Gender Studies, Masculinity and Television (via Utne Reader)

This is an interesting look at the dearth of analysis of male characters on television in gender studies. The majority of characters are male, yet they are seldom studied within their gender performance context, while women have been often studied over the last several decades.

This brief article is an excerpt from the Introduction to Cable Guys: Television and Masculinities in the 21st Century (NYU Press, 2014), by Amanda D. Lotz.

Gender Studies, Masculinity and Television

Why gender studies should examine male television characters like Archie Bunker and Tony Soprano more closely.

 
By Amanda D. Lotz
September 2014

Despite the number of male characters in American television, the study of these men—and their roles as men in society—are not among the popular topics when discussing gender studies. Photo by Fotolia/migfoto

Women’s roles on television have been analyzed over the course of television’s history. Through the 20th century and into the 21st century, the evaluation of gender roles has come mostly through the analysis of women. Why not men? In Cable Guys: Television and Masculinities in the 21st Century (NYU Press, 2014), Amanda D. Lotz attributes the lack of analysis and typology to the abundance of types of male characters in television, which leads to an audience who is more accepting of the male characters they see on television. In the following excerpt from the introduction, Lotz examines why male television characters have not been analyzed in depth under gender studies while many male film characters have. 

What Do We Know about Men on Television?

It is revealing that so little has been written about men on television. Men have embodied such an undeniable presence and composed a significant percentage of the actors upon the small screen—be they real or fictional—since the dawn of this central cultural medium and yet rarely have been considered as a particularly gendered group. In some ways a parallel exists with the situation of men in history that Michael Kimmel notes in his cultural history, Manhood in America. Kimmel opens his book by noting that “American men have no history” because although the dominant and widely known version of American history is full of men, it never considers the key figures as men. Similarly to Kimmel’s assertion, then, we can claim that we have no history of men, masculinity, and manhood on television—or at best, a very limited one—despite the fact that male characters have been central in all aspects of the sixty-some years of US television history. It is the peculiar situation that nearly all assessments of gender and television have examined the place and nature of women, femininity, and feminism on television while we have no typologies of archetypes or thematic analyses of stories about men or masculinities.

For much of television studies’ brief history, this attention to women made considerable sense given prevailing frameworks for understanding the significance of gender representation in the media. Analyses of women on television largely emerged out of concern about women’s historical absence in central roles and the lack of diversity in their portrayals. Exhaustive surveys of characters revealed that women were underrepresented on television relative to their composition of the general populace and that those onscreen tended to be relegated to roles as wives, love interests, or sex objects. In many cases, this analysis was linked with the feminist project of illustrating how television contributed to the social construction of beliefs about gender roles and abilities, and given the considerable gender-based inequity onscreen and off, attention to the situation of men seemed less pressing. As a result, far less research has considered representations of men on television and the norms or changes in the stories the medium has told about being a man.

Transitioning the frameworks used for analyzing women on television is not as simple as changing the focus of which characters or series one examines. Analyzing men and masculinity also requires a different theoretical framework, as the task of the analysis is not a matter of identifying underrepresentation or problematic stereotypes in the manner that has dominated considerations of female characters. The historic diversity of stories about and depictions of straight white men has seemed to prevent the development of “stereotypes” that have plagued depictions of women and has lessened the perceived need to interrogate straight white men’s depictions and the stories predominantly told about their lives. Any single story about a straight white man has seemed insignificant relative to the many others circulating simultaneously, so no one worried that the populace would begin to assume all men were babbling incompetents when Darrin bumbled through episodes of Bewitched, that all men were bigoted louts because of Archie Bunker, or even that all men were conflicted yet homicidal thugs in the wake of Tony Soprano. Further, given men’s dominance in society, concern about their representation lacked the activist motivation compelling the study of women that tied women’s subordinated place in society to the way they appeared—or didn’t appear—in popular media.

Gender Studies: Focusing on Men

So why explore men now? First, it was arguably shortsighted to ignore analysis of men and changing patterns in the dominant masculinities offered by television to the degree that has occurred. Images of and stories about straight white men have been just as important in fostering perceptions of gender roles, but they have done their work by prioritizing some attributes of masculinity—supported some ways of being a man—more than others. Although men’s roles might not have been limited to the narrow opportunities available to women for much of television history, characteristics consistent with a preferred masculinity have pervaded—always specific to the era of production—that might generally be described as the attributes consistent with what is meant when a male is told to “be a man.” In the past, traits such as the stoicism and controlled emotionality of not being moved to tears, of proving oneself capable of physical feats, and of aggressive leadership in the workplace and home have been common. Men’s roles have been more varied than women’s, but television storytelling has nevertheless performed significant ideological work by consistently supporting some behaviors, traits, and beliefs among the male characters it constructs as heroic or admirable, while denigrating others. So although television series may have displayed a range of men and masculinities, they also circumscribed a “preferred” or “best” masculinity through attributes that were consistently idealized.

The lack of comprehensive attention to men in any era of television’s sixty-some-year history makes the task of beginning difficult because there are so few historical benchmarks or established histories or typologies against which newer developments can be gauged. Perhaps few have considered the history of male portrayal because so many characteristics seemed unexceptional due to their consistency with expectations and because no activist movement has pushed a societal reexamination of men’s gender identity in the manner that occurred for women as a component of second-wave feminism. Male characters performed their identity in expected ways that were perceived as “natural” and drew little attention, indicating the strength of these constructs. Indeed, television’s network-era operational norms of seeking broad, heterogeneous audiences of men and women, young and old, led to representations that were fairly mundane and unlikely to shock or challenge audience expectations of gender roles.

