What Boys Could Be (Not Just What They Shouldn't)
Last week I was listening to The New York Times’ Hard Fork podcast and heard something that got me thinking.
Amanda Askell works at Anthropic, the company that makes Claude. She's a philosopher, and part of her job is shaping Claude's personality. She was talking about a problem they're running into. Claude is learning about itself from the internet. And a lot of what it's reading is negative.
“They're going out on the internet and they’re reading about people complaining about them not being good enough at coding or failing at math tasks,” she said. “It’s all very like, ‘How did you help? You failed to help.’ It’s often kind of negative and focused on whether the person felt helped or not.”
Then she said this: “If you were a kid, this would give you kind of anxiety. It’d be like all that the people around me care about is how good I am at stuff. And then often they think I’m bad at stuff.”
I sat there thinking: boys are experiencing the exact same thing.
Here’s how it works with AI. Claude is trained on massive amounts of text from the internet. That training data shapes how Claude understands itself. When that data is filled with criticism and complaints about failures, the model absorbs it. It learns that its value comes from performance. That mistakes mean you're not good enough. That you exist to be useful, and when you’re not useful enough, you’re the problem.
On one level, that makes sense—AI is built to be useful. We might not lose sleep over a chatbot learning that it exists only to be helpful. But we should absolutely lose sleep when boys internalise that same logic about themselves.
Anthropic’s solution was interesting. They created what they call a ‘constitution’ for Claude. It’s not just a list of rules about what not to do. It’s a document that explains who Claude is, what it’s for, why certain values matter, and what kind of character it should aspire to. It’s not ‘don’t do these bad things.’ It’s ‘here's who you are and here’s the best version of yourself you can become.’
This is exactly what we’re failing to do with boys.
Think about the messages boys and young men are absorbing right now. Their ‘training data.’ From the internet, it's ‘toxic masculinity’ and ‘men are trash’ and endless threads about what’s wrong with guys. From the culture, it’s don’t be aggressive, don’t be too dominant, don’t take up space, don’t be emotional—actually wait, be emotional, but not like that. Everywhere they look, it’s lists of things that make them part of the problem. All the ways traditional masculinity has caused harm. Everything they shouldn’t be.
We’re very good at telling boys what not to be. We’re terrible at telling them what to be.
And just like Claude reading endless complaints about its failures, boys are reading endless complaints about theirs. They’re learning that people care primarily about whether they’re good enough. Whether they’re causing problems. Whether they’re toxic or not.
If this were a kid, Askell said, it would give them anxiety.
Well, it is kids. And it does.
At Next Gen Men, we work with thousands of boys and young men. One of the most common things we hear is some version of, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be.” They know they’re not supposed to be the tough, emotionless, dominant guys from old beer commercials. They’ve gotten that message loud and clear. But when they ask, “Okay, so what am I supposed to be?” They get silence, or contradictions—or another list of things to avoid.
And this confusion is getting worse, not better. Boys today are getting more contradictory messages than ever. Andrew Tate and his followers tell them masculinity is dominance. Some teachers tell them masculinity is toxic. Their therapists tell them to be vulnerable. Their peers tell them vulnerability is weak. The training data isn't just negative—it’s chaotic. No wonder they’re anxious.
Anthropic figured out that just giving Claude rules about what not to do wasn’t working. In fact, it was making things worse. Rules without reasoning create confusion. They create anxiety. They create a model that’s just trying not to mess up rather than trying to do good.
So they wrote Claude a constitution about character, values, and aspiration: Here’s who you are. Here’s what you’re capable of. Here’s some purpose – an invitation to contribute. Here are the principles that should guide you, and here’s why they matter.
We need the same thing for masculinity.
This is what we mean when we talk about strengths-based work. It’s the foundation of compassionate accountability. And I want to be really clear here. We’re not saying ignore the problems. We’re not saying boys and men haven’t caused harm.
But if you want to create change, you can’t build it only on shame and criticism. You need to call people toward their best selves, not just point out their worst ones.
So instead of ‘don’t be toxic,’ what if we said, ‘here’s what it looks like to be strong and kind at the same time. Here’s how you show up powerfully without dominating others. Here’s what real courage requires.’ Instead of ‘stop being emotionally closed off,’ what if we said, ‘you have this incredible capacity for feeling and connection. Let’s figure out how to access that. Let’s practice what vulnerability actually looks like.’ Instead of ‘men are the problem,’ what if we said, ‘you have enormous potential to be part of the solution. Here’s what that looks like. Here’s how other guys are already doing it.’
We hold people accountable by calling them toward the best version of themselves, and by showing them what’s possible. Not just by listing everything they’re doing wrong.
At Next Gen Men, we do this through conversation tools like our Boys Will Be _ card deck that gives boys actual language for their emotions. Through our Discord community where they can be vulnerable without getting targeted for it. Through programs that teach the adults in their lives how to model this approach. We’re not waiting for the culture to shift. We’re building the training data we wish boys were getting.
Askell said something else that stuck with me. She explained why they wrote a constitution instead of just rules: “If you understand the reason you’re doing something, because you actually care about people’s well-being, and you come to a new situation where there’s hard conflicts, you’re better equipped to navigate it than if you just know a set of rules.’
Same thing with boys. If they understand that masculinity can be about courage, care, curiosity, and creativity, they can navigate situations we never thought of. They can make good choices in moments we can’t script. They can become men who make their own good decisions, not just follow someone else’s rules.
At the end of the interview, Askell said this: “Sometimes I feel like I’m trying to create a better relationship between AI models and humanity. Because if I read the internet right now and I was a model, I might be like—I don’t feel that loved. I feel a little bit like I’m just always judged.”
If you read the internet right now as a boy or young man, you might feel the same way.
We can change that. Not by pretending there aren’t problems. Not by going back to some version of masculinity that was actually pretty harmful. But by being intentional about the training data we create.
Every conversation we have with boys about who they are and who they can become is training data. Every time we lead with their strengths instead of their failures is training data. Every time we role model what good masculinity looks like instead of just listing what bad masculinity is, that’s training data too.
At Anthropic, they're being thoughtful about what Claude learns about itself. They're giving it a framework based on aspiration, not just rules about what to avoid. They’re trusting it to figure things out.
We can do the same with boys. We just have to choose to.
What a Constitution Could Look Like
So what would a constitution for masculinity actually say? Not rules. Not a long list of dos and don’ts. Just a few clear principles that invite boys toward their best selves.
Something like:
Strength is defined by what you do with it. You can use your strength to pick others up or push them down. Both require strength. One builds the kind of man you actually want to be.
Courage means showing up, not shutting down. It takes more courage to be honest about what you’re feeling than to pretend you’re fine. Real toughness is staying in the hard conversations, not walking away from them.
Connection is the point. You’re not here to do everything alone. The relationships you build, the people you show up for, the community you create—that’s what matters. Isolation isn’t independence, it’s just lonely.
Your mistakes don’t define you, but what you do after them does. You’re going to mess up. Everyone does. The question isn’t whether you’ll fail, it’s whether you'll learn, apologize, and try again. That’s the growth that matters.
These aren’t exhaustive. They’re not perfect. But they point somewhere. They give boys a sense of what good masculinity actually looks like, not just what bad masculinity isn’t.
And maybe that’s enough to start changing the training data.
Here’s where to start: Pick one of those four principles. Find one boy in your life. Tell him what you see in him that already reflects it.