Masculinities, Crime and Criminology, Richard Collier 

Collier (1998) criticizes Messerschmidt’s concept of hegemonic masculinity as too limited, arguing that it fails to consider the complexity of social subjects. He uses the case of the Dunblane Massacre to demonstrate the multifaceted nature of masculinity and its influence on violent behavior. Collier’s nuanced approach provides insight into the specific violence of men.

Collier (1998) is critical of Messerschmidt’s work on masculinity and crime

Collier argues the concept of hegemonic masculinity is limited. 

For collier this is simply a list of traits which are not common to men. Women can also express the traits of what Messerschmidt calls ‘hegemonic masculinity’. 

Messerschmidt uses the concept of hegemonic masculinity to explain too many types of crime. He uses it to explain everything from sexual abuse to traffic offences, from burglary to corporate crime. 

Messerschmidt’s’ concept of hegemonic masculinity isn’t really sociological. It is based on stereotypical ideas about what a typical traditional man should be, drawn from popular ideologies. 

Collier’s Postmodernist Approach

Collier argues a postmodernist approach is needed to understand the relationship between masculinity and crime. Such an approach would address the complexity of the multi-layered nature of the social subject. Stereotypes and images of masculinity are important, because they do affect people’s understanding of what it means to be masculine. 

However, they are always interpreted in particular contexts. For Collier, men do not simply try to ‘accomplish masculinity’, because masculinity is multifaceted and where crimes are perceived as related to masculinity emerges in the discourses that surround crime. 

There is uncertainty around what it means to be masculine because of the changing configurations of childhood, family and fatherhood, and of heterosexual social practices and sexed subjects. 

Collier believes it is preferable to examine the subjective expression of masculinity by individuals or groups of men through crime rather than generalise about hegemonic masculinity. 

Generalisations are dangerous because male identities are precarious and never fixed. 

The Dunblane Massacre

Collier’s approach can be demonstrated by his case study of Thomas Hamilton, the guy who carried out the Dunblane Massacre.

On 13 March 1996 Thomas Hamilton shot and killed 16 primary school children and their teacher in Dunblane, Scotland. He then committed suicide by shooting himself. 

Hamilton was a local man who was 43 and single. He lived alone but kept in frequent contact with his mother, who was local. 

He had been a scoutmaster but had been forced to leave because of ‘inappropriate behaviour’. He had failed, despite a number of attempts, to be reinstated. 

Collier argued the media portrayed Hamilton as a monster. It was implied he was a repressed homosexual, because he was single, had never married and had an interest in male children. 

The media saw him as an inadequate nobody, a man who had failed to express any kind of masculine success: not financially, socially, sexually, academically in sport or at work. Hence why he went on to express his masculinity in a violent way. 

However Collier argues that failed masculinity doesn’t offer a full explanation of Hamiltons’ extreme violence. 

He argues we need to take account of the multifaceted nature of his masculinity and the interface between the contexts in which Hamilton lived at the level of social structure and the specifics of his own life history. 

Based on the evidence Collier argues there was no evidence that Hamilton was a predatory paedophile, it is more likely he felt a need to control and direct young boys in order to direct their development. 

Hamilton was regarded as a paedophile because he went against the norm: it is mainly women who care for children and men who take on the role are automatically regarded with more suspicion. 

Thwarted in his attempts to express his masculinity as a Scout Leader, Hamilton sought to express it through an interest in guns. This allowed him to draw on images of hypermasculine toughness. By attacking the school he was asserting male authority and turning it on the feminised world of primary education. 

His act of violence wasn’t one of losing control, it was one of him taking control. 

Evaluation 

Collier’s account is nuanced and explains the specific violence of men based on both structure and their specific life histories. 

However it is just down to his interpretation. We can never be certain about what led Hamilton to commit such a gross act of violence.

Signposting

This material is relevant to the Crime and Deviance module within A-level sociology.

Paul Collier (1998) Masculinities and Crime.

Masculinities and Crime: James W. Messerschmidt

Messerschmidt (1993) notes that males commit most crimes and therefore any study of crime must include a study of masculine values.

He criticises sex-role theory for assuming socialisation is passive. This theory assumes boys are simply not taught to ‘act male’ in childhood and this then defines their behaviour into adulthood.

He also rejects biological explanations for higher rates of male offending.

Messerschmidt points out that cross cultural comparisons show that masculinity varies across cultures. Both men and women are active agents in the construction of their identities. They do not just act on the basis of their biology or sex-roles they have been taught in childhood. They make active decisions as they go through their lives.

Messerschmidt thus argues that any theory which explains why men commit crime must take account of different masculinities. Different conceptions of masculinity tend to lead to different social actions and different types of criminality.

Applying structuration theory

Messerschmidt applies Giddens’ strucuration theory to better understand gender and crime. Like Giddens he believes social structures exist, but they only exist through structured social action. In other words, people’s actions are needed to maintain social structures.

