Masculinity as Homophobia by Michael S. Kimmel

As with a great majority of men in the world today, it is easier for me to give hugs than to accept them. This is not my own doing, but rather centuries of men before myself being taught that the outward expression of emotion, in any facet, was a direct form of weakness. This has led to adverse affects in regards to a new generation of man that I find myself apart of now. This belief has forged a lack of sentiment within men, all in the name of “being a man.” Do not take it the wrong way, as if to say a lack of compassion is a bad thing, they teach young men. It is actually the contrary in a growing market economy. As we shift to a more global marketplace, empathy of any sort is the cog in the wheel that holds a man back in an attempt to fully obtain certain standards of living (or at least the ones the world has set). A lack of emotion can easily be perceived as a competitive advantage. “Emotions will get you killed,” is what they use to say in my neighborhood growing up. Passion became replaced by apathy in the hearts and minds of many of my cohorts coming up in an urban area. And this exact same message is being shared, perhaps in different ways, all throughout the world; as young men are continuously bombarded with this indication that somehow any feminine quality should be repressed. Society, through avenues of media and other propaganda, has formed a way of thinking for men that causes them, despite always having these feelings internally, to put on an act which inhibits them from openly expressing any type of femininity, especially in public.

In Michael S. Kimmel’s work, Masculinity as Homophobia, he reveals the great secret of all men: We are afraid of other men. Kimmel urges the reader to realize that men are grouped int...

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