One notable aspect of men’s depictions has been the manner through which narratives have defined them primarily as workers in public spaces or through roles as fathers or husbands—even though most male characters have been afforded access to both spaces. A key distinction between the general characterizations of men versus women has been that shows in which men functioned primarily as fathers (Father Knows Best, The Cosby Show) also allowed for them to leave the domestic sphere and have professional duties that were part of their central identity—even if actually performing these duties was rarely given significant screen time. So in addition to being fathers and husbands, with few exceptions, television’s men also have been workers. Similarly, the performance of professional duties has primarily defined the roles of another set of male characters, as for much of television history, stories about doctors, lawyers, and detectives were necessarily stories about male doctors, lawyers, and detectives. Such shows may have noted the familial status of these men but rarely have incorporated family life or issues into storytelling in a regular or consistent manner.

This split probably occurs primarily for reasons of storytelling convention rather than any concerted effort to fragment men’s identity. I belabor this point here because a gradual breakdown in this separatespheres approach occurs in many dramatic depictions of men beginning in the 1980s and becomes common enough to characterize a subgenre by the twenty-first century. Whether allowing a male character an inner life that is revealed through first-person voice-over—as in series such as Magnum, P.I., Dexter, or Hung—or gradually connecting men’s private and professional lives even when the narrative primarily depicts only one of these spheres—as in Hill Street Blues or ER—such cases in which the whole lives of men contribute to characterization can be seen as antecedents to the narratives that emphasize the multifaceted approach to male characters that occurs in the male-centered serial in the early 2000s. Though these series offer intricately drawn and complex protagonists, their narrative framing does not propose them as “role models” or as men who have figured out the challenges of contemporary life. The series and their characters provide not so much a blueprint of how to be a man in contemporary society as a constellation of case studies exposing, but not resolving, the challenges faced.

The scholarly inattention to men on television is oddly somewhat particular to the study of television. The field of film studies features a fairly extensive range of scholarship attending to changing patterns of men’s portrayals and masculinities. While these accounts are fascinating, the specificity of film as a medium very different from television in its storytelling norms (a two-hour contained story as opposed to television’s prevailing use of continuing characters over years of narrative), industrial characteristics (the economic model of film was built on audiences paying for a one-time engagement with the story while television relies on advertisers that seek a mass audience on an ongoing basis), and reception environment (one chooses to go out and see films as opposed to television’s flow into the home) prevent these studies of men on film to tell us much about men on television. Further, gender studies and sociology have developed extensive theories of masculinity and have been more equitable in extending beyond the study of women. Although theories developed in these fields provide a crucial starting point—such as breaking open the simple binary of masculinity and femininity to provide a language of masculinities—it is the case that the world of television does not mirror the “real world” and that the tools useful for exploring how societies police gender performance aren’t always the most helpful for analyzing fictional narratives. Sociological concepts about men aid assessments of men and masculinity on television, but it is clearly the case that the particularities of television’s dominant cultural, industrial, and textual features require focused and specific examination.

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Reprinted with permission from Cable Guys: Television and Masculinities in the 21st Century by Amanda D. Lotz and published by NYU Press, 2014.

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From NPR's All Things Considered, Saeed Jones reviews the intriguing book from TC Cooper, Real Man Adventures (2012). The reason this book is interesting to me, and likely anyone who is interested in how masculinity is socially constructed, is that the author is a trans man, a man born with a female biological body but a male sense of self.

Here is the publisher's ad copy for the book:

A few years ago, the novelist T Cooper wrote his parents a letter telling them he “wasn’t their daughter anymore.” And that was the “good news.”

Real Man Adventures is Cooper’s brash, wildly inventive, and often comic exploration of the paradoxes and pleasures of masculinity. He takes us through his transition into identifying as male, and how he went on to marry his wife and become an adoring stepfather of two children. Alternately bemused and exasperated when he feels compelled to explain all this, Cooper never loses his sense of humor. “Ten Things People Assume I Understand About Women But Actually Don’t,” reads one chapter title, while another proffers: “Sometimes I Think the Whole of Modern History Can Be Explained by Testosterone.”

A brilliant collage of letters, essays, interviews (with his brother, with his wife, with the parents of other transgender children), artwork, and sharp evocations of difficult conversations with old friends and puzzled bureaucrats, Real Man Adventures will forever change what you think about what it means to be a man.

I look forward to reading this, and sharing it with my trans men clients who are still working to develop a comfortable sense of a being man without the socialization cis males get simply by being born male. The way that trans men construct their masculine identity is informative for all of us.

Doing The Hard Work Of Becoming A 'Real Man'

by Saeed Jones
September 01, 2014

All Things Considered

3 min 10 sec

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Real Man Adventures
by T Cooper
Paperback, 275 pages

Here is something I wish I'd been taught when I was still a limp-wristed little boy: Any man who says that the performance of red-blooded masculinity comes naturally and is easy to pull off is either lying to you, or worse, himself. Being a man, or, constructing manhood is damn hard work.

Some of us just give up and eventually settle into an easier, more breathable version of ourselves. Others resort to all sorts of desperate shows of sexism, violence and general havoc in an attempt to convince ourselves and our culture that we are up to measure.

T Cooper's recent book, Real Man Adventures, examines manhood's precariousness through the lens of his own experiences. The memoir opens, after an epigraph from Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man, with these three sentences: "I am a visible man. By all appearances white, middle-class, heterosexual. Male."

