One of the things that jumped out to me in this documentary was the fact that men can get bullied just for showing any small emotion. Showing a facet of your real self that isn’t seen as manly can mean years of name-calling and bullying, especially in school. Something as small as playing with girls could mean rejection by boys because males are only supposed to play with other males. Even if this is in primary school, done between little kids, it shows a lot about the society we live in and the brainwashing people receive starting at an extremely small age about masculinity. Another thing in this movie that surprised me was the number of men that commit suicide. When someone gets help from suicide prevention, it is almost always a girl. Why? Because men are taught to keep their emotions in and not go and get help, from fear of getting bullied and seen as feminine. Unlike females, men become more aggressive and violent when depressed. Instead of taking this as a sign of depression, society just thinks the boy is a troublemaker and a bad kid. Because of this, depression is overseen and only 30% of boys try to get help. This causes a much higher rate of suicide in men than women, which surprises me.
In the book from Carlos Andres Gomez, the thing that caught my attention was how when he traveled to Zambia, two straight men were perfectly comfortable holding hands in public, without getting weird looks and being seen as gay. This is a big contrast to the way men had to act in the documentary in the US, where men distance each other and don’t show feelings to not look gay. This makes me think that the United States viewpoint on the way a man should be is much less advanced than in other countries such as Zambia in this case.
Lovers and Fighters | Section 22 