Saturday, November 10, 2007

Manly man...

The cultural studies section of Chapters always lures me in. It's my favourite section and I always find something I want. But I'm always disappointed by their gender studies area.

Women's studies is first (don't read too much into that. I'm not complaining about which gender's section is more prominently displayed) and there are all sorts of books that empower, educate, study and basically revolve around women. And why shouldn't there be? It's what the section is there for. So big ups to women. Rah rah rah.

Right before the gay & lesbian shelf is male studies. (Don't read too much into that, either. I'm not homophobic and I'm glad there's a GLBT section in major bookstores. Rah rah rah.)

What worried me is that the male studies section had a total of three titles on it's single shelf. Spreading Mysandry, Legalizing Misandry, (misandry being defined as "the hatred of men") and taking up a whole two-thirds of the male section was a book called The Game - Penetrating the secret society of pickup artists, by Neil Strauss.

Two things immediately struck me about this book:

The clever use of the word "penetrating" on the cover of a book about guys getting laid,

And the fact that The Game is designed to look like a bible, gold foiled pages and all.

I suppose if I were 16 again, I would consider that book a sort of Holy Grail. I'd read it religiously trying to figure women out when really, it's best to just figure yourself out and look out to the world instead of trying to figure out what the world sees when it looks back in at you.

So, according to Chapters, men only care about getting laid and they are also very hated.

Just because women are regarded as being more "complicated" than men (whatever that means) doesn't mean we wouldn't like to see a few books helping to explain us to ourselves. Where do men turn to when we have questions about what it means to be a man?

Am I a man just for having a dick? Or is it something else entirely? I want to know more thoughts about masculinity from both men and women. I'd like to know what masculinity means to a gay man, or listen an old man debating masculinity with a young man.

What about a black man, or a Japanese man? Do they have radically different views on masculinity?

Why are men on TV consistently portrayed as blundering idiots? And who creates a word like misandry to describe the hatred for an entire gender?

Either I wasn't looking hard enough for male-culture books, or Chapters is showing me that equal rights has to be earned by both sides.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The current phenomenon or backlash to old school feminism, is the idea of masculinism. It's just getting started - so hopefully we'll see more on it soon.

Michael said...

No doubt it'll have just as many facets as feminism. Curious and looking forward to it. Thanks, Nathan.