The documentary shows different aspects of masculinity, how boys became men and how it changed their lives. It’s hard to watch the video a bit because I can feel their pain through their manly voice. We can’t even see who get bullied in middle school. The researchers said that 1 of 4 boys get bullied in school and 30% notify by adults. It is such a shame because some adults doesn’t even intervene and they think it’s the way to make them a man. Also, some boys wants to play with girls that is one of the reasons they get bullied because boys should “only” play with boys. Furthermore, 99% boys plays video games. They play video games because it is for men, they said. Violence is more likely to define how to be a man. It’s just disappointing to say that masculinity needs violence which is in fact it isn’t. Thirdly, sex violence is scary especially for women. Every 9 seconds, women get sexual assaulted by men. They think that it’s normal because of what they’ve seen online wanted or unwanted, maybe influenced by friends. But it’s actually unmanly, true men knows the true value of a woman.

In Carlos Andres Gomez book, a part that got my attention was when he wants to show affection to his family and friends but he’s tired of not being able to express his true feelings rather hide it and he’s disappointed about it. The documentary helped me understand that men are just only tough on the outside but they have feelings and emotions too that they cannot express because “true” men don’t show any weaknesses. They do manly things in order to be masculine. No matter how tough they are, they feel pain, sadness and even fear.

” I’m tired of not being able to show affection to my brothers and friends. I’m tired of feeling like I have to hide my emotion and my sensitivity.”

While watching this documentary, a couple of things stood out. The first was how young boys are when bullying could start. The boy Ronan in particular had his bullying start at age 6. If you’re being harassed from such a young age about how you’re too “weak” or a “sissy” of course you’ll want to change and shut every emotion down. Using verbal or physical abuse is enough for someone to submit to the stereotype in order to no longer be harassed. A second thing was that any sign of male intimacy, even friendship, would be perceived as gay. This leads to a negative association of the word gay and the actions that boys and men will make. As a girl I hug my friends all the time and have no issues with it. Human beings crave that kind of feeling even if it’s in a total platonic way. It’s strange to think that boys are “not allowed” to hold their friend’s hand or hug them without feeling some kind of weakness or have them feel threatened.

This better helped me understand the part of Carlos Gomez’s book where he visited Zambia. While he was there, he saw men showing signs of physical platonic intimacy and no one had anything negative to say. This shows that America’s view on male “weakness” is very different from other countries’. This must have been a turning point in the man’s life as well cause he saw this behaviour in a nice way versus the negative way he had previously seen it in. Supporting your friends and letting them see your emotions is never a weak or negative thing. Being vulnerable and intimate is actually one of the braver things we as human beings can do!

While watching the documentary, what struck out at me was how boys/men must stay in line with the various aspects involving masculinity. From playing sports to not being aloud to cry, it is interesting to see how men are expected to be or act a certain way, a “man box”. The way men must keep their emotions and pain secret simply became more obvious to me. This caught my attention because I had never pictured the problem from this perspective. What also interested me was how any boys’ role model can have a significant impact on young kids. For example, a soccer coach can often become a second father to many aspiring boys and their influence can help create a sense of community among the team. When this idea was brought up, I couldn’t help but think about the negative influence that rappers specifically, can have on a young boy’s life and his perceptions. 

    Watching this documentary helped me better understand Carlos’s perception of masculinity and his way of expressing it. Thinking back to when Carlos experienced the differences of Zambia, I can understand why he felt free. Free from the non-written rules that keep a man masculine enough, free from the feminine stigmas that float around in society passed down to us by our parents. Most importantly, I think Carlos felt free from the “man box” as discussed in the documentary. After watching the documentary, I cannot help but understand all the experiences and feelings described by Carlos in his book. In Zambia, all the masculinity issues discussed in the documentary seem to have vanished, it is the land where masculinity has never been so genuine.

there is a sentence  that always occurs to my mind whenever I hear or see a person doing a bad thing to another person or to himself , and that is there is no smoke without fire.

when I think of how Abused and neglected children are 9 times more likely to be involved in crime ,I wasn’t surprised that much when I knew that 1 in 6 boys is sexually abused.Or how is 90%of homicide perpetrators are male and over half of all boys are physically abused .I  started to connect all the dots,if they can’t cry,can’t express there feelings nor show their weakness to others and at the same time they have a lot of pressure to become this ideal version of a man in this society ,they will eventually have to let all these bad feelings go in some sort of a way,so they tend to be aggressive they use curse words they scream they fight they bully they might even kill themselves or others.

