When someone thinks of a man the first thing that comes to mind is a large man, the epitome of strength and toughness, but where did they get that idea. More often than not people get their ideas of masculinity from the shows and movies they watch throughout their lives. In the article Hegemonic masculinity in media contents, by Peter J. Kareithi, he focuses much more specifically on how the media has presented it to the public, and less of the why, and how it started. The paper by Connell and Messerschmidt, Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept, does a much better job at explaining the history of hegemonic masculinity and how it came to be. Though together the two articles give the reader a complete sense of what the focus is, and
Historically, masculinity in the United States has been constructed as being White Protestant Anglo-Saxon, furthermore heterosexual and in charge of all matters, and this definition sets standards against which other men are measured an evaluated. Michael Kimmel provides a good definition:
Violence is a mechanism of coercive control that is used to maintain and reinforce gender difference and hierarchy. Building on Lynch 's (2009) claim that hegemonic masculinity is "toxic to both the men and women left in its wake" this essay aims to explore the relationship between hegemonic masculinity and violence. Placing a specific focus on acts of intimate partner violence and mass shootings, and exploring the works of Lynch (2009), Keith (2011), Baugher, & Gazmararian (2015), Kimmel, Hearn, & Connell (2004), Reidy, Berke, Gentile, & Zeichner (2014) and, Katz, Young, Earp, & Jhally (1999 & 2013), this essay seeks to argue that the strict regulation of masculinity as well as a history of encouraging male violence in our society has created a dangerous and hostile climate for both men and women to exist in.
The definition of masculinity; Is the fact of being a man or having qualities considered typical of a man.
The article “The National Conversation in the Wake of Littleton is Missing the Mark" By Jackson Kats and Sut Jhally is about finding the cause of violence and relating it to students who dispense harm to society, as well as other students. There is a focus on masculinity, along with behavior and how that behavior is being influenced by the environment. The article focuses on factors such as peer exclusion, the prevalence of violence in the media and most importantly, violence in relation to gender. .
At the break of the day I wake up before the sun has even settled itself back into the sky, I repeat my dreary morning routine, and I go somewhere. I go somewhere by myself, quite alone, maybe in my car, maybe just for a walk around the neighborhood. While I’m out on my walk or after I’ve driven somewhere and gotten out of my car (that seriously needs a run through the car wash), I become aware. I become vividly aware of all the people around me and feel unsafe, I feel unsafe in my own neighborhood because I heard a woman was held at gunpoint not far from here, I feel unsafe because I’ve binge watched Criminal Minds and I know how easy it is for unsuspecting women who feel safe in public, at stores and in parking lots, to be abducted.
To read Babio without recognizing the gender politics at work in the play would disregard much of how the play itself creates meaning. So much of the play’s plot and character dynamics are related to the way gender functions in this play. One major theme of Babio is the idea of masculinity and how masculinity is defined. Through the portrayal of Babio as an effeminate character, Babio is able to define masculinity through absences in Babio’s Character. Consequently, Babio makes the additional point that lovesickness is not an intrinsic aspect of medieval masculinity, despite the fact that love sickness is often attributed to men.
Masculinity is a socially constructed practice that guarantees the domination of men and the subordination of women. This practice has been looked at as a superior “force of nature” in literature for years and years, and Frederic Henry from A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway, McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, and Joe from Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, all use their masculine identity as a way to gain and maintain power, both subconsciously and consciously. Masculinity and the supposed traits that come along with it, such as the right to power and the right to use violence, are used as means to find fulfillment and success. Henry considers masculinity to be the ultimate stressor of personal autonomy; he consciously commits himself to masculine acts (suppression of emotion, fighting in war) in order to be considered a dominant figure. McMurphy views the feminine as destructive to men and fights back in an attempt to defeat the “Combine,” or cold war society, that suppresses masculine identity and heteronormative sexual performance. Joe uses the practice of masculinity to justify acts of violence against women: as the supreme being, he can control the weaker gender for his benefit.
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land explores modernism, specifically focusing on the troubling of binaries and the breakdown of the traditional. The boundaries between life and death, wet and dry, male and female, and more are called into question in Eliot’s conception of modernity and the waste land. The blurring of gender boundaries—significantly through Tiresias and the hooded figure scene in “What the Thunder Said”— in the poem lends itself to Eliot’s suggestion that traditional masculinity breaks down and decays in the waste land. Traditional masculinity is further challenged through Eliot’s criticism of hyper-masculinity and heterosexual relations in the modern era through allusions to the myth of Philomela and the “young man carbuncular” scene in “The Fire Sermon.” Along with this, Eliot stages scenes charged with homoeroticism to further challenge ideas of traditional masculinity. Homoerotic scenes such as the “hyacinth girl” scene in “The Burial of the Dead” and the Mr. Eugenides scene in “The Fire Sermon” suggest an intensity and enticement towards male-male relations, while also offering a different depiction of masculinity than is laid out in the heterosexual romance scenes. Through scenes depicting queer desire and homosexual behavior, Eliot suggests that masculinity in the modern era does not need to be marked by aggression and
Sanchaiyata Majumdar Interrogating ‘masculinity’ in female characters of Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude Masculinity is a common theme in Latin American literature. The same is true about the works of Garcia Marquez. Machismo and patriarchy are subthemes of several of his creations, including his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude. However, theorists such as J. Hearn and A. Petersen have argued that the concept of masculinity is blurred.
Interest in body image, its effects on person’s psychology and individual’s position in community, started with Paul Schilder in 1920s. Yet most literature of gender studies is consisted of works about female body image. However, with recent developments over the world, men’s body image has obtained more significance and has drawn more attention from psychologists, sociologists and gender scholars. To analyze this conjuncture and the reasons for it, we may firstly, introduce the concept of body image by defining it. Paul Schilder has defined the body image as “the picture of our own body which we form in our mind, that is to say, the way in which the body appears to ourselves” (as cited in Grogan, 1999, p. 14). In other words, body image
For centuries, men, more specifically white cis-gendered males, have been looked at as superior compared to everyone else. The superiority then falls to white women, men of color, and finally women of color. If we mix in sexuality into the mix it gets even more messy. This paper will attempt to make sense of how that power structure affects members of the LGBTQ+ community in regards to work life and family life.
Being a male in today’s society is not about living and enjoyment, it has become more of a task. Social pressures and media have made it difficult for males to live a life in which they are not being pressured to act or perform a certain way. In order to reassure themselves of their masculinity, violence has become the main method in assuring themselves and those around them that they are powerful. Not only is this violence being perpetrated against others, but self-inflicted violence also exists. The violence being used is not only physical but it is emotional abuse as well. Masculinity has forced many males to perform in ways that are detrimental to their own health as well as their loved ones. Furthermore, it has also put males in the
According to Anthony Clare the heart of the masculinity crisis lies within the understanding of “the private and public sphere, the intimate and the impersonal, the emotional and the irrational” (Clare, 2000:212). Both men and women are both confined to their spaces and the line between the two has somewhat been blurred, thus resulting in a crisis. The way in which this line is blurred is by masculinity becoming more feminized. There have been two major shifts in masculinity over
Given that the structure of gender qualities has been a large part of our views, in regards to a variety of issues, a number of people take exception to variances from within these rules. Keeping this in mind, we will discuss the reasons why many individuals are discouraged from crossing traditional gender traits, and closely examine parts of the article assigned for this paper.