Early Manuscripts on Teaching the Psychology of Men

The title & reference below is for the entire issue while the titles that follow are for each of the four articles within the issue. Click here for the full references.

Special Focus: Teaching the Psychology of Men

O’Neil, J.M. (Ed.)  (2004). Special Focus: Teaching the Psychology of Men. SPSMM Bulletin, 10, 20-71.

Exposing the Default Options by Teaching Men's Studies
Christopher Kilmartin, University of Mary Washington

The great developmental psychologist Sandra Bem (1993) once referred to gender as a set of default options preprogrammed into the individual by the culture. As a psychologist long involved in violence prevention and the study of mental health problems in men, I hold the firm belief that some of these default options have the potential for dire negative consequences for men and the people who come into contact with them. If we are to help people transcend gender roles when it is their interest to do so, we will have to teach them to override the defaults.

The most common modern usage of default is in the computer world, which provides a useful analogy to gender. When you boot up your computer, you see icons on the screen that represent various programs. In a standard operating system, these icons are about one inch square. But you can change the size of the icons. Doing so requires three steps. First, you have to become aware that the icon size on your screen is a default option, and that therefore it can change. Second, you have to be motivated to alter the default. Perhaps you've taken the first step and know about the default, but you think that the icon size is fine the way it is. But, maybe you don't see very well and want them bigger, or need to fit so many on your screen that you want them smaller, or maybe you just want your screen to look different from everyone else's -- it's a fashion choice. Third, you have to know how to change the default - to learn some set of procedures that will result in your reaching the goal of changing your icons.

If gender is a set of default options, then we need the same three steps to change them. Men's Studies fulfills the first step: it exposes the default options by giving men (and women) a new language for symbolizing their experience. Once understanding that they don't just have to "go along with the program", they are now in a position to decide if it is their desire to challenge dominant conceptions of gender at times (step 2), and undertake a process of transformation (step 3).

My personal definition of gender is social pressure to behave and experience the self in ways that the dominant culture defines as sex-appropriate. To change the default options is to resist the pressure, and it is very difficult to resist a pressure that one cannot name. A basic example: we have long conceptualized hegemonic masculinity as antifemininity. Although most people know that stereotypical men refuse to ask for directions when they are lost, they do not understand that the probable reason behind this seemingly ridiculous behavior is the cultural definition of asking for help as a feminine activity. When men intellectually apprehend the absurdity of this oppositional behavior, they are in a better position to perform feminine-defined behaviors and move themselves toward some life goal. Men's Studies puts men into position to challenge dominant masculinity when it is important for them to do so. Interestingly, women who take a men's course also come to a better understanding of the gender pressure they face.

Another computer analogy: sending students out into the world without gender awareness is like sending them out without computer skills - they are only going to become more important as the years go on. Because of changes in the sex division of labor, definitions of family, and reproductive technologies, conceptions of gender will continue to change. In fact, we have seen remarkable changes just within our short lifetimes. Men need to learn that they reduce their chances of reaching their life goals if they simply attempt to apply the same formulas to success that their fathers and grandfathers used. I have twelve broad goals for teaching gender:

1. to see self as a gendered being (exposing the default options).

2. to explore the range of possibilities in response to gender pressure.

3. to build intellectual skills by investigating the histories, cultures, psychologies, images, and mechanisms of gender.

4. to facilitate empathy for women, other men, and the self.

5. to gain an awareness of the social privilege associated with being male and an awareness of the social stigma associated with deviation from dominant statuses and ideologies.

6. to explore the possibilities for social justice work.

7. to understand the risks involved in uncritically accepting hegemonic masculinity, both for individuals and for groups.

8. to gain an awareness of how gender affects one's daily life and experiences.

9. to engage in a continuing process of becoming a person of conscience.

10. to integrate the spiritual, social, intellectual, and psychological dimensions of self as man or woman.

11. to join with persons of the other sex in respectful ways to work toward common goals.

12. to foster a sense of pride that comes from affirming one's life choices rather than merely conforming to gender pressures.

The Course

My course is Psychology of Men, a 300-level undergraduate course for which General Psychology is the only prerequisite. The class of 25 is usually composed of about half psychology majors and half non-majors. I have taught it once a year for about 12 years, and over that time it has evolved from a psychology-focused course into an interdisciplinary one. I have come to believe that an understanding of gender requires the incorporation of the scholarship in History, Anthropology, Economics, Biology, Philosophy, Religion, and other disciplines. Therefore, the variety of majors in the students who take the course is a real asset.

Toward the end of having students understand gender from a variety of perspectives, I assign readings from various disciplines in addition to the textbook, and I hold discussions of these readings. When I first began to do so, I found that students often did not complete the readings before class, and so they were not prepared for the discussions. So, on the suggestion of a colleague in our English department, I required them to produce a one page, single-spaced summary of each reading along with their reaction to it. They print their paper, bring it to class, and make further notes as their thinking evolves during the discussion. These assignments are evaluated as part of the participation grade, so their grade suffers if they do not complete the reading before class.

I have found a simple and very effective technique for getting students to apply academic material to the world outside of the classroom. In order to sensitize students to the pervasiveness of gender assumptions and arrangements in society, I ask them to turn in 5 journal entries three times during the semester, for a total of 15 entries. By the time they are turning in the second set of 5 entries, they tend to say, "I never realized it, but gender is everywhere! I'm sick of seeing it." This sensitization, they tell me, lasts a long time -- some say permanently. It puts students into the habit of noticing and evaluating what is around them, surely a valuable skill. The assignment to the student is as follows:

The journal is a vehicle for engagement with classroom material in non-academic ways, and a way of having a dialogue with yourself (and the instructor, if you wish). You can use journal entries to react, disagree, agree, associate to, or speculate about a television show, newspaper article, conversation, observation of behavior, thoughts about an issue, lecture (in this class or another class), movie, or anything else pertinent to the topic. One student wrote: "I was watching a rerun of the old Cosby show the other day, and I noticed some real differences in the way Cliff (the father) interacts with his son and daughter. With his daughter, he is more playful and affectionate, but with his son, he is harsher, more challenging, and less tolerant. You can see the difference in attitude in his facial expressions. It occurred to me that my father, and many other fathers, are the same way, and it reinforced the research that we went over in class about fathers and sons." (The student went on to elaborate).