Accomplishing masculinity

Gender is something people do, something they accomplish. In everyday life they try to present themselves in their interactions as adequate or successful to men or women.

Masculinity is never a finished product, men construct masculinities in specific social situations and in doing so reproduce social structures.

From this point of view a man chatting with his mates at a bar, or playing football, or watching and Andrew Tate video, are all attempts to accomplish masculinity.

Men construct a variety of masculinities, at least in part because they find themselves in a variety of social situations which they have little control over.

Some men are not in a position to accomplish certain desired forms of masculinity such as being good at sport or being a higher income earner. One’s ability to accomplish these desired forms of masculinity are shaped by one’s class and ethnic background.

Hegemonic and subordinate masculinities

Messerschmidt divides masculinity into hegemonic and subordinate.

  • Hegemonic masculinities are the most highly valued. These include economic and sporting prowess within mainstream society.
  • Subordinate masculinities are less powerful and carry lower status. These include violent, street-based activities.

The nature of hegemonic masculinity varies from place to place and time to time, but is generally based on the subordination of women. Hegemonic men benefit from their power over women. Men with less dominant forms masculinity may also try to gain power over women but it is less easy for them to do so.

Criminal behaviour can be used as a resource for asserting masculinity. As Messerschmidt puts it:

“Crime by men is a form of social practice invoked as a resource, when other resources are unavailable, for accomplishing masculinity.”

Different groups of males turn to different types of crime in attempts to be masculine in different ways.

Masculinities and crime in youth groups

White middle-class boys tend to enjoy educational success and frequently also display some sporting prowess. In these ways they are able to demonstrate the possession of hegemonic masculinity.

However, these are achieved at a price. Independence, dominance and control largely have to be given up in school. In order to achieve success they have to act in subservient ways in school. Their masculinity is undermined, they are emasculated.

Outside school some white middle class boys try to demonstrate some of the masculine characteristics which are repressed within school. This involves pranks, excessive drinking, vandalism and minor thefts. Because of their backgrounds these boys tend to be able to avoid the criminal label.

Such young men adopt ‘accommodating masculinity’ within school. This is a controlled, cooperative rational gender strategy to achieve institutional success. Outside they adopt a more ‘oppositional masculinity’ which goes against some middle class norms but asserts some of the hegemonic masculine traits they are denied in school.

White working-class boys also experience school as emasculating. However they are much less likely to achieve academic success within school. They therefore tend to construct masculinity around physical aggression. It is important to be tough, or hard, and to oppose the imposition of authority by teachers. They construct an oppositional masculinity both inside and outside of school. The Lads Paul Willis researched in Learning to Labour are an example of this.

A third group, lower working-class boys from minority ethnic groups struggle to find reasonably paid, secure employment. They are unable to construct masculinity through economic success and the breadwinner role. They are also too poor to do so through conspicuous consumption.

They thus turn to expressing their masculinity on the street. They use violence both inside and outside the school and are most likely to get involved in serious property crime.

Messerschmidt quotes a number of American studies showing how robbery is used to make offenders feel more masculine than their victims. Gang and turf wars are also attempts to assert masculine control. Rape is sometimes used to express control over women.

Horrific crimes such as gang rape can help to maintain and reinforce an alliance among boys by humiliating and devaluing women, strengthening the fiction of male power.

Recourse to these more violent forms of masculinity happen when social conditions of poverty, racism and lack of opportunity limit options.

Different types of masculinity and crime

Different types of masculinity can be expressed by different adult males in different contexts leading to crime.

Pimping

On the street, pimping is one way to express masculinity. Pimps usually exert strong control over the prostitutes they pimp out. They get them to turn over their earnings and can thus enjoy material success. Their attitude is one of the cool badass, displaying features such as control, toughness and detachment.

Pimps tend to be loud and flamboyant and display their success through luxury consumer goods. For black pimps this is away to transcend race and class domination.

White-collar crime

To achieve success within large-scale institutions crime may be necessary. In Corporate contexts crime may be tolerated, even encouraged if it can lead to more profit.

Messerschmidt quotes an engineer at Ford explaining why no one questioned the continued production of the Pinto model in the USA. This car was prone to bursting into flames if it was in a rear-end collision, and a number of people died as a result, but Ford still continued to produce it. The engineer explained that ‘safety didn’t sell’ and anyone questioning this would be sacked.

Domestic violence

Messerschmidt argues that relatively powerless men use domestic violence to assert control when women threaten their masculinity.

Much violence occurs when a man believe his wife or children have not carried out their duties, obeyed his orders or shown him adequate respect.

Evaluations of Messerschmidt

Messerschmidt’s theory allows for the existence of different types of masculinity and for the way these masculinities can change.

It also makes plausible attempts to link different types of crime to different types of masculinity and helps explain why men are more criminal than women.

However his theory fails to explain why particular individuals turn to crime when others do not.

