Matt Griffith

SOCI 334
Dr. Koch
April 30, 2015
What is a Real Man Actually Like?
In the video, we can see a little boy who is getting a shot at the doctors
office. His father is filming the video. The little boy is afraid to get the shot and he
starts to get nervous when he is about to get it and after the nurse or doctor give
him the shot, he starts to cry. In an attempt to make the little boy stop crying his
dad repeats multiple times say, Im a man. At the end of the video, the little boy
says Im a man as he tries to fight off his tears.
Besides the humor in the video, the question must arise, would a real man
cry when he was getting a shot? Our culture tells us no, he would be tough even if
it hurts. Raewyn Connell tells us, Masculinities, as socially constructed
configurations of gender practice, are also created through a historical process with
a global dimension. (Appelrouth and Edles 592) So how does our culture view
masculinity? We view masculine men as strong, both physically and mentally,
tough, aggressive, successful, and many more traits. The little boy in the video is
being exposed to that expectation by his father. The words behind what the father
is trying to get his young son to repeat has a connotation that the little boy will be
tough through the painful situation and not cry or he is not really a man. The father
is strengthening our cultures ideal of masculinity in his young son.
Both Raewyn Connell and Judith Butler can explain this phenomenon that
seems to those not looking at it through critical glasses as just normal. Connell
suggests that there is something called hegemonic masculinity that aids in this.

Butler tells her readers that the concepts of the heterosexual matrix and
performativity can show us why we enforce such strict gender roles.
The reason that men and boys are taught to act and do certain things is to
keep their dominance. Since our culture values strength from men, it is taught from
a young age, such as the little boy in the video. Because many young boys are
brought up with the assumption that men should be dominating, the idea of
hegemonic masculinity has evolved. Hegemonic masculinity is the term that refers
to the pattern of practices that allows mens dominance over women to continue
(Appelrouth and Edles 588). This leads to Connells theory that masculinity is .
socially constructed configurations of gender practice because the way we teach
masculinity helps men have a heads up over women. If domination of women helps
men remain a very large majority of corporate executives, top professionals, and
holders of public office., make twice as much money, and control high power
positions within national government, than this is a cause for men to continue to
hold our view of masculinity in high esteem (Appelrouth and Edles 593).
Judith Butler tells people that the term woman fails to be exhaustive, not
because a pregendered person transcends the specific paraphernalia of its
gender, but because gender is not always constituted coherently or consistently in
different historical contexts... (Appelrouth and Edles 603). Since the term woman
is not exhaustive and has meant different things in different cultural and historical
settings, it is safe to assume that the term men does not have an exhaustive
meaning behind it as well. But in our growing up, we are taught what is proper
for a man or woman to do, which is the heterosexual matrix (Appelrouth and
Edles 600). In turn, we then act a certain way in order to show others what gender
we are.

Butler suggests that gender and sex have nothing to do with one another in
their natural sense. She says that man and masculine might just as easily
signify a female body as a male one (Appelrouth and Edles 605). This idea
shows that our cultures view on what sex- the biology of a person- and genderthe way we present ourselves- do not necessarily have to be exclusive in the case of
man and masculine and woman and feminine. The implications of this are quite
interesting, and contrast what the father is teaching his son in the video. Just
because the little boy has the sex of a male, thus one day becoming a man, he
could actually be masculine or feminine in gender. But since the father is
putting these expectations on his son, the father is enforcing to his young son what
he feels, as well as most of society, how a man should act.
What is a real man really like? The answer to this question is not as simple as
it seems. A man can be a real man by either being masculine or feminine. Just
because a person is a man biologically- sex- does not mean that he is a man in
gender. Many men and women are taught to act the way they do because of the
heterosexual matrix, how we think men and women should act. Because of this,
people must act a certain way or risk not fitting this mold that is seen by most as
black and white, but in reality, there is quite a bit of grey room involved.
The little boy in the video would be just as much of a man if he expressed his
fear by crying or by not showing pain. He is already a man biologically and the way
he acts should not constrict what gender he chooses to play out, or even if he
chooses a lesser masculinity, which is anything which falls short of the hegemonic
masculinity that Connell describes.
Word Count: 946

Bibliography:
Appelrouth, Scott A. and Laura Desfor Edles. 2012. Classical and Contemporary
Sociological Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage.
Jamar Collins. 2015. Little Champ, mans up!!. You Tube Web site. Retrieved April
25, 2015 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtsBvjTR6WI).