This was an excellent journal entry. Not only did the student show insight into gendered arrangements in the culture, but she also related what she had observed to the class material. An example of a less satisfying entry: "I went to my boyfriend's intramural basketball game the other night, and I couldn't believe it -- the two teams got into a fight and they had to stop the game. Why do guys make such a big deal about a game? Girls would never do this...."

The student went on to vent her frustration and puzzlement over these men's behavior. In this entry, the student notices a gender issue, but does no speculation on its source and makes no connection between the observation and the class material. She also shows a low level of awareness of gender and power relationships (which we discuss in class) by referring to college women as "girls," a term that describes children. I also might invite the student to make some other observations, such as: how often do boyfriends come to watch women's intramural games? (Not very often). What does this say about gender?

Students tend to like these assignments because they get to write about whatever they are interested in, and it is nice to have a professor that will listen to their voices. Occasionally, students might write about disturbing or intimate things, and an instructor has to be prepared to respond sensitively in these cases. Overall, however, this assignment tends to produce very valuable learning that involves little if any pressure or unpleasantness. In fact, I can say that grading these journals is actually enjoyable, and there are not many grading tasks that I can say I look forward to.

Following is an example of a great journal entry (My Fall, 2001 student Katrina Wilson, gave permission for me to print her entry and credit her):

Battle of the Sexes

In class we talked about the battle of the sexes. It was interesting that everyone in class raised their hand for having a conversation about the differences between the sexes, but no one raised their hand for a similarity of the sexes conversation. This brought to mind a very recent dispute of the sexes between my boyfriend and I. These talks always end up getting us into heated debates in which we often make general and offensive statements. This particular battle started innocently enough as we were talking about our future career plans. I made the comment that his working/career life would be easier than mine because he has a penis. The rest of the conversation followed the pattern for typical "battle of the sexes" debates.

It was ironic that only a few days after this debate we talked about it in class. After class I thought about the similarities of the genders. Later that night I called my boyfriend and we had our first similarity of the genders conversation. We started by talking about how we both like to eat and watch TV but soon moved on to how we both value our education, want success, and want to raise a family in the future.

This was an interesting activity for us. I learned a number of things from doing this activity. These insights are:

1. The conversation was personal when we talked about similarities as opposed to using broad, generalized, stereotyped statements.

2. We came up with a few silly examples and could laugh at ourselves instead of angering the other.

3. We created unity helping each other think of points instead of dividing ourselves trying to come up with a better point than the other.

4. The tone of the conversation was fun and light, not tense and agitating.

5. We do have a lot in common.

6. We could use a personal approach to talk about our individual differences and appreciate the things that make us different.

7. Neither of us fit the stereotyped gender role in all ways.

Students often report that the course changes the way that they look at the world in a fundamental way. They become aware of their own gendered behavior and that of others. They feel a sense of empowerment that comes from the realization that they have choices about their behavior and do not have to conform to gender expectations when there are good reasons not to do so. They modify their preferences for the men that they would like to be and the men with whom they would like to interact.

Anthropologist Scott Coltrane (1998) points out that the goal of gender studies is to decrease the extent to which conceptions of sex-appropriate behaviors are an organizing principle of society. As Sandra Bem (2001) told her children, what sex you are does not matter unless you are trying to make a baby. Paradoxically, one path to the goal of making gender less relevant to daily life is to call attention to it again and again - to expose the default options of the culture. Doing so builds students' intellectual capacity, their skills in critical thinking, and their ability to be conscientious social actors.

References

• Bem, S. L. (1993). The lenses of gender: Transforming the debate on sexual inequality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

• Bem, S. L. (2001). An unconventional family. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

• Coltrane, S. (1998). Theorizing masculinities in contemporary social science. In D. L. Anselmi & A. L. Law (Eds.), Questions of gender: perspectives and paradoxes (pp. 76-88). Boston: McGraw-Hill.
  
  

Teaching the Psychology of Men Using Psychoeducational Principles
James M. O'Neil, University of Connecticut

I have really enjoyed teaching the psychology of men over the years. Watching students question, deconstruct, and expand their gender role ideologies has been a very gratifying part of my career. One of the greatest pleasures in academia is hearing that a difference was made in a student's life because of what they have learned. On the other hand, I admit that teaching the psychology of men has also been troublesome and challenging for me. At times, I have been perplexed and frustrated with my course. During most of the 1990's, I experienced an uneasy feeling about teaching the psychology of men and was critical of my pedagogical approaches. I should have been satisfied with my teaching of the psychology of men. My teacher ratings were usually high, the class was always overenrolled, and the university had endorsed my course as a General Education elective in the diversity section.

I have pondered my mixed feelings about teaching the psychology of men. Maybe, like Michael Addis (this issue) my expectations have been too high or I have been over invested in the material. The paradox of being pleased and annoyed with my course relates to my course's multidimensionality. I wanted my psychology of men course to be theoretically driven, empirically based, and a dynamically psychoeducational. A course that reviews both theory and research and produces a psychoeducational process may be too much for one course. My problem was that I insisted on having these multiple dimensions in my course. I have been very reluctant to give up the theory, the empirical research or the psychoeudcational processes. Over the years, I have systematically stripped the course of all tangential information. After four major course revisions, I am now beginning to feel satisfied with how the course is organized and taught.

