This is the second lengthy post in a three-part series of responses to Michael Kimmel’s new Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. Part One is here.
Sometimes, it seems to me that an entire generation of young men are lost to what might be called the siren song of the “Three Ps”: Pot, Pornography, and Playstation (video games). For an increasing number of young men, a fourth “P” is enjoying a renaissance: Poker, this time often played on-line. Ask any parent of a “guy” in the age range Michael Kimmel is focused on (16-26), ask any exasperated sister or would-be girlfriend, and you’ll hear many an anecdote about the hours lost and the commitments broken by young men indulging themselves in one or more of the aforementioned behaviors. Much of the recent writing about the “boy crisis” has focused on the influence of pornography and video games in particular on young men. By no means has all that focus been negative, though most thoughtful observers of contemporary society are deeply troubled by the tremendous amount of time that so many young men spend absorbed in the dubious “pleasures of the Ps.”
Michael Kimmel is not an anti-pornography activist. (From the perspective of the pro-feminist men’s movement, Robert Jensen’s Getting Off will remain the indispensable text on the subject for years to come.) Nor is Kimmel reflexively hostile to the “gaming” culture. Indeed, his writing on video games reveals a sophisticated knowledge of their appeal: his descriptions of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and World of Warcraft (perhaps the two most popular time-sucking games available) taught me a great deal about both these games and their stunning appeal.
Kimmel points out something every adult knows: young men tend to become hostile and defensive when queried about the amount of time they devote to online gaming.
Why are these guys so angry and defensive? In part because they feel a little guilty that they are spending so much time doing something they know is purposeless…
But it goes deeper than that. Guys’ defensiveness also has to do with the rage that’s both covert and overt in much of what passes for entertainment in Guyland. Because, as it turns out, the fantasy world of media is both an escape from reality and an escape to reality — the reality that many of these guys would secretly like to inhabit. Video games, in particular, provide a way for guys to feel empowered. In their daily lives guys often feel that they don’t measure up to the standards of the Guy Code — always be in control, never show weakness, neediness, vulnerability — and so they create ideal versions of themselves in fantasy. The thinking is simple: if somebody messes with your avatar, you blow him away. It’s a fantasy world of Manichean good and evil, a world in which violence is restorative and actions have no consequences whatsoever.
Kimmel rejects a simplistic connection between video games and “real-life” violence. Most psychologists and sociologists are justifiably suspicious of what he calls a “monkey-see, monkey-do” analysis of the influence of violent media. (And for what it’s worth, can we just leave the pigs and the monkeys and the dogs out of the discussion?) At the same time, he recognizes that gaming has tremendous significance in the lives of many “guys”. Explaining what these lads get out of their compulsive media consumption, he writes:
They’re getting a parallel education to the formal curriculum — complete with its own Three Rs: Relaxation from the weight of adult demands and of the rules of social decorum (also now known as political correctness); Revenge, against those who have usurped what you thought was yours; and, Restoration to your rightful entitled position in the world.
That’s not just alliterative, that’s right on the mark. In Manhood in America, his great primer, Kimmel focuses on the recurrent theme of “running away” from feminizing, civilizing culture. Huck Finn and Rip Van Winkle, two of the most memorable fictional characters of the 19th century, both go to great lengths to “relax”, to escape, and to create alternative worlds in which only “guys” can be found. (Think of Rip’s flagon of spirits as the modern-day bong, and the “bowling ghosts” he encounters as symbolic of men who live without the confining, restricting, civilizing impact of women). Young men today can’t escape as easily to the mountains or down the Mississippi, but they can escape into cyber-worlds that are largely male, rule-bound, and positively welcoming of violence.
They spend so much of their lives being bossed around by other people– teachers, parents, bosses–it’s really a relief to be the meanest, most violent, and vengeful SOB around. And they spend so much of their lives in a world that is, if not dominated by women, at least is characterized by women’s presumed equality, that it’s nice to turn back the clock and return to a time when men ruled — and no one questioned it.
I think Kimmel’s right, and therein lies the problem. How can escape be harmless if it is so inextricably connected to resentment of women? While some young men may return to the “real world” (in which women are people and violence is destructive rather than restorative) feeling relieved and rejuvenated, other young men seem deeply frustrated by the disconnect between their fantasy lives and their all-too-real obligations. And it sets up a destructive spiral: the more young men feel alienated from “real life” and its myriad attendant responsibilities, the more they long to soothe themselves with fantasies of revenge and restoration. The more time they spend in that fantasy world, however, the more strange and bleak and unfair reality may seem — and this drives still more video game use, often accompanied by pot or porn or other anesthetizing tools.
And this brings us to pornography. I’ve blogged a great deal on this subject, and a few paragraphs above I note Robert Jensen’s magisterial new book on men, masculinity, and porn. What Guyland adds to the discussion is, again, the relationship between pornography and male entitlement. Specifically, today’s pornography may not lead most young men towards direct acts of violence against real women, but it does foster a culture of entitlement to women’s bodies:
(Young men) experience their masculinity not in terms of what they had to give up in order to become men, but rather they experience it as anticipation — what they will experience. And more to the point, what they are entitled to experience. And as they begin to bump against the reality that they’re unlikely to become masters of the universe, omnipotent sex gods, and billionaire celebrities hounded by hordes of groupies, they begin to feel a bit resentful. It is ‘the men who do not feel secure in their manliness, who do not feel a solid part of the culture, who are more likely to take pornography’s lies seriously and to abuse the women in their lives’, writes (journalist David) Loftus.
