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.
Lovers and Fighters | Section 22 