That’s only one year of victimization in what military brass admitted before Congress was a “cancer.” If it weren’t for the seven women on the Senate Armed Services Committee, I’d expect such reports to be buried.

Hearing so many of the old Congressmen respond to this with stupidity, sexism, and pseudo-science, even surprised those of us who expect so little out of right-wing politicians. And blaming the existence of women in the military ignores the fact that 14,000 of those victims were men.

That’s 6.1% of the women in the military and 1.2% of the men. And 98% of the reported sexual assaults on men were committed by other men.

In one of the most insightful analyses of this epidemic, Ana Marie Cox of The Guardian concludes: “it’s something about being in the military today, at this moment in history, fighting the kinds of wars we’re fighting with the kinds of troops we have.” [“The Real Roots of the US Military’s Epidemic of Sexual Assaults”]

“It’s a truism among feminists – if not senators – that rape is a crime of violence, not of sexual attraction…. Could it be that the real crisis in today’s military is tied to not who these soldiers are, but the nature of what we’re asking them to do?”

Today’s military with a growing number of soldiers and veterans diagnosed with mental illness and chemical dependency, with the tactics of modern warfare and the length of troop service, exacerbates what we’ve taught our men culturally and our military men in particular.

It starts with what we teach our boys as they enter puberty about what manly sex is. In Scared Straight I called that conditioning, the “Nine Layers of Getting Laid,” a paradigm that continues to dominate junior high and high school male gender roles idealized in the studs of contemporary media.

This cultural conditioning is often excused as the male sex drive. Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss said in the Senate hearings: “Gee whiz, the hormone level created by nature sets in place the possibility for these types of things to occur.”

But the third of those layers is that “Getting Laid” for high school boys is impersonal. “It is best if a boy isn’t otherwise acquainted with, or a friend of, the sexual object. One does not marry the girl who is the best lay…. Getting laid, therefore, is not about the person.

The more that this impersonal layer is internalized – the more it’s felt that the sex isn’t done to a person but an object – the easier it is to deny that there’s violence involved. One isn’t really hurting another person.

Add to this the seventh layer – that “Getting Laid” is self-centered, that it’s done to someone on the agenda of a real man – and the sexual act becomes an act of power over another. One can see this in the raping of men by men who identify as heterosexual in our prisons – a situation that’s often taken as a joke.

Now, most of our boys know that something like this conditioning is there in their teen years but they fight it silently, internally and seemingly alone because men don’t talk about their deviation from manhood. But what happens when we add the conditioning men encounter in the military?

A key goal of the military’s basic training is turning recruits into warriors who’ll be ready to kill others if called to do so. But a man can’t do this if he thinks of the enemy personally.

That’s why enemies must be turned into stereotypes and described with phrases such as: “human life isn’t valuable to them.” The face of the enemy must be inhuman or it would be hard to destroy it.

Military conditioning thereby adds another layer to thinking impersonally of others. Other human beings are objects, not living, loving human beings who are sons and daughters of real people.

But it also de-humanizes the warrior himself. His own value comes to be understood as contingent upon not only is ability to kill others but his willingness to be killed defending the system.

Violence to others becomes even easier. And violence against oneself as a just a killing machine who’s been put further out of touch with his own, caring, feeling humanity also becomes easier.

A true warrior expects violence. He could even use its presence to finally provide value for his own insecure manly self-worth.

He can earn a medal from real men at the top for killing another man, after all, but be killed for loving one. Valuing oneself for such violence turned inward has spurred a record level of suicides among those who serve and veterans, so that in the past twelve years more have died by their own hand than by enemy fire.

What’s actually surprising is that these figures aren’t much higher. The conditioning is doing everything it can to encourage sexual assault as an act of power and violence over some object so as to assert one’s manhood and worth.

But they’re not, because men aren’t inherently like this. They’re not naturally driven by testosterone and hormones, no matter how we might use these as excuses.

It’s not that “boys will be boys,” for a lot of abusive manhood conditioning software has to be installed in our little naturally loving, caring, feeling boys to make them killers and sexual assaulters. And enforcing that is the fear that if they don’t act tough, hard, cold, and object-oriented enough, they’ll be put down as girly and fags.

Add to this their impression that society has given up on men. It’s not challenging their conditioning but sending them to anger management, drugging them, or finally throwing them away in prison.

This conditioning is all learned, and what is learned can be unlearned. But do we have the courage to lead that charge?

Suggested workshops are, for example: Economy/financial crisis, the affective turn and masculinity studies, relations between queer theory and masculinity studies, global masculinities, family work balance, antifeminism and xenophobia, men and feminism “up North,” confronting sexual violence, theory and practice in working with men, masculinity and media, fatherhood and parental leave, trafficking in the North.

The conference is organised by the Nordic Association for Research on Men and Masculinities (NFMM), as part of the Icelandic Presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2014, in cooperation with the Ministry of Welfare and Centre for Gender Equality in Iceland.

