This is a link to a brief youtube clip from a documentary
called "Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity"
It features Jackson Katz, a filmmaker and anti-sexist speaker, who details the
politics of manhood and certain negative aspects in male culture, such as
dominance, aggressiveness, a lack of empathy, generally anything the opposite
of what is perceived to be feminine. It examines male stereotypes, and social
pressures that socialize young men into becoming as they say in the
documentary, "just one of the guys". The documentary shows just how
much the male physical form in media representation has become increasingly
larger, taller and just bigger over the last several decades. The documentary
ends with Jackson Katz calling for a re-examination in masculine identity,
asking society to throw away such status quo apologist statements as "boys
will be boys" and demanding that men be taught to be more empathic. It
examines issues related to patriarchal societal structures, such as the idea
that hegemonic masculinity ascribes dominant traits to masculinity, thus
perpetuating the cycle of women’s oppression by labelling femininity as the
opposite.
This piece is extremely important and is perhaps the crux of
the portfolio. It lays out the issues in contemporary masculinity and how this
modern construction of cultural idealized masculinity is playing out in some
very toxic ways, but also talks about potential solutions that can only come to
light once the issues come to awareness. It argues that violence and aggression
in men are seen as cultural norms in our society, and even shows that when male
violence is committed against a woman, the headlines tend to gloss over the
fact that men are the ones committing such acts, a key component to
understanding the magnitude of the problem.
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