Sarah Miller Guyland

In reading Michael Kimmel’s article, the first thing that caught my attention was the top ten list of what boys thought it meant to be a “real man.”  The list was basically a list of things not to do, “don’t cry, be mad not sad, don’t get mad—get even, don’t ask for directions, don’t finish last.”  This list reminded me of the Gendered Bodies article where it described how boys were told not to do things and were not given an action in place of the forbidden behaviour, while girls were reprimanded and then given a replacement behaviour. 

I was constantly wondering over the course of the articles where men got their ideas of masculinity from, at least the ones that make the most impact, and Kimmel answers that on page 47 where he says: “fathers, coaches, brothers, grandfathers, uncles, priests…inform ideas of masculinity.”  The picture Kimmel paints of coaches who put their players down in order to build them up seems crazy, but is not unusual.  Myself as well as my brother have both had coaches who yelled, degraded and verbally abused their athletes in the name of toughness.  As a coach myself now, I can tell you that aggression only breeds aggression and ultimately failure.  I coach a teenage swimmer who has a poor attitude that she carries with her to practice, the older male coach that I work with yells at her and makes fun of her in an effort to get a handle on her behaviour.  It does not work.  Seeing his failure to help her, I try talking to her and asking her to be better because I know she is capable, I can see it, even if she cannot.  Though she is still a handful she is making slow but steady progress. 

Another line from Kimmel’s article that stood out to me was: “women are for possessing, not for emulating.”  Though it is clear why men do not want to, in general, emulate women, it is interesting that they want to “possess them.”  That may explain why men often treat women like things for the taking and not like people.  But men are not the only ones at fault, as Kimmel writes on p.49, women think a man is “gay” if he “is interested in what she is talking about.”  It is disturbing that women think so low of themselves, without even realizing it, that they believe no heterosexual man could want to listen to them.  It is perhaps even worse that men treat themselves and the people around them I such a harsh way just to fit in, it begs the question, who really are men?  Likewise, the question of why men do they not stick up for themselves, comes up in the example of the little boy in the barber shop, and is an equally puzzling question. 

When Kimmel moves on to the topic of boys and fighting, around page 56, the reasons behind why boys used to fight so much on the playground and why grown men cage fight seem remarkably similar.  If anyone has a chance they should watch a clip or an episode of the show “caged” from MTV: http://www.mtv.com/shows/caged/series.jhtml.  It puts Kimmel’s article into a real life context, and it becomes clear how and why men feel they need to fight each other.