Tough Guise

The documentary Tough Guise 2 from Media Ed critically examines the way masculinity has been constructed over time in a way that increasingly puts society at risk, especially males who are statistically more likely to be both the perpetrators and the victims of violence.  

The documentary is available on both Mediacast (for SHS only) and Vimeo.

The documentary is narrated and produced by Jackson Katz.  Katz is the creator of Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP)

Katz explains some of his work in this Ted Talk:

Here is a summary of the documentary's claims:

I.  Hiding in Plain Sight (3:29)

Our society does not recognize violence as a masculinity issue.

• Often when violence occurs, if the perpetrator is from a dominant group (white, male, heterosexual) that group is ignored.  Instead, when the perpetrator is from a minority group, then the subordinate group is mentioned such as:  females committing violence, or teen violence, or urban/inner-city (aka black) violence.
• Sometimes, the perpetrator is completely removed from the violence as in "violence against women" or "domestic violence"
• When violence is connected to males, it often gets explained away as being biological and natural.  
• However, violence is correlated to masculinity and rather being natural, it is constructed and taught by the culture.

II.  A Taught Behavior (10:42)

Our society socializes individuals to believe that masculinity is being strong, tough, uncaring, violent and willing to treat anything not masculine, such as women as objects of conquest, especially sexually.  This extreme form of violent (toxic) masculinity is reinforced by: movies, video games, NRA marketing, families/parenting, peers, schools.

Families/parents and the construction of masculinity:

Real Boys; Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood, book by William Pollock.  Pollock documents how at a very early age boys are taught to accept traditional male gender traits of being tough and repressing their emotions.
Excerpt available here.

Based on William Pollack's groundbreaking research at Harvard Medical School over two decades, Real Boys explores why many boys are sad, lonely, and confused although they may appear tough, cheerful, and confident. Pollack challenges conventional expectations about manhood and masculinity that encourage parents to treat boys as little men, raising them through a toughening process that drives their true emotions underground. Only when we understand what boys are really like, says Pollack, can we help them develop more self-confidence and the emotional savvy they need to deal with issues such as depression, love and sexuality, drugs and alcohol, divorce, and violence.

High School and the construction of masculinity:

Dude You're A Fag, book by sociologist C.J. Pascoe.  From the amazon summary, "High school and the difficult terrain of sexuality and gender identity are brilliantly explored in this smart, incisive ethnography. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a racially diverse working-class high school, Dude, You're a Fag sheds new light on masculinity both as a field of meaning and as a set of social practices. C. J. Pascoe's unorthodox approach analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process but also a sexual one. She demonstrates how the "specter of the fag" becomes a disciplinary mechanism for regulating heterosexual as well as homosexual boys and how the "fag discourse" is as much tied to gender as it is to sexuality."  Here is a video of the authors discussing their work.

College and young adulthood and the construction of masculinity:

Guyland; The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men, book by Michael Kimmel.  Kimmel's research focuses on kids slightly older than those in Pollack's research.  Here is a review from the NY Times.

In mapping the troubling social world where men are now made, Kimmel offers a view into the minds and times of America's sons, brothers, and boyfriends, and he works toward redefining what it means to be a man today—and tomorrow. Only by understanding this world and this life stage can we enable young men to chart their own paths, stay true to themselves, and emerge safely from Guyland as responsible and fully formed male adults.  Here is a post from Kimmel in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.  Here is a TED Talk from him.  And here is a trailer for Guyland, a documentary about his work.

III.  An American Ideal (20:00)

America has constructed masculinity over time

Movies:  Westerns - Film Noir Crime Dramas - Gangster Films - Gratuitously Violent Action Movies - Sexualized Comedies 

Gunfighter Nation The Myth of the Frontier in 20th-Century America, a book By Richard Slotkin.  Excerpt from the NY Times;

According to the myth of the frontier, says Mr. Slotkin, "the conquest of the wilderness and the subjugation or displacement of the Native Americans who originally inhabited it have been the means to our achievement of a national identity, a democratic polity, an ever-expanding economy and a phenomenally dynamic and 'progressive' civilization." Central to this myth was the belief that "violence is an essential and necessary part of the process through which American society was established and through which its democratic values are defended and enforced."

Video Games

Sports

Advertisements/Marketing

Politics

Leading Men; Presidential Campaigns and the Politics of Manhood, book by Jackson Katz.

In Leading Men, Jackson Katz puts forth the original and highly provocative thesis that presidential campaigns have become the center stage of an ongoing national debate about manhood, a kind of quadrennial referendum on what type of man—or one day, woman—embodies not only our ideological beliefs, but our very identity as a nation.  Of course this debate has enormous implications for women—both as potential candidates for the presidency and as citizens.

IV. The Cool Pose (27:17)

Males learn to create a "cool pose," or a "tough guise".  This role males play is a form of dramaturgy that becomes their identity.  The paradox is that how real of a man you are is based on how well you can perform this role.  Mobster movies influenced the cool pose of urban minorities which influenced the posturing of suburban and urban white males.

Cool Pose; The Dilemmas of Black Manhood, book by Richard Majors and Janet Mancini Billson.  Here is a review from the NY Times;

While the cool pose is often misread by teachers, principals and police officers as an attitude of defiance, psychologists who have studied it say it is a way for black youths to maintain a sense of integrity and suppress rage at being blocked from usual routes to esteem and success.

V. Upping the Ante (33:30)

Because masculinity is a construction, it can change over time; and it has become more extreme.