Cooper, a happy married man with two young step daughters, is also transgender. His identity as a transgender man is not and should not be regarded as a paradox. And through the book, via essays both humorous and heartbreaking, lists, illustrated diagrams and interviews with family members and friends, Cooper strives and ultimately succeeds in illuminating what he has learned about manhood on the way to becoming himself.

One chapter is a list of changes he and his wife have noticed since he first started taking testosterone, among them: "I am angry more frequently. Or: it takes way less to make me blazing mad." And, "People defer to me more." And, "I say less to strangers." Later, there's a chapter in which Cooper interviews a trans friend's mother. He begins the interview by admitting: "I'm asking you these questions because I'm too much of a wimp to ask my own parents. Or maybe I'm not ready to hear their answers."

Cooper writes with intelligence and vulnerability as he grapples with the idea of being or becoming a "real man." And in doing so, he gets to an essential truth that we'd all do well to heed: Manhood itself is a work of art, you might say. The stoicism, the toughness, the strength are like a painter's brushstrokes on a self-portrait: "This is who I am. This is who I want you to see." If we are real men, Cooper seems to say, it is because we are real to and with ourselves.

What he has accomplished with Real Man Adventures was not achieved without risk or sacrifice. He weighs the possible consequences of writing about his personal life and thus exposing himself and his family. For all the progress America has made regarding acceptance of transgender people, there is still a great deal of work to be done. But the necessary change, the breakthrough we seek and need begins here in this book, with the honest questions answered and the self laid bare.

I would have loved to read Cooper's book when I was still a boy, but I suppose — since being a man is an ever ongoing process — his brilliant writing has arrived right on time all the same.

• Saeed Jones' next book of poetry, Prelude to Bruise, comes out next month.

Tracy Moore - Meet the Spornosexuals: Muscled Men Who Embrace Equal Opportunity Objectification

About 20 years ago, a new word entered the cultural lexicon, and quickly became both pervasive and pointless - Mark Simpson's metrosexual. [Even now, the spell-checker in Blogger thinks its not a word.]

So Simpson thinks he has identified a new subculture in varied world of masculinities, the spornosexual, a second generation metrosexual where obsession with clothes is replaced by obsession with sports and fitness, and the added, seemingly ubiquitous porn addiction (or desire to be a porn star).

Oh, and they love to post selfies of their buffness on social media sites. Honestly, this makes them little different than all of the females who post pictures of themselves in their underwear or showing off their ass-sets. It all feels a bit homoerotic to me, which is also interesting. While certainly a lot of these guys identify as straight, there is also the element in this trend of wanting to be desired by both sexes, whether it's to be sexually desired (by women) or to instill jealousy (in other men) for their physiques (who will desire their buffness).

Besides, this type of selfie has long been an element in the gay male community - a kind of marketing tactic.

So, do we really need this word? Tracy Moore, writing for Jezebel, thinks not.

Meet the Muscled Men Who Embrace Equal Opportunity Objectification

by Tracy Moore | 6/23/14

What's with dudes getting buffer, y'all? Should we call it something? Other than, you know, buff dudes? What ever happened to beefcake? How about we ask that guy who came up with metrosexual. Oh, he already came up with something. Spornosexual. [dies]

Let's all say it once and then never say it again because this bullshit is never going to happen. Sporno-barf-ual. Sporno-vomitron. Sporno-dude-icus. Spornoshitcicle. In fairness, if I coined a term like metrosexual that actually caught on so thoroughly that it was used even by terribly unhip people in near-forgotten states where trends hit two years late even with the Internet, I'd probably enter the ring with lady luck again and try to coin another thing every six months.

Mark Simpson, term coiner, waited 20 years. That is something. But this spornosexual business just won't do. It is a new thing out this month already added to Urban Dick that's supposed to be a term describing a second-generation metrosexual, only + sports + porn, a portmanteau of sportsman and porn star. It's all thanks to the rise of selfies, social media, and a pornified culture, what Simpson describes as "the major vectors of the male desire to be desired."

One, it sounds too much like spore or spawn and therefore it is gross and dumb, the double-whammy of bad things you can do to concepts. At least metrosexual gave you a better sense of the intersections: Urban + sexuality. It was dumb, too, but had a kind of clarity we could all dread together while also comprehending.

Two, it's way too general and all encompassing of all dudes who are beefy and nice to look at on some level without really isolating any particular distinction. According to Simpson, the tools of these eye-burning bathing suits would qualify BUT ALSO this totally acceptable beefiness found in Daniel Osborne from The Only Way Its Essex. And, we can only presume, beefcakes such as Gosling, and Efron, and Tatum, etc.

I'm spornoconfused. Wait, what is a spornosexual supposed to be, again?

Says Simpson:

With their painstakingly pumped and chiselled bodies, muscle-enhancing tattoos, piercings, adorable beards and plunging necklines it's eye-catchingly clear that second-generation metrosexuality is less about clothes than it was for the first. Eagerly self-objectifying, second generation metrosexuality is totally tarty. Their own bodies (more than clobber and product) have become the ultimate accessories, fashioning them at the gym into a hot commodity – one that they share and compare in an online marketplace.

This new wave puts the "sexual" into metrosexuality. In fact, a new term is needed to describe them, these pumped-up offspring of those Ronaldo and Beckham lunch-box ads, where sport got into bed with porn while Mr Armani took pictures.

Let's call them "spornosexuals".

