Boys Do Cry

I was happy to see another reading by Jessica Valenti on the reading list since I really enjoyed her first one. In this reading, Boys Do Cry, it states that men are affected by feminism too. I am sure that a lot of people probably do not realize this, me being one of them prior to this article/class. Men are expected to be masculine and thus not feminine. The problem is that violence often gets tied up into this idea of "manly." There is a lot of pressure on men to act a certain way and in particular the media promotes the tough guy exterior. For instance, the article talks about how in one commercial a man who acts girly gets killed by a beer can. This type of message just reinforces how dangerous it is for a man to step outside of the box. A man who acts girly may not actually be killed in real life but they will most likely experience harrassment and might even get beat up.

There has been a resurgence of boyhood being the cool standard opposed to how it used to be cool to take care of your family. I would assume that this degression is probably related to increased feminism awareness. The more powerful women become, the less powerful men become which goes against what they think it means to be a man. This loss of power in men is then probably related to an increase in violence against women. Violence is a way to show power and it is conceivable to claim that the less power men feel they have, the more likely they are to be violent in an attempt to gain power.

Valenti says that in order to fix the problem, the whole concept of masculinity has to go. This sounds like a great idea but I cannot come up with any way in which it could be done, at least not all at once. The only way I think men can get rid of the extreme pressures to be manly is through a slow and gradual change in the way we define masculinity. One thing that could help, at least some, would be a change in the way the media portrays men. If the media portrayed it as acceptable for men to avoid violence and be sensitive, perhaps that would help.