Male Studies--Not Just a Guy Thing

Diana Schoeller and Sherry Lutzen want to know what makes men tick: how they think, what they feel, why they behave in certain ways. College classmate Christopher Myer shares their intrigue.

“There’s a lot of confusion right now about what being a man is,” he says. “We’re up for murder, rape, drug abuse, violence, aggression. Obviously, we don’t know who we are since we’re having all these problems.”

A generation after women’s studies began setting down roots on American campuses, scholars scrutinizing the world through the prism of gender have come full circle to integrate the study of men, or what it means to be male.

On the slopes above this Finger Lakes town, Hobart and William Smith Colleges will become the first university in the nation this fall to offer a degree in men’s studies--an undergraduate minor.

“This is not a fad, a tongue-in-cheek kind of gimmick,” says Rocco “Chip” Capraro, a history professor at the coordinate men’s and women’s colleges. “The interest is much more serious, because men’s problems are not going away.”

The caricature of ‘90s guys trekking into the woods to beat drums and bond around a campfire might be difficult to shake, but analysis of male roles in a hurriedly changing society is extending across an array of academic disciplines, from literature and religion to psychology and health.

In fact, U.S. college courses that delve into manhood have proliferated from about 40 in 1984 to more than 500 today, says Sam Femiano, a founder of the American Men’s Studies Assn.

“Just as women and blacks and gay people have been invisible in traditional studies, men have been hyper-visible as public figures, writers, scientists, military heroes--but not as men,” says sociologist Michael Kimmel of the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

In a 19th century British literature course, he says, any debate about the Bronte sisters inevitably turns to “their relationships to marriage, family and femininity,” whereas, instead of “fatherhood, family and sexuality,” Charles Dickens prompts discussion of “class relations, industrial society and Dickens as a social novelist.

“Integrating gender requires us to go back to what we’ve been teaching for decades with fresh questions and new ideas,” says Kimmel, whose books such as “Men Confront Pornography” often serve as texts in men’s studies.

For many Hobart and William Smith students, instead of being an arcane subject, the Men and Masculinity course also delivers a personal impact.

“There have been experiences in my life where men have done odd things to me or around me, and taking this course is a kind of therapy,” says Schoeller, 19, of Danbury, N.H.

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Men are molded by social expectations much more than she realized. “Women are taught the ideal body, the ideal domestic responsibility thing, the ideal wardrobe; men are taught the ideal extracurricular activities, the ideal job, the ideal car,” she says. “Each gender is left to the mercy of society to define who they become.”

In 1992, the school added a Theories of Masculinity seminar for first-year students. Its spring semester course tackles topics such as sexism, homophobia, date rape and domestic violence, using films such as “Born on the Fourth of July,” “Deliverance” and “Philadelphia.”

The class draws many more sophomores and juniors than there’s room for, and women usually outnumber men--a curiosity seen in most men’s studies programs nationwide.

“One could see it as men not really wanting to confront that which may be problematic about being a man,” says sociology professor Jack Harris, who teaches alongside Capraro.

Higher levels of suicide, homicide, alcohol abuse, heart attacks, sports injuries, work-related stress--”the data is the way it is because men are acting like men, in ways typically violent to themselves or others, or taking unnecessary risks in ways women typically don’t,” Harris says.

The course explores diverse expressions of masculinity across race, class and sexuality.

“In our society, we’ve tended to focus only on the narrow, most elite forms of masculinity,” Harris says. “Most of us men would fail if John Wayne was the model because we’re living smaller lives, trying to raise a family, trying to get the job done, often with much fear and uncertainty.”

Big changes in women’s lives, in relationships, parenting and the workplace, carry big implications for men. Just as the emergence of men’s movements such as Promise Keepers and the National Organization for Men Against Sexism attest, “this is, kind of, men catching up with change,” Capraro says.

Alexis Santi, 21, says the course demonstrates male privilege “even in something as simple as walking the street at night. Men don’t have the issue, ‘Am I going to get heckled? Is someone going to grab me in an inappropriate way?’ ”

Lutzen, 42, a mother of four who is finishing up a studio art degree, says she’s discovering “men’s issues are just as stressful as women’s issues. I can almost sometimes feel as sorry for them as I do for us.

“I always thought everything was just fine for them,” she adds, laughing. “Maybe they’re just better at hiding the way they feel.”

She says she has pulled back on “categorizing men” and thinks men’s studies are an eye-opener. “They should have courses in kindergarten--when you get to seventh grade, a lot of times it seems too late.”

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So far, there are few fears that men’s studies constitute a backlash against a women’s movement making too much headway. Most scholars see it as a natural progression.

“Women’s studies called attention to the fact that we all play certain roles socially that are very much determined by our gender,” says Charles Thornbury, an English professor at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn.

Through books, films and plays, his students explore men’s aggression and self-scrutiny in war (“The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien), sports (“North Dallas Forty”) and at work (“Glengarry Glen Ross”).

“Women and ideas of femininity are constructed in relation to men and masculinity, so you can’t really understand one without the other,” says Mike Messner, an associate professor of sociology and gender studies at USC.

“The study of men is not there to rectify a silence about men, because everything before has been about men. It’s there more to start looking at men in different ways, through perspectives that arise in women’s studies.”

“The idea,” echoes Capraro, “is to find agreement ultimately on issues of social justice and gender equity. We don’t downplay conflict, but we hope in the end to find a common cause.”