Michael Kimmel’s research focuses on challenging conventional notions of masculinity in today’s society.

Kimmel will deliver a lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday in Room 001 of the Life Sciences Complex. The lecture will be about his book, ‘GuyLand: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men,’ and will focus on the developmental stage between adolescence and adulthood in young men’s lives, Kimmel said.

The lecture is sponsored by the campus organization A Men’s Issue, which advocates against sexual violence and seeks to redefine what it means to be a man, said Louis DiFazio, the co-president and a junior mechanical engineering major.

‘Traditional masculinity tells me I have to have multiple heterosexual partners, hold my alcohol and suppress any emotion,’ DiFazio said.

Kimmel plans to report his findings on the lives of young men today and the lengthened developmental stage, termed ‘GuyLand,’ which he thinks has emerged in all large industrial societies, he said.

‘There are very, very few people who seem to be noticing that the trends among young people are, basically, to elongate the period before adulthood to a full decade,’ Kimmel said. ‘Not that long ago, people got married at age 20 or 21.’

Kimmel’s research is based on 400 interviews with males ages 16 to 26, according to a March 9 Syracuse University news release.

Kimmel also intends to explain how GuyLand originated, what this developmental phase asks of men and what these social expectations in turn suggest for women, he said.

‘I wanted to sort of map what this new stage of development is, between adolescence and adulthood,’ Kimmel said.

Some of the negative behaviors associated with this time period in a young man’s life may include excessive video gaming, binge drinking, hooking up and sexual assault, Kimmel said.

‘Basically, guys give themselves a pass by saying things like, ‘Well, I never raped anyone,” Kimmel said. ‘I think that kind of sets the bar a little bit too low. I think that men can do better than not having raped somebody.’

Kimmel’s job is not to instruct men to act in a certain manner or to try to evade GuyLand, because it is a state of development, he said.

‘What we can do is we can go through that period more consciously, and that’s basically what I’m going to be talking about,’ Kimmel said.

Sacchi Patel, a graduate student who teaches SOC/WGS 230: ‘Intergroup Dialogue on Gender,’ said it is important to expose Kimmel’s work to the SU community and other college campuses because there is limited discussion on issues of masculinity.

This lecture might ‘spark dialogue’ on critical topics that are often dismissed because they are considered ‘taboo,’ because people do not care about them or because they are deemed women’s issues, Patel said.

Patel, who is also a staff member at the R.A.P.E. Center, said many of the mainstream ideals of masculinity ‘reinforce power differentials in society,’ which hurt women and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community the most.

Seth Finkelstein, co-president of A Men’s Issue, said society has designed the way men have to act to be accepted by their peers. There is more pressure to succumb to these expectations in a group setting as opposed to an individual basis, he said.

Co-sponsors of Kimmel’s lecture include Students Advancing Sexual Safety and Empowerment, Pride Union, Vera House and the SU R.A.P.E. Center, together with the 17th Annual White Ribbon Campaign, Finkelstein said.

DiFazio, the A Men’s Issue co-president, said bringing Kimmel to SU was a smooth process.

‘Dr. Kimmel was more than happy to come to campus,’ DiFazio said. ‘He already knew of our group from past conferences, and we’ve been wanting him to come to campus for a while now.’

chlevin@syr.edu

 

Published on March 23, 2011 at 12:00 pm