Big Boys Club
Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men
by Michael Kimmel
Harper Collins, 2008
(332 pages, $25.95, hardcover)
reviewed by Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr.
The average age of marriage for men has risen sharply since the late 1950s, when it was 22. As a result, a single-male culture has developed, especially since the 1970s. Representatives of this culture may be found in college fraternities and post-college sports bars. It features heavy drinking, video games and other cyberspace activities, sports on television, pornography, beer and pizza, predatory heterosexual sex, and misogyny.
In Guyland, Michael Kimmel presents a guide to this culture. He charges that “guys” (his word for single men under 30 in the subculture) consort with “girls” to prove that they are not gay, but they are not at all happy about real women. Whereas traditional cultures have initiation rites for young men administered by older men, this culture has young men trying to initiate each other without any involvement of the older and more mature.
Protected & Protective
Kimmel writes, “This was a generation that was told from the get-go that each of them was special, in which their self-esteem was so inflated they became light-headed, in which they were rewarded for every normal developmental milestone as if they were Mozart.” Inhabitants of Guyland were also raised to expect work to be exciting, fulfilling, and remunerative. But Guyland is divided between those with dead-end jobs and those with entry-level jobs that don’t pay much. So while puberty comes earlier now than ever before (often by age 13), economic maturity comes much later. So much for self-esteem.
Kimmel describes the principles of the Guy Code—the worldview of Guyland. These include “Boys don’t cry,” “It’s better to be mad than sad,” “He who dies with the most toys wins,” “Take it like a man,” and other such sentiments.
He also isolates several “cultures” or shared heart-attitudes that prevail in Guyland. There is entitlement: The world of equal opportunity for women and people of color raises the bar for white males. Between this and the movement toward a knowledge economy, many young men believe they have not gotten what they are entitled to.
And silence: Few young men actually participate in hazings or gang rapes, but they are likely to keep silent when they know of others who have. “Bro’s before ho’s” may indicate, on the one hand, that friendship (at least when three or more are included) may not be as endangered as some have speculated, but it also means that one never tells on other guys when they do bad things to other people. Protection is frequently expected. Not only is there silence on misdeeds, but often adult male authorities like parents or coaches actively abet the viler aspects of the culture by defending hazing on athletic teams or predatory sex. In the case of the notorious Lakewood Spur Posse, whose fornications often amounted to rape, some of the fathers seemed almost proud of their sons.
Try Not to Be Gay
Central to Guyland is the necessity of not being perceived as gay, and to strike any pose necessary to avoid the perception. But there is an irony here. R. J. Rushdoony noted four central characteristics of homosexual culture in his Institutes of Biblical Law, all of which are duplicated in Guyland: Both cultures have an abnormal fear of aging and of death, and therefore cling to youth and pre-adulthood. Both exalt vulgarity into style. Both are bitterly hostile to the family and small-town culture. (Guys may not be anti-family in the long term, but a real woman who sets limits to their desires and fantasies, the kind of woman one usually ends up marrying, is often called a “bitch,” as opposed to a “babe”—a girl who approaches the pornographic fantasy ideal.)
Howard Ahmanson has run the philanthropic operation Fieldstead and Company since 1979. Fieldstead concerns itself with applying a Christian worldview in all areas, especially the arts and culture. Howard’s personal area of concern right now is housing affordability and land use law. He writes at Howard howardahmansonjr.com. His wife, Roberta, is especially concerned with the visual arts. They live in Orange County, California.
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