Messerschmidt also seems to stereotype men, and he has very negative views of working-class and ethnic minority men. There is no room in his theory for the many men who reject hegemonic masculinities.

He might also be accused of exaggerating the importance of masculinity in explaining crime. Not all male crimes are about asserting masculinity!

Other theorists, such as Bob Connell (1995) do not portray men as negatively.

Signposting

This material is mainly relevant to the Crime and Deviance module, part of A-level sociology.

Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.

To find out more you might like this more advanced resource by Messerschmidt on Masculinities and Crime.

A Man in Full: A Criticism of Traditional Masculinity

A man in full is a 2024 Netflix limited series which has some good examples of negative representations of traditional masculinity.

The programme follows the demise of Charlie Croker, a real estate mogul in Atlanta, Georgia. Just turned 60, Croker is an extreme alpha male character who lives a lavish lifestyle. He has a mansion, hunting lodge and estate, private jet and a wife half his age. He has also spent the last ten years building a massive skyscraper: the concourse. 

Charlie Croker and his wife

The character of Croker is stereotypically hegemonically masculine. He was the star of the college football team when he was younger. He ‘lives life on his own terms’, he puts himself first, he enjoys hunting. In one scene we see him loving watching horses breed: ‘ah this is life’ he states.

Croker is a very physical man, but at 60 he’s starting to deteriorate. He has a replacement knee put in which is state of the art, robotic. This enables him to be walking within two days because ‘it’s not OK for a man to be weak’. 

The series starts with Croker’s lavish 60th birthday party, in which Shania Twain sings for him. It’s all about him and he loves the attention. The day after this his bank calls him in for a meeting and tells him he needs to repay the $800 million he owes them. 

There are two key characters at the bank who want Croker to repay the $800, Harry Zale and Rayomnd Peepgrass. They not only want him to repay the money, they also want to crush him financially. They want to destroy him, to ruin his reputation. 

Raymond Peepgrass has been working with Croker for years. He has been the main liaison between Croker and the bank. He hates Croker as croker has made him feel like a nobody. He also envies him and wishes he could be him. He is obsessed with bringing Croker down. He is a bit of a weasley character who has always lived a servile life working at the bank. So he starts out NOT being hegemonically masculine. However, as the plot progresses, we see Peepgrass becoming more ‘masculine’ as he obsesses more and more with destroying Croker. 

Raymond Peepgrass

Peepgrass’s boss is Harry Zale who is also keen to bring Croker down, but for him it’s not a personal vendetta. He just seems to relish the masculine accomplishment of destroying another alpha male. He was an ex-wrestler in college and keeps wondering if he could ‘take’ Croker in a fight. 

Hegemonic masculinity ends in tears and death…. 

The main plot line for the series is Croker’s attempts to avoid bankruptcy with the assistance of his lawyer, Roger White. White is not a hegemonically masculine character, he is much more balanced. He is a brilliant lawyer, working for a ‘bad man’ (Croker) because the work is interesting and pays well. However he does have a conscience and wishes he could be doing more good. 

Over the course of the six episodes we see that hegemonically masculine all lead to disaster. Traits such as violence, competition, the urge to control and manipulate, eventually lead to misery and even death. 

On the other hand, those who admit to the failings of these traits have a happier ending. 

The most damning critique of hegemonic masculinity is in the interplay between Croker and Peepgrass. 

Peepgrass’s descent into traditional masculinity has a comic end. Towards the end of the movie he and Zale are ordered to leave Croker alone by their boss (Croker struck a deal with the mayor who did him a favour). Zale accepts this but Peepgrass can’t leave it alone. He seduces Croker’s ex-wife and ends up sleeping with her. He also sets up a company with the intention of buying a majority share in Croker’s concourse (the skyscraper). Peepgrass has convinced Croker’s ex-wife to transfer over her and her son’s shares in the concourse. 

Croker gets wind of this and sets off to confront his ex-wife, he finds her sleeping with Peepgrass. Peepgrass taunts him about having stolen his company AND his wife. Croker throttles Peepgrass, his hand locks up and he can’t release his grip and Peepgrass dies, then Croker has a heart attack and dies himself. The last scene we see is Croker dead, his robotic knee still twitching. 

So here we have two men going at each other and both dying in a farcical situation. Both have been brought down by their aggressive hatred of the other. However, neither intended to kill the other or die, so they’ve lost control at the end of the day. 

The critique of Croker’s alpha male character is the most obvious. He has made many enemies throughout his life by stamping on people and it’s clear no one is going to come to his aid in his time of need. He has bankrupted himself through going into deep debt to build a skyscraper. The phallic imagery here should be obvious. 

The major sub-plot in the series is Roger White helping out another character, Wes Jordan. Wes hit a police officer over an incident involving a parking ticket. Wes’ car had been nudged into a parking zone by another vehicle and was being towed. He objected to this, the police were called and he lashed out after one officer used force to cuff him. 

