Friday, April 21, 2017

Literature Review #4


  1. Kimmel, Michael. Guyland: The Dangerous World Where Boys Become Men. New York: Harper, 2000. Print.
  2. Guyland talks about the passage from adolescence to adulthood. This passage was once clear but has become blurred due to the stages of liminality in men, who must explore what it means to be a “man” in order to feel validated.
  3. Michael Kimmel is an author/editor of more than twenty volumes on the subject of manhood. He’s a sociology professor at SUNY: Stony Brook.
  4. Guyland: a liminal stage of life between adolescence and adulthood where “guys can be guys” with each other, paradoxically grown men are fixated on boyhood and ignore adult responsibilities
Initiations: events that prove “misguided notions of masculinity”, transition from one status to another: boyhood to manhood.
  1. “Initiations in Guyland are about the passage from boyhood to manhood. Boyhood is the world of women… Many fraternities have equally infantilizing rituals. If initiation is going to validate your manhood, first you have to regress to babyhood.” (99)
“In the United States, providing masculinity appears to be a lifelong project, endless and unrelenting. Daily, grown men call each other out, challenging one another’s manhood.” (100)

  1. This book takes a look into initiations, pledging, and hazing. These Greek-life related concepts can provide an insight into the psychology of men who join fraternities. While the experiences described are not specifically for homosexual experiences, they can be one of the reasons why LGBT students join Greek culture despite problematic culture.

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