Kimmel states that, “Institutions accomplish the creation of gender difference and the reproduction of gender order through several gendered processes.” This quote indicates that males and females’ roles in the workplace or educational institutions are constructed by their gender. He mentions the example of studying medicine and becoming a doctor and how it takes several years to complete their studies. “Such a program is designed for a male doctor.” (Kimmel 3) To summarize his words, men have more biological time to spare because they are not expected to have children. Women who wish to be doctors would have to postpone having and taking care of children or not have children at all. The number of female medical students makes up for half of the equation, meaning this affects a lot of people who probably want to have children, but cannot. 

Kimmel prefers to take multiple ‘masculinities’ into account because he is aware that masculinity means different things to different people (different ages, nationalities, etc) and it is constantly changing. This is a respectable term that takes different people’s points of view into consideration. In the fourth episode of ‘Man Enough’, there were a handful of men who each identified ‘masculinity’ as something different from the last. This supports and relates to how Kimmel does not refer to masculinity as a singular definition, but as a multiple and plural definitions.

When Michael Kimmel says “ institutions accomplish the creation of gender difference and the reproduction of gender order through several gendered processes” in my opinion, he is talking about the discrimination between man and women at work since a lot company owner’s will see men as superior compared to women and they will often give more benefits or a higher salary to men. In a workplace it should be gender-neutral since the person who hustles the most to get work done should get a better salary but like it says in the text when there is a male as the owner the norm becomes invisible. This is often because men think that women are not right in what they do or say. This brings me to relate to the scene in “Man Enough” when the old lady got abused and she asked for help from a group of men, they didn’t believe that she got abused.

The use of the word “Masculinities” recognizes the variation in how different groups define masculinity. Kimmel uses the plural since everyone has a different definition of the word masculinity which is why he wants to refer to all of them. I can relate “understanding how we do masculinities…opens up the unimaginable possibilities of social change” to the “Man Enough” episode when at the end they talk about how they will listen to other people’s problems so they can help them have a better perspective of life and treat women better which will make a social change in the future .

First, on page three of “Masculinity” by Michael Kimmel, he writes “Institutions accomplish the creation of gender difference and the reproduction of gender order through several gendered processes.” A fairly complicated sentence that signifies a simple thing: institutions contribute to gender differences. A good example would be how in a lot of institutions, women aren’t even considered for certain positions simply because they are women, or in even more extreme cases, when they are given the same position as a man, the title and salary are different. Kimmel gives lots of examples to support his statement and if you think about it, it can be very present and noticeable.

This essentially means that institutions aren’t only ruled by gendered standards that are already put in place in a society but they contribute to them, they contribute to these standards becoming even more distinct between the two genders. Simply put, if we start hiring more men to be secretaries it wouldn’t be considered a “woman’s job” anymore.

An interesting example is the illustration presented below by a New York Times cartoonist:

When we talk about institutions, it mostly applies to workplace, schools, gouvernement, etc and not so much families or friendships. But the problem can be closely related to the family life that people lead, and some discussions in the documentary “Man Enough? Episode 4: #metoo” cover that issue. For example, one of the men that were gathered for the discussion brought up a very good point, he said that no matter how hard we try to raise our children and teach them right from wrong, they go out and experience all sorts of things and are exposed to all sorts of misconceptions all day that when they come back home, you need to “retune them”. At the end of the line, we can’t show them everything and they will end up adopting some of the gendered standards that institutions and society have put in place. Another point that was brought up was that sometimes we might not see anything wrong with the way young boys treat women, at the moment it is harmless even tho it might be disturbing to hear, no one really stops them from talking about women as if they were sexual conquests and objectifying them, but when they grow up they adapt the same behaviours in their jobs and act the same way in their newly acquired power (as a manger, instructor, CEO or even doctor for example).

To conclude my first point, what Kimmel says about gendered institutions in his books is very real, and he provides much more examples than me in his text (med school and the way the program is shaped to be easily completed by a man but not a woman is very good example). I personally think that family life and the life we lead outside of institutions also inevitably contributes to gender inequalities and sadly, it is the first place to start if we want to see a change happen, according to the discussions in the documentary.