All these prisoners that where in the documentary they witnessed abuse in so many awful ways it  gave me chills and so much emotions just by hearing there stories and knowing how they ended up there.

The truth is,only when we move away from what we’ve subconsciously learned can we ever truly find and know who we are.

Carlos words basically shows the struggle of everything he had taught about masculinity and what pressure has society put over him,and how much he was tired of hiding his emotions and sensitivity and  how tired he was of being stigmatized for wanting to communicate and express himself.The documentry helped me understand his struggles by showing me how man are forced to bury all their emotions and fears because they will get bullied on .How they always have to be strong tough powerful to create this ideal man to satisfy the society.and unfortunately how bad it’s affecting them and the world. 

Carine Saiori 

While watching the documentary, there are two things that shocked me.For example, the documentary explored the relationship between masculinity and athletics. Excelling at and having an interest in sports is often assumed to be the default position of being a man in America. Many men, from the day they are born, are given baseballs and basketballs and the expectation of athleticism. I liked when Joe talks about the commonly accepted myth that sports builds character. He says that, “In a win-at-all-costs culture, it’s strictly about winning at the expense of character development.” Ehrmann made it clear that sports cannot teach character unless the coach is intentionally teaching and implementing it every day. Ehrmann teaches his boys empathy and integrity. He wants them to become men who will be responsible and change the world. I think that that’s what coaching should be about, but today, many coaches police their teams in unhealthy ways. Another example in the documentary is when Steven and his  son, Jackson. Steven really stepped up when he told Jackson’s mother that he would raise him on his own if she didn’t want to. Steven showed how he had to struggle with letting down his guard in order to express compassion and intimacy. These were things he was never shown by his own father. He had to break down his own barriers after Jackson said, “Daddy, I’m sensitive.” Steven then went on to research how to be “sensitive” in order to have a better relationship with his son.

In the Carlos Andres Gomez text, Carlos said that in the US, if you see two guys holding hands, it is considered gay. When he went to Zambia, holding hands is completly normal and is not considered to be gay. In two different countries, the same action could mean two different things. I think a lot of guys don’t open up on their sexuality because most of them get bullied as seen in the documentary.

There were two big aspects of the research in the documentary that really stuck with me and I have given them a lot of thought.

The first one would be how they spoke of depression and how it affects boys and girls differently. They said how with girls, the regular early signs of depression are more known as keeping to oneself, not going out, and so on and the signs in boys are related to anger issues. “The more a man is depressed the louder he becomes”, he picks more fights, he gets angry easily and so on. This information stuck with me because I deal with guys with “anger issues” daily and I have always been aware that they aren’t actually violent people, they just need to unload their feelings and this is the only way they know how. Right after watching the documentary I contacted a lot of my guy friends and I told them I’m sorry that society shaped them in that way, I told them it’s okay to cry and to show their feelings and I know it’s hard, I told them they’re good enough and they don’t need to prove themselves to anyone.

The second aspect of the research shown in the documentary that stuck to me is about the physical contact in boys. They showed how when boys reach puberty they all crave to find a friend to whom they can unload and share their feelings. They show how hard it is for boys to hug and show each other any kind of physical loving support because of the way they were taught that only “faggots and sissies” hug. This relates a lot to one of Carlos Andres Gomez’s experiences he mentions in his book, about the physical contact with guys he experienced in foreign countries and not in America. The documentary helped me better understand why physical contact between boys is very very uncomfortable to them, because of the way they are taught how wrong it is. Something interesting that I noticed about his experience is that, in other, less economically and industrially advanced countries, the physical contact between man isn’t seen so badly. This made me wonder if the progression of the country we live in has anything to do with it, because so far, my own experience has been similar. I come from a less advanced country and there, little brothers and boys are encouraged to hold hands and hug and sleep in the same bed and there is nothing wrong with that. I think that because America is so corporate, everyone is stuck in their own careers and lives, they forget the importance of human contact.

I will end on this note and hopefully give you something to think about.

The documentary discussed about some interesting insights such as relatable examples, events and statistics about how men are supposed to behave. There are two mains elements discussed in the documentary that really jumped out to me. One of them is that “boys from the age of 20 to 24 are 7 times more likely to commit suicide compare to women”. I think this statistic caught my attention because 7 times is fairly high rate. Even though I knew beforehand that boys are more reserved in expressing their feelings, I didn’t realize that the suicidal rate would be that high. Additionally, knowing that the age of 20 to 24 is where young adults are actually beginning their life in which they start graduating, building their own career, relationship, etc… But, these young boys still decided to take off their life because of different reasons such as traumas, sexual abuse, bullying, etc… To put it in another way, this statistic reached me with an emotional appeal. I don’t think that anyone of them wanted to actually take off their life. It must be because they couldn’t hold it anymore or that it’s too much for them to handle by their own. Therefore, this statistic really appealed to me and made me realized that I should pay more attention to my surrounding no matter if I personally know them or not.