Kimmel notes the ubiquity in contemporary porn of deception scenarios: in pseudo-documentary style, a group of men invite a woman for a modeling gig, promising all sorts of potential rewards. The young woman is then coaxed into first removing her clothes, and after being offered increasing amounts of money, has sex with one or more of the men. At the end, the men either escape without paying, or break the news to the model that the whole thing was a scam.
Of course, these are professional productions. The porn actresses are only pretending to be ingenues; they really did get paid. As Kimmel notes, every one of these porn videos begins with a quick statement of FBI conpliance, advising the viewer that signed consent releases and proof of age are on file. The exploitation and abuse is fictionalized solely for the purpose of heightening the arousal of the viewer. Consensual sex is less sexy, apparently, than sex that involves deception, humiliation, and — above all — revenge. Kimmel notes that this genre is primarily popular with young male consumers; older men are much more likely to be repulsed by deception scenarios.
Kimmel, who cites his own study on young men and porn writes of the connection between pornography, frustrated entitlement, and rage:
…aggression is simply the expression of frustrated impulses — in this case, the frustrated desire for sexual release is translated into aggression against the weaker and more vulnerable object, the one who can’t fight back, the woman on the screen. The men desire, the pornography informs and elicits that desire. But they cannot satisfy that desire. So whose fault is that? It’s not the guys’ fault: They were just sitting there, minding their own business, with no intention of feeling horny. But then this beautiful girl seduced them, elicited desire from them, and they can’t have her, and can’t do anything about it. Pornography evens the score by offering a fantasy of revenge.
So what are these guys getting out of getting off? They’re getting back. They’re not getting mad, they’re getting vicariously even. Getting back at a world that deprives them of power and control, getting even with those haughty women who deny them sex even while they invite desire, getting back at the bitches and hos who, in the cosmology of Guyland, have all the power.
Men’s Rights Activists, I’ve noted, tend to fall into two groups: older, usually divorced heterosexual men who feel victimized by family courts, and younger men still in the Guyland phase, convinced, as Kimmel writes, that they have been disenfranchised and exploited by the bitches who have all the power. The older men offer the younger men cautionary tales about grasping wives, ungrateful children, and biased judges; the younger men grow even angrier and more cynical as they realize the stunning disconnect between what porn and video games promise and the world the way it really is.
Kimmel has much more to say about the role of media (he has a great section on online poker tournaments) in guys’ lives, and I invite my readers to pick up the book and read more. But in concluding this second part of the review, I’m struck by how effectively Kimmel identifies the real source of the “Guyland mystique” into which so many of our young men have disappeared. The mistaken sense of having been disenfranchised (by women who now insist on being seen as equals) breeds a longing for revenge, a longing that is made manifest in video games and porn movies which feature narratives in which men are restored to their proper, dominant role. In video games and pornography, young men get a vision of what it might be like to exercise raw, unrestrained, restorative power. And in a world where so many young men feel so uncertain about their role, a world in which they are so confined by the contradictory and impossible demands of the Guy Code, video games and porn offer an alternative moral and sexual universe infinitely easier to understand than the one which these lads actually inhabit.
In the third post in this review series, I’ll look at “what is to be done”, and in particular, at the role older men can and must play in helping young men transition out of Guyland.
You’re mostly on the right track with all this, but you’re denying women any agency in the creation of this world. These guys aren’t JUST confined by the contradictions of their own code – although that certainly is real – they’re also beset by contradictory and sometimes dishonest demands from the women in their lives. Much of the guy code is in response, not to the choices men would make for themselves, but to the sometimes impossibly-narrow gateways women have set up. Be sensitive, but don’t be a pussy. Be strong and authoritative, but don’t ask me to do anything I don’t want to do. Be passionately attracted to me, but show no interest in any other woman on earth, and telepathically determine what my level of sexual interest is – and don’t ever expect me to communicate it in a straightforward way that doesn’t require guesswork, which if you get wrong I will punish you. Work hard every day, but always have time for my emotional or social needs. Love children and be an active parent, but never infringe on the emotional space between me and my kids. Get rich so we can afford everything we want, but don’t prioritize career over family. Etc., etc., etc. Oh, and to make the whole thing a lot more fun, for some women some of these gateways are nonoperative, or are replaced with others. Jane demands that her man be the provider, Jill demands that her man respect her right to be the provider, and Janet hasn’t made up her mind yet.
A large number of men can negotiate these turbulent waters and win the prize: a love-filled relationship, successful reproduction, a happy life of partnership with someone with whom they have mutual respect and regard. Many others take a look and say “I know I’m going to fucking drown if I go there”, and choose fantasy.
Women don’t control the world, and it’s unfair to lay the blame for male social pathology on women (and vice-versa). But women do play a primary role in setting up the incentive structures that young men, in particular, respond to; older men often realize that they can play a completely different game if they wish, and that they aren’t obliged to play under the incentive structure that society sets up. Young men rarely have that wisdom, and it seems unattainable except through time and experience – so for the “yutes”, they’re going to behave in ways that are rational under the incentive structures that they perceive as being operative. Women aren’t the only people around the table that set up those structures, but they have a huge voice in the process.
An analysis which doesn’t take that into account is going to end up being fatally flawed, like trying to explain sexual violence against women in terms of female behavior, dress codes, and social mores. It ignores the elephant in the room, the volitional behavior of the other sex.
Hugo,
Your link to Kimmel’s book really points to Robert Jensen’s Getting Off.
