Response to "Boys and Men in Families" and "Guyland" by Alexa Campagna

            As a child, I do not recall the words “power” and “male” ever being used in the same sentence. I was not bothered that my father attended all of my brother’s athletic events but none of mine. I remained blissfully ignorant of the fact that the little boys were encouraged to play competitive sports at recess while the girls stood on the sidelines, poking at the grass with a stick or playing a boring game of hopscotch. I did not think twice when the women synchronously got up and cleared the dirty dishes from the Thanksgiving table while the men, bellies full, sat and talked without offering a helping hand. It just seemed natural. It just seemed normal. How ridiculous it would have been to see a little girl running around a soccer field in her delicate eyelet dress covered in mud or a father offering to cook dinner for his wife after she had endured a long day at the office. What I didn’t realize was that I was confusing normalcy for a pervasive sense of power and masculinity that males are taught to believe they must maintain in order to avoid rejection, ridicule, and the fear that others will view them as “feminine.”

            I was surprised at the emotions that were evoked while reading “Bros Before Hoes:’ The Guy Code” and “Boys and Men in Families.” I began by feeling a sense of anger that boys are socialized to act in an aggressive, powerful, and dominant manner in order to save face and avoid being labeled as “gay,” a “pussy,” or a “Mama’s boy.” As I read on, my anger became sadness that boys feel they need to follow such a restrictive set of unspoken rules in order to meet society’s expectations of masculinity for which they are constantly being monitored and kept in check. In my high school, the male varsity football players were viewed as an amorphous blob of masculinity that oozed high status and power. Other boys feared them. Girls fawned over them. People simply assumed that each member of the team was born with a higher level of testosterone than every one else. It was assumed that the valued characteristic of manliness was hardwired into their brains and that they didn’t show emotions because they didn’t have the ability to do so and that an injury couldn’t have inflicted any pain because, if it had, someone would have cried by now. Peers, family, coaches, and other authority figures are constantly pressuring boys, like the members of the football team, to “suck it up,” “play like a man,” or face the ultimate shame of being deemed, God forbid, “feminine,” or worse, “Gay.” Society is constantly reinforcing the notion that for a boy, acting, chewing, sitting, smiling, running, playing, or behaving in any way that resembles the mannerisms of a woman is a punishable offense.

            It seems as if the socialization of gender is an inescapable force for anyone who spends more than a few minutes interacting with another human being. Although gender policing gives the illusion that it does no harm, especially since it is so subtle that many people do not even realize that it is occurring, it has detrimental and highly irreversible effects on individuals of bother genders. When a boy expresses stereotypically “feminine” emotions, such as nurturance, sorrow, or vulnerability, he is constantly told to suppress his emotions and “man up,” as if emotionality is reserved for the weak, the fragile… the women. If men are unable to express their inner feelings and believe that they must conceal their emotions behind a mask of stoicism and supremacy, they may never be able to develop meaningful relationships with their wives and children and they may always feel concerned that any expression of emotion will compromise their manhood. They are jeopardizing their ability to reach a certain level of happiness because men have been taught that maintaining masculinity, and thusly power, should always remain a high priority. But, don’t men getting exhausted? Is it really worth the effort to constantly be concerned that you’re not being “masculine enough?” It’s a full-time job that seems to reap few rewards.