masculinity

From “Why the Sting of Layoffs Can be Sharper for Men,” NYTimes Jan. 31, 2009:

As job losses reverberate across the economy, differences in “his” and “her” layoffs are beginning to take shape — revealing gender dynamics that may not have been as apparent when the Dow was at 14,000.

Dr. Louann Brizendine, author of “The Female Brain” and a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, says that women who lose their jobs “aren’t going to take as much of a self-esteem hit” as men. That is because the most potent form of positive social feedback for many men comes from within the hierarchy of the workplace. By contrast, she said, women may have “many sources of self-esteem — such as their relationships with other people — that are not exclusively embedded within their jobs.”

She said that over the past six months, her clinic has had an increase in the number of men seeking help for difficulties related to job loss.

Terrence Real, a family therapist and the founder of Real Relational Solutions in Arlington, Mass., said the difference in reactions could be explained by the idea of performance esteem.

“Everyone who has written about male psychology has acknowledged that men base their sense of self on the maxim that ‘I have worth because of what I do,’ ” Mr. Real said. The feeling is that “you are only as good as your last game or your last job,” he said.

In his practice over the past 12 months, Mr. Real says, he has seen a roughly 20 percent uptick in the number of men seeking help because of the economic downturn.

Interesting….More from me on all this to come.  (Check out Recessionwire.com, plug plug!)

The other day I stumbled across Rafael Casal on YouTube and was blown away. The first thing I did was to send out an email to a bunch of my friends that said: If you knew about this guy and didn’t tell me about him, y’all are in some deep shit.

A slam champion poet, recording artist, and educator, Rafael Casal is turning up the political heat. His message is steaming hot. And now that I’ve found Casal, I want to tell as many people as possible about this amazing hip-hop influenced poet who cuts straight to the heart of so many issues.

Take the Bill of Rights. You know, those 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution that were ratified as a package deal in 1791? Remember those 10 gems that are supposed to protect us from an overzealous federal government? Freedom of speech, the right to peacefully gather, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment or unreasonable search and seizure. Yeah, that Bill of Rights.

Well, “I’m billing them for my rights,” Casal says.

more...

I’m back from my talks in Iowa (thank you Astrid Henry! thank you Renee Kramer!), back in action, and wanted to follow Shira’s awesome inaugural post (welcome, Miss Shira!) with an updated plug for The Masculinity Project. This amazing project sponsored by Black Public Media “uses media to create a virtual community record of the true issues affecting black men and black community in America” and includes a blog, BLACKstream, film shorts, forums, and more.  The hope, according to the press release, is that it become a repository of work by the next generation of storytellers and filmmakers, fostering cross-cultural dialogue that “reaches our neighborhoods as well as our policymakers.”

Why now?  Because:

This year Barack Obama made history when he was elected as president of the United States on November 4, 2008. His candidacy has trained significant public and media attention to issues of race and the challenges facing black men in this country. While President Elect Obama ran for the highest office in the land, he also hails from Illinois, a state where the prison population is 63 percent African American—an incarceration rate nine times that of whites. But what does it all mean?

Check it out! www.masculinityproject.org

I’m thrilled to join Girl With Pen with this inaugural entry of The Man Files. Deborah Siegel and I have big plans for this column. Watch us grow! In the meantime, join our monthly discussions about masculinity, sex, culture, work, parenting, and progressive change. Our goal is to engage scholars, bloggers, and readers in a popular online forum about what it means these days to “be a man.”

Why The Man Files? Because gender isn’t just about women. And because it’s time that the amazing female feminists and the awesome feminist guys get out of our (virtual blog) boxes and start talking with each other. There are so many people doing so much hard work to end sexism, racism, and other forms of hate. Yet so often we stay oddly isolated.

Personally, I’m not one to shy away from difficult, challenging, or even unlikely convos across communities. The Man Files provides a forum for these conversations. The more we talk, the closer we come to preventing male violence against women, improving pay inequity, building strategic feminist alliances, and generally expanding our everyday choices in selecting where we work, who we love, how we act, and why we do — the sorts of choices that are so often constrained by rigid gender expectations.

To start out The Man Files I want to introduce a couple recent works about men and masculinity. A few of my favorite things, if you will, that include hot new projects hitting the scene.

Monthly Round-Up
Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men by Michael Kimmel (HarperCollins 2008). Kimmel cuts new ground again with his most recent book, Guyland. Going beyond pop-psych pablum or narrow-minded moralizing, Guyland takes us inside the world of young men between 16 and 26 so that readers can understand how these critical years contribute to the formation of masculinity. Think boys and their toys, beer, babes, and (foot)ball.

The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life edited by Kevin Powell (Atria Books 2008). Kevin Powell makes a strong case in The Black Male Handbook for supporting men in the black community. This collection of highly personal essays offers “fresh solutions for old problems.” Authors like Hill Harper, Byron Hurt, Jeff Johnson, and Ryan Mack provide concrete plans for improving economic empowerment, creating physical health, and developing spiritual and political awareness. These issues have political roots and such personal consequences. Written primarily for black men, we can all benefit from reading this book. Check out the suggestions for new music, books, and other sources of entertainment.