This ended him up in a high security prison because he refused to accept a plea deal. Roger White manages to get the case thrown out eventually. He argues that Wes was in fact just scared when faced with both the police officer and parking official. It was this fear that led to violence. The message here seems obvious: hegemonic masculine traits get you in trouble. However if you accept the failings of your hegemonic masculinity there is redemption. 

Further, while in jail, Wes has to turn on violence, here it helps him survive. So the only place this character trait works: it’s jail, where all the losers are. 

Characters who are less hegemonically masculine do much better

Croker tries to get another local billionaire, Herb, to bail him out of bankruptcy. Herb is a very quiet man who lives his life in the background. He is calm, collected, rational, not aggressive or overtly masculine. He stands in contrast to the ostentatious masculinity on display by Croker.

The characters are mostly painfully black and white but there is a tiny amount of nuance. Croker has a moment towards the end when he ‘does the right (not traditionally masculine) thing’ because of his son. 

Also the character of the Mayor is ambiguous in terms of his gender traits. 

NB the women in the series are generally portrayed much more positively, but I wanted to focus on men here. 

Links to A-level sociology 

This is mostly relevant to anyone studying the media option in the second year.

This is a good example of traditional masculinity being represented in a very negative way! 

Sources 

IMDB A Man in Full

Representations of men in the media

This post focuses on traditional representations of men as reinforcing aspects of hegemonic masculinity before considering some of the changes to male representations in more recent years.

Traditional representations of men reinforce hegemonic masculinity

Traditional representations of men have ascribed certain attributes to male characters such as strength, power, control, authority, rationality and lack of emotion. In other words, media representations of men have reinforced hegemonic masculinity.

Gilmore has summarised this even more simply, arguing that the media stereotype men into ‘the provider, the protector and the impregnator’.

Violence as a normal part of masculinity  

According to Earp and Katz (1999) the media have provided us with a steady stream of images which define violence as an ordinary or normal part of masculinity, or in their own words….

“The media help construct violent masculinity as a cultural norm. Media discourse reveals the assumption that violence is not so much a deviation but an accepted part of masculinity”.

Wider representations of men and masculinity

Children Now (1999) conducted research in the late 1990s and found that there were six common types of representation of men in the media

  • The joker – uses laughter to avoid displaying seriousness or emotion
  • The jock – demonstrates his power and strength to win the approval of other men and women
  • The strong silent type (James Bond) – being in charge, acting decisively, controlling emotion and succeeding with women.
  • The big shot – power comes from professional status
  • The action hero – strong and shows extreme aggression and violence
  • The Buffoon – a bungling father figure, well intentioned and light hearted. (Homer). Hopeless at domestic affairs.

(Boys to Men: Media Messages About Masculinity, Children Now 1999).

The Crisis of Masculinity, the New Man and changing representations of masculinity

As with women, the changing roles of men in society are reflected in changing representations of men in the media.

Representations of men are moving away from absolute toughness, stubborn self-reliance and emotional silence with more male characters being comfortable with showing emotions and seeking advice about how to deal with the problems of masculinity.

There are also an increasing amount of images within advertising which encourage men to be concerned with body image and appearance as well as a sexualisation of male bodies, in which they are presented as sex objects for female viewing pleasure, much in the same way as female bodies have been traditionally been used by the media.

Analyse two reasons why men might commit more crime than women (10)

This is a possible ’10 mark with item question’ question which might come up on the AQA’s A level sociology crime and deviance with theory and methods paper (7192/3).

I’ve just got this intuitive feeling that IF a 10 mark question comes up on gender, it will ask candidates to focus on masculinity and male crime rather than female crime.

Below I include a question, with item and a suggested model answer…

10 Mark ‘with item’ Question

Read Item A, then answer the question below.

Item A

‘Normative masculinity’ is the socially approved ideal of what a ‘real man’ is. This involves being successful in terms of money and sexual conquests, being in control/exercising power. Messerschmitt argues that high levels of male crime are simply down to men trying to prove they are ‘real men’.

This goes some way to explaining white collar crime (mainly male) – it’s about status and competition. It might also also explain domestic violence and working class street violence – these are the means men with low status use to act out their masculinity when they lack power in mainstream society.

Using material from Item A, analyse two reasons why men might commit more crime than women (10)

Hints and Tips

  • Being successful: money, sex, in control, excercising power
  • normative (traditional) masculinity
  • Elite (white collar) crime
  • Low status crimes (WC street violence)
  • Also DV!

Suggested Model Answer

Firstly

  • Men might commit more crime than women because they believe that they need to be financially successful to prove they are a ‘real man’. The most obvious way a man can ‘act out’ this ‘traditional breadwinner’ aspect of his masculinity is to get a well-paid job.
  • However, according to Merton’s Strain Theory, not all men can achieve this goal through the legitimate means of getting a high paid job, as there are relatively few of these available, and as a result some will turn to crime in order ‘show they are successful’.
  • For some men this may ‘simply’ mean earning money by criminal means – by dealing drugs or doing ‘moped thefts’ for example – all of which seem to be mainly male pursuits.
  • Other men who lack the opportunity or ‘smartness’ to do utilitarian crime may just get frustrated and seek to prove their status and toughness through violence, as Winlow found with mainly working class men in Newcastle.
  • However, it isn’t just working class men who turn to crime to prove status: within companies some highly paid men turn to fraud to make even more money than their male peers.

