“A four-year-old boy had a big dilemma: he loved butterflies. He also loved being a boy. His teacher’s unfortunate statement about ‘butterflies are for girls and cars are for boys’ was the source of his internal conflict” (Ozkaleli 567). When a child is born, we as a society, decide how they should dress, what they should like and more importantly how they should act. Without any knowledge of what this child wants or needs we decide to control their feelings and shape them in a way that seems acceptable in our society. Our society tells our girls to be pretty and like butterflies and it tells our boys that to be strong and to like cars. Liking or wanting anything else besides what we are told is considered to be normal is not appropriate and often causes children to become outcasts. We divide actions and preferences into two categories: girly and manly.
In this paper I will be discussing what it means to be a man and what happens when that masculinity is threatened. Firstly, I will be looking at what a man is supposed to be, how he is supposed to act and what his role in society is. How a male goes from being a boy and then turning into a man. Then, I will be looking at two age groups teenage boys mostly high school boys and grown men somewhere between 30’s to late 60’s. I will be covering how teenage boys react to bullying, gay baiting and their masculinity being threatened. Why these teenage boys respond with violence and what does being violent have to do with being a man. I will also be looking at older man and how they view what a man’s role is in society. Also, what is it about guns that make them feel like a man, as they get older? “Jeff felt proud that his officemate feared him. Though he is older now, and not able to d...
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... Journal of Emotional Abuse 7.4 (2007): 43-67. Print.
• Willis, Danny G., and Catherine A. Griffith. "Healing Patterns Revealed in Middle School Boys' Experiences of Being Bullied Using Roger's Science of Unitary Human Beings (SUHB)." Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing 23.3 (2010): 125-32. Print.
• Feder, Lynette. "Bullying as a Public Health Issue." International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 51.5 (2007): 491-94. Print.
• Reuter-Rice, Karin. "Male Adolescent Bullying and the School Shooter." The Journal of School Nursing 24.10 (2008): 350
• Klein, Jessica. "Book Review: The Bully Society: School Shootings and the Crisis of Bullying in America's Schools." Rev. of The Bully Society: School Shootings and the Crisis of Bullying in America's Schools, by Mark Cohan. Gender & Society 27.10 (2013): 438-40. Print. -59. Print.
Most acts of bullying are dealt with, but not always in the correct way of doing so. Bullying Policies in many schools state that bullying is not tolerated and has consequences that will be used if bullying occurs. However, Jodi draws our attention to the issue that not all schools have a policy that states the consequences of bullying and practically just tells the victim to fight back and stand up for himself. This generally makes things worse for the victim by allowing the bully think that the victim is trying to "embarrass" the bully. With repeated attacks on one, it will have him/her believe they are either "useless" or think that they have to do something to prevent the next attacks, and this may not always be pretty or the "right" way. The results of these intense, repeated attacks can cause the victim Just like this book, shootings are a result of bullying, derogation, and ignorance and end ultimately end with many
... E Glenn, and Nancy B Sherrod. The psychology of men and masculinity:Research status and future directions. New York: John Wiley and sons, 2001.
School shootings and suicides result from continuous bullying. As a result, after time some side effects of...
Bullying has become a major problem facing the United States today. The American Psychological Association reports that roughly 40% to 80% of children are involved in bullying on some level during their time in school. (APA, 2014) The magnitude of the problem can be observed in the statistics. In the United States, a total of 4,080,879 children between the ages of five and 18 have been the victims of bullying compared to 3,892,199 who have reported that they have engaged in bullying someone else. Additionally, 851,755 said that they have been both the victim and the bully. That's a whopping 8,824,833 people in the United States that have been involved in bullying behavior on one level or another. (High, B., 2000 Census)
The genre of analyzation in this paper is masculinity. More in depth, the societal perpetuation of the concept of masculinity and its effects on individuals. Masculinity is a concept defined as a category of attributes, social behaviors and roles generally associated only with individuals of the male sex. It is rarely associated with females unless they are butch lesbian, and even if they are not, society will portray them as so. The concept of masculinity is a social construct – most often seen in patriarchal cultures and societies and identified mainly with gender roles. Gender roles are the acceptable or appropriate societal norms dictating
Early feminist studies of gender often depicted the expression of masculinity as solely meant to subordinate women. Upon further research and understanding of gender and its role in society, gender theorists have realized that masculinity is not only a patriarchal regulation against women, but that it also has negative effects against men. Masculinity has different characteristics in different cultures, but masculinity in general presents a hierarchy of traits, with femininity as the lowest, least desirable trait. In American culture, masculinity is defined within multiple structures, such as race, class, and sexuality, where a man’s masculinity can be lessened by his traits as well as these identities. Often, normative expressions of masculinity
