Summary of the video of "Tough Guise."

Our culture expects men to put on a front of toughness or else face the consequences of being labeled deviant and being subjected to both verbal and physical abuse. Basically men are confined to the “man box.” Proof of this trend that men have pressure to act tough is the statistics that show that most assaults and murders are committed by men, and while lots of the victims are female there are also a lot of male victims to this violence as well. Another factor brought up is that those who are abused as kids often abuse their kids and thus continues the cycle.

Another trend we have now is that when crimes are mentioned that involve the majority they leave it out and just mention the crime without questioning why men did it,but if the very same crime was to be committed by a woman then it would be all over the news scrutinizing how and why she would do such a thing. Part of our societies reinforcing these values that men have to be strong and in control is the fact we see in action figures that the muscles increased meanwhile females who used to have fuller figures are now being shown as smaller and weaker.

The reason for the violence against gay and lesbians are because the majority feel threatened and it is for this very same feeling that Reagan rode the wave into office, promising to bring back some of the old ways.

Men who feel inferior are often seen displaying “hypertoughness” to compensate for their perceived weakness and sometimes their body size and lack of muscles and try to control with their motions and the way they present themselves to make up for it as well as acting more aggressively in order to maintain their manhood because if they did not then they would be seen as deviant and not keeping to the strict adherence of the “man box”. However our misguided society instead of recognizing that the problem lies with what we hold as the norm for manhood blames it on other things such as video games and movies which almost definitely contributes to it but is not the foundation.

Men are socialized mainly by the media that real men keep things to themselves and to deal with it. The media sends this message out with the likes of the”Marlborough man”who claims that a man should be independent and if not and is not strong it is his fault.

However nowadays people are learning that vulnerability is a good thing and we see it getting a more positive public response such as Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire friendship despite both being alpha males competing with each other and being of separate race. Another example is of Chris Reeves who used to play superman and was a symbol of power, he suffered a accident that left him wheelchair bound but his character shone despite what his body could no longer do and for this he received respect and admiration of many.

In the words of the commentator the way to solve this problem is that “courage is not going with flow of violence but rather breaking the cycle”. If more people have this courage,the real courage we may stand a better chance at making the world a better place to live in.