men

Sex and Sensibility: Thinking about the Boys
by Kristen Loveland

Michael Kimmel, in his new book Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men describes, as James Hannaham aptly summed up at Salon, a land “where women are treated as objects or bargaining chips, and alcoholism and drug abuse are the norm.” A new anthology edited by Shira Tarrant, Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power, gives us the voices of men living in the twenty-first century of what some would call post-feminism, what I would call the third wave. One of the contributors, Nate Einschlag, described going from the relative liberalness of New York City, where he grew up hanging out at Laguardia High School and talking about music, to a suburban university where girls did guys’ laundry and guys talked about which “bitches” they’d had sex with the night before. All of which made me wonder about what borders should be drawn around this so-called “Guyland.”

I went from a suburban Connecticut high school to a very urban college atmosphere, which represented a huge relief from the jockish and more overtly misogynistic guys I knew in high school. I’ve always called such guys “dudes” and I’ve met plenty of such “dudes” subsequently in the city. But overall, my college experience was one of emancipation, while “guyland” represents a place where men, and the women who love them, become entrapped by the masculine expectations of their new adult lives.

Of course everything was far from peach perfect in an urban college atmosphere: my feminist self was awakened by parody signs around Take Back the Night, where “dudes” on my floor demanded that women take back the kitchen instead. And a recent article by Anna Clark in Bitch describes some of the issues that I saw beginning at the university level:

the gender gap indicates that women are far less likely to land their stories in the nation’s top magazines and newspapers. Likewise, in the digital world, political candidates made a point of stopping by the YearlyKos conference last summer, headlined by a prominent progressive male blogger, but were absent from the BlogHer conference, which drew top women bloggers together.

This more aptly describes the atmosphere at my college: the suffocation of female ambition, or what might also be called: the female voice. Another contributor to Men Speak Out, Bob Lamm, caught the essence of this issue when he noted the importance of men listening to women, which I thought happened too infrequently in the classroom.

The lack of the female voice and the spidery web of the “old boys network,” which still pervades clubs and classroom space alike, was paradoxically made clear to me at a college talk on the fluidity of gender and sexuality one night. When the female student facilitator paused for a moment to find the right words, her male deputy took the opportunity to depose her, grabbing the spotlight for himself and moderating the conversation from then on. He later complained to me about the female facilitator’s lack of articulation, completely unaware of what he had done. It may be a more subtle misogyny than talking about “bitches,” but it’s harmfully ubiquitous nonetheless.

I still wonder where the delineation falls between the collegiate “guylands” described by Kimmel and Einschlag and the ones I’ve experienced. On the one hand, it seems to be a suburban versus urban phenomenon, and clearly Kimmel and Einschlag are talking about a mostly white, heterosexual population. Quite honestly, some of their stories seem to be taken straight out of every stereotypical and yes, essentially elitist, assumption I’ve ever made when I’ve considered what it would be like to go to a state school in the midwest. As a friend pointed out, these disparate experiences may also stem from whether frats and sororities are prevalent on campus or not. After all, what does it mean to live in an alternative world where men and women deliberately segregate themselves from each other, perpetuating a view of the other gender as occupying a rigid, mostly sexual, place in their lives, and cementing any innate tendency to go with the pack?

Looking at the outliers of “guyland” is just as important as looking at the core, and it’s something I’d like to explore more. I’d love any feedback you, GWP readers, may have on on these constructions of masculinity and your own experiences with different (de)formations of it. You know, I began to write that last sentence with a self-deprecating, understated edge, asking whether “I had made vastly wrong anecdotal assumptions” about masculine constructions. But, really, why shouldn’t I stand by what I’ve said?

Team GWP with Shira Tarrant!

At Shira’s bequest, I am posting this picture sideways. Because Shira and I both look taller sideways. Plus, the photo came to me sideways and I’m bad at turning them around. You can still see Shira’s kickass boots. So here we are, with Kristen (who is naturally tall), celebrating Men Speak Out last night.

(“Tell the truth but tell it slant”?!)

Last night I went to hear Shira Tarrant and the guys from Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power read from the book at Bluestockings. I was very moved, hearing these men read. It kind of reminded me why I’m in this line of work to begin with. Thank you, Shira, and thank you, feminist dudes. You are everyday heroes, all.

Picture to follow soon.

