Tough Guise/BoyCode/Masculinity: Kimmel Post:8

REFLECTION: Write about your personal connections to this text.  What does it make you think about?  How does it relate to you? Be sure to draw directly from the text so that the author’s themes and issues are clear.

Having political debates and psychological commentary really missed the mark or are they purposely missing the mark? I think that is one of the most important questions we should ask? Or in all honestly are they even conscious of gender construction and how masculinity and femininity as a social construction playing a major role in these very violent murderous events that are occurring? I mean shootings of black bodies are occurring every single day in black communities and these get no publicity its like a certain fetish this country has with guns, violence, gender, femininity, and masculinity the whole idea of white boys is just a piece of this "the mark" we are missing the whole issue in general! Violence, masculinity, whiteness, control and power over bodies is all you see its normative or accepted even if you want to believe it or not and that is just sickening to me. Anyways I went off on a tangent.... Kimmel makes a very good point in regards to this whole concept of masculinity... gender construction for males and females starts at a young age....

MALES (MASCULINITY): strong, tough, fighters, unemotional, protectors, boys don't cry, muscular, athletic, NOT GAY.  These are just some of the typing that goes into the raising of a male in our culture as a masculine being, this occurs through gender typing that can be formed through the media, education, parenting, environmental factors. It is amazing to me that most people get brainwashed into believing that it is the easy access to guns, the psychological mental health issues, and media itself that causes these violent spastic school shootings. It is the very construction of male as masculine conceptualizations and these can be extremely damaging to not only the males themselves but to everyone in their environments as we have seen in the increasing shootings around the country. Kimmel is definitely getting somewhere with this. When a male does not conform to these typical masculine roles he is therefore considered anything but MASCULINE, so he could be called gay, sissy, weak, scared, or sensitive and this builds up and causes psychological effects and builds up within them . I mean at some point these males get sick and tired of this whole idea of not fitting in or being bullied and picked on they BLOW! and instead of focusing on the main issue our society like to blame a numerous amount of issues instead of the MAIN IMPORTANT ONES. Gender construction and typing.... This topic is very personal to me because I have nephews and I want them to be raised without these expectations of their "boy hood" and I also am worried that it may be out of my hands that they will still be expected to act and hold up to these standards causing psychological damage upon themselves unknowingly. However, I will do my best.

PATRIARCHY HURTS EVERYONE