The Discovery of What It Means to Be a Man - Thomas Page McBee - the Atlantic
… . That’s another thing: Younger people in general hold blasé attitudes towards gay marriage, eroding the homophobia at the heart of generations of male machismo. Stony Brook University just announced plans for the Center for Men and Masculinities, which will study the emerging discipline, and lead to a master’s degree in masculinity studies.
So what about that crisis? There’s still evidence here in the States that some men are clinging to the worst aspects of masculinity—and we, as a culture, aren’t exactly enforcing a new code of what makes a man. Look no further than the media coverage of Steubenville and the emphasis of the loss of the rapists’ “promising futures,” the Steubenville School Board’s extension of a coaching contract to the man who helped his players cover up their crime, and the victim-blaming most recently modeled by no less than Serena Williams in Rolling Stone to see that we’re still besieged by contradictory, and often toxic, ideas about manhood. Peruse your standard-issue men’s magazine for confirmation, or check out a parade of Super Bowl commercials for a bossy dictate claiming to “get” us while defining us to ourselves: what we can drink, how we relate, what we can care about, even how we feel.
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