Description of HDFS 259: Men and Masculinity: Social Psychological Perspectives

I decided to teach the psychology of men because no course existed at the University of Connecticut. I felt that men's issues deserved a place in our curriculum along with our strong Women's Studies Program. HDFS 259 has been taught at the University of Connecticut since 1990 in the School of Family Studies as an undergraduate, three credit class. The course integrates traditional lecturing with psychological, experiential, and hypermedia learning (Jensen, 1993; Kolb, 1984). The teaching process includes an organized set of lectures, experiential/affective activities, group discussions, self evaluation checklists, music, music videos, seven gender role journey biographies, and media clips from movies. These teaching interventions are sequentially ordered to activate both cognitive and affective domains of learning (Bloom, 1956; Krathwohl, Bloom, & Masia, 1964). The lectures and assigned readings provide the conceptual basis for the psychology of men. The experiential activities, especially the self-assessment activities and media, are designed to stimulate personal and emotional exploration.

The average enrollment for HDFS 259 is fifty students with two thirds of the students being women. Most students are either psychology or family studies majors. The primary textbook used is Chris Kilmartin's The Masculine Self (Kilmartin, 2000). I use this text because, in my opinion, it is the most useful undergraduate text to teach the psychology of men. Students also read six manuscripts on the gender role journey and gender role conflict ( O'Neil, 1981; O'Neil & Egan, 1992 a b; O'Neil & Egan, 1993; O'Neil & Harway; O'Neil & Nadeau, 1999). Transparencies are used in the lectures and all visual information presented is collated into a 136 page class manual (O'Neil, 2003). This manual contains all the class transparencies and allows students to think and participate in class rather than just compulsively take notes. Students take a midterm and final exam using a multiple choice test items.

Students are required to write a gender role journey personalization paper. The purpose of this paper is to promote the personal growth of students using the course concepts and to facilitate class closure. Students are asked to summarize their gender role journey from infancy to the present. An eleven part outline is used to focus these gender role journey papers. Students write about their childhood memories of gender role socialization in their families, experiences with sexism, gender role transitions and gender role conflict, and intentional ways to resolve past and current conflicts.

Table 1 describes the topics and lecture content, psychoeducational interventions, and the media used in the course. Each week specific academic content is paired with psychoeducational interventions including music, video clips, self-assessment devices, documentaries, and seven gender role journey biographies. Checklists and class discussions are used to enhance the theoretical understanding and personalization of the concepts. I have summarized this course in more detail in an earlier publication (O'Neil, 2001) and only a brief summary of how I teach is given here.

Psychoeducation and Teaching the Psychology of Men

I have spent many hours thinking about what I mean by psychoeducational. I define psychoeducational as using psychological principles and processes to facilitate students' personal, emotional, and intellectual development in a classroom or group setting. Psychoeducation focuses on both the cognitive and affective domains of learning (Bloom, 1956; Krathwohl, Bloom, & Masia, 1964). With psychoeducation, feelings and emotions have equal weight with conceptual and factual knowledge. Emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1995) and academic content are true partners in the psychoeducational process. With the psychoeducational approach, students both think and feel in the classroom. The teacher is interactive, personal, self disclosing, and strategic.

How are psychoeducational approaches operationalized when I teach the psychology of men? There are seven dimensions to my psychoeducational approach. They include: 1) Setting positive expectancies, 2) Context setting, 3) Creating classroom norms, 4) Student assessment, 5) Using stimulus diversity techniques, 6) Managing resistance and student defenses, 7) Helping students with their psychoeducational processes. Each of these is briefly discussed to explain how I teach the psychology of men.

Setting Positive Expectancies

Setting positive expectancies in the classroom is critical to developing a psychoeducational learning environment. Setting specific expectancies in a class increases the probability that most students will meet or exceed them during the semester. Positive expectancies for learning are expressed very early in class and emphasize that the course can be an opportunity for personal growth and "intellectual stretching". I invite students to personalize the course content and by answering one question: "How does this course affect your life now and in the future?" My psychoeducational approach invites students to be involved in the course at their "optimal comfort level". The option of intellectual stimulation and emotional processing is presented to students as a free choice. There are no judgments about the degree of involvement, but encouragement is given for risk taking and self exploration. The most powerful expectancy that I express is that the classroom can be a place to be transformed, renewed, invigorated, and altered personally and politically. This expectancy may sound overblown and unrealistic, but it truly represents my highest hope for each student.

Context Setting

I provide multiple course contexts for students to understand the psychology of men personally, professionally, and politically. Context setting is very important since there is usually ambiguity, misinformation, confusion, and defensiveness about men's and women's gender roles. Furthermore, many students have few contexts to study the psychology of men. The primary conceptual context of the course is to understand how sexism and patriarchy operate at both the macro-societal and micro-interpersonal levels. I do this by continuously referring to a diagram that depicts how the larger patriarchal society affects men's and women's interpersonal lives (O'Neil & Egan, 1993). Furthermore, the five phases of the gender role journey (O'Neil & Egan, 1992a; O'Neil, Egan, Owen, & Murry, 1993) are primary contexts for the course. The gender role journey phases provide students with an active vocabulary for students to analyze their own gender role transitions and conflicts. The five phases of the gender role journey are: 1) acceptance of traditional gender roles, 2) ambivalence about gender roles, 3) anger, 4) activism, 5) celebration and integration of gender roles. The gender role journey phases are used to help students understand how their socialization, sexism, and adherence to gender role stereotypes may negatively affect their lives. Finally, concepts in Kilmartin's (2000) book also provide additional contexts for how gender roles shape men's and women's lives.

Creating Classroom Norms

The third psychoeducational approach is the creation of classroom norms that guide the class process. Classroom norms are necessary because studying the psychology of men is emotionally intense, politically salient, and can cause interpersonal conflict in the classroom. The challenge is how to harness this intensity and put it to good use. I explain to students why classroom norms are necessary as we journey with our gender roles. I provide 10 operationally defined classroom norms that guide our mutual respect and open discussion in the classroom. I outlaw "political correctness" in the classroom. This "educational pathology" compromises an intellectually open classroom and usually includes aspects of fear and intimidation. I indicate that all sides of an issue can and should be examined if we want to pursue truth and find wisdom. I indicate that we all have biases and prejudices and that the course can be used to examine them. Additionally, ridicule, humiliation, disrespect, name calling are "interpersonally incorrect" in my classroom. Sensitivity, tact, mutual respect, and honesty are recommended when we express biases and prejudices on topics that others have experienced pain and loss.