Don’t get me started on Jensen again
They’re getting a parallel education to the formal curriculum — complete with its own Three Rs: Relaxation from the weight of adult demands and of the rules of social decorum (also now known as political correctness); Revenge, against those who have usurped what you thought was yours; and, Restoration to your rightful entitled position in the world.
Given that I’m an unrepentant heathen gamer, I won’t waste time responding to anything but the fundamental mistake made in the above. Specifically, Kimmel is erroneously assigning equal priority to all three Rs on the part of gamers. In my experience, as well as that of basically all of my friends and nearly all of those with whom I’ve discussed this online, R1 (rather, the “reprieve from demands” bit) is vastly more prevalent than Rs Two (which seems a necromantic resurrection of Jack Thompson’s “arguments,” alleged rejection notwithstanding) and Three (which summarily dismisses any demonstrative value in antagonists).
Okay, the antisocial misogynist who probably lives in his parents’ basement is done babbling. You can resume your regularly scheduled choir-preaching.
As a happily addicted World of Warcrafter who has been all about fantasy role-playing games ever since she got her first computer back in the 90′s, I think I have to think hard about how my love of the “Playstation P” compares to the analysis of a “guy’s” love for it described above. Lots of food for thought here.
Robert –
I think it’s a straightforward category error to identify individuals as the causes of cultural norms and standards. Women and men both are caught up in our deeply inconsistent web of contemporary gender roles, and neither created this mess we’ve inherited.
Noumena –
Category schmategory. Cultural norms are created by individuals, just acting en masse. Sure, our inconsistent web of roles is something that catches us all – but we cannot pretend that we didn’t create it. We can note how much of it was created by our ancestors, and we can certainly note that some of it is emergent behavior rather than volitional choice – but other large parts of it are totally volitional.
There’s no alien force making us adopt these sets of roles which are totally alien to us. They emerge from our behavior and choices, and we have agency to change them. Men who treat women badly and then cry about not finding intimacy, women who set impossible standards and then cry about loneliness; these are not people who are inheriting mysterious problems they can do nothing about.
Finally, I now get to have three P’s too! (I don’t smoke pot.) Although I play most of my poker live, rather than online.
Seriously, though, in these examinations of “Guyland”, I’m straining to see what the better alternative is, given young men in that situation. You mention the role of older men Hugo, and really, I’m waiting on tenterhooks for that one. Most of the older men in our lives (I’m only a few years out of the Guyland bracket here) are not very useful as role models. Either they’re negative examples, like workaholic absent fathers; unidentifiable examples, like most clergy, or simply came up in an era that seems so remote and different that it means little to us.
“The better alternative” is the question that I’d really like to see answered. Taken from an individual standpoint, what’s the problem with life in Guyland?
Robert – you mean that women are individuals not a homogenous group who all respond in the same way to the same things? Shocking. I hate to make the obvious point but presuming that women aren’t put under a great deal of social pressure to conform but instead all choose to behave in the ways you describe is a product of priviledge. I’m not saying all women are perfect, but they can be under a great deal of social and personal pressure which is invisible to you as a man.
“I’m not saying all women are perfect, but they can be under a great deal of social and personal pressure which is invisible to you as a man.”
What Lady in Tweed said.
“A large number of men can negotiate these turbulent waters and win the prize: a love-filled relationship, successful reproduction, a happy life of partnership with someone with whom they have mutual respect and regard.”
Robert,
Having a love-filled relationship, kids (successful reproduction? you sound like you’re talking about breeding cows rather than engaging in the act of having children), and a happy life with someone whom they have mutual respect and regard is not a -prize-. It is a -privilege- that is earned. One that one must keep constantly earning throughout the entirety of the relationship.
Lady in Tweed – Sure, women are under their own set of pressures. Didn’t intend to minimize that or to deny it.
Faith – Semantics. You earn it/win it/achieve it, whatever. And the constancy of the requirement to earn it is another pressure against those young men.
I said successful reproduction vs. “having children” because for men, reproducing and having children is not a given. We can’t, in fact, “have children”. Historically, by and large, women who want to reproduce are able to do so. Less than half of all men successfully do so. This difference produces some differences in our starting assumptions, too – we think of it as “successfully reproducing” (achieving something that’s hard), you think of it as “having children” (something that’s harder to avoid than to do). There are always exceptions, of course; Genghis Khan vs. the woman who yearns for babies but is infertile or very unlucky; but those are the general trends.
LIT & Faith: To what extent does this invisible (to men) social and personal pressure erase women’s agency? By saying that these pressures are invisible to men, are you implying that they’re not invisible to women? Aren’t these social and personal pressures invisible to women’s consciousness as well? If one is conscious aware of these pressure I would think it is correct to say that the decision to give in for those pressures or not is volitional act (as Robert put it) – presuming one believes in a free will of course.
Hugo,
“Ask any parent of a “guy†in the age range Michael Kimmel is focused on (16-26), ask any exasperated sister or would-be girlfriend, …”
Don’t be so sure. As the parent of one of those human beings who are dismissively characterized as “guys” living in some childish “guyland” I can’t agree. What I can’t find here is any description of a harm done to others, or any acknowledgment that these pursuits may be just a passing phase for many young men. It seems little more than preening outrage that someone, somewhere is having fun, and they are having this fun indulging in things I don’t approve of. You dismiss the social pressure of the straw-man guy-code, but what you really want is to substitute a whole new set of new, improved social pressures of your own devising. A Hugo code. Put down the video games and join take a Womens’s Studies course! Forget the porn and join a Take Back the Night March! Get a job so you can contribute funds to Planned Parenthood! Get your sorry, sad ass off the couch, and start working the phone banks for Obama!
