The Mask You Live in 1. The idea of wearing a mask that your face grows to fit communicates the difference between performance and self as symbol. Wearing the mask is a performance of gender. A person’s face is how one understands himself (I’ll use male pronouns here since this film is about maleness in our society. 2. The thing that is being performed is an initiation rite for the achieved status of “man”—what we call gender status. 3. The self as symbol is what we call gender identity, your idea about yourself as a man. 4. The idea here is that in order to fit in boys perform gender, but that over time there performance can affect a person’s deeper sense of self. 5. If Joe Ehrman doesn’t think being male is bad, why does he think saying, “Be a man” is so destructive? 6. Notice in the montage of “be a man” statements that the gender status of “man” is narrowly defined. Also notice that if you don’t achieve that gender status, what the alternative is. 7. What do the “if you really new me” statements suggest about the mask and the face? 8. What is meant by “Masculinity is not organic; it’s reactive?” 9. The idea of “there’s a whole social system that polices them through this low level of threat from other men” is known as gender policing. It means enforcement of gender norms for a particular gender status. The idea is calling a guy a f-g or a p-ssy is a sanction designed to keep not just the victim of the insult from acting in non-normative ways, but any guy who witnesses the interaction. 10. What are the gender norms attached to the gender status “man” enumerated by the prisoners? 11. What are the three defining features of “man” discussed by Joe Ehrman? 12. Think about the narrowing of experiences that Ian went through as he aged. That is a good example of the difference between a male homo sapien and the gender status “man.” A male person is capable of doing anything a person can do, but a “man” in our society cannot achieve that status unless he limits himself in specific ways. 13. A crucial element of our collective consciousness is “the belief that men and women are fundamentally different creatures.” Obviously men and women are different, but think of what different outcomes are machine would produce if our dominant belief was “men and women are mostly the same but with a few differences.” 14. What is the difference between sex and gender? 15. Explain the idea of how the 90% overlap of bell-shaped curves of psychological test results for boys and girls leads to stereotypes of what boys are like and what girls are like (remember back to social locations—stereotypes are the meanings attached to social locations). 16. In figuring out how to “be in the world and engage in relationships,” what do boys learn to do? 17. How does that relate to the mask-face analogy? 18. Speaking as a dad of a 13 year old son, it isn’t an “exquisite sense of dilemma” of whether I teach my son to be fully human (emotionally expressive) or to fit in (emotionally shut off). It sucks. Because the first is healthier and the second is socially adaptive in a society that denies “man” in a narrow way. 19. The guy who did google searches about how to be sensitive is a hero. But explain how the reality that he had to search that is related to the mask-face analogy? 20. Describe “the mean team” situation in terms of 1. gender norms 2. gender status 3. gender policing 21. Explain how a “culture that doesn’t value what we’ve feminized” affects male’s ability to bond in high school. 22. Binge-drinking and drug-taking are sometimes referred to in sociology as moral holidays, times when the usual norms and ideas about right and wrong don’t apply. Explain how this type of moral holiday works for male bonding. 23. What are the differences between girls and boys expressions of depression? 24. What is the relationship between quantity of emotional language in boys’ narrative and suicide rates? 25. Explain this relationship with the mask-face analogy. 26. How cool is the teacher who does that mask exercise? 27. Though the sample size is too small to be scientific, what does this exercise suggest about how constructing the gender status “man” the way we have is working in terms of the patterns of thought and behavior it is generating? 28. The one place I differ with Joe Erhmann is when he says, “the great myth in America today is that sports build character.” I disagree—I think sports definitely builds character (mental and moral qualities); it’s just that the character is based on competition often to the extreme of dehumanizing others, emphasizing success over kindness. It’s a character that suppresses pro-social sentiments in favor of task accomplishment. 29. The next section we are going to call “media archetypes”—archetypes are recurring symbols (in this case recurring symbols of masculinity), and media suggests they are found in the social institution of mass media. Be able to describe each of the following male media archetypes 1. athlete 2. strong, silent guy 3. superhero/action hero 4. thug 5. mook 6. rappers 7. video-game hero 30. What is arousal addiction? 31. What are the 3 major findings from the Surgeon General’s task force on Youth Violence? 32. What does the statement that “pornography is sex education” mean? 33. What point does Jackson Katz make about how boys are socialized to think about women’s bodies? 34. To say that pornography includes “normalized brutality and sexism that’s associated with the sex act” makes a distinction between two things: the biological reality of sex and the cultural ideas are attached to it and shape how we think about it. “Having Sex” is a symbol—a thing that holds meaning, and the point that is being made in the film is that the dominant way we have defined that as a society is in a non-egalitarian, male-dominant way. 35. What does “rape culture” suggest? 36. What examples of beliefs and symbols does Terry Porter provide that could be considered part of a rape culture? 37. Ian discusses an important gender norm—objectifying girls/women socially. 38. In Ian’s discussion of that he concludes with an important insight about how our society defines girls/women. What is it? 39. How is it related to the earlier expressed idea of boys rejecting what is defined as feminine? 40. Explain the idea that initiation into the gender status “man” creates both horizontal solidarity and hierarchy. 41. How can the “bro code” be seen as like the opposite side of the coin of male gender policing? 42. Explain ”avenging the humiliation we’ve suffered” in terms of “man” as an achieved status defined by being powerful. 43. What is meant by the statement that thinking about mass shooters in terms of mental illness “is one way to put them aside so we don’t have to think about out culture”? 44. How cool is the prisoner who talks about “the man box”?