It is remarkable that a broadly framed discussion of the well-being of boys and men immediately turns away from a focus on males and moves instead to talk about women, especially relationships between men and women (what Esther Vilar once termed partnerships between “the manipulated man” and women, divorce, child custody battles). Perhaps just as important, the participants in the discussion about most men are often only men. At the point when concern for males is broached as a topic, oddly enough women go silent. This is symptomatic of three powerful taboos. The first is the inhibition among men to talk about their boyhood. Yet the boy in the man never disappears; he only goes underground. This is not an undesired phantom presence, but probably the source of creativity in men, what I have termed thymos or male spiritedness. Given the prominence in the discussion of talk of relationships between men and women, little is said about intimate relationships between men themselves, what has been known as friendship. When male-male relationships are mentioned, they are assumed to have a sexual basis. Yet one has only to read Plato, Montaigne and Emerson (to cover a broad period of time and a number of quite different cultures) to realize that same-sex relationships have always been essential for boys and men. Think of the father-son relation as foundational, but also of the importance of the deep confidences between chums during the preadolescent years (pointed out by Harry Stack Sullivan), and the powerful lifelong ties established by males who have been close in high school or college, or served in the military. The third taboo concerns the silence of women when talk about what is good about boys and men is important. Instead one hears only of “problems” when talking about boys and only of “shortcomings” when the talk turns to men. It is crucial that a male-positive orientation be taken at this moment in “his story” (an untold story) and by both men and women. This does not imply a concurrent female-negative stance, as some have suggested. It simply means that we allow ourselves to describe what is good in most men, not the few males who drain away the source of power over their own lives for most men or the even smaller number who do horrific things to women and gain media attention. If we are all honest, we will have to admit that a “second sexism” (David Benatar’s term) has been in play from early on and is probably built into culture itself (as work of the anthropologist David Gilmore has suggested) and is not a reaction against the advances women have made in gaining control over their lives. We should also be careful in understanding what “boys will be boys” suggests. It does not mean that the fabled “slugs and snails / And puppy-dogs' tails” are what little boys are made of. Instead, it means there are basic differences between boys’ and girls’ tendencies in movement, comportment and play that are not attributable to socialization, although the latter may reinforce or discourage such tendencies. We must be able to see certain remarkable features in boys, recognizing that boyhood itself is a quite recent phenomenon in the West (perhaps first best characterized by Dickens). We must see boys as who they are, enjoy their exuberance, and learn from them about "la vida loca" of boyhood that ends all too soon when the demands of manhood are reluctantly (yes, reluctantly) taken on. And let us hear from women about what they like about their fathers, sons, brothers and lovers. Most women do like men, you know.