This train of thought has been festering for a while, but it started with this article about how there are fewer male students in veterinary school, a phenomenon that researchers refer to as "the feminization of veterinary medicine".
I recently something similar in language. Apparently male (Anglophone) students are hesitant to study French because they perceive it as being "for girls". You also often hear it spoken of in reference to elementary education. Apparently boys get less than enthusiastic about reading etc. because it's being modeled and encouraged by (primarily female) teachers, which apparently makes boys thing it's "for girls". Again, the word "feminization" is often used to describe this phenomenon.
The word "feminization" makes it sound like the thing is being made more feminine. But that isn't the issue. The thing isn't being made feminine, the thing is exactly what it has always been. The issue is that a previously neutral thing has started being perceived by boys as feminine (presumably because girls are doing it), and this makes boys not want to do it. So the real problem is that boys don't want to do things that they perceive to be "for girls."
But can we as women even do anything about this? It seems like an internal characteristic of male culture (insofar as it's even remotely useful to think of male culture as something homogenous), and I can't imagine that anything that women might say or do would make a difference.
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There's an opposite effect around some other effects -- math and science seem to be considered "for boys", and girls often stop taking them around the onset of puberty. Is this masculinization?
I'd wager it is. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that the gendering is absolute nonsense -- ask my wife the engineer -- what's to be done is the key question.
As people in one of the "gendered" fields, it's important to be aware of the effect and to work against it where it's perceived. For example, you're talking to a student who says he likes French, but... You could try to show him that it's a great field for anyone, even boys, to be in. I can similarly encourage young female students to consider technical fields.
But that's at the lowest, most tactical level. I'm sure there's something that can be done at a higher level, but that's far from my area of expertise. It's probably more of a girl thing.
This might just be my own personal baggage, but I don't think it's a great field for anyone, I think it's a great field for people whose talents and inclinations lie in this direction. When I was a kid people kept trying to "encourage" me into engineering (I'm sure I've blogged about this ad nauseum), and when I said I wasn't interested tried to convince me by saying that girls can totally do engineering. But my disinclination towards engineering had nothing to do with the fact that it was male-dominated, and everything to do with the fact that you have to make actual real tangible things that actually function in real life. The whole thing was so insulting to my intelligence that I'm still complaining about it to this day.
What's a good 'boy' language? Klingon?
In my experience, "feminization" has meant when something becomes disproportionately female. My first association with it was the "feminization of poverty" that was written about in the 1980s. It wouldn't occur to me that that meant poverty was taking on feminine traits.
These days, at least in much of the world, the gendering of any field of study or profession seems unbelievably antiquated. Way past time to get over that.
Did you take "band" in skool? If so, in your skool was it the case that the woodwind instruments were girl instruments and the brass instruments were boy instruments?
Not really. All our instruments had representatives of both genders, although their were trends. Trumpets were primarily cool girls, French horns were primarily cute geeky boys. Percussion was the coolest people and clarinets (me!) were the dorkiest. Strangely, the flutes were nearly all devoutly religious. I can only think of one flautist in my five years who wasn't. Oboe players tended to go on to medical school and saxophonists tended to go on to law school. Oh, and percussionists were most likely to go on to be a professional musician. And bassists all had long blond hair.
It is about recognizing the underlying pattern of educational feminization.
Recently there was a to-do about a Timothy Findley novel where a man is gang-raped by soldiers (bad, naughty, manly men types of course) being forced as a high school english novel. I too, had to read a pseudo gay novel decades ago during my high school years. Has anyone ever instead read a school novel where, for example, a woman is raped by another woman or a gang - for a mandatory class?
Teachers have long held a general bias against young confident men. They despise those who strike out for their own non-educational or government industry careers by playing Junior Hockey or learning a vulgar(?) work trade. Even Lance Armstrong from Texas HAD to drop out of school when his cycling career naughtily conflicted with his proper school schedulings.
CQ -- wait, sorry -- are you saying that "The Wars" was a pseudo-gay novel?
A) I haven't read that exact novel. The reading material 'that I had to study' definitely was.
