Academics Discover Masculinity

Several years ago, a friend of ours, filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney, attempted to lampoon the iconic field of women’s studies by showing up at random campuses, on camera, and asking where he could find the men’s studies department. It turns out that Evan may have been ahead of his time.

“A few institutions have established centers of masculinity research and counseling,” Peter Monaghan reports in the December 15, 2017 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. “Among them are the Center for the Study of Masculinities and Men’s Development at Western Illinois University and the Men and Masculinities Center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.”

“At Stony Brook, Mr. [Charles L.] Robbins and his colleagues work with one of the most prominent figures in the field, Michael Kimmel, who runs the university’s Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities and who, thanks to such best-selling books as Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (2008), has been dubbed by The Atlantic as ‘The Bro Whisperer.’” There is also the Duke [University, not Wayne] Men’s Project and the masculinity project at Richmond College.

Beyond making men feel better about themselves through various forms of therapy, what has all this research unearthed? “Similarly, research shows that male students spend far more time playing video games, watching television, and going to the gym than female students do,” Monaghan writes.

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