Secondly…

  • Men might commit more crime than women to ‘prove they are in control of women’.
  • From a radical feminist perspective this is largely what explains domestic violence which happens across all class groups.
  • Heidensohn suggests DV is just one criminal way men express control in in private – it also happens in public through ‘harrassment’ on the streets
  • This is further perpetuated by ‘the male gaze’ and the objectification of women in the media, especially porn, all of which are interwoven in a network of patriarchal control over women.
  • However, men don’t necessarily just use sexual violence to control women, they also use it to control other men – male rape has been used against captured combatants in the DRC for example, and it can also be used in prisons where ‘situational homosexuality’ can be used as a means some men use to express their power over others.

 

 

Technology Enchantment and Arousal Addiction

A summary of Zimbardo and Coulombe’s Man Disconnected, part 4.

It seemed appropriate to devote a whole blog post to this chapter (chapter 11) as this seems to be the main thrust of the book. (No, the book’s not that well organised!)

Zimbardo Man Disconnected.png

Chapter 11: Technology Enchantment and Arousal Addiction

J.R.R. Tolkein used the word ‘enchantment’ to define a human being’s total immersion in a fictitious world.He said that the more…

‘You think that you are bodily inside [a] Secondary World [the more] the experience may be very similar to Dreaming… but you are in a dream that some other mind is weaving, and the knowledge of that alarming fact may slip from your grasp’.’

Tolkein’s writing is certainly enchanting – when I first read The Hobbit and  Lord of the Rings when I was about 11, I was absolutely transported into Middle Earth for most of the book.

However, according to Philip Zimbardo, it is far easier to get wrapped up in online virtual realities than it is in a book, because they are more sensually immersive and have rewards systems and status which hook you in: with games, for example you get to actually play the hero or anti-hero, and gain virtual rewards risk free; while with online porn you get to be a ‘virtual sheikh with a harem’ – having your choice of girls to wank over with no threat of rejection.

Today, both computer games and porn are extremely pervasive, and literally millions of young men use these two together as their first port of call to meet their basic ‘male urges’ – to be competitive/ be a winner/ and gain status, and to achieve sexual gratification – you can do both by using a combination of computer games and porn: in fact, not only is it accessible (and very cheap), you have a choice over exactly which game, or which ‘type’ of porn you want to use to ‘fulfil your needs’.

This has been encouraged precisely because men have been taught to be ashamed of their competitive nature and their male-sexuality over the years: according to Zimbardo these are effectively aspects of masculinity that men have been taught to hide in an era of female liberation: the result is that young men repress these ‘natural’ aspects of themselves in public and turn to online worlds to express these aspects of themselves: to be competitive and get their status rewards through gaming, and get sexually gratified by wanking over porn.

In the world of online gaming and porn gaining status and sexual gratification is very easy: you simply learn a few skills and level up, or choose your fetish and spank your monkey, and millions of young men who have effectively grown up immersed in these environments now have their pleasure sensors hard-wired into this ‘switch on get gratified immediately’ mentality. There is also research which suggests that the more pleasure is associated with habitual patterns of action (such as online gaming and porn) then the less responsive pleasure centres are to less familiar experiences.

The problem with this is that in real-life gaining status through such things such as working with others, and gaining sexual gratification in a relationship are just a little bit more complicated!

Zimbardo has been criticised for lumping gaming and porn together, but he sees them as similar arguing that they are both based on ‘arousal’ and that increasingly the two are merging. As far as he see it, Porn and Video games are potentially psychologically and socially damaging to some males, especially those who use them excessively in social isolation.

Zimbardo points out that games designers may think they’ve ‘hacked Maslow’ except that the rewards online games offer can be achieved without the need to relate effectively others.

Zimbardo now cites research in which in gaming cultures, it is common to mock people for losing, which doesn’t happen in real world sports, and that some gamers retreat further into their gaming worlds the more their offline lives do not yield them success.

There is also a phenomenon in which gamers real world selves becomes more like their gaming personas, and Zimbardo warns us that this could lead to more egocentric and individualised behaviours.

Finally, there is a problem that people’s behaviour can be manipulated online, through clever use of avatars for example, a problem which will become more acute as online and offline worlds become more similar and harder to distinguish.

The Dynamics of Porn

In this section, Zimbardo outlines the results of a survey on the effects of porn on young men and women. The general gist is that the availability of online gratification through porn reduces young mens’ patience, makes them hold themselves to unrealistic expectations and cripples them socially.

