Author: Arielle Darr
Oxy’s first Masculinities Week challenged hundreds of participants from Oxy and beyond to explore their conceptions of gender and gender roles through talks ranging from “Masculinity and Hip Hop Culture” to “Men and Pornography.” Dr. Michael Kimmel kicked off the event on Oct. 15 with a talk about “Men in the New Millennium,” while Shira Tarrant, an expert in gender politics, feminism, pop culture and masculinity, concluded Masculinities Week on Oct. 23 with her talk on masculinity and feminism in regards to gender equality.
“We think of masculinity as some unchanging, static thing, but there’s actually a lot to talk about,” said Program Assistant of the Center for Gender Equity (CGE) Jacob Goldstein (senior). “It is as socially constructed as any other gender expression [yet] no one is talking about it or exploring it critically.”
To facilitate dialogue on the subject, the CGE, Associate Politics Professor Caroline Heldman and several other campus organizations sponsored a week and a half of events focused on masculinity in the U.S. today.
“When we think of gender, we typically think of women and forget that men are also gendered,” said Heldman when asked why Masculinities Week is significant. “I am hoping that students come away with a better understanding of how masculinities are socially constructed and performed, and how these performances affect both men and women.”
Masculinities Week is an event unique to Oxy. According to Associate Director of Intercultural Affairs Naddia Palacios, the ideas behind the event were recently developed. “I think it’s a new concept of thinking in academia that hasn’t really been explored,” she said. “The speakers that we have this week are the innovators of this thought process.”
The event also marks the first time such a diverse group of experts has been featured together. Speakers ranged from a sociologist and an anthropologist to two filmmakers and two former athletes. “These scholars are truly the best-known researchers on this topic,” said Heldman.
Kimmel, a leading researcher on masculinity, focused his talk on society’s rules for how to be a man, mixing statistical evidence and humor. Kimmel also discussed the invisibility of the male gender, and how acknowledging the privilege of being male is one of the first steps to gender equality.
On Oct. 19, Jackson Katz, author, filmmaker and anti-sexist activist specializing in gender violence prevention led a talk on “Masculinity and Violence.” Prior to Katz’s talk, his documentary “Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity” was shown. Katz talked about how society has conditioned men to act aggressively and violently toward women and to each other. Katz explained that this supposed norm is no excuse for violence, and emphasized the need to dramatically change the status quo of gender relations.
Anti-sexist activist and documentarian Byron Hurt spoke on Oct. 20 about the journey that led him to his job today. He then showed a clip from his documentary “Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes.” The scene depicted men’s treatment of women at “Spring Bling,” a spring break event BET annually hosts. Viewers watched as men freely called women “hoes” and “bitches” and grabbed at their bodies without consent.
After the clip, discussion ranged from whether the way women dress encourages men’s behavior to why some men have such divergent attitudes about female relatives versus the general population. Issues with race and the role of media and education on men’s behavior frequently arose.
Robert Jensen, Journalism Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and expert on the radical feminist critique of pornography, discussed “Masculinity and Pornography” on Oct. 22. Jensen noted how the traditional values attributed to masculinity, like dominance, are depicted within mainstream pornography. Jensen concluded by arguing that gender relations in pornography presage an end of the world scenario where people are devoid of empathy for one another.
To wrap up the week and a half of events, Tarrant, a professor in the Department of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at California State University, Long Beach, discussed how men and women can be activists in the realm of gender justice and invited the audience to share personal experiences and come up with possible solutions.
In addition to the five guest speakers, Oxy Critical Theory and Social Justice (CTSJ) Professor Jeffrey Tobin led a special lecture on Oct. 21 for Oxy’s Feminist Faculty Series in conjunction with Masculinities Week. He spoke about masculinity and Argentine soccer fans in a talk titled “Seminal Fraternity.” When asked if this overlap was planned, Goldstein said, “Why not have it as part of Masculinities Week? It emphasize[s] that men can also be feminists. A feminist critique can also apply to masculinity.”
A common theme that arose from many of the films and speakers was the juxtaposition of masculinity to feminism and how deeper analysis of the relations between the two can lead to greater gender equality. “If we want to move forward with a progressive, empathetic and kind humanity . . . we must take a hard look at the ways that we construct masculinity,” said Laura Frankel (senior) in an e-mail interview.
Other Masculinities Week events included a panel of current male Oxy students who discussed masculinity from a multicultural perspective. Although, according to Goldstein, it was difficult to find men willing to participate, male representatives from six on-campus organizations agreed to take part. These included William Bighorse (junior, First Nations), Francisco Hernandez (sophomore, MEChA/ALAS), David Telfort (sophomore, Black Student Alliance), Ellis Raskin (senior, Hillel), James Case (junior, Queer Straight Alliance) and Brandon Ahlo (junior, Hawaii Club).
“At first . . . I was not sure that one man’s perspective, even if he was from a particular cultural group, could sufficiently represent the myriad of subcultures and groups,” said Telfort, Vice President of BSA. “That being said, however, I thought that it was important for us to be represented in the discussion.”
The panelists took turns answering questions about their cultures’ understanding of masculinity, as well as their own personal experiences. While there were differences in their responses, several similarities arose.
“Although all of our experiences were not shared ones, there were common threads of the expectancy to be the ‘Alpha Male’ and many times to uplift the family name in a respectable manner,” said Telfort. “The plight of the male has common themes that affect us all, despite land of origin, race or creed.”
As this was the first event of its kind, Masculinities Week organizers focused on getting exposure. “Since it’s such a new concept, we want more students to be aware of it, not just CTSJ and Politics majors,” said Palacios.
In addition to students from the expected majors, such as Professor Heldman’s Gender and American Politics class who were required to attend six of the nine events, a variety of Oxy students were also present.
Many members of Greek life were visible in their organization’s letters at each talk. According to Delta Omicron Tau’s Greek Council Representative, Nonda Hanneman (senior), Greek Council voted to participate in the event to showcase Greek support for gender equality. Asked about Greek involvement, Goldstein said, “We were thrilled that Greek Council wanted to take part . . . I think it speaks a lot to the Greek students at Oxy that they are willing to participate in this.”
Students, faculty and community members from throughout the Los Angeles area also came to campus to take part in Masculinities Week. Guests ranged from Eagle Rock High School students to students from surrounding colleges like Pomona, UCLA, USC and many more. “Masculinities Week was an enormous success,” said Frankel, a Programming Assistant for Project S.A.F.E. “We had huge turnouts from both the on- and off-campus communities.”
“My
hope was that students, both male and female, but especially male, [would] attend the event and come in thinking one thing, but then [leave] realizing masculinity isn’t this static entity,” said Goldstein when discussing his expectations for Masculinities Week. “It’s something that we need to further critically explore in both the good and bad aspects and something that can potentially change.”
The Center for Gender Equity plans to make Masculinities Week an annual Oxy event. The organization hopes to keep up the dialogue on the rapidly changing nature of gender in the U.S. to promote greater gender justice.
“I do not envision a world where men and women are talking about what it means to be a man all the time, but I do agree that the conversation needs to occur,” said Telfort. “So often the subject is taboo and men are asked to keep their feelings, emotions and thoughts to themselves, preserving their image of being the stoic pillar of society. Once we chip away at this outdated, ineffective view, we can begin to heal many of the wounds that persist in society.”
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