Lower Job, Same Views:

I walked into the shop, punched my time card, and looked at the days work
order. I was working with our departments electrician, Gene. He isnt like most of
the other guys at Bristol Virginia Department of Parks & Recreation, he has a
bachelors degree in business in addition to his electrician license, he came from a
middle class family, and he plays golf with the guys down at city hall. Most of the
other guys there came from working class homes, some are high school dropouts,
and the rest only have a high school diploma.
We went to our departments offices first thing in the morning and after
meeting some of the higher up people, they were excited that there was a college
student working on the laboring crew and in a joking manner they asked my boss,
How did you get someone this smart? Later in the day, Gene and I took a break
and we were near city hall so we stopped by for a few minutes to talk with some of
his friends. After we got back into the truck he told me that he was glad that I was
with him because he is usually weary of taking our other guys into city hall, but he
said he knew I wouldnt have a problem with any of the people who worked there.
That comment he made and one of our office workers made to my boss earlier in
the day stuck with me.
So why did they make those comments? At first glance I look like all the rest
of the guys we work with. I had on jeans with a few grass stains, dirty work boots,
and a green parks & recreation t-shirt that the rest of the department laborers wear.
Was I a member of the proletariat described by Karl Marx and they members of the
bourgeoisie, or at least the petty bourgeoisie? If that is true than why was Gene not
worried about me when he took me there? It is not as clear cut as Marx makes it

seems. It turns out that there are many other factors at play as well. In the eyes of
Max Weber, I was not in the same social class as them, but my status would be
around what their status is.
We may speak of a class when (1) a number of people have in common a
specific casual component of their life chances, insofar as (2) this component is
represented exclusively by economic interests in the possession of goods and
opportunities for income, and (3) is represented under the conditions of the
commodity or labor markets. This is a class situation (Appelrouth and Edles
161). My parents money aside, which at the moment, I was not showing, I was
working a low or no skilled job for low wages. I had a low social class by my own
means, especially being a temporary worker on the lowest rung of the city. But I
was not just a proletariat talking with the bourgeois as Marx might suggest, I was
close to the same status by Webers definition.
A simple way of describing the differences of class and status is given by
Max Weber himself: one might thus say that classes are stratified according to
their relations to the production and acquisition of goods; whereas status groups are
stratified according to the principles of their consumption of goods as represented
by special styles of life (Appelrouth and Edles 161). Is this why I fit in more than
most of the other guys who work as city labors? In fact it is. In this rigidly simple
comparison of class and status, I was a lower class because my means of production
were lower. I had absolutely no clout in the city. I did whatever I was told each day,
without regard to what I thought should happen. I certainly made less money and
had a much different job than the people at city hall. The class differences aside,
our status was more similar. My life style was different than many of the other
labors in my department, but I enjoyed much of the same type of things as the

people in city hall. I play golf, am a college student, come from a similar middle
class background, and am more likely to value more similar things as the people in
city hall.
While Karl Marx worked to create a definition of class, it is incomplete. Max
Weber does a much better job because he realized that it was not all black and
white. Weber allows us to go into that grey area that can explain our place in
society more than Marxs explanation could ever give us. Weber allows us to see
and unpack why I was looked at differently by people in more prominent city
positions than others who were on the same low latter rung of the city that I sat on.
Weber allows for more slack because a persons place in society can not only fit into
one of two categories, our world is too complex for that. We have different social
classes besides the oppressors- bourgeoisie- and the oppressed- proletariat. There
are different dividers within our classes and relationships with those who differ from
us, even just slightly. As a whole, Weber describes this much better than Marxs
explanation could ever give us.
Word Count: 902

Bibliography:
Appelrouth, Scott A. and Laura Desfor Edles. 2012. Classical and Contemporary
Sociological Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage.