He cites numerous interviews with men young and women in which they outline the fact that porn has resulted in a lot of young men suffering from performance anxiety, further evidenced by viagra prescriptions increasing for the under 30s.

Porn also encourages young men to see sex as just an act in itself, with no ‘build up’, or no ‘chase’ as such – young men are now less likely to approach women in night clubs, partly because, in porn, there is no story to lead into the sex-act itself.

Chronic Stimulation, Chronic Dissatisfaction

A recent study by the CDC found that heavy porn users are more likely to suffer long term physical health problems, suggesting that over-stimulation through porn rather than engaging in actual person to person sexual interaction might lead to eventual sexual isolation.

According to Alexa, 5% of the top most 100 viewed websites are porn site, and most of the people viewing them are young men under 24…. Alone in their bedrooms.

And porn sends out certain messages, most obviously that sex is about fucking rather than emotional connection and conversation, and of course condoms are rarely seen in porn.

7/10 heavy porn users report sexual problems in their relationships, compared to 3/10 light porn users.

Research from the Max Planck Institute suggests that heavy porn use ‘wears out the pleasure receptors’….. The lead researcher hypothesizesd that to get a dopamine release, and basically to get an erection, porn users would rely  on more and more extreme types of porn….. And sex with the same partner in real life becomes less and less satisfying as a result.

The Madonna-Whore complex…

Zimbardo rounds off this section by suggesting that a lot of men in the Western World have developed a ‘Madonna-Whore complex’ – they regard the women they have, or want to have sex with, as whores… but they cannot deal with women who are both attractive to them and nice – mainly because they can’t sustain an erection when having sex with the same woman over and over again.

The Dynamics of Video Games

Zimbardo starts this question by pointing out by recognising that there are positives to playing computer games, and that that they are really only concerned here with young men who play video games in isolation, primarily with strangers, which is just over a third of all gamers.

For these people, Zimbardo suggests that computer games can make real life and other people seem boring by comparison.

He cites statistically controlled evidence that children who spend more time gaming later on suffer lower paper-test scores at school, and reduced attention spans generally, suggesting that this could explain the higher rate of ADHD among boys compared to girls.

Comments

This chapter is a bit skewed – much more evidence on the effects of porn, much less on gaming, and I’m not convinced that it’s useful to lump the two together – these are both hugely diverse areas which at least deserve the attention of being studied separately, surely?

Man Disconnected #2: Why are young men in crisis?

Man Disconnected by Zimbardo and Coulombe is about the challenges young men face in our technological age. This post summarizes chapters 8-10. 

If you like this sort of thing, then you might also like…

  1. Man Disconnected summary part 1: which deals with the evidence of the problems faced by young men today.
  2. Man Disconnected summary part 3: why are young men in crisis #2 (chapter 11) – technology enchantment and arousal addiction
  3. Man Disconnected summary part 4: why are young men in crisis? #3 (chapters 12-15)
  4. Man Disconnected summary part 5: solutions to the crisis of masculinity (chapters 16-21)

Chapter 8: Rudderless Families, Absent Dads

Today, children are brought up with much less contact with adults: they used to be surrounded by extended families, but today the average household size is just below 3 in the US and 2.4 in the UK, and on top of this, the typically teacher pupil ratio at school is 1:20.

It’s not just quantity of contacts, but quality: something like 50% of households feel the ‘time pinch’ to the extent that they cannot find time to sit down to meals together on most days of the week.

Zimbardo also cites the tired evidence on the increasing number of children being brought up in cohabiting households, which have twice the break up rate of married households, and the fact that today about 1/3rd of US children and ¼ of UK children are brought up in single parent (mainly mother) households.

Declining trust

In the US trust in the general public has declined so much that we no longer even trust the nannies we employ to look after our kids – as evidenced by the increasing sales of ‘nanny cams’.

The percentage of people reporting that most people can be trusted has fallen from 55% in 1960 to  32% in 2009.

Zimbardo now seems to link declining trust to divorce, citing evidence that divorced people have lower immune systems than married people (yes, there are measurable physiological effects!)

He focuses first on the effects of divorce on separated mums and their children: arguing that only around 25% of single mums report that they are happy, half the number of married women. He also argues that girls brought up in single parent households are given mixed messages – that they should put their kids first, and get a career, but there are hardly any examples of people who successfully do both!

He then turns the effects on the separated dads: who have a suicide rate 10 times higher than divorced women, suggesting that the typical experience is for them to spend time working for someone else, who is now distanced from them, and basically having to ‘suck this up’ because they are conditioned to not seek help from anyone.

High divorce rates makes children who experience them think differently about relationships – he cites Vaillant’s famous Longitudinal Harvard Study as an example of the negative effects….suggesting that such children are suspicious of relationships (they are less likely to trust adults!) yet they are still caught up thinking that stable monogamous relationships are for everyone (thanks to Disney).  