It’s also fascinating that you lump sisters and would-be girlfriends
as allies of all parents, because we all know that young woman are more moral, more selfless, and more wise then these sad young losers. Of course, when a young women (and don’t ever dismissively use a term like “gal” to refer to her) is exasperated with anyone, that exasperation is always justified by the moral failing of others.
Adolescence and young adulthood isn’t easy for anyone, and as a parent, knowing the traps and snares that are out there, it is scary. But it is also scary to realize that there are many people who would do not view my son as an individual human being, but rather just a spoiled and corrupted member of a supposedly privileged class. People who feel that any disappointment and pain he experiences in his life are merely his just and proper due from his supposed sense of entitlement.
I realize my comment here isn’t gender-related, but I’m always amused when you bring up video games, Hugo. There are a wide variety of reasons for playing a video game. You quote Kimmel as saying, “Why are these guys so angry and defensive? In part because they feel a little guilty that they are spending so much time doing something they know is purposeless…”
Playing a video game is entertainment. It’s like reading a book, watching a movie or television, building model planes, embroidering pillows, whatever one might do to enjoyably pass time during free time. All entertainment could be chalked up to being purposeless if you’re being really simplistic. All entertainment can suck people in, and all pasttimes have the potential to invite addiction. It doesn’t mean there’s something inherently bad about them. Reading, as much as it’s encouraged, could easily become problematic if someone spent all day reading to avoid responsibilities. It’s not the book, but the avoidance. Take away the book, take away the video game, and people who hide in them will simply find somewhere else to hide. THAT’S what you have to address, not their choice of hiding spot.
Not all video games are violent like Grand Theft Auto. I’m a woman, I haven’t been a teenager in a long time, but I’ve always loved video games. Some of them tell stories and have interesting characters, some which rival my favorite books. Some are problem-solving in nature and bring a sense of accomplishment when puzzles are solved. Some offer adventure and exploring in a virtual world that can’t be recreated in the real world. As a female gamer who’s participated in gaming communities for over a decade, I’ve been a minority in a sea of men and boys. It’s been pretty damn rare that I’ve heard or sensed that their love for video games is as sinister as wanting to get revenge on people and reassert their masculinity.
By focusing on (a limited view of) the Playstation, you’re really missing the mark. I’d be defensive too if people kept questioning my choices of entertainment and trying to read too much into it.
STF, I invite you to read the book. You and I fundamentally disagree about so many things that consensus on issues around gender and identity is impossible — but Kimmel may prove (and I suspect will prove) to be far more convincing to you.
As for the gaming, Kimmel is focused specifically on the games like “GTA” and “World of Warcraft” that focus around redemptive violence. He notes that the “Sims” game, enormously popular with his female students, elicited nearly universal contempt from a study he did (references in his book) of young men in this age group. Why? Too much narrative, too much responsibility, too close to real life.
And there’s also the question of how much time is expended — half an hour a day? Or five hours a day? Kimmel is more concerned, rightly so, with those on the upper end of that spectrum, and those on the upper end of that spectrum are the ones he characterizes as defensive.
Video games have never appealed to me, going back to the Atari of my youth. This isn’t a moral judgment Kimmel is making (and which I concur in). It’s noting that for many young men, it’s not just a “game” — it’s an alternative universe that they find more fulfilling than their own actual lives, and in which they spend almost as much time as they do doing other, interactive behaviors with flesh-and-blood humans. Please, please, check out the copy of the book for more. Kimmel represents himself better than I can!
Wow. This was really insightful, at least from my female standpoint. So many men my age are locked in a haze of irresponsibility that they don’t even seem to be aware of. Every so often they look around and wonder why they’re not getting the things they want. And instead of looking at themselves – wondering if maybe they’re not married because their lifestyles are not appealing in a potential husband, or at their desires – questioning if anyone, male or female, really has unlimited sex with anyone they want anytime they want it, they become angry.
I’ve dated some men I didn’t even realize were angry, because they seemed like nice, quiet, slightly geeky people, but when their reserved slipped away I learned that they hated all their ex-girlfriends, harbored bad feeling for every woman who had ever turned them down for a date, and seemed to feel that – just because they were male – all women should want to be with them, regardless of what they did or demanded. Frequently these relationships turned sour for me emotionally, as the men demanded more and more sacrifices from me and refused to compromise or negotiate, instead belittling any area of my life that I felt was important enough to stand up for. This was characterized by a combination of unassumingness and entitlement that made me believe they were unequivocally right and that I was wrong, even when in retrospect they were making unfair or unreciprocated demands.
One such relationship became physically coercive, and again it was insidious, he never did something as blatant as hit me. Instead he blocked the door when I tried to leave his apartment after a fight, held me down on the couch until I apologized for saying something that upset him, held me down in bed when I told him to stop, and later said it was accidental. I do think it was accidental in the sense that he never meant to hurt me; what he meant was to control me, which he thought – as a man and particularly as my boyfriend – was his prerogative, and he couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that he had no such right.
Now I carefully examine men for signs of anger before getting involved with them. I don’t date anyone who expresses any ill feeling toward his exes, female friends, female relatives, or Hilary Clinton. Everyone has a little resentment towards someone in their past, but if it’s so strong as to come out when he’s on good behavior, I don’t need to be involved with him.
