Chapter 8: The "Streets" in the Pocket

VAST WASTELAND

The corrosive impact of media on social standards has long been debated, and while the nature of its content has grown more salacious and indecent, it's our relationship with media that defines one of the greatest challenges of this generation. Still, it's important to examine the "slippery slope" upon which content has plunged since the early days of television.

In 1961, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) verbally wagged his finger at the television industry, imploring it to do better with regard to the quality of the content it offered. Newton Minow, who was appointed by President John F. Kennedy, challenged the room of television executives to watch a full day of their own programming, uninterrupted and free of distraction. He famously assured them they would see a "vast wasteland":

 

You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials—many screaming, cajoling, and offending.

 

This critique still holds up today. In our media-saturated culture, the wasteland has not only grown exponentially vaster, it has also become our homeland. Popular media permeates every aspect of our lives. And while we now have the benefit of sharing collective moments that we witness en masse, we often see them through a narcissistic lens and the personal handheld devices that characterize today's generation. (Picture selfie sticks at a presidential inauguration.) Popular media no longer has viewers but "users," and content designed to be intuitive has become an extension of our beings and the very way we understand our lives. And while the online version of popular media is referred to as "social," "antisocial" seems a more accurate descriptor of its personalized nature and isolating effect.

The producers of media grow increasingly more anonymous and varied in the platforms they use. And there is no center—no accountable foundation or core. As the wasteland has grown, the controls on decency and morality have been relinquished to the individual user. And in many cases, that means children.

 

PORN IN THE POCKET

The fact is, there is very little we can keep from kids today. In 1977, I walked nearly two miles to see "soft" porn. In 2018, more graphic, violent, and dehumanizing pornography of every type can be accessed on the phones in their pockets.

And yet, despite decades of grandstanding claims and protests against the gratuitous sex and violence that is eroding the moral fabric of our society, the sex-and-violence industry has never been healthier—in a media environment that endlessly pushes the limits. But mere criticism of mass media will not create comprehensive measures to ease the challenges parents have historically faced to protect their children.

That is not to say that the enduring critique of mass media that began with Newton Minow's 1961 statement doesn't remain valid and necessary. We should never give up being guardians and stewards of the public spaces that media and entertainment occupy—taking a critical stance and holding content producers to account. But in our critique we also need to be honest with ourselves. We mustn't be afraid to acknowledge how our examination reveals a truth about the primal nature of our humanity, no matter how far outside our comfort zone it takes us. Doing so often uncovers the hypocrisy and rigidity of our own ideologies. We must ask: Why aren't depictions of sex, if they are supposed to reflect the true nature of our humanity, more tender and warm? What do they reveal about the impact of misogyny on portrayals of sex? We must pay attention to what this is saying about us and who we are, whether we are ready to hear it or not.

 

CONSIDERING PORN

Just before Newton Minow proclaimed television a "vast wasteland," he stated, "When television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse."

In the previous chapter, I suggested that masturbation was part of a healthy understanding of our bodies and ourselves as sexual beings. Some argue that pornography is contained within a "sex-positive" ideology that embraces and celebrates sexuality more freely in all its forms. I do believe in that freedom of sexual expression, and I understand how observing sexual activity excites a very real and natural human urge. However, I also subscribe to Minow's perspective: when it's good, nothing is better; but when it's bad, nothing is worse.

The problem is not the porn industry per se but the dogma of misogyny and masculinity that fuels its existence. Moreover, our inability to talk honestly and openly keeps all ideas about sex in the shadows as something deviant for which we should feel shame or apprehension. This gives power to porn and credibility to the ominous warning that sex is dirty, salacious, and covert. The curiosity that drove me to see Emanuelle was not to witness the beauty of an egalitarian portrayal of human intimacy. Or, to be more crude, it wasn't even to watch people "fuck." It was to fulfill two critical and inescapable demands of the mandate and performance of masculinity: One, it demonstrated a strong predilection for risk-taking behavior. When I was twelve years old, there was no greater opportunity to do something that was as indubitably against the rules as viewing pornography. Sneaking peeks at our father's Playboy magazine was one thing; actually going to the theater was the epitome of triumph over risk.

