First, I chose this topic on bullying and school violence because it is a delicate and highly relatable situation of everybody while growing up, especially me. I lived most of my life in a predominantly white city in a way. So being a brown kid with a culture, morals and values different the majority at that time caused many problems for me growing up. But ever since I took this class I realized that my problems with bullying was because of who I was culturally and racially but also the ideology of masculinity had a huge factor in this. I will talk about the documentary about school, the possible applications masculinity in school violence and my personal experience with school violence and bullying.

In the documentary, the news reporter was talking about how violence, such fighting or assault is a constant incident in school. Therefore, I started thinking what could be cause of this brutal urge of violence in these young kids, mostly boys. It is possible that these boys have learned from their fathers that in order to be a man, you have to impose dominance and brute strength. This is quite possible, in Fathers and Fathering in The Masculine Self, the author says, “From a masculinity perspective, authoritative parenting may difficult to achieve because emotional warmth […] due to the limited emotional vocabulary and framework men typically develop.” (Kilmartin 186) Which means that young boys learn what it means to “be a man” and develop these shallow or violent behaviors from their fathers, who learned it from their fathers. We can easily see this in the documentary that we have watched in class, for example, the interviewees at the church talk how their actions in the past that contain violence and bullying are learned and encouraged by their fathers or family members. So it is possible, that fights in high school are caused because they want to show there strength, instead of vulnerability.

In my case, in school, I wasn’t the type of person to show off or being obnoxious to other to show I’m a strong kid, due to that I was picked a lot for the way I would behave in school. I played the same sports as everybody else but I was the non-violent type and the type of kid that would easily express themselves. I always thought it was because I looked different from others. It was definitely one of the reasons, but I realized that the way I was behaving in school reflected on the other boys in school, which put me in trouble. I realized from this documentary where they would talk about the behaviors of these bullies and it made me realize that I went through the same thing as those victims and I finally understood why it was like this for me growing up because of this humanities class. Masculinity is truly the cause on school violence and bullying because this ideology is basically saying that you should not be someone who is vulnerable, because you look “weak” and be somebody strong and violent if necessary in order to be “strong”. It was at that moment I realized that being weak and strong are two is different for everybody. As would Kilmartin would say about in-expressiveness and independence in men, “Men should be strong, sturdy, independent, and in control of themselves, even in the most difficult situations. Further, they should solve problems without help, keep their feelings to themselves, and disdain any display of weakness.” (Kilmartin 6) It was completely mind blowing when I realized the connection between school violence and masculinity…

This hits me a lot, because this class and this documentary made me remind many things, horrible memories when I was in elementary school. I kept asking myself when I was young, what was the reason that I was a target in school. We notice that bullies in films and in real life of course, pick on students that are more vulnerable and show emotions. The reason bullies pick fights and bother these “type” of people is because it’s that masculinity mentality that they have learned from their masculinity parenting. Remember, masculinity is anti-feminist, where it contradicts and encourages men from being vulnerable, emotional and having the ability to not resort to violence if provoked. So the first clip we saw in the documentary when the bully slams the kids to the ground, we don’t really know what could’ve been the reason, but it’s possible that the bully thought that the poor kid did not see the masculinity that he learned and took the opportunity to show his power.  Kimmel says in Masculinity as Homophobia, he says, “Homophobia is the fear that other man will unmask us, emasculate us, reveal to us and the world that we do not measure up, that we are not real men.” (Kimmel 147) This results as behaving erratically towards other men, violent actions and homophobic acts such as saying slurs, which I can relate while growing up…

I would just like to conclude that school violence is not tolerable at all. The kid who does boxing after his recovery from his brutal fight (I forgot his name), he mentions how the school administration is not fixing this properly and makes him feel as if the school is not standing up for these victims. I felt the same way when I was in elementary, and I am angry that even in 2020, after all these years of anti-bullying ads, protests and intervention that since I graduated from elementary that it is still the same or in some schools, the situation is getting worse. It is disgusting that some schools are more worried about their reputation than helping their students.

