It is said that guidelines are good to have, but it is not pointed out that they can be restricting. In other words, guidelines can help an individual know exactly what to do in a situation but can be detrimental to another individual because their natural ability to think outside of those guidelines is painfully stifled to appease societal standards. This statement is supported by the author Michael Kimmel of “Bros Before Hos” and the author Junot Diaz of “Drown”. The lens text “Bros Before Hos” lays out a helpful framework for understanding how, in particular, men must feel having to ostracize feelings and thoughts to stay within set guidelines that society expected for them to follow in the target text “Drown”. Indeed, in the target text, …show more content…
“Drown” has the following main characters: the unnamed male protagonist/narrator of the story, the mother of the protagonist, and Beto. Beto is an old friend of the narrator and is the only named character in the story. They are no longer close friends anymore since Beto tried to pursue the male protagonist twice sexually. “Drown” starts with the narrator’s mother telling him that Beto is back in town after a good while and that he should try to find Beto to catch up on each other’s lives. As the narrator looks for Beto, he begins to have these flashbacks of his relationship with Beto. They used to be best friends and would go around causing trouble and stealing together until one day they had sexual encounters that Beto unexpectedly tried to initiate with the narrator. The narrator has since then been a bit more reclusive whenever Beto is brought up into conversation, especially when his mother did so. The narrator’s sexuality is never stated in the story. These things were done purposefully by Diaz to show how the narrator may be confused with his sexuality. As seen in “Bros Before Hos”, it is the masculine ideal to be heterosexual. Homosexuality is seen as the insult towards men. “Bros Before Hos” gives the reader more of an insight into “Drown” as to why the narrator is mostly silent and refuses to thoroughly identify himself to the reader in order not be “abnormal, a f*cking pato” (Diaz 104). The word “pato” means the word “duck” in Latin America, but it can also be used as slang to insult a gay man. The protagonist knowing this shows the reader how much he resents wanting to be known as that. It is said that he was “terrified” (Diaz 104) of being called those things. This hints at the narrator being homosexual or at least bisexual and being not only uncomfortable with it, but also scared by the fact. It is clear that he is not the heterosexual he wants to
In Kimmel’s essay “’Bros Before Hos’: The Guy Code” he argues that the influence of society on masculinity is equal to or greater than biological influences on masculinity. In the essay, Kimmel uses various surveys and interviews to validate his argument. He points to peers, coaches, and family members as the people most likely to influence the development of a man’s masculinity. When a man has his manliness questioned, he immediately makes the decision never to say or do whatever caused him to be called a wimp, or unmanly. Kimmel’s argument is somewhat effective because the readers get firsthand accounts from the interviewees but the author does not provide any statistics to support his argument.
As young men grow up, they would generally learn and integrate within a box of codes which shows them how to be a man, known as the Guy Code. The Guy Code is a set of rules prevalently applied among men groups about how a man behaves with other men and his girlfriend. It mainly teaches guys to be dominant, aggressive and fearless. In Michael Kimmel’s “ Bros Before Hos: The Guy Code”, he indicates that men disguise their emotions and inner beings to be like a man, particularly among their peers. It imposes a consciousness that timidity is not a characteristic that men should have.
Pascoe’s next major study was an eighteen-month research project, which produced the book Dude,You’re a Fag. The book is an ethnography the daily lives of teenage boys in a present day public high school. She finds that masculinity in teenage boys is defined by dominance and control. More so she talks about what she calls “fag discourse”, boys call each other hurtful names to further create domina...
Here we go again but this time Bud isn't looking for Herman, Miss Thomas is looking for Bud. This paper will be about what would have happened if Miss Thomas was looking for Bud. It would have been different if Miss Thomas was looking for Bud because Miss Thomas is looking for Bud. Also, Bud would have stayed in Flint. Finally, Miss Thomas would have found him. So, this is how it might be different if Miss Thomas was looking for Bud.
“Expect more from yourself than from others” (Ryan Ferreras). In our world today, people have high expectations for themselves but also for others. One might even argue and say that people expect more from others than they do from themselves. In the selection, “Bros Before Hos”: The Guy Code by Michael Kimmel, Kimmel emphasizes the expectations of being a guy and what to do to act masculine. But in our world, there are not just expectations for guys but also for girls. There are expectations on the way males and females talk, the way they act and the things they do, and about the things they are suppose to like.
The images that infiltrate our lives appear to focus on maintaining the status quo or the norms of society. They are designed to show what is expected in life. Berger states, "Images were made to conjure up the appearance of something that was absent"(107). Berger argues "images" are "conjured up" or imagined to represent what is "absent" or what the individual wants to see as reality. There used to be a tendency to over exemplify the way in which women were thought to be, but "today, that opposition no longer seems to hold quite as rigidly as it once did (women are indeed objectified more than ever, but, in this image-dominated culture, men increasingly are too)" (156). Regardless of so...
