gender: masculinity

Cross-posted at Ms.

Happy A. sent in an article at comment dit-on about a new anti-domestic violence ad in Chile that tells men not to hit women by using openly homophobic language — specifically saying that a man who hits a woman is a “maricón,” the equivalent of “faggot”:

Translation of the main text: “A faggot is one who hurts a woman.”

It’s a blatant example of the way leftist groups often undermine each other, fighting one form of inequality or discrimination by reinforcing another (see: everything PETA ever did). The group that put out the PSA added that a man who hits a woman is “poco hombre,” or barely a man, reinforcing the idea that gay men are insufficiently masculine. As the comment dit-on post author says, “Clearly, a larger conversation needs to take place about what it means to be powerful and attitudes that marginalize the powerless.”

UPDATE: Reader chinamorena says, “adding an interesting layer is the fact that the second man who speaks in the ad is Jordi Castell, a publicly gay tv personality.”

Angela Zhang sent in a Heineken commercial that helpfully illustrates the common depiction of sex and dating as a game or hunt, and alcohol as a tool in that hunt. In the commercial, men are predators in a sexual “jungle,” and attractive women are their “prey.” The true champion in this hunt will not just manage to get his prey — he’ll get her to “surrender” to him voluntarily:

It’s not the first time Heineken has presented itself as a useful tool for your dating life. Also check out this video on women in beer ads. Of course, other times beer ads conflate women’s bodies with beer itself. Or liquor as the response to the loss of patriarchal power. And hey, guys, if you fail in your hunt, don’t worry — it turns out alcohol is better than relationships with women anyway!

Alex C. sent in an example of the belittling of men by men in the context of sport.  Two teenager fans of the Red Sox found themselves verbally assaulted by Yankee fans for the sin of sitting amongst them.  They surround the boys and sing, aggressively, to the tune of YMCA, after a mostly indecipherable lead in:

Why are you gay!
I saw you suckin’ it, D-I-C-K.
They have every size, you’re about to enjoy.
You can hang out with all the boys!
Why are you gay!
I saw you suckin’ some D-I-C-K.

It should be clear to everyone that this behavior represents a sick society. Team affiliation follows the rules of the minimal group paradigm: humans appear to be willing to form meaningful groups based on just about anything.  Sports just happens to be an arena in which hypermasculinity is rewarded, even demanded.  This makes it acceptable to be cruel to one another and makes it inevitable that that cruelty will take the form of hatred towards gay men (deemed masculine failures) in the form of homophobic slurs.  It’s not even that they think the kids are gay, but calling them gay is good for a laugh and a great insult.

This is what it’s like to be a man under patriarchy: moments of inhumanity in which men accept and reproduce hatred against others and moments of victimization when other men aim that hatred at you.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Doris G. sent in this commercial for Jack & Jones jeans, in which a man laments the way that women just want to use him for sex:

The website indicates that if you go to a store and buy a jacket, you can get a pair of headphones that come in packages that show different versions of Girl Toys. Here’s the “bad boy rebel wearing a bomber jacket”:

You can also choose from the “outdoor living macho dude wearing a wool coat,” “casual cool big-city guy wearing a peacoat,” and “urban sports hunk wearing a soft-shell jacket.”

Of course, the reason this works — the reason it’s supposed to be funny instead of disturbing — is because of gendered ideas about sex (masculine) and romance (feminine). Men are generally assumed to want sex any time they can get it, and to be able to completely separate it from emotions and love and such. Truly masculine sex is no-strings-attached sex for physical pleasure. The idea that a guy would be disturbed because hordes of conventionally attractive women want to have wild sex with him but require no greater commitment, is laughable if you accept an ideology in which that’s how girls act.

This ideology obscures the reality that men do want to make emotional connections with their partners. Michael Kimmel summarizes the research on gender and relationships in his textbook, The Gendered Society (2nd edition, 2004):

Men, it seems, are more likely to believe myths about love at first sight, tend to fall in love more quickly than women, are more likely to enter relationships out of a desire to fall in love, and yet also tend to fall out of love more quickly. Romantic love, to men, is irrational, spontaneous, and compelling emotion that demands action… (p. 227)

But the masculinization of sex discourages men from thinking about sex in terms of emotional (as opposed to primarily physical) satisfaction and prevents us from acknowledging that boys and men can, in fact, be uncomfortable with women’s advances, or even be sexually victimized by women (see our posts here and here).

An anonymous reader sent in a segment (found at Taking it Day by Day) from a Seattle TV program called New Day. The segment focuses on Dyson Kilodavis, a young boy who likes to dress up like a princess, and how his family and school has reacted to his gender non-conformity, and does so in a way that seems quite thoughtful (sorry for the short ad intro):

I think it’s an interesting example of how gender non-conformity among kids affects families. At 4 years old, Dyson seemed pretty comfortable dressing up openly in “girls'” clothes; it was his mom who initially had some concerns and tried to channel his interest in dressing up into more “boyish” forms. Parents often express concern about gender non-conformity among children (and as the host says, much more when it comes from sons than from daughters) for a range of reasons — concern that they somehow failed as parents, that others will judge their parenting skills, or fears that their child will be harassed or threatened as a result.