Hugo,
I will read the book, even though I wasn’t particularly impressed with Manhood in America.
And regarding the Simms. Once again there is this dichotomy – when young woman make choices in terms of how to spend their leisure time, and how to relax . . . well then these choices become the model of probity and good sense. If I was highly moralistic about such things, I might choose to characterize someone spending hours playing the Simms, carefully selecting a home, and a life, and and populating it with a community of souls that are built to amuse as . . . just possibly . . . pathologically manipulative and controlling. Perhaps they have some inflated sense of entitlement that can be realized only through some Godlike ability to construct a world of their very own, and populate it with small souls who live unaware of the power that spawned them.
As a woman who’s played quite a bit of World of Warcraft myself, I actually was a bit disturbed by how well “The more time they spend in that fantasy world, however, the more strange and bleak and unfair reality may seem” applied to my experience. If I go spend time with my friends in person, there will be boring parts, and slow times.. but in WoW the initial social bonding is almost instantaneous, and it’s easy to find something to do with your friends that gives you that feeling of cooperating for a common goal, of achieving something. And so many of the people I met in game needed that precisely because they weren’t getting feelings of achievement in their lives. As so many people don’t, even with a ‘good’ job and a ‘good’ family. And the people around them tell them how lucky they are to have such an easy job and such a nice family, so the discontent just feels like ingratitude and you suppress it rather than taking up a hobby or job that challenges you.
On the other hand, this DOES point something out about your moral view (and mine as well) that StF noticed: lack of ambition is a moral flaw. If all you want is to sit around and feel good and be content, that’s a problem. Even if these people who are caught up in porn and games and drugs without any sense of responsibility per se don’t cause any harm in their real-world interactions, they should feel that drive to improve the world around them. There are people who disagree, and I suspect they are the same people who don’t really see what’s wrong with Brave New World (as I didn’t when I first read it).
It’s noting that for many young men, it’s not just a “game†— it’s an alternative universe that they find more fulfilling than their own actual lives, and in which they spend almost as much time as they do doing other, interactive behaviors with flesh-and-blood humans.
I guess it’s they choice of the word “many” that’s bothering me. Like I said, I’ve spent a decade in conversation on the internet and in real life with mostly male gamers from all around the world, and almost none of the boys or men exhibit the qualities you’re discussing here.
Now it’s certainly possible it’s because the boys and men using video games for avoidance aren’t getting together in groups to talk about them. The people I talk to are obviously interested in interacting with like-minded people and sharing their opinions and listening to others’. Also, as casual gaming increases (and us hardcore gamers are very dismayed that the money now lies in appealing to the masses rather than people who really love gaming), it also spreads to people who aren’t invested enough in the hobby that they’re interested in talking about them, so I can’t insist I know a every player’s motivation for playing.
But I still think that focusing on the video games themselves, even repetitively violent ones, is misplaced. If it wasn’t, then that means taking away the video games will result in these boys and men leaving their TV screens and going out to get jobs and interacting with people. I’m not an expert, but something tells me that whatever’s going on in their heads isn’t going to be solved that easily. They’re going to replace those video games with something else – it’s a symptom, not a disease.
…”it’s a symptom, not a disease.”
Agree completely, and so does Kimmel. I’ll put up my third post next week, but the solution is always going to be deeper and richer than turning off the computer!
As for “lack of ambition as moral flaw”, I know that is one of my weak points. I tend towards Calvinism in my temperament if not my theology. But lack of ambition is fine as long as it doesn’t manifest as dependency on parents, and a sense of entitlement. The young man who still expects others to buy his groceries and pay for his heating while he spends all his money on gaming (and there are quite a few of these lads) need a wake-up call.
…lack of ambition is a moral flaw.
Ambition doesn’t exist in a vacuum, though. If an ambitious person is so bullheaded or plain incompetent that they merely screw things up, then their alleged flaw would be preferable.
“To what extent does this invisible (to men) social and personal pressure erase women’s agency?”
The level of agency a woman has in regards to her behavior depends upon how much choice she has in her life. A white western woman clearly has more agency than say a WOC in a third-world country. The level of agency a member of an oppressed group of people has is highly questionable. The other issue is that women themselves are often unaware of the social pressures that they face – or they don’t recognize them as harmful – since they’ve been so trained to see them as normal.
(But none of this is really on topic, and since I’m already engaging in an off topic discussion on another thread, I’m not going to continue this particular conversation.)
As has been noted above, there’s a difference between playing video games in the same way as one might read a book, and playing video games to the exclusion of other aspects of your life. One is not an issue, the other is.
I play a fair bit of multiplayer video games online, e.g., Halo, Call of Duty, etc., (and okay, *sometimes* I indulge a little too much, but usually I’m pretty good about it) and one thing I regret is that I can’t really have any interaction with other players. Sometimes I do try and talk, but as soon as someone identifies my voice as female, it’s all over — the level of hostility and verbal sexual harassment is ridiculous and sometimes upsetting. I have a somewhat deeper voice, so I can be laughing and playing cooperatively with a team, sometimes, until someone finally calls me out for being female, and the camaraderie is instantly dispelled — either by anger or by pick-up attempts.
When playing, if I lose a game, they laugh gleefully about killing a girl. If I win, they can get so abusive I end up having to mute the other players just so I can stay on.
As for the gaming, Kimmel is focused specifically on the games like “GTA†and “World of Warcraft†that focus around redemptive violence. He notes that the “Sims†game, enormously popular with his female students, elicited nearly universal contempt from a study he did (references in his book) of young men in this age group. Why? Too much narrative, too much responsibility, too close to real life.
