How and why do we need to talk about men? Jason Kiesau asked Men & Masculinities expert Dr. Michael Kimmel for his insight.
I am curious about human beings. When I was in my early 20’s, I wanted to know about motivation; why we do the things we do; what really motivates us? As I’ve gotten older and more aware of the world, I’ve become more and more interested in the history of people. As a young man who strived to find my identity, a mentor working with young men, and a father of a boy, this study of man and masculinity turned in to a passion.
I’ve found the conversation is a delicate balance between confidence and humility; assertiveness and compassion; having self-respect and still respecting others; and handling responsibilities while taking care of yourself.
◊♦◊
In response to another article I wrote for Good Men Project titled Modern Men and Masculinity, I was asked if I would be interested in interviewing masculinity expert: Dr. Michael Kimmel.
“Michael Kimmel is among the leading researchers and writers on men and masculinity in the world today. He is Distinguished professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at Stony Brook University, where he directs the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities. Kimmel is the author of more than 20 books…”
I recently had the opportunity to spend some time on the phone with Dr. Kimmel to talk about masculinity and ask him questions about things I was curious about. As we reviewed our interview I had a few “aha” moments with things I hadn’t considered. It was an enlightening and fun experience and I am grateful for his time.
Here is the (edited) transcript from my interview with Dr. Michael Kimmel:
JK = Jason Kiesau
MK = Michael Kimmel
JK
The concept of man and masculinity is something I’m passionate about. Growing up in a chaotic household with an alcoholic father and fumbling around in my early 20’s forced me on a journey of redefining and relearning what “being a man” was all about.
Why is this subject so important to you?
MK
Like virtually every guy I know we have sisters, moms, wives, daughters . . . and we want to see them grow up in a world that is equal and where they are treated fairly. I realized early on that the only way we are going to be able to do that is to be able to engage boys and men and be able to talk about this and what holds us back. We want to engage men and meet them where they are in their relationships; as fathers, brothers, sons, uncles, cousins, and friends; all of those relationships that animate our lives. We want to have good relationships with people. For me, it’s always been about the idea that my world… my life is so much better when it’s animated by people that are happier.
JK
With your focus on masculinity, is there a reason there is more of a focus on men than women? My observation has been that if we can fix or lead men to more productivity the world would be a better place for everyone. Is that along the lines of your point of view?
MK
Sure, but it’s not about fixing men, it’s about listening to what men are actually doing and meeting them where they actually are at. Men today are far more involved in child care. They say what masculinity means to them includes things like passion and caring and nurturing; things that would have been unthinkable to Don Draper 50 years ago. So the idea that masculinity has really changed; it’s not about changing men, it’s about honoring the changes that men have already begun.
We need to celebrate men where they are instead of trying to “fix” them by telling them what they “should” do. Men today are more involved and we need to celebrate that.
|
Part of the research that Dove Men + Care is doing is that men have really dramatically expanded, not transformed, it’s not that one has replaced the other, but men have expanded the repertoire of emotions that men now feel to express their manhood. From my perspective it’s really to honor and celebrate where men already are, rather than offer them some blueprint for how they are supposed to change, because that’s going nowhere.
JK
So meeting them where they are gives us the opportunity to embrace what we are feeling in what’s hopefully going to be an accepting culture. I’ve been around people and women who have had an idea in their mind with what the ideal man looks like and their identity and expectations around that really created some issues for the men in their lives. What they were supposed to be doing, whether or not they should be pursing their passions, was their job manly enough? So, I really appreciate your perspective of accepting and allowing rather than changing and fixing.
MK
Let me say something else. The reason I decided to study men was that I really believe we can’t fully empower girls and women without engaging boys and men. But the truth is, in this culture, if I tell we have to talk about race, you’re thinking we are going to talk about people of color. If I tell you we have to talk about gender, you’re thinking we need to talk about women. And I always felt, why don’t we talk about “whiteness?”; why don’t we talk about “masculinity?” These are also important and relatively invisible so we have to make them visible. To me that’s what Good Men Project has always been about. Give guys a platform to talk.
JK
I’m a leadership guy and I facilitate leadership training with men and women. I’m always trying to figure out root causes and trying to identify what motivates people to do great things or stop doing unproductive things. What really motivates men?
MK
I think if we present this transformation in “should” statements”; like “men should be more involved in their families” or “men should take better care of themselves” you won’t get very far. If you offer them the ethical imperative with what is good or fair or the American way, you won’t get very far. I think the answer to this is that you also have to show men that it is in their interest to do it. It is not simply doing it to be nice to the ladies like, “OK, I’m going to chip in with the baby because, you deserve a day off”. It’s not about that, it’s about, “In fact, when I do spend time with my kid it my life is better for it, it enriches me, I feel better about myself”.
