Back to Critical Masculinity Studies

Although we took a slight detour last week down the road of queer theories as applied to trans issues in order to accommodate our visiting lecturer, DC-based feminist and queer activist Shannon Wyss, we’re going to get back onto our current topic of constructing masculinity/ies for Thursday’s class. But don’t worry: As you know from your syllabus, we’ll get back to queer theories in a few weeks, so just be patient!
 

For this week, though, we’re reading a fantastic book by feminist sociologist CJ Pascoe. Entitled Dude, You’re a Fag, the book examines the construction of masculinity/ies among students at a public high school in northern California. And because we all know that you can’t construct masculinity/ies without also constructing femininity/ies (and vice versa), Pascoe looks at that, too! 

In addition to using the Weekly Worksheet, which is posted on Blackboard, I suggest that you also think about how to use Gould, Martin and the chapter we’ve already read in Connell as theoretical tools to help you make sense of Pascoe. Remember, formal education (i.e., schools) are a significant component of the GENDER POLICE. For example: 

• Gould’s “X: A Fabulous Child’s Story” (from Week 2) demonstrates some of the difficulties and challenges of raising a child without gender. Where do those difficulties and challenges show up at River High?

• Martin argues in the chapter from two weeks ago that, in addition to the overt focus on men in the content of school curricula (i.e., books, courses, etc.), there are HIDDEN CURRICULA at work, as well. In what specific ways does the HIDDEN CURRICULUM manifest at River High?

• Connell discusses the need to think about masculinities (plural) and demonstrates the existence of a PATRIARCHAL DIVIDEND. How can you use these concepts to sort out what’s going on in Pascoe’s study?

As a little teaser, here’s Pascoe talking about her book and why it matters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_nqYnjfe_8&feature=youtu.be

And just in case you might get lulled into thinking that all this is just common sense and there's no homophobia or sexism anymore and that the two aren't inherently connected, scroll down on the YouTube page and take a look at the posted comments while remembering all the potential consequences for transgressing "normative" femininity or "hegemonic" masculinity.

Please remember that the best part of my job is getting to know my students, so please don’t hesitate to come on by during my office hours if ever you have any questions or just want to chat! If you can’t make my office hours, then just e-mail me, and we can arrange an alternative meeting time.

Happy reading, and I’ll see you in class.

A Detour: Trans 101

As you know from the syllabus, although we just began our unit on constructing masculinity/ies, we're taking a slight detour this week to welcome a guest speaker all the way from Washington, DC, feminist and queer activist Shannon Wyss! I invited hir to write a guest blog post, and I've posted that below.

First, though, a few administrative things:

1. Don't forget that your 'Zine Project proposals (one per group) are due on Thursday at the start of class.
2. Also don't forget that you have some reading to do in preparation for Thursday's class.
3. As part of that reading, please complete the exercises on pp. 74-76 of Bornstein. You'll hand these in to me for credit toward your class participation mark, but we'll also be discussing your answers/experiences in class.
4. Remember that class will meet in Y224 on Thursday.
5. Please join us for the reception directly after class in The Knuckle (EA3001) for some free food and a cool discussion/strategy session about how to be an LGBTQ advocate.
6. My office hours are cancelled on Thursday so that I can do some stuff to get ready for all the exciting stuff that's happening on Thursday!
7. And lastly, Shannon's guest blog is below, and the link to hir website is just above, on the right-hand side menu. I encourage you to check it out!

And now, without further ado, Shannon's guest blog:

Hello, Sex, Gender, and the Body students!

I’m looking very forward to meeting all of you next Thursday! Kim speaks very highly of you as a smart, insightful class. So i’m sure we’re going to have a great dialogue with each other.

She suggested that i write a blog post introducing myself. So here i am, wondering what the heck to say to you since i’m going to be there in person. What could you possibly want or need to know about me in advance?

I suppose that telling you a little about me is a good way to start. And while there are many ways that i can describe myself (ain’t that true for all of us?), here are some of the most important:

·         White;

·         Queer (in sexual orientation and gender identity);

·         A strong trans ally for fifteen years or more;

·         US-born;

·         Native English-speaking;

·         Upper-middle class;

·         Able-bodied;

·         Well-educated;

·         An anti-racist ally;

·         Assigned female at birth;

·         A completely-recovered Catholic;

·         Partnered;

·         Monogamous;

·         Introverted;

·         Mentor to four gay/bi/queer/trans young men;

·         Politically radical;

·         Proud pet co-parent of an adopted beagle and three adopted cats;

·         Dedicated to coalitional and intersectional politics at all levels;

·         Social justice-focused;

·         The oldest of four children in my nuclear family;

·         Feminist-identified since about eleven years old;

·         Middle-aged (barely, since i just turned 40 in October);

·         Short;

·         Employed full-time in a job with great benefits;

·         Not very concise; and

·         Doing laundry right now for my trip to Calgary, for which i’ll be leaving at 3:30am Saturday.

·         (Also, i am not a morning person.)