Student Assessment

I actively assess student needs and the entire learning process. I do a need assessment in the first class and a mid semester evaluation to determine where students are with the class. I usually read the evaluative feedback to students so that the information becomes part of our process. I also administer many different checklists and questionnaires during the class. These checklists help students personalize the concepts and relate the course to their lives. This student assessment serves six primary functions. It helps me create a dynamic, personal relationship with the class and allows me to know the students and their needs. Sharing the data also shows how interactive teaching and class dialogue work and that I care about students personalizing the course.

Using Stimulus Diversity Techniques

Over the years I have experimented with stimulus diversity techniques as a way to expand students' attention spans and deepen their understanding of complex psychological realities. Stimulus diversity is alternating the learning stimuli and instruction to touch as many of the students' senses as possible (listening, observing, writing, thinking, feeling, smelling, doing, touching). Stimulus diversity implies thinking through the sequential order of carefully selected stimuli to maximize understanding and personalization of course concepts. For example, I might start with a short lecture, followed by a media clip that deepens the concept, followed by a reflection period, ending with a written reaction to the concept, prompting questions and discussion from students. Stimulus diversity is also useful in analyzing major concepts from many different levels of cognitive and affective complexity. The ultimate goal is to provide a stimulating learning environment where students leave class thinking and feeling about concepts taught.

Managing Student Resistance and Defenses During Learning: Three Strategies

Working with the students' resistance and defensiveness is a very important psychoeducational issue. Resistance, defensiveness, threat, and high emotions can be experienced as the class challenges the myths of masculinity and femininity. Resistance and defensiveness may be particularly evident with those students who have been victims of sexism, abuses, or any form of oppression. Consequently, students may distance themselves from the class by denying their real emotions, not fully engaging the class, or only intellectualizing the concepts. I implement three different strategies to work with defensiveness.

First, I let student know that studying the psychology of men is not a "breeze" and at times difficult. I normalize defensiveness and resistance as we deconstruct the myths about gender roles. To normalize defensiveness and hopefully limit it, I give a mini lecture on the following topics: 1) the nature of unconscious defenses, 2) what purposes defenses serve when trying to cope or avoid threatening insights, and 3) what the major defenses are (repression, denial, projection, rationalization, ect). The goal of this lecture is to help students work with their defenses during the semester. Usually with some resistance on my part, I discuss my own personality defenses. I model self-disclosure, introspection and the deeper emotional processing that I want students to actualize during the semester.

A second strategy to reduce defensiveness involves the use of the gender role journey video biographies. Over the years, my students and I have studied six celebrity personalities and documented their gender role journeys. Using video clips from documentaries, movies, music videos, and biographical and autobiographical literature, we have created gender role journeys video shows of John Lennon (O'Neil, 1988), Marilyn Monroe (Goldberg & O'Neil 1997), Elton John (Brooks, 1996), Frank Sinatra, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Marvin Gay. These video shows are shown throughout the semester to illustrate how these men and women have coped with sexism (and other forms of oppression) during their gender role journeys. These emotional videos allow students to experience the course concepts through the lives of these personalities. Rather than just focus on their own problems and pain, these videos demonstrate that almost everyone experiences pain, loss, and suffering in their lives. By observing these life stories, students become more comfortable looking at their own lives. Furthermore, these videos stimulate questions about how to effectively resolve gender role conflicts, work with the pain, and emotionally heal.

The third method to reduce resistance and defensiveness is when I step out of my professor role and selectively self disclose about my own gender role journey and problems with sexism. This self-disclosure is sometimes premeditated and other times it is spontaneous, but in both cases it is tied directly to the course content and process. This self-disclosure communicates my personal vulnerability to very issues that the students are hopefully struggling with. Through my self-disclosure, I try to give hope that over time they too can work effectively with their gender role conflict and transitions over the life span. The primary way of self disclosing is through a biography of my own gender role journey. Using my mother's photographs of me from 6 months to the present, I have created a 30-minute video summary of my own journey with my gender roles. Using Barbra Streisand's music (The Way we Were), video photography, and overheads, I discuss my psychosocial development using the course concepts. Being a private person, this is one of the hardest parts of the course for me. I have to work with my resistance and defenses, just like the students. I explain to students that I should not expect them to do self exploration and disclosure if I am not willing to do it myself. My gender role journey presentation comes a few weeks before students complete their own gender role journey personalization papers.

Helping Students With Their Psychoeducational Processes

The psychoeducational process reaches a peak when students write their gender role journey personalization paper. This required paper asks students to apply the course's concepts to their lives. Although it is very labor intensive, I read each paper and give individualized written feedback to every student. These papers reveal the actual depth that students personally process the course concepts. There is some variability in the depths of these papers, but most students are able to review their gender role journey with meaningful insights and strategies for change.

My teaching role includes helping those students who discover pain and unresolved gender role conflict in their gender role journey. This means convincing them that negatives can be turned into positives and that anger can be constructively used in the activist stage of the gender role journey. I introduce two major concepts to help students with their pain. The first concept is metaphors for healing and the second is forgiveness. Both of these concepts help students decide what to do with their gender role journey after the class ends. Developing metaphors for healing and forgiveness are powerful vehicles for ongoing growth and recovery. The most important point is that some students need practical ways to recover from being hurt by sexism and other forms of oppression. Some students can be directly helped through the class and others need to be referred directly for counseling and psychotherapy.

