Archive for the 'Michael Kimmel's "Guyland"' Category

Looking for “the inoculation against cruelty”: how to help boys through the trials of Guyland

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by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 17, 2008
in Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement, Mentoring, Michael Kimmel's "Guyland" and Youth
. 39 Comments

This is the third installment of a three-part review of Michael Kimmel’s Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. Part one is here, and part two is here.

In the first two parts, I looked at Kimmel’s concerns about young men in America, noting his insights into the “Guy Code”, homosociality, and the recurrent theme of escape in boys’ lives. Kimmel is as good as any in identifying the problem, and making a compelling case that there are some immensely troublesome aspects to the way in which our culture helps (or doesn’t) boys transition into adulthood. But it’s axiomatic that diagnosis is always easier to write than remedy; most of us see the wrong more clearly than we see the right. And in the end, the most valuable contribution that any of us in the gender studies field can make is to prescribe workable solutions to the problems we are usually so good at identifying.

Many writers of similar books spend the first four-fifths of the text laying out the case that something needs to change, usually with copious anecdotes designed to illustrate just how bad things have gotten. The suggestions for change and transformation, if they have any, usually only appear in the conclusion. Too often in recent years, I’ve read books about “youth in crisis” in which practical solutions appear almost as a rushed afterthought. It’s as if the author never meant to include them at all, and only did so, grudgingly, at the firm insistence of an editor. I am happy to say that Michael Kimmel weaves his vision for an alternative “guyhood” into every chapter of his book. Though the bulk of his strategy for change appears towards the end of Guyland, the whole text is shot through with thoughtful and compelling suggestions for how things can be different.

First off, we need to acknowledge that there is much that is good in our young men. One of the classic slurs that anti-feminist men’s rights activists (MRAs) throw at the likes of Michael Kimmel (or Jackson Katz, Robert Jensen, Michael Flood, and — if I may be so bold –myself) is that we are filled with masculine self-loathing. We then apparently project our own self-hatred onto other men, longing (apparently) to change “real men” into women. This charge has as much credence as the suggestion that Barack Obama runs an al-Qaeda sleeper cell, but like those whispers, the spurious charge of misandry has proven surprisingly resilient. Kimmel does what all of us do, though we get too little attention for it: he honors the worth and dignity of the young men about whom he writes, and he honors them as men. Continue reading ‘Looking for “the inoculation against cruelty”: how to help boys through the trials of Guyland’

Escape, entitlement, and empowerment: young men and the “four Ps”

Published
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Hugo Schwyzer
on September 11, 2008
in Men and Masculinity, Michael Kimmel's "Guyland" and Youth
. 51 Comments

This is the second lengthy post in a three-part series of responses to Michael Kimmel’s new Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. Part One is here.

Sometimes, it seems to me that an entire generation of young men are lost to what might be called the siren song of the “Three Ps”: Pot, Pornography, and Playstation (video games). For an increasing number of young men, a fourth “P” is enjoying a renaissance: Poker, this time often played on-line. Ask any parent of a “guy” in the age range Michael Kimmel is focused on (16-26), ask any exasperated sister or would-be girlfriend, and you’ll hear many an anecdote about the hours lost and the commitments broken by young men indulging themselves in one or more of the aforementioned behaviors. Much of the recent writing about the “boy crisis” has focused on the influence of pornography and video games in particular on young men. By no means has all that focus been negative, though most thoughtful observers of contemporary society are deeply troubled by the tremendous amount of time that so many young men spend absorbed in the dubious “pleasures of the Ps.”

Michael Kimmel is not an anti-pornography activist. (From the perspective of the pro-feminist men’s movement, Robert Jensen’s Getting Off will remain the indispensable text on the subject for years to come.) Nor is Kimmel reflexively hostile to the “gaming” culture. Indeed, his writing on video games reveals a sophisticated knowledge of their appeal: his descriptions of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and World of Warcraft (perhaps the two most popular time-sucking games available) taught me a great deal about both these games and their stunning appeal.

Kimmel points out something every adult knows: young men tend to become hostile and defensive when queried about the amount of time they devote to online gaming.

Why are these guys so angry and defensive? In part because they feel a little guilty that they are spending so much time doing something they know is purposeless…

But it goes deeper than that. Guys’ defensiveness also has to do with the rage that’s both covert and overt in much of what passes for entertainment in Guyland. Because, as it turns out, the fantasy world of media is both an escape from reality and an escape to reality — the reality that many of these guys would secretly like to inhabit. Video games, in particular, provide a way for guys to feel empowered. In their daily lives guys often feel that they don’t measure up to the standards of the Guy Code — always be in control, never show weakness, neediness, vulnerability — and so they create ideal versions of themselves in fantasy. The thinking is simple: if somebody messes with your avatar, you blow him away. It’s a fantasy world of Manichean good and evil, a world in which violence is restorative and actions have no consequences whatsoever.