Is all of that relevant? Not really. But at least it might be a little interesting.

I’ve been involved in queer-related activities and activism since college, when my best friend came out to me as bisexual in 1993 and blasted the lock off my closet door. (Previously, i was so far in the closet that even *i* couldn’t find myself with a flashlight!) I was fortunate to have had a relatively easy coming out experience since my politics were already in the right place and my parents, while not necessarily happy to have a non-straight child, were overall very supportive. In fact, my mom remains a dedicated PFLAG parent.

I’ve gone through a variety of labels since i first started coming out: bisexual, dyke, lesbian, queer, and genderqueer – and that’s only in the first twenty years after my coming out! Discovering transgender-related writings was critical not only to exploring my own gender identity but also to examining deeply the structure and function of binary sex and gender in Western culture.  Really listening to what others have to say about their lives and experiences has both challenged me and enriched my life academically, politically, socially, and emotionally in ways that i can’t really articulate.

What started with reading Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues, on the recommendation of multiple bookstore coworkers in 1995, has lead me down a path that now finds me coming to Calgary for the first time in my life to talk about transgender and activism at MRU. I can’t wait!

Finally, i should let you know that some of the material in my Trans 101 might seem pretty basic: you can probably all define the difference between “sex” and “gender” in your sleep by this point. The elementary stuff will be only a small portion of what i’m going to talk about, though. And, regardless, we have a chunk of time after the main presentation is over when we can have a more in-depth conversation just among us.

Just one request: can you all order up some warmer weather for me, please?

I’ll meet you all next week!

--Shannon E. Wyss

  Hyattsville, Maryland, USA (right outside of Washington, DC)

  Friday, March 1, 2013

Critical Masculinity Studies

Welcome back! I hope you all had a lovely, relaxing and productive Reading Week.

During our last class, we took it a bit easy. The WMST librarian, Jessie Loyer (jloyer(at)mtroyal.ca) led a workshop specifically focused on your ‘Zine Project, and then, having got off to a good start there by organizing yourselves into research groups and starting to brainstorm about your topic(s), we reconvened in our regular classroom to finish up our unit on constructing femininity. We continued our discussion of The Waiting Room, focusing on the DISCIPLINARY PRACTICE of body modification in the quest for perfect femininity. But we also took a look at BODY PRACTICES that can be empowering as some women engage in body modification to (re)take control of their bodily sovereignty and actively resist notions of femininity.

On Thursday, we’re going to jump right on into the next part of our course, “’Act Like a Man:’ Constructing Masculinity.” But before I talk about that, let’s clear up some administrative loose ends:

1. I’ve posted the list of groups and tentative topics for the ‘Zine Project under the “Assignments” tab on Bb; please be sure to be in touch with your group members ASAP in order to finalize your topic.
2. Your group project proposal is due next week, Thursday, March 7^th. Please be sure to adhere to the directions as laid out in the ‘Zine Project assignment, which is posted on our course blog.
3. If you’d like to meet with me to brainstorm about the project—or for any other reason—please don’t hesitate to stop by during my office hours. Or, if that doesn’t work, e-mail me and we can arrange an alternative appointment.
4. Also, don’t forget that next week we have a guest lecturer coming in to talk to us about trans issues. The first part of our class next week, from 2-3:30, is open to the MRU campus community, so please invite your friends!

Now, down to business:

Critical Masculinity Studies

I’m sure that those of you who have taken Women’s Studies courses before have all heard at least one Women’s Studies “newbie” ask, “But why aren’t there men’s studies?” Sometimes the question comes from a place of genuine curiosity, but more often than not (in my experience, at least), it comes out of political antagonism to the questions about power and inequality that Women’s Studies and feminist scholars seek to address.

I love when students ask me this question. I usually don’t have to answer it, because there are invariably students in the room who, as a result of their previous coursework in Women’s Studies, are very capable of answering it for me. But the question is an excellent one, because the sheer ubiquity of (white, heterosexual) men’s studies at every stage and in every aspect of the education system points explicitly to the necessity of Women’s Studies—as well as to other allied critical spaces of inquiry, such as indigenous studies, critical race studies, and LGBTQ studies.

R.W. Connell’s book, Masculinities, which we’re returning to this week after having already read chapter 1, is exemplary of CRITICAL MASCULINITY STUDIES in that it incorporates the perspectives and approaches of feminist and queer theorists to study men as a product of and influenced by the processes of gender construction. In fact, Connell is considered one of the founders of this relatively new field of scholarship and analysis, which developed in the wake of the conservative men’s rights movement of the late 1980s and 1990s. This movement argues that while the rights of women, girls, homosexuals, people of color, and other historically marginalized groups have been protected through civil and human rights legislation, the traditional rights of (white, heterosexual) men have been eroded. 

