Dakota Broadwell

Professor Rebecca Agosta

UWRT 1101-004
20th April 2015
Man Should Be
Throughout American culture many structures and views have been established, changed,
or gone away with completely. Some aspects of our society stand out more than others with a
reign of dominance in which we must abide by or suffer the consequences of being a social
outcast, or not in the norm. Since humans strive to get attention or communicate with others,
even if some do say they do not mind being a loner, we need to be normal so that we can full fill
the needs we have as social beings. A big part of American culture is manhood and being manly
enough to gain trust and respect by others. It was brought to my attention by Jackson Kats in his
anti-sexist male activist group video called Tough Guise that there are men and women in our
society that do not agree with men having to be rough around the edges and do the things that
men have been doing and were expected to do for centuries.
Jackson pulls multiple articles from the news showing statistics of the crime rate between
male and females. Almost as a battle of the sexes he uses these stats that we assume are true
because the media is always shows us crimes committed by males on television and in our
papers. He uses our logical sides to open up his theory to attract the viewer, because it although
this news may not be surprising to the standard individual our curiosity gets the best of ourselves
and we hope to see if his story makes their standing point look better or worse.

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Not only did Katz use short clips in his video to bring out our logical side but our
emotions were also tested. Aside from the charts on screen stating how men are more abusive
than females he also displays videos of males being bullied for not being manly enough. He
wants his viewers to feel sympathy for the people being bullied, which is not a difficult task
when you pick an issue as broad as being manly. Many homosexual males have been spited
down by other males because they did not find the act of two men together as a masculine
choice; they think that a man should be with a woman because it is the right way and has been
done for centuries before. So showing these negative clips about gays, Katz has already gained
the trust and support from almost all of his homosexual viewers.
Since this was Katz video he was obviously made to look like he was one of the good
guys in the debate. He allowed a few clips of interviews of other people that stated how they
agreed with his opinion and how the issue at hand needed to be better addressed and resolved.
Once again he also decided to pull clips from popular movies from our culture and show scenes
with men being demoralized because they showed weakness.
Personally, Jackson Katz video should not have been against the way boys became men. I
feel like there are multiple reasons why men need to be tough. Security purposes for example, a
woman may be capable of defending herself females are genetically declined on physical
strength. So there needs to be tough guys in this world to help those that need help, most tough
guys are our everyday heros like policeman, firefighters, and soldiers. I do agree with Katz with
the issue of guys being judged for showing emotions or have a different sexuality. However I
cant prove that his thoughts and ideas trump the ideas that people have retained from their past
generations.