Meanwhile, just came across today’s review of Michael Kimmel’s Guyland by Salon’s James Hannaham. The review begins:

Imagine a world where you can’t express your feelings. Where women are treated as objects or bargaining chips, and alcoholism and drug abuse are the norm. Where you must reject your own mother, and your father will rebuff you. You’ll belong to a kind of cult that demands that you ostracize anyone who doesn’t follow the group’s twisted values. This cult may pressure you into physically and sexually abusing someone incapable of fighting back. If you’re an American guy age 16-26, congratulations. You probably live there already.

Read the rest.

I read with interest an article on single dads by choice in this weekend’s NYTimes, titled “The Bachelor Life Includes a Family.” Says a 46-year old doctor from Miami who is interviewed for the piece, “I’ve always felt that I wanted fatherhood to be a part of my life,” he said. “It’s just a core part of who I’ve always been. I absolutely would want a partner, but I couldn’t let my life wait for that random event.” Sound familiar, ladies? Seems men, too, hear the ticking of their biological clock.

Stats on single fathers by choice are few, but according to the article their numbers are growing. Surrogacy agencies say most of these men are gay, agencies say, but there are straight men seeking to become fathers too. Some figures:

-“Gail Taylor, a founder of Growing Generations, one of the largest surrogacy agencies with about 100 births a year, said 24 percent of its clients this year are single men, both gay and straight. That number is double what it was three years ago.”

-“Last month, the National Center for Health Statistics issued the first federal survey of men and women on adoption. It found that men age 18 to 44 are twice as likely as women of the same age group to have adopted a child. That men are more likely than women to adopt their stepchildren accounts for part of the gap. But, the report said, about 73,000 never-married men had also adopted a child, a group that includes those who are single fathers by choice.”

Interesting, and also raises tough questions. Does anyone know a single father by choice? I’d like to interview a bunch for my next book. Please let me know, and many thanks!

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I’m back in action. I mean, rather, back at work.

A piece I wrote, “Sex and the Single Guys, For Real,” is up today over at the Women’s Media Center. The piece has nothing to do with Grandma of course, unless you count the fact that Marge volunteered at a center that offered counseling and contraception to teens, for which I will always remain extremely proud of her.

My WMC commentary features Michael Kimmel’s new book, which was also reviewed, btw, by Wesley Yang in yesterday’s NYTimes (see “Nasty Boys”). Here’s the teaser:

With all the excitement of the summer games, you may have missed this juicy bit of “news” from Olympic Village: as soon as their competition ended, the athletes apparently got rather busy themselves.

They had sex. Lots of it. So much that organizers in Beijing handed out free condoms, says former Olympian Matthew Syed of the UK’s Times Online. And this year, Syed tells us, the female athletes were as horny as the men.

We’ve long been inundated with images of young men with libido flowing unchecked. But with sexual insatiability now cast as an equal-opportunity calling, the guys are no longer portrayed as alone. If all the hook-up hoopla about kids on U.S. campuses is true—the girls have gone wild! the boys can’t get enough!—then the athletes in Beijing were hardly the only modern young men and women engaged in an Olympic-size orgy of never-ending desire.

But wait! New research…Read the rest.

And for those here in NYC, Kimmel will be reading from and discussing his book, Guyland, on Sept. 9 at 7pm, at Borders Columbus Circle. I may see you there….

Two new books on men have captured my attention this month: Michael Kimmel’s Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men and Kathleen Parker’s Save the Males: Why Men Matter and Why Women Should Care. The first, by a well-known sociologist and gender scholar, I recommend. The second, by a so-called “cultural provocateur,” not so much.

Kimmel’s is an Ophelia-like look at what’s going on inside the minds of 16-26 year old young men. Parker’s is a wry and shoddily researched look at men under seige by guess who. Check out this Q&A with Kimmel in Inside Higher Ed and this review of Parker’s over at About Fathers. I wrote a commentary hooked on Kimmel’s findings that will be up at the Women’s Media Center next week. Will post when it goes live 🙂

(Thanks to Paul Raeburn for the link!)

Check out this quickie in Dame about the advent of the male pill–an injection or patch once every 12 months that acts as an impermanent vasectomy. Writes Dame’s Jonathan Bender, “It’s about time science caught up to the changing gender roles.” More on the science of it here. Thoughts?!