Barack & Curtis: Manhood, Power & Respect directed by Byron Hurt. As part of the recently launched Black Masculinity Project, Byron Hurt does it again with his recent short about Barack Obama and rapper 50 Cent. (See Hurt’s acclaimed film Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes.) Why these two guys? As Hurt explains, Barack Obama is shattering so many myths about black masculinity and 50 Cent (named Forbes Magazine‘s top-earning rapper), epitomizes gangsta hip-hop masculinity. “Both are successful Black men,” Hurt says. “Both are rock stars. Both are admired and feared.” Juxtaposing the two men in a short documentary film promotes — in Hurt’s words — historic level conversations. See it on YouTube.

So that’s it for this time. Humor and (respectful) controversy are always welcome at The Man Files. Send your ideas to Shira_Tarrant at yahoo dot com and tell me what you’d like to see. The lines are open, we’re taking requests, and I’ll see you here next month.

—Shira Tarrant

Yep, you got that right. Barack and 50 Cent in the same sentence. Or rather, post title.

Last night I went to KGB bar with Shira Tarrant to hear her read from Men Speak Out, along with one of her contributors, filmmaker Byron Hurt, and learned about Byron’s latest–a short doc examining the contrasting styles of manhood exhibited by Barack Obama and Rapper/Mogul Curtis Jackson, aka 50 Cent. It’s part of The Masculinity Project, a web-based endeavor launching in January 2009 devoted to redefining what it means to be a man. Here’s the 10-minute short, which has been released only at Byron’s website and is being spread virally:

Read more about it here. Word.

I am ridiculously thrilled to share the news that Shira Tarrant is joining the GWP team as our latest editor! Shira and I are teaming up on an evolving web project, called The Man Files, and we are “seeding” it here on GWP.

The Man Files–for now, a monthly column here–will bring together some of the most provocative thinking about feminism and masculinity on the web. Our shared aim as hostesses/editors is to continue the conversation Shira launched with Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power and to foster the kind of the intergenerational conversation around the aftershocks of feminism I put out there with Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild. The Man Files column tackles a range of subjects, from sex to work to fashion to fatherhood. Our goal is to engage scholars, bloggers, and readers in a popular online forum about what it means these days to “be a man.” We got plans. Stay tuned!

If you have ideas for a guest column for The Man Files, please email me at deborah at girlwpen dot com.

And in the meantime, for anyone here in NYC, you can catch Shira reading TONIGHT at KGB Bar, along with Men Speak Out contributor Byron Hurt. The topic: Masculinity, Sex, and Hip Hop. Doesn’t get much better than that!

By the way, I’m sitting here with Shira and when I typed the title of this post Shira says to me, “Wow – that’s loaded.” Hehe.

Just a quick hit today on a book I’m about to get my hands on, titled The Decline of Men: How the American Male Is Tuning Out, Giving Up, and Flipping Off His Future, by Guy Garcia. Coming on the heels of Michael Kimmel’s most excellent Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men, I’m eager to see how it, um, measures up.

From the Publishers Weekly review:

Garcia (The New Mainstream) explores disturbing trends of men leading increasingly socially isolated lives and dropping out of high school and college in record numbers, naming them victims of an invisible epidemic. According to the author, modern men have failed to forge a new and productive role in the 21st century. Garcia charts the rise of feminism and the changing societal roles of both men and women, illustrating how and why men have become so confused about what defines masculinity; having lost their traditional role as provider and protector, men flirt with hollow substitute identities—drawing on Jackass culture (men pretending to be boys), gangster culture (boys pretending to be men) and metrosexual obsessions with grooming and body image—that have reductively redefined manhood and led men away from compassion, responsibility and family. Garcia wisely avoids degrading feminism or pitting men against women; instead, he offers an astute and well-researched meditation on how men might reclaim their identity and place in modern America and why such a transformation is important to future generations of both men and women. (Oct.)

Paging Clark Kent?

And for this week’s XY FILES (also a little late!), I wanted to share some analysis from my guy Marco, who continues to blog up a storm over at Open Salon. In his post this week over there, “Postcards from Camelot,” Marco offers a comparative analysis of political family portraiture from the days pre-Betty Friedan with today’s, juxtaposing a portrait of the Obama family that appeared on the Obama campaign’s website, and a portrait of the Kennedy family at Hyannisport circa 1962. Writes Marco,

While Barack is dressed identically to JFK, down to the wristwatch (signifier of male diligence during downtime), it is ironically Michelle who seems the more work-ready in the 2008 image. She is much more formal here than Jackie, as befitting a contemporary professional mom, yet it is also possible that the zetgeist is not yet ready for a black First Lady in leisure attire. Certainly this is true in corporate America, where non-white professionals can still feel the need to one-up their white colleagues in formality just to achieve equal parity.

At a time when Sarah Palin’s suitability for office is questioned even by liberals in the context of motherhood, it is significant that it is Barack whom the daughters embrace. Here we have a signifier not only of progressive gender politics but of the increasing importance of family values in the political sphere. The Obamas are in that sense a tighter unit here than the Kennedys; in the Kennedy image Jack looks true to the pre-Betty Friedan era, a man in proximity to his family yet not unduly “enmeshed”, which implicitly allowed him the freedom to work and “play” outside the domestic realm. Not so Obama, who must project utter wholesomeness in a post-Lewinsky landscape.