Male Fraud? EXAMINING THE VALIDITY OF THE MALE STUDIES PHENOMENON by Sarah Curtis-Fawley "So, what's your major?" is a question every college student will be assaulted with about a bizillion times during his or her academic career. Unlike many people, who either don't have a clue what their major will be, or don't feel very passionate about their focus of study, I am inwardly thrilled by this everyday inquiry. I am filled with an inspired fervor when I tell people I am a Women's Studies major. My major makes me feel like a feminist hipster, part of the vanguard in a burgeoning academic field. When I signed my major declaration form, I suddenly became a revolutionary. I became a warrior armed with theory and history, with intriguing feminine epistemologies. I began to unlearn what years of TV, Glamour magazine, Barbie dolls, and history textbooks had indoctrinated me with as the "truth" about men and women. When I tell people that I am a Women's Studies major, many reply with a blank stare and ask, "Why?" or "What do you study anyway?" Women's Studies is not a major composed of frivolous bitch sessions, new-age sensibilities and feminist propaganda. It is a critical study of perhaps the most important and influential social construct: gender. Women's Studies allows us to examine how history, psychology, literature, and even science have been based upon the foundations of a vastly disparate power differential between men and women. The study of women and gender constructs is the first step in dismantling these damaging hierarchies and beginning to create "equality" within the social, academic, political, and economic realms. Due to my euphoric passion for Women's Studies, I was deeply offended and enraged when I first heard about the Men's Studies programs being developed at universities across the country. "What the hell are they going to study?" I sneered. "It's not as if history and literature and every single other academic field aren't already predominantly male domains." It seemed that just when women were carving out an essential and respected niche within academia, men were crashing our party and shoving us off the dance floor. My flawed perception of Men's Studies, however, was based on rhetoric found in Robert Bly's Iron John and weekend workshops like "Men, Sex, and Power," which claim to turn "wimps" into "real men." This faction of the men's movement purports that men should go hang out in the woods and beat drums, reclaiming their inner masculinity, what Bly refers to as "the beast within." Frantically attempting to reclaim and reassert masculinity appears to be a blatant knee-jerk reaction to the gains made by the women's movement. Feminism has demanded that institutions and individuals question and redefine what it means to be a man or a woman. Bly and his cronies adamantly seek to remind men and women of their differences and proselytize to men their inherent strength as men. Bly asserts that there are no longer any "real men" in America, that "there's a disease going around, and women have been spreading it. Starting in the '60s, the women have really invaded men's areas and treated them like boys." What would a Men's Studies program based on this logic look like? Would it include Raping and Pillaging 101? Fortunately, the concept and mission of Men's Studies is not to turn male college students into raging misogynists, but to analyze and examine the ways culture, society, and biology shape and define masculinity. This entails an exploration of gender hierarchies and male dominance, and what male power over women has meant throughout history. Dean Bernard Mayes, who is part of the American Men's Studies Association (AMSA), emphasizes that "men also pay a price for the lopsidedness of our culture," which has been grounded in male dominance. Mayes states that "Men have suddenly come to a different view of themselves, as a result of Women's Studies." Men's Studies strives to examine masculinity's entangled relationship with issues such as violence and war, the role of fatherhood, and questions of homosexuality. Far from being a belligerent reassertion of male superiority, the AMSA's mission statement describes "the study of masculinities from an ethical perspective which eschews oppression in all forms (namely, sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, classism, et al.)." Men's Studies shares the goals and objectives of Women's Studies: to provide an academic forum for research and discussion concerning gender and the far-reaching effects of the culturally defined concepts of masculinity and femininity. Dean Mayes asserts that studying and understanding gender is so important because "there is a man and a woman in every person." For centuries, our chromosomes have determined our destiny, ascribing very narrow definitions of what it means to be a man or a woman. The very organization of the world was predicated on a strict separation of the sexes, and rejecting one's gender role was tantamount to mutiny of the entire social structure. Feminism has spurred drastic social upheaval in the past few decades, destroying falsely constructed gender categories and revolutionizing how men and women relate to each other. Women's Studies grew out of this transformation, providing scholarly insight and inquiry into the complex nature of gender, as well as presenting the history and literature of women that had been systematically ignored and silenced. Men's Studies is a natural and even necessary outgrowth of Women's Studies. In order to truly understand the intricacies of gender and the intersection with political, economic, and social concerns, we need to explore the experiences of both men and women. If the purpose of an undergraduate education is to get a job and keep the hierarchical, stratified status quo intact, Men's and Women's Studies may seem like silly pseudo-majors. But perhaps the objective of a college education is to teach us how to look at and understand our complicated world. If this is to be our aim, studying men and women as an academic pursuit has great merit. Gender lies at the heart of the most important issues in our lives and our world: intimate relationships, work, violence, poverty, power. Men's and Women's Studies provide both a lens through which we can critically examine gender and the tools with which we can work towards equality.

back to Decweb main