Second, in the conclusion to his article on page four, Kimmel writes, “Understanding how we do masculinities…opens up the unimaginable possibilities of social change.” It is maybe confusing to read the word “masculinity” in the plural form but Kimmel’s argument is that masculinity can not be defined as one single unchanging characteristic of men. Depending on the society you live in, your family, your religion, when and where you were born, your definition of masculinity is bound to change. And so, masculinity isn’t just one, there are multiple different masculinities, because of the way different people view the definition.

To begin I will give a personal example of this phenomenon and then I will relate it to the documentary mentioned previously. I was a school photographer and I used to take individual pictures but also pictures of siblings. And sometimes, to my unpleasant surprise, some boys, however young would refuse to hug or even touch their brothers for the picture. The excuse some gave me was I’m not gay, even though these boys weren’t more than 5-7 years old they already had a very strict definition of masculinity embedded in their heads. On the contrary, some boys would hug their bothers and even kiss each other on the checks for the photos.

To relate this point to the documentary I will first start by pointing out that every single one of the men that were gathered in a discussion had different points to bring in and never fully agreed with each other nor had the same experiences. This is an easy way to point out that there are multiple definitions of masculinity and not just one. Also, if we go back to the point with the “retuning” of the children. This also shows that there are different definitions of masculinity. Your father may be telling you that it’s okay to hug your friends and it’s okay to be emotional and cry and be heard, but when you go to school and your friends tell you not to do these things because “it’s gay” you are in a dilemma between two different definitions of masculinity.

And lastly, when Kimmel says that this opens up the possibility of social change, he is right. As I said a few times in this long blog post, the family aspect of boys lives can play a critical role on their definition of masculinity, and even though institutions have gendered standards that are already set, boys and men do not have to adapt or learn from them.

Gender neutral is what the institutions wants to achieve however, theres still traces of gender inequality. It’s a distinction between male and female, masculine and feminine. He means that female can’t take the role of a male, because there’s a disadvantage for female such as their emotion and action that can’t be like male, that men and women have different tasks, that they have different responsibilities, that women have difficulties to balance the lifestyle of a motherhood and have a hard time to commit to their professions. That can lead men to have the job considering their experiences in the workplace. Therefore, it’s an inequality of gender in institutions. Furthermore, in episode of Man Enough, a topic that men brought up was about domination over women. I can relate on that topic because in our society that is how men portray themselves. In any workplace, men are usually getting the job, the highest they could possibly get in compared to women because they’re capable of doing hard tasks. Also, I learned from them that it’s their job to dominate women and that’s being taught that women are of less value. And they also talked about the gender differences, basically how they learned from the society. To correlate the quotation and the episode of Man Enough, having inequality in gender and having a gendered institution are basically harming men. They got influenced by what the society wants them to be therefore, at the end, they tend to hurt women intentionally or unintentionally. With or without the institution, there should be an equality between men and women.

Masculinities have different definition depending what individual or group of people think of masculinity. He uses it because we, as an individual person, have our own opinion and values. Masculinity has different impact because the word refers to social roles, behaviors that emphasize gender. The quotation is referring to men who wants to change their lives, to have better lives. Leaving behind all the things that they did wrong to women and to be better men. Those men are the ones who are in Man Enough. I believe that they can change the society by encouraging others, by telling other men to just listen to women, support the person and respect them. If women get sexually assaulted, just listen and believe them and that way, women can have a strength to speak up.

In his article about “Masculinity” Michael Kimmel, talked about Masculinity in different ways saying that masculinity is shaped and influenced by four major things: first , by the cultural differences , secondly by the considerable variation in any one country aver time , thirdly , masculinity changes over the course of a person’s life and finally , the meaning of masculinity vary considerably within any given society at any one time. This leads to the global construction and shaping of men’s stereotypes ,traits and view of their masculinity.