Second thought: Let's not. While it's worth looking at the way selfies and porn have intersected to give rise to the indulgence of our vainer tendencies, we've no doubt all moved a little closer to the light. The term spornosexual goes beyond that to generalize beyond comprehension and make extreme assumptions about the intelligence and sleaze of anyone who looks the part (whatever that part is/still don't get it).

Says Simpson: They want to be wanted for their bodies, not their wardrobe. And certainly not their minds.

Look, if you re-read his paragraphs and pretend they're about women it sounds like every dumb thing ever said about a woman who cares a lot about her appearance. Additionally, in the various coverage of the term, you get a good sense of the unease of writers (male and female) about men who boldly seek attention for their physique or have bodies that are considered sexually appealing.

Here's one:

The term encapsulates the new breed of male who thinks nothing of using (and abusing) products, practises and pleasures previously only the domain of women and gay men. Practises including wearing half-thongs to the beach.

Ugh, men showing their bodies? And thinking nothing of it?!

Another, which calls spornosexuality an "evolutionary step backward":

Spornosexual. It sounds like something Japanese businessmen might watch (featuring naked girls and fish), but actually it's the latest fad in male beauty.

Is it really a fad? Is men caring about their bodies and appearance and clothes — even to what we might think of as "extreme" by virtue of the cultural pressure on them not to care — a fad, or simply inevitable and quite human?

And

Women have had to endure this commercialisation for years, but for men the "fun" started in the 1990s with the rise of the metrosexuals – fellas who seemed to imagine that wearing a necklace made them feminists or even a little bit gay. But, in defence of metrosexuality, at least that trend was all about remaking yourself to be attractive to others. It was innately social. By contrast, the spornosexual is really only interested in how they look to themselves – it is narcissistic. By toning and perfuming and recording every ripple with Facebook selfies, they've converted their bodies into their own masturbatory aids.

He's right that women have had to endure this for years: Narcissism is usually aimed as a pejorative at women who spend a bajillion hours getting ready as a result of an insidious blend of liking to do it and being told since birth it's their first duty to mankind. But the answer to men increasingly getting on this vain train is not to mock men who give in to the pleasures of being desired, it's to eventually regard the desire to look good — whatever your definition of that is — as acceptable for the people who are into it, not spend another round of centuries now aiming the tired criticism of shallow frivolity at men.

He goes onto say there's nothing wrong with wanting to look good, but that prioritizing looking good above having brains (for men) is not a sign of gender equality or social progress. Again, the larger point is missed: Looking good without being viewed as intelligent is hardly considered problematic in women, much less viewed as a tragic development. But men being all brawn and no brain? A step back.

But back to those men: Certainly, the increasing focus on everyone feeling the pressure to look camera ready is a phenomenon well worth documenting, but not everyone feels that pressure, and it's certainly not summed up by spornosexual. Certainly it'd be nice if everyone could feel less pressure to look perfect, but this is capitalism, and equal opportunity objectification is probably the best we can hope for.

Simpson writes that spornosexuals have "photoshopped themselves in real life" which we know is a lot like a line out of Crazy, Stupid Love uttered by Emma Stone describing the body of none other than ultimate beefcake Ryan Gosling. This. But this is a long time coming and true of women too. In a piece about the rise of Hollywood hotties, Dodai tracked the trend that for men in the industry, it's no longer about acting; it's about abs.

The fact is, it's possible to discuss and critique the fact that men's bodies can be sexualized too, for better or for worse, and celebrate that choice when it is in fact a choice. Men's bodies are no less appealing or lust-inspiring than women's, and such determinations are a matter of opinion anyway. Still, it's hard to imagine a time when, no matter how much men "eagerly objectify" themselves, that such pressures will ever be a mandate. The decision to be extra-maniacal about your bod as a dude on earth is probably only going to help you, and even if it makes a lot of people invested in more rigid gender roles uncomfortable, for the time being, it's still optional.

Illustration by Tara Jacoby.

This brief story from NPR details the shift in Hollywood from leading men who embody traditional forms of masculinity (tough, sure, quiet) to men who are more real and more reflective of the varied masculinities men can embody. Even our superheroes are flawed men (Iron Man, The Dark Knight [Batman], Superman) who have doubts about themselves and who many not always act like heroes.

Who's The Man? Hollywood Heroes Defined Masculinity For Millions

by Bob Mondello
All Things Considered
July 30, 2014

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John Wayne — seen here in 1956's The Searchers — was an icon of traditional Hollywood manliness. AP/Warner Bros.

Tony Curtis used to say that he'd learned how to kiss a girl by watching Cary Grant at the movies. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he wasn't just sitting behind Grant at the theater — while also noting that he's hardly alone in taking instruction from films.

Movies have always offered a window through which audiences, sitting in the dark, can observe human nature without being observed. A movie theater is where many a boy learned how to make things right, the way John Wayne did in so many pictures, with fists or a gun. Movies taught about sacrificing for the greater good, as Humphrey Bogart did when he sent Ingrid Bergman off with a "here's lookin' at you, kid" in Casablanca. They're a place to learn about standing firm against injustice (with Spencer Tracy in Inherit the Wind), and about standing up for yourself (with Sidney Poitier in A Raisin in the Sun).

All of which was useful for a nation that thought of itself as a melting pot. For generations, newly arrived immigrants had emerged slowly from their ethnic enclaves in big cities, where things were comfortingly just like the old country. Assimilating was hard.

But film — even back when it was silent — was like an instruction manual for the American experience. For a nickel at the nickelodeon, a foreign fellow fresh off the boat could see exactly how American men dressed, how they greeted each other (with a handshake, not with European kisses on each cheek), and, more generally, how people in his newly adopted country behaved. Admittedly, silent films used a kind of shorthand for American behavior — stereotypes, to allow directors to brush in characters quickly without dialogue: women were almost always domestic, delicate and passive, while men were outgoing, strong and active.

