What Are Little Boys Made Of?

What Are Little Boys Made Of? In his essay "What Are Little Boys Made Of?", Michael Kimmel describes how America has been so focused on girls and feminism, that boys have been forgotten about.

"There's no question that there's a boy crisis. Virtually all the books cite the same statistics: boys are four to five times more likely to be diagnosed as emotionally disturbed, three times more likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, and fifteen times more likely to be victims of violent crime" (Kimmel, What Are Little Boys Made Of).

American men have always tried to prove that they are real men by doing an enormous amount of things to prove it. They take amazing risks, such as driving fast, building up their muscles, making a lot of money, etc. The self made man has done many great things in the world but when does he stop feeling that he has to prove it. He has built wonderful civilizations but he still feels insecure and still feels that he has to prove himself. For instance, I remember many different occasions in high school where different guys would get into fights solely to see who was stronger, who was more of a man. Even if one of them did not want to fight, he felt that he couldn't turn down the challenge because that would make him look and feel like less of a man.

What many do not realize is that men are not only trying to prove themselves as strong men to the women, but mainly to other men. For example, my friend Ryan and I went to see a movie when I was visiting him in Arizona last year. He wouldn't take me to Ruth 2 see the new Madonna movie, The Next Best Thing, because he was afraid that other guys would think he was gay and make fun of him. It was considered a chick flick and heaven forbid he be caught dead or alive in that movie. From early childhood when little boys look to their fathers for approval, to their school days when their always showing off to other boys, to their work days when they're competing with other men to get ahead, just goes to show that what men really want is to be a man among men and want to be seen as a real man by other men.

According to Kimmel, when it comes to gender issues, three terms come to mind: difference, same, and equal. "The political theories upon which America was founded, were preoccupied with the relationship between difference and sameness, equality and inequality .......the inequalities at the end of the road are the natural outcomes of our differences" (www.hws.edu/news/speakers/kimmel.html). On the other hand, the problem with equality has always been that it has been confused with sameness. People feared that economic equality would mean that everyone would all look, act and think the same things. The bottom line is that men and women are different, but that these differences are not nearly as big as some like to think they are. There are many similarities and not many jobs that men or women are uniquely more qualified for, unless we are talking about donating sperm or giving birth. Kimmel further states: Throughout American history, women have said We want to do something: We want to go to college, We want to vote, We want to be able to drive, We want to join unions. And every time men have predicted that women Ruth 3 wouldn't want to do it, and that women couldn't do it. I can think of no case in which women, once they entered the field, turned around and said, "You know what" They were right. Let's go home." So, my philosophy is very simple. Instead of asking the experts what women can or cannot do, ask the women" (Kimmel, omnimag.com/archives/chats/br120696.html).

Treating alikes as unalikes and treating sameness differently is the basis for most sex and race discrimination cases in the workplace, schools, etc. For example, when we use the word "woman" to modify a professional term, such as woman lawyer or woman doctor, and leave the unmodified title for the men of that profession.

Equality does not mean that we all have to be the same. In the correspondence to the way that we cannot treat alikes as unalikes, we cannot treat different people the same. Take for example the idea that women who go to all women colleges have higher levels of achievement and higher levels of self-esteem than women who go to coeducational schools. This is due to the fact that these schools teach women that they can do anything men can do; hence the idea that we cannot treat different people as the same. In contrast, men who attend all boys schools also have a higher self-esteem but this can tend to lead to male arrogance. While the women are learning that they can do everything that men can do, men are learning that women cannot do most things.

How do we solve these problems? We must incorporate masculinity into our curriculum. It is very true that in every school and every university, every course that Ruth 4 doesn't have the word "women" in the title is about men. But it's always about men as political leaders, military heroes, scientists, writers, etc. Men, themselves are invisible as men and rarely do we see a course that examines the lives of men as men. Everywhere one turns there are courses on men, but no information on masculinity and how masculinity played a part in the lives of great artists, writers, presidents, etc. (Kimmel, www.hws.edu/new/speakers/kimmel.html).

Gender must not only be applied to women, but also made visible to men. We must see both men and women as gendered and take both masculinity and femininity seriously.