As a child develops, their surroundings have a major influence on the rest of their lives; if boys are taught to “man up” or never to do something “like a girl”, they will become men in constant fear of not being masculine enough. Through elementary and middle school ages, boys are taught that a tough, violent, strong, in-control man is the ideal in society and they beat themselves up until they reach that ideal. They have to fit into the “man box” (Men and Masculinity) and if they do not fulfill the expectations, they could experience physical and verbal bullying from others. Not only are friends and family influencing the definition of masculine, but marketing and toys stretch the difference between a “boy’s toy” and a “girl’s toy”. Even as early as 2 years old, children learn to play and prefer their gender’s toys over the other gender’s (Putnam). When children grow up hearing gender stereotypes from everyone around them, especially those they love and trust like their parents, they begin to submit themselves and experience a loss of individuality trying to become society’s ideal. If everyone is becoming the same ideal, no one has a sense of self or uniqueness anymore and the culture suffers from
Bullying has been a part of schooling for as long as children have been congregating. To some it seems like a natural, though uncomfortable, part of life and school experience, while to others it can mean terrifying experiences which spoiled and characterized otherwise happy years in school. Dan Olweus, a pioneer in bully behavior research documented that 2.7 million children are affected as victims, and that 2.1 children act as bullies (Fried, 1997, as cited in Aluedse, 2006). With bullying cited as the reason for violent, gun-related crime in the past few years, school districts as well as national governments have put anti-bullying policies in place. Bullying is a complicated phenomenon, involving more than one child demanding lunch money from a smaller child. It is a worldwide epidemic hitting schools everywhere. Virtually everyone has seen or experienced bullying. With technological advances, bullying is even hitting the internet. Parents, teachers, students and governments agencies alike are attempting to put a stop to bullying practices.
Forbes, Casie. "Bullying: 'Enough is Enough.'" The Spectrum, 20 May 2013. eLibrary. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.
Bullying is a growing concern in a society where status and exercising power over another human being are increasingly important in developing one’s social circles. Dan Olweus (Norwegian researcher and founder of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program) defines it as an “aggressive behaviour that is intentional and that involves an imbalance of power. Most often, it is repeated over time” (Violencepreventionworks.org). School victimization is an especially delicate matter that has only really been in the public eye for the past half century, as more and more researchers and psychologists pointed out its short- and long-term negative effects on targeted individuals. It has since been widely investigated and numerous programs have been developed in an effort to address and prevent the many forms of bullying that exist today. The negative effects of such an abusive behaviour are various and can greatly differ from individual to individual. However, there are three main consequences that can be associated with school bullying, which are: school avoidance, depression/anxiety and even suicidal attempts.
In November of 2012, a 14 year old girl committed suicide in Canada after receiving numerous threats from 2 of her classmates because of a “falling out” in the girls' relationship. This past year, a freshman at Rutgers University took his own life after a video revealing his true sexuality was discovered and put onto a commonly known website for all the university to see. The well known “Columbine Shootings” shocked the world because the shooters were said to have been picked on and bullied in school. The effects of bullying, even in one’s childhood, can haunt them forever: “Sometimes, a whisper in an elementary school classroom can echo for decades. A threat called out in a middle school hallway can cling to the subconscious into adulthood. And an insecurity exploited in a high school cafeteria can redefine a future” (Johnson 1). It’s clearly obvious that bullying can take lives and torture the people whom loved the victims of such cruelty. People, not just kids and teenagers, but people are bullied everyday across the world.
Sex and gender are attributes to our identity. Sex describes the physical and biological factors we are born with, for example male or female genitalia, as quoted from blackadder “A boy without a winkle is a girl” (Elton and Curtis 1998). Whether we have oestrogen or testosterone hormones also tells us if we are man or woman. Gender however is in relation to stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, and expectations of what characteristics men or women should portray. Anyone given the opportunity to describe men, they would say words like dominant, non emotional, macho, aggressive, and to be the provider and protector of his family. This essay sets out to examine if masculinity is socially constructed and to do this the theories of gender, media, historical societies and even sexuality will be analysed throughout.
The dangers of school bullying can be seen in the Columbine Massacre which was listed as one of the top five deadliest shootings in the history of the United States. On April 20,1999 in a small town in Littleton, Colorado. Two high students Dylan Klebold an...
Bullying is a devastating issue that threatens the well-being of today’s youth. Those who are most likely at risk are those who; have a learning or physical disability i.g., autism or ADHD, are underweight or overweight, are gay/lesbian/transgendered, or speak a different language. Of course, there are no specific guidelines of who will become victims of bullying. Children who are bullied experience lower self-esteem, greater loneliness, greater anxiety, and more depression in addition to the already stressful adolescent years. The longer the bullying occurs the more profound the symptoms can become. As a low-level, subtle form of violence, bullying creates an unsafe school environment and can lead to more serious types of violence among students (Whitted & Dupper, 2005).
Shootings and physical violence are only part of the problem in schools. More than twenty percent of students have encountered bullying whi...