A Lowcountry woman is rallying support for her plight to support young American men, who she says are slipping through the cracks in the wake of the push for gender equality.
“I’m trying to get eyeballs and ears on this,” said WORTHYBoy founder Cheyanne Lake of West Ashley. “People still don’t really recognize that there is a crisis for our men, and if they do, it’s still very much not politically or socially correct to say that our boys and men are in any way disenfranchised.”
To bring more attention to the problem, Lake first will embark on a two-week rickshaw journey on Dec. 28 across India with international travel company The Adventurists. Why? To get a clearer contrast of what’s happening in the South with young men, compared to India, which has a different cultural dynamic.
Each day, she says she will spotlight a different advocate who she says is doing significant work to combat the crisis. An example is Warren Farrell, an American educator and author of The Boy Crisis.
“We will meet in Kerala in the south of India,” Lake said. “There’s a start line, and how you get to the finish line is up to you. You just have to get there in 14 days, but you decide your journey.”
The finish line is Jaisalmer, a more than 930-mile journey that takes two days by car.
Along the way, she said, she plans to film the experience and talk with the local men to learn about different cultures. The documentary she expects to make will be titled Worthy Voices, and she said she has big plans to turn it into a podcast and book, too.
After India
But that’s just the first leg of the adventure, Lake said. After finishing her time in India, she plans to do the same thing in the United States, across Canada, the United Kingdom and then in Australia. The whole experience, she said, will take about two years.
“The question I asked myself was: ‘Are the boys in India doing better than the boys in the West?’” she explained. “Family is still very important. Men are still, maybe to the detriment of some women, honored. Has that helped the boys? I don’t know. That’s what I want to find out.”
According to an email, Farrell said he is hopeful that Lake’s trip to India will shed much-needed light on the issue.
“Cheyanne Lake is a rare blend of warmth, vision, planning and follow through,” he said in a statement. “The filming of her interviewing boys from India to the United States will doubtless bring heart that will substitute neglect with compassion.”
Discovering the crisis
Lake, who also goes by “Ferghe,” said she first learned about a crisis among young men from Farrell’s book and others like it. In it, she found several statistics, such as boys getting 70% to 80% of the Ds and Fs in school. Data also show they represent 75% of school suspensions and more. It was alarming, she said, and the situation felt far more dire than others made it seem.
She described how she started talking about it with anybody who would listen, and when people started to recognize her as someone who cared about the fate of young men, they started to reach out to her to get involved, too, she said.
“My goal is to make Charleston a model city for what it looks like to care and invest and change classroom styles for our boys,” Ferghe said.
She said she has big plans to start smaller organizations and programs under her WORTHYBoys name, including opportunities for young men who want to go into trades or real estate or own their own business. Other ideas include a mentor program run by men for men.
“Until I die, it will just be about awakening people to the idea that there’s something wrong,” she said. Most people, when I say there’s a boy crisis, they don’t understand. They look at me puzzled. … Boys don’t scream and cry and complain. And men don’t know how to seek help. They just shut up and go to work. They’re suffering silently.”
Since finding her voice for young men, Lake has joined several larger organizations and become part of a larger advocacy network. Lawrence DeMarco, executive manager of the International Council for Men and Boys, lauded her work in her local communities and beyond.
“[Ferghe’s] work is not ideological or performative. It is grounded in listening, evidence and a sincere commitment to understanding the lived realities behind the statistics,” DeMarco said in a statement. “At a time when many voices speak about men and boys, Férghe is willing to stand with them, ask difficult questions and pursue solutions that are humane, balanced and necessary.”
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