AN ASSEMBLY OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF ENGLISH

The Straight White Guy & the Challenges of Queer Literary:
Selected Bibliography
by John Foster, III

Diane J. Goodman, “Motivating People from Privileged Groups to Support Social Justice,” Teachers College Record 102.6 (2000): 1061-85.

Empathy

Defined: ability to identify with the situation and feelings of another person; natural inclination

Fostering by minimizing distance and anonymity

a.      exposure to life experiences through books, movies, panels, and personal testimony

b.      simulations, role plays, case studies

c.       reflecting on and sharing personal experiences with discrimination and oppression (since nearly all people are members of at least one oppressed group)

d.      understanding that a personal plight is not just an individual issue (must understand societal conditions and systemic oppression)

e.      meeting actual people and experiencing their situations firsthand

Moral Principles and Spiritual Values

Appealing to notions of right vs. wrong

a.      encourage students to identify and articulate their moral and spiritual values

b.      educate them about inequality

c.       help them perceive discrepancies as injustices so they feel that a moral wrong has been committed

d.      motivate them to take action to remedy the situation

Self Interest

Continuum: individualistic > Mutual > Interdependent

Appealing to self interest (“What’s in it for me?”)

a.      find out what people are concerned about

b.      start where people are and help expand their perspective toward thinking about the common good

c.       link personal concerns to larger issues of equity and justice

d.      help students see they can better meet their short-term and long-term interests by supporting efforts that promote social justice

Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young, Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2001).

• since the 1990s, American and Canadian popular culture has demonized men as evil, inadequate, or honorary women (in other words, men are neither good nor acceptable)

• began with men being ostracized from women’s studies programs and scholarship; women portrayed as purely innocent victims or quietly enduring heroes

• the roles that make men secure in their maleness—provider, protector, controller, father—are all under assault; the old certainties about the male role are disappearing; maybe what is more at threat is the modern gender order and gender relations

• Two basic points in the study:

o       Misandry still generally unrecognized as a problem, so few attempts made to expose or challenge it

o       Suggests prevalence of gynocentrism: same way that feminists have argued that the way women are represented in movies or on television can have profound effects on the way men and women see women in real life; same can apply to men 

-        Assumptions we make about men

o      Supposedly immune to the psychic damage inherent in sustained attacks on their identity

o      Men satirize themselves, so must be acceptable

o      Men seek sexual variety (openly addressed for men but ignored in women)

o      Men are superfluous; indifference to men highly encouraged

The “Linguists” Speak Out

Jennifer Coates, Men Talk: Stories in the Making of Masculinities (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003).

• Contributes to the idea that men’s lives and experiences are gendered and socially and historically variable across social class
• Seeks to demonstrate how “hegemonic” masculinity (“approved” ways of being male) is constructed through speech and conversation
• Suggests that significant changes are not in the daily patterns of women’s and men’s lives but in the values we attach to those patterns
• By analyzing conversations between men and between men and women, Coates argues that the self-presentation of most men in most groups is constrained by the hegemonic norms of heterosexuality, toughness, power, authority, competitiveness, and the subordination of gay men
• Imperative to avoid vulnerability by expressing emotions; men associated with reason and rationality; men stress sociability rather than intimacy

Peter F. Murphy, Studs, Tools, and the Family Jewels: Metaphors Men Live By (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2001).

• Premise: all relationships are tactical encounters that men must win (over gay men, women, and other straight men), lest they risk the loss of manhood
• evokes a conception of manhood imbued with a sense of alienation, distrust, fear, and confusion
• men hide behind a discourse that protects them from close, personal, caring relationships with others (by cowering behind a language whose meaning even they don’t fully comprehend)
• straight men translate their fear of being seen as weak or nurturing into violence against women and gay men; language expresses this violence, sometimes covertly but always effectively
• men fear for the continuity of their privilege; ongoing attempt to remain in power

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