Zimbardo finishes off with the usual trawl through the ‘problems’ which the decline of the nuclear family create for society – arguing that countries with more stable families (basically a prosperous society is based on the nuclear family seems to be his argument) are correlated with higher employment rates, more wealth generation, better qualifications and lower obesity levels. Although he cites Charles Murray as part of his evidence.

Boys are affected relatively more than girls by family break up

The USA leads the way in fatherlessness, and for those who do have fathers, the  average school boy spends just 30 minutes a week in conversation with his father, compared to around 44 hours in front of screens.

Zimbardo basically goes on to make the argument that boys need father figures – but that way too many of the current generation are missing out on this – boys are growing up thinking that ‘being male’ effectively means avoiding parenting (this is something mothers do); he cites further evidence that men are basically afraid of hanging out with teenage boys.

Boys need men to offer reassurance and guidance, but they are less likely to get it now than in the past.

This is further compounded by the fact that girls have been taught how to evolve into both traditionally male and female roles, but boys have no role models to teach them how to evolve into both roles either: and when they fail at the traditional male role, as they increasingly go, they are left in the shit.

This problem is further compounded by the lack of positive male role models in the media, and especially porn, which offers teenage boys instant gratification with no need to learn how to communicate.

Chapter 9: Failing schools

Education systems are failing our boys.

The general gist here is that schools focus on ‘academics’ which require children to sit still and focus for longer periods of time, and they require this from a younger and younger age. This disadvantages boys because boys mature later than girls, and they are thus turned of learning, which explains why boys end up with worse GCSE results than girls and for the dramatic increase in female graduates compared to males since the 1960s.

Then there’s the fact that school play times have been cut and that hardly any teachers are male, all of which has resulted in a gynocentric education system which is increasingly shaped in the interests females, and works against male achievement.

Zimbardo offers up Montessori style education as an alternative.

Finally, Zimbardo suggests that we need to start educating our children about sex properly from the ages of 10-11, rather than leaving it to the porn industry!

Environmental Changes

In this chapter Zimbardo makes the argument that toxic chemicals in a whole range of day to day products (such as tins) are causing endocrinal (hormonal) disruption, resulting in increasing health problems for men: such as higher rates of testicular cancer and a lower sperm counts.

In order to back up his claims, Zimbardo cites a range of evidence from studies on animals who have been exposed to toxic chemicals over the long term, and admits the effects of chemicals on human biology remain inconclusive.

He rounds off the chapter by suggesting that many harmful chemicals are built up in body fat tissues, and we don’t really know what the effects of the release of these when (if?) fat cells get broken down will be.

All in all this is something of a speculative chapter.

 

 

White Working Class Men

Professor Green’s fronted an excellent recent documentary on the lives of 6 white working class men for Channel Four, which aired in January 2018.

In an interview with John Snow (about the documentary), Professor Green (who is himself white working class) says the show was born out the fact that only 10% of white working class men will go to university, and this show sets out to explore some of the problems 6 of these men face in just ‘getting by’ in the world today.

It’s well worth a watch: in the first episode he follows one young man whose parents both died when he was 17, and documents how he’s effectively slipped through the welfare net; another guy whose living with his nan, and is something of an entrepreneur, and a guy who has an offer from Cambridge, and has basically re-crafted his entire image so he looks and sounds ‘posh’.

Possibly the most depressing moment is when Professor Green attends a Britain First Rally.

Britain First

He says of the experience that he didn’t want to give them a voice, but how else can you understand the white working classes without at least listening to them…. at one point he says in the documentary that maybe the reason for the growing popularity of Britain First is that ‘whiteness’ is all working class men have left, and thus they cling to it?

From a methods point of view, this is also an excellent example of Interpretivist style unstructured interviews, boarding on participant observation.

Man Disconnected

Amid shifting social, economic and technological climates, young men are getting left behind, at least according to Philip Zimbardo and Nikita D. Coulombe in their 2015 book ‘Man Disconnected: How the Digital Age is Changing Young Men Forever‘.

Zimbardo Man Disconnected.png

The two authors cite a range of anecdotal and research-evidence (some of it primary) to put forward the argument that men are ‘flaming out academically’, falling behind in the world of work, failing to connect with women and struggling with addictions to porn video games and drugs (both legal and illegal).

In order to understand why men are increasingly disconnected, they develop a three part analysis:

  • firstly they highlight the individual dispositions (such as ‘shyness’ and ‘impulsiveness’) related to male disconnectdness
  • secondly they look at situational context – such as widespread fatherlessness and the ease of availability of online games and pornography
  • Finally they look at structural factors such as changes in the labour market.

These three factors together have resulted in many men lacking purposeful direction and lacking in social skills: may would rather live at home with their parents, often extending their childhood into their 30s, (on this note, you night me interested in this post on the increasing numbers of young people living at home with their parents, UK focus).

Rather than face up to the complexities of adult life, more and more young men stay at home, distracted by an online world of gaming and porn, which further reinforces their social isolation and awkwardness.