Why Riot?
Race riots in the past year have made news headlines. There were riots in
Ferguson, Missouri starting on Monday, November 24, 2014 with the decision
pertaining to the incident of police officer Darren Wilson shooting and killing a
young African American man named Michael Brown (Pompi 2014). In a more recent
protest, turned riot, a twenty five year old African American man named Freddie
Gray, was arrested on April 12, 2015 and suffered injuries, which led to his death on
April 19. Riots have since broken out starting on Monday, April 27, and led the city
of Baltimore, Maryland to be declared under a state of emergency and the arrival of
the National Guard and police in riot gear (Schonfeld 2015).
So why are so many people taking part in these huge riots that are gaining
national attention from all major news companies? There seems to be a strong
sense of what Emile Durkheim refers to as a collective conscience throughout the
African American community in Baltimore, Maryland. These riots are also coming
out in a religious form as described by Durkheim as well. Surely not all the rioters
are bad people who want to destroy their city.
The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to average citizens of the
same society forms a determinate system which has its one life; one may call it the
collective or common conscience (Appelrouth and Edles 95). It seems that the
rioters have the same mind set on these issues, the case of Michael Brown in
Ferguson and Freddie Gray from Baltimore. They are angry because of what they
feel to be an injustice for their social group, African Americans in their community in
these cases. The rioters see the acts of the police as criminal.

We can, then, to resume the preceding analysis, say that an act is criminal
when it offends strong and defined states of the collective conscience (Appelrouth
and Edles 95). The collective conscience of these two communities in particular has
a distrust of police in general. This consciousness of mistrust is independent of the
particular conditions in which individuals are placed; they pass on and it remains
(Appelrouth and Edles 95). Because their society has long held this belief that the
police are to be mistrusted, it is not the individual who has formed this conclusion,
and it has been enforced and passed on by their communities.
Just because these individuals may feel oppressed because of what they feel
to be injustices from the hands of police on its own does not explain why so many
people are taking part in this riot. There are certainly those who would ordinarily be
considered deviant by committing crimes, which we have shown elsewhere,
consists of an act that offends certain very strong collective sentiments
(Appelrouth and Edles 91). We can also safely assume that there are people who
would not typically upset the collective values, who are also taking their part in the
protests turned devastating riots. The collective conscious appears to have
changed so that a group of individuals, most of whom are perfectly inoffensive,
may, when gathered in a crowd, be drawn into acts of atrocity (Appelrouth and
Edles 87).
The actions that are taking place as a religious type of experience for these
people. The work religious is not necessarily one of worship any deity, but in the
actions that are taking place. One of the rioters may feel himself dominated and
carried away by some sort of an external power which makes him think and act
differently than in normal times, he naturally has an impression of being himself no
longer (Appelrouth and Edles 121). This external force, in the case of the riots in

Baltimore and Ferguson, are those who are surrounding the individual whom are
also angry at the injustice that they perceive, regardless if they are right or wrong.
And as at the same time all his companions feel themselves by their cries,
their gestures and their general attitude, everything is just as though he really were
transported into a special world, entirely different from the one where he ordinarily
lives, and into an environment filled with exceptionally intense forces that take hold
of him and metamorphose him (Appelrouth and Edles 121). During the heat of the
moment, many people have been symbolically, in their mind, taken to a different
world. In this world, it is acceptable to loot, injure people, burn down businesses
and other objects, and basically break their normal collective sentiment.
As stated earlier, some of the rioters are most likely delinquents in their
normal everyday life, but it is also safe to say that many of the rioters, who are
protesting the deaths of Freddie Grey and Michael Brown, are usually people who
share a collective consciousness of what they view as right and wrong. But because
of the forces of society surrounding them, they change. The social forces that are
surrounding them at the time that the peaceful protest turns to a riot are larger than
many people give credit to. The ordinarily peaceful collective consciousness of
individuals in a crowd can change by the emotion of others caused by the situation.
This religious experience can and will cause people to do things that they would
not normally do as they are transported into a special world. and into an
environment filled with exceptionally intense forces that take hold of him and
metamorphose him (Appelrouth and Edles 121).
Word Count: 910

Bibliography:
Appelrouth, Scott A. and Laura Desfor Edles. 2012. Classical and Contemporary
Sociological Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage.
Pompi, Jennifer. 2014. Inferno! Rioting, fires, looting break out after decision
announced. Washingtontimes.com, November 24. Retrieved April 30, 2015
(http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/24/rioting-breaks-out-inferguson-after-grand-jury-cl/?page=all)
Schonfeld, Zach. 2015. Who is Freddie Gray, and Why Is Baltimore Burning for
Him? newsweek.com, April 28. Retrieved April 30, 2015
(http://www.newsweek.com/who-freddie-gray-and-why-baltimore-rioting-him326265)