Jackson Katz considers masculinity as a guise because it is a way for man to put on a mask to not show their vulnerability and their human side. He expresses that mask can take a lot of forms and one of them is the tough guise. For man to show their masculinity to the dominant society they have to be able to show that they are strong, violent, aggressive, respected, powerful, intimidating otherwise they will be looked by that dominant society as weak, losers, soft, or girl. Katz explains that this situation can be seen in every culture and boys have difficult to try to fit in the dominant society. One example that Katz explains in his article men are engaged in an ongoing process of keeping or creating their own masculinity identities. Nowadays
In the novel Tangerine Luis Cruz fits the mythological archetype mentor because he is very kind/nice to paul.Luis is also the mentor to paul because he inspires paul to be the best he can be.
In the video “Tough Guise” Jackson Katz argues that, “widespread violence in American society, including the tragic school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, Jonesboro, Arkansas, and elsewhere, needs to be understood as part of an ongoing crisis in masculinity.” He considers that while the social construction of femininity has been extensively examined, the role of masculinity has remained invisible until recent years. From the beginning of the episode male students are asked, “What is a real man?” Katz got replies like, strong, independent, intimidating, physical, powerful, and tough multiple times. Then after asking what is a real man, Katz asked, “what happens if you don’t live up to these standards?”
We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity becomes this hard, small cage, and we put boys inside the cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear. We teach boys to be afraid of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves because they have to be, in Nigeria speak, ‘hard man’ (Adichie).
Jenifer Siebel Newsom’s documentary, The Mask You Live In, is about the struggles young men and boys face while they are figuring out their identity in a stereotyped America. The film highlights the negative psychological and sociological implications that stem from society’s expectations of “masculinity.” According to Dr. Caroline Heldman, masculinity is defined in the U.S. as a rejection of everything feminine. American culture has classified masculinity as a strong, hardened, domineering, powerful, and controlling state of being. There are typically three lies that boys learn at a young age that plant the idea that they have to be masculine. Those lies are 1) You must have superb athletic ability and be fast and buff, 2) in order to be a “true” man, you must have
The article by Sally Raskoff states the current situation of gender and power in society. She states that we currently live in a male dominated society and hence our actions and languages reflect that. Examples of curse words are given to show how they refer to women negatively. This is happening because of male masculinity. According to Sally Raskoff, Males want to be seen as assertive, aggressive, and strong. And in order to show they are those things, they insult other males by referring to them as inferior things, body parts of women they consider to be “dirty”. One way to combat male masculinity is by emphasizing femininity, which is about encouraging women to be more nurturing, caring, mothering, and passive.
In his essay we can read how Cooper Thompson is deliberating the stereotypical definition of the word masculinity and how he sees in both men and women some good qualities. To achieve the “New Masculinity”, he claims that young men (boys) should consider to learn a women’s and a men’s qualities, because a good combination of both will achieve this goal of creating new masculinity. In his experience he states that the testers stereotypical define the word masculine a person of having strength. Society acquaintances to be masculine with men or boys, but here we need to accept as a society that both men and females can be masculine. To be masculine depends on a person’s behavior or characteristics.
What makes a man, a “man”? Is it how much money he makes? The car he drives? The life he lives? Or, the amount of “Masculinity” that he shows? These are some of the stereotypical question that becomes the ideas of what men should have or strive to achieve. In Post-Princess Models of Gender: The New Man in Disney/Pixar by Ken Gillam and Shannon R. Wooden, they bring forth the ideas/thought of what the characteristic of men should be, by the overly influential control Disney and Pixar have on us and our future generation. Similar to what Matthew Immergut, in his article Manscaping: The Tangle of Nature, Culture and the Male Body, they both share ideas on the thought of man. The argument addressed in the question is either the way we view masculinity should be changed or not to determine us as men. In which the answer is, yes it should. Male or man, is a gender identity which show/ categorize, us separate from our female counterpart, Female or woman. But then are criticized on their place a “males” by getting in situation the emasculate them. Just because men independent or allowing for help, either overly sensitive or possess a lack of emotion, or whether or not “he” shaves his body or not should deter what the worlds thought on his masculinity
The definition of masculinity; Is the fact of being a man or having qualities considered typical of a man.
