“Bros Before Hos”: The Guy Code by Michael Kimmel

                In this short section from his book Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men, published in 2008, Michael Kimmel would like to highlight how masculinity is brought about in a male through fear and not as a natural behavior. He introduces by talking about what women feel about being a woman. He emphasizes that men are more conscious about their behavior because they do not want to be noticed as having feminine characteristics. After researching through a bunch of languages focused on criticizing men as not masculine, Kimmel concludes that all of them aim at men being unemotional and strong. He tries to show how the idea of masculine behavior hasn’t changed much in successive generations of schools and college men. He shows how different people get the idea of masculinity and the different aspects of it from other male members they are related to in some way or another. The motivation behind being masculine is more to get the approval of other men then to impress women. Kimmel heavily emphasizes on how our peers are like our evaluators that keep us from crossing the line of masculinity. Working very close to that idea is homophobia, where men try to be more masculine to prove they are not gay. This is where Kimmel shows that our fear of being non-masculine is more of our fear of other men than anything else. And this idea of manhood is introduced into the mind when a boy is so young that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to overcome that thought. The idea has settled itself so deeply in the society that it has become challenging for men who want to be different. They risk almost every aspect of their life to be different, to be free.