The Huffington Post has an interesting new article about some research on the changing nature of masculinity for teenage boys in England. My primary reaction to the article? Holy shit, the good guys are winning.
One of the biggest changes is that masculinity no longer automatically equals hatred of women and homosexuality. Slut-shaming and use of misogynistic language was rare. And teen boys (as do most people under thirty) explicitly support gay rights, such as marriage, and disavow homophobia. Even though (gay and straight) they’re likely to use “gay” to refer to things they don’t like, they claim this use of gay is unrelated to homosexuality (…somehow).
My personal experience confirms this trend: as a slutty nonbinary pansexual female-assigned person, I’ve experienced an extraordinary amount of basic human respect from my straight cis male friends. I am aware that my experience is very privileged (I grew up in a liberal area and don’t disclose to people who seem to be assholes) but compared to the amount of support I’d have gotten even twenty years ago (i.e. none), it is an amazing change.
…It’s kind of sad that “basic human respect” is a sign of progress, isn’t it?
Perhaps growing out of the greater acceptance of homosexuality, teen boys’ definitions of masculinity have expanded and grown healthier. Within the schools studied, fighting is no longer considered cool or manly. Guys care about looking good and express their sense of style, which is a positive trend (even though that’s something we ought to be watching for signs of an incipient male Beauty Myth). Most heartening, femmephobia has eroded so much in these schools that one of them has adopted Barbie Girl as an unofficial anthem. (England, I approve, keep it up. America has a long way to go.)
One of the biggest changes has been with friends. Freed from homophobia, teenage boys are encouraged to express their love for each other and to value their friendships. Freed from toxic masculinity, they are willing to express their fears, whether of a breakup or of a snake, and to express support for each other. Given the social support gap between men and women, this is amazing progress.
Many teen boys do what the author of the article calls “ironic heterosexual recuperation”: for instance, they might say “I’m so turned on by you right now,” miming homosexual desire as a means of reaffirming their heterosexuality. (Dear God, I’ve seen that SO many times.) It is certainly less homophobic than “ew, you’re gay,” and it allows teen boys to express love, touch each other, etc. However, it is still somewhat problematic, because it ultimately others homosexuality (like any irony, the joke is “isn’t it hilarious I’m saying this, because I’m definitely NOT like that?”)
Are teen boys wandering off, hand in heterosexual hand, into Gender Liberation Utopia? Unlike the author, I’m not willing to go that far. I believe the whole “that’s so gay isn’t homophobic” thing about as much as I believe that calling a woman a cunt isn’t sexist. While they may be less likely to slut-shame than previous generations, they still do, and other forms of sexism, like rape apologism and normalization, are still endemic among teen boys. Faux-homosexuality as a means of differentiating oneself from gay people is an improvement on homophobia for same, but it’s still not good.
“However several trans men I know have said that they have been called “tranny” as an insult on several occasions, so where does that leave them?”
Have they been presumed to be trans women at this time? Given the population’s ignorance of trans men, I wouldn’t think it this farfetched for them to think that a trans man was a “lucky” trans woman (in terms of height usually) that didn’t know how to really appear female (since trans men don’t want to, usually).
