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 .
Lovers and Fighters | Section 22 