Hmm, isn’t that a little (or a lot) Americentric? I mean, as far as I understand, there’s a similar epidemic in Japan of people (and if I remember correctly it’s people of both genders doing this) in their 20s+ who are mooching off their parents, but they don’t tend to play violent video games. Of course, this whole blog tends to lean that way but I digress.
How of much of the Sims’ contempt is from the socially constructed idea that it’s a “girly” game (it’s problematic of course, but in a totally different way)? I mean, would Nintendogs have as much universal contempt? How many of those guys who hate the Sims would hate Simcity, or Civilization (which arguably have as much responsibility, though less personal)?
Jay, good point. You refer to hikikomori – “individuals who refuse to leave their parents’ house, and isolate themselves away from society in their homes for a period exceeding six months.[2] While the severity of the phenomenon varies depending on the individual, some youths remain in isolation for years, or in rare cases, decades.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori
Although Japan is the original hotbed of video gaming, the Japanese games are marketedly different than American ones (which are more violent – the American XBOX has largely failed in Japan because Japanese people just don’t play shooters and games in the same vein as Grand Theft Auto). And as far as I know, hikkimori has never been blamed on video games.
I haven’t thought about hikkimori in a while, but it is kind of similar to what Hugo and Kimmel are talking about, being based on being overwhelmed by societal responsibility.
And I have plenty to say about the idea that Sims is socially constructed as a “girly” game – but I’ll bite my tongue for now except to say that female gamers generally HATE how games are marketed.
I kept mangling the spelling, whoops. I’m sure I just amused anyone who can read Japanese.
Yes, both Kimmel and I are writing about North American guy culture, with some attention in Kimmel’s book to “laddism” in the UK. This is indeed not a universal phenomenon.
I’m glad to hear that Kimmel recognizes that “pot, pornography and Playstation” are symptoms rather than causes. I do believe that in many cases violence is not as important a factor as the numbing, though. No matter how frustrated you are in the real world, no matter how lost or adrift you feel, these things (like television) put you into a more pleasant mental state. Feeling worthless or hopeless? You can still achieve something in a game, the porn stars still love you, and the drugs will take the bad feelings away.
As a society, there’s something very diseased about the passive and easy lifestyles we’ve made the norm. Whenever the topic comes up I’m reminded of pampered, neurotic lapdogs. It’s just not what we’re built for.
What would you say about young men who take little to no interest in the four P’s?
Are they more well adjusted? Or is it just a matter of preference for different hobbies?
Hugo, you’re right in that you tend to talk about North American culture, but given that hikikomori is very similar in terms of the isolationism to the phenomenon you described here, do you believe they are linked in similar ways?
What would you say about young men who take little to no interest in the four P’s?
Are they more well adjusted? Or is it just a matter of preference for different hobbies?
Depends. It’s all a matter of degree. Anything can be destructive in excess – watching TV, drinking, going shopping, hoarding. So I’d say that they may or may not be better adjusted. Society does attach values to different types of hobbies, so football is “better” than WoW, even though both reward teamwork (in a very simplistic reduction, it’s just for illustration purposes).
Oh my, there are two Lisas. Time to break out the initial.
Anyway, I’d say that it’s not the interest so much as the obsession that defines the relevant phenomenon, as I see it. Hugo may of course completely disagree.
But the warning sign to me is when any stress, difficulty, or unpleasantness in the real world drives someone to go dive back in to the activity (even/especially when that activity was the root cause). So, if someone has to go play the slots to cool down after their spouse yelled at them for gambling? And then doesn’t see any problem with this? It’s all the same thing. And when someone says that it’s the only thing that makes them feel fulfilled – that’s another warning sign. At some point you have to make a judgment call about whether they crave the activity because it’s truly their calling (say, someone who just can’t wait to go cook another meal for the shelter, or who feels a drive to get back to the book s/he’s writing) or whether it’s something that they shouldn’t be so dependent on.
I’m going to have to comment on defining hikikomori as “being overwhelmed by societal responsibility.” What is societal responsibility, exactly? Japanese society is well-known as placing a lot of emphasis on fitting in. So is it your social responsibility to fit in? There are plenty of bullies in Japanese schools (just as in American schools), and bullies will find some excuse to pick on someone, and if they have decided to exclude you they will find a reason if they have to fabricate it. It’s a serious problem and can lead to suicide, and I am sure some percentage of hikikomori would be dead if they hadn’t taken the best of a bad set of options. Of course, this sort of problem is not unique to Japan. If I had cared much about fitting in, elementary through high school would have been unbearably hellish, instead of merely horrifyingly traumatic, and perfectionist that I am I might have destroyed my health and future in a quest for peer approval.
My point is, society can reject you for plenty of reasons other than your failure to meet your social responsibilities, so let’s not (inadvertently, I assume) give the impression that all rejects-from-society are just irresponsible people.
meerkat, I’ve never been under the impression that hikikomori is the result of rejection by others, but rather a withdrawal of the individual. And I don’t think that either the Japanese who are suffering from it, or the subjects of Hugo’s post, are irresponsible people. If there’s too much of a stimulus and groups of youths shut down because of it, concerned people should look at both the stimulus and the youths shutting down to try to figure out what’s going on, rather than condemn them.
Hugo: It’s hard to believe the Calvinist in you thinks lack of ambition is acceptable in any form and to any degree.
