Masculinity Is More Than a Mask

[Valin]

Time:

s it O.K. to tell boys to "be a man"? An upcoming film that is much buzzed about on the web ignores the real differences between the sexes

Christina Hoff Sommers

Jan. 13, 2014

 

 

 

Are school shooters and mass murderers born out of an aggressive emphasis on masculinity in our society? The trailer for filmmaker and feminist activist Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s new documentary, The Mask You Live In, would have us think so.

 

The recently released trailer has attracted 1 million views on YouTube. It argues that American boys are captive to a rigid and harmful social code of masculinity. From the earliest age, they are told to “Be a man!” “Don’t cry!” “Stop with the emotion!” and “Man up!” This “guy code” suppresses their humanity, excites their drive for dominance and renders many of them dangerous. The trailer features adolescent men describing their isolation, despair and thoughts of suicide, artfully interspersed with terrifying images of school shooters and mass murderers.

 

I admire Newsom for using her considerable talent to advocate for boys. But I worry that she is less concerned with helping boys than with re-engineering their masculinity according to specifications from some out-of-date gender-studies textbook. The trailer is suffused with males-are-toxic ideology but shows little appreciation for how boys’ nature can be distinctively good. The Mask You Live In is scheduled to be released later this year. Let’s hope there is still time for edits.

 

Here are a few suggestions:

 

(Snip)

 

 

 

Read more: Christina Hoff Sommers: Why Masculinity Is More Than a Mask | TIME.com http://ideas.time.com/2014/01/13/masculinity-is-more-than-a-mask/#ixzz2qPtefzZn

[Valin]

Heretical Thoughts, Courtesy of Time
1/15/14

Could it be that boys are different from girls…and that that’s OK? Christina Hoff Sommers has a good piece in Time about The Mask You Live In, a new documentary arguing that an unhealthy standard of masculinity (“never cry or show your feelings”) is what gives rise to violence, like the school shootings that have been far too common over the past decade. Against this, Sommers points out that some level of aggression and emotional reserve is biologically natural for men:

 

(Snip)

 

he goes on to point out that there are better ways to meet the challenges of excessive male aggression or depression than by attacking masculinity as such. One issue the Sommers piece raises is what role, if any, men have in a culture that views all “masculinity” as simply a mask men are forced to wear. If men and women are roughly the same in all respects, separated from each other only by the “masks” of arbitrary, socially imposed gender characteristics, then is a man just a woman who lacks the ability to bear children? Is a unruly boy just a deficient girl? Is that all we are supposed to make of gender?

 

Sommers’ piece provides a forceful antidote to that kind of thinking. As such it will probably horrify the professional gender equalitarians, but we for one welcome these heretical thoughts.

[Valin]