(Pedro Jones killed his girlfriend's baby in attempt to make him act like a boy.)
The American ideal, then, of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American ideal of masculinity. This ideal has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and faggot, black and white. It is an ideal so paralytically infantile that it is virtually forbidden--as an unpatriotic act--that the American boy evolve into the complexity of manhood.
- James Baldwin, "Here Be Dragons"
You've seen this story so many times before you should know it by heart:
Father figure kills son for "acting like a girl."
Baby boys aren't ever going to stop dying at the hands of their hypermasculine father figures because we live in a society that tells these men that it's their duty to guard their sons behavior in this way. We live in a society that tells them that the worst thing they can ever be is not a thief, rapist, or murderer.
No, the worst thing they could ever be is a woman.
As long as the Western, patriarchal ideal of masculinity calls on us (especially those of us who are poor or people of color) to be soldiers instead of sons, police instead of parents, misogynists instead of optimists, monsters instead of men, all we will ever yield is tragedy.
"Man up" will be the death of us.
R.I.P. Roy Jones.