Michael Kimmel

Misframing Men: The Politics of Contemporary Masculinities

brittany — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0000

The media’s obsession with the “crisis” of masculinity has long reached a feverish, cliché-filled pitch. “We’re losing our boys,” one article proclaims. “We must save the males,” says another. It’s unnerving, particularly since that identity crisis is pinned on the advancement of women in formerly male-dominated spheres.

There is a masculinity crisis, according to Michael Kimmel’s latest book Misframing Men. But it has nothing to do with women “invading” formerly men-only spaces or men taking on more responsibilities at home. Instead, Kimmel posits, men—particularly young men—are being confronted with media stereotypes and a public discourse that attempt to put them in a rigidly stifling box of masculine identity. And the more men struggle to fit themselves inside this frame, the more apparent it becomes that such a frame is doing a grave disservice to them.

Kimmel does an excellent job weaving together the economic, political, and social contributors to this masculinity crisis while avoiding the over-conflating (and overreacting) he is so critical of in the media. His debunking of gender symmetry in domestic violence articulately critiques a quantitative tool for measuring domestic violence (the Conflict Tactics Scale) through a stern analysis of the differing intentions and severity of male- and female-perpetrated violence. He negates the claims of gender symmetry supporters who believe the solution to violence perpetrated by both genders is to decrease the amount of funding for women who are survivors of domestic violence by suggesting an overhaul on how our culture approaches the causes (and solutions) of interpersonal violence.

His discussion of the struggle to make the Citadel and Virginia Military Institute co-ed—an arduous legal process for which he served an expert witness—is approached with no less of a degree of professionalism and intentionality. Critics bemoaned the attempt to “de-male” these institutions as another “threat” to men’s rights and happiness. Yet, as Kimmel points out, the rationale for keeping women out of these institutions has been mired in stereotypes and wholly ignorant of reality. As he poignantly concludes, the best way to strengthen these institutions is not to continue to seal them off from the outside world (and women). Rather, Kimmel states, “In a context of equality, the assumed differences between women and men will be revealed as stereotypes that help neither women nor men nor the institutions in which we find ourselves.” It is this striking eloquence that makes it my favorite chapter in Misframing Men.

Kimmel ends his book on a high note, reflecting that—despite allegations that young men are buckling under the pressure of women’s equality—young men on college campuses are happily adopting the “identities, practices, and ideas” of gender equality—in essence, constructing a new frame for themselves. It remains to be seen whether the media takes notice or chooses to remain mired in the sand of their manufactured obsessions.

Written by: Gwen Emmons, September 12th 2010

Privilege: A Reader

admin — Sat, 08 May 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Michael Kimmel, Abby L. Ferber

Westview Press

A historian once said that the more one can know about something, the more you can control it. Michel Foucault was specifically talking about the control of psychiatric patients, prison inmates, and people's sex lives, but we can certainly extend his thoughts to a plethora of other examples. What Foucault did not say, however, was how exposing and learning about power and dominance can lead to their dismantling.

After more than two decades since his passing, the inheritors of Foucault's ideas make an appearance in a handsome new book that explores the invisible power of privilege; namely the privilege of being White, heterosexual, and middle class in America. Privilege: A Reader is a collection of essays compiled and edited by Michael Kimmel and Abby L. Ferber, both scholarly experts in masculinities and ethnic studies respectively. The book takes on a welcoming and accessible feel with essays that come a personal place, many written from a first-person perspective by heavyweights like Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, and Tim Wise.

Some, like Allan Bérubé's experience as a gay rights activist brings to light the complications of being White in anti-racist gay rights movement. Not being White, I found Bérubé's angst about pointing out the Whiteness of influential gay groups in the U.S. an eyeopener. For White people, it seems, it was convenient to remain racially invisible and to depend on the unspoken rules about keeping that Whiteness unchecked. Awkward silences, defensiveness, and hostility form the repertoire of White discomfort when the racial gaze is turned to Whiteness.

In Michael A. Messner's piece on "Becoming 100 Percent Straight," he raises questions that heterosexual people rarely ask: how do we know for sure we're straight? And what made us straight? Messner's question is interwoven in a study of his own sexuality that touches on his memories as a young man who was infatuated with a male classmate and friend. In repressing this infatuation, he belittles and rejects his friend—a process Messner calls the heterosexualisation of his masculinity.

With every chapter I am reminded of the discomfort the topic of privilege raises and how important that it should remain unsettling. I learn that Black men and working class White people, as privileged groups, are highly contested categories in the face of institutional racism and poverty. And dishearteningly, I discover that the gateway to social mobility undermined by the unearned privilege of being accepted to Ivy League colleges by virtue of having parents who are alumni.

Kimmel and Ferber's book takes us on a journey of self-reflection, of deconstructing the power of invisibility, and asks us some difficult questions about our many roles in maintaining oppression. But it does not try leave us beset with racial or class guilt. Rather, it invites us to pursue, both on a theoretical and practical level, ways of recognising the overlapping nature of social privileges and overcoming differences in the name of solidarity against oppressions.