What I Have Learned and What I Still Need to Do

I have found that the psychoeudcational teaching process can help students personalize the psychology of men. I have learned that data gathering and ongoing assessment of student learning processes helps me develop a positive relationship with the class. I have observed that a psychology of men class can be very powerful in student's lives and activate both painful memories and potentials for personal transformation.

I have concluded that not all students see the relationship between societal patriarchy and their personal wounds at the same time in class. What I have learned is that students have different paths and move at different speeds when journeying with their gender roles. I continue to be challenged on how to present empirical research to undergraduate students in ways that advance their learning about men. My course also needs to be expanded beyond psychology and have a more interdisciplinary thrust. Furthermore, there is also still much work to be done to infuse my course with multiculturalism and explain how race, class, ethnic background, nationality, religion, and sexual orientation affects men's lives.

I also need to know more about how students experience the class. I am amazed at how many students have repressed aspects of their sexist gender role socialization. This amnesia is understandable given that children and adolescents usually repress painful experiences they cannot understand or label. The gender role journey papers are full of painful experiences with sexism in homes, at schools, and with peers. Furthermore, many men in the class report being razed and ridiculed for just taking the class. Most of the comments have homophobic overtones with innuendo like "So you are really into men these days?!". Men in the class may need more help in responding to these insults, jokes, and threatening comments. For many women, the major class issue is how to work with past and present anger at men. Women's pain does get activated as I explain how men's gender role socialization contributes to men's violence against women (Harway & O'Neil, 1999). I need to figure out more direct ways to reach out to these students as they individually process their conflicts, emotions and pain from the class.

As you can see from this lists of next steps with my course, there are clearly more things to be done to improve my psychology of men course. Experimenting with more effective ways to teach the psychology of men is what is so exciting about being involved in this emerging area of psychology.

References

• Bloom, B.S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives - The classification of educational goals: Handbook I: Cognitive Domain, New York: David Mckay Company, Inc.

• Brooks, B. (1996) Video: Elton John's Gender Role Journey: I'm Still Standing. School of Family Studies, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269.

• Goldberg, J. & O'Neil, J.M. (1997). Marilyn Monroe's gender role journey: Promoting women's development. Journal of College Student Development, 38, 543-545.

• Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books.

• Harway, M. & O'Neil, J.M. (1999). What causes men's violence against women? Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

• Jensen, R.E. (1993). The technology of the future is already here. Academe, 79 (4), 8-13.

• Kilmartin, C.T. (2000) The masculine self. Boston: McGraw Hill

• Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential learning. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

• Krathwohl, D.R., Bloom, B.S. & Masia, B.B. (1964). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook II: Affective domain. New York: Donald McKay Company Inc.

• O'Neil, J.M. (1981). Patterns of gender role conflict and strain: Sexism and fears of femininity in men's lives. Personnel and Guidance Journal, 60, 203-210.

• O'Neil, J.M. (August, 1988). Definition of gender role conflict: A study of John Lennon's life. In J.M. O'Neil & G.E. Good (Chairs) Men's gender role conflict: Definitions, case study, and three empirical studies. Symposium presented at the American Psychological Association Convention, Atlanta, GA.

• O'Neil, J.M. (2001). Promoting men's growth and development: Teaching the new psychology of men using psychoeducational philosophy and interventions. In G. Brooks & G.E. Good(Eds.) The new handbook of psychotherapy and counseling with men: A comprehensive guide to settings, problems, and treatment approaches (pp. 639-663). vol. 2, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

• O'Neil, J.M. (2003). Resource Manual for HDFR 259(Men and Masculinity: Social Psychological Perspectives). School of Family Studies, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT.

• O'Neil, J.M. & Egan, J. (1992a). Men's gender role transitions over the lifespan: Transformation and fears of femininity. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 14, 305-324.

• O'Neil, J.M. & Egan, (1992b). Men and women's gender role journeys: A metaphor for healing, transition, and transformation. In B. Wainrib (Ed.) Gender issues across the life cycle. (pp. 107-123). New York: Springer Publishing Co.

• O'Neil, J.M. & Egan, J. (1993). Abuses of power against women: Sexism, gender role conflict, and psychological violence. In E. Cook (Ed.) Women, relationships, and power: Implications for counseling (pp.49-78 ). Alexandria, VA.: American Counseling Association (ACA Press).

• O'Neil, J.M., Egan, J., Owen, S.V. & Murry, V.M. (1993). The Gender Role Journey Measure: Scale development and psychometric evaluation. Sex Roles, 28, 167-185.

• O'Neil, J.M. & Harway, M. (1997). A multivariate model explaining men's violence toward women: Predisposing and triggering hypotheses. Violence Against Women, 3, (2), 182-203.

• O'Neil, J.M. & Nadeau, R. A. (1999). Men's gender role conflict, defense mechanisms, and self- protective strategies: Explaining men's violence against women from a gender-role perspective. In M. Harway & J.M. O'Neil (Eds.) What Causes Men's Violence Against Women? (89-116). Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage Publications.
  
  

Teaching an Advanced Undergraduate and Graduate Level Seminar in the Psychology of Men and Masculinity
Michael Addis, Clark University

Every spring at Clark University I have the opportunity to teach Psychology 265: The Psychology of Men. I look forward to this course each time I teach it. More than any course I teach, it covers issues that are central to my research, and are also of great personal interest to me. I chose to teach this course not only because I find the topic area fascinating, but also because I believe that students need to be exposed to the psychology of men and masculinity. There seems to be an increasing awareness in popular culture that men's experience, like women's, is gendered. Every month I see more magazine articles and television programs either drawing on popular stereotypes of masculinity, articulating some problematic aspect of men's experience, or attempting to reinforce traditional hegemonic constructions of masculinity. In short, I have a strong sense that if we don't get busy teaching students about men and masculinity, somebody else will!