In page 3 of the article ” Masculinity” Kimmel wrote ” Institutions accomplish the creation of gender difference and the reproduction of gender order through several gendered processes.” , Kimmel gave the example of of studying medicine , that in order to graduate to be a doctor you have to spend 7-11 years studying and you will graduate in your late twenties , even early thirties and this suits men more than women because women are emotional seeing people suffering , whereas men are strong , but if women chose to study medicine they have to postpone their plans to have children to after their late thirties because ounce they enter their thirties chances to have children become lower because of the fertility so , also ounce you have children your responsibilities will became more stressed and women have to balance between household , children , study and work this is why mothers tend to have part-time jobs and thus society traits , stereotypes of seeing her function changes , another example of social institutions is workplace men have higher positions and wages because they can work more hours dedicating themselves to the work because they don’t have other stuff to worry about or do , also bosses tend to judge women workers more than men workers because most bosses are men so they tend to impose their social traits about antifeminity that they have learned it from their masculinity over women ex: judging women and men about being late , they tend to create excuses for men being late whereas judging women for being late because they don’t appreciate what women do and they consider themselves being more important than women . This relate to the purpose of the 4th episode of “Man Enough” because the 4th episode demonstrates how the social stereotypes and traits of each gender created its characteristics and the purpose of this is to give importance to the new step they were talking about which is to find way to change how society is constructed to achieve the social equality between men and women .

In the conclusion to his article on page 4, Kimmel wrote, “Understanding how we do masculinities…opens up the unimaginable possibilities of social change.” And what he means by using the term masculinities ( in plural) instead of masculinity ( singular) is significant because gender varies so significantly—across cultures, over historical time, among men and women within any one culture , and aver the life course – we cannot speak of masculinity as though it is a constant, universal essence , common to all men . Gender must be seen as an ever- changing , fluid assemblage of meanings and behaviors; we must speak of masculinities. By pluralizing the
term we acknowledge that masculinity means different
things to different groups of people at different times. And the term masculinities was expressed and explained in ” Man Enough” when they were speaking about each one’s way of seeing and living masculinity in their lives ,the way they see women , and when they were talking about what was the meaning of masculinity several years ago .

1. In this statement, the author is stating that gender roles and gender differences have all risen from the way the culture and society has formed it to be seen. There are certain things which were “made” or “fit” for a man, and the same for women as well. The creation of these gender differences arise from past habits where women are seen as being the stay-at-home mom, and cleans and cooks for the family. Men are seen to be the breadwinners, and provide for the family. These two simple gender roles which have been put into society prove the fact of how the creation of both past and present gender differences come from society’s habits. In the episode which we watched in class titled “Man Enough”, the men sitting around the table go on to elaborate on how in their personal lives growing up, they discovered gender differences and grew into them. Some of these differences have brough personal shame on them as they did fall into the traps of disrespecting not omly women, but also for falling into the stereotypical statements for men in society. 
2. Kimmel speaks on these masculinities in meaning all the possible statements and stereotypes which are put onto a man and what a man should be. The daily habits and hobbies of a man which create society’s “man” and exactly what he should act like. Kimmel speaks on how understanding these masculinities can open up the conversation for unimaginable change for society and the culture. In stating this, Kimmel is trying to convey the message of how understanding the true  idea of being a man and masculinity can allow many people to realy understand that there is more to a man than what society pushes us to think. This relates to the fourth episode from “Man Enough” as the men speak on how they also have felt confused as to what a man should act like towards women and others in society. Their masuclinities and what makes them who they are have been misunderstood in the past, and have also confused them, making them men which have made mistakes in the past with behaving respectfully in society. There is more to madculinity than what meets the eye, and in this episode, the men speak on this exact idea and why is it something that must be widely spoken of to everyone so they can see that it takes alot of effort and experimentation in order to become someone that you are proud of, and to be someone which society respects.

Kimmel knows all of the problems of masculinity in our society. He shared a quote saying “Institutions accomplish the creation of gender difference and the reproduction of gender order through several gendered processes.” This quote basically stating that job,school,politics and etc are gender bias. Men are mostly hired in a certain and job and women are less likely do.Politician has argue for women rights and equity before but some of our women in our society are still getting treated unequally till this days. Men are more likely to be promoted while women are still in the same position as they we’re.

In Kimmel’s perspective of masculinity, Masculinity are sectioned of behaviors and socialization. He is basically saying that Men are evolving and learning every single day in our society in terms or behavior and personality.The men in the fourth episode of Man Enough showed us how a deep conversation about emotions and feelings of a man can change a Men Ideally but It shows how can we improve and be more open to our self and our society to become a better you and a better person or a role model in this Society.