Though Privilege: A Reader could be a more comprehensive, far-reaching catalogue of dominance, both insidious and overt, if it had taken on board the narrative of privilege from other non-White experiences and interrogated what being able-bodied and cisgendered mean. The absence of trans, disabled, Asian, and Native American voices speaks, ironically, of Kimmel's and Ferber's privilege of omitting these important experiences that are key to dismantling the edifice of privilege.

I praise Privilege: A Reader nonetheless, for its courage to speak from a place that prefers to remain silent, for raising attention to a things that want to stay hidden, and its overall critique of life's many taken for granted experiences and “common sense.” I'm sure Foucault would be proud of that.

Written by: Alicia Izharuddin, May 8th 2010

Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men

admin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:23:00 +0000

By Michael Kimmel

Harper Collins

Guyland is less of a place than an attitude, a realm of existence. Occupied by young, single, white men, its main demographic is middle class kids who are college-bound, college co-eds, or recent graduates in the United States. They live in communal housing with fraternity brothers or other recent grads. They work entry-level jobs but act aimless. They have plenty of time to party like they did in college and subsist on pizza, beer, and a visual diet of cartoons, sports, and porn. They hook up with women, but rarely form meaningful relationships. Sociologist Michael Kimmel might sound like he’s stereotyping, but years of research confirm what many of us already know: Guyland, as described in the book of the same name, is a world occupied by a specific type of privileged, entitled, young, white male, one who probably watches _The Man Show _on SpikeTV and listens to gangsta rap with no hint of irony.

Kimmel has written extensively about this culture with no name, a culture that appears so ubiquitous on large, public U.S. university campuses, it can seem redundant to label it at all. Yet in Guyland, Kimmel deconstructs the many problems associated with this lifestyle, and perhaps most importantly, how it can stunt the growth of young men (and women) with true potential.

The critique of Guyland includes a laundry list of offensive behaviors and attitudes. Crude male bonding encourages a specific type of homosocial behavior that dictates strict masculinity, which makes gay baiting a common practice. Women who reject Guyland lads are suspected lesbians, and female friends are treated as accessories or potential “friends with benefits,” assuming they don the required baseball cap and oversized sweatshirt so as not to unnecessarily tempt their male buddies. This gender policing also exists in athletics, where even when cross-racial bonding occurs, you still prove yourself “guy or gay.” The “jockocracy” ends up extending into many facets of young men’s lives, making violent athletic culture norms everyday experiences, cultivating competition, silence, and fear.

Men in Guyland watch pornography in large groups, not to get off, but to discuss humiliating the women to whom they feel entitled. Binge drinking and partying all weekend are common behaviors, both in college and beyond. No one acts particularly interested in committed relationships, though many men interviewed assume they will one day marry and have children. The contradictions continue throughout the entire book, as entitled young men voice to Kimmel their desires without introspection about how to reach them.

While thorough, the main problem with Kimmel’s assessment is that in trying to be fair, he ends up excusing behavior. While individuals and their actions are clearly different from the harmful whole of Guyland’s influence, continuously explaining that most young men are good and harmless reinforces the privilege associated with men who defend the actions of other men. There may not be any efficient way to draw a line between violent offenders and naïve college guys who get caught up in a culture of complicit silence, but defending them is demeaning and deeply offensive to those who are hurt by their actions.

Kimmel also spends much time explaining that the men he writes about are generally middle class and white, yet never once is the phrase “white privilege” used. Perhaps I’m taking issue where some see none, but in order to fully address a problem, it must be named. To constantly skirt around the issue, to name race without defining the system that holds its power in place, does a disservice to the problem at hand, as well as the author’s otherwise insightful analysis. This truth may be difficult for the population at large to swallow, but in omitting key elements from his text, Kimmel failed the groups his book could otherwise benefit: women, people of color, and people who identify as LGBTQI.

Guyland should come with a warning for those who have lived – personally or indirectly – through the trauma that can go hand in hand with a violent male culture: those who have survived assault, those who have done permanent damage from binge drinking, and those who have lost their identities trying to keep up with the expectations of men. The statistics and stories recounted in Guyland are often terrorizing, and despite helpful suggestions for turning things around, this isn’t always a narrative of hopeful rehabilitation.

Despite its flaws, Guyland is highly informative, especially for those who haven’t been living in the midst of young white guy culture for the last decade. It picks up where books like Stiffed and Female Chauvinist Pigs left off, exploring the nuances of male bonding, sports culture, and hazing. It credits feminism for helping men bounce back from their time in a pornified wasteland and offers hope that, as a culture, we can begin turning things around for young men, beginning as early as middle school. It isn’t light reading to pair with a Glamor magazine, but it does take a necessary look at an increasingly pervasive part of our culture and names ways we can all begin to change the status quo.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, December 11th 2008