Guyland Quotes

Guyland: The perilous world where boys become men.
Michael Loebig
11/28/11

Guyland can be defined as the world in which young men live (Kimmel 2008, pg. 4). It’s a stage these young men go through from the time they hit adolescence to the time they enter manhood (from about 15 to 26). It’s a world where guys just act as guys, untouched by the adult life of parents, jobs, kids, girlfriends, etc. Kimmel (2008) describes it as a “Peter-Pan mindset”, where these kids live in a realm of fun and freedom and never want to grow up. Guyland is the world young men grow up in, and is a passage they navigate through from adolescence to adulthood. It can also be described as what men do for fun. In this world, they do nothing but drink, have sex,
The first thing I think of is the bullying issue. We touched on Jamie Nabozny and Kimmel talked about his story as well. And the relationships remain the same. In both contexts, issues about the bullies, victims, and how the professionals handled it were brought up. In class, we talked about how the victim is usually unwilling to conform to society’s standards, which is the underlying reason they are bullied. Jamie’s case was that he was gay. In many people’s eyes, being gay is against the norm and is frowned upon, which is the problem. Both in class and in Guyland do we agree this is the reason he was bullied. In Guyland, the bullies are the popular guys, the ones that run the show. In their eyes, Jamie was not a real man. He was not interested in women, and this was against the guy code. So, they thought he deserved to be punished for not playing by the rules. Both in class and in Guyland, we agree that the actions taken by the school administrators were insufficient. They did not help Jamie’s problem and is some ways encouraged it. The bullies were never punished, and the school officials just let it go , saying “boys will be boys”. Carrying this attitude with them, the bullies saw it as a sign that they can carry this thing further. The problems escalated, and now Jamie’s mother came in and the woman in charge of punishment told her “boys will be boys”. She also told Jamie that he “had it coming to him”, and she not act so openly gay. This is obviously unacceptable, to let this bullying go unpunished and unsolved. Common ground was met on this topic both in-class and in Guyland. Another example is the way women are scene in society. We talked about this in class where woman are undermined. In class, we saw this in the movie Metropolis, where the women were living had unsubstantial jobs and in the eyes of the company, were just tools to do their work