---
AND THERE IT IS BEST ARTICLE EVER-.... mostly why are all the women warriors
naked??? Even the bravest of the brave... why?
#METOO #TIMESUP- after all these years- rich game boys
actually might change their caveboy behaviour?
Gaming’s toxic men, explained https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/25/17593516/video-game-culture-toxic-men-explained?utm_campaign=polygon&utm_content=entry&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
via @Polygon
links always… credit goes where credit is due… and
brilliant writing and authors of the word… need us bowing at their pens and
keyboards
For our sons…. And their sons and daughters…. We need
to take a breath and get back to being better people helping and village
raising our boys because #boysmattertoo
-------------------------
CANADA'S THE WALRUS..
The Epidemic of Isolation Among Young Men
Why are we so squeamish about male friendship?
In 2017, former
US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy identified the most common threat to
public health that he had seen: not heart disease, diabetes, or
cancer—but loneliness. Isolation and weak social connections, he wrote
in Harvard Business Review, “are associated with a reduction in
lifespan similar to that caused by smoking fifteen cigarettes a day and
even greater than that associated with obesity. Loneliness is also
associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia,
depression, and anxiety.” Murthy was supported by a large body of
research, culled from more than 200 studies involving more than 3
million subjects worldwide, that showed that we are in the midst of a
loneliness epidemic. The culprits are manifold and include the fluidity
of modern life (we move and change jobs more), the weakening of
community institutions such as service organizations and faith groups,
the gig economy, and our increasing reliance on social media.
One factor at play is that men are often reluctant to show vulnerability or ask for support, so they are less likely to reach out to other men when they’re struggling or to make an overture to a new acquaintance to deepen the friendship. Beginning in childhood, women are encouraged to be good listeners, social, communicative, and empathetic—all attributes required to make and maintain emotionally robust friendships. These same qualities aren’t emphasized to the same degree among boys and young men, despite the importance of social ties to children of all genders.
As early as preschool, friendships are crucial to children’s development and well-being. They create a sense of belonging and safety and help diminish stress. There’s also research showing that friendships play a role in children’s mental health. A 2010 longitudinal study followed about 230 elementary school students over two years and found that having just one friend helped prevent anxious, withdrawn children from developing full-blown depression. While children who are shy and have a sad affect tend to become even more withdrawn and sad as they enter adolescence, the students who had one friendship at any time during the study suffered less and even reported that their sadness declined. Researchers believe that friendship conferred psychological resilience.
Boys and young men genuinely want intimate connections with their peers, yet there is stigma attached to male vulnerability, starting very early, conveyed in implicit and explicit messages that equate tenderness and affection with weakness and femininity. And the sort of easy physical affection shared by girls and young women is often met with homophobia when the same sort of hugging and hand holding is displayed between boys and young men. In 2015, the national distress-support service Kids Help Phone launched a service called BroTalk, offering direct access to online and phone counsellors to teenage boys. This demographic is statistically much less likely than girls to talk about and seek help for mental and emotional health issues due to embarrassment and to gender stereotypes about self-sufficiency and self-reliance. In order to reach those boys, the helpline needed to target them directly.
This animosity toward queerness can be devastating for boys and young men who are gay, bisexual, gender nonconforming, and trans, resulting in bullying, violence, and isolation. Homophobia also carries a threat for straight and cisgender boys and young men, who fear being perceived as gay. Consider the seemingly benign term bromance. The cutesy portmanteau carries with it a certain discomfort around male emotional vulnerability and connection. Bromance celebrates same-sex fondness but does it with a smirk—as if two men caring for another needs to be explained or justified.
Given the importance of friendship for health and, more simply, happiness and pleasure, this unease with deep, loving male friendships has serious consequences. If we want to improve the outcomes for adults, we need to intervene where this disconnect begins—with boys.
Our squeamishness about male friendship is a historical anomaly: connections between men have been idealized throughout Western history and understood as foundational to society, culture, and art. The veneration of men’s friendships can be charted as far back as ancient Greece. Aristotle called the friend “a second self,” and the biblical David said his friend Jonathan’s love for him “was wonderful, passing the love of women.” From Renaissance Europe, there’s French philosopher Michel de Montaigne’s essay “On Friendship,” in which he describes his connection with a deceased friend as one with “souls mingling and blending with each other so completely that they efface the seam that joined them.”
And on it went through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, at a time when women and men rarely socialized together outside supervised gatherings or family groups. This led people to turn to same-sex companions for emotional sustenance. All-male societies, such as professional guilds and workplaces, religious orders, universities and colleges, service clubs, sports teams, and the military, fostered adoring friendships, particularly among younger and unmarried men. Overt displays of affection and confessions of love between male friends were, until recently, common and unremarkable.