In Kimmel’s writting about Masculinity, he states that ” Institutions accomplish the creation of gender difference and the reproduction of gender order through several gendered processes.” From my interpretation, what he means by that is that not only we, human beings, contributes to the “gender difference and order” but also the institutions where we evolve. For example, In some schools, the dress code differs for you depending on your sex. Boys have less or restrictions compared to girls that have to follow a much stricter code. This show how even institutions that are supposed to demonstrate equality and integrity have biases and contributes to genders’ inequality. As the men said in the documentary, boys do not learns to break those gender codes and go beyond them in school and others institutions since those places creates gender differences themselves.

The author decides to use the word masculinity as a plural noun to put the emphasis on the fact that there is not only one way to be a man. Masculinity changes from a place around the world to another but also from a moment in your life to another. Some of the “manly” caracteristics at 20-25 years old becomes completely irrelevant when you grow up older and vice-versa. In the documentary “Man Enough”, it conveys the same message since every one of the six men had a different understanding of what being a man is and their views were decided by differents criteria each time depending on the job they had, the social status, their age and so much other things. Therefore, masculinity cannot be considered as something identical for everyone and this is why kimmel decides to make it plural.

1. Michael Kimmel writes “institutions accomplish the creation of gender difference and the reproduction of gender order through several gendered processes”. In this passage Kimmel refers to institutions such as the Church, the state, schools, and even workplaces whose existence depends on the maintenance of gender differences. For example, the Church promotes marriage and heterosexuality, concepts in which the power dynamic belongs to the man. This idea is synonymous to the conversations in the “Man Enough” episode since all of the men were from different backgrounds and had experienced different gender processes and yet, they perceived manliness and their relationship with it in very similar ways.

2. “Understanding how we do masculinities…opens up the unimaginable possibilities of social change.” The use of “masculinities” makes the term and the concept more inclusive of different personalities in the hopes to break the strict code around toxic masculinity. In the same way, the participants in “Man Enough” were discussing the various ways in which they are learning to be better people towards women in order to break the cycle of toxic masculinity.

The Text ‘’Masculinity’’ by Kimmel brings up many issues regarding gender and how differently we view them in our society. “Institutions accomplish the creation of gender difference and the reproduction of gender order through several gendered processes.”(Kimmel 3) Through this statement Kimmel makes us realised that, often, institutions do not only display falsely jobs as genderless but also that our system  is often mistakenly considering genderless jobs as jobs only achievable my men, men who are not interested or fully involved in parenting. As Kimmel explains on page 3 of his article, the field of medicine, even if half its applicants are women, does not really succeed in accommodating women wishing to start a family. ‘’ Many doctors complete college by age twenty-one or twenty-two, and medical school by age twenty-five to twenty-seven, and then face three more years of internship and residency, during which time they are occasionally on call for long stretches of time, sometimes for even two or three days straight. They thus complete their residencies by their late twenties or early thirties. Such a program is designed for a male doctor’’ (Kimmel 3) they don’t allow any time for pregnancy, childbirth and early motherhood. Therefore, we can study Gender as an Institution in the case of medicine and in many other fields just as education at the university level, that are falsely genderless.

In this text it is also question, just as the title indicates, of masculinity but even more than that, it is question of masculinities. Just as stated in the following: ‘’Understanding how we do masculinities…opens up the unimaginable possibilities of social change’’. (Kimmel 4) Kimmel does not only talk of masculinity, but of masculinities. He does so because there is no such thing as a singular masculinity in the world, we live in. He argues in his text that there is multiple factor to define masculinities. His factors include data as basic as our culture and religion but also the period of our life, because we are beings constantly moving forward, our sense of gender should be evolving as well. Just as the men are discussing around the table of Man Enough, we hear them talking about the way they saw themselves going through situations making their sense of gender grow. Talking how about men belittle women way to often just because of the fact that they are afraid that the simple act of caring for them is going to hurt their sense of masculinity. Talking about how men are to afraid to step out of the man box because that is the definition of a man that they are told is perfect, but a perfect masculinity does not exist. There is as much masculinities as there is people considering themselves as men on this planet. After all that’s the beauty of it.