I also experience a good bit of dread every time I anticipate teaching Psychology 265. I know the process will be difficult at times and will fall well short of my expectations for myself and the students. I know the class discussion will periodically devolve into stereotyped discussions about sex differences (i.e., "men are…women are…"). I know it will be very difficult to engage the men in the course without putting them on the spot. I know from experience that the women in the class will be extremely curious and concerned about the issues we discuss. I know there will need to be a very fine balance between personal interest and investment in the material, and more "objective" analysis of theories and research. I know I will have to be very careful about how much and what I self-disclose to get the process moving.

In short, perhaps because I care so much about the material, the stakes always seem high when I anticipate teaching about the psychology of men. And yet, I look forward to teaching this course every spring. I will draw on this dualistic experience of teaching psychology of men as a framework for thinking about how I approach the course. But before moving further into the course, let me say a bit more about the context in which Psychology 265 takes place.

The Course Context

Clark University is the smallest research university in the United States. With just over 2000 undergraduates enrolled, the atmosphere for faculty on campus often resembles a liberal arts college. At the same time, Clark has several Ph.D. programs of which Psychology is the largest. Faculty in psychology are expected to teach undergraduate and doctoral level courses, to be available to undergraduates and graduates for advising and mentoring, and to conduct research and scholarship that situates them as leaders in their respective fields.

Many of the faculty strive to creatively work the tension between competing demands common to an undergraduate liberal arts college versus a research university by integrating teaching, mentoring, and research. For example, roughly fifty percent of undergraduate majors at Clark are actively involved in research with faculty members. The psychology major itself is designed to be rigorous with a primary emphasis on critical conceptual thinking in addition to active involvement in research. The capstone seminar is the final requirement for the major and is typically taken in the senior year. Course enrollments are limited (I cap Psychology of Men at 12) and students are expected to read, discuss, and write critical responses to primary literature (i.e., not textbooks, but journal articles, books, and book chapters that faculty would routinely integrate into their own scholarship). Finally, doctoral students often enroll in capstone seminars and the level at which material is discussed varies depending on the particular mixture of graduate and undergraduates in each course.

The Course Process

The course process is spelled out in detail in the syllabus. Briefly, we meet weekly for two and a half hours in a small group of approximately twelve students (typically 75% undergraduate, 25% graduate). Each week a different student is responsible for leading the discussion of readings. All students are expected to have read the material and to come to each class with specific questions or reactions to each reading. Discussion leaders are given a list of strategies (see syllabus) for facilitating and maintaining a discussion, and also a description of their role and goals as a discussion leader.

The Course Goals

The syllabus (linked here) gives a good sense of the topics covered and the specific readings I use. One specific structural aspect of the course I'd like to point out is its division into Major Theoretical Perspectives and Men in Context. I believe it is critical for students to appreciate the similarities and differences, however subtle, between major paradigms for analyzing gender. My bias is that progress is made in analyzing psychological and social processes by first sharpening distinctions between different ways of understanding phenomena. It is only after we are able to articulate with precision, scope, and depth the assumptions and implications of different explanatory paradigms that it may become useful to approach phenomena through an integrative lens (Addis & Cohane, in press). In contrast, I see too many students prematurely jumping to conclusions like, "it all makes sense and it's all important" or "all these different theories are really saying the same thing."

I have two broad goals for students in the course. The first is that they come to understand the problematic nature of masculinity. By problematic I don't mean "bad" "harmful" or other negative qualifiers (although we do discuss many harmful aspects of masculinity). Problematizing masculinity means first de-fusing it from men and recognizing it's socially constructed and socially learned nature. Many students come to the course thinking masculinity refers to personality characteristics inherent to men. I hope they come away recognizing that masculinity, to the degree that we can define it at all, is a very short-hand term for a whole range of social and psychological processes that influence, and are influenced by, broader layers economic, political and otherwise social processes that occur within cultures.

I alluded earlier to my second goal for students; I would like to see them increase the precision, scope, and depth of concepts and terms they bring to their understanding of men and masculinity. Precision means using the various terms and concepts found in social scientific analyses of men and masculinity with greater accuracy and theoretical integrity. For example, the first day of class, I write the following terms on the board:

Men, Male, Masculinity, Masculinities, Gender ,Gender Norms, Gender Stereotypes, Gender Socialization, Selection Pressures, Social Construction, Social Learning, Gender Roles, Feminism, Patriarchy, Sex

I then ask students to define each term to the best of their ability. What often becomes apparent is that the definitions students provide for many terms overlap considerably. I then tell students that my hope is by the end of the semester they will be able to use each term with precision to make specific statements or interpretations about the psychology of men and masculinity.

I also hope that students will learn to use terms and concepts with a greater degree of scope. In other words, they should by the end of the course be able to apply terms and concepts to a wide range of social and psychological phenomena. Finally, I hope that they will increase the depth of their understanding of men and masculinity. In other words, I would like them to be able to identify and articulate the ways various concepts can be linked across different "levels" of social organization from the individual to the cultural.

Dialectical Tensions

I was fortunate throughout my graduate training to receive clinical supervision from Marsha Linehan, a researcher and psychotherapist who developed Dialectical Behavior Therapy (Linehan, 1993). In addition to providing excellent clinical training, Marsha raised my awareness of the ways dialectical thinking can be useful as an approach to situations where various tensions between apparent opposites seem to pull us in incompatible directions. At the risk of greatly oversimplifying, dialectical thinking involves working creatively within a tension rather than reflexively trying to solve it by coming down on one side or the other, or avoiding it all together. In working with the sorts of tensions or "pulls" that come up in discussing men and masculinity, I try to remind myself of the counter-intuitive notion that opposites can both be true. Moreover, there is often insight to be gained by working within tensions (rather than avoiding them), and trying to find syntheses between apparent opposites, or accepting that one can "move back and forth" productively without coming down firmly on one side or the other. To make this a bit more concrete, I've identified below some dialectical tensions that often emerge in teaching the psychology of men and masculinity. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it does provide a sense of some of the competing directions in which the students and I find ourselves pulled.

