People associate homophobia with the idea that they are afraid of gays. The question is: what would a gay man do to straight men to scare them so much? The problem is not that they are afraid of them, but they appear to be less men in our society to others. If a man is homophobic, he will do everything he can to oppress gays and not be associated with they are seen as gay, they are seen as less men to believe that men should be a certain way and if a man does not follow this normality he is seen as less of a man. as Homophobia” by Michael S. Kimmel states that masculinity could be transformed into homophobia Kimmel asks what a man should be like , but what if a man is different from the “normal” of the status quo if a man is not seen as masculine but seen as feminine, he is normally considered gay because that is how our society sees men as gay, straight men are the ones who have power over him. If people of color are asked who is in power, they will say that straight white men have all the power, but if society has to ask the men themselves, they don't think they have the power. This is because they have never been oppressed and do not know what it means to be truly undermined by someone else. At an early age, a boy would have the pressure of masculinity. An example of this would be the toys a child would play with. Society would say that this boy should play with cars, Legos and play outside. What if this boy wanted to play at home with dolls? This would be seen as abnormal and the child would be classified by society and peers as gay. The dad will try to protect his son with a... middle of paper ...... a relentless test through which we demonstrate to other men, to women, and ultimately to ourselves, that we have successfully mastered the part. The restlessness that men feel today is nothing new in American history; we have been anxious and restless for almost two centuries. (108) Men want to prove themselves to be masculine because anything less is not seen as normal and no one wants to be different, this is what is portrayed in society. A man does not want to be seen as less of a man because he would be classified as feminine. Once it's feminine, it seems gay or close to a woman; both are seen as inferior to a straight man. He is therefore forever trapped between a rock and a wall, where society is the rock. The rock can be large or small depending on how society views the idea of being female. Every society has a different way of dealing with feminism.
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