Then the culture shifted. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women began moving beyond their domestic duties; places of employment, schools, and political movements were no longer all-male environments. The sexes were increasingly integrated in public life. As the social spheres of women and men began to overlap, love-based marriage and the nuclear family displaced male friendships and male societies at the centre of culture and society.
At the same time, homosexuality became more visible as an identity. Same-sex desire and sex have existed throughout history and across all cultures, but until relatively recently, sexuality was understood to be something that shaped what you did, not something that defined who you were. In the West, it wasn’t until the mid-1800s that homosexuality was described as a perversion and a threat to Victorian values. This fear about same-sex desire soon made platonic male friendships seem suspicious as well.
Taken together, these shifts helped forge a new definition of manhood that still exists today: the male as the opposite of the female, as the provider and head of the household, and as heterosexual. Under these new rules of masculinity, intimate same-sex connections became antithetical to being “a real man.”
Judging from media accounts, you’d imagine that all boys are hapless oafs, out of touch with their emotions. Stanford University psychologist Judy Chu found something very different during her two years spent observing the emotional and social development of a cohort of six boys.
In her early visits to their school, when the children were four, she noticed that the boys were really interested in playing guns. There were no toy guns at the school, but the boys built them out of blocks or used their fingers. This activity bothered the teachers, who banned the game, fearing it reflected violent impulses and aggression. Initially, Chu thought the same, but then she noticed that playing guns had a different meaning for the boys than it did for the adults. First of all, the boys weren’t angry or hostile. They were delighted to chase and be chased, to play stickup, and to pretend to shoot or be shot.
On closer observation, Chu understood that playing guns was primarily a “quick, effective and distinctly ‘masculine’ way for the boys to engage and bond with each other.” By the age of four, they’d already absorbed social messages that a gun is a “boy thing,” just like dress-up is a “girl thing.” Boys weren’t drawn to the game because of some inherent blood lust—rather, it gave them an opportunity to play with other boys. As they got older, their interest in guns waned and was replaced by Pokémon cards and sports. Though the toys and activities changed, the desire to bond and identify with other boys remained.
The six boys Chu observed had individual temperaments and preferences, and while they shared a number of common interests, they made deliberate choices about when to act masculine (by being tough or bossy, by making fun of girlie things, and so on) depending on their wishes and needs at any given moment. Boys who liked status and power, such as Mike and MinHaeng, were most likely to adhere to boy norms, including competitiveness, while others, such as Dan, a happy-go-lucky kid who played with girls as easily as he did with the boys, and Tony, a withdrawn kid dealing with the upheaval of his mom’s recent remarriage, seemed less interested in or less capable of fitting in with the boys’ clique. All of them tended to moderate their behaviour when adults were present, intuiting that they were seen as more troublesome and mischievous than girls. This goes back to earliest childhood: studies show that adults perceive boy babies as being more angry than girl babies and girl babies as being more social than boy ones.
Chu wrote up her findings in a 2014 book titled When Boys Become Boys: Development, Relationships, and Masculinity—the title captures her central conclusion that the characteristics and qualities typically associated with boys are not universal or innate but rather are deliberate and calculated responses to social conditioning and cultural expectations. “The boys’ adaptions to norms of masculine behaviour was neither automatic nor inevitable,” she writes. Boys chose how much like “boys” they would be, some because that’s what suited their tastes and inclinations best, some because of a wish to belong to the group or conform to adult assumptions.
For nearly thirty years, first as a volunteer high-school counsellor and now as a professor of developmental psychology at New York University, Niobe Way has studied the emotional lives and friendships of boys. She estimates that she’s interviewed and talked with over a thousand pubescent and teenage boys, and they’ve told her, in language both vehement and tender, how important their friends are to them. Here’s how a fifteen-year-old named Justin characterized his relationship with another boy: “[My best friend and I] love each other…. I guess in life, sometimes two people can really, really, understand each other and really have a trust, respect and love for each other. It just happens, it’s human nature.”
Though plenty of books and articles have come out in the last decade channelling worries about the state of young men and the “boy crisis,” few have examined the psychological and social well-being of this demographic. But from these boys comes a consistent call for emotional support and love. Take fourteen-year-old Kai, who told Way, “You need a friend or else you’d be depressed, you won’t be happy, you would try to kill yourself.” Or Benjamin, who, when asked what he likes about his best friend, said, “Most everything. His kindness. Everything. I know he cares for people, [like me], I know.”
Counter to the entrenched idea that boys are less communicative, and less capable of vulnerability and intimacy than girls, Way’s findings reveal that boys are equally so. “Boys have this enormous capacity for emotions, but somehow people ignore it,” she tells me. Of the boys Way has interviewed, she observes, “Their closest friendships share the plot of Love Story more than the plot of Lord of the Flies. Boys valued their male friendships greatly and saw them as essential components to their health, not because their friends were worthy opponents in the competition for manhood but because they were able to share their thoughts and feelings—their deepest secrets—with these friends.”