The video also highlights how much the social environment can affect how gender non-conformity impacts families. In this case, Dyson appears to have the great luck to go to a school where the staff actively took on the role of normalizing Dyson’s behavior and attempted, as much as they could, to ensure that he wasn’t mocked. Contrast the experience of Dyson’s family with the family of a 4-year-old boy kicked out of school in Texas because of the length of his hair.

Kristie, Dmitriy T.M., and Tiffany L. sent in this post at OkCupid comparing 3.2 million profiles of straight people to those of gays and lesbians. Undermining the persistent stereotype that gays are more sexually promiscuous than straight individuals, OkCupid users, gay and straight, reported the same median number of sex partners (6), and the overall pattern is nearly identical regardless of sexual orientation:

And sexual encounters with someone of the same sex aren’t limited to people who identify as gay. Here are the results from a survey of 252,900 users who identify themselves as straight; about a third have either had at least one same-sex sexual encounter, or would like to:

Straight-identified women were significantly more likely to report a same-sex experience (and that it was pleasurable) or interest than were straight men. Here’s the pie chart for women:

And this is for men:

My guess is a lot of people will attribute that to women “playing” at being bisexual or going through a “stage,” but it seems likely to me that part of what is going on is that men’s gender performance is policed so much more harshly and constantly that men suffer greater consequences for same-sex encounters and have more reason to avoid them and to avoid even thinking of them as a possibility.

Reports of same-sex encounters or interest varied significantly by region. In the map, orange = higher rates, blue = lower (OkCupid doesn’t give any percents to go with the different colors, sorry):

There’s other data on personality profiles and, uh, the number of people who think the earth is larger than the sun (!) at the original post.

Also see our previous post on race, gender, and preferences on OkCupid.

Dmitriy T.M. pointed out a post at Jezebel about an odd aspect of the Forbes “Power Women” list. Forbes has a general list of the “world’s most powerful people” (with 67 entrants, 3 of whom are women), as well as one specifically of the world’s 100 most powerful women. Here’s a sample bio from the general list, which is representative of what they all look like (I didn’t include the paragraph below each photo that explains why they’re powerful):

Now let’s check out a profile from the powerful women list:

Notice the difference? Almost all of the women’s profiles, but none of the profiles on the “general” power list, include their marital status (84 do, 16 don’t), and many list how many children they have. It’s fairly common to have a woman listed as married but without any comment about children; I could only find one (Ana Patricia Botin, #38) where she is listed as having children but her marital status isn’t provided, and none who were listed as single (as opposed to married, divorced, or widowed) but having children. (Also, Jenny Goudreau wrote an article about diversity on the list that’s rather interesting.)

To be fair, on some occasions Forbes has included marital/parental information on lists that are dominated by men. Why they didn’t decide to be consistent here, I don’t know. The inconsistency in this case leaves the unfortunate impression that Forbes is endorsing the tendency to see powerful men are individually interesting, while still judging powerful women by their family roles.

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

Alicia S. sent in an image of the poster for the movie Life as We Know It, featuring Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel. Heigl appears to be in her familiar role as responsible, career-oriented, but uptight and ultimately unfulfilled woman who falls for an irresponsible or immature guy. In the movie, the two main characters end up raising a child together after the death of the baby’s parents. The poster pretty much sums up the messages you’re going to get about gender:

Want more? Here’s the trailer:

So women are responsible — they can even get themselves dressed — and nurturing while men are childish boors. Alicia says,

While Heigl is presented as a warm, caring motherly figure, her male costar is likened to a baby: immature and irresponsible, just another child in the family. He reflects the stereotype represented in so many romantic comedies and Monday night sitcoms alike that men are messy, careless, and juvenile.

They’re repeatedly presented as messy, careless, and juvenile…and yet still ultimately get the mature, caring, nurturing, attractive woman.

These stereotypes are offensive to women and men. Women are supposed to settle — to fall in love with the equivalent of a child, and to find that endearing, as opposed to insulting or creepy. That means, of course, she’ll have to be primarily responsible for childcare and running the household, since you can’t trust an immature, careless person to do important things (think of every sitcom or commercial that shows a hapless man messing everything up when he’s left to care for the house on his own).

And men are depicted as ridiculous oafs. I’m always surprised that more men aren’t offended by this representation of manhood: men as incompetent pigs who treat women badly (setting up another date in front of his current one at the beginning of the trailer) who can barely take care of themselves, much less anyone else. Of course, the stereotype does have benefits from those men willing to draw on it: if you are incapable of taking care of children and doing housework without causing a major disaster, you’re relieved from those tasks, or your partner has to fight constantly to get you to do them. So while the gender stereotypes on display here are insulting to both men and women, they reinforce a gendered division of parenting labor that justifies putting the burden of that labor on women rather than men.