First call for papers and suggestions for workshop themes. Deadline May, 15, 2013. Please send abstracts, suggested workshops and general enquiries here.

For more information, click here.

The Spring 2013 issue of The Journal of Men’s Studies

• “Factors Associated with Cancer Family History Communication Between African American Men and Their Relative” by Jamie A Mitchell, Jaclynn Hawkns, and Daphne C. Watkins
• “Masculinity’s Interior: Men, Transmen, and Theories of Masculinity” by Judith Kegan Gardiner
• “Monet’s Vulnerable Masculinity in Frédéric Bazille’s The Improvised Field Hospital” by Mary Manning
  
• “Health and Gender in Female-Dominated Occupations: The Case of Male Nurses” by Rosa M. Limiñana-Gras, M. Pilar Sánchez-López, Ana I. Saavedra-San Román, and F. Javier Corablán-Berná
• “Does Phallic Masculinity Still Matter?: Masculinities in Indonesian Teenlit During the Post-Reformasi Period (1998-2007)” by Nur Wulan
• “Working With Men in Groups From an Integrity Model Perspective” by Danielle Nahon and Nedra R. Lander
• “Men Against the Wall” Graffiti(ed) Masculinities” by Kara-Jane Lombard
• “The Boy’s Forum: An Evaluation of a Brief Intervention to Empower Middle-School Urban Boys” by James M. O’Neil, Clewiston Challenger, Sara Renzulli, Bryce Crapser and Emily Webster
• “Gay Athletes’ Perceptions of Body Hair” by Shaun M. Filiault and Murray J. N. Drummon

For more information on this issue click here.

Along with regular articles (approximately 6,000 to 8,000 words), The Journal of Men’s Studies routinely publishes book reviews (approximately 750 words). It publishes the best research—both theoretical and empirical—in the emergent men’s studies field, recognizing the varied influences of class, culture, race, and sexual orientation on defining men’s experiences. The journal’s cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural character disseminates material by men’s studies scholars from various perspectives (political, social, cultural, and historical) as well as various disciplines (anthropology, sociology, history, psychology, literature, theology).

A international multidisciplinary conference on the subject “Political Masculinities: Structures, Discourses and Spaces in Historical Perspective” will take place at the University of Vienna, November 15^th to 17^th, 2013.

The organizers welcome papers from all academic disciplines, focusing on conceptual questions as well as presenting empirical studies of structures of political masculinities. 

The Conference description explains:

The field of masculinity studies has found its way into many academic disciplines. The social sciences as well as medical and psychological research have investigated many phenomena around the issue of masculinity. Moreover, there is a consensus that masculinity as the unmarked gender has remained invisible in many contexts. This, it has been argued, is particularly true for the sphere of politics. Thus, it is not surprising that there is an increasing body of research in the social sciences, especially in political science, exploring the interdependence of the construction of masculinities on the one hand and the emerging, maintenance, and modification of concepts such as state and citizenship, nationality, democracy, militarism, policing, and colonialism on the other. As a result, masculinity as structuring politics and political institutions is being made visible. Likewise, political masculinities need to be deconstructed in order to identify and focus on the processes of “engendering” political spaces, institutions and norms. In addition, analysis of the mechanisms and functions of different types of masculinities in variable political and historical contexts, drawing attention to the transformation of masculinist structures and spaces, is required. Finally, for the purposes of this conference, the concept of political masculinity has been widened to include and concentrate on structures of domination at the intersection of gender, sexuality and ethnicity.

Whereas political science has contributed to the understanding of modern politics and states as masculine arenas and empirical research has identified different representations of political masculinities with respect to time, space and state form, cultural and literary research focuses on the representation of political masculinities in cultural artefacts and texts. In an attempt to integrate these findings from different disciplines, the conference aims at shedding light on different modes of representing and constructing political masculinities across time and space. Leading questions will be: What are main characteristics of representing political masculinities? How do they interact with affect and emotions (i.e. rationality, aggressiveness)? How can we trace the transformation of political masculinities across time and space? How does the transformation of stateness impact on political masculinities? Does the current crisis transform political masculinities?

Email abstracts for papers to Professor Birgit Sauer at the University of Vienna or Professor Kathleen Starck at  the University of Koblenz-Landau by Saturday, 15 June, 2013.

For more information click here.

