blog 3 - Feb. 27

“Being a Boy” (1b)
“…They learn as they grow up that they are not supposed to feel and they shut down…In many ways the fact that today’s boy often has a wider range of emotional expression in early childhood but is forced to suppress emotional awareness later on makes adolescence all the more stressful for boys” (42-43). Well, obviously. This completely makes sense, as it is pretty much a true statement. As kids, the boys can’t actively show their feelings because their parents, mostly fathers, tell them to hide them, to not cry in certain situations for example. And then, they grow up and still have that mindset that they can’t show true emotions because people will think they are weak. Being a boy apparently means that in order to become a man, you need to drop all emotions, and if you can’t drop them, you better be able to hide them. Stupid concept if you ask me. I see it all the time and to see it in words just makes my blood boil. So dumb.

“Making Masculinity” (1c)
Ok, there were a few things that caught my attention, and these things in my opinion- in a “nerds” mind, - are completely true. To be a man, you need to do the following: “By working out, the boys shed their weak, effeminate, and possibly homosexual identities.” Right…that’s totally how to do it. This doesn’t make sense to me at all. Pascoe goes on to say that, “gangstas…flee in terror at the mere hint of the nerds’ strength.” Point being, I have never seen that happen so I am definitely not on the same plane as Pascoe apparently. Maybe I didn’t get this chapter correctly or something but there were just a whole bunch of things in here that I just don’t get. Another instance, I didn’t know that there were different types of masculinities as the Parsonian theories suggest. I thought that if you were deemed masculine, you were that; masculine. And why is femininity not as important as masculinity when scholars are researching? Stupid sexist scholars!

“Becoming Mr. Cougar” (1a)
This is new to me. “…American teens are too innocent to know about sexuality and too sexual to be trusted with information…” in the school system. If this is true, then why do schools have health classes and talk about condoms and sex? “For boys the condoms served as evidence of masculinity in that they were a proxy for heterosexual success…Condoms became concrete symbols of masculinity through their signification of heterosexual activity.” And homosexuals don’t use condoms? Okay, but really, I had never thought that a condom would intensify a males idea that if he had them, he was going to be feeling extremely masculine. I know girls who have them. Does that make them feel masculine or just more feminine?

“Dude, You’re a Fag” (1b)
The kids Pascoe spoke to voiced that they associated “gay” with being less than but not with sexuality. Interesting if you ask me. Never thought of it that way. It was pretty interesting to see that boys do not exactly fear homophobia but that they fear that if they act less masculine, they would be emasculated. “Gay,” from a guy’s mouth usually means an insult while “slut,” from a girl’s mouth usually means the same. I’ve heard girls use the term “gay.” I’m not going to deny it. I have done so on many occasion when I think something is really dumb or stupid, but I never looked at it as something that could possibly reflect my sexual activity level. Since I’ve never been called a “slut,” I guess my sexual activity level is low, huh? Ha ha.

“Compulsive Heterosexuality” (1a)
Boy, I am not a puppet! In “Females are the Puppets,” Nancy Henley wrote a passage saying that when she was at a country dance, the boys used the girls to show off who was better by dancing with them, in turn, using them as puppets to make themselves look better. I never thought that men used women as puppets to further enlarge their overbearing masculinity but now that I read this, I’m shocked and down right pissed off. “By dominating girls’ bodies boys defended against fag position, increased their social status, and forged bonds of solidarity with other boys.” These behaviors are looked at as ‘social.’ Give me a fucking break. Even though Pascoe brought up that it is not saying these boys are unrepentant sexists, I have to disagree. Now looking back, I can see where things like this happened in my life.

(2a)
I remember in high school, last period P.E. was for anyone who was doing sports for the year. Since I was doing shot put and discus, I was able to go into the workout room with the football players, the basketball players, and the soccer players. I remember watching them all lift weights; each time rotating and the next guy saying he could do more weight then the last. During this time, I was really into weight lifting, having grown up with a body builder dad and uncle. My favorite thing to do was the leg press, where you lay on your back and push against the weights with her feet. Anyway, I remember one day, I was the first into the weight room and I headed straight for it. I was probably pushing around 500 pounds when the guys started to come in. When they saw the weight I was pushing, they all started taking turns at the one next to me, saying they could out push each other as well as “do better than that girl,” even though I was their friend of 3 years. My max weight was 700 pounds and the guys could barely get to that weight. I remember them all getting up, saying “fuck this” and “she’s bullshit” just because I could out press the guys and they all moved on to bench press. Even though I was a friend with all of them, I was looked down upon because I was stronger in the legs than my guy friends. It goes back to the last reading, “Making Masculinity” and the need to work out to show their masculinity. A few of them tried to pull me off the machine and tell me that I’m a girl and shouldn’t be as strong as them, that it makes me more of a boy. After that, the same guys always said that I looked weird when I was wearing a skirt. I guess a strong woman can’t be feminine.