Way also found that in early adolescence, at ages fourteen and fifteen, boys specifically seek out friendships with other boys rather than friendships with girls. Younger teenage boys cherish and protect their male friendships not because of similar, gendered interests in sports or video games but because of their shared emotional terrain. Way suggests that the preference for male friendships at this age “may be rooted in boys’ desire to connect to other boys right at the time their voices are cracking and their bodies feel awkward. They may feel too vulnerable to be vulnerable with those they do not perceive to be experiencing the same changes.”
This changes in older adolescence, when fears about being perceived as homosexual grow, and male friendships become less intense. At this age, boys become distrustful of one another and less comfortable expressing their feelings. Way says that as straight boys enter manhood, they are more self-conscious about same-sex intimacy and instead turn their attention to romantic relationships. And it’s not a coincidence, she says, that boys’ middle and late adolescence is also marked by an increased risk for depression and feelings of isolation; their now more-superficial friendships don’t provide them with the same degree of emotional sustenance as when they were younger. Way believes the “crisis of connection” that young men are experiencing is in no small part the result of being told that real men can’t be close to one another.
A couple of years back, I went to a Toronto Blue Jays game with a large group of middle-school boys (in grades six, seven, and eight) who were part of an after-school program that helped them build their social skills. I sat with several of the younger boys. They were rowdy but polite, full of jokes, and in perpetual motion. They draped their arms over each other’s shoulders, pressed against each other in a tight knot when I escorted them to the concession stand, and took endless goofy selfies—it was like chaperoning a litter of puppies.
In front of us in the stands were the older boys. They were, naturally, more restrained and mature than the younger kids, but they were also more self-conscious and wary. They were quieter, looked straight ahead at the game, and tended to hunch into themselves.
This awkwardness is part of adolescence, of course, and among this group of boys were young men who had been referred to the after-school program because they were anti-social or rebellious. But their self-consciousness also reflects the shift that Way identified in the boys she surveyed: the pull inward in middle adolescence.
How soon would this shift occur in the younger boys surrounding me? And what could be done to avoid it? I looked around at the younger boys, free in their bodies and at home in themselves, thrilled with this adventure, and delighting in being in each other’s company. Perhaps they’d been caught early enough by this program; they could retain this openness and emotional resilience. An epidemic of loneliness may await them, but they can be the generation to end it.
About the Author(s)
=================
Best brilliant article….
Canada
CANADA
Masculinity detox:
redefining what it means to be a man
In light of #MeToo and the rise of Jordan Peterson,
can boys and men learn to be better? Here's what Canadians of all genders are
doing to rewrite the rules for masculinity
April 4, 2018
#METOO AND MEN
On a chilly afternoon last December, Humberto
Carolo, executive director of White Ribbon, stepped up to the
microphone at a rally at Queen’s Park inspired by the #MeToo movement.
“We must commit to never using violence against women.
We must not remain silent,” he urged the handful of men in the crowd. “We must
be a part of dismantling rape culture.”
Carolo has been with White Ribbon, the world’s largest campaign
to end gender-based violence, for 12 years. The organization started in Toronto
in 1991 as a response to the Montreal massacre, a mass shooting at an
engineering school two years earlier in which 14 women were killed by a man who
stated that he was fighting feminism. In recent years, White Ribbon has
broadened its scope to include promoting healthy masculinity.
“We need to teach men how to empathize in order to be
better allies,” he told NOW in an interview. “There’s a strong connection
between toxic forms of masculinity and gender-based violence and
inequality.”
The opposite of toxic masculinity, he explains, is
healthy masculinities – pluralized to reflect the myriad ways masculinity can
be performed, even beyond stereotypical butch and femme dichotomies. “Men and
boys should be encouraged to express the full range of emotions and not just
ones that are traditionally accepted.”
This includes showing vulnerability and kindness, and
pushing against stereotypes of machismo and dominance. But unlearning
behaviours that are socially encouraged is a lot harder than it sounds.
Carolo points to the all the ways in which boys and
girls are raised differently, from the toys they’re given to play with to the
careers they’re encouraged to pursue.
“Gender norms don’t exist in isolation,” he says.
“They’re very entrenched in our everyday lives.”
ALT-WRONG
When Jamil Jivani was coming of age
in Brampton in the late 1990s, he learned how to be a man from rappers and
basketball players.
“I’d go home from school and watch MuchMusic or Rap
City on BET and see these examples of men with brown or black skin, the way
they dressed and the values they espoused,” Jivani recounts. “If I had a father
in my life or someone who could consistently show me that masculinity was more
complicated than the version I saw on TV, I’d have known that men get
disappointed and sad, and that we depend on women for things.”
Jivani, a Toronto lawyer and author of Why Young Men:
Rage, Race And The Crisis Of Identity (HarperCollins), says his understanding
of masculinity changed when he was a student at York University. A professor
encouraged him to read about Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Booker T.