In this short story by J.D. Salinger, masculinity with war time behavior is embodied through Franklin Graff’s life. During this time period any man away at war is considered a real man. Franklin is not able to become a soldier due to a bad heart. This results in him being flirted with from the same sex and losing the special girl in his life. He now struggles with being emasculated in his every day activities and lifestyle.
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
William Pollack, in his article “Inside the World of Boys: Behind the Mask of Masculinity”, discusses on how boy tries to hide behind the mask and the stereotypical of masculinity. He demonstrates how boy hide their deepest though and feelings and real self. Pollack open the essay with “a fourteen-year-old boy, he is doing badly in school and he might fail algebra, but when teacher or his parent ask about it, he said everything is just fine. He hide his true identity behind the mask, and let no one see his true self.” After read the story, I think the story is really useful source to write an essay about how boy become men and they are emotionless.
The Mask You Live In is a 2015 American documentary film that covers the topic of hyper masculinity in American society and its effects on the development of boys in this country. The primary argument that this film makes is that it is highly unrealistic for men to live up to the standard of hyper masculinity that our society as created and forced upon them. In fact, the film makes the argument that men who try to live up to these standards are setting themselves up for failure because many of them fall in to deep depression as they fail to measure up to society’s skewed idea of masculinity. This film uses various interviews from many different individuals including a single father, victims of abuse, and teachers in order to support the overall claim that it is trying to make along with going into some of the effects that hypermasculinity has on boys as they grow up. Overall, I feel that this film does a fantastic job of communicating both the dangers of trying to live up to a frankly outdated model of masculinity as well as showing how unrealistic this standard of masculinity is in modern society.
Masculinity, a seemingly simple concept. Yet, when examined more closely, it is clear that masculinity is constantly changing in its definition as well as in its most basic essence. Throughout the years, one can see this evolution firsthand by looking back at the men who have been portrayed in popular media in the United States of America. From the suave Don Draper types of the 1950s to the more casual, educated, and easygoing men- with perfectly chiseled abs, of course- that are portrayed in media today, the difference is clear. This drastic, yet unsurprising, shift in ideals, as well as the exponential increase of media consumed every day, has led to a change in how “masculinity” is perceived, as well as how it is enforced by society in the modern day. Alarmingly, this trend has led to the birth of so-called “toxic masculinity”, a bastardization of the original ideas behind masculinity which has created an enormous, detrimental effect on society as a whole. As defined in the article The Difference Between Toxic Masculinity and Being a Man, toxic masculinity is “manhood as defined by violence, sex, status, and aggression. It’s the cultural ideal of manliness, where strength is everything… where sex and brutality are yardsticks by which men are measured,” (O’Malley) This is a clearly displayed truth, and it’s astounding to see how even from a young age boys are taught not to show emotions other than anger, conditioned to believe that being “like a girl” is the worst possible
Masculinity can be defined as the behaviours, social roles, and relations of men within a given society in addition to the meanings that are attributed to them. The term masculinity stresses gender, unlike male, which stresses biological sex. Despite, this we often times see masculinity being represented as directly correlating to men with an inability to adhere to this is shown making you less of a "man". As put by Katz (1999) there is an expectation that men on screen must be void of emotion, not backing down from a fight, tough and an embodiment of the male gaze. Katz (1999) argues that essentially what
Strong, Independent, Intimidating, Powerful, Strong, Independent, In control, Rugged, Scares people, Powerful, Respected, Hard, A stud, Athletic, Muscular, A real man is tough, Tough, Tough” These are the responses of young men when they were asked what they believed what being a man was in the movie Tough Guise. This is a movie by Jackson Katz who is an anti-violence educator. The media that is taken in by the young men in our society is a very violent one. The men in most movies are portrayed as violent, tough, powerful, and criminals. The roles played by these men create an image for these young men making it seem ideal to be like them. The media influences the men and makes them have the negative portrayal of what a man is supposed to be. Masculinity reaches many people by influence through others.