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Gender roles influenced by society
How media influences gender roles
Gender roles influenced by society
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Jackson Katz is the founder of Mentors in Violence Prevention which is an education program that has been focused on military and sporting organizations in attempts to put a halt on gender violence. Other than being an educator, Katz is also an author and filmmaker. In 2013, he produced the film Tough Guise 2. In this film, Katz reviews the normalization of male jurisdiction in America. The film looks at the messages of gun violence, sexism, and bullying that are sent to men throughout their entire life. Tough Guise 2 argues the statement that male brutality is a rooted back to our cultural standards of manhood. A pivotal point of the film is that a male’s masculinity is not just handed to them, it must be earned. During the course of the film, this point is supported by examples such as gun violence, homophobic messages and mass shootings. The entertainment industry makes abundant profits off the glorification of gun violence. Categories like movies, television series and video games are …show more content…
Behind the majority of gunmen in mass shootings is mental illness. These gunmen were ridiculed and bullied leading them to depression and anxiety. These emotions in a man are seen as a weakness, degrading their masculinity. It is much more socially acceptable for a women experiencing depression to seek treatment then it is for a man. A women can learn to work through mental illness because it is encourage for her to undergo therapy. A man may feel that treatment for mental illness will make him less authoritative and will turn to the only thing he knows- guns. Boys are brought up thinking that a man with a gun is masculine. A male adolescent who has been called homophobic slurs his entire life for not measuring up to these standards turn to guns to prove himself. Boys and men use violence to overcome shame associated with not being respected by their
The media effects coupled with predisposers, precipitants and facilitators can have dire consequences on their own, but the last subject for mass murderer that demands attention is mental illness. In order to distinguish between the various kinds of mental illness and criminal culpability, this paper will analyze the criteria for ‘insanity’ developed by Cohen and Coffin. The victim is innocent and there is no reasonable way the perpetrator should consider them an enemy. The motive is unintelligible, delusional, unrealistic, and inappropriate for the nature of the murder. The method is ill-planned and often requires a situational weapon such as a blunt or sharp object. No attempt for secrecy, concealment, to avoid guilt, or to evade capture. And there should be queer behaviour illustrated before and after the fact such as depression, suicide attempts, etc. This point does not mean to convey that mass murderers and serial killers are insane by the same definition for they are usually calculating, patient, pursue the most prolific and in some cases sadistic methods, and realize their actions are wrong. However, it is important to recognize that they are clearly exploring sociological deviance and their mental instability is a contributing part. Teams of socio-scientists researching Jonesboro and Paducah cases found the shooters were: socially marginalized from bullying/teasing, had family problems, failed to attract attention from authority figures, had an availability of guns, and suffered from mental illnesses making them more vulnerable than other youths. Perhaps the media would not have such a far reaching and tight grip on people’s lives if it were not for the culture where children are reared. The weapons that are ...
George Orwell quotes, “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.” The documentary, “The Mask You Live In”, directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, shows different ages of males who struggle to be themselves while battling America’s limited meaning of manliness. George Orwell quotes, “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.” Influenced by the media, among their age group, and the grown-ups in their lives, adolescents dissociate their emotions, disrespect women, and are aggressive. Society gender stereotypes affect young males to change to fit into the societal norm as they characterize “real” men.
Criminal justice institutions in Oakland challenge masculinity as a means of rehabilitation. For instance, from a boy’s perspective, being a man involves standing up to peers who challenge self-confidence. This results in law breaking and violent fights, which can create opportunities for arrests. On the other hand, probation officers believe that being a man involves obtaining an education to support your family. However, by living in a poor neighborhood where punitive social control is ratified, the boys can hardly find employment. Thus, it generates hypermasculinity, which “often influenced the young men to perpetrate defiance, crime, and violence, sanctioning police to brutalize or arrest them” (p. 138). To reiterate, probation officers tell the boys to “get a job, do well in school and stay out of trouble” (p. 139). But the odds of succeeding are low, because “most avenues of legitimate success were out of reach” (p.
Tough Guys is a narrative about the "intense person" model in American society. Discharged in 1999 by hostile to sexism lobbyist and social commentator Jackson Katz, the narrative interleaves film footage, news footage and chronicled photos with article editorial by Katz himself.
The documentary Tough Guise reveals that the cause of violence traces back to cultural codes on masculinity and societal expectations rooted from such codes. Prior to watching the documentary, it was difficult to understand how culture played a part in men’s violence—it was thought to be more of a natural phenomenon linked to men’s biological traits. The documentary, however, disproves this: men’s violence in America is “made” by the society, not naturally “given”, and thus cultural implications should be explored to understand where the violence really comes from.