Washington, which helped him see more ways Black men could exist.
----------------
UNITED
KINGDOM
A Crisis in Modern Masculinity:
Understanding the Causes of Male Suicide
Men need new rules for survival, misplaced
self-beliefs are proving lethal
The role of men is being transformed by globalised
forces from economics to technology to feminism. And men are faring
particularly badly in many areas of life. From homelessness to education,
alcohol and drug misuse to general life expectancy, they are clearly finding it
increasingly difficult to cope as they try to adapt to circumstances that are
entirely unprecedented.
Male suicide at a 15 year high
As a result, male suicide rates are at a 15-year
high. Every year in the UK over 4,500 men kill themselves – nearly three times
as many annually as all deaths caused by road accidents*.
This hidden killer is now the single biggest cause
of death in men aged 20–45 in the UK, with males accounting for 78 per cent of
all suicides in this country. In contrast, female suicide rates are declining.
AND
#InternationalMansDay
November 19th
CANADA
Men and Masculinities: Rethinking the Rules that Delineate Masculinity
Date and Time
Thu, 3 May 2018
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM EDT
Event
description
Description
Acknowledging that there is a link between
some conceptions of masculinity and gender-based sexual violence (extreme forms
of which can lead to sex-trafficking), this webinar will be an open
conversation about ways of conceiving masculinity, with Mississauga's Poet
Laureate, Wali Shah, and Michael Kehler, Professor of Masculinities Studies at
the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary. Specifically, the
conversation raises questions about performances of masculinity in different
environments, how these contribute to heteronormativity and can maintain,
challenge, or disrupt normative masculinity. The goal of this webinar is to
provoke a dialogue in which we begin rethinking and reconfiguring the rules,
the barriers and instead consider ways that men can relocate and redefine how
men “do” men.
This is an online event. A link to the webinar room will be shared via e-mail 24 hours before the event.
About the Speakers
This is an online event. A link to the webinar room will be shared via e-mail 24 hours before the event.
About the Speakers
Michael Kehler
Canada and internationally - examining critical environments in boys'
youth where the performance of masculinity is engrained, focusing in particular
on school locker rooms and boy’s literacy
Wali Shah
Selected as one of Canada’s Top 20 Under 20 in 2014, Wali Shah is a spoken word poet and public speaker, addressing social issues through personal stories, comedy, and his South Asian and Muslim background. He has spoken on subjects of bullying, mental health and toxic masculinity in hundreds of schools across North America
Selected as one of Canada’s Top 20 Under 20 in 2014, Wali Shah is a spoken word poet and public speaker, addressing social issues through personal stories, comedy, and his South Asian and Muslim background. He has spoken on subjects of bullying, mental health and toxic masculinity in hundreds of schools across North America
---------------------
Uk
QUOTES
Men after #MeToo: ‘There’s
a narrative that masculinity is fundamentally toxic'
Can a new
men’s movement bring a positive shift?
Men are very
unskilled when it comes to relationships. We need to train them to be better at
vulnerability, at relating
My mum told me men
are wrong and men are sick. That’s something I internalised. Hating ourselves
is social conditioning
Women are angry at
the masculine and at men, and it isn't helping the guys who are already
insecure in their masculinity
Listening to
polite, middle-class men, full of guilt, anger, despair… I had an
image of them sawing their own balls off
“What
it’s so good at doing is breaking down the traditional ways men are supposed to
relate,” he explains. “I find men incredibly generous with one another when
they come together like that. There’s an implicit support for all men, the
wounded men, the insecure men.” The message he finds himself giving, time and
time again, is that men need to work on being present. Simply listening. “I
find a present man is by his nature solid, loving, kind, protective. He’s not
threatened by his own femininity, or the external feminine. He knows how to
make women feel valued. And the problem is, women feel devalued by a
patriarchal culture that’s run by castrated men and other devalued women.”
Still, I
take some comfort from the main thing I learned from men’s groups. Not one of
us has a clue what he’s doing. I think it’s one reason many men are finding
this moment so hard: we are perceived to have the power, yet most of us feel
powerless in relation to our own lives, emotions, relations. You get a real
rush when you admit that in front of another man, and another rush when you
hear pretty much the same thing echoed back. It may not be much to work with,
but it’s a start.
------------------
AND
Quote: I would like men to use feminism as an inspiration, in the same
way that feminists used the civil rights movement as theirs. I’m not advocating
a quick fix. There isn’t one. But we have to start the conversation. Boys are
broken, and I want to help. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/opinion/boys-violence-shootings-guns.html
Quote:
Boys, though,
have been left behind. No commensurate movement has emerged to help them navigate
toward a full expression of their gender. It’s no longer enough to “be a man” —
we no longer even know what that means.