Two, it showed an adherence to the rules of misogyny.

 

SHE DOES NOT MATTER

Dave and I knew that seeing porn was not something you bragged about or even disclosed to girls, because although we may not have been able to articulate it, we knew it revolved around their domination and degradation. It featured what boys do to girls and how girls, whether they approve or not, "serve" boys. The irony of boys' early exposure to pornography is that the experience has little to do with girls. It's a misogynistic performance, a way to use women's bodies to impress other boys rather than to truly understand physical intimacy and love.

The women portrayed in porn are not real—they are not the girls in school and certainly not anyone in our families. The seemingly complicit behavior of women in porn presents a disturbing cognitive dissonance for boys: while in real life they are told to respect women, in this fictional world they witness the most disrespectful, vile, and degrading behavior. This is why boys and men will recoil when asked to imagine their mother in the porn they watch. They are aroused by what they actually view with contempt. The dissonance is shrouded in our general silence about sex.

Increasingly we are seeing cases where women's actual participation in sexual behavior is not even necessary—hence the use of date-rape drugs, including alcohol, that incapacitate and, in effect, remove women from the experience. In other words, the woman becomes inconsequential; she does not matter.

If we examine the case of Brock Turner, we hear this disturbing narrative in the defense of his crimes, from both him and his father. In 2015, nineteen-year-old Turner, an accomplished swimmer at Stanford University, raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. The bystanders who interrupted the attack in progress detained Turner until police arrived. They also checked to confirm that the woman was still breathing. The public outrage about the incident was not over the heinousness of the crime but the lenient sentence Turner received: just six months in jail. The judge explained that it would be "too hard" on Turner to serve a longer sentence.

As disturbing as the sentence was, so were the subsequent statements from Turner and his father. Brock Turner blamed his alcohol consumption and college party culture as factors in his raping of an unconscious woman—not his attitudes and behavior. His father suggested the sentence was too harsh for "twenty minutes of action," as if this were an actual sexual encounter. In both claims, we find a deep-seated sense of male privilege and an entitlement to women's bodies; a narrative that gets told repeatedly in pornography and the ways men understand sex.

 

THE PROPHECY OF GAIL DINES

Today, what was once necessarily covert behavior to access porn has become as routine and effortless as making a phone call—from anywhere, at any time.

In many ways, the ease of access to sexual content has as distorting an impact on real intimacy as porn itself. What's missing are those humanizing qualities of sexual intimacy, such as feeling awkward or embarrassed. These are important emotions in intimacy, nature's speed bumps to slow the process and allow the brain to participate as well. But as with online activity in general, online porn mutes and even dulls the emotions. The relatively anonymous way in which it is obtained and viewed presents little risk and is free of any moral interference. And finally, rarely is the user gradually introduced to online porn. A simple keyword search can launch an onslaught of extreme, violent, and misogynist images and videos, categorized by what men do to women. Taking into account all these factors, including the availability of the content to children of any age, many health officials are now examining pornography as a public health concern.

Leading this group of officials is Dr. Gail Dines, an ardent and uncompromising critic of pornography. In 2018, Dines left her position as a professor of sociology and women's studies at Wheelock College in Boston to take on the porn industry full time. She is the most eloquent and trenchant scholar on the subject and the personal and social impact it has on our lives, influencing how we see and relate to each other in our most vulnerable intimate relationships. She argues that what she calls the "pornification" of our culture, along with the silence of adults about it, has led to porn becoming a de facto source for children's sex education, as well as a force that normalizes misogyny and sexual violence.

