Micheal Kimmel is a sociologist and one of the leading authorities on men and masculinity. His books include Manhood in America: A Cultural History, The Politics of Manhood and Changing Men. But his new book, Guyland, is perplexing.
The subject here is young men-mostly white, middle-class young men, 16 to 26. Kimmel says he talked to 400 of them, and he has nothing good to say about them. They inhabit something he calls "guyland," which is all about drinking, sex, video games, sports, music videos, shoot-em-up movies, shock jocks, porn, pizza and beer. And if that isn't enough for you, it's also about circle jerks, fraternity pledges forced to eat cookies covered in the product of circle jerks, date rape, party rape, and gang bangs.
Doesn't that just sound like every teenage boy and young man you know?
Kimmel has properly, and usefully, described a subculture that is a part of the lives of some young boys and men. [That's the one line his publisher will crib from this review.] But he disturbingly makes it sound as if this is the reality for all of them, all the time. "Guyland is the world in which young men live," he says, without qualification.
He calls guyland a terra incognita, but it doesn't seem so incognita to me. None of what he describes is new to me; a half hour of Howard Stern will give you the whole agenda, minus the rapes and gang bangs-and you can get those from the evening news.
But there is a more troubling issue in Kimmel's book. In the last chapter, he asks what is responsible for boys being attracted to guyland. And his answer?
Fathers.
He doesn't cite any evidence or scientific research to cite this; he simply asserts it.
His favorite example of how fathers fail their children (he tells it twice) is an anecdote about "Josh," a 21-year-old college student. Josh calls home, and his father answers. "Hey, Dad, how are you?" Josh asks. His father says, "Hold on, I'll get your mother."
When a son leaves home, "his father often breathes an enormous sigh of relief," Kimmel says. "How many fathers answer the phone when their son calls from college and say only, ‘Hold on, I'll get your mother?'" Well, I dunno. Kimmel's the sociologist. How many, Kimmel?
I'm sure it happens, but I don't think it's the usual response. "Many dads willingly check out of their sons' lives far too soon," he says. Again--how many? And what's the evidence that this is what turns boys into gang-raping "guys"? Kimmel doesn't give us any.
What's worse, according to Kimmel, is that fathers have not only given up on their sons-fathers want to be part of guyland themselves. "Their sons live out the lives that they, the dads, wish they could have lived until they turned 30."
Not me. I don't wish I'd lived that life. And I wish my boys had called home from college more often. I cried when they left. And I loved the updates on what was going on when they did call. My experience, of course, does not entitle me to make scientific claims about guyland or lost boys. But neither do Kimmel's anecdotes allow him to make scientific claims.
Kimmel's hammering of fathers goes on and on. After a description of predatory sexual behavior by high school boys who had sex with girls as young as 10, Kimmel says their mothers were outraged. But their fathers "seemed almost proud."
I'm sure some boys and young men are behaving in the ways Kimmel describes, and it's a bad thing. Some fathers are bad fathers. And I agree with Kimmel that we should study figure out why some young men get trapped in guyland and what we can do about that.
But Kimmel has not done that here.
