Concept Of Masculinity

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A young boy is walking home from the bus stop after school. Suddenly three boys run up to him from behind and tackle him to the ground and throw his diorama away from him. When the boy gets home his parents ask why his diorama is beat up. He doesn’t want to tell his parents what happened, because being picked on, showing large amounts of emotion, and telling is a weak thing to do. The parents eventually do hear the story and confront one of the bully’s parents the next day about what happened, the bully’s parents reply, “Well boys will be boys”. The story that just been told is an example of the major problems with todays society’s view on masculinity: being weak is bad, violent behavior is acceptable because it is natural, and it is acceptable for males to show excessive amounts of aggression. The story shows three issues, but there are others. The idea of …show more content…

Kupers, a psychiatrist with years of experience working with mental health centers and rehabilitation centers, talks about a certain type of masculinity called, hegemonic masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity is the most common form of masculinity, “it serves as the standard upon which the “real man” is defined. Historically hegemonic masculinity is built on two legs, domination of women and a hierarchy of inter-male dominance. It is also shaped to a significant extent by the stigmatization of homosexuality. Hegemonic masculinity is the stereotypic notion of masculinity that shapes the socialization and aspirations of young males” (Kupers, 716). Today we see the effects of centuries of teaching hegemonic masculinity in the United States of America and Europe. We are now seeing high amounts of ruthless competition in the male population, an inability to express emotions other than anger, an unwillingness to admit weakness or dependency, devaluation of women and all feminine traits in men, and large amounts of homophobia. Today we have put hegemonic masculinity under another name, toxic

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