Lisa: Whatever we’re built for, being scolded as “pampered neurotic lapdsogs” is no help whatever. In the first place, a lot of these guys like what they’re doing and where they’re at. It may surprise you to learn most of them know they’ll outgrow their taste for these guys and most of them don’t live in Mom’s basement (sorry Hugo, it’s true). In the second place, these guys have eyes, ears and heads. They’ve seen a lot of men treated the way Marcello Mastroianni was treated by Yvonne Furneaux in the scene in “La Dolce Vita” where they’re on their way to cover a newsstory with Paparazzo. If being browbeaten into eating an egg one doesn’t want to eat and then being told to chew slowly is part of what gets sold as a happy, loving relationship, then the appeal of pot, porn and brainless games is entirely understandable.
Hugo, I wonder who Kimmel has been talking to about video games. Men hate The Sims? The gender divide is about 50/50. And while a lot of male gamers get pissy when you point this out, it’s been said by more perceptive people than me that MMORPGS are basically shopping for boys; instead of going to Jimmy Choo and getting a fabulous pair of heels to wow all your friends, your character (who is much tougher and cooler than you are in real life) can show off his epic mount and his matching set of glowy 15K armor.
Robert, of course it’s true that women have a role in some of the pressures men face; but be honest about how much a part that really plays in these social norms. Are you actually arguing that men who enjoy ‘ambush porn’ are pushed to it by women who accuse them of being pussies if they don’t?
Mythago, it’s the result of a study he did (formal study, documented in the footnotes of Guyland) with interviews of about 400 young men. And I’m not the expert on video games, so I’m relying entirely on his study. But he’s not arguing from anecdote, either.
Definitely don’t think porn and video games are the same thing. I’m a woman and a gamer and while I do play to relax and escape, I know lots of other women and men who don’t have a “revenge” angle to their gaming. I think Kimmel is off base, but I guess I’ll have to read the book to see more.
Totally agree about the porn. I’ve seen those “bang bus” videos, as I had a bf who was annoyingly addicted to porn. Yuck. Porn is a problem, pot is a problem, but playstation isn’t as bad as you and Kimmel make it out to be.
Good grief, is there no end to this nonsense? Any time men find something they like to do because it’s, you know, FUN, along comes some prat who has to analyze it halfway to Timbuktu and back in order to come up with all kinds of reasons why these little pastimes are proof of these pitiful males’ failure as human beings. For Chrissakes, the fact that a guy might like hanging out with his buddies some night, or get a kick out of blowing away pixellated villains in GTA4, doesn’t indicate a wholesale panicked flight from the boo-scary grownup world of responsibility. And it doesn’t mean you’re overcompensating for perceived inadequacies in your day to day life either. It’s just FUN. You know, recreation. Some people crochet, some people go running, some people play video games or poker. Deal with it. Not everyone has to be just like you!
Jesus, Hugo, is there no simplistic finger-wagging misandrist twaddle you won’t embrace? (Yes, I noticed the link between “civilizing” and “feminizing”. I forgot that no men have ever figured prominently in the history of civilization.) I have to say that STF’s views are mostly far to the right of mine, but he’s hit nothing but net on this one. What utter rubbish, all around.
Are you actually arguing that men who enjoy ‘ambush porn’ are pushed to it by women who accuse them of being pussies if they don’t?
No. I’m arguing that the men who use this kind of material are rejecting the norms and behaviors they would have to engage in to win female approval, and that women largely establish those norms.
No. I’m arguing that the men who use this kind of material are rejecting the norms and behaviors they would have to engage in to win female approval, and that women largely establish those norms.
You mean, like, not being an asshole? Because being an asshole is such a great thing to aspire to.
Robert, it’s the “women establish these norms” where your argument fails. Do women participate in enforcing social norms? Absolutely. But that’s far from SETTING those norms. Women aren’t, as far as I know, insisting that men are sissies if they don’t enjoy beating up hookers in GTA, or that a real man gangs up with his buddies and catcalls women on the street.
What people do for fun says a lot about them. Unless you think that nobody should have given a shit about Michael Vick because dogfighting was just like FUN, dude.
Disagree with Robert. Social norms created by women do not force men to withdraw: when we make that choice, we do so of our own free will, whether we have good or bad reasons. Look, I agree that you can find writings labelled (and honoured as) feminist that contain absolutely outrageous racism and ableism, and we should address that. And we should also ask hard questions about how exactly we create social norms, and who enforces them, and why. But we shouldn’t use any of those things as excuses.
Disagree with Hugo: I have in mind an “activist” whose activism consists of holding and attending meetings where everyone thinks the way he does. Now, as someone whose activism for peace consists of going as a witness and peacemaker into areas of potentially lethal conflict and working for justice and peace; whose activism for literacy consists of tutoring in maximum security prisons and housing projects where drive-by shootings happen from time to time; whose environmental activism has consisted of nearly getting killed a couple of times working on alternatives to carbon-intensive transport, I have to ask this: why should I not lump this particular “lad” among the “lost souls”? How much do we have to or risk for what you like to call “Tikkun Olam” to get out of the “lost boys” club, and who decides?
Mythago, you’re not comparing video games to dogfighting, are you?
I just want to make one counter-point to the idea that men are escaping from feminizing influence in video games. World of Warcraft is not a place where men rule and escape from women. I’m a woman and I play WoW, and although the percentage is still skewed pretty significantly toward men, I know a lot of other real women who play the game with me. Also, a fair amount of men choose female avatars in the game. How are they escaping the feminine by inhabiting it? I don’t think they are running away from women at all – I have never been resented or abused for being a woman in a male space, for example.