The Personal "I, My" Versus the Collective Average

We often find ourselves struggling with the tension between what we think we've experienced as individuals and what theory and research on men and masculinity would suggest is generally the case. The tension here exists because, on the one hand, the material is often very personally relevant for myself and the students. On the other hand, I want to encourage students to consider the value of theory and research for determining for gaining knowledge beyond personal experience or anecdote. For example, when it comes to discussing restrictive emotionality or homophobia, students will often point out that some of their male friends are very emotionally expressive and close with other men. I try to use such observations as a springboard to discuss in general how individual cases can differ from collective averages, and how each source of information can be useful in different ways. Occasionally, we are also able to consider the possibility that impressions of individuals can be as misleading as averages. If a student is willing to be challenged, I might ask, "what exactly do you mean by emotionally expressive? How do you know how this person behaves with his friends?"

The Essential "Men are…" Versus the Situated "Some men…in Some Circumstances"

Everyday discourse on gender often includes generalizations that implicitly or explicitly refer to women's and men's essential nature. Although we are typically able to move rather quickly in the course to focusing on the socially learned or constructed nature of masculinity, we still often find ourselves making statements such as "men are competitive with their friends." These statements are plagued by all the same problems that face any generalizations about groups of people. However, they can sometimes bring a difficult or emotionally laden topic into sharp relief. In effect, stating "I think men are competitive with their friends" forces the group to consider whether and/or how the statement might contain some truth. It can often be a springboard from which we jump to the other side of the tension where we ask questions such as, "Under what conditions and how does masculinity operate to create competition between friends?"

The Psychological Versus the Sociological/Historical

This tension is partly a result of the limited primary source material on men and masculinity; much of the major theoretical work over the last two decades comes from sociology rather than psychology. The students and I are often initially working from an implicitly psychological point of view when we read and discuss material. This point of view roughly locates masculinity "inside" or occasionally "between" people. In contrast, much of the material we read locates masculinity in various larger social formations. Consequently, we often need to move back and forth between viewing gender as personal, social, cultural, and historical processes. I struggle to make clear what "level" of analysis we are currently invoking in a discussion. Again, it is only when we are able to make provisionally sharp distinctions between different viewpoints that we can effectively begin to attempt integrating them.

Empathy for Men's Struggles Versus Recognition of Men's Privilege and its Consequences

 This is probably the most difficult dialectical tension to work with during the course. More often than not, we find ourselves squarely on one side or the other; either increasing our empathy and understanding of the harmful effects of socialization according to restrictive masculinity norms, or gaining clarity on the various ways patriarchal privilege operates both to advantage white, heterosexual, upper-class men, and to oppress or marginalize other groups. Michael Kaufman's chapter entitled, "Men, Feminism, and Men's Contradictory Experience of Power" is particularly helpful in describing the ways men can both benefit from and be harmed by traditional hegemonic forms of masculinity (Kaufman, 1994). To the best of my ability, I try to model for students how to simultaneously consider both ends of this tension. The process is always difficult because there are critical moral and political issues at stake in these discussions, and they are felt personally by myself and members of the course. For example, it is particularly difficult for many male students to recognize their privilege without feeling shamed or guilted to some degree, and consequently increasing their resistance to the ideas. This is often a point in the course where I will disclose in some detail my own experiences wrestling with the tension between my subjective sense of empowerment and the social structures and processes that benefit me by virtue of my sex and gender.

Conclusion

Expectations can run high when we teach courses in our specific areas of interest or scholarship. I know they do for me. And they need to be tempered with recognition that the study of men and masculinity is often very new for the students. Not only is it new, it can be a very personal and emotional process regardless of how intellectually the material is framed. The personal relevance of the material and the emotional arousal it often generates can make it hard for the students and me to engage in the sort of critical analytic thinking we might otherwise apply to less evocative topics in psychology. But this sort of thinking is precisely what I hope to see come out of the course. Indeed, thinking and talking with greater precision, scope, and depth will not only be useful for students, but for all of us interested in furthering the study of men and masculinity.

References

• Addis, M.E. & Cohane, G.H. (in press). Social Scientific Paradigms of Masculinity and their Implications for Research and Practice in Men's Mental Health. Journal of Clinical Psychology.

• Kaufman, M. (1994). Men, feminism, and men's contradictory experiences of power. In Brod, H., & Kaufman, M. (eds.) Theorizing Masculinities. pp. 142-163. California. Sage.

• Linehan, M.M. (1993). Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. New York: Guilford.
  
  

Teaching the Psychology of Men and Masculinity
James R. Mahalik, Boston College

I have taught the graduate level "Issues in Counseling Men" at Boston College for almost a decade. In many ways, the class is similar to other classes I teach. It has a pretty traditional format with weekly readings, I do some lecturing with PowerPoint, there is a paper and students also complete a take-home final. In the class, I do some "break-out" groups with students, and sometimes we pull the whole class (usually between 20-25 masters students) in a circle for discussions, but the majority of the time students are in straight rows in the classroom.

Unlike other graduate courses I teach (e.g., personality theories or research design), the material in this class is especially personal. For the men in the class, they have the opportunity to reflect on themselves and their experiences in a way that they have rarely ever done before. They are reading about their lives. They are remembering their experiences. They are telling their stories in class and having a roomful of their peers nod and laugh and sympathize. The experience for them is one where they are subject in the class, and they seem to generally be engaged in the class in the same way that we tend to pay attention to a conversation when someone is talking about us.

Many of the women approach the class with a sense of curiosity about "the other". Many have taken a "Psychology of Women" class or been exposed to feminist ideas applied to women's lives. At the beginning of the class, some women will talk about how they wanted to take the class in order to hear from "the other side." They say this because they perceive men's experiences as somehow alien to their own and they want to learn about this other world. A frequent experience reported by the women later in the class is that they come to feel a sense of genuine empathy with the men in their lives as they come to see both men and women as enduring similar experiences that shape them and sometimes silence them.

