A man is known as strong, a fighter and as someone who solves problem. In this documentary, they asked the little boy in the football team what would he feel if his coach told him he was playing like a girl. In my opinion that boy would get destroyed by what his coach said since in our society boys think that girls are weak, soft and sensitive. That young man doesn’t want to be seen as weak next to the other players since that would often contribute for him to get bullied and get called a “pussy” or a “faggot”.

What also caught my attention was the guy that was explaining why he shoot someone six times in a row. As a kid he would get bullied by his father. He started smoking weed then he joined the weed business and had a conflict with someone in there. He killed him because in his head he thought that if he didn’t do it, all his friends would’ve taken away everything he has. He also said that it was the only time he felt like he had power. In my opinion, he only want it to take revenge since as a kid he would always get beat up by his father. Often guys wants to hurt someone else the same way they have been hurt.

In the Carlos Andres Gomez text, Carlos say that in the U.S two guys holding hands or even a little touch would be considered as been gay but when Carlos went to Zambia touching hands between guys was absolutely normal. In my opinion, in the U.S guys are really scared to get called “gay” since in the documentary we see that people often bully gay people since they are afraid of becoming like them.

Watching the film, I was surprised by the huge amount of misogyny that is used by many men which objectifies women and often uses violent wording, to represent sexual attraction. For instance “I would hit that” or “I would tear that up”. Furthermore, I was interested in the idea of the documentarians that merely suspending or expelling children for acting out worsens their issues. It leads to the children feeling as though they have no hope,, and thus continuing their negative streak. This is the same issue as is ongoing in US prisons: they operate from a punitive mindset which leads to a high recidivism rate among criminals as the criminals are only made to feel worse and their core issues are never resolved. Furthermore, with a felony, these people cannot get jobs so it is all the more likely that they will turn to crime for their livelihood. Norway has implemented a rehabilitative prison system, and as such, they have a much lower recidivism rate than that of the US, indicating that this method works (Norway’s recidivism rate is 20% whereas that of the US is 75%). Lastly, I was quite surprised by the statistic that 1 i 4 boys experience bullying but that only 30% tell people about it. 1 in 4 is 25%, this is a lot more than I assumed, and I am unpleasantly surprised that so few of these children had the courage or confidence to tell somebody.

Of Carlos Andres Gomez’s book, I found the aspects of him yearning physical contact with other men interesting, and it relates to the film in that the film documents how men are often discouraged from expressing emotion, and to be stoic. Therefore, showing physical affection would certainly be considered a faux-pas by this old-fashioned standard.

Sports are not for weak

In the documentary “The Mask That You Live In”, the first thing that stroke me was the violence use in sports.

It really caught my intention because, as an athlete, I can’t accept such behavior.

I do karate, a sport where the goal is to hit each other. And even then, we learn to respect each other.

Of course we are here to win, and it is frustrating to loose. But getting mad and yelling at the players won’t fix anything.

When you loose there is only one thing to do, fix what didn’t work and improve what did work. Only training and hard work can do that.

Like my coach always says: “The work is never done.”

Video Game and violence

The second that jumped at me was when they talk about video game.

I firmly think that video game doesn’t encourage violent behavior. It could even reduces them.

In most case, people play video games to be someone that they cannot be in real live. Like a secret agent, a professional hitman or even a super hero.

We know this isn’t reality and that’s why it feel so good. There is no consequence, so why not enjoy it.

Most main character are stoic and without emotion. But it is over shadow by how cool they are.

If you want to feel emotion they are a lot of different media. Video game is suppose to make your heart bounce, make your adrenaline go wild, and make you like a boss.

Since it is so violent, is is a good chance to take all your rage on the game and not on a real person.

The link with Carlos story.

The part of Carlos story that caught my attention was when he spend time in a eastern country.

I founded funny how he was embarrassed with everyone being so open to physical contact.

The documentary explain it by saying that it all come to education.

The main school of thought is that we need to taught our children to be thought and strong.

But we don’t have to stop there. We can also teach them to be kind and how to deal with their emotion in a healthy way.

Happiness bring happiness. Only by surrounding yourself with people who are truly happy that you can see the light in this dark world.

I believe this is something we can learn from eastern country. It is correct to have emotion and to shared them with other.

There’s a lot of aspects in the documentary that got my attention. First, how the media demonstrate hyper-masculinity and hyper-femininity. Second, how school standards and hierarchy between boys grows masculinity, meaning how if you don’t play sports, swear, drink or having sex in high school, you can be looked down upon from others, which then you force yourself to do some things you don’t want to do. Third, how sometime schools and its teachers affect the increase in students dropping out in high school. By suspending students because of their bad behavior without knowing why some students are behaving this way. This limits their commitment to education which leads them to dropout.

The first aspect got my attention, because I never realized how the use of colors for example for toys is to seperate the genders. But for the two other aspects, it’s because it was so relatable to me while growing up. However, I didn’t know the magnitude and effect it is causing.

What got my attention in Gomez’s book, is how he doesn’t censor on his past experiences, like the part where he hooks up usually with a girl at his college parties but outside of the parties, they don’t communicate. By watching the documentary I understand better Gomez’s experiences.

In the documentary, the boy who are different, actually are gentler and softer than boys around him, are bullied at school really jumped out at me. Because I am a mom of two boys, while I was watching the aspect I doubted whether my boys would be bullied some day for my education which were to lead them to become a gentle and nice man. I begin to think about not only the education to my boys but also the major education to boys in my city. As well as school bully, the rate of drink, smoke, playing PC games, et. caught my attention too. It make me consider how to guide my boys gain interesting and healthy life, how to help them gradually grow strong enough to tell right from wrong.

In Carlos Andres Gomez book, the author said “he (his dad) is one of the most cultured and open people I have met. And yet he is still a human being. Aren’t we all? He’ll quietly encourage and enforce all of these masculine norms but still tell me to love and appreciate everyone.” which also got my attention. Carlos didn’t hate but understand his dad although his dad incorrectly educated him in some point of view. Compared with the documentary, one of the psychologist and educator, at the end of the documentary, expressed his forgiveness and pity for his father. Both Carlos and the psychologist and educator eventually understand there is no perfect dad or parents, there are only human beings who all grow up in the mask which may lead them to make mistakes unconsciously. These two aspects really make me relax a lot.