Tough Guise

I walked out of class on Tuesday and was bothered for the rest of the day by the issues brought up in "Tough Guise." I found the film a little bit hard to sit through (not only because scene after scene was just a shot of Jackson, the narrator, talking, but also) because of then nature of the images shown and the issues being discussed. It's so unfair for men to feel like they have no other choice than to put on this "tough guise" to gain respect and be seen as a "man." It's valuable for everyone to recognize that as much as our patriarchal society controls images of women, it also controls images of men. Men are just as likely to crack under society's and media's pressure to be rough and tough as women are to crack under the same pressures that force us to be dainty and delicate.
I thought the part about "passive language" was very interesting. I'd never really considered the way rape is publicly reported: "She was raped" instead of "he raped her." Huge issue.
The part of the video about the school shootings chilled me. It should be the BIGGEST red flag in the world that 11 and 12 year old boys are committing such atrocities (even though I feel like middle/high school shootings have stopped for now, college shooting seem to be the more recent trend, as with Virginia Tech.). When the various shooters' childhood pictures and yearbook pictures were shown, I couldn't help but think of my little brother, Max, who is only 7 but is no doubt exposed to similar societal expectations of violent, tough-guy masculinity. How can we stop this craziness?!
Howard Stern's rape joke about the attractive female students running out of the Columbine shooting scene infuriated me. I can't even bring myself to blog about it! He is a disgrace to men. Period.