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She Knows Magazine, September 2024
Over the course of the summer, we brought more than 20 young people aged 14-20 into our studios for in-person interviews, and interviewed and surveyed even more as part of our ongoing Gen Z Council. We’re proud to showcase their insights and opinions throughout this issue. We also tapped thought leaders including Scott Galloway, Richard V. Reeves, and Ruth Whippman. Being a teenager has always been complicated. So has being a parent of one. We hope this issue gives you valuable insight into the minds of teen boys — and the advice you need to better support the ones in your life.
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Testimonials for so-called TRT are one of the year’s most ridiculous — and dangerous — online trends.
Bloomberg Health, September 19, 2024
Young men have an entire lexicon to fight their current crisis of masculinity: They’re mogging1 at the gym. They’re mewing2 in class. They’re chugging raw eggs for breakfast. They’re bulking to reach a new PR. And a growing subset of them are “testosterone-maxxing” with TRT, a sex hormone replacement therapy they believe will enhance their sexual, physical and mental well-being. Chris Bryant says we’re living in a “Wild West” of testosterone. While plenty of people have a valid reason for treatment — perhaps they have a hemoglobin deficiency or they suffer from osteoporosis or they’re in need of gender-affirming care — bad actors are all too eager to take advantage of Joe Rogan sycophants who religiously monitor their T-levels. “Championed by buff podcasters, Hollywood actors, fitness influencers and even former US presidential candidates, testosterone consumption is booming,” he writes. But blasting yourself with 500 mg of “test” isn’t a TikTok experiment, nor is it “akin to taking a multivitamin.” It’s reckless, plain and simple. The widespread acceptance of TRT has created an aura of casualness that’s frankly unwarranted, Chris writes. “There’s a danger that opting for TRT as a cure-all means health issues such as obesity aren’t appropriately addressed, while young men risk impaired fertility and a lifetime of unnecessary and costly injections.”
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WebMD, September 17, 2024
Too many men turn to urgent care for treatment they should be getting from a primary care doctor, said John Messmer, MD, a family medicine doctor and geriatrician at Penn State Health in Hershey, PA.“ Men should first come around age 21 for general health maintenance,” said Messmer, noting that it’s also a good time to start measuring cholesterol, especially if there is a family history. “Maybe they have a father or grandfather who died of a heart attack, never had a problem but had high cholesterol their entire life. Here, we’re looking at a dementia risk, and if you’re depositing cholesterol in your arteries throughout your life, you’re going to advance problems that could have been prevented,” he said. Other concerns include weight, blood pressure, diabetes, and discussions about diet, physical activity, smoking, and drug/alcohol use. This is also the time to start self-examination of testicles to avert testicular cancer, Bajic said. Messmer said if nothing is found that requires closer attention, he recommends one or two more appointments for men in their 20s, and three or four for men in their 30s.
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NEW PMY RESOURCE
PMY has released a series of three one-page briefs for parents on the subjects of AYA males and sexual and reproductive health, male sexuality, health risks and gender and pornography. In addition to background facts on those subjects, the briefs include practical advice for parents, including how to communicate with young males on those topics. The website page containing downloadable versions of the briefs also contains suggested readings containing advice for parenting of AYA males.
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Reducing this educational gap will require many solutions. Among them: more men need to step up as role models
phillyvoice.com, September 20, 2024
According to the American Institute for Boys and Men, boys are struggling at school and have fallen well behind girls in academic achievement. There is a 14% gap in school readiness between boys and girls at age 5. Boys have lower grade point averages than girls throughout their K-12 educations. Boys are less likely to take advanced-placement courses and less likely to graduate high school. Women make up the majority of students on America's college campuses, a gap of 15% between young men and women. It gets worse. AIBM also notes that in the average school district, boys are almost a grade level behind girls in English language arts (there is no gap in Math), and that the risk of suicide is four times higher for boys and young men than their female peers — and has risen by 40% among younger men since 2010. The severity of this problem prompted Melinda French Gates to announce funding for AIBM earlier this year as part of a gender equality initiative to better help boys achieve as highly as girls. To me, this represents a call to action for men of all ages to do our part to help shape the future of the boys in our lives. It's a call that can impact boys while conveying benefits to the men who get engaged. A piece published in the Columbia Political Review in 2021 suggested the poor state of U.S. boys can be traced to the American educational system, which perpetuates gender norms that overlook the harm that they inflict on boys. Predominant among these stereotypes is that boys misbehave more. That has translated into a number of concerning outcomes which constitute the crisis.
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USA Today, September 13, 2024
A culture of masculinity marked by anti-LGBTQ and other harmful language pervades youth sports environments, according to a study led by Fordham University researchers – signaling a public health concern whose implications, experts say, are both wide-ranging and long-lasting. While sports generally offer great benefits for youth, the study found those benefits are increasingly eroded the more that youth are exposed to such language ― even if they aren't the targets of it. Such environments hurt not only LGBTQ youth but all youth, the authors say ― with no group suffering more harm than straight white boys. “It harms the wellbeing of everyone,” said Laura Wernick, one of the study’s lead authors and an associate professor of social service at Fordham's Graduate School of Social Service, located in Manhattan, New York. Whether as joke or insult, homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic language is often wielded in boys’ sports environments, used as motivation or one-upmanship to enforce ― or "police," as the researchers write ― traditional standards of masculinity. Such locker room vernacular includes phrases like "man up" or "don't be such a sissy," with boys pressured to meet expectations so as not to be thought of as gay or feminine. The study found that youths exposed to higher levels of such language were less likely to reap the benefits of youth sports environments, particularly self-esteem. The decrease in self-esteem was significantly greater among straight white cisgender boys than any other subgroup, Wernick said.
