3.13 Gender Inequality and Masculinity

Important Announcements:

After this lesson, the window will be open for midterm assessment 3.  You have until Thursday at class time to complete the assessment.

If you would like to submit a qualitative assessment for this unit, the assessment will be posted here.

This Friday will be the conclusion of our course.  Attendance will still be graded so please plan to be in class. We will have a course evaluation and I will give you an opportunity to work on your final essay and ask me questions.

Today's Lesson: Masculinity

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?

Pew Research: How Americans See Men and Masculinity (2024)

Pew Research: Acceptable and Unacceptable Behaviors for Men (2024)

CJ Pascoe's research and the construction of masculinity among peers and in high school 

 

NOTE: CJ Pascoe is a sociology professor who is part of the LGBTQIA+ 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." 

 

Her research is about 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, Dude You're a F*g was published in 2007, before the more recent social pressure to see the word as a vulgar pejorative and remove it from everyday use. Pascoe is not using the word lightly or offensively - she is simply explaining how masculinity is constructed. However, because of the offensive nature of the word, I have redacted it, where possible. And although recently the word may be used less publicly, it is still used privately. Even if publicly the word is used less, 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 an excerpt here. 

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

Here is a review from Everyday Sociology. 

Here is CJ Pascoe’s micro lecture on bullying and masculinity. 

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.

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.  The video is available on Kanopy and below is a trailer:

 

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 at Risk in 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:

Sociologists Thomas A. DiPrete and Claudia Buchmann explain in a report from their book, The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What It Means for American Schools,  

Boys’ underperformance in school has more to do with society’s norms about masculinity than with anatomy, hormones or brain structure. In fact, boys involved in extracurricular cultural activities such as music, art, drama and foreign languages report higher levels of school engagement and get better grades than other boys. But these cultural activities are often denigrated as un-masculine by preadolescent and adolescent boys.

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?

Masculinity, Jobs, and risks/inequality

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?

Males and risks of 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?

Michael Kimmel's book, Angry White Males 

Guardian Review here.

One of the headlines of the 2012 Presidential campaign was the demise of the white American male voter as a dominant force in the political landscape. On election night four years later, when Donald Trump was announced the winner, it became clear that the white American male voter is alive and well and angry as hell. Sociologist Michael Kimmel, one of the leading writers on men and masculinity in the world today, has spent hundreds of hours in the company of America's angry white men - from white supremacists to men's rights activists to young students. In Angry White Men, he presents a comprehensive diagnosis of their fears, anxieties, and rage.

Also a 2020 short film on Tubi and Apple.

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?

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  Vimeo and on Kanopy

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."

Regeneration through Violence; The Myth of the American Frontier 

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."

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."

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.