Sometimes when women say that they want to hear from "the other side", they mean that they are curious to hear the non-feminist side of the argument in gender relations. It is surprising for some when I tell them that I teach a class about understanding and counseling men from a pro-feminist framework. In many ways, this represents an important and useful tension in the class (and my own work). For example, I help students acknowledge the reality of patriarchy in our society as it disempowers women, but also recognize that most men in U.S. society do not experience themselves as having much power and are also hurt by the structures of power in society. I try to acknowledge the genuine benefits that traditional gender roles bring while also exhaustively detailing the costs to individuals, families and society to traditional masculine socialization. I want to help students recognize the uniquely positive difference that many males make in our lives, but also to face the facts that men contribute to much of the violence and anti-social problems we experience in families and communities.

Of critical importance to me is that the class also attends to other social issues related to masculinity such as homophobia and racism. Because I am convinced that men's homophobia is one of the most powerful influences on boys and men, we focus significant time throughout the class on the issue and return to it throughout other topics. We work with the topic in light-hearted ways (e.g., viewing the Simpsons episode "Homersphobia") and more sober ways (e.g., reading an interview with Matthew Shepard's father after the murder of his son). I think most students already understand how homophobia hurts gay men. My goal is to help them see and experience how homophobia also significantly constrains the lives of straight men, creates conflict and pain in families, and significantly constrains both straight and gay men in their lives.

Similarly, I try to approach issues of race from a somewhat different slant in the class. I think this is particularly useful for White students who often find it easier to understand gender than racial dynamics. After talking about how society expects men to be providers, protectors and achievers, we look at examples of the lives of men of color. When racism is seen as preventing men of color from being able to provide, protect and achieve this seems to effect students very strongly as they recognize these as life and death issues for individuals and their families.

In developing the class, I saw the tremendous successes that had been made addressing women's lives and developing training for psychologists to work with girls and women. It was (and is) very noticeable to me that the majority of training programs in psychology do not have any training for their students to work with boys and men. As such, my class is somewhat different from the others described in the Special Focus Section because its purpose is to apply the psychology of men and masculinity to help graduate students in counseling psychology work clinically with men. To do so, I structure the early part of the class to focus on socialization issues to help students develop a gendered set of lenses from which to view boys and men. We typically spend a lot of time viewing the media, discussing examples of traditional masculine socialization, and examining the "sub-text" to socialization messages. We often focus on identifying shaming messages to men if they do not conform to traditional gender role norms. This part of the class is often the most fun and is usually very eye-opening for students. It is also typical to have students come to class being excited and telling stories about recent interactions they have had with family members and experiences with friends that make great examples of what we have been talking about in class. They are also very excited to talk about examples of socialization messages they see in the media where they can see the subtext about gender role socialization.

After describing the process of masculine gender role socialization and its effects on boys and men, we try to make connections to issues involved in counseling men. We look at the effect of those gender norms on men's personal development through the life span including issues of men's health, body image, violence, life roles (e.g., partners and fathers), and how men approach mental health and other health services. We pay particular attention to men's emotional lives. We look at cases trying to learn about how socialization history may be connected to presenting concerns (e.g., depression, substance abuse, interpersonal isolation), and try to integrate a gendered lens into established and popular counseling treatments (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy) and psycho-educational approaches.

Because I do not typically run the class as an interpersonal process class, I do not often have interpersonal conflict in the class. That being said, the issues we talk about affect the people in the class in a very personal and powerful way. There are times when people's feelings get stirred up in the class and we need to move the focus to the interactions in the classroom. In doing so, I view my task with my students as creating an environment where their experiences and viewpoints are respected, while also gently confronting them with alternative views they may not have considered. One example I remember was a class interaction with an older male student who was divorced and had a bad time in family court. He was a vocal supporter of fathers' rights groups, and angry at feminists for "setting up the courts to discriminate against men." Even though there were many negative reactions to his characterization of feminists (and by extension, his pro-feminist professor), we focused on slowing everything down and agreeing to listen to everyone who had something to say. In telling his story to the class, the other students became more aware of the injustices and tragedies that can happen to fathers in the family justice system. He was then asked about other places where they saw discrimination against men, but did not list many more. When I asked the women in the class to identify places where they saw discrimination against women, they listed a very large number. Everyone was heard. Everyone was respected. And everyone came to a somewhat bigger understanding of the world that included more compassion for the other person.

I judge most of the successes in the class based on what students tell me. In terms of their work, many students tell me that their work with clients has become more effective because of my class. Students have told me that they are able to be more empathic toward men in their work, anticipate relationship dynamics between them and their male clients (whether male counselor or female counselor), and better understand the sources of their clients' presenting concerns. Some students have developed workshops on men's issues at their college counseling center sites around Boston, done outreach to improve men's access to counseling services, and began men's groups on campus. One former student wrote me a note several months after beginning her first post-MA job working in a hospital counseling heart attack survivors. She wrote and told me that our "Issues in Counseling Men" class was the single most helpful class she had taken in her two years of graduate study.

The successes for the class that stand out most to me, though, are usually things having to do with the personal lives of the students. Some students have told me that they have tried to repair a relationship with a father after a long period of bitterness. One student came out to the class telling us that he was gay but that this is the first time he had ever told anyone. Women will often talk about being more sympathetic and compassionate toward men. Men will talk about challenging others who shame boys or men, or making a decision to live a little differently because of the class. Most will talk about seeing things differently in their personal lives and being more critical of the media. One student once told me that he was now so aware of how commercials sold masculinity along with their products that I ruined his ability to just sit down and watch television. I would like that put on my gravestone.

In closing, I believe it is critical for us to develop courses that address the psychology of men and masculinity to raise consciousness in the academy, educate our students and advance our profession. Arguably, no more effective strategy could be employed to bring boy's and men's issues into the national consciousness of our society and profession of psychology than to educate large numbers of smart, energetic and challenging students about the psychology of men and masculinity. Did I also mention that it was fun?