Yay!! My friend and Director of Women's Studies at Shenandoah University, Dr. Amy Sarch Schopick responded to my Batman Dark Knight posting. The question was, how do we reach men when it seems that there is a great cultural incentive for men to be pathologically brooding, detached and well, stuck? Where do we begin to have the conversation? She is one person I know who is reaching the young men of Shenandoah University - so that's where we begin this dialogue.
Here is Amy's response:
I actually had one of those aha moments a few years ago teaching a history of gender in advertising course. I was doing background reading on 1950s, 1960s images of men in advertising (same time period that Playboy begins, Marlboro Man introduced) and I read Barbara Ehrenreich's The Hearts of Men (which I highly recommend). Ehrenreich talks about how conformity for men takes the form of breadwinner, grey flannel suit, loyal husband. And Playboy actually was revolutionary for men because it was about noncomformity really -- forget marriage, grey flannel suit, making money for the family -- do it for yourself. Actually making the some parallel arguments to women in the women's movement -- be an individual.
This was difficult for me to wrap my brain around at first because as a women's studies professor it's like I'm conditioned to just think sexist, but culture constrains men as well as women -- as another poster stated, socializing boys NOT to cry is as constraining as marketing pink kitchens to little girls.
I'm also doing train of thought here -- so when thinking about Playboy, Marlboro Man -- these actually are revolutionary images of men because prior to that (in advertising at least) all you had was the man in the grey flannel suit selling socks and dress shirts. And what I realized, that once I introduced students to this notion that hey, the social constraints keep women AND men from recognizing social constraints as culturally constructed that men were more willing to start listening.
So now, in a different class (intro to women's studies), we spend a lot of time on phrases like "boys will be boys" -- and what that means, and it's not always freedom, using that to explain a boy running amok in a supermarket is a disservice to that boy (that same 'boys will be boys' statement has been used by a dad to defend his son in raping -- although he didn't see it like that -- a series of women in high school -- spur posse case). Oh, another author to recomend is Michael Kimmel who is the leader in this 'men's studies' (in not your caveman version). So anyway, the brooding man -- definitely a genre that is linked to the same undercurrents that launched Playboy and created the marlboro man.
