Raising Boys Who Won’t Laugh

8 Lessons from the Men’s Hockey Team

I wasn’t going to write about the men’s hockey team laughing at President Trump’s “joke” about having to invite the gold-medal–winning women’s team lest he be impeached. So many smart writers already responded swiftly and pointedly.

But then I had a conversation with a group of young men, ages 18 to 21.

They didn’t think the joke was especially funny. But they also thought us critics were being thin-skinned.

“When did people stop being able to take a joke?” one asked — a line that sounded parroted from male internet culture.

An anxious dad rushed in to mediate: “Both can be true. It can be funny and sexist.”

And while he’s not entirely wrong, who tells the joke — and who laughs — matters.

So to this dad trying to “both-sides it” and every parent raising boys right now: here’s what our sons need to hear before they leave our homes.

The hockey moment is as good a teaching tool as any.

1. You have unearned privilege

Tell him if he’s male — especially if he’s white — that the world will assume he’s competent before he’s demonstrated it. He will be interrupted less. Questioned less. Underestimated less.

Tell him:

That doesn’t mean you didn’t work hard.

It means you didn’t fight certain headwinds.

Your job isn’t to feel guilty.

Your job is to notice.

Unless boys understand their privilege, none of the others on this list will make sense.

2. Women often do more with less — and get less recognition anyway

Since women’s hockey became an Olympic sport in 1998, the U.S. women have medaled in every single Olympics. That’s seven medals in seven olympics. The men have won 12 medals in 25 olympics.

Both teams have won three Olympic gold medals. But the men’s victories span more than 100 years — their last in 1980. The women accomplished the same feat in just 28 years.

And yet men’s hockey consistently receives more headlines, more sponsorship money, more cultural relevance.

So when a president makes it clear that he’d rather not have the women’s team there (while making a personalized video call with the men but not the women and then sends a chartered White House plane for them but not the women), we know it’s misogyny.

Ask your son to reflect on why that’s funny.

3. Male bonding often happens at girls’ expense

From locker rooms to group chats to frat basements, boys are often socialized to bond by mocking, sexualizing, degrading, or violating girls.

One comment may not seem like a big deal. But thousands of moments of 'locker room talk' slowly normalize the idea that girls are objects, punchlines, or prizes — and that normalization has consequences. It makes harassment easier to dismiss. Abuse easier to ignore. It creates a culture where violations of women are unsurprising.

Explain why they use women to bond:

We raise boys to fear intimacy with each other. We tell them closeness is “soft”. Vulnerability is suspect. So they prove belonging by jointly objectifying someone else—evidence they are manly—not gay.

It’s a performance — what Liz Plank calls “a constant, anxious audition: are you man enough, are you one of us, do you get the joke?”

And it works — which is why it’s so hard to interrupt.

Show your son the video. Ask him what he notices. Ask him why laughing might feel easier than not laughing.

Then tell him real connection — with boys and girls — requires courage. It’s not unmasculine—it’s the beating heart of life.

4. Power determines whether a joke punches up or punches down

Many boys ask: why is okay for girls to make fun of boys? Isn’t that “reverse-sexism”?

Power matters.

Mocking a group with institutional power is not the same as mocking a group historically excluded from it. Punching up can be satire. It can be a way of processing powerlessness with others who experience the same thing. Punching down reinforces hierarchy.

It’s not that mocking anyone is ideal. It’s that harm lands differently depending on who already holds power.

5. Proximity to power is not the same thing as having it

Laughing at the right moment can feel like access. Approval. Alignment.

But being near power does not mean you’re powerful.

If you stop thinking for yourself and silence your own moral instincts to gain belonging, you haven’t gained power — you’ve surrendered it.

And sometimes, boys try to reclaim their power by exerting control over people with less of it, like girls.

Trading your empathy or your dignity for a head nod is a bad bargain.

6. Culture shapes what you value

One of the young men in the group told me men’s sports are simply more entertaining — more speed, more power, more spectacle.

But men’s sports get more investment, more airtime, more production value. Ask your son to reflect on what might make men’s games seem more exciting—halftime shows, cheerleaders, better camera coverage, more instant replays. Tell them women’s sports receive less than 10% of media coverage despite making up 40% of athletes.

Entertainment is not purely biologically-determined; it’s cultivated. Some prefer the raw speed and power of men's sports, others the technical, strategic nature of women's sports.

Even if you prefer men’s sports, that preference doesn’t justify diminishing women’s achievements.

Liking one thing doesn’t require belittling another.

7. Successful men usually have women to thank

No elite athlete got to the rink alone.

Someone woke up at 5 a.m. Someone packed the bag. Paid the fees. Sat in freezing stands. Wiped away tears. Rearranged her life so he could chase his dream.

Two brothers on the men’s hockey team have a mother who helped coach the women’s team and who was herself a former women's national hockey player. Ask your son how he thinks she felt watching them laugh?¹

Women’s labor — especially mothers’ labor — is so foundational it becomes invisible.

Don’t let it.

8. Be an upstander.

Tell your son that there will be a moment — maybe many — when someone makes a comment that diminishes girls or women.

Say:

You will feel the gravitational pull of the group.

Laughing will be easier.

But character is built in the half-second before you decide whether to go along.

You don’t have to grandstand. You don’t have to shame anyone.

You can simply not laugh.

Or you can do what one player shouted that day: ‘Two for two.’ Pride in both teams. No diminishment required.

That’s leadership.

That’s strength.

And that’s what I expect from you

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1. Ellen Weinberg Hughes—who must have fought a lifetime of gender inequity given her interest in hockey—gave up an important opportunity to call out the misogyny for what it was when asked about it on The Today Show. I understand the instinct to protect your sons. But protecting boys from discomfort does not prepare them for integrity. Let’s raise boys who can withstand the discomfort of not laughing.

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