Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Reflection: Michael Kimmel’s “What Are Little Boys Made Of?”

I personally really love this piece by Michael Kimmel, as a male and as a human being.  Kimmel pretty much reconfirms many of my personally held beliefs about masculinity and the male condition.  Kimmel says, “When they say boys will be boys, they mean boys will be uncivilized animals.  In their view, males are biologically propelled to be savage, predatory, sexually omnivorous creatures, hard-wired for violence.  As a man, I find his view insulting.”  Before reading this article I have constantly stated a very similar opinion.  When I am told that I have to be or compared to this type of aggressive and obnoxious male model (or when people assume that I already am) I become offended.  Being a male of fairly large stature, I have actually been told that since I do not like typically masculine sports like American Football that I am “big for nothing.”  What the hell does that have to do with anything?  Why am I told that since I’m a larger male that I should be more aggressive and use my stature in a certain way that conforms to what others want me to do? 
Something else that this article has reminded me of is how (at least from what I have observed) Feminism is not really solving the problem yet.  So far, from the small amount of Feminist literature and movements that I have been exposed to, Feminism is not yet really getting to the heart of the problem.  I am not saying that Feminism has not done some important work thus far, but it has only treated the symptoms, and not the source.  It has dealt with issues such as voting, inequality in the workplace and other important issues through mainly legislative activities and bringing awareness to adults.  What I would like to see is action to change the mindsets of all sexes at the youngest of ages in order to change the current ideology.  We need to attack this current ideology where it starts, when we are all young. 

2 comments:

  1. i really enjoy david's thoughts and i do agree with what he has to say about everything.I never realized that men felt this way about things. When i thought of boys will be boys, i never realised what kind of peressure that but boys. At a young age of trying the figure out what they want to be how how they want to act. Also agreed with the statement that david made about femenist and how it really cant affect, people the way so people thinl that femisinism is the down of fall of young boys. But what i think the downfall of young boys really is that they don't know what is right and wrong, because they are just playing follow the leader.

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  2. I would love to know what code do yo follow. your own code, your friends code or simply society code . I think personally there is three codes instead of two. What do you think??????

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