Friend of the Gutter Jessica Ritchey writes about The Toys That Made Us, the fragility of masculinity and how we got where we are. “’The stories we tell matter’ is usually meant as a piece of feel good puffery. But there’s a real warning in that statement too. One we ignore far too often. We teach boys that they are born to lead, to rule, to swing swords. And we teach girls they are meant to be ornamental, to demure. We leave boys with their only female figures of authority being their mothers or their teachers and thereby teach them that women in power will only take away what they want. We teach boys not to share, not their toys, not their power.”