Film's power of suggestion quickly became so influential — so overwhelming in fact — that some argued it should be curbed. In the 1930s, the film industry created a production code that laid out a set of strict rules for filmmakers, banning drunkenness, sex, revenge plots, all forms of immorality and stating explicitly that no movie should throw audience sympathy to the side of wrongdoing.

You couldn't do most of Shakespeare under those rules, but you could have strong, manly, family-friendly heroes. Which meant, as the bluenoses intended, that Hollywood, having been told what it could show, was in effect telling audiences what they should be — portraying human behavior (especially male behavior) in idealized, heroic terms that mere mortals might have trouble living up to.

After World War II, the code started fraying around the edges as competition from television cut into Hollywood's bottom line. What could film offer that TV couldn't? Well, foreign films had nudity; indie films offered rebellion. The studios wanted a piece of that action, so they stopped restricting filmmakers with the Production Code and started alerting audiences through the ratings we know today.

And as soon as the restrictions were gone, leading men in movies became more like men in real life — not always strong or good or forceful. Dustin Hoffman became a huge star, playing a total slacker in The Graduate. Peter Fonda easy-rode his way across America; Paul Newman and Steve McQueen played antiheroes and got labeled the "Kings of Cool." John Travolta was that era's Fred Astaire — all of them recognizable as people, not icons.

All were nuanced, and vulnerable and incapable of being like the men of old Hollywood, because the world had changed too much. Woody Allen demonstrated the change in comically literal terms by conjuring up Bogie to help him man up in Play It Again, Sam.

In a world of modern, nuanced, flawed screen men, superheroes like Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man have taken up the mantle of traditional movie masculinity, says critic Bob Mondello. Industrial Light & Magic

Testosterone was in full retreat by the 1980s. Movies made for teenagers had teen heroes, not adult males. James Bond started poking fun at the kind of "suave" his predecessors had played straight, and romance devolved from Cary Grant to Hugh Grant — stammering, hesitant, charming in a manner that was utterly without eloquence or confidence.

This led over time to the adult male as overgrown child in Judd Apatow comedies, to dads who turned themselves into Mrs. Doubtfires to rule the roost, to sensitive bad guys, earnest good guys, gay guys who wished they could quit each other, and action heroes like Jason Bourne who literally don't know who they are. Men, in short, became varied, and human, and unambiguously authentic on-screen.

But audiences still want heroes — and more important, audiences are eager to pay to see heroes. Which means Hollywood needed to find a way for males to be heroic again.

The solution, which turned out to be a multibillion-dollar solution: Make them superheroic. Men of Steel, Men of Iron, men with the webslinging power of spiders and with the claws of wolverines — but more important, each and every one a man who cares.

From John Wayne to Iron Man ... not such a stretch, really. They're icons both, standing tall, fighting for the greater good. And yes, they're manly in a way that may not be entirely human, or even something most people would want to live up to. But it sure looks great in Cinemascope.

 

The is the first installment of a new series from Pacific Standard called The American Man, written by Thomas Page McBee, author of the forthcoming title, Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man (City Lights/Sister Spit, September 9, 2014).

This article looks at tattooing as a male bonding ritual. His perspective in these articles (and likely his book as well) is sure to be more interesting than some other male writers on gender - McBee is a transman, and therefore has had to manufacture a sense of masculinity in ways many cis-males have never even considered.

The American Man: A Late Night at Magic Cobra Tattoo

By Thomas Page McBee • June 19, 2014


(Photo: Susan Law Caiz/Shutterstock)

Our constant exploration for a sense of belonging is just about the only thing that could bring Brooklyn hipsters, queers, and a Christian couple from California all together for tattoos in the middle of a full-moon night. That and the $13 price tag.

•
The plan was for the scruffy lot of us to line up at midnight on the 12th outside Magic Cobra Tattoo in Brooklyn to get Friday the 13th tattoos—an underground tradition in shops across the country where $13, tenacity, and whiskey (recommended, not required) gets you a date with a piece of flash chosen last-minute off the shop’s board: a skull with “13” for eyes, a dagger, a toilet on fire.

My two buddies and I have dozens of tattoos between us, and there was talk of all three of us getting the same one. A crown, I figured, though I’d go for the owl or a dagger maybe, too. I love my friends, I love reclaiming masculine ritual, and I love tattoos.

What could go wrong?

Male bonding traditions are strikingly consistent and problematic in many cultures: often simultaneously homophobic and homosexual, pervasive, historic, and even animal—from skin cutting in Papua New Guinea to foreskin suturing by the Romans to bullet ant-sting initiation in Brazil—they’re also stunning in their commitment to pain and power as a way to mark a masculine coming-of-age.

One dark, modern side of such rituals is hazing—of particular concern in the military and college fraternities. The Army, which defines hazing as “an activity typically steeped in tradition, bound by silence, and ritualistic in nature” that “is thought to mark a transition, celebrate an achievement, or bring someone into a social or professional circle” has a zero tolerance policy for such activities, and the “deadliest fraternity” has eliminated pledging altogether.