The male is supposed to be the main bread winner of the family unit, making money and protecting the woman while she tends to the children and the house. In the modern day this mold has been challenged to a certain extent with more woman moving into careers beyond the home. However, in Freud’s time these set matrimonial roles were still in place, especially the ones limiting women from having any form of sexual relations prior to her wedding. As he puts it, a high value is placed on a women’s “preservation of sexual chastity”. Practices such as ‘slut-shaming’ represent a continuation of this tendency to stigmatize the sexual promiscuity of women. Freud argues that this lack of sexual experience and knowledge of a woman will lead to problems for both parties in a marriage. If a woman is suffering in an unhealthy marriage he posits that a woman will develop mental problems as “nothing protects her virtue so securely as
Although contemporary society is not as patriarchal as it was in the past, that male dominance still exists today. Young’s description of a self-imposed “I cannot” can be supported with common real life examples today. The “I cannot” comes from a woman’s insecurities, fear of getting hurt, and underestimating their bodily capacities. In a sexist society, these factors of the self-imposed “I cannot” would lead to
A man, at least, is free; he can explore each passion and every kingdom, conquer obstacles, feast upon the most exotic pleasures. But a woman is continually thwarted. Both inert and yielding, against her are ranged the weakness of the flesh and the inequity of the law…. Always there is the desire urging, always there is the convention restraining. (MB, 70) 1
Along with the responsibilities a man has when in a relationship, women have the equal right to decided upon relationship goals and her owns. Hills Like White Elephants, by Ernest Hemingway portrays the image of man as a powerful coward unable to be responsible of his own actions; but even worst the image of a woman who empowers her mate to decide everything as he pleases. The young lady and her partner are discussing the option of an abortion for the unwished offspring she is carrying. She says, “If I do it you won’t ever worry… Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me”(Cite). The man tries to show his concern by saying, “ I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t want to. I’m perfectly willing to go through with if it means anything to you” (cite). Unfortunately, the man here is not interested on taking responsibilities, but he is not to blame. A woman who is not even sure if she wants an Anis del Toro drink with or without water, rather she waits for her lover to decided for her. A yet to be mother that chooses a man before the life she is carrying. This is the image of women that have been portray since Ancient Mesopotamia, but back then women had no option than to be submissive of
Sexism serves as the constant reminder that, although in our history there have been many changes, we still have much to work on. The equality of all people has yet to be achieved and while the progress made should be noted, there are facts of our culture that demonstrate we still haven’t reached where we need to be. As for how The Bro Code comes into play, Director Thomas Keith explores the aspect that society still harbors and in most ways promotes the inequality between men and women. Director Thomas Keith clearly states in the beginning of the documentary that even he grew up believing that “women were here for our sexual enjoyment” (Keith). His documentary serves to focus that our society has allowed for men to objectify women and to believe that they are better. These thoughts that he presents are not foreign or stretches of the imagination but simply observations of the society in which we live.
In today’s heterosexual and patriarchal society sex and sexual desires revolve around men, and Hoagland sets out seven patterns showing how this is the case. Sex is thought of as a “powerful and uncontrollable urge” and male sexuality therefore is a basic component to male health, sexual acts show male conquest and domination, sexual freedom gives men total access to and over women, rape is, by this logic, natural and women who resist a man’s advances are “‘frigid’”, sex involves losing control and sexual desire, when described as erotic, “involves a death wish (eros)”. The bottom line is that in today’s heterosexual and patriarchal society sex is all about men having a natural power over women; sex involves a total loss of control which creates a split between reason and emotion since being in control is a matter of reason controlling emotions, “we tend to believe that to be safe we must be rational and in control but to...
Overall, we can see that 200 years later we are still attempting to escape from the gender line created through society’s image of men and women. Men and women still fail to communicate their feelings within their relationships, resulting in an overall unhealthy marriage. Today women and men attempt to challenge these gender stereotypes by taking on the roles of the opposite gender, but like in the “Yellow Wallpaper” are immediately met with “heavy opposition” and disapproval through the process. Although we may seem as though we are improving in escaping from the gendered stereotypes, the past will always be recurrent in a majority of relationships today if dominance within the relationship is not equally balance between both sexes.
Imagine that you are hurt, whether it is physically, emotionally, or even mentally but you cannot express these emotions. You cannot show one bit of the pain that you are experiencing. The only thing you can do is hide behind a huge dark mask that consumes you and who you really are just so you have the ability to conform to the rest of your peers and society. What makes it even worse is that it must be done for the majority of the days you live. The reality is this exists today in the world we live in. Men every day are forced to conform to the rules of the guy code in order to live without the criticism of society. In the article “’Bros Before Hos’: The Guy Code” by sociologist and spokesperson for the National Organization for Men Against
Some of the most controversial issues in society have historically revolved around matters relating to gender and sexuality. As gender plays an integral part in how we function in society, we quickly learn what is expected of us through our gender roles at a young age and our sexual scripts as we get older. We are expected to conform to our respective gender roles of femininity or masculinity depending on the sex we were assigned at birth. We learn that certain characteristics and expressions are attributed to each gender but are never taught that gender is fluid but instead it is binary. We also become subjected to assumptions of our sexual desires and attraction based on our sex and our gender and are expected not to deviate from it. We become