Too many boys
are trapped in the same suffocating, outdated model of masculinity, where
manhood is measured in strength, where there is no way to be vulnerable without
being emasculated, where manliness is about having power over others. They are
trapped, and they don’t even have the language to talk about how they feel
about being trapped, because the language that exists to discuss the full range
of human emotion is still viewed as sensitive and feminine.
Men feel
isolated, confused and conflicted about their natures. Many feel that the very
qualities that used to define them — their strength, aggression and
competitiveness — are no longer wanted or needed; many others never felt strong
or aggressive or competitive to begin with. We don’t know how to be, and we’re
terrified.
-------------------
Rwanda
Defining A Modern Masculinity
The traditional view of masculinity, especially as
espoused in the west, is an identity that’s reaffirmed through the use of
bullying and violence, while punishing others for being insufficiently
macho. Sometimes the definition of “man” is wrong. In fact, sometimes it’s
not just wrong but actively harmful.
The Quiet Strength
The problem
isn’t masculinity in and of itself; the problem is that the old
model of masculinity is toxic. Even in this day and age, with
greater acceptance of wider definitions of sexuality and gender, the tropes of
“acceptable” masculinity remain narrow and exclusionary. Men who are more
openly emotional or who flout masculine fashion are still seen as aberrant,
treated as objects of ridicule. Even as acceptance of homosexuality and gay
marriage grows, the casual reflexive use of homophobic insults as a way of
belittling men remains. The trope of men as sexually insatiable, barely
able to control their own lusts – and
thus mandating that women control it for them – is still
dominant.
Its
restrictive definitions and inherent fragility serve to make people miserable. It
describes a system of faux-strength, a brittle facade that crumbles at the
slightest provocation. It’s insecurity that tries to masquerade as strength by
being loud and brash, attempting to intimidate others into doing what they’re
told for fear of letting them look too closely and revealing the cracks in the
system. Moreover, by making gender-policing a key part of manliness –
encouraging the punishing of others (and thus taking away their masculinity)
for violating gender roles and tenets of manliness – it becomes a
self-perpetuating cycle; one compensates for threats to their own masculine
identity by performing acts of violence, which then threatens that other person’s
identity, and so on.
This is why
we need to reclaim the real definition of masculinity – to
take it from being something external and fragile and give it true
strength. The kind of strength that only comes from within.
True strength
isn’t loud and brash; it’s quiet. True masculinity, a modern
masculinity, doesn’t need to prove its existence because it doesn’t require the
validation of others to exist, nor is it narrowly defined or exclusionary. It
isn’t defined by the size or shape of your genitals or what you do with them.
It isn’t something that’s defined by being in charge or threatened by the
strength of others – men or women. It sees others as
potential partners, not competitors or
antagonists, until proven otherwise. At the same time, it doesn’t mean
being a doormat, being intimidated by others. The phrase, “never begin a fight,
but always finish it” remains true; it’s a strength that comes from maintaining
boundaries. About not being afraid to be vulnerable or to present your
authentic self. It means being willing to face down challenges to the end, even
if it means risking failure.
And most
importantly: it means not taking part in the bullshit gender-policing. Part of
the reason why so many people react with hostility to anyone who challenges the
tropes of traditional masculinity is because it requires everyone
to take part, if the system is to continue. The people who choose to not to go
along, who opt out of being caught in the cycle are castigated and shamed
because each person who leaves the system shows just how broken it really is;
it makes it harder and harder to paper over the cracks. Each person who refuses
to play into the roles becomes another pebble. And while that can seem
insignificant, a pebble can start the avalanche that brings the mountain down.
The old model
hurts us all, literally and figuratively. It’s time for a change.
It’s time for
a new, modern masculinity.
and
Do We Need to Redefine
Masculinity—or Get Rid of It?
Last week,
comedian Michael Ian Black wrote a compelling and heartfelt piece for The
New York Times titled “The Boys Are Not All Right.” Acknowledging,
in the wake of the Parkland mass shooting that claimed the lives of 17 students
and teachers, that “Girls aren’t pulling the triggers. It’s boys. It’s almost always
boys,” Black made a plea to interrogate the state of boyhood and manhood in the
United States.
and..
AFTER
PARKLAND #EnoughIsEnough
#MarchForOurLives
The Boys Are Not All Right
By Michael Ian Black
What do these
shootings have in common? Guns, yes. But also, boys. Girls aren’t pulling the
triggers. It’s boys. It’s almost always boys.
America’s (USA
and Canada’s – Quebec Mosque schools)
boys are broken. And it’s killing us.
--------------
And...
What does Masculinity mean to me?
