On February 9, I attend a documentary screening sponsored by Family Action Network (FAN) entitled, “The Mask You Live In.” While sex is a biological, gender is a social construction — and a dangerous one too. Gender has become a binary, and on each pole lie associative qualities and expectations. To be a woman is to be weak, emotional, vulnerable, and most of all, lesser. “Be a man” now means, “be everything and anything a woman is not.” Masculinity is a reactive construction: it is the rejection of everything feminine. As definitions of masculinity and manhood become less and less fulfillable — “don’t cry!”, “fight back!”, “be a womanizer!” — sexism and gender inequity escalates. Perhaps, if men did not feel the pressure of being “masculine,” as society defines it, then men would have no means for oppressing women. If the very qualities that men reject are instead embraced, gender inequity would become less prevalent. Activists, such as Jackson Katz, have been saying sexism is a men’s issue for years, and this documentary exhibited just that.
Because of many men’s rejection of “feminine” qualities, they begin to distance themselves from others. Relationships require too much empathy, emotion, vulnerability, and self-sacrifice, so their relationships struggle. There is a proven connection between friendships and mental health, as presented in the documentary, and when young men begin saying, “I feel close to him, no homo,” it is no surprise that by age 12, we see 34% of boys having begun binge drinking and taking drugs as a way to escape the expectations of building an emotionless character.
The combination of factors that lead to false definitions of manhood are dangerous for both men and women. Men, in one way or another, are told that in order to be “manly” they must have emotionless relationships, improve athletic ability, achieve the most economic success, and see sexual relations as never-ending conquests. Eventually, these unattainable expectations can lead many men to use destructive and violent behavior as an outlet.
However, this behavior, which was originally an escape, has become incorporated into the definition of masculinity because it’s just seen as boys “acting out” rather than an indicator of an internal battle. In an article entitled “The Price Women Pay for Boys Being Boys” first published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on May 13, 2001, Jackson Katz wrote, “One recent survey showed that 25 percent of teens know someone in their school who has been in an abusive relationship. Most gender violence is perpetrated by men who are not athletes. But when male athletes in high school, college or the pros are caught treating women in stereotypically sexist, physically abusive or sexually assaultive ways, because of their status and prominence in male culture they reinforce the idea that being disrespectful to women is part of the very definition of being a man.” And thus, as violence becomes apart of manhood, so too does violence against women.
It is the quintessentially human elements of our characters that have been deemed “feminine” and thus, inferior, which is proving to be a detriment to the humanity of men and women alike. If manhood continues to be defined as “everything a woman is not,” it is likely that men’s mental health will continue to suffer, women will continue to be oppressed, and the relationship between the two genders will be perpetually debilitating. Easier said than done, but, if men were to incorporate empathy and humanness into the definition of masculinity and reclaim the responsibility for passing that definition on to other men, both men and women would see a shift in their immediate realities.
Katz, Jackson. "The Price Women Pay for Boys Being Boys." Jackson Katz. Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, 13 May 2001. Web. 23 Feb. 2015. <http://www.jacksonkatz.com/pub_price.html>.
