D’Ambrosio 1

Joseph D'Ambrosio

Professor Granillo

English 101

15 November 2018

Men: Stereotypes/Emotions

Suck it up don’t cry you are a man and men don’t cry. That’s what many young boys

have been told all their life growing up. This what boys at young ages and through most of their

adult lives here from other older men or leading role figure. In “Teaching Men to Be

Emotionally Honest” by Andrew Reiner he touches upon how men deal with their emotions from

child all the way to adult hood. Then how they deal with those emotions can shape them or make

them do bad things in life or the opposite if they handle their emotion good. Even though many

men are brought up to be stoic with their emotions where they won’t be affected by these

emotions. So, they can be a generally masculine tough guy as the world see men to better

perform in life. Many people like me abide with what Reiner in stating that if men are taught at a

young age to suppress their emotions and this can lead to men being unable to cope with their

emotions, causing them to become more violent or socially unstable. The reason to the problem

of men hiding their feelings can be linked to how men are stereotyped in pop culture and then the

behavior patterns in family up bring and societies outlook of men in general areas. Therefore, we

should focus on fixing the way we teach our kids and stop generalizing certain activity as

masculine and non-masculine to help prevent domestic abuse in men.

There are many generalizations ways on why typical stereotypes happen, like there can

be a basic cause on to why it occurs, but these stereotypes don’t go further in detail on what

situations these small boys are in. In the article “Gender and Emotions…” its states that
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“emotional expression fails to acknowledge situational, individual, and cultural variations on

males” (leslie, volume 53). That the stereotype of a man that hides his feeling can be bad later in

life does not mean he was generally having to be like that. It just that this general assumption

doesn’t go on about what situation that the child is in at the time and his surroundings. However,

in Reiner article he gives plenty of reason why general stereotypes of men do take in account on

what’s happing in the background of the boy’s childhood.

In Reiner article “Teaching Men to Be Emotionally Honest” he brings many ideas on

why and how men tend to use their emotion in different ways and how it affects them in life. In

the article it goes to say, “the earliest stirrings of a male identity are at war with itself starts at a

young age… that some cultural critics link such mounting emotional vulnerability to the erosion

of male privilege and all that it entails” (Reiner,593). That it goes further back and more in depth

than a simple generalization stereotype that people think that stereotype miss but they in fact

must do a lot with experience and cultural clashes. Then it can go also in the behavior area on

how they are taught. This is just the general background of the problem it can go more into the

pop culture today and in the past how boy grow up with today.

There are many ways in pop culture today and in the past that have affected men growing

up on how to act like an adult man. There are many mobsters or gangster movies that portray

usually young men trying to survive in a big world and the only way they can do that is go into

criminal activities where they kill a lot and make a lot of money in the process in the

underground world. Like many movies in the 1990s like the Goodfellas (1991) or Mobsters also

in (1991) just to name a few. Here given a scene from Mobsters where the main character

Charlie goes to speak with the man who fixed the baseball world series for his benefit Mr.

Arnold. Now Mr. Arnold begins to question him or giving him certain scenarios and situations
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that he might get caught in because Charlies involve in a sticky situation with another gang

group and one of the last questions that Charlie is asked is “what is the secret of America” and

Mr. Arnold answers his own question saying “Money, money is everything”. This just showing

how the crime mobster world revolves around mostly around money because money is power,

but it also entails a lot of violence and cheating to get that much money in the first place. What

makes this relatable on how men ending up suppressing their emotions and lashing it out in

violence to get what they want is that this movie is based on a true person so most of these

accounts happened. Then when young men see the violence and see how the main character was

at the bottom but then rises to the top from being tough and letting his anger with the shooting

and violence in the movie involved with gangs or mobs. Then the young men will try pursuing

that way to get all that money and power that comes in doing crimes making the bad guys look

good or cool to be one. Thinking if I am tough, sneaky and violent then I can achieve all the

money and power doing crimes then I should try and be like that to. It’s just not old movies that

young men look at to see how to be a masculine man of tradition, which is a tough guy

personality mostly, but they also get the ideas of this on how to deal with emotions or ways to act

from recent T.V. pop culture shows.

Another way men get stereotyped in tv shows is the way they let out there anger in the tv

show and how men hide their emotion behind a mask. Then the true emotions will pour out in

the way of violence and it is usually targeting another person or group of people that the mean

lets his anger out Which is most case lead them to violence to the point of psychopath murderer

in the movies to let out the anger and emotions. In the show Dexter the main charter lives a

double life. In the morning he is a forensic expert and the night he is a serial killer that kills other

serial killer that has an escaped the justice’s system. The reason behind his two masked life is
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because as a young boy he saw his mom killed by a serial killer and was dramatized by the

experience ever since. Then he got adopted by a police officer who taught to use his gruesome

lust for killing in a positive way, to exact vengeance on the people who deserve it. This show

how what young boys are taught or experience in a young age can direct where or what they

might do. Then they might not see it as a bad thing if they never knew it was a bad thing and a

way to get out their anger from those past experiences as a child. The last way that many men get

stereotyped with violence is using music.

Now it just not just all the song genre that promote men to be violent and emotionally

hidden but that most common today is the song genre of Rap music. As you see today in many

rappers like Emmen, Snoop Dog and other prominent rappers put in their songs a lot of

references to drugs, girls and violence. These rappers just go to show what they have been

through and how they fought against their problems, but many kids tend to look up to that

because they can relate where the rapper is coming from. Which pits more force that they want to

be just like the rapper and go through all the thing he did, which can cause problems in the long

run. So, as young children mostly boys will tend to listen to the lyrics and pick up the vocabulary

used in the songs and want to act as those rappers making them more violent in the way they act

because of the music. This isn’t the only way that stereotypes effect boys but another way that

can cause boys to suppress their emotions is from behavior patterns as a child from society and

family areas.