I interviewed my closest friends for this blog post.

For the first question, one friend said that because we knew each other for so many years, since the beginning of high school and that he said that my personality, my flaws, our fights and our many adventures while growing up is what made our friendship strong and valuable.

For the second question, another friend said that when we (our group) were all together, that’s what he needed to have fun, nothing big, nothing planned, just to see his friends, make jokes, play soccer and having some rare but interesting discussions about serious topics. (He then started laughing is eyes out because he thought what he said was “cheezy”. )

For the last question, a third friend told me that he doesn’t need to or that I don’t need to tell how much we mean for each other, because we’ve all been through so much in our lives like fights, family matters and accomplishments. All of us supported each other through those moments and from that we know how much we mean for each other. (He also started laughing and punched me in the arm for forcing him to do the interview.)

The interview with my friends contradicts to Kilmartin’s “No Man Is an Island: Men in Relationships” He explains how physical interactions between male friends can distant them because it can percieved as a “homosexual” quality. This doesn’t apply with my friends because we when all meet each other we do handshakes or even hug each other if we haven’t seen all each other for a long time, because of school and work. Kilmartin discusses about the stereotypical of male friends activity do like talking about sports, “bar” games and or joking around. This is a bit true, but in my interview with my friends, as I mentioned, we also have serious and intimate conversations about life and problems that we all have in our individual lives. So I think from my perspective that male friendships are more open than it used to be.

On page 3 of “Masculinity”, the author Micheal Kimmel says, “Institutions accomplish the creation of gender difference and the reproduction of gender order through several gendered processes.” What he means to say is that how gender enequality or gender bias is automatically assigned in institutions. Where there is a specific gender standard or unconsious gendered roles in workplace instituions, which creates gender enequality between men and women. In the documentary, one of the men explained how his 15 year old son and his friends treat women through their communication, behavior in school and social media, he says after that whatever they learned when they were young about women, like superiority or undervaluying women. They use these “teachings” when they get older because it is embedded in them for such a long time, but not by purpose. Another person at the table mentions how the entertainment buisness is unconsiously built around the objectification of women and how that also unconsiously teaches young boys from a young age to be mysogonistic.

In the conclusion of Kimmel’s article on page 4, he says, “Understanding how do masculinities…opens up the unimaginable possibilities of social change.” First, Kimmel uses the term “masculinities” because many groups in society define masculinity in different ways, some define it as someone who does not express their emotions and fight them, become somebody who is strong, tough and does not need help from others. While others define it as somebody who has no shame in expressing emotions and showing vulnerability. For example, in the documentary, the men at the table have their own defintion of masculinity due to their past experiences and upbringing. Second, by relating to this to the documentary, the fact that these high socialite men are discussing about masculinity and how they can help women by discussing and disecting what’s wrong in masculinity completely relates in the quote on how changes can happen socially if we focus and discuss the understanding of masculinity.

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.

The man I chose who is inspirational to me is my father. My father came to Canada in 1992 with no money in his pockets. Even though he has a electrician’s degree back in India which has no worth here in Canada. My father struggled a lot in the beginning, at one point he was homeless and sleeping a bus bench. Ever since he came here in 1992, my father worked endlessly, job to job, ending up being a trucker. Having a steady income, in 1998, he got married and fell in love with my mother and had me three years later. My father had a difficult past, he lived without a father and I believe it’s the reason why he is an excellent father.

At one point, everything was going well in his life, he had another child and owned five trucks. But by sheer bad luck, he lost all of those trucks by theft, accidents and mistrust leading to shortage of a lot of money. He told my mom to take me and my younger brother to go to India, because he had no ways to provide us. My mom refused him and stood by him. From that day, my father worked harder than ever without changing his love to us. Now, my father is successful, has a wonderful marriage with my mother for almost 20 years and has two kids in college.

For me, being inspirational character to others, is somebody who goes through tough moments in their past or present and uses those moments to become a better person by preserving and putting efforts.