I think that’s wise, and the fact is, ever since I began injecting testosterone three years ago, I’ve been drawn to ritual. I didn’t have a boyhood, never stayed up all night at summer camp engaging in harmless pranks like writing “butts” on some poor sap’s forehead, and—like a lot of modern men—I walk a knife’s edge between nostalgia for a true straight razor shave and a gratitude that I can be my tight-jean, literary self without much worry. I’m turned off by the endemic sexism, violence, and homophobia peppering locker room and barbershop talk, and—since I never felt an affiliation with my birth gender—I’m 33 and, for the first time in my life, I experience gender affinity with every toll booth ticket taker who calls me “brother” or “boss.”

Men are taught that power is the key to relationships, which is where a lot of troubling behavior starts. But an instinct to ritualize bonding may come from a need for healthy belonging. Contrary to popular belief, studies show that under stress that results in vulnerability groups of men (like women) demonstrate cooperative behavior that leads to less aggression and more trust and compassion. So Friday the 13th tattoos with my buddies felt more goodtime portside sailor than, you know, frat nightmare kidnapping and death. That was the idea, anyway.

It was only right that the night started off with my good buddy’s first trip to Shake Shack. We ate burgers and talked about this horrible dude we both want to punch in the face and the women we love, tenderness and red meat and elaborate fantasies regarding this guy getting his comeuppance. Then he bailed on the idea of tattoos so he could get up early enough to meet his fiancée in Philly (“I get it,” I said, because I did), and I took the G to hold a spot in line for my other friend.

The parlor line was a culture all its own. Hardcore old tattoo dudes; Brooklyn hipsters; and a mishmash of twentysomething hip-hop heads, and wide-eyed first-timers drank beer out of coffee cups and smoked joint after joint. A kid I knew from queer dance parties showed up, read my astrological chart, and hit on the straight girl in front of us who planned to get a UFO inked on her neck. She was with two doofuses, one of whom announced that he was “just here to meet bitches,” which drew a look from pretty much everyone around him. “Sorry,” he said, but he wasn’t. Later, I felt a twinge of victory when the straight girl ordered him to buy her cigarettes and he was gone, hitting three stores and returning to her with his hands outstretched, like an offering.

My friend showed up late and got in line with someone else, leaving me with no plan and a ragtag group—the straight Queens guys up-talking peyote with blustery bravado while holding an umbrella over my head, the queer kid smoking endless kush out of a vaporizer, and the Christian California couple behind me who went and bought me beer and snacks at 3 a.m. but stared at me, wide-eyed, when the queer kid announced that we were “all gay”—which wasn’t really true, I sleep with women, but whatever, close enough.

“You people might not like this,” the Queens guy just here to hit it with the ladies mumbled to us drunkenly around 4, “but there’s this reggae dance night in the Rockaways you should check out.” Kush Queer smiled politely, while I tried to understand whose people he thought I was exactly—gay ones, I guessed. It occurred to me that, as usual, I straddled the world in which I passed and the one in which I didn’t.

I can always bond, but never commit, to one way of being a man: I belong everywhere and nowhere at once.

Maybe that’s the reality of a lot of my brethren. Younger men aren’t as hampered by social constructions of masculinity, and though we may hunger to reclaim some aspects of it with our boxing clubs and barber shops, we have less of a need to codify what being a man means in primal, no-pain-no-gain terms. Generation Y men do more housework and are more engaged fathers than any generation before. Despite the need to be better feminists, many of us—contrary to what Pharrell thinks—use the term to define ourselves.

I caught sight of my friend after he got a knot tattoo on his arm, and we hugged and then he took off. I’d decided to go my own way with the log cabin, but by 4 I’d lost steam. It had been five hours, someone said the tattooists were drunk, and I felt a little hungover. When the rain kicked up, I told my new friends I was out, collected pounds from all of them, and hopped in a trolling cab.

It was the ride home that, surprisingly, offered me the fraternity I’d spent all night seeking. The driver, a Nigerian man with bad hearing and alarmingly erratic steering, couldn’t find the bridge to get me back to Manhattan. After a few minutes circling the same three blocks, I asked if we were lost. “Yes,” he said, pulling over, actually holding his head in his hands. It was 5 in the morning on a Friday, the salmon sunrise making everything a little sparkly. “I’m so ashamed,” he said.

“It’s all right,” I told him, because it was. He’d turned off the meter, I had nowhere to be, and the rain made the light look magic.

After getting back on the road and asking another cabbie for directions, my man turned around and faced me. “Have you ever been lost?” he asked, his eyes pleading, and I knew that what I wanted was this: a kindness to sand the edge off days filled with tiresome bravado, electric moments of near-violence, shit talk and flexing and avoiding a mysterious fight on Canal with a guy who accused me (wrongly) of “taking pictures of his car.” This moment wasn’t a ritual or a test, but when I answered the cabbie, I felt fraternal.

“I’m always lost,” I said, and we both laughed, two strangers in fragile bodies, connected in our liminal crossing of the bridge, under the sun that just kept on rising over our journey home.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The American Man is a new semi-regular series from Thomas Page McBee that features gonzo reporting from barbers shops, boxing gyms, frat houses, and other bastions of masculinity in an effort to define what makes a modern man.


Thomas Page McBee is the author of the forthcoming book Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man. He has written about gender for the New York Times, the Atlantic, Vice, Salon, and the Rumpus, where he pens the column “Self-Made Man.” Follow him on Twitter @thomapagemcbee.

This event occurred at the University of Minnesota in March of this year (2014). This conversation is a companion to the Office for Equity and Diversity's Critical Conversations about Diversity and Social Justice series at the University of Minnesota. Co-sponsored by the University Libraries.