All of these provide evidence of more extreme norms of masculinity:

• Superheroes - from comic book character to action hero
• Toys - G.I. Joe from 12" biceps to 26.9" biceps
• Sports - from boxing to MMA
• Movies - from Humphrey Bogart to Dirty Harry to Rambo to Terminator
• Video Games - from Asteroids to Mortal Kombat to Grand Theft Auto

(SKIP 37:00- 37:20) Pornography - from Playboy magazines to SMD and violent videos

VI. Culture in Retreat

Often when the dominant group (white, male, heterosexuals) feel threatened by social change, rather than adapt to the change, they retreat to traditional norms and ratchet up masculinity.

Recent example:  "The wussification of America."

Regeneration through Violence; The Myth of the American Frontier by Richard Slotkin shows, 

"...how the attitudes and traditions that shape American culture evolved from the social and psychological anxieties of European settlers struggling in a strange new world to claim the land and displace the Native Americans. Using the popular literature of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries-including captivity narratives, the Daniel Boone tales, and the writings of Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Melville-Slotkin traces the full development of this myth."

1900s: Women's voting, education, recognition of gay as a sexuality, urbanization 

Reaction: Western dime novels, Boyscouts, (nativism, rise of KKK)

1940s:  suburbs, white collar jobs, female employment

Reaction: Men's magazines (Argosy, Stag), Western Movies,  

 1960s: civil rights, women's movement, anti-war movement, 

Reaction: Southern Strategy, rise of Reagan, 

1980s: Deindustrialization

Reaction: Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, 

                   and:  Militant Groups:

• Proud Boys
• Oath Keepers
• Three Percenters
• Boogaloo Boys
• Patriot Front
• Militias

 

Great American Hypocrites by Alex Greenwald

Ever since the cowboy image of Ronald Reagan was sold to Americans, the Republican Party has used the same John Wayne imagery to support its candidates and take elections. We all know how they govern, but the right-wing propaganda machine is very adept at hijacking debate and marketing their candidates as effectively as the Marlboro Man. For example:

Myth: The Republican nominee is an upstanding, regular guy who shares the values of the common man.
Reality: He divorced his first wife in order to marry a young multimillionaire heiress whose family then funded his political career.
Myth: Republicans are strong on defense and will keep us safe.
Reality: They prey on fears, and their endless wars make America far less secure.
Myth: Republicans are the party of fiscal restraint and small, limited government.
Reality: Soaring deficits, unchecked presidential power, and an increasingly invasive surveillance state are par for their course.

VII. All The Wrong Lessons (53:34)

Males learn that the only acceptable emote is through violence as exemplified by Sacha Baron Cohen and:

• Fight clubs
• Rape Culture - Steubenville rape case. (Skip? 56:15 - 57:30)
• Violence against people who are LGBT
• Violence against people who are homeless
• Violence against random people like school shootings and other mass shootings.

Violence; Reflections on a National Epidemic, book by James Gilligan.  Drawing on firsthand experience as a prison psychiatrist, his own family history, and literature, Gilligan unveils the motives of men who commit horrifying crimes, men who will not only kill others but destroy themselves rather than suffer a loss of self-respect. With devastating clarity, Gilligan traces the role that shame plays in the etiology of murder and explains why our present penal system only exacerbates it. Brilliantly argued, harrowing in its portraits of the walking dead, Violence should be read by anyone concerned with this national epidemic and its widespread consequences.

Out of all of the civilian firearms in the entire world, half of them are in the U.S.A.  In other words, half of all of the entire world's guns are owned by Americans - more than 300 million guns.  

And although there are enough guns in the U.S.A. for every American to have one, 2/3 of these guns are owned by just 20% of Americans.

Here is a critical analysis of Bush Master's Man Card marketing campaign from Voice Male.

The Takeaway (1:07.1):

We live in a culture that connects manhood to guns and a willingness to use violence at the deepest levels of men's identity; Telling young men that violence far from being the last resort for resolving disputes is the first and preferred method of proving you're a man especially when you feel your masculinity is under attack.

Beyond the Tough Guise (108:30)

We need to overcome this "tough guise" because of the harm it creates in our society:

• Men are most often the victims of violence.
• Most gun deaths (2/3) are suicides and 80% of these are white males.
• Violence is a leading cause of death for African American males age 15-30yrs. 
• Half of all deployed veterans have PTSD
• More Vietnam Veterans have killed themselves than were killed in action during actual combat.

In her book, Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman studies the effects of violence and how that traumatic experience shapes those victims:

Trauma destroys the social systems of care, protection, and meaning that support human life. The recovery process requires the reconstruction of these systems. The essential features of psychological trauma are disempowerment and disconnection from others. The recovery process therefore is based upon empowerment of the survivor and restoration of relationships. The recovery process may be conceptualized in three stages: establishing safety, retelling the story of the traumatic event, and reconnecting with others. Treatment of posttraumatic disorders must be appropriate to the survivor's stage of recovery. Caregivers require a strong professional support system to manage the psychological consequences of working with survivors.

Terrence Real's book I Don't Want To Talk About It; 

Twenty years of experience treating men and their families has convinced psychotherapist Terrence Real that depression is a silent epidemic in men—that men hide their condition from family, friends, and themselves to avoid the stigma of depression’s “un-manliness.” Problems that we think of as typically male—difficulty with intimacy, workaholism, alcoholism, abusive behavior, and rage—are really attempts to escape depression. And these escape attempts only hurt the people men love and pass their condition on to their children.

 

We need to redefine masculinity and demand different depictions of masculinity: 

• Show the real effects of violence and don't glamorize it: Saving Pvt. Ryan, Hurt locker, The Wire
• Show males with emotional complexity: Sopranos, Good Will Hunting
• Realize the cure for violence is NOT more violence
• Respect males who show bravery without violence: firefighters and first responders
• Respect males who support equality for women and are not threatened by it
• Redefine strength as being willing to change not digging into traditional masculinity even stronger.