{"id":29223,"date":"2010-11-19T10:25:29","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T15:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=29223"},"modified":"2013-12-02T23:21:19","modified_gmt":"2013-12-03T04:21:19","slug":"redefining-masculinity-do-men-save-lives-or-take-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/11\/19\/redefining-masculinity-do-men-save-lives-or-take-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Redefining Masculinity: Do Men Save Lives or Take Them?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rich sent in a fascinating example of an attempt to redefine masculinity. \u00a0At <a href=\"http:\/\/www.afa.net\/Blogs\/BlogPost.aspx?id=2147500421\" target=\"_blank\">Rightly Concerned<\/a>, Brian Fischer argues that the fact that all of the recipients of the Medal of Honor awarded during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have received the award for saving lives, not taking them. \u00a0He calls this trend &#8220;the feminization of the Medal of Honor.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/11\/Capture3.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-29226\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/11\/Capture3.jpg\" width=\"564\" height=\"543\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/11\/Capture3.jpg 627w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/11\/Capture3-500x480.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 564px) 100vw, 564px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s not get into a conversation about whether the Medal should be awarded for saving lives, taking lives, or both. \u00a0Instead, let&#8217;s consider what, exactly, Fischer is saying about men and masculinity. \u00a0Fischer is suggesting that saving lives is something that women (should) do. \u00a0He has arranged saving lives and taking them in a binary layered onto gender. \u00a0Women save; men kill. \u00a0When men save, they are doing something feminine.<\/p>\n<p>This is in <em>dramatic <\/em>contrast to the vision of the heroic man who protects others that has long been part of the American imagination (think firemen, policemen, body guards, big brothers, dads, boyfriends, and husbands) and a very interesting example of an attempt to redefine what &#8220;real men&#8221; do.<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rich sent in a fascinating example of an attempt to redefine masculinity. \u00a0At Rightly Concerned, Brian Fischer argues that the fact that all of the recipients of the Medal of Honor awarded during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have received the award for saving lives, not taking them. \u00a0He calls this trend &#8220;the feminization of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23384,55,2096,2087,309],"class_list":["post-29223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-gender","tag-gender-femininity","tag-gender-masculinity","tag-warmilitary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29223"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59551,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29223\/revisions\/59551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}