“I dunno Schadrach, how do you feel about the word tranny being used by trans men (in a “This is a cool word to describe us” way), when it historically was entirely aimed at trans women (since trans men were not even presumed to exist)?” I’ve been involved with discussions about this, the idea that trans men using the word “tranny” to describe themselves is not appropriate reclaiming because the word is generally directed at trans women. However several trans men I know have said that they have been called “tranny” as an insult on several occasions, so where does… Read more »
“Two of my female friends won the prom queen equivalent (different years). In any of your typical american teen movies, both would easily fall under the geek category; one went on to study mechanical engineering. The other to study piano at a very prestigious music collage. ” I live and grew up in the UK, and I’ve always found the portrayal of social hierachies in high schools from US films and TV shows pretty unreal and in no way connected to anything I’d actually experianced (particually the idea that someone can be both popular *and* mean, surely you become popular… Read more »
“Flaw in the system, since we are talking about words and no one else has pointed it out, your use of the word “lame” is a bit troublesome also.” True, but at the time a grew up it wasn’t connected (unless you went hunting through a dictionary) with physical disabilities. Someone else addressed that after my comment (I’m not saying it makes it right, thats just how it is). Similarly queer used to mean odd/strange, and certainly did whilst I was quite young and I saw the word change through my school years. There used to be an old couple… Read more »
“That’s all well and good except a) the word “gay” only came to mean “something bad” because it meant “homosexual male” and b) the word is still, regularly, and commonly used as a self-identification by men who have sex with men; no one is ignorant of this usage so, even if they are, somehow, ignorant of point a, they still know that they’re using a common self-identification to refer to bad things.” I used “gay” to reference… well… actually stereotypically weird, colorful and maybe a little bit distasteful things loosely associated with transsexuals, be it persons or objects for a… Read more »
Black Humor: worked very well with “queer” It did? ohhh never mind then… sorry, I’m obviously wrong! Tofu: the lower classes Ouch! Glad I don’t live in the UK. I would deck the first person who described me that way. I’d be in jail all the time. 😉 “Working class” and/or “poor” are preferable and more accurate terms than deciding who is “lower” than someone else. You might try one of those, in case one of us lower class people hear you. Leum, write the comment, copy it, then *refresh page* and then post it. Its the only thing I’ve… Read more »
Flaw in the system, since we are talking about words and no one else has pointed it out, your use of the word “lame” is a bit troublesome also. Rachel Maddow loves the word, but seems to be using it less often. I haven’t heard her say it lately, since we all started tweeting her like crazy whenever she did. I like to think that had some positive results. Nothing bad about being lame and it should not be used as a euphemism for ineffectual or somehow lacking. I grew up with the word “queer” as an introduction to a… Read more »
Also, is every comment in this blog individually moderated, or did I do something to warrant special attention? I think every comment I’ve posted lately has been moderated.
“Even though (gay and straight) they’re likely to use “gay” to refer to things they don’t like, they claim this use of gay is unrelated to homosexuality (…somehow).” Oh come on you have to be smarter than that. “gay” originally meant “joyful” or “joyous.” Words evolve. it happens. That’s all well and good except a) the word “gay” only came to mean “something bad” because it meant “homosexual male” and b) the word is still, regularly, and commonly used as a self-identification by men who have sex with men; no one is ignorant of this usage so, even if they… Read more »
The UK is waaay more socially progressive than the states. That being said, The UK is a very very classist place (more so than the states) and the lower classes have yet to reap the rewards of the enlightened society.
In Glasgow people still get knifed for looking at other people the wrong way, for instance.
“Gay” was used in the late nineteenth centuy in London to mean engaging in prostitution, so as they say, go figure. Language changes over time and to hell with those people who suggest a word’s meaning is fixed in stone for all time, or that only they are allowed to determine what it means and who can use the word. As for the central idea that English teenagers are somehow more tolerant, maybe. Depends which teenagers you mean. Homophobia is absolutely rampant in the young black inner-city community, and among those kids belonging to street gangs, where recent studies have… Read more »
Pretty sure they were meaning the kids adopted Barbie Girl as an unofficial thing, rather than it being a school policy or summat.
“Even though (gay and straight) they’re likely to use “gay” to refer to things they don’t like, they claim this use of gay is unrelated to homosexuality (…somehow).”
Oh come on you have to be smarter than that. “gay” originally meant “joyful” or “joyous.” Words evolve. it happens.
@Mr. lurk wait a school with boys attending adopted barbie girl as a theme? isn’t that kinda othering? Wouldn’t the goal be something gender neutral? not just, not male? I agree with that Mr. lurk. Also, hurray for the absence of femmephobia and all, but if I can be all ‘What about teh wommenz here’, Barbie Girl is also a song about a girl sort of selling herself as an object in a sexual light. It’s a fun song for everyone who gets that it should be tongue-in-cheek, but high school shouldn’t be were either gender is uh, celebrating sexual… Read more »
I also think using ‘gay’ as a slur is still rather homophobic. I believe the author may have overextended himself a bit trying to establish that even though we run into this issue so much, that he feels attitudes are better than ever. I’d agree, from my ‘currently not in high-school’ perspective, that things do seem much better than they used to be. I like that he defends, a bit, a heterosexual man’s prerogative to be seen as heterosexual. Ironic humor and ‘No Homo’ statements are homophobic, and that’s not good, but overtly heterosexual statements can sometimes be seen as… Read more »
wait a school with boys attending adopted barbie girl as a theme? isn’t that kinda othering? Wouldn’t the goal be something gender neutral? not just, not male?