There are definitely spaces that are pretty reserved for male privilege, such as non-pc language, lots of macho confrontations, that sort of thing. But there are also a lot of spaces (that a lot of men choose to join) that are socially conscious and don’t allow racism, sexism, or hateful language of any sort. So the feminizing, civilizing influences are very present in WoW at least, if not GTA. But I think you’re spot on about everything else.
“I’m arguing that the men who use this kind of material are rejecting the norms and behaviors they would have to engage in to win female approval, and that women largely establish those norms.”
Except that it isn’t really women who have established these norms. And even if they had, it’s still not women’s fault if the man -chooses- to become a bum or sexist asshole who wanks off to misgoynistic porn…or plays games like GTA where you get to beat up hookers.
“Mythago, you’re not comparing video games to dogfighting, are you?”
I don’t believe that was the point at all. I believe the point was simply that just because someone finds something “fun” and “recreational” doesn’t mean it’s an activity one should engage in. And what a person does for recreation does say quite a lot about them.
Faith: But this is where meaningful distinctions have to come in, lest you fall into the trap of undermining your argument with emotional appeals and rhetorical button mashing. The minute you toss a vicious bloodsport like dogfighting into a conversation about pastimes that are comparatively harmless, like poker night with your buds or playing WoW, you’re on the verge of a slippery slope. There are pastimes that are worthy of disdain or outright condemnation, and those that aren’t, however much they may not be to your taste. It’s obvious why someone would take the view that dogfighting is unequivocally a type of “recreation” no one should engage in. Try to say the same for video games and you’re on much shakier ground. And the fact that a small handful of video gamers may happen to be totally unsocialized no-hopers who spend 12 hours a day in front of the console instead of having a life is no indictment of video games. That’s a person with a problem, video games didn’t cause it, and if he didn’t have video games to channel his problem into he’d find something else.
I’m not too impressed by either your reasoning or Kimmel’s here, Hugo. From reading this, you’d think women gamers didn’t exist, or were somehow a fundamentally different phenomenon from guy gamers. One phrase you wrote here rather chimed with me: the stunning disconnect between what porn and video games promise and the world the way it really is. That disconnect is larger for women than for men. My suspicion is that the only reason men are more often gamers in the West is marketing, rather than any intrinsic chime with ‘disenfranchised’ masculinity. (I believe the split is more even in East Asian countries, where pop culture marketing in general seems to more often strike out for a crossover audience than a single-gender audience).
I play videogames for some of the reasons you mentioned – to withdraw from a society where rules and goals are less obvious than they are in a game, to find a more relaxing, easier to understand universe, sometimes to play at being a badass. (Which I’d argue isn’t the same as ‘revenge’ – LisaKS’s post on Punkass explores the ‘knight’ stereotype for women; personally I think that fake videogame heroism and fake videogame revenge are very much two sides of the same coin, in that they’re both exploring the idea of violence successfully applied to serve an emotional purpose).
I have a problem with these reasons being so pathologised. It sounds like you’re saying that a woman shouldn’t want to pass some of her time in a less frustrating, more goal-oriented world – or that a woman somehow wouldn’t want this because women are so DIFFERENT from men and can’t possibly be considered on the same level as them, as fellow gamers – Honestly, I sometimes think there’s more sexism in the way gamers are framed than there are in the games themselves. When women game, no one wants to hear about it. The games women favour most (Sims, some RPGs, Tomb Raider) are often framed in gamer culture as more ‘casual’ than games which go out of their way to avoid appealing to women, because women’s free time obviously isn’t as SERIOUS as men’s. (And again, who plays what is largely determined by design and marketing, not by the cognitive process of gaming itself). Maybe women’s gaming habits aren’t pathologised like this because their feelings about the games they play aren’t as important, or as dangerous, as men’s?
Am I a co-freak on an equal pathological level with the boys’ club? Or am I just having fun in a way you & Kimmel don’t approve of?
>>Now I carefully examine men for signs of anger before getting involved with them. I don’t date anyone who expresses any ill feeling toward his exes, female friends, female relatives, or Hilary Clinton. Everyone has a little resentment towards someone in their past, but if it’s so strong as to come out when he’s on good behavior, I don’t need to be involved with him.<<
The number one thing that attracted me to my husband was that when I met him, he was in the middle of a divorce, and his explanation of the situation was thus: “She wanted something I couldn’t provide (children), and she did what she had to do for her to be happy. I don’t like how she went about it, but I can’t blame her for doing what she needs to do to be happy.” Not a nasty word in sight.
On a strange note, I developed a litmus test for guys to date based on pets. Men who like cats, or are neutral about cats are fine. Men who actively dislike cats are not (for me)- I found that people who can’t tolerate independence in an animal often can’t take independence in a mate.
Now I carefully examine men for signs of anger before getting involved with them. I don’t date anyone who expresses any ill feeling toward his exes, female friends, female relatives, or Hilary Clinton.
Clinton’s been a complete sucker for the Thompson view of gaming, so gamer men who express ill feeling towards her are at least making a sensible reaction based on their own interests, even if those are not interests you share. I do think it’s sad that a lot of young people are so un-engaged politically that that’s the only thing she’s been involved in that they know and care about, but if you’re meeting a lot of young male gamers who have ill feeling towards Hillary, that’s exactly what she’s asked for from that demographic, no more and no less.