There is a difficult obligation in helping a boy who feels rejected: taking his hurt seriously while refusing to let it become an accusation against women. Hurt deserves attention. It does not confer a right to make somebody else smaller.
That distinction matters in the debate about online misogyny. The Guardian reports that authors writing in the Lancet are calling for the manosphere and its harms to be approached as a public health issue, with governments, schools, health services and community organisations working together. Their proposal also stresses the need to give boys a worthwhile alternative.
The alternative deserves more thought than the word usually receives. Telling a young person to stop listening leaves an obvious vacancy. What is he supposed to listen to instead? Who has time for him when he is awkward, angry or embarrassed by his own uncertainty?
We should be wary of expecting a warning about harmful content to answer those needs. A boy may understand perfectly well that something is objectionable and still find the promise of belonging attractive. The practical challenge is to make room for him somewhere that does not require contempt as the price of admission.
There is a complication here. Talk of understanding boys can become another demand that girls and women accommodate them. A girl should not have to absorb humiliation because the boy delivering it is struggling. Nor should she become responsible for patiently explaining her humanity until he accepts it. Adults have responsibilities here which cannot fairly be passed to her.
A public health approach is worth considering partly because it asks for a response beyond the individual household. Yet its language needs care. Boys are people with choices to make, not a suspect population to be managed. Treating them as inevitable victims of what they watch risks overlooking their capacity to question it.
For ordinary life, the obligation is quite demanding: leave room for an honest conversation, including an uncomfortable one, and hold a boundary when hurt becomes cruelty. That means being available before a crisis, allowing uncertainty without ridicule, and challenging contempt without declaring the person expressing it beyond reach.
Somewhere in that work, a boy needs to discover that he can be disappointed, lonely or unsure of himself without needing an enemy. That discovery requires more from the adults around him than a list of things he must never say.