Male College Students and Hegemonic Masculinity

Many men on college campuses express their masculinity in a hegemonic way due to the influence of institutions such as fraternities, ROTC, and sports teams. 

Fraternities are made up of insecure men who bond through homophobia and by getting sex. The pledging process reinforces this by teaching men that women are to be devalued. Because of this 70 to 90 percent of all gang rapes on college campuses are perpetuated by fraternity members.

ROTC also reproduces hegemonic masculinity in order to create warriors. This occurs through cadences that talk about degrading women and insulting cadets who are unable to perform with insults that are usually used for women. 

Sports teams also reproduce hegemonic masculinities by encouraging men to overcompensate their masculinity due to how close their bodies are to other men on the sports field and in the locker room. 

The degree to which hegemonic masculinity is expressed depends on a man's class and his geographical location. 

The Pain felt by Man due to Shifting Gender Roles

After seeing the video below, I'm starting to think what happened at Yale University is in response to the pain men are feeling as the role of women in our society has changed and their role as men have stayed the same. If this is the case, our goal then is to show men how to acknowledge their pain without taking it out on women.

Are the acts described below just reflective of Sexist Men?

As I've been thinking about the two acts described below, I'm starting to ponder if they are just reflective of sexist men or if as I'd like to argue that they are reflective of men as a group. To answer that question, I think I need to explore how men are stereotyped and what the normative man looks like if their is such a thing. 

What will it take for No to mean No, and Yes to mean Yes

On Wednesday October 13^th, an event occurred at Yale University that is troubling to those of us who care about gender equality. Fraternity boys were recorded chanting outside of a women’s dorm, “No mean’s yes, and yes means anal” (see below video). Even though this and other misogynistic incidents occur throughout the united states, many men believe that the goals of the feminist movement has been achieved and some men even think that they as a group are now more oppressed than women. This event shows us the difference between precieved equality and actual equality. I am interested in finding out what it would mean for no to mean no, and yes to mean yes and what this event tells us about the role of women and men in our society.

While working to discover how actual equality can occur, I believe that it is important to look at male studies scholarship to further understand why some men think they are oppressed when in reality they are not (or even why some men think equality has been achieved). I preliminarily believe that events like what occurred at Yale University occur due to the fear men have of losing their male privilege. Men are more fearful now then they were in the past because the role of women has changed while the role of men has stayed the same. Maybe then events such as this partially occur since the role of women in our society has changed while the role of men has stayed the same. When looking at any  male studies scholarship I need to remember that it lacks the intersectional approach found in Women's Studies. Male studies scholars need to remember the groups (Women of Color, Lesbians, Jewish Women, etc...) that criticized feminism during the second wave and work towards incorporating the concept of intersectionality into any male studies scholarship. 

I am ready to embark on this journey and will record my thoughts on this blog on the way. 

What's Your Standpoint

Since women’s studies strives to include intersectional approaches in all of its work, it was not surprising to read how Edmonds-Cady decided to incorporate both race and gender when using the standpoint approach to understand the different actors in the welfare rights movement in her article “Getting to the grassroots: Feminist Standpoints Within the Welfare Rights Movement”. Her article inspired me to better understand the standpoint of myself in relationship to feminism as well as others in my cohort. I challenge others this week to also think about their standpoint in terms of gender, and race as well as sexuality and class, which I also believe to be important when completing this work. Looking at our own standpoints will allow us to further understand our own work and why we are interested in being part of the feminist movement.

To do this for myself, I will explain where I fall in the class, race, sexuality, gender hierarchy. I am a middle class, white, gay men. I am privileged in terms of class, race, and gender but oppressed in terms of my sexuality. To further complicate matters, I can easily pass as straight and in our heteronormative society, people always assume I have the privileged sexuality. I always think it is interesting when suddenly, I tell someone new in my life that I am gay or they somehow find out and I am suddenly oppressed because they feel that due to my sexuality they can no longer treat me as one of the guys even though in reality nothing has really changed.

Because of my experience feeling oppressed and my belief that binaries of all kinds need to end I am drawn to feminism and its academic discipline women’s studies. I love that women’s studies works towards creating social change. I wish every discipline worked towards this. As much as I believe that every man should be involved in feminism, I understand that there are some particular issues with gay men being involved in feminism.

Gay male culture is not very feminist. Many gay men enjoy porn especially hyper-masculine porn. Because of this some have argued that being gay is being hyper-masculine and is someone who is hyper-masculine truly able to work as a feminist? Also, as men gay men hold the dominant gender status and may then not allow women equal opportunity.  As much as I love the feminist movement it is questions such as these as I continue my studies in women’s studies and feminism. 

Men's Movement

I’ve spent the last week reading about the men’s movement and how it was formed in response to the feminist movement in preparation for the paper I am currently writing. Before doing this reading, I had never heard of the practice of men in the 90s going out into the woods to become reacquainted with nature and other men. In addition, some men’s groups believed that being a man was endangering and men needed to find some way to re-shape their gender so their health and well being was not as threatened. As I am developing this paper, I have decided to include research about the men’s movement since it was formed as a direct result of feminism. I am currently struggling with how to differentiate between components of the men’s movement that are clearly pro-feminist and components of the men’s movement that are anti-feminist. By doing this I believe I will be able to support my argument that men who are pro-feminist are treated as the other among other men. 

Literary Criticism, Discourse and Critique

This week the class readings covered three subjects: the impact of black literary criticism on the feminist movement, the definition of discourse and how the term discourse has been misused, and how the beginnings of feminism can help us critique the events that occurred in the United States after 9/11.

The first article reminded us that in the beginning the academy presumed that all women were white and all persons of color were men. This changed when women of color entered the feminist movement and demanded that they be included as part of the feminist movement. This helped the feminist movement to include everyone and begin to fight all forms of oppressions. As the article discusses this fight for inclusion by women of color spilled over into other disciplines such as literature and allowed for texts to be rediscovered and reinterpreted based on this new group who was able to look at the texts. I believe that processes such as this are always good as it forces disciplines to take a hard look at itself and accept new interpretations of the disciplines core beliefs.  

The second article explored the term discourse and how it has been used and misused in academic literature specifically in the discipline of political science. The article argues that many use discourse as a substitute for looking at ways people argue, instead we should use discourse in order to explore how political figures operate for political purpose. This is important when looking at the political process and trying to ensure that we are examining politicians based on their articulation of feminist goals.

The last article opened with a scene from the beginnings of the feminist movement and the historical academic association’s difficulty with women studying women in history. The author connects this scene with the events after 9/11 by stating that feminist scholars are now able to provide critical interpretations of events and to show how feminist scholars are now able to explore the operations of differences and the workings of power. The author suggests we need to look more critically at the conflict in the Middle East and probe deeper our assumptions of both players in the conflict. We also need to be careful that we do not take at face value analysis that suggests George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan because of women’s issues. She ends her article by calling our attention to the women in black, an independent feminist organization that unites women throughout the word in support of feminist issues.