3.08 The Construction of Masculinity

Today's Lesson is ASYNCHRONOUS:

Open the Google Form.

How does the binary affect males (and put them at risk)?

Now that you have learned how gender is socially constructed into a binary, we will examine one pole of the binary: masculinity.    Remember that the construction of the binary is just that - a social construction.  The socialization pressure pushes people to the extreme poles of the whole spectrum of ways that we can exist.  Those extreme norms put individuals in the USA who identify as masculine at risk. My hope is that if we realize that this is a dynamic affecting us then we can mitigate the risks.  So, this idea is not being anti-male; instead it is being critical of the ways that males are pushed to extremes within our culture.  It is being critical of the culture.


Getting started

Before we begin, please answer the following questions.  Answer each quickly with the first words that come to mind.  Please don't worry about foul language, just write the words that come to mind:


QUICKLY, without thinking, brainstorm, the first three words that come to mind:

1. What are three words that describe what it means to be a man?

2. What are three words that describe someone who is not a real man?

CJ Pascoe's research 

NOTE: CJ Pascoe is a sociology professor who is part of the LGTQIA+ community. From her website, "She has also worked with and advised various organizations such as The Born This Way Foundation, True Child, and The Gay/Straight Alliance Network to translate academic research into policy and programming for young people."  This excerpt is about her research into high school students (mostly heterosexual boys) and how they construct norms around masculinity.  She found widespread use of the word f*g was being used by high schoolers, especially males, to attack each other's masculinity.  Her book was published in 2007 before the more recent social pressure to see the word as vulgar pejorative and remove the word from everyday use.  Pascoe is not using the word lightly or offensively - she is simply explaining how masculinity is constructed. However, because I understand the offensive nature of the word, I have tried to redact it where possible. And although recently the word may be used less publicly, it is still used privately.  Publicly, many other words are used in place to the same effect - wuss, sissy, girl, baby, etc... So Pascoe's research is still important to understanding the construction of masculinity.  Also, Pascoe has a talk about how to support queer youth in schools here and an interview about cultures of kindness in high school here!

Read the excerpt here.  

Her 2007 ethnography is called "Dude You're a F*g."  

Pascoe wrote about her research in an essay in Contexts here.    

Here is a review from the Everyday Sociology blog.  

Here is CJ Pascoe's micro lecture on bullying and masculinity.  Please watch the video below.

3.  What does Pascoe's research show about masculinity?

4.  Do you think Pascoe's research applies to your high school?

Oh hey, that's just me and CJ hanging out at the top of the IC.

Males are at risk because of masculinity norms

Recall the chart below from our lesson on the gender binary.  Use the chart to assess each of the three areas below in which males are at-risk.

Males and School

• In school, boys are 30% more likely to flunk, 250% more likely to be suspended and 300% more likely to be diagnosed with learning and emotional disabilities.
• From the NIH, this article explains how boys manifest ADHD differently than girls due to the expectations of masculinity.
• Males are less likely than females to: go to college and earn a bachelor's degree, earn a master's degree or earn a PhD.

5.  What is your hypothesis about why this is so?  How can these be related to the binary?  (Use the chart above to try and explain why traditional masculine traits might  lead to these educational outcomes.)

This article examines how males choose to be less involved at school and how that affects their ability to succeed:

Males and Health Risks

Young men are much more likely to die from accidental death than women: 

Males 20-24 are 3 times more likely to to die as a result of accidents,

4 times more likely to die from suicide and

6 times more likely to be murdered than women. (Ferris and Stein pg 256)

 

6.  What is your hypothesis about why this is so?  How can these be related to the binary?  (Again - refer to the chart above.)

Researchers Sandra Nakagawa and Chloe Hart conducted a study examining how gender identity influences eating habits.  

"...in the United States, where men have higher rates of life-threatening health conditions than women — including uncontrolled high blood pressure and heart disease — changing eating habits may be important for their health."

7.  Why do you think males have difficulty changing their eating habits?

8.  Hypothesize why traditional masculine traits might lead men to eat unhealthier.

After your hypothesis, read the explanation for the study here in Contexts.  From the link,

"This study shows that masculinity does matter for how men maintain their health. Importantly, it is not masculinity itself that is the problem here, but the high standards men feel they must meet (pun intended?)— and eat."

After reading the explanation above in Contexts, assess your hypothesis.  Was it correct?

Males and violence

Males are more likely to be both the perpetrator and the victim of violence.
From Statista 2022 (below) and from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2010),

• 40% of teenage girls 14-17yrs say they know someone their age who has been hit or beaten by a boyfriend.
• 1 of 5 college females will experience some form of dating violence from their male partner.
• 1 in 3 High School students have been or will be in an abusive relationship.

These stats come from the Zacharias Foundation which is a local organization that will confidentially help individuals deal with sexual and domestic abuse.

9.  What is your hypothesis about why these stats might be connected to gender socialization?  How can these be related to the binary?


