Aaron W. Voyles examines what bathroom misbehavior means for becoming a man.
Are you familiar with the mega-dump? A mega-dump is achieved when a man is able to climb to the top of a bathroom stall and do his business. Feet and arms perched upon the top of the tall dividers, it’s essentially pooping from great height to the toilet down below. It involves great acrobatic skill, balance, good depth perception, and a flair for adventure.
Though I can’t speak from personal experience on mega-dumping, I can assume it also involves a good bit of risk. I learned about the mega-dump from a group of college men with whom I worked. Based on my informal analysis, I would say that you miss your target more often than not.
In the college world, men succeed at a far lesser rate than women (Lewin, 2006). Part of the reason for this is competency. To develop as a person, you need to get better at things and to believe you can be good at those things. Mega-dumping, it would seem, involves a certain amount of competency.
Chickering (1974) referred to areas of competency as vectors. In his research, he posited that as people developed, we progressed through our physical and mental competencies. We learn to manage our emotions, and eventually we develop our own identities and senses of purpose.
It’s hard to explain a mega-dump as a vector of identity development, but for college men, this type of action can be representative of competency. For many men, being “a man” is intrinsically tied to identity. From birth, boys are given blue things and action figures, while girls are given pink things and dolls. Our gender and identity are often engrained in us far before the college years.
To develop as a man, you must do “manly” things. For college men, this manliness can present itself in a number of problematic ways. Men can prove they are manly by having as many sexual partners as possible. Men become men through taking more shots than any of their friends. I have a buddy who eats sticks of butter and can’t back down from a dare. You know, because he’s a man.
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Mega-dumping is the type of silly activity that permits boys to become men. Not everyone can be the most athletic or the hottest guy, so a skill like mega-dumping gives someone a way to be manlier than his peers. Because identity is tied to gender, boys seek out those opportunities to become men or risk losing their sense of self.
It’s not hard to agree that competency in academics or sports are good. The belief that a man can achieve his academic or physical goals is a good one, and finding out those goals and honing our skills towards them is what makes us develop our identities. It’s what makes us human.
For college men who come in unprepared for college or with other baggage, those positive competencies may not always come quick enough. As others around begin to progress and succeed, a lack of competency may mean a lack of manliness. Here’s where mega-dumping comes in.
We all strive for competency because of the shame of the dunce cap. To lack competency in traditional areas like good looks, intelligence, charisma, or physical prowess is to wear the dunce cap. It is to be called out as less than average, less than manly, or less than human. The shame that follows men from this lacking influences their behaviors.
Chickering’s theory is part of the reason we see the class clowns. It’s the reason I had a member of my freshmen class whose goal was to smoke a pack of cigarettes before I even woke up most days. It’s the reason I’ve won a pizza eating contest and learned to make cocktails far stronger than any of my friends could tolerate.
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To move forward, we need to establish positive masculinity competencies. While it’s true that we need to support our men to lift them up academically, we also need to acknowledge that there will always be men who struggle. How do we disentangle gender and identity enough to influence competency? How do we create positive alternate competencies?
In the end, I laughed when I was told about mega-dumping. I joked with the man who told me that he was crazy, and I marveled at him having attempted it. I fed back into the cycle I now write about as negative. But not all negative competencies are as innocuous as the mega-dump (which, let’s be clear, is still disgusting and problematic behavior).
As silly as it sounds, withdrawing support for mega-dumping is a step in the right direction. As men, we have to commit to recognizing the types of behaviors we support and the reasons behind why we are supporting those.
Chickering, A. (1974). Commuting versus resident students: Overcoming educational inequities of living off campus. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Lewin, T. (2006, July 9). At colleges, women are leaving men in the dust. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/education/09college.html?pagewanted=all.
Ditching the Dunce Cap is a weekly Friday column from Aaron W. Voyles on the University of Texas-Austin. He welcomes your comments.
—Photo Ruthanne Reid/Flickr
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