Sarah Miller's Post on "Tough Guise"

In “Tough Guise” masculinity is described as a pose or a guise to mask a man’s humanity.  While I can see how this is true in some ways, in others I have a hard time believing it.  With my own father I do not see him trying to mask his humanity or his feelings, same with many of my male friends, some of my previous boyfriends and my own brother.  All of the men mentioned above treat themselves, their peers and especially women with respect and humanity.  On the other hand I have known some boys that treat others, especially women with a serious lack of respect.  Such a difference in treatment makes me believe that yes there is a guise that men do put on, but they choose whether to treat other human beings with respect or not.  It seems to me that some of this pose is a choice rather than a necessity.  For example, the boys and girls water polo teams often scrimmage together during the week when we are both between seasons.  While many of the boys choose to ignore the girls or purposely try and nail us with hard shots, some of them, instead of joining in, come over and practice with the girls and apologize for their teammates behaviour, they are visibly embarrassed by the other boys actions.  Often it is the best players who come and play with the girls, curious because one would think those would be the players the other boys would want to emulate.  The movie pointed out that the media defines manhood as dominance power and control.  I would argue that in the media this is true, yet the media executes this targeted act much better than actual men.  For example when the boys were leaving the pool after one practice, the girls decided to stay, one of the boys players was taking a goal out and we nicely asked him to leave it in, he threw a fit basically, and slammed the goal back into the water violently and stormed out.  Now it seems to me that this boy had no dominance, power or control over his actions or emotions and instead of looking violent he looked like an idiot.  Also there was no reason for his behaviour except that a girl asked him to do, or rather to not do something.  I wonder if boys that act like this are aware that everyone sees right through them and thinks they are petty and immature, not masculine or strong or whatever they are trying to be.  The movie also made the point that there is nothing natural about masculinity, that it is just a pose and a performance.  After encountering many men I believe this is true, that masculinity is a performance, one that instead of gaining the performers accolades, tarnishes their respectability and real personality.  It is sad.