Although many agree with Dines's assessment of porn, her warnings have been largely ignored and she is a regular target of the "pro-porn" community, criticized as a sex-hating feminist. Regardless of those opinions, it is hard not to see how her foreboding prophecies have been realized. In fact, researchers, health professionals, and practitioners increasingly talk about "porn addiction" as a real condition, even though it has not been officially designated as a disorder like other addictions (such as drug, alcohol, or gambling addiction). Like so many new social phenomena, anecdotal analysis and academic theory about porn addiction have preceded empirical evidence. Ultimately, the decision to conduct deep research of the issue is fully dependent on the honest admission of a problem. In other words, until we acknowledge that we are sexual beings and our kids are learning what sex is from pornography, our culture is truly threatened by a pornified understanding of how we fundamentally express and share intimate, physical love.

For the past three decades, I've asked college students whether they've ever had a "graphic, honest, and sustained" conversation with trusted adults about intimacy, sexual behavior, and their bodies. I started asking that question nearly ten years before the first mobile app was created. What has been most disturbing during that span of time is the continued silence of adults while a media culture has persisted in blatantly encroaching on their authority.

When I watched porn at age twelve, what I saw filled the space "between the lines" of adult conversations and provided a visual for the claims made by older, (and presumably) more knowledgeable peers. But again, the experience of today's young boys is not like mine: I walked nearly two miles to watch a porn film, and didn't see porn again until I was in college. For young boys today, the average age of first exposure to porn is eleven years old. This means many boys are experiencing porn well before adolescence. The porn they see is not filling gaps of information; it has become the informational channel, providing their foundational understanding of sexual behavior.

 

THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT—INFORMED BY PORN

Our most hardened attitudes and fundamental understandings of any issue rise to the surface during intense moments when there's no time for contemplative thought. This is what I referred to earlier as the "heat of the moment." For some, it is when rash decisions and mistakes are made, fights occur, and crimes are committed. However, through preparation, we can mitigate the negative impact of the heat of the moment. Repetition is the core of preparation—building intellectual and muscle memory so that in that moment, our reaction is the right one. Earlier I discussed this as the "process of sports": that meticulous process we go through to foster good decisions in the heat of the moment. This is why I began asking students if they'd had that graphic, honest, and sustained conversation with their parents. It's imperative that we examine what is informing the heat of the moment of intimacy for boys. The silence of adults, coupled with the recent proliferation of pornography, should cause urgent alarm.

And although this book can't offer a comprehensive analysis of the social and psychological impact of pornography, it is safe to say that the violent and degrading nature of much of the pornography landscape indicates a deeper problem—that of how boys are nurtured. Boys are not just receiving messages about the exploitation of women's bodies, but also the grotesque example of what they are supposed to "do." In our silence and inability to talk about sexual behavior in general, we are completely ignoring the impact of pornography on the psychosocial development of boys. The tantalizing nature of pornography—seeing what you've heard in rumor or what you've been told "you're not ready for"—does not tell the entire story of why porn is appealing to boys. This is especially true for young boys who have little or no experience of sexual intimacy with girls. If, for many boys, porn is their first exposure to sexual intimacy, why does sexually violent and degrading behavior make sense to them? If we have taught our boys to love and respect girls and women, why do they not reject the violence and degradation on sight?

Underlying the appeal of porn is not just learned misogyny but the low expectations boys have for their own sexual fulfillment. I am not referring to immediate carnal gratification, but fulfillment based on a profound emotional connection that is unconditional, unselfish, and truly loving. When we examine violent and degrading pornography or hear of a college athlete raping an unconscious woman, we are seeing the manifestation of the social and emotional obstruction of healthy and whole masculinity, and the emotional disconnect that perpetrators have with themselves. This traces back to my discussion of relationship abuse in Chapter Five and the question "Why does he stay?" If a man does not live with and use a full toolbox of emotions, then his tools for functioning in relationships are extremely limited. Likewise, if men learn about sex but are not nurtured to expect intimacy with emotional accountability to themselves and their partner, then sex for them is transactional rather than relational. This is also, in part, how a Brock Turner—a highly functioning student and athlete with Olympic aspirations—can reduce himself to raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster.