anyway happy chick day oz
Jumping into the “that’s so gay” debate, the annoying thing about words being used like that (“gay”, “retarded”, used to be “idiot”, “moron” and “imbecile” were this too) is that linguistic change doesn’t usually happen because someone demands it. A language generally evolves without much respect for who it’s offending and there’s not much anyone can do to force it to change. It’s certainly POSSIBLE to do that (it wasn’t too long ago that “nigger” could be used seriously, by white people, without consequences) but generally the options are either to attempt to reclaim the word (worked very well with… Read more »
As a teenager, I can tell you one thing about teenagers (and about people people in general), many of them only give empty lipservice to gay people and women, they will say they support people as equals regardless of sex or sexual orientation, but it practice they do no such thing, they’re lying, they want to make it look like they’re being falsely accused when someone calls them out on their asshattery. Personally, I don’t think broadening and redefining masculinity is actually the right thing to do, because masculinity is and always will be a stereotype about how men are… Read more »
A lot of this fits nicely with my recent time in a British senior school (first time I’ve heard the word high school over here). I remember in one of my classes we had one boy openly express homophobia, the general reaction was a sheer inability to understand why you’d find homosexuality discomforting. I myself won best costume (with a standing ovation) at the last day, just by turning up in a dress. (I was going to go for the American McGee version of Alice in Wonderland, but I left things too late and couldn’t get it together in time… Read more »
I think there’s an unspoken undercurrent here of “intent isn’t fucking magic, guys.” Even if we go to an unrealistic extent for the sake of argument and say the people using gay as a word for badthing are in and of themselves not at all homophobic (in that they accept gay people with absolutely no problems), and simply lacking any mental connection between gay-people and gay-badthing, but that’s not really the point. The point is the effect it has on gay people to have their identity being used to mean Bad, even if the people saying it weren’t making that… Read more »
“I will buy this argument when and only when someone is legitimately confused by someone self-identifying as “gay.” As long as people are aware that “gay” means someone who has sex with people of the same sex, using “gay” as a perjorative is homophobic.”
This.
I remember when I was at school (in the UK, so comparable to the schools studied in the article) everyone used the word gay as an insult. Not necessarily for people, more for situations, like ‘that’s so gay that we have to stay after school’ or whatever. I think a lot of people did this unthinkingly, including me, and I honestly did not really think about the actual meaning of the word until my mum heard me saying it and told me not to. Her doing that made it click in my brain that to equate the word ‘gay’ with… Read more »
@woop: I don’t know that the “i’m so turned on by you(except I’m not isn’t this so funny)’ sexuality reaffirmation is as problematic as you might think. I’ve seen it used pretty much equally by my straight friends, gay friends, bi friends, etc. It seems to be just a sort of universal ‘this statement isn’t true and therefore funny’ joke, at least in my experience. Well, I once had a guy online tell me had a man crush on me. He knew I was female, but for him, it was more about a certain type of relationship than about gender.… Read more »
@Schala: I prefer to stay out of that one, since it’s not about the word having a different meaning entirely that can be discerned from either context or tone (such as the way the word “gay” gets used with some frequency to not mean “homosexual”). I’d be shocked if at some point in the future the word didn’t acquire a second meaning of some kind, and the use of that second meaning wasn’t considered offensive to the transgendered regardless of what that second meaning actually was. For a good example of changing meanings, “a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid… Read more »
I will buy this argument when and only when someone is legitimately confused by someone self-identifying as “gay.” As long as people are aware that “gay” means someone who has sex with people of the same sex, using “gay” as a perjorative is homophobic.
Nail on the head Leum, Nail on the head.