In sports, cheating used to thought of as individual dirty players and shady things like point shaving. Really it is about top-down constructing of any league via team to team scheduling differences, draft & trading set-ups, and rule changes - often to induce more or less desired results.
We've got a number of Canadians working in Hollywood on mysteries, sci-fi, comedies and thrillers. I haven't heard of works by writers like Howard Engel ever being studied.
In recognizing any pattern, we need to view assumed innocently specific, by themselves, examples within their overriding context.
Consider the NHL over the past 16 years. Winnipeg, Que. City, Minneapolis, 2nd Southern Ont. out; Nashville, Phoenix, Atlanta, Tampa, Miami (Fla), Carolina, Anaheim in. And there was no underlying concerted pattern? Of course there was.
In recognizing any pattern, we need to view assumed innocently specific, by themselves, examples within their overriding context.
Part of the context is also an understanding of the stated rationale, too. For the NHL, it could be that TV revenue was considered more important than gate revenue. For schools, it could be that there are different standards for selecting literature than you think.
That Howard Engel or genre fiction in general isn't studied seems pretty independent of "feminization" -- they don't study Harlequin romances either.
But what about Hemingway? That dude fished, boxed, armied, and shot himself in the face with a good ol' shotgun. All pretty manly pursuits. Or Arthur Miller? He married Marilyn Monroe. I read them both in grade 12 -- the same year my school told me not to read The Wars because it was too gay.
Maybe your experience and the anecdotal information you've selected aren't telling the whole story.
R: M@
On my own I've read a collection of short stories by Hemingway (and other real Lits). Dude also worked for the Toronto Star.
I'm going to call my earlier answer 'The Casino Theory'. That's where anyone CAN win and be comp'ed using their individual skill or chance, but, wink wink, every game over time produces its net desired profit to The House.
Funny thing is, I've named two authors off the top of my head who don't fit your theory; I can name a few more -- Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, Graham Greene, Geoffrey Chaucer (he was a spy!) -- off the top of my head who probably fit your idea of "masculine" literature, without so much as a glance at my bookshelves, all of whom I first read in school.
Meanwhile, you've named one author who does fit your definition (though his suitability for school study is questionable at best); one who you think doesn't but have never read; and one who you read but seem unable to name.
Either I'm on a hell of a lucky streak, or we're seeing which side of the argument the house is playing.
By the way -- before you or anyone else gets the wrong impression -- I completely reject not only the idea that literature taught in schools is "feminized"; I reject, in fact, the very idea that literature can be generalized with terms like masculine or feminine. It should go without saying, too, that I reject the idea that homosexuality is in itself feminine.
I would say, instead, that you're making conclusions from a set of poorly considered and not very useful assumptions. In addition, you're taking as proof some carefully selected cases that fit the assumptions (and rejecting, as we've seen, cases that don't fit the assumptions).
So I don't think your argument holds water at all. I think if you were to go and read some of the literature you're railing against you'd see that it's a lot more complex and interesting than you've been led to believe. Maybe you had some bad English teachers; don't let bad teachers make your mind up for you. Go get a copy of The Wars and give it a try. I think you'll be surprised.
BTW, As an adult I've read Melville's Billy Budd Greene's The Third Man, Conrad's The Secret Sharer, etc. amongst others of my own free selection. I also liked works by Balzac, Maugham, and James as well. I didn't HAVE TO read and acceptably discuss any of these - by timetable and at the exclusion of other options - to pass thru a required class. (And I had played on the school football team, too.)
Teachers have long held a general bias against young confident men.
Commenters have a long held tradition of making sweeping generalizations with insubstantial, cherry-picked evidence to back it up.
The two apparent sock puppets remind me of RAW's creation of Marvin Gardens' creation of Frank and Ernest.
Ha! But only one sock puppet, methinks.
I don't know about any of the specific books you guys are discussing, but the books we did in high school weren't particularly feminine. I only read two books with female protagonists (Obasan and To Kill A Mockingbird) and those weren't mandatory, they were from the "pick one of the books on this list" list.
It's also inconsistent with my experience that teachers would be biased against confident young men. As I blogged about a bit here, my teachers tended to identify with confident people and not identify at all with non-confident people, my theory being that this is because they're confident themselves.
And I don't see any sock puppets.
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