 

MEDIA MATTERS

In the 1990 documentary Dreamworlds: Gender/Sex/Power in Rock Video, University of Massachusetts professor and film producer Dr. Sut Jhally cogently dissects the content of music videos, extrapolating the messages of violent sexism and misogyny, drawing direct links to men's violence against women. The arguments made by Jhally are undeniably compelling. The documentary was a damning and concise critique of the overwhelmingly violent misogyny and sexist content in music videos. The problem, as Jhally explained, is the monotonous and limited interpretation of violent, sex-obsessed masculinity and the hypersexualized and objectified female body. Yet Jhally does not call for more censorship; he calls for less. It is misguided to say that pornography or the mass media in general bear sole blame for fostering a rape culture and producing the likes of Brock Turner. We can't continue to scapegoat the mass media as if it's a foreign element invading our culture to corrupt the social order. It merely holds up a mirror to our cultural understanding of masculinity and sex.

When I heard Jhally's call for less censorship, I was struck by how profoundly true it was that broader interpretations of gender, sex, and a whole host of behaviors were clearly absent. Most of the images and story lines of music videos depicted gendered caricatures engaging in unhealthy and immature intimate relationships. All the anxieties of young adult relationships reduced to shallow scripts of selfish and manipulative

behavior—a primary and unfortunate source of information on social behavior for an entire generation. The programming was created exclusively for young people and, in an effort to remain authentic, it was largely informed by young people who saw their idealized selves and their lives on the screen. While this approach validates the life experiences of viewers, it skews the legitimacy of youthful perspectives and dilemmas, and lacks the wisdom gained through experience and maturity that comes with living with the consequences of behavior.

Jhally's analysis was of the media that defined that generation­—music videos. However, more recently, mobile technology and social media have changed our concerns from content to the relationship young people have with media. Today, media influence encourages young people to share experiences, not build and nurture relationships. This is ironic since media can make those experiences live in perpetuity. Experiences in "real life" are fleeting and temporary, and are building blocks of growth. However, fleeting moments stagnate and fester and live on the device in their pocket. Part of the devastating impact of cyberbullying is the exaggerations of "moments" and the anonymous ways in which a moment is spread throughout a community. For the target, the moment captured in media becomes an inescapable reality.

Like Gail Dines's caution, much of what Jhally diagnosed—how a lack of diverse interpretations of masculinity dangerously distorts cultural expectations and understandings of male behavior—has isolated boys and narrowed and stymied their understanding of masculinity and sex even further.

 

ADULTS MUST WATCH

My recommendation to adults is to take the same advice Newton Minow gave to television executives in 1961: spend a full day absorbing the media our boys consume daily. We need to withhold judgment about the programming and get past our aversion to the silly, sophomoric story lines, and consider how it may be interpreted by our boys in light of what we have or haven't discussed honestly and in depth with them. And we should consider all the other influences in a boy's life.

What this will likely reveal is that boys are continuously immersed in content that is violent, disrespectful, and hateful—all for the sake of entertainment. Boys are not simply desensitized; this milieu has become normalized. For some boys, this content may have lost its novelty and shock value and they have grown numb to it. In fact, they may have already given it meaning and importance, social currency that has become their norm.

A strong case could be made that this content should be prohibited, but this doesn't make sense to me personally. In fact, I agree with the experts who argue that we need less censorship, not more of it. I see a connection here to how my life has not been fully represented by the sports media. I was a caricature—not a real person but a "football player." As narrow as that depiction was, it pales in comparison to the representation of masculinity by men in entertainment, which provides a more acute version of masculinity. They are the more grotesque archetypes, acting out violent, sexist behavior with limited emotion; they are masculinity incarnate. And unlike athletes, whose performance takes place in the context of a game, boys and men in entertainment portray real-life scenarios. Even in the more innocent forms of entertainment, the foundations of narrow masculinity are present: common themes and comments are homophobic or involve dynamics where "boys rule" or have more social freedom than girls. It may not be as demonstrably sexist today as when I was a boy (the nearly all-boy cast of my favorite show back then, The Little Rascals, had something called the "He-Man Women Haters Club"), but it is still difficult to find content that adequately represents whole, healthy masculinity.

