Event 1- The Bro Code: How Contemporary Cutlure Creates Sexist Men

I attended a Gender film for class called The Bro Code: How Contemporary Culture Creates Sexist Men. In this blog I will draw connects to Adrienne Rich's Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existance and also Michael Kimmels, What are Little Boys Made of? The experience was pretty interesting, in an Alice in Wonderland walking into a rabbit hole type of way. I blindly searched for the secret film room, and along the way I passed three or four people who only had to see my confused expression to know where I was going, even though I wasn't even aware of where I was going. Eventually I was pointed in the right direction.

The film itself was pretty interesting too; explaining how sexism is a vicious circle drawn between culture that has been passed down through society and family, and culture as seen on TV. The movie called this a feedback loop; saying that the TV copies people, and then people copy the TV. It then uses examples to go into detail about each of these aspects affecting sexism and gender roles in society. The movie states that family plays a large role in creating sexist men; wether it is how the family acts, or lack of proper parenting advice.

Women feel disempowered by sexist men, and in response feel that certain things, like dressing provacative will empower them, which then creates music videos with men being surrounded by women dressed like that, money, and expensive things like cars. This pushes men to think that in order to be successful, powerful, or atractive, they must posess all of these things, including "possessing" women. I feel like this asspect of the film very closely related to Adrienne Rich's paper in which she explains how automatic and unnoticabley people in todays society are heterosexual. In her paper she states that society is male dominated "the New Right's Messages to women have been, precisely, that we are the emotional and sexual property of men, and that autonomy and equality of women threaten family, relgion, and state."

Another class reading that related really well to the movie was Michael Kimmel's peice What are Little Boys Made Of? In which he brings up authors, both feminist and not, men and women who have written about a "war against boys" which claims that "boys are the new victims of a feminist-inspired agenda," but that the real underlying issue is teen violence, which is predominantly recognised as boys commiting the acts.
I like the way that this article connects to the reading, because in it, Kimmel singles out non-feminist men therapists who wrote books justifying innapropriate male behavior, and the feminist counter-perspectives that explain that it is privelege that allows boys to act this way.
I feel that if these nonfeminist therapists, Gurian and Buddalph, had seen this film they would feel it is just another feminist attack on male personalities.  They claim that violence, possession, and lack of emotion is a biological entitlement for men; that feminists and women in general are trying to force boys to ignore. The film also disproves their theory that it is biology, not peer/pop culture, that forces them to act agresively and masculine.

Agressive children= Biological (Not cultural) ???

The film supports everything that Kimmel brings up in his peice of the cultural (not biological) "rules" of being a man...even specifically bringing up a "boy code".
In the film, it is noted that "boys should take whatever they want at any means necessary to give them status and don't snitch tell or ask" and in Kimmels peice he states Kindlon and Thompson write, "culture of cruelty imposes a code of silence on boys, requiring them to suffer without speaking of it and to be silent witnesses to acts of cruelty to others."


The movie was very enlightening, and i was glad that I waited to write about it so that I could connect it to more appropriate readings.

Class topics:
In my notes I cited a few specific facts and statements made through the movie that i feel generate a lot of thought....

Gay guys are most joked about group

Gay teens are three times more likely to commit suicide 

 Two categories of women for men: dumb and sexy 

Smart is unsexy because dumb is not threatening to alpha male dominance

Kesha shows that it's now unisex and rather then change men we compete with them and adopt all their negative traits and make it neutral