Breaking the Man Box: Reconstructing Masculinity in America

Friday, March 28, 2014

Watch this event here!   (requires Microsoft Silverlight)


What does it mean to be a man? Historically, certain images of masculinity have been foundational to American beliefs and values. Challenging these rigid constructs has resulted in major shifts in American society, opening up opportunities for new ideas about gender, identities, and behaviors. How are Women/Gender Studies challenging traditional cultural behaviors? How are ideas about masculinity shifting and helping families raise feminist sons? This conversation engages panelists and participants in an examination of manhood, maleness and masculinity by discussing cultural contexts such as sports, gaming and guns; male power in the market place; ethnic masculinities; paternity and parenting; artistic expression; and sexual expression and identity.

This is a companion to the Office for Equity and Diversity's Critical Conversations about Diversity and Social Justice series at the University of Minnesota. Co-sponsored by the University Libraries.

If you are interested in learning more about this topic, check out some of the highlighted resources.

Books

• Affirmative reaction: New formations of White masculinity by Hamilton Carroll
• Artistic impressions: Figure skating, masculinity, and the limits of sport by Mary Louise Adams
• Boyhoods: Rethinking masculinities by Ken Corbett
• The caveman mystique: Pop-Darwinism and the debates over sex, violence, and science by Martha McCaughey
• The Chican@ hip hop nation: Politics of a new millennial mestizaje by Pancho McFarland
• Deconstructing Tyrone: A new look at black masculinity in the hip-hop generation by Natalie Y. Moore
• Dude, you're a fag: Masculinity and sexuality in high school by C.J. Pascoe
• Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities
• For colored boys who have considered suicide when the rainbow is still not enough: Coming of age, coming out, and coming home by Keith Boykin
• Guyland: The perilous world where boys become men by Michael S. Kimmel
• Looking for Leroy: Illegible black masculinities (Postmillennial pop) by Mark Anthony Neal
• New Black Man by Mark Anthony Neal
• Pimps, wimps, studs, thugs and gentlemen:Essays on media images of masculinity by Elwood Watson
• We real cool: Black men and masculinity by bell hooks

Videos

A call to men by Tony Porter from TEDWomen 2010



How movies teach manhood by Colin Stokes TEDxBeaconStreet 2012



Violence against women—it's a men's issue by Jackson Katz TEDxFiDiWomen 2012



Ten responses to the phrase 'Man Up' by Guante

Articles

• Superflies into Superkillers: Black Masculinity in Film from Blaxploitation to New Black Realism by Katharine Bausch
  Journal of Popular Culture, 2013 Apr, Vol.46(2), pp.257-276
• Meat, morals, and masculinity by M.B. Ruby and S.J. Heine in Appetite, April 2011, Vol.56(2), pp.447-450
• An Analysis of Hyper-Masculinity in Magazine Advertisements by M. Vokey, B. Tefft, and C. Tysiaczny in Sex Roles, 2013, Vol.68(9-10), pp.562-576
• The Spectre of the Wheezy Dad: Masculinity, Fatherhood and Ageing by Fiona Shirani in Sociology, 2013, Vol.47(6), pp.1104-1119
• Please be that guy: 7 Men who are transforming masculinity from the Change From Within Blog

Panelists

• Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre, hip hop artist, two-time National Poetry Slam champion, social justice activist, and educator
• Gavin Grivna, Director, University of Minnesota Housing and Residential Life,University of Minnesota Men's Network
• Zenzele Isoke, Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota Gender & Women’s Studies
• Jason Jackson, Assistant Director, University of Minnesota GLBTA Programs Office,Tongues Untied

Moderator

• Owen Marciano, Co-Chair, University of Minnesota Transgender Commission

This page was created by Jody Gray, Diversity Outreach Librarian.

The Tantrum of Masculinity - Omnivore

From Bookforum's Omnivore blog, here is a new collection of links themed on masculinity.The topics include patriarchy, male competition, academic masculinities, education, military masculinities, and pick up artists (PUAs).

And speaking of PUAs, there are also the mandatory links to articles blaming men, masculinity, patriarchy, and guns for the shooting rampage in Isla Vista. If only it were that simple.

The tantrum of masculinity

May 26 2014
9:00AM

• From Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, Daniel J. Kruger (Michigan), Maryanne L. Fisher (St. Mary’s), and Paula Wright (Newcastle): Patriarchy, Male Competition, and Excess Male Mortality; and Dario Maestripieri, Amanda Klimczuk, Daniel Traficonte, and M. Claire Wilson (Chicago): Ethnicity-Related Variation in Sexual Promiscuity, Relationship Status, and Testosterone Levels in Men. 
• Christopher R. Matthews (Brighton): Biology Ideology and Pastiche Hegemony. 
• Lawrence D. Berg , Levi Gahman, and Neil J. Nunn (UBC): Neoliberalism, Masculinities and Academic Knowledge Production: Towards a Theory of “Academic Masculinities”. 
• A link between fidgety boys and a sputtering economy: A gender difference in behavioral skills, seen as early as kindergarten, is hurting boys’ academic prospects and their earning potential. 
• Discharged under the rainbow: Ariel M. Martinez on military masculinities and Don't Ask, Don't Tell. 
• The tantrum of masculinity: Elisabeth Donnelly interviews Rebecca Solnit on mansplaining, power, and her book Men Explain Things to Me. 
• 10 years later, The Game has changed for pick-up artist Neil Strauss: “To hear Strauss tell it, PUA is about using male sexuality as a force for good in the world”. 

Here are the requisite articles on the Isla Vista killings last Friday.