Kimmel rejects a simplistic connection between video games and “real-life” violence. Most psychologists and sociologists are justifiably suspicious of what he calls a “monkey-see, monkey-do” analysis of the influence of violent media. (And for what it’s worth, can we just leave the pigs and the monkeys and the dogs out of the discussion?) At the same time, he recognizes that gaming has tremendous significance in the lives of many “guys”. Explaining what these lads get out of their compulsive media consumption, he writes:

They’re getting a parallel education to the formal curriculum — complete with its own Three Rs: Relaxation from the weight of adult demands and of the rules of social decorum (also now known as political correctness); Revenge, against those who have usurped what you thought was yours; and, Restoration to your rightful entitled position in the world.

That’s not just alliterative, that’s right on the mark. In Manhood in America, his great primer, Kimmel focuses on the recurrent theme of “running away” from feminizing, civilizing culture. Huck Finn and Rip Van Winkle, two of the most memorable fictional characters of the 19th century, both go to great lengths to “relax”, to escape, and to create alternative worlds in which only “guys” can be found. (Think of Rip’s flagon of spirits as the modern-day bong, and the “bowling ghosts” he encounters as symbolic of men who live without the confining, restricting, civilizing impact of women). Young men today can’t escape as easily to the mountains or down the Mississippi, but they can escape into cyber-worlds that are largely male, rule-bound, and positively welcoming of violence. Continue reading ‘Escape, entitlement, and empowerment: young men and the “four Ps”’

Our sons, our brothers, our guys: part one of a three-part review of Michael Kimmel’s new book

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 10, 2008
in Books, Men and Masculinity, Michael Kimmel's "Guyland" and Youth
. 63 Comments

This is the first of a three-part review of Michael Kimmel’s new book.

I order a lot of books (which I then pass on or recycle dutifully), but I’ve awaited no book in 2008 more eagerly than Michael Kimmel’s brand new Guyland: The Perilous World where Boys Become Men. As anyone even remotely connected to the gender studies field knows, the last half-decade has seen an explosion of alarm over the “boy crisis”. Pundits and physicians, mostly on the political right, have written anxious and angry jeremiads about how, thanks to feminism and other innovations, our sons are ignored, stifled, shamed, and alienated. The astonishing rise in autism and ADHD diagnoses among boys, and the increasing demographic domination of women among the college-educated, are regularly cited as evidence that the system is failing our young men.

Of course, concern for young people is not a zero-sum game. Success and opportunities for young women has not come, and indeed never need come, at the expense of their brothers. Much of the “boy crisis” (or its counterpart, the risible notion of a “War Against Men” recently promoted in a lamentable bestseller) is manufactured as a vehicle to push a tired anti-feminist agenda. But the fact that the problem with boys is often oversold (in order to market books to anxious parents and indignant right-wingers) doesn’t mean that growing up male in American society today is particularly easy. Young men today must navigate through a confusing and contradictory series of messages about their identity, their purpose, and their relationship to others. There is a real problem, and those of us who care about young men cannot let our exasperation at the flagrant misdiagnosis of its cause distract us from working on a solution.

This is why Michael Kimmel’s new book is so welcome. Kimmel (professor of sociology at SUNY Stony Brook) is perhaps the leading American scholar on the subject of men and masculinity. Indeed, it would not be a stretch to say that the growing field of “Men and Masculinity Studies” owes more to Michael Kimmel than to anyone else. His indispensable primer, Manhood in America, is now in its second edition. (I use it in my men’s studies course.)

Guyland focuses in on young men in one crucial decade: the years between 16 and 26. For the book, Kimmel interviewed more than four hundred men who fell into that age range, from a wide variety of economic and cultural backgrounds. (He notes how easy it is for academics to focus their research on their own students, who tend to be predominantly middle and upper-middle class. Kimmel assiduously seeks out young men who aren’t the sort to be found in selective four-year colleges, as well as those who are.) His conclusions, as a result of these extensive interviews and his own decades of work on masculinity, are sweeping, profound, and immensely important.

Kimmel, blessedly, skewers those who suggest that the “boy crisis” is in some way a consequence of feminist advances in education and elsewhere.

The idea that feminist reforms have led to the decline of boyhood is both educationally unsound and politically unstable. It creates a false opposition between girls and boys, assuming that the educational reforms undertaken to enhance girls’ educational opportunities have actually hindered boys’ educational development. But these reforms…actually enable larger numbers of students to get a better education, boys as well as girls. Further, ‘gender stereotypes, particularly those related to education’, hurt both girls and boys, and so challenging those stereotypes and expressing less tolerance for school violence and bullying, and increased attention to violence at home, actually enables both girls and boys to feel safer at school. (Emphasis in the original.)

What then of the evidence that girls are starting to surpass boys in terms of academic achievement, not only in the humanities but increasingly in maths and science? Kimmel makes the case that this is a less a result of anti-boy prejudice and more a consequence of the disastrous attempt on the part of many young men to live up to what he calls the “Boy Code” (more on that later). Continue reading ‘Our sons, our brothers, our guys: part one of a three-part review of Michael Kimmel’s new book’