Let's Talk About...

20 - Man box, woman box

On my previous post, I talked about the construct of the ideal masculinity in our culture and how it affects boys and men. I'm wrapping up the subject with additional material from the documentary The Mask You Live In by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, some stats and reflections.

I'll start by quoting Michael, interviewed in the film. A participant of the San Quentin Juvenile Lifers Program, he discusses the man box and the woman ("not manly") box. "The lessons we're being taught from early on is that being a woman, being feminine or anything that's not within the man box, within the confines of this construct, is bad. So what I'm gonna do next is erase the labels man box and not manly box. When we take away these barriers that society places on us—our parents, peers, teachers, media, whatever it may be—we get to be whoever we choose and we find that we are some of the very things that we were taught are not manly."

Cleo, another participant, agrees: "Before, when I was stuck in that man box, I felt a sense of being incomplete. I felt that I was never the person I was meant to be or that my family envisioned me to be. Once I got out of that man box through this process and the work, I feel like I stand 10 feet tall and I'm worthy, I have a right to be loved, a sense of belonging with the peers that I've built a community here and I feel whole."

Masculinity and femininity are not separate, they co-exist in the same spectrum and often overlap. "Sex is a biological term and refers to the chromosomes you have. Gender is a social construct," neuroscientist Dr. Lise Eliot clarifies. We all have masculine and feminine traits and situate ourselves in some point of that scale. By rejecting our masculine or feminine traits in order to fit into a box, we limit ourselves tremendously. As coach Joe Ehrmann mentioned, not all boys are interested in sports, just like not all girls are interested in cooking.

Now I'll tell the story of Ian, one of the college students interviewed in The Mak You Live in. He grew up under the influence of his grandfather, who kept stressing to Ian he should be bigger, stronger, faster. But as a boy Ian wasn't considered to be "cool" and, along with his best friend, suffered bullying at school. Instead of sticking with his friend, he distanced himself in order to fit in and avoid being further ridiculed by the other guys.

Ian became a successful athlete and a paradigm of masculinity. In his first year in high school, he was talking to a girl and standing next to a guy. The girl wore tight pants and, as she walked away, the guy commented he understood why someone would rape a woman. "The way in which I've experienced men talk," says Ian, "oftentimes it involves doing things to women that don't seem like they're particularly consensual."

When he went to college, Ian felt the pressure to engage in the hookup culture. Alcohol was a tool for him to be assertive, aggressive, predatory, to find women to have sex with and hence impress other men. "Particularly around other guys, you're always one-upping the other person, talking about a woman's ass or breasts. There's an implied sense that women exist for us to have sex with them. They exist for us. I don't think that we think about the implications of that."

In his first long-term relationship, Ian learned that his girlfriend had been raped. Then he found out his mother had also been raped at a younger age. The notion of that happening to his loved ones pained him and he thought about all victims of sexual assault. That made him reflect on the concept of masculinity in a critical way: "I tried to become more of a full human being and less constrained by who I thought I had to be." Ian stopped playing sports in collegiate competition and went back to doing theater.

Sex and violence

Reaffirming what we've covered in this series about the merging of sex and violence as merchandise in our culture, psychologist Dr. Philip Zimbardo points out that on a weekly basis the average boy spends 40 hours watching television and movies, 14 hours playing video games and 2 hours watching porn. "When you play video games and see the same kind of setup, it loses its impact. The video game companies know this and give you endless variety, creating an arousal addiction. Boys' brains are digitally rewired to this technology where things happen in microseconds. The most addictive video games are the most violent, where your job is to destroy the enemy, to dominate."