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So Philip Weiss recently “reported” in New York Magazine on the secret lives of married men. And the gals at Slate’s XX Factor blog responded, calling the piece “not an outré confession but a fiftysomething baby boomer’s long-winded attempt to rationalize his desire to screw a variety of women despite being married.” I concur. Though Weiss’ article presents itself as provocative and edgy, the piece is inflected with the naïve, wishful rhetoric of 1970s thinking about sex. Here’s the XXers’ take:

Weiss explains that men “hunger for sexual variety” and determines that this hunger is “a basic and natural and more or less irresistible impulse.” He reports that men are using more porn than ever and quotes Mark Penn wondering what will happen when women “realize it.” He notes that sexless marriages among power couples are endemic. He harps on his own desire for “some[thing] strange.” Yet when his exasperated wife proposes an open marriage in response to all his bellyaching, he flinches at the thought that she might avail herself of the new rules, too.

Ah, Phillip. Double standard, much?

It’s amazing to me how little research exists on teenage and young adult sexuality in contrast to all the hot media air the topic seems to inspire. At this weekend’s Council on Contemporary Families Conference in Chicago, I had a chance to listen in as journalists and sex researchers shared their latest thinking on hook ups, the orgasm gap, and girls gone wild.

Hook ups, argued Deb Tolman, founder of the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality at San Francisco State and a scholar of adolescent sexuality, follow a rather male model of sexual behavior. Friends-with-benefits do not a “relationship” make, and hookups are supposed to occur without those nasty little things called “feelings” getting the way. How did that model get so broadly accepted as ok?, Tolman wanted to know. She added that the question of what “good sex” means is still up for grabs. Who decides? Is it always about orgasms? Kids need adults to talk openly about sexual pleasure in concrete terms.

But back to hookups. At the same time that hookups are part of kids’ sexual landscape, they are not the landscape in its entirety. Tolman reminded the crowd that the recent emphasis on hooking up overlooks the fact that coupledom still exists. Couples just ain’t sexy news. Pepper Schwartz later noted that relationships during adolescence were NEVER easy. So if we’re saying hookups are bad, what are we comparing them to? Young people today get more intimacy from each other than in days of yore. And perhaps that’s not such a bad thing after all.

Tolman feels strongly that the topic of teen sexuality has been reductively portrayed, fueled by moral panic. Laura Sessions Stepp, author of Unhooked, bypassed this (veiled?) critique of her recent work, concentrating instead on the downsides of hooking up. “Young women say they don’t have time for relationships, so they play at relationships — faux ones, aka hook ups — while they’re busy getting everything else done,” said Stepp.

And then came the larger frame. Stanford researcher Paula England commented that we’ve had a sexual revolution without much of a gender revolution in the bedroom. The focus in sex is still, often, male pleasure (orgasm gap being alive and well) and there’s a double standard about women initiating both dates and sex. Compare this to the gender revolution we’ve made in the realms of jobs and education. With sex, we’re still a bit in the dark ages.

England drew on findings from the College Social Life Study, which gathered quantitative data from students at Stanford and Indiana and qualitative data from an online study. According to the numbers, hookups do NOT threaten relationships. It’s true that most hookups don’t lead to relationships, but it’s also true that most relationships are preceded by hookups. When asked if they want to marry someday, under 2% of young women and men said NO; 98% said YES.

As the panel reached its close, my crew–late 30something/early 40something academic women–whispered conspiratorily amongst ourselves. “And what about hook ups in your 30s?” we asked, directed at nobody in particular. After all, hook ups are how many of us grown ups begin our long-term relationships these days. And I’m here to say hook ups ain’t all bad. Heck, I’m marrying mine!

For more on the CCF conference, see coverage in Saturday’s USA Today and Chicago Tribune.

Check out this must-read piece from Marie Wilson over at HuffPo, called “Leading Like a Girl: For Men Only?”, which concludes:

I am on a crusade to have women risk revealing their authentic selves. As a group who bring important attributes to leadership, who can also be tough and in control, women’s leadership, having been honed at the foot on the table, has lessons and positive possibilities for us all. We have made it safe for men to play like the girls. Now is the time to claim our own ability to do the same.

Along the way, Marie touches on men’s and women’s investing styles and the gendering of political leadership styles. One of the smartest slants on these topics I’ve read in a while. Thank you Marie. (And thank you to Catalyst’s Laura Sabattini for the heads up!)