Apart from the statistic that I mentioned above, another insight that really caught my eyes is that many “boys believe that it is not normal to cry after 10.” This sentence really jumped out to me because I consistently hear this sentence over and over again between my friends, brother, cousin, etc… It is a common phrase that I can’t understand. To put it in another way, we’re all humans which means we all go through some ups and downs in our life. Why do we need to restrict people from expressing their emotional feelings because of “social expectations”? Why can’t boys be weak and cry when they can’t hold it in anymore? On top of that, this documentary has been released in 2015 and I’m sure that there are many movies and documentary out there that discuss on this topic. However, our society knowing that “restricting” boys from expressing their feelings increase suicidal and depression rate on an annually basis. Why people don’t change their attitudes and expectations towards boys? Why marketers still use female for emotional appeal in the ads and they use boys only for “thoughest”?

 “I wish I could speak to that six-year-old version of myself with my beautifully painted nails […] I’m tired of not being able to show affection to my brothers and friends. I’m tired of feeling self-conscious when I kiss or hug my father” (p.82)

I chose this section of Carlos Andres Gomez book because the documentary portrays it really well. In other words, the documentary and the book both has a similar structure. They both starts by explaining the critics and events that they went through as young boys. It’s only at the end of the story and of the documentary that they finally accept who they are and found happiness again. In the quote, Carlos mentioned that he wished that he could went back in time and tell his younger self that he was beautiful, that he wished that he could show affection to his friends and brothers, etc… It means that it’s by going through all these experiences that he realized that he should behave based on himself not by following the society. Similarly, in the “Mask You Live In”, it started with the experiences that the different victims have lived through. For example, we learned that Ian kept pushing himself to fit the manly figure that the others wanted him to be. So, he dated the head cheerleaders, he played sports and he distanced himself from his friends that were more feminine, etc… At the end, he mentioned that he regretted, and he wished that he didn’t distance himself from his old friends. Therefore, this documentary really shows how “social pressure and expectation” could ruin a person, especially young boys who are constantly under pressures and influences.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s “The Mask You Live In” contains several interesting aspects of research regarding men. One of them is the finding that boys in the U.S. are 30% more likely than girls to flunk or drop out of school. This surprised me, because I thought the percentage would be even higher! As a perfectionist, I always wanted to get the best grades at school, but I noticed that my friends weren’t often as eager as I was. Being “cool” was more important. I never used to tell my friends about my good grades, as I didn’t want to be seen as a “nerd”. I believe that this might be due to the fact that men often seek to demonstrate and improve their masculinity, even at the cost of their grades and success at school. One such example of the manifestation of masculinity is when partying and drinking. According to the documentary, men are much more likely to binge drink than women. This behavior can be a strong contributor to academic failure.

Another statistic that grabbed my attention was that 25% of boys reported having been a victim of bullying, but that only 30% of them sought help from an adult. I believe that this is due to a popular idea that men must dominate, which can cause them to bully others in order to assert their superiority. Additionally, I think that the reason why less than a third of boys look for support is because men are often taught to be mentally and emotionally strong and deal with problems by themselves. However, this statistic still surprised me, because most of my male friends seek support when they are bullied.

Man Up

A part of Carlos Andres Gomez’s book “Man Up” that stood out for me was when he mentioned, towards the end of Chapter 3, that he was tired of not being able to show affection to his brothers, friends and father, of feeling like he has to hide his emotions and being stigmatized for expressing himself.

“I’m tired of not being able to show affection to my brothers and friends. I’m tired of feeling self-conscious when I kiss or hug my father. I’m tired of feeling like I have to hide my emotion and my sensitivity. I’m tired of being stigmatized for wanting to communicate and express myself.”

Carlos Andres Gomez, Chapter 3 of “Man Up”

The documentary helped me better understand what Gomez meant about showing affection. It showed a man named Steven teaching his son that crying and showing emotion is okay. He tells him not to hide his emotions and that he can show affection for others. He did not have a father present in his life, so it was interesting to see that he believed that a son should be able to cry with his father and confide in him. I believe Steven is the father that Carlos Andres Gomez would have wanted his dad to be!