I went
to the Philly Trans Health Conference this year and in one of the
genderqueer/non-binary workshops we were given a piece of paper with ten blank
lines and a crayon. I sat in a packed room and listened to the host of the
workshop explain how they were going to ask us ten questions and we had to
write whatever instinctually came to mind. We were going to have very little
time to think about our answers. So the exercise begins with the host saying,
“First question, Who am I?” I write down, Marika. “Second question, Who am I?” I
write down, Gender non-conforming boy. “Third
question, Who am I?” I write down, daughter. After we went through all ten
questions — which I’m sure you realize what the remaining seven questions
were — we were asked to cross out three of those answers. Again given very
little time to ponder our decisions. Then we were asked to cross out three more
answers. And finally three more. We were left with only one answer still
showing. My answers spanned from my gender identity to my occupation to my
twinness (I have a cis twin brother); but to my pleasant surprise, the answer
still showing was my name, Marika.
---------
AND
America’s
Insufficient Definition Of Masculinity
In the wake of National Men’s Day, I felt compelled to
write an article on a problem that has played a significant role in suicide’s
climb to the position as a top killer of teen and adult men: hyper-masculinity. Although we do live in a century where we are
increasingly encouraged to defy gender norms and binaries, hyper-masculinity
and its counterpart, hyper-femininity, still plague modern society and cause
serious damage.
Throughout human history, there has been an underlying
idea men and women are fundamentally different. Now, let’s take a moment to
differentiate between sex and gender. Sex is a biological term referring to
which chromosomes you were born with. Gender is a social construct and is
determined socially and culturally. Many scientists have begun explaining
gender as a spectrum. There is the hyper-masculine side and the hyper-feminine
side and everything in between, not just two categories. The truth of the
matter is, boys and girls are far more similar than they are different.
It’s important to note being masculine or feminine is
not inherently bad. “Masculine” and “feminine” are just adjectives. Being
feminine does not make one any less of a man or any more of a woman. Simply
put, identifying as a man makes one a man. One does not need to be hyper-sexual
to be a man. One does not need to be aggressive to be a man. One does not need
to be stoic and devoid of emotion to be a man.
Everyone deserves to feel loved and appreciated for
exactly who he/she is. No one should be confined to a box or label, and each of
us can and should do our part to expand what it means to be a man for ourselves
and the boys in our lives. There is freedom outside the rigid definitions we
have placed upon men, and not just for men, but for everyone involved. As Emma
Watson said in her UN
HeForShe speech, “If men
don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted, women won’t feel compelled
to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be
controlled.” It’s not about teaching boys something new or turning them into
something that they’re not. It’s about helping them return to what they already
know but many feel they have to hide to be accepted: compassion, sensitivity,
self-love, and empathy.
----------------
Australia
– part of thesis
It’s a Man’s World: The Effect of Traditional Masculinity on Gender Equality
Aydon EdwardsMar 29 2015, 37169 views
Quote
Without the supportive contribution of males, gender
equality is doomed to perpetuate existing power imbalances that favour
traditional masculinity. To progress towards gender equality, efforts must be
made to deconstruct traditional masculinity.
[1] R. W. Connell, Masculinities, 2nd ed. (Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2005), p. 67.
[2] M. Hughs and P. Paxton, Women, Politics, and Power: A Global Perspective, 2nd ed. (London: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2014), pp. 24-25.
[3] D. Zimmerman and C. West, ‘Doing Gender’, in A. Aronson and M.Kimmel (eds.), The Gendered Society Reader, 5th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 122.
[4] V. S. Peterson and A. Runyan, Global Gender Issues (Oxford: Westview Press, 1993), p. 17.
[5] Zimmerman and West, op. cit. (2014), p. 122.
[6] Peterson and Runyan, op. cit. (1993), p. 17.
[7] H. Christian, The Making of Anti-Sexist Men (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 6.
[8] M. Gatens, Feminism and Philosophy: Perspectives on Difference and Equality (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), p. 102.
[9] Connell, op. cit. (2005), pp. 8-9.
[10] D. Britzman, ‘Psychoanalytic Theory’, in Encyclopaedia of Curriculum Studies (Online: Sage Publications, Inc., 2010), p. 693.
[11] Gatens, op. cit. (1991), p. 103.
[12]S. Goldberg, ‘Feminism Against Science’, National Review, vol. 43, no. 21 (1991), p. 30.
[13] A. Moir and D. Jessel, Brain Sex: the real difference between men and women (London: Mandarin, 1997), p. 6.
[14] D. Halpern, Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities, 4th ed. (New York: Psychology Press, 2012), pp. 97-98.
[15] Connell, op. cit. (2005), p. 21.
[16] J. Ashfield, The Making of a Man: reclaiming masculinity and manhood in the light of reason, 2nd ed. (Australia: Peacock Publications, 2004), p. 154.
[17] G. Wilson, The Great Sex Divide (Washington, D.C.: Scott-Townsend Publishers, 1992), p. 20.
[18] Ibid., p. 19.
[19] Ibid.