Men are happier when they are more involved with their families.
|
And the truth is the data complete supports this. Men who spend time more time with their families and involved in childcare are actually happier. So instead of the ethical imperative; instead of the normative “you should, you should, you should”, rather say “you already are, and good for you” and second is this is in your interest, this is a complete win/win.
JK
I’m a father and extremely involved. I hope I live everything that you are talking about. With nephews and nieces at a younger age I’ve always had a natural flow with kids around me. I know other men who are not as “kid friendly” as I am. I’ve heard some people say that men aren’t naturally as relational as women which may contribute to their involvement with their family. What are your thoughts on that?
MK
If it was simply a matter of biology; if men were simply hard wired to be violent, competitive etc. we as a culture would say ,“We can’t let those people near children”. But the truth is: we are far more complicated than that. If we are going to assume something is biological, we shouldn’t expect much variation. And there is so much variation from culture to culture and there is so much variation with what it means to be a man over the course of your life. What it means to be a real man at age 13 is not what it means to be a real man at age 43 and it’s not what it means to be a man at age 70. They are really different, so your ideals change over time… they change in different countries. So my feeling is that really we have to talk about the interplay of culture and nature. Yes of course, men have some different styles, but the really important thing is that we are all human beings hard wired to care for the next generation, otherwise we couldn’t survive; we are hardwired to do that.
Humans are hard wired to care for the next generation. Men and women may do it differently. We need to stop creating gender wars when it comes to parenting and being more involved.
|
Now some people will short circuit with their wiring and people will create stereotypes. You know these stereotypes that drive you crazy that you see TV that men are basically stoic, monosyllabic buffoons; that they are robots. That’s the caricature that would come from this biology. We are a lot more complicated than that. Some of us may nurture differently than women; some of us the same. Women nurture differently too; so what! Kids need lots and lots of love and support. That’s what they need and it comes in a lot of different packages. The good news is, and I think this is the part that is so important to the Dove Men + Care campaign is that when men do it, they are happier and say they are living the lives they actually want to live. It is not some imposition of some ideology on them. This is what men say they want to do.
JK
Stories that have been relevant to what we are talking about is what has been happening in the NFL with Adrian Peterson, Ray Rice, and other players. I’m a Vikings’ fan so I’ve been close to that. What is it with men and violence and the irresponsibility men seemed to have attached to them, from the violence to the fatherless homes and just not taking responsibility. What is the cause? What’s the gap?
MK
Let me offer two thoughts about that. The first thought is I’m sorry you are a Vikings’ fan as this wasn’t a great year for them. But we focus on the Adrian Petersons and Ray Rices. And each NFL team walks out on the field with 60 guys in pads and you don’t hear about this stuff with all 60 guys on every team, do you? Most of these guys have families, they love their kids, they are good dads, and in the off season they are playing with them. Most of them are not drug taking thugs or gun toting gangbangers. They are really regular guys and we never focus on the fact that most of these guys play a terribly violent game and they take off their pads and they go home to their families. The same thing is true for hockey players and athletes in general. What you’re talking about is not the violence in football specifically, but rather the incredible sense of entitlement that comes with celebrity. You get the same behavior from rock stars or Hollywood actors that you get with football players. There is nothing intrinsic in football that makes it stand out like it’s a world a part that is completely different from the world of other celebrities who thinks the world lies at their feet and make way more money than any of us will ever see. They have a sense of entitlement about them.
So when you said, “Yes, it’s been a really incredible year in the NFL,” I was going to say back to you, “Yeah, who would have ever thought you’d see an NFL add for It’s On Us?” I live in New York so I don’t have to choose; I get an AFC and NFC team and one of our quarterbacks was on a national ad saying guys should step up against domestic violence. I was like, “WHOA!” When was the last time you’ve seen that?” And nobody at that moment said there is something intrinsic in football that leads men to oppose violence.
JK
For part of my undergrad I did my synthesis project on youth leadership. One of the stats that stuck out at me was that half of all children will experience the divorce of their parents. 40% of those children haven’t seen their biological father in over a year. I have worked with boys here in Des Moines who is in terrible situations so I have seen some of it firsthand. How do we tackle some of this stuff like the fatherless homes?
MK
Well, I think we focus too much on form and not content. I’ll give you form question first: of the 40% of the children who haven’t seen their biological father in over a year, that’s because the mothers have sole custody. In those families where the father has sole custody, zero percent of those children have not seen their mother. So, after divorce men do things to often lose touch with their children, but after divorce mothers almost never lose touch with their children. So there is something about masculinity there where after divorce, you walk away and say “I’m out of here”, whereas women never say that, that is interesting to me.