Men are taught what they are supposed to be from a young age or from their parents or

from the society around them that tells them what to be as a many expert in child devilment in

the article “Are you a Parent?..” say “a child's behavior and personality are molded by their

childhood experiences. If their problems are not checked at an early age, the traits may amplify
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and create psychological problems later in life” (Top News). This goes into how we teach or the

experiences that we put them through will go shape their lives in good or bad manner because

that’s what they grow up around. This goes all the way back on what we are taught or our

behavior pattern that comes from our parent’s way of teaching boys at a young age. This can lead

to a different of ideas and how some men deal with their emotions because of those ideas they

were taught to be like. There a connection on this reason and the next where the boy behavior

can also depend on what extracurricular activities they do in and out of school.

Another way that shows how boys are taught or influence by social society norms is in

what elective or sport that the boys does and how that changes their attitude towards things out

of that sport or elective. In the article “Perceived Characteristics of Aggressiveness in Male

Adolescent Athletes and Nonathletes” by Romualdas Malinauskas, Audrone Dumcienr, Vilija

Malinauskiene it states that “Non-athletes had more positive attitudes towards aggression than

athletes. Regular students were less verbally aggressive than athletes. Non-contact athletes were

less verbally aggressive than all athlete types. Non-athletes were less angry than athletes. Also, it

turned out that combat athletes were the angriest group. Athletes and non-athletes did not differ

much on physical aggression and hostility, but a breakdown showed that contact athletes score

higher than noncontact athletes on both measures” (Malinauskas, Dumcienr, Malinauskiene,

volume 45). This is talking about how men that participate in aggressive or combat sports tend to

be more aggressive out of their sports areas to other, while no sport men tend to be mostly stable

with their anger if they are not in one of these aggressive or combat sports. This just goes to

show the stereotypes or the difference in attuited of men in sports and out of sports and how they

control their aggressive side and how those electives and sports can shape their persona in life.

Just like sports and a non-aggressive elective there is another similarity with what career choices
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that boys get to make on what career they end pursuing in college and how that certain jobs are

traditionalized.

There an easy way that people can see on how men are affected by behavior teaching and

that is in what career they end up leading to choose in their life.in the article “Men in Traditional

and Nontraditional Careers…” by Dodson, Thomas A; Borders, L DiAnne. it says that “Men

who have less constricted ideas about their own gender and gender-related characteristics of

nontraditional occupations would be more willing to choose a nontraditional career than would

men with more strongly held, traditional gender-related beliefs. Differences in gender role beliefs

and attitudes, then, would influence a man's openness to pursuing a nontraditional occupation”

(Dodson, Borders, volume 54). It is saying that have center strong idea about men and

masculinity tend to be in more traditional jobs for men but if men tend to have a more fluid

picture of masculinity they tend to go non- traditional jobs. These beliefs can come from us

mostly from the way they were taught as a child to be and act around certain thing in life. It also

goes over a brief idea about how these career choices that these men make can affect the family

and other aspects of their like emotionally. This what happens to men and why they end

suppressing the emotion and how that can lead to men being more violent or aggressive towards

others. The pressure or the experience that they are put through at a young age and what the

traditional values of men in what elective, sport or even what career can all be a factor on why

men are suppressing their emotions.

Like many believe what Reiner is stating in his article “Teaching Men to Be Emotionally

Honest”. Where if men start to hide their emotion and keep it to themselves it can cause some

men to emit their emotions through getting angry or getting violent. This problem arises from

what our young boy child sees in our pop culture and what they are taught at a young age by our
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parents and society. Some other people think that it just due to general stereotypes, but they don’t

take in what our child see or feel. In our pop culture today, there are many ways that young men

are exposed to how men are pictured in this certain culture like in popular violent crime movies,

or in drama based psychological tv shows like Dexter and then their rap music in what many

young men listen to and gets influenced with their words about violence, drugs and many more

expletive things. Then also got the way people teach their kids whether that be tough with what

sport they play and if its violent or not and, how or society and family put the stereotype in men

with how they should act what jobs they should occupy. In the end people should prevent men

from being less emotions which can cause them to be violent by helping them go against the

social norms and stereotypes and to tell them to be more open to other, then say that they should

just be themselves and not what others think they should be.
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Work cited

-Brody, Leslie R. "Gender and Emotion: Beyond Stereotypes." The Journal of Social Issues,

vol. 53, no. 2, 1997, pp. 369-393. ProQuest,

http://ezproxy.canyons.edu:2048/login?url=https://ezproxy.canyons.edu:2457/docview/2156

34667?accountid=38295.

-MALINAUSKAS, Romualdas, Audrone DUMCIENE, and Vilija MALINAUSKIENE.

"Perceived Characteristics of Aggressiveness in Male Adolescent Athletes and

Nonathletes." Revista De Cercetare Si Interventie Sociala, vol. 45, 2014, pp. 17-30.

ProQuest,

http://ezproxy.canyons.edu:2048/login?url=https://ezproxy.canyons.edu:2457/docview/1665

211555?accountid=38295

-Dodbson, Thomas A., and L. D. Borders. "Men in Traditional and Nontraditional Careers: -

Gender Role Attitudes, Gender Role Conflict, and Job Satisfaction." The Career

Development Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 4, 2006, pp. 283-296. ProQuest,

http://ezproxy.canyons.edu:2048/login?url=https://ezproxy.canyons.edu:2457/docview/2194

42992?accountid=38295.

-Durst Russel, Birkenstein Cathy, Graff Gerald. “They say I say”. New York, London:

W.W. Norton, 2008. Book.

Reiner Andrew. “Teaching Men to Be Emotionally Honest.” (2016) p589-pp595. Essay