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'Man up!' 'Grow some balls!' 'Don't be a sissy!' Phrases such as these still reverberate throughout Western culture, and shape the lives of many boys and young men. These same young men are growing up in a society saturated with violent video games and often-dehumanising pornography, while also being told to reject violent acts and respect women. MYKE BARTLETT reports on a new documentary that delves into the minefield that is modern masculinity, and offers ways to discuss this important topic with students.

These are complex times for young men. Boys find themselves confronted by mixed and contradictory messages - a media landscape that implicitly tells them they are the centre of the universe, while arguing that they shouldn't be. For many men, the early twenty-first century can be seen as a time of wounded privilege. That is, in being asked to consider whether they - by virtue of their gender - occupy a more privileged position in society, some men have responded with fear, anger and outrage. As Laurie Penny notes in The Guardian:

Being made aware of your privilege can feel a lot like being attacked, or called a bad person, and when that happens you sometimes get the urge to stamp your feet and scream.1

At its most extreme, this foot-stamping has resulted in men's rights activist groups, many of whom attempt to flip the language of feminists and accuse them, in pursuing equality for women, of being guilty of sexism - as if a world in which gender equality exists is inherently unfair to men. While these battles play out along frequently simplistic lines (and binary notions of 'male' and 'female'), there has been less discussion around what it actually means to 'be a man' in the twenty-first century.

In her documentary The Mask You Live In (2015), director Jennifer Siebel Newsom takes aim at definitions of masculinity, arguing that they are far too narrow for boys to develop as rounded, emotionally grounded human beings. In other words, while society demands that men improve, its working definition of 'men' prevents this from happening. While the film is very American in its focus, the issues it examines regarding masculinity remain potent for an Australian audience.

'BE A MAN'

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