Last semester I had the fortune of being in Michael Martin’s GWS-390 History of Masculinity course at Fort Lewis College.
I can say with full clarity now that I knew why I was taking this class, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
I took this class to give me some context for the thesis I was producing for my senior seminar in the history department.
In this thesis I was evaluating the aggressive policy of fire suppression pursued by the United States Forest Service from 1935 to 1978.
Part of what I wanted to cover was how the gender of the individuals in charge of making these policies guided their content and implementation, and how gender affected the actions of firefighters on a historically tragic fire in 1949.
I felt that devoting some of my time to the study of masculinity would give me some clarity on the subject and provide credibility to the claims I knew I would be making.
What happened was so much more…
On the first day of class Dr. Martin relayed the pervasiveness of the subject we would be delving into and how once we were aware of its many facets we would begin to see it everywhere.
I didn’t think anything of this.
I feel like most professors who are passionate about the subjects they are teaching make such claims every semester and I didn’t think it would affect my overall view of the world around me, but it did.
It made me acutely aware of the ways in which behaviors and expressions are gendered in our society. I learned how this normative behavior is presented to us and how our actions are influenced by our genders.
There were truly too many take-homes from this class for me to relay or honestly even remember.
This was apparent in the length of the final thoughts essay I produced for this course, which came in at twice what was required.
I don’t say this to brag, I say it to really highlight how much I had to say about what I had learned.
Even with all the stress of finals week, finishing up my senior thesis and research project for GWS-390 and the cumulative fatigue that comes after a 15-week semester I literally could not stop writing about what this class had brought to the forefront to me, and I still can’t, because even though this class answered many questions, it made me ask so many more.
One of the profoundly difficult realizations that came from this class was the connection between gender and violent crimes, especially mass shootings.
This was one of the many things that came up in my final thoughts and continued to bother me over break, and into this semester. Once I had an opportunity to explore why there was such an obvious connection between violence and my gender, it did not bother me as much.
This opportunity came in ENGL-315 Multimedia Journalism where I pitched the idea of an article on the subject of masculinity, men’s mental health and violence.
I wanted to give the readership of the Indy a snapshot into a subject that I find extremely compelling while also furthering my journey to discover what it currently means to “be a man” in America, and what it should mean.
I hope you’ll take the time to read the article that coincides with this opinion and I hope you find something in-between the two of them that will spark an interest in the pervasive subject of gender studies.