[20] G. Sharwell, ‘Review of Deceptive Distinctions: Sex, Gender, and the Social Order by Cynthia Fuchs Epstein; A Woman’s Wage: Historical Meanings and Social Consequences by Alice Kessler-Harris’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, vol. 517 (1991), p. 229.
[21] D. Seligman, ‘Gender Mender’, Forbes (41998), available online: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1998/0406/6107072a.html (accessed 22 October 2013).
[22] Connell, op. cit. (2005), p. 21.
[23] Halpern, op. cit. (2012), p. 96.
[24] Gatens, op. cit. (1991), p. 100.
[25] Halpern, op. cit. (2012), p. 96.
[26] N. Gaitanidis, ‘Benign Masculinity and Critical Reason’, Psychotherapy and Politics International, vol. 10, no. 3 (2012), p. 220.
[27] M. Kimmel, ‘Introduction’, in A. Aronson and M. Kimmel (eds.), The Gendered Society Reader, 5th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 1.
[28] Ibid, p. 2.
[29] World Bank, World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development (Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 2012), p. 4.
[30] Peterson and Runyan, op. cit. (1993), p. 18.
[31] R. Connell, Confronting equality: gender, knowledge and global change (UK: Polity Press, 2011), p. 15.
[32] J. Grossman and L. McClain (eds.), Gender Equality: Dimensions of Women’s Equal Citizenship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 1.
[33] J. Flax, ‘Gender Equality’, in M. Horowitz (ed.), New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (Detroit: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2005), p. 701.
[34] T. Parvikko, ‘Conceptions of Gender Equality: Similarity and Difference’, in E. Meehan and S. Sevenhuijsen (eds.), Equality Politics and Gender (London: SAGE Publications, Inc., 1991), p. 36.
[35] C. Bacchi, ‘Review of Promblematizing “Gender Equality” by Magnusson, Eva, Malin Ronnblom and Harriet Silius, eds,’ Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, vol. 17, no. 4 (2009), p. 304.
[36] Parvikko, op. cit. (1991), p. 48.
[37] World Bank, op. cit. (2012), p. 4.
[38] Connell, op. cit. (2011), p. 17.
[39] Ibid.
[40] Department of Social Services, ‘Background Paper: ‘The role of men and boys in gender equality’ (2013), available online: http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/our-responsibilities/women/programs-services/international-engagement/united-nations-commission-on-the-status-of-women/background-paper-the-role-of-men-and-boys-in-gender-equality (accessed 21 October 2013).
[41] Peterson and Runyan, op. cit. (1994), p. 21.
[42] C. Epstein, Deceptive Distinctions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 232.
[43] Peterson and Yunyan, op. cit. (1994), p. 22.
[44] Kimmel, op. cit. (2014), p. 4.
[45] Connell, op. cit. (2005), p. 76.
[46] Homosexual masculinity is considered to be a gender profile that is subordinated in relation to the hegemonic masculinity. — R. Connell, ‘A Very Straight Gay: Masculinity, Homosexual Experience, and the Dynamics of Gender’, American Sociological Review, vol. 57, no. 6 (1992), p. 735-737.
[47] Christian, op. cit. (1994), p. 7; and Connell, op. cit. (2005), p. 77.
[48] Christian, op. cit. (1994), p. 7.
[49] J. Clarke and P. Cushman, ‘Masculinities and Femininities: Student-Teachers Changing Perceptions of Gender Advantages and Disadvantages in the New Zealand Primary School Environment’, in J. Aston and E. Vasquez (eds.), Masculinity and Femininity: Stereotypes/myths, Psychology and Role of Culture (New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2013), p. 2.
[50] H. Mansfield, Manliness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 23; and Clarke and Cushman, op. cit. (2013), p. 2.
[51] D. Collison and J. Hearn. 1996. ‘”Men” at “work”: multiple masculinities/multiple workplaces’, in M. Mac an Ghaill (ed.), Understanding Masculinities: Social Relations and Cultural Arenas (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1996), p. 65.
[52] New as quoted in O. G. Holter, ‘Social Theories for Researching Men and Masculinities: Direct Gender Hierarchy and Structural Inequality’, in R.W. Connell, J. Hearn and M. Kimmel (eds.), Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities (Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2005), p. 15.
[53] Department of Social Services, op. cit. (2013).
[54] Christian, op. cit. (1994), pp. 7-8.
[55] IRIN, ‘Gender Equality: Why involving men is crucial’ (2011), available online: http://www.irinnews.org/report/93870/gender-equality-why-involving-men-is-crucial (accessed 18 October 2013).
[56] Plan, Because I am a Girl: The State of the World’s Girls 2011 – So, what about boys? (Plan International, 2011), p. 3.
[57] J. Gardner, ‘Men, Masculinities, and Feminist Theory’, in R.W. Connell, J. Hearn and M. Kimmel (eds.), Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities (Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2005), p. 36.