The way in which ratings are applied to content is important to understand. In 1968, the Motion Picture Association of America established a rating system to notify audiences about "mature content" in film. In 1994, the Entertainment Software Rating Board was formed in response to violence in video games. The FCC's guidelines for television went into effect in 1997 and have since become the standard rating system for cable and online television programs. In each case, ratings most often warn of graphic and gratuitous violence and explicit sexual content. We deem certain images, language, and stories to be appropriate by age—as if raping and killing and all the preceding behaviors are appropriate for any age. Yes, it may be true that certain content is too sophisticated for younger people with fewer life experiences, and older people have the right to view what they want. Yet ratings don't intend to protect intellectual development but instead govern (the assumed) sensibilities of social decency.

 

THE OBJECTIFICATION OF MEN

This, in many ways, is where the myth of masculinity is advanced. Over the years, this approach to controlling "mature content" has resulted in a deepening of the myth and performance of masculinity. We are entertained and distracted by caricatures of masculinity while we ignore our true humanity. We laugh at the shortcomings of men who don't meet the mandate and are entertained by those who fail in the attempt to be whole, loving men. And we are relentlessly reminded of what mythological hypermasculinity looks like; the hyperbole of risk-taking, violence, and unemotional sexualized masculinity is celebrated. The objectification of muscular male bodies has not been framed as a commercial tool quite as harshly as women's bodies but it is no less present in the lives of boys—telling them what a (real) man's body is "supposed" to look like. Augmenting the conflated images of physicality and masculinity is the ever-present addition of weaponry that continues to grow more lethal and destructive. Filmmaker Jeremy Earp calls it "prosthetic masculinity," as it often replaces a weaponized muscular body with that of a weapon that becomes an extension of the violent persona.

The incessant images of violent men and exaggerated and predatory sexual prowess have distorted and desensitized the reality, discourse, and ultimate understanding of both sex and violence: sex is seen as dirty (but desirable) and violence is glorified and purposeful. In reality, violence is the forceful attempt to control nature and an evil way to extinguish life. We have become more at ease with, and even entertained by, witnessing unnatural death while admonishing the beauty of how life is formed and loving existence is shared.

I believe we need a different approach to how we rate content to help parents be more intentional than defensive. The current system, self-managed by those who produce the content, often puts parents in a defensive position. With the ease of access children have to different media, parents are rendered virtually defenseless in managing what children are exposed to. A rating system should provide more information and not be driven by concerns of "age-appropriateness"; rather, it should focus on giving parents a "choice" of content that is healthy and aspirational. There is a reliable body of research and social science regarding prosocial behavior that could guide this approach. Such a system would thus recognize the ways that the mass media, in all its incarnations but especially social and mobile media, can help inform our ideologies, attitudes, cultural norms, and sense of self.

 

SEXISM IN PRINT

In the summer of 2005, I was invited to a meeting by a cable television network geared to children and early adolescents. The meeting was meant to explore the idea of healthier programming for boys. I was encouraged that the executives at the network recognized the leap from innocence to violence that most boys experience through media. They were seeking advice on how to appeal to boys without reinforcing the messages of "toxic masculinity" they realized were in so much of their programming for that population. Dr. William Pollack, author of Real Boys: Rescuing our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood, and I spent several hours with production and creative executives outlining the "state of masculinity" and explaining how boys are negatively impacted by narrow interpretations of masculinity. It was a productive meeting, yet I was haunted by the feeling that this was an exercise in futility, that the idealized masculinity Dr. Pollack and I described was not something the network could develop in its programming.