Obviously, this way of thinking is in opposition to the perspectives and approaches of feminist and queer theorists, but it has resulted in some interesting new research that studies and celebrates the activities and experiences of men. This research is generally referred to as MEN’S STUDIES, which Connell notes is a POSITIVIST study of men as a coherent group constitutive of anyone who has “a penis, a Y chromosome and a certain supply of testosterone” (43). CRITICAL MASCULINITY STUDIES scholars argue, though, that this research on men is flawed because it (1) not only excludes, but is hostile to, feminist and queer theoretical approaches to gender, and (2) ignores the social, cultural, and political causes and consequences of the SEX/GENDER SYSTEM. In other works this research studies men, but not masculinity. As a result, the causes and consequences of (some) men’s power and privilege remain unexamined. 

Interestingly, this “new” MEN’S STUDIES looks and sounds an awful lot like the same old study of great wars and great (white, heterosexual) men that comprises the overwhelming majority of most peoples’ educational experiences. (***Remember: the education system is part of the GENDER POLICE! Think about this as you read Martin’s article in Weitz this week.)

This is why CRITICAL MASCULINITY STUDIES scholars, who come from a wide array of academic locations, insist on being accountable to feminist theorists: The field of CRITICAL MASCULINITY STUDIES very literally wouldn’t exist without the work on interrogating power and privilege and the construction of gender done originally in Women’s Studies by feminist scholars.

Take a look at this teaser featuring an excerpt from a lecture by Michael Kimmel, another founder of CRITICAL MASCULINITY STUDIES.

This is the conversation/debate that Connell is part of. If you remember from our first encounter with his ideas from chapter 1, he is generally concerned that the academic and scientific study of men and masculinity has been historically flawed—largely because each area (psychology, anthropology, history and sociology) has only recently started to think about men as gendered subjects, but has yet to widely embrace the work of feminist theorists.

He returns to this point again in chapter 2, “Men’s Bodies,” which you’re reading for this week. In this chapter, he takes up the task of thinking about men’s bodies in relation to masculinity by reviewing the three general approaches to THE BODY in the sciences, social sciences and humanities (***Remember from chapter 1 that he’s concerned with how, why and by whom knowledge about masculinity has been constructed (6)), arguing that none of these approaches is all that effective. He concludes by offering his own approach/theory/analytical tool for making sense of how masculinity is constructed. He calls this BODY-REFLEXIVE PRACTICES, which calls attention to the circuit of social relations and institutions that affect the construction of masculinity/ies, acknowledge the materiality of the body and take into account the domain of gender politics.

In chapter 3, Connell “set[s] out a framework based on contemporary analyses of gender relations” in order to “provide a way of distinguishing types of masculinity, and of understanding the dynamics of change” in gender over time (67).

Chapter 8, as is clear from the title, is all about the history of Western masculinity. In this chapter, Connell draws attention to the specific times and places at which particular forms of masculinity became salient. Not surprisingly, this chapter is my favorite because it contextualizes the always dynamic process of masculinity within the histories of the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution (15^th and 16^th centuries), colonial conquest (15^th through 19^th centuries), the Industrial Revolution (18^th through early 20^th centuries) and contemporary globalization (late 20^th century to the present). For those of you who often ask, “How did all this gender inequality—not to mention other forms of social injustice—start,” this chapter’s for you!

For this week, I also recommend that you review Connell, chapter 1. You might also be interesting in checking out NOMAS, the organization Michael Kimmel started in the late 1970s to enhance men's lives.

Please remember that the best part of my job is getting to know my students, so please don’t hesitate to come on by during my office hours if ever you have any questions or just want to chat! If you can’t make my office hours, then just e-mail me, and we can arrange an alternative meeting time.

Happy reading, and I’ll see you in class!

This week's class will be a bit of an exciting hodge podge as we finish up our unit on constructing femininity and prepare to begin working on the term project. That assignment is available by clicking the link on the left, so make sure you take a look at it before the Library Workshop on Thursday.

We're going to start class on Thursday in the Library Lab. Most of you know where that is, but just in case: Head into the main entrance and walk straight ahead toward the info desk, then bang a right. The Library Lab is on the right, behind the video/DVD stacks. We'll start at 2 PM sharp, so please don't be late.

Although many of you may have had library workshops before, please don't miss this one, as it's specifically geared toward this project. We get a whole 90 minutes with the WMST librarian, Jessie Loyer, who'll work with you to identify appropriate and relevant resources for your research. We'll also be picking groups during this time, and then brainstorming topics, so you don't want to miss this crucial class meeting.

After the Library Workshop, we'll take a break and then reconvene in our regular classroom. We'll spend the rest of our class wrapping up our discussion of the DISCIPLINARY PRACTICES through which femininity is constructed, focusing specifically on The Waiting Room. For this discussion, please be sure to review Q #5-8 on Worksheet #3 re. the play's major themes. Those questions will be our focus in the second half of class.

In the meantime, you may enjoy these little tidbits:  

"16 Ways the Toy Industry is Stuck in the Stone Age"  

And don't forget my office hours if you have any questions, concerns or issues -- or just want to chat!

See you on Thursday in the Library Lab!