• Amanda Hess on the Pick-Up Artist community’s predictable, horrible response to a mass murder. 
• It denies reality to pretend that Rodger’s sense of masculine entitlement and views about women didn’t matter or somehow existed in a vacuum. 
• Laurie Penny on calling the Isla Vista killings what they were: misogynist extremism (and more and more). 
• Here are some of the most powerful #YesAllWomen tweets (and more and more and more and more and more).

 from the 12:00 pm entry:

• Rightbloggers say Santa Barbara killer Elliot Rodger's sexist rants have nothing to do with sexism (or guns). 
• In the deadly aftermath of Elliot Rodger’s psychotic and suicidal shooting spree that left six others dead, the muted echoes of David Attias — who killed four people in Isla Vista 12 years ago — will be bouncing off Isla Vista’s blood-stained streets for some time to come. 

Over 95% of Straight [British] Male College Athletes Admit to Cuddling Their Teammates in Bed

This comes from The Daily Mail in England, which is not a very reliable source of non-sensationalist information. But this time there is an actual research study that serves as the foundation for the article - from the journal Men and Masculinities.

Cuddling and Spooning: Heteromasculinity and Homosocial Tactility among Student-athletes

By Eric Anderson, Mark McCormack

Abstract

This article examines the prevalence of homosocial tactility and the contemporary status and meaning of heteromasculinity among British male youth. Drawing on in-depth interviews with forty student-athletes at a British university, we find that thirty-seven participants have cuddled with another male. In addition to this cuddling, participants also engage in “spooning” with their heterosexual male friends. Demonstrating the pleasurable aspects of being a man in this culture, we argue that the expansion of esteemed homosocial behaviors for heterosexual men is evidence of an expansion of changing conceptions of masculinity in contemporary culture. We call for the discussion of heteromasculinities and contextualize our findings using inclusive masculinity theory.

There really is nothing at all shocking about this - men used to regular share beds and share physical affection like cuddling and hugs. Seems this died out, at least on the surface, back around the early 20th century.

It's a fallacy, however, to equate this behavior (mostly in men aged 16-22) as homosexual or homoerotic. It seems to me that men are finally getting comfortable (again) with the need for physical touch to be psychologically whole. If you are an athlete in particular, you likely spend more time with teammates than with any other human beings - its logical to look to those guys for emotional support and physical contact. 

I'd bet the numbers are far lower in the U.S. where there is much more homophobia and homohysteria among athletes.

Here is the summary of the article from The Daily Mail.

Spooning for success: Over 95% of straight male college athletes admit to cuddling their teammates in bed

• Researchers found that 97.5% of heterosexual, male British college athletes have shared a bed with another
• Small study interviewed 40 male athletes on their sleeping arrangements

By Mark Prigg
Published: 1 May 2014

Researchers have found that the majority of male athletes spoon each other when sharing beds with their teammates.

Researchers found that 97.5% of heterosexual, male college athletes have shared a bed with another man and 93.5% admit to having indulged in spooning.

Researchers say the athletes even spooned with others who were not necessarily close friends.


A fine Bromance: James Franco and Keegan Allen aren't alone, researcher have found. Researchers found that 97.5% of heterosexual, male college athletes have shared a bed with another man and 93.5% admit to having indulged in spooning.

CHANGING ATTITUDES

• A recent national survey found that 29% of British adults think same-sex relationships are wrong, a sharp drop from 46% in 2000.
• It’s backed up by data from the Pew Research Center, which found that 74% of Americans born after 1980 believe that homosexuality should be accepted by society.

The study, published last month in the Men and Masculinities journal, was conducted by two researchers at Winchester and Durham Universities, who questioned 40 University athletes.

'In addition to cuddling, participants also engage in ‘spooning’ with their heterosexual male friends,' Eric Anderson and Mark McCormack wrote.

'Highlighting the prosaic nature of bed sharing for these participants, most indicated that it was not necessary to be close friends to share a bed with someone.'

One of the participants said the act was simply one of friendship.

'I love a quick cuddle, just so you remember your friends are about and are there for you.'

Another said: 'I feel comfortable with Connor and we spend a lot of time together.

The researchers say the behavior is common among athletes as they travel and shower together, but is common among all young men - although tapers off with age.

'I happily rest my head on Connor’s shoulder when lying on the couch or hold him in bed. But he’s not the only one. The way I see it, is that we are all very good and close mates.

'We have a bromance where we are very comfortable around each other.'

The researchers say the behavior is common among athletes as they travel and shower together, but is common among all young men - although tapers off with age.

'Outside of an undergraduate setting the numbers are likely to be far less,' Anderson told Vocativ.

'While we know, definitively, that it is a regular occurrence among 16- to 18-year-olds in addition to university students, it is not likely to exist whatsoever among 40-year-old men,' he says.

Participants said cuddling up was simply an act of friendship.

'This is both a function of the homohysteric culture that 40-year-old men experienced in their adolescence, as much as it is a function of the fact that 40-year-old men go home to sleep in bed with their spouses.'

Experts say the study reflects changing attitudes to male sexuality.

'We argue that the expansion of esteemed homosocial behaviors for heterosexual men is evidence of an expansion of changing conceptions of masculinity in contemporary culture, the researchers wrote.

A recent national survey found that 29% of British adults think same-sex relationships are wrong, a sharp drop from 46% in 2000.

It’s backed up by data from the Pew Research Center, which found that 74% of Americans born after 1980 believe that homosexuality should be accepted by society.

Some of the interviewees even admitted they had no problem with their bedmate waking up with a morning erection.

'We don’t give anyone s**t anymore,' said one.