In Kimmel’s “Masculinity”, he talks about many problems with our society surrounding masculinity and gender. On page 3, he says: “Institutions accomplish the creation of gender difference and the reproduction of gender order through several gendered processes.” This means that institutions such as schools, hospitals, workplaces all have a heavy gender bias that is extremely hard to remove because it has been a part of our society since the beginning. An example that Kimmel gives is that the higher position jobs are easier to get by males because the education system for PhD’s are based upon the biological clocks of men. For medical school, between the ages of 22 and about 28, children a woman might want to have could greatly disrupt this goal. In “Man Enough” episode 4, the whole show revolves around stopping this behavior that is standardized in our whole society and changes the way we act and function so that men and women have equal chances in life.
In Kimmel’s conclusion, he uses masculinities instead of masculinity because, as he explained on page 1-2, there is not one way to define a man. Everyone sees masculinity differently, from culture to culture and class to class, so there is not one concrete definition of what makes a man a man. How I see this concept of plural masculinities in the show “Man Enough” is that even though the six people talking during the show were men, every single one of them had a very different story. We cannot just fit all of these life experiences in the same category of masculinity. Their views of masculinity have also evolved over time with these experiences.
Lovers and Fighters | Section 22 