Reflection 6: Gender Documentary
I learn from the video about a majority of aspects of male masculinity spanning across different forms of violence and standards in society. It's very interesting to know the length of masculinity evolve through the movies, tv shows, and the music industry to name a few.
I personally felt the Tough Guise Video is narrating how I was extremely influenced by the power, strength, or coolness by men I believe are the norm to how men should act. Showing no fear and not being intimidating to anything is how I look at life as a whole when situations gets very difficult.
For example, Rambo as a one man army being brave against America's enemy with no fear of doing what's right for his country. The act of masculinity was also interesting because it can take shape through acts of self toughness and power.
I enjoyed the most about the film is how the connection of movies and television programming have profound effects toward masculinity. I feel that how the culture of masculinity with how men are represented by the physics and aggressive attitude.I was amazed at the drastic changes of men and women looks over the past decade with biceps for men and skinny waists for women.
An example came from the video where the narrator stated that, "One of the ways to explain these shifts is that in an era where women have been challenging male power in business, the professions, education and other areas of economic and social life, the image of women that have flooded the culture show them as less threatening.
They're literally taking up less symbolic space. At the same time, the images of men have gotten bigger, stronger, more muscular and more violent." This shows the slight competitiveness for the men to be perceived as the dominant gender which was a particular cultural norm.
The most challenging was reflecting toward the message of what the video tells me because the length of the movie makes it slightly difficult for me to comprehend a lot of information to memorize. Although, I feel like it's a positive for myself by interpreting it as a reflection to learn more about the nature of my gender.
My thoughts on the question, "Can men be feminist?," have evolved because my initial perspective was that men are not capable to display feminism because of the history of masculinity being a driving force to how men should be perceived as strong and powerful.I also thought that men being a feminist in the early 90s and so on feel somewhat far-fetched then in the 2000s where there are some men showing feminism in the public. Vulnerability has been a strange attribute in the world of masculinity, but showing it brings another aspect to being man.
The video was spot on that men should acknowledge vulnerability instead of it being a fictional belief. This is the case because it shows diversity of masculinity to something other than the norm of what the term means.
A great example from the video is from the Steven Spielberg's movie "Saving Private Ryan" where it showed the pain and agony of war, which was a different view of masculinity like the John Wayne movies. It also was a tremendous contradiction to Rambo as well by the emotions of pain, anxiety, terror, and suffering.
Hegemonic masculinity is associated with violence by the gender stereotype of men portrayed in a dominant position. I believed that hegemonic masculinity is rooted from past trauma experience of being physically, sexually, and mentally abused.
It's similar to the environment of peer pressure and bullying where they have to put on a suit of masculinity in order to survive. I agree with the video that masculinity sheds men of their psyche and being decent human because the humanity of a male is replace by the aggressiveness to be dominant over the same or different gender.
The violence masculinity is also caused by the news. When watching or reading the news, dilemmas like rape allegations, and sexual abuse by men is not properly written on depicting specific genders in their headlines. The cover stories or news article usually don't mention majority of the perpetrators who causes the situations are male.
Although with females, they are going to go in-depth to why women are acting this way. For example, the movie "Thelma and Louise" was extremely criticized because it was out of the realm of women doing masculine matters regarding an act of violence.
It's a common cause which is ignore for bring attention to violence masculinity which feminist groups are constantly speaking out about. This is why violence masculinity is always growing, which is linked to control and supremacy against a cause of oppressing women.
A "real man" is to show masculinity by showing power and strength in certain situations. The social institution of genders relates to what a "real man" is based on the structure of the gender hierarchy. This is meant for having the rights and responsibilities for men to achieve which defines them.
According to Judith Lorber, "In social interaction throughout their lives, individuals learn what is expected, see what is expected, act and react in expected ways, and thus simultaneously construct and maintain the gender order." The quote means how males are constructed to be in the U.S. as being masculine in any situations and are expected to be the main gender the nation needs.
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