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The Conversation, September 20, 2024
Black gay and bisexual men made up about 38% of the estimated 37,981 new HIV diagnoses in the U.S. in 2022. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that approximately 50% of these men will receive an HIV diagnosis during their lifetime. Despite being disproportionately affected by HIV, Black gay and bisexual men have one of the lowest rates of PrEP usage ( preexposure prophylaxis, a highly effective prescription medication that prevents the spread of HIV) across all age groups. Many of them live in the South, which has the highest number of people living with HIV in the U.S. but very low PrEP uptake due to stigma, cost and homophobia. Other barriers include lack of trust in the health care system, discrimination, poverty and limited physician knowledge about PrEP. PrEP faces significant barriers for widespread use among the most vulnerable populations. In 2022, only 36% of the 1.2 million people who could benefit from PrEP were prescribed the medications. As public health researchers studying why Black gay and bisexual men have low access to PrEP in Iowa – a rural state with growing rates of HIV infection, especially among sexual and gender minorities – we recently published a study that highlighted some ways to improve prevention.
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Thrilled that lenacapavir, which is injected twice yearly, was highly effective in both gay men and women in clinical trials, HIV advocates worry it will prove too expensive for insurers.
NBC News, September 12, 2024
The hotly anticipated results are in from a landmark pair of major clinical trials of a long-acting, injectable HIV-prevention drug that only requires dosing every six months. They are sensational. Thrilled over the news Thursday that lenacapavir was 89% more effective at preventing HIV than daily oral preventive medication among gay, bisexual and transgender people, plus previous news that the injectable drug was 100% effective in cisgender women, HIV advocates are looking to the future. They hope that if rolled out broadly and equitably, lenacapavir could be the game changer the nation badly needs. “These kinds of results are unprecedented,” said Dr. Jared Baeten, senior vice president of virology clinical development at Gilead Sciences, which manufactures lenacapavir. “I have moments like this where I truly am speechless. What this can mean for the trajectory of the HIV epidemic is everything that all the world has imagined for years. We can actually turn off new infections.” And yet, as battle-worn public health advocates stand on the front lines of an over four-decade effort to finally bring the U.S. HIV epidemic to heel, they find a cold, hard fact staring back at them: Lenacapavir is extraordinarily expensive. Calling lenacapavir’s clinical trial results “nothing short of amazing,” Jen Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at the nonpartisan health nonprofit KFF, said the news “raises the stakes on the importance of getting this new tool to all those who need it, in the United States and around the world. The track record thus far has unfortunately not been a good one.” Lenacapavir’s current list price for use as HIV treatment is $3,450 per month. Gilead has not yet indicated whether it will set a different price for the drug’s use as PrEP. A company spokesperson told NBC News on Thursday, however, that the reference point for the price of lenacapavir as PrEP will not be its current use as treatment.
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Young men appear to be drifting right. Ignoring them means trouble.
The American Prospect, September 20, 2024
Signs have been mounting that, for the first time in recent decades, Democrats may lose majority support from young men in 2024. The risk to Democrats is that this is not just a one-time fluke but an indication of growing trouble with men in coming elections. Democrats can celebrate the support they are getting from young women, but they also need to take the disaffection of young men seriously, engage them directly, and respond to the visions of manhood and masculinity that Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are offering. According to New York Times/Siena polls, the Democrats’ deficit with young men had already emerged when Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee. In four national polls from December to June, Trump held an edge among 18-to-29-year-old men averaging 11 points, while Biden’s margin among women that age averaged 28 points. In August, with Kamala Harris as the nominee, the gender gap among young voters was higher in a poll of six swing states, but nearly all the difference came from a surge of support for Harris among young women to a 38-point advantage. Trump’s margin among young men, at 13 percent, was just two points higher than in the earlier national polls. The breadth of this political realignment suggests that the underlying causes are changes in the structure of the advanced economies that have reduced the advantages that men once enjoyed. These include the decline of manufacturing jobs and diminished ability of men with less than a college education to support a family, while women have made gains in education and the postindustrial labor market. This shift has coincided with the rise of feminism and support from left-of-center parties, including the Democrats, for gender equality and LGBTQ+ inclusion. To some extent, parties of the left have taken the blame from men for an economic and social transformation that did not have partisan origins. But as Thomas Edsall has pointed out in The New York Times, the gender gap in voting has recently become a “gender gulf” in the United States and some other countries. The shift among young men is part of that heightened polarization, and its causes may be both economic and political.
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CNN, September 20, 2024
Peter Hamby and CNN's Audie Cornish join The Lead
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PMY CONSULTANT SEARCH
PMY is conducting a search for a consultant to help plan and facilitate a Board of Directors strategic planning retreat. Send inquiries to
dbarbour@partnershipformaleyouth.org
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Please consider a contribution to support PMY and the publication of the Weekly News Roundup. All donations are tax deductible. To donate, click on the button below. |
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DENNIS J. BARBOUR, Esq.
Editor
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ABOUT
The Weekly News Roundup is produced by The Partnership for Male Youth and is released every Monday.
For more information contact Dennis J. Barbour, Esq.
News Roundup editor and President/CEO of the Partnership, at dbarbour@ partnershipformaleyouth.org.
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