In the December issue of Men’s Health, a popular men’s magazine, a man with a seemingly perfect physique is on the cover. The words that are in bold all over the cover talk about how to achieve the perfect body. The first bolded lines one sees are “Strong & Lean!” and “Drop 20lbs”. These lines convey the need for men to have a great physique. Like Jack Katz explained in Tough Guise, men struggle with what is considered a real man. A man has to be able to display is strength, by either having muscles or by having courage. According to society, to show that a person is a real man they must have a great body with muscles and abs. Throughout the years, men’s bodies have also been criticized for not being fit or strong. Jack Katz also explains
Gaunte challenges the perceived benefits from engaging in hegemonic masculinity and its relevance to a person’s well being. Benefits are strictly social, whereas the costs are internal and limits how one can behave based on guidelines of masculinity. The phrase “man up” imposes gender expectations, exaggerating perceived differences between men and women such as physical strength and emotional absence. Mora concludes that puberty is a social accomplishment because boys can enact hegemonic masculinity, but Gaunte evokes the alternative where boys do not enact hegemonic masculinity and are penalized for it. Due to society’s expectations of engaging in masculinity, a boy’s freedom to express himself is limited, and being “strong in a way that isn’t about physical power or dominance” implies femininity (Gaunte). This is important because criticisms toward marginalized masculinities lead to internalized self-hatred that is projected onto self and relationships. Gaunte emphasizes the importance of addressing problems that arise from this, such as boys committing suicide, women being assaulted, and trans people being
The fact that nearly all mass shootings are committed by men, save for a handful of incidents involving fewer people, reinforces his argument for the need to talk about masculinity, Katz said. That some deceased shooters left behind manifestos, which complain of not living up to society’s expectation of being a man and rejections from women, only adds to it.
In recent years the school shooting activity shows alarming rates. As reported by Duplechain and Morris (2014), more than 350 documented school shootings happened from 1760 until 2014, from those 190 happened from 1990-2014 alone. The numbers are staggering and even more staggering is to find out some of the details of those shootings. School shootings perpetrated by underage people even a student from the school that completed their killing rampage committing suicide. Although, it might seem that the problem comes from the accessibility to guns people could have, the reality is different. In most cases mental instability can play as a key element, while bullying and media coverage can also act as important factors. This paper will explore some of reasons behind school shooters from the past, and it will demonstrate how accessibility to guns had nothing to do with the outcome of their behavior, by responding to the following questions.
Social forces tell the American male hat he live in a way that rejects everything seen as feminine. As outlined in In Social Inequality: Forms, Causes, and Consequences, Hurst asserts that media often portrays American women as emotional and affectionate (Hurst, p. 126-127). Thus, men who show emotion and affection often receive both physical and verbal attacks from other men due to not rejecting these feminine actions. These conceptions of masculinity damage American males because they repress emotion and simultaneously bolster aggression. The Representation Project is combating this damaging narrative by calling on society to change the overarching stereotypes. In their documentary The Mask You Live In, the Representation Project shows American males engaging in conversations about emotions and harmful masculinity in order to peel away the dangerous mask that harms all persons. Overall, The Representation Project strives to “re-humanize” men by drawing society away from the current
Over the past years media has been overwhelmed with news about mass shootings happening around America and if mental illness is the primary cause of the violent act. On February 2014, Jonathan M. Metzl and Kenneth T. MacLeish published their article “Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms” in the American Journal of Public Health that addresses the issue that mental illness has very little to do mass shootings which is commonly used on the aftermath of the shooting
Some might say that gun violence is a mental illness, according to the washington post “It seems intuitive that anyone who commits a mass shooting must be mentally ill, but this is a misuse of the term “mental illness.” Mental illness is a term reserved for the most severe mental disorders where the person has severe symptoms such as delusions or hallucinations. Decades of mental health research show that only a small proportion of persons with mental illness commit violent acts, and together they account for only a fraction of violent crime. Some mass shooters have had a mental illness. Most do not.” What they 're saying here is that mostly the people who cause gun violence have mental illness and the sandy hook shooter was one of them. There have been many court cases stating how we should deal with people when it comes to gun violence, one example is voisine v. united states. This court case shook our legal system because it was very hard to understand why he was getting charged. The reason is even though its a animal that was shot, you 're still going to get in trouble because it was an eagle that
“The more energy they have to gin up to execute their plan, the harder it will be to do so” (Newman). When “Would be shooters” are faced with a challenge they most likely don’t go through with their plan. The dedicated shooters are those who intend on finding guns and shooting people, those who have the drive. “Totally dedicated shooters” are the type of people who wont give up whether the guns are accessible to them legally or illegally. Dedicated shooters have a plan of action and intend on going through with it. These types of people likely suffer from mental illnesses. “The abnormally high level of school shootings in America is not solely a gun issue a mental health issue, or a media issue, but rather a problem caused by a combination of mental illness problems, social inequality, gun control policies, and the structure of schools”(Gupta, 2016). Structural inequalities in the United States cause stress, which lead people to turn to radical measures. Factors such as economic change, racism and social changes cause constraints on behavior. Mental health is also a leading factor to school shootings. “Metzl and MacLeish’s research shows that up to 60 percent of mass shootings in the United States since 1970 involved shooters displaying symptoms of mental illnesses—including paranoia, depression, and delusions—and the evidence suggests that
Jackson Katz shows how violence in the media perpetuates, reinforces, and promotes violence in society. He points to how violence is gendered and that the media and society ignores the fact that men are almost always the perpetrators of violence. Katz explores how the media and society create masculinity. The title is a pun that refers to the masculine "guise" that guys put on to prove their manhood.
"How Fight Club Relates to Men's Struggles with Masculinity and Violence in Contemporary Culture." HubPages. Web. 22 Feb. 2011. .