Articles about AMSA in this special issue include:

• “AMSA at 20: Where Have We Been? Where Should We Go? Perspectives from Long-Term Participants” by Merle Longwood
• “Twenty Years and Counting: The Relevance of Men’s Studies in A Gendered World” by Robert Heasley
• “‘The American Men’s Studies Association at 20: The Kind of Place AMSA Intends to Create: Goals, Practices, and Effects” by Stephen B. Boyd and Mark Justad
• “A History of Men’s Studies Press and It’s Association with the American Men’s Studies Association” by James A. Doyle and Sam Femiano
• “AMSA at 20: A Woman’s Journey” by Vicki L. Sommer
• “AMSA at 20: Where Have We Been? Where Should We Go? In Color and Sexual Expression” by Whitney Stewart Harris
• “Men’s Studies: A Retrospective Review” by Harry Boyd

Along with regular articles (approximately 6,000 to 8,000 words), The Journal of Men’s Studies routinely publishes book reviews (approximately 750 words). It publishes the best research—both theoretical and empirical—in the emergent men’s studies field, recognizing the varied influences of class, culture, race, and sexual orientation on defining men’s experiences. The journal’s cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural character disseminates material by men’s studies scholars from various perspectives (political, social, cultural, and historical) as well as various disciplines (anthropology, sociology, history, psychology, literature, theology).

“American Masculinities” is the theme for the Annual Conference of The New York Metro American Studies Association to be held November 2, 2013 at Pace University’s Manhattan Campus. The annual conference provides a dynamic forum for area scholars, while attracting presenters nationally.

NYMASA announces a call for papers for its 2013 annual one-day conference closing June 1, 2013.

The theme for this year’s conference explores the intersections of U.S. concepts of masculinity, manhood, and maleness. This query feels particularly relevant to American studies as definitions of masculinity have been foundational to American ideology and identities since its inception. For this reason, contested and contesting challenges to masculinity have signaled major shifts in American society, opening new spaces for gendering practices.

In imagining this conference, we invite participants to engage with any of the following issues (or any other these topic inspires):

• Founding fathers
• Emersonian men
• Radical men
• Men in power
• Masculinity and the marketplace
• Technologies of gender
• Military men
• Female masculinities and feminine men
• Emasculated men
• Queer masculinities / Masculinity and queerness
• Drag and performative gender
• (Psycho) analyzing men and pathologized masculinity
• Sports and gym culture
• Race Men and other black masculinities
• Ethnic masculinities
• Feminist men and Reactionary manhood
• Male desires
• Paternalism and paternity
• Fraternalism and fraternities
• Lad Lit and Guy Movies
• Pedagogy of masculinities
• Becoming men: coming of age and transgender men
• Boyhood
• Laboring men
• Traveling men: cowboys, frontiersman, sailors, and salesman
• Medical men
• Violence and men
• Heroes and superheroes
• Incarcerated men

We welcome papers on any historical period in American Studies, as well as 21st century topics. We particularly encourage presentations that circulate across historical and disciplinary borders, presentations that are non-traditional in form, and presentations that incorporate performance and/or visual art. While we welcome proposals on any element of American Studies, we will especially privilege presentations focusing on the New York area. Please note that we will accept abstracts for individual paper presentations only, not pre-constituted panels.

Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words to nymasamasculinities@gmail.com by June 1, 2013. For more information, click here.

Because AMSA is co-sponsoring the event AMSA members can register at a special rate. Register on-line by clicking here.

Bringing together the most diverse and talented educators in the field of men and masculinities research and practice, the Conference on College Men has become the premier venue to explore and examine issues related to men and masculinities in higher education. As particular populations of college men continue to struggle in their postsecondary transitions and engagement, the Conference on College Men challenges attendees to critically reflect upon how their own identification and expression of gender influences their work with college and university students while also treating them to the most recent scholarship and services in the field.

For more information and to submit a program.

Professor Watkins’ interests include: gender disparities in mental illness; health education and behavior; and intervention research. Currently, her work explores how gender role socialization influences mental health over the adult life course for black men. An anthropologist and health educator by training, she uses quantitative and qualitative research methodologies to extend the current scholarship on mental health disparities and how they impact communities of color. Her research agenda aims to (1) use evidence-based strategies to improve the physical and mental health of black men, and (2) increase knowledge about the relationship between culture, gender, and the social determinants that place black men at high risk for poor health status.

She becomes AMSA’s sixth president in its twenty-one years. AMSA By-Laws stipulate three consecutive two-year terms as the maximum.

The award honors a graduate student doing research on men’s studies who presents his research at AMSA’s Annual Conference. It includes expenses and a monetary reward. Yamashita’s paper was entitled: “Contesting Asian Settler Colonialism: Gendering the Native Hawai’ian Sovereignty Movement through Sudden Rush’s Eas (2006).” His research interests include: Transnationalism, Cross-Cultural Studies, Racialized Masculinity, Asian American Studies, African American Studies, and Representations. He holds a B.A. magna cum laude  in History and American Studies from Macalester College. He is a fourth-generation (yonsei) Japanese American who was born and raised in Hawaii.

Learn more about the Loren Frankel Scholarship.

The Conference theme will be “Considering Culture: Masculinities in International and Regional Contexts.” For more information visit AMSA’s 2014 Conference Information page.