But here is the thing that is really important. Let’s not focus on form, let’s focus on content. What children need is a lot of love, time, and support. That can come in many packages. That can come with a mom and a dad. It can come with a mom. It can come with a dad. It can come with two dads. It can come with two moms. The package is much less important than what is inside the package. Those children need a lot of love, time, and support.
It’s more about the amount of love, time, and support that children get than it is about how they get it. It’s less about the “traditional family” and more about children feeling like people care about them and understand them.
|
I feel like as a culture we need to support what’s inside that package with all of our resources. We have to make it easier for people to balance work and family and we have to make it easier for people to have parental leave. You heard this in the State of the Union Address: we are only one of three countries in the entire world that offers no paid parental leave to anyone. This is really important. We are the only industrial country that offers no paid parental leave to anyone. Do you want to support children? Do you want to support families? That’s how to do it.
JK
So based on what you just said, do you feel as long as the love, time, and support happens consistently that the gender or absence of one gender doesn’t have an impact?
MK
I think we’re asking the wrong question whether it’s a man or a woman. For example, today, I was on a panel at a national mentoring conference with the people from My Brother’s Keeper and other organizations all from an African American lifestyle. The head of My Brother’s Keeper spoke and said that he came from a broken home, was raised by his mom, had powerful sisters, and knows the importance of mentoring. The guy sitting next to me, who is now the head of a foundation, grew up in Detroit with a single mom and there was this guy in his neighborhood who came home every day from work, put his clothes away, kissed his wife, and went outside to play basketball every day with the boys in the neighborhood, none of whom had fathers.
So it is possible to find this kind of support out of a biological father or biological mother. It’s the idea that somebody gets you, somebody sees you, and somebody cares about you. And all that I’m saying is that when men do step up they find their lives are richer and better for it.
JK
So, how do we get men to do that? How do we get more men involved to mentor and volunteer?
MK
I don’t think it’s going to be that hard. My students all have an expectation that they are going to be involved with their family and children way more than their fathers were. I think what you’ll find is the Gen X and Gen Y men are far more involved to begin with.
Let me conclude with this. I think what we’ve always been talking about is walking our talk. OK, we want to be better about it, we want to be better fathers so we say to guys, walk your talk and live the life you say you want to live. But I think the second piece of this is we also have to talk our walk, which is that men are already doing more, but we don’t talk about it that much and we don’t celebrate it that much. There are all these guys who are quietly going about the business of being regular guys, good parents, loving husbands; we don’t celebrate them enough in our culture. The media images of men are either these robotic action heroes who don’t show any other emotion besides anger or these kinds of idiotic buffoon dads who haven’t a clue on how to fold a sock. This is what we are constantly shaping in these media images and it seems to me what we need to do. Yes, we need to walk our talk, but we need to talk our walk and we need to be talking to each other about what we are doing and that we like it.
◊♦◊
Earlier I said that I had a few “aha” moments while talking to Dr. Kimmel. These are my personal takeaways. Some of them reinforce my long-held beliefs, others are new. All of them add up to a view of masculinity that needs to be considered, discussed, and nurtured for our future.
My personal take aways:
- We need to celebrate men where they are instead of trying to “fix” them by telling them what they “should” do. Men today are more involved and we need to celebrate that.
- Men are happier when they are more involved with their families.
- Humans are hard wired to care for the next generation. Men and women may do it differently. We need to stop creating gender wars when it comes to parenting and being more involved.
- It’s more about the amount of love, time, and support that children get than it is about how they get it. It’s less about the “traditional family” and more about children feeling like people care about them and understand them.
- As a culture, we must WALK OUR TALK, TALK OUR WALK, and celebrate what we are doing. We cannot allow the few bad apples and the media to define what being a man is all about. And it’s not about patting ourselves or each other on the back for doing what we are supposed to be doing. It’s about setting an example and showing boys, young men, and other men who haven’t had strong male leadership that it is in their best interest to be step up, be responsible, and get more involved.
Photo: Harry/Flickr
I appreciate the perspectives in this article. It seems as though Michael is addressing a very big context of men and masculinity. And your takeaways of how to orient are mostly refreshing. What is missing here for me is that this article doesn’t address the upbringing, templating of care of lack of care / love in the men that now have influence and families. What is the metric or method from your perspective that addresses the ranges of the men whom are ‘grown’, have families, etc., but never received what it is that’s being said they can now offer to… Read more »
I really like your “My Personal Takeaway ‘: Totally spot on!