While networks geared toward young audiences have rightfully struggled to feature healthy images and stories for boys, the broader media environment has remained indifferent. Tampering with strongly held beliefs makes stories less appealing and jeopardizes commercial appeal. And again, the ease of access to detrimental content ensures that its proliferation continues. Meanwhile, positive counter-messages about healthy, whole masculinity fail to reach boys. But that isn't because those messages don't exist or aren't fighting to be heard.

When Jackson Katz and I appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, after I was featured in her magazine in 2002, we believed it would prove to be a defining moment in our work. But as I've mentioned, when Oprah recommended me to a publisher, I got his attention, but not his consideration. The written response was quick and very discouraging. I was not discouraged as a writer or even as an advocate; I know that writing a book is a lengthy and arduous endeavor. I was discouraged as a caring man, and on behalf of all caring men. In his letter, the rationale he gave for rejecting my work was literary cowardice. It read:

 

Thanks so much for letting us review your manuscript for YOU THROW LIKE A GIRL. Your cause is such a good one, and the attention it is receiving in O and on Oprah will certainly help get your message out in a big way. Our concern about the book, however, is that those who agree with your message won't feel the need to read a book in order to be convinced, while those who really need it would not buy one. It's a dilemma we don't think we could solve, but I hope you find a publishing house that feels more able to do so.

 

This was a familiar response to my manuscript, both before and after I was featured on the show and in the magazine. Even though the publicity raised the profile of my work with women, I continued to hear from editors, agents, and publishers that the market was not men but twenty-five- to forty-year-old, college-educated white women. One woman actually told me that she was the market and wanted me to convince her why she should buy my book.

The advocate in me understood this reaction to my manuscript, but once again, the caring man in me was insulted by the dismissive position that men don't care or would not seek out such information. I am fully aware that men don't want to talk publicly about this issue—that is the essence of the performance of masculinity. But I also know men continue to seek knowledge to be better partners and fathers. What the book industry chooses to publish and not to publish reveals a troubling sexism working against men about what they read, and even perpetuates the misconception that they don't read at all. Take, for instance, the popularity of Heaven's Fury, coauthored by Curtis James Jackson III (better known as the rapper 50 Cent), and G-Unit Books, the Simon & Schuster imprint through which it was released. How many twenty-five- to forty-year-old, college-educated white women are picking up 50 Cent's latest musing to read while curled up in front of the fire?

Even if his writing is extraordinary—which it may be, considering that G-Unit Books has published many of his titles—I am both jealous and outraged. Don't tell me that a book about the examination of masculinity—with the goal of nurturing loving, healthy, nonviolent boys and men—has no market, but the book that perpetuates the narrative of violent, poor black masculinity has a broad market among white women with college degrees. And don't tell me that my market is college-educated white women of a certain age and that I should modify my writing to appeal to their sensibilities. I am aware of the needs and perspectives of grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters, and daughters trying to understand their relationships with the men in their lives. But we must also focus on the needs of grandfathers, fathers, brothers, uncles, brothers, and sons, to help them work toward creating a healthy understanding of loving masculinity.

Sadly, not only are boys today continually exposed to a narrow interpretation of masculinity in the mass media, but we have also stifled a conversation of growth, maturity, and evolving masculinity among adult men. There is one thing of which I am certain about most fathers, male coaches, and educators—they care about developing healthy and whole men. They want to be transformative influences on the next generation of boys, and they want more information on how to do that. But they are often overwhelmed by a prevailing and narrow view of masculinity that is consistent with how they were raised. In many ways, they themselves struggle with understanding and reconciling their relationships with their fathers and untangling what it means to be a whole man. This confusion is perpetuated by mass media and exacerbated by their lived experiences—their "old-school" dads and coaches and traditions of silence. If more men grasped the messages they were actually feeding boys, and the ways that popular culture reinforces those messages, they would rethink parenting styles, media and entertainment, coaching, sports, and a litany of other things that our patriarchal culture fails to critically examine that are the conduit tools by which masculinity is learned and passed on to future generations.