Males and work

Some jobs are genderized and males are limited by the sexist socialization messages about gender. 

It is ironic, but misogyny actually hurts males.  Below is evidence about how gender inequality is limiting the jobs that males will do and the feminizing whole industries.  Males don't want to take jobs that they label as feminine.  Because of this, males are passing on some of the fastest-growing industries, like home healthcare.

• Why Men Don’t Want the Jobs Done Mostly by Women (2017)
• Job Listings That Are Too ‘Feminine’ for Men (2017)
• Contexts, The Pushes and Pulls of Gendered Occupations (2018)

In Gender & Society, Latonya Trotter finds that it’s not just exclusion from men’s professions, but the inclusionary policies of women’s professions that maintain distinctly gendered fields.

•  Here is an article in Harvard Business Review written by Janette Dill, an assistant professor in the sociology department at The University of Akron in Ohio:

The Entry-Level Health Care Jobs Men Are (and Are Not) Taking (2017)

This all signals that men, and particularly white men who are able to gain additional training, may be defining some health care occupations as more technical and masculine, preserving the conventional understandings of masculinity within the health care sector. Unfortunately, this also means that women and minority men may continue to be clustered in lower-paying direct-care occupations, where the “dirty work” remains stigmatized as “women’s work.”

And supporting professor Dill's work is this research about gendered language in job postings.

 

Washington Center for Equitable Growth provides this fact sheet (2017) about occupational segregation.

The genderization of jobs includes some of the following examples (Ferris and Stein 2018, 269-71):

Many jobs still highly genderized: nurses, early education (97%), dental hygenists, secretaries (94%), paralegals, housekeepers are highly female while pilots, carpenters, mechanics (98%), and firefighters (94%) are highly male.

Besides applicants self-selecting jobs based on gender, employers also select based on gender.  This research (2019) documented in Contexts shows that employers hire applicants by gender, based on their perception of what the gender of the job should be.


The Australian Men's Health Forum breaks down the research on jobs and gender discrimination here.

10.  Do you understand how the gender binary affects the jobs that males will take?

How does the binary affect males (and put them at risk)?

The Mask You Live In is a 2013 documentary about masculinity from the makers of Miss Representation.  Here is a trailer:

 

Please read Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence Random School Shootings, 1982-2001.  It is a qualitative study in American Behavioral Scientist about who randomly shoots up schools and why.  Students can access it here.  Publicly it is also available here.

11.  What is Mahler (and Kimmel)'s overall claim?



Reproducing Mahler and Kimmel's Research

After understanding Mahler and Kimmel's claim and evidence,  we will attempt to replicate and update their qualitative research.   Their qualitative analysis of existing data on school shooters examined random school shootings in major print media outlets (Time, Newsweek, US News, USA Today, NY Times, LA Times). Below are two lists of school shootings to get started.

A.  First, choose at least one of the random school shooters after 2001.

• Wikipedia list of school shootings since 2000 
• MotherJones data set of all mass shootings (under the "location" column, see schools) 

12.  What shooter(s) did you research?

B.  After choosing a shooter to research, use major news outlets to gather data about some of the school shooters from 2001-present.

Try Googling the name and look for article detailing the incident in major newspapers.  Additionally, here are a few other websites to help you find info:

Ballotopedia

Edvocate

Everytown K-12 database 

Make a note of the shooter's:

• race 

13.  What was the shooter's race?

• gender 

14.  What was the shooter's gender?

• community: urban, suburban, rural

15.  What community setting did the shooting occur in?

•  state (red or blue in 2001) NRA gun law tracker might be helpful for determining the gun culture of the state or use the map below.

16.  Was the shooting in a blue state (more restrictive) or red state (more permissive) 

• other qualitative info about them such as music, video games, movies, parent status, mental illness, social status/teased, et al...

17.  What other details about the shooter were revealed?

After you have entered the data above for at least one school shooter, hypothesize whether Mahler and Kimmel's research still holds up.

18.  Do you think that since 2001, Mahler and Kimmel's claim is still true about who shoots up schools and why?

After you click submit, look at the data the other students found and think about these questions:

• Does your data correlate with what the rest of the class found?
• What do you think of the findings?
• Is this data interesting/insightful?  Why/why not?
• Can you see the connection between masculinity and violence?
• Do you think that the average American would have trouble understanding the connection?  Why?
• What questions do you still have?

EXTRA:

Try to apply the research to other random shootings besides schools.  Search the websites that you used earlier.  Again, you may want to use the IC newspaper search to find info about the shooters, or Google their names.  Here are a few other websites to help you find info:

Mother Jones Mass Shootings

Gun Violence Archive or GVA

Mass Shooting Tracker
TheTrace compiles articles and data related to shootings at thetrace.org
NRA gun law tracker

Does Mahler and Kimmel's research also apply to NON-SCHOOL random shootings?