[58] S. de Beauvoir and H. Parshley (trans. ed.), The Second Sex (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), p. 172.
[59] Plan, op. cit. (2011), p. 4.
[60] J. Oliffe et al., 2010. ‘Masculinities and college men’s depression: Recursive relationships’, Health Sociology Review, vol. 19, no. 4 (2010), p. 466.
[61] V. Hanninen and J. Valkonen, ‘Narratives of Masculinity and Depression’, Men and Masculinities, vol. 16 (2012), p. 161.
[62] Ibid, pp. 161-162.
[63] MenEngage, ‘What we believe’ (2008), available online: http://www.menengage.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12:what-we-believe&catid=4:about-us&Itemid=10 (accessed 20 October 2013).
[64] Ibid.
[65] Mansfield, op. cit. (2006), pp. 31-32.
[66] IRIN, op. cit. (2011).
[67] Plan, op. cit. (2012), p. 4.
[68] V. Fonseca et al., ‘Program H and Program M: Engaging young men and empowering young women to promote gender equality and health’ (2010), available online: http://www.promundo.org.br/en/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/OPASINGLES_WEB.pdf (accessed 21 October 2013).
—
Written by: Aydon Edwards
Written at: University of Queensland
Written for: Dr. Samid Suliman
Date written: November 2013
Written by: Aydon Edwards
Written at: University of Queensland
Written for: Dr. Samid Suliman
Date written: November 2013
--------------
AND
Understanding Men
and Masculinity in Modern Society
2013
AND
Learning to be a Black man
without knowing my father
To grow up a fatherless Black boy is to yearn
constantly to fill a void – in my case, I sought him in books
April 4, 2018
But I had
already forgiven him.
For what my
father did not know – could not have known – was that I had been fathered many
times by men who had faced their responsibilities without flinching, men who
had demonstrated that their measure was determined through struggle and
resilience. Because of their example, I could see my father for the defeated
and broken man that he was, and this knowledge would not allow me to harbour
any ill will against him.
Time passed.
We exchanged some more pleasantries and then it was time to go.
My relatives
who were there to see me off enveloped me in hugs, kisses and well wishes. A
wave of loving faces carried me to the check-in area. I caught a glimpse of my
father through the crowd, standing in the distance, a plume of cigarette smoke
snaking above his head.
I wanted to
call out to him, to let him know I was happy we had met. I decided to wave
instead. He seemed surprised by this, waving frantically with the same hand
that held the cigarette. In that instant I knew I would never see him again,
that he would once again return to the imagination.
--------------------------
USA
How to Raise a Boy
I’m not
sure what to think about what my dad tried to teach me. So what should I teach
my sons?
How to Raise a Good Man
Read what the experts have to say about bringing up a son with character
For generations, boys
have been raised in environments that seemed designed to cultivate, and then
sublimate, aggression, sometimes right up to the border of sociopathy. (We
recoil at Fight Club,
but it basically depicts the secret life of boys aged 8 to 14. Men are Tyler
Durden spliced with Beavis.) But those masculine scripts seem especially
problematic today: Trained by superhero movies, inspired by planet-straddling
athlete-gods and tech tycoons more powerful than entire governments, boys are
reared to tame their aggressions, then asked to navigate a bleak,
winner-take-all economic landscape. Thanks in part to more enlightened
attitudes about gender and parenting, it is hard not to see male entitlement
and aggression as toxic forces degrading our culture. But it is also hard not to
notice that the world is now run by the aggressive and the bullying.
It is also hard not to
notice that, in many ways, and on average, boys are falling behind.
As a
patriotic American who believes our country is a better place when all have an
equal chance, and who believes it is time for the historical ledger to be
balanced, this is what I want for the future.
---------------------
Brilliant
brilliant article... especially the YOU’LL NEVER KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE...
You’ll never know what it’s like to be a woman who’s physically intimidated
while standing up to an angry man – yet you choose to stand firm because your
black son is watching you defend him – and you can’t afford to have him see you
flinch.
You’ll never know what it’s like to have a police officer stop your son as he
waits on the sidewalk for us to join him at his state wrestling tournament,
only to be asked if he’s there to cause trouble and then be warned that they
have their “eye on him.”
You’ll never know what it’s like to have to make 21 years worth of phone
calls, schedule meetings with coaches, teachers, administrators throughout the
entirety of your son’s life and school career. Meetings where no matter how
awful things get for him, it’s always chalked up to – “Boys will be
boys.” or “They didn’t mean it.” or “It was just a joke.” To
have every single thing he goes through constantly minimized.
You’ll never know what it’s like to tell your white friends all of
your struggles and have them be so shocked and outraged that “all of this still
goes on.” Yet never once offer to come and stand with you, because
it’s not really their problem.
What it’s
been like to raise a black child in a white world.
-------------------
What Black Panther Means to My Black Son
--------------
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