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.
Lovers and Fighters | Section 22 