Raoul Wieland didn’t expect to be so moved or challenged by Michael Kimmel’s book about the process of how boys become men in our society.
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Dear Michael Kimmel,
It has now been a week since I finished reading your book, Guyland – The Perilous World where Boys become Men. I am grateful to have read it and to you for writing it and playing such a big part in this important conversation. I took much from your book.
Guyland, which you describe as not only being a stage in life, that for men tends to fall in between the ages of 16 and 26, but also a place or several places where adolescent youth – guys – gather with each other, has also been a part of my growing up. Having read your book, I now have the chance to reflect back on my time in High School and University, and equipped with your research and narrating, am able to not only better understand what happened during this time, but perhaps also see my experiences in a different light.
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I am/was the typical white, middle-class kid that has been so much the focus of your writing. Every day I breathed Guyland and remember only too well how guys that I knew struggled to not only understand this thing called manhood, this elusive quality called masculinity, but also to prove that they possessed it – whatever they thought it was – to the watchful, evaluative eyes of other guys. They never directly indicated that they were struggling – something frowned upon in Guyland – but there were signs and I too, after all, was struggling. I saw many guys, feeling challenged in their masculinity, who struggled, for example, with the choice of fighting or walking away, of rising to the challenge or backing down, as they saw it. As can be expected, I was spectator to many a face-off behind school buildings as guys threw punches at each other, hoping that they would come out of this confrontation more or less unscathed, emotionally and physically. None ever did. Most would rather not fight. I knew them to be kind and gentle, most of the time. Yet still they fought.
Having been a quiet, shy kid, I was never the one to loudly proclaim or prove my masculinity, but I was very much trying to prove something to myself and others – perhaps it was manhood, at the time it was all very confusing – and to seek the approval of my classmates. I did this mostly through excelling in sports, but also by portraying myself as confident, tough, experienced, above emotion, independent and unaffected by mostly anything, including romance. Guys are good at shrugging things off and pretending that they are unimpressed, unmoved. I excelled in this department thus following, unknowingly but nevertheless conscious of some sort of seductive if often frightening push and pull, a path that made me very much a part of what Guyland expects of guys.
While my parents never sat me down and drew me a map for how to navigate my feelings and experiences, they were able to instill in me – often without knowing it – an understanding of how to respect and treat people, how to work hard, how to question, how to listen and how to walk away from things that could hurt. Perhaps this is why I never fought.
I remember my father telling me that for him, the threshold of becoming a man was crossed when he first realized and accepted the burden of responsibility; there would be no one else to blame for his actions but himself, no parents to excuse and protect him from the carelessness of youth.
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I am now 26 years old. That leaves me at the supposed threshold of becoming a man and leaving Guyland behind. As I do so, I am left with many more questions than answers. I will offer a few of them here for further conversation.
1) From your book I get the impression that once a guy has become a man, all is good and well. To begin with, I would like to challenge how you seem to go along with the idea that being a man requires having completed some if not all of the five transitions of: leaving home, completing one’s education, starting work, getting married and becoming a parent. Can we not be men without ever achieving any of these? Granted, most of us need to find work, but are not the other transitions more or less arbitrary to defining what makes a man? Does here really lie the final harbour, whence we unmoor no more?, to use your quote from Moby-Dick.
2) You write that guys do move on from Guyland, grow up and settle down. We become men and the issues that once plagued us and the damage that we did to one another whilst in Guyland somehow seem to dissipate more or less into thin air. If we look at our society and how much damage is being done by and for these so-called grown-up men, then where does this leave us? What stage do we need to define now? Think of systems of oppression (sexism, racism, ageism…), xenophobia, damaging drug and educational policies, financial corruption, a disregard for social support, a looking down upon the poor, mass incarceration, war after war in the middle east, targeted drone assassinations, much collateral damage, the incessant destruction and contamination of our environment, the many political power plays, hierarchy wrangling and name calling. This is not the work of guys, but mostly men. Men who are fathers, workers, have completed their education, moved out and are married.
Do we not need to allow in our definition of what a man is, also his imperfect nature? His fault and his failure? His darkness? And how can we do so without returning him to the state of guy? What about our definition of ‘success’ in relation to ‘being’ a man. Do we need to think about how we can define it in a way such that it is not hetero-normative and based in capitalist ideals of being? Is being a ‘real man’, as you write, really only about “doing the right thing, standing up to immortality and injustice when you see it, and expressing compassion, not contempt, for those who are less fortunate”? Who that you know can live up to any of these and thus call himself a ‘real man’? Where is the room to maneuver and learn and fail again and again and yet, like Jean Vanier so eloquently puts it in his writings, stand up once more and try to support each other despite our failings, imperfections and sufferings? Are we not placing the idea of ‘being a man’ on too high a pedestal? Are we not then in danger of indeed unmooring no more, calling ourselves complete and failing to keep growing, thinking, changing, adapting, learning and engaging?
3) Are the attributes and actions, the ones that you use to define a ‘real man’, not also those that define ‘real women’? You write that some question the ideology of masculinity and call for it to be discarded since all of the qualities that are attributed to it, such as honor, respect, integrity, doing the right thing despite the costs, are also those that describe women or anyone that does not pay lip-service to the conventional gender constructs. I understand when you write that we need a way to define our identity, and that ‘enlightened masculinity’ might be useful, but can we not find an alternative? Can we really envision no alternative identity? Do we need to box ourselves in? Is dropping the notion of manhood and womanhood for personhood really so impractical? Can we not see ourselves as beings that hold many different qualities and traits all at the same time and acknowledge that we live in a world that is not black and white but filled with spectra that we continuously navigate and change position on, such as the one that locates us as somewhere between feminine and masculine; gay or straight? Do we always need to be defined and identifiable? Is, whence I leave Guyland, becoming a ‘man’ really the only option that you suggest is open to me?
4) The big focus of your study seems to be the middle-class, white, heterosexual kid growing up in High Schools and Universities all across the United States. You rarely mention the many youth that are racialized as African American, Latino or Asian nor do you mention youth that are queer, in any great detail. Also, when you do talk about socio-economic class you only refer to the increasingly unreliable and depersonalized job market as it pertains to how middle, white-class youth develop their identity. You rarely go into politics or explore how different systems of oppression and power operate to create life experiences that are quite different depending on which identity group one belongs to. The effects of class on influencing the experience in Guyland are also not explored much. Why leave out so many important forces acting upon guys as they grow up? Would they not greatly impact how youth navigate Guyland, the resources and resilience they have to do so and the particular messages that might be unique to them based on their particular identity?
Finally, what about the long-lasting impacts of bullying or perhaps better described as verbal and non-verbal physical/psychological violence? What does Guyland have to say about these experiences? where they come from, what impacts they have on the developing notion of self and identity, how they differ between youth and what messages are being conveyed through them?
In the spirit of opening up the conversation and finding positive approaches to navigating not only Guyland but also whatever follows after, I offer these reflections and questions to you and whomever finds themselves on a similar path of much uncertain navigation.
Sincerely,
Raoul Wieland
Photo: Flickr/José Antonio Morcillo Valen
Excellent critique mate, truly.
I’d heard of Guyland, though I haven’t read it… but either way, I’ve asked many of those same questions myself. More often than not, the answers I receive only lead to more questions as well.