Yuri Casta¤o | Boys on the side

This semester, I took the course "Gender in Latin America."

I was the only male out of sixteen students in the course.

My professor - Ann Farnsworth-Alvear of the Latin American and Latino Studies department - explained that in the 14 years she has taught the class, there has never been more than one male enrolled.

This observation suggests a larger trend, that males - particularly those who identify as heterosexuals - do not understand gender and sexuality to be a relevant academic subject.

Erin Cross, associate director of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center, noted that there are far more female-identified staff and faculty involved with gender and sexuality studies and there is not one male identified professor who studies gender issues as his main focus.

Furthermore, Cross also explained that though "a handful of undergraduate male-identified students work on gender and sexuality studies, at least 90 percent of them identify as non-heterosexual."

As a heterosexually identified male, I am both disappointed and disillusioned by the lack of male interest and involvement in gender and sexuality studies at Penn.

The lack of interested and involved males is offensive to women because it conveys a message that Penn males do not respect the struggles and inequality women have suffered in the past and continue to face today.

But perhaps more importantly, it also devalues the importance gender studies plays in understanding other disciplines.

Cross suggested that men are disinclined to study gender and sexuality because it is seen as "a 'touchy-feely' subject and more importantly it challenges the patriarchal hegemony, which even queer men derive power from."

Gender and Sexuality studies are not touchy-feely; they engage our fundamental nature as human beings living in a society rigidly constructed around a male-female sex and gender binary. Gender and sexuality studies challenge the most basic assumptions which structure our society and govern our everyday actions.

In regards to Latin American studies, the discrepancy between male and female involvement in gender studies suggests that male Penn students don't consider gender to be important to the study of Latin America.

But it would be, for example, impossible to understand the Colombian drug-traffic trade without observing and comprehending the use of females as 'mules' to transport drugs. Nor would it be possible to study the Colombian economy in general without seeing how intimately the drug trade is tied to gender roles.

One way to increase male awareness of sex and gender issues might be for academia to place increased attention to male experiences.

While Penn has a Woman, Culture & Societies program, many gender studies courses place an emphasis on female issues and usually deal primarily with non-heterosexual men when discussing males. Greater focus on women issues and non-heterosexual male issues is merited because in many ways, history is a history of heterosexual males.

Little effort is made, however, to explore the biological, psychological and societal practices that have led men to historically function as the oppressor. The conflicts heterosexual men face in meeting societal standards of masculinity are often glazed over.

English professor Heather Love - who teaches several classes on gender and sexuality - said she has attempted to "really try to emphasize the idea that everyone has a gender and a sexuality, and that straight white masculinity (for instance) can't be taken for granted any more than any other configuration of sex and gender."

Just as men must see that women's issues and discussions of sexuality are of critical importance, the identities of normatively identified men must also be a pertinent course of study.

Professor Love alluded to director David Fincher's 1999 movie Fight Club, which explored "all the work it takes to be a straight white man," as a productive example for teaching these issues.

Courses geared towards understanding these issues would help males, particularly heterosexual males, come to understand themselves as specifically gendered and sexed rather than just assuming the "naturalness" of their condition.

Presently, however, it is critical that men begin to rise to the occasion of learning about and engaging in the study of gender and sexuality, particularly women's studies.

Yuri Casta¤o is a College sophomore from Mexico City. His e-mail address is castano@dailypennsylvanian.com. Bringing the ¤ Back appears on Fridays.

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