The book is split into three sections:

  • the symptoms (or you might say indicators) of men being disconnected, which I deal with in this post
  • the causes of men being disconnected.
  • Finally, the authors offer some solutions for dealing with what we might call a ‘crisis of masculinity’.

The Symptoms of Male Disconnectedness 

In this (short) section the authors simply trawl through a range of evidence to outline the problems faced by young men in many societies about the world. NB the evidence cited is mixed – some is global, some US and UK focuses, some not particularly well referenced at all.

The authors break ‘the symptoms’ down into seven major sections:

  1. Disenchantment with education – girls are outperforming boys in every subject at every level of education around the world.
  2. Men opting out of the workforce – the male unemployment rate globally has increased nearly fourfold since the 1970s – from 2% in 1970 to 7% in 1990/
  3. social intensity syndrome – this is a phenomenon in which increasing male shyness means men prefer the company of other men… they’d rather have bromance than romance.
  4. excessive gaming – this is a weekly evidenced section – we are told that the average person will clock up 10k hours of gaming before they are 21, but in terms of gender, we are simply told that the majority of gamers are male, and informed that in a couple of pieces of research of couples where only 1 person was into gaming, that person was male 70-80% of the time.
  5. becoming obese – this section focuses mainly on the US where 70% of US men are overweight, 1 in 3 are obese.
  6. excessive porn use – the average boy watches nearly 2 hours of porn ever week, and 1 in 3 are heavy users, meaning they can’t even count how much they watch. The problem with porn is that it teaches young men (with no prior sexual experience) to treat women like sex objects rather than as human beings.
  7. over-reliance on medications and illegal drugs – this is a poorly written section, the only statistical evidence cited is that 85% of medication for disorders such as ADHD are given to males.

If you like this sort of thing then you might also like the following, follow on posts:

Before reading this you might like to read the following posts:

  1. Man Disconnected summary part 2: why are young men in crisis? #1 (chapters 8-10)
  2. Man Disconnected summary part 3: why are young men in crisis #2 (chapter 11) – technology enchantment and arousal addiction
  3. Man Disconnected summary part 4: why are young men in crisis? #3 (chapters 12-15)
  4. Man Disconnected summary part 5: solutions to the crisis of masculinity (chapters 16-21)

 

Gender and Education Summary Grid for A Level Sociology.

There are three main types of question for gender and education – achievement (why do girls generally do better than boys); subject choice (why do they choose different subjects) and the trickier question of how gender identities affect experience of schooling and how school affects gender identities.

Below is the briefest of overviews(*it would be a grid, but wordpress doesn’t like them, so it’s just linear!) designed to cover all three areas within gender and education for A level sociology.

 Achievement

  • In the 1980s boys used outperform girls
  • Today, girls do better than boys by about 8% points at GCSE.
  • There are about 30% more girls in University than boys.

Subject Choice

  • Subject choice remains heavily ‘gendered’
  • Typical boys subjects = computing/ VOCATIONAL especially trades/ engineering
  • Typical girls subjects = dance, sociology, humanities, English, hair and beauty.

Experience of Schooling/ Gender Identity

  • Pupils’ gender identities may influence the way they experience school.
  • Schools may reinforce traditional (hegemonic) and femininity
  • Gender identity varies by social class and ethnicity.

Out of School and Home Factors

  • Changes in Employment – Rise of the service, decline in manufacturing sector, crisis of masculinity.
  • Changes in the family – dual earner households, more female worker role models. LINK TO FAMILY MODULE
  • Changing girls’ ambitions – from marriage and family to career and money (Sue Sharp)
  • Differential socialisation –girls socialised to be more passive/ toys related to different subjects (Becky Francis) LINK TO FUNCTIONALISM/ PARSONS.
  • Parental attitudes – traditional working class dads may expect boys to not try hard at schoo.
  • Impact of Feminism – equal opportunity policies.
  • Policy changes – introduction of coursework in 1988/ scaling back of coursework in 2015.

In School Factors

  • Teacher Labelling – typical boys = disruptive, low expectation, typical girls = studious, high expectations (Jon Abraham) – LINK TO INTERACTIONISM, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
  • Subcultures –boys more likely to form counter-school cultures (Willis) – LINKS to out of school.
  • Feminisation of teaching – increase in female teachers puts boys off
  • Subject counsellors advise boys to choose boys subjects
  • Gendered subject images match traditional gender domains
  • Boys’ domination of equipment puts girls off practical subjects like PE
  • Traditional masculine identities – boys just don’t see school as a ‘boy thing’ – Working class boys saw school as ‘queer’, middle class work hard but hide this (Mac An Ghail)
  • Hyper-Feminine identities (hair/ make up) clash with the school (Carolyn Jackson)
    Verbal Abuse – boys who study hard get called ‘gay’ as a term of abuse.

Be sure to check the more detailed revision sheets for each of the 3 sub topics above!

You could also link in different types of Feminism to many of these subtopics