The 2021 Disney movie, Luca, is a coming-of-age story about a young sea monster boy on the cusp of adolescence. It's also a powerful challenge to conventional, restrictive male socialization, and inspiring celebration of expansive, healthy, male emotional connection.
This is interesting but how do we know that men need to be humanized and that this way of doing it does in fact humanize them? It’s built on the assumption that the view of men as only able to express themselves through violence or anger is in fact the default. It also assumes that it’s a socialized thing that is done to men. How do we know that the belief that it’s socialized isn’t socialized itself?
I would argue that it is based in the research supported by sociologists and psychologist. It is supported by the fact that men die much younger than women on average in general, are much more likely to kill themselves when they're young men, much higher rates of incarceration, much more likely to die through good violence, engage in acts of violence against others at a much higher rate compared to women for example.
But how do we know that the sociologists and psychologists aren’t simply acting out the fact that they’ve been socialized into believing that men need to be humanized? Of course the research would conclude that if the researchers believed that and were looking to find that result.
As an example, I recall a very old study which showed that chocolate was good for your health. The sponsor of that study? Hershey’s Chocolate Company. Gee, I wonder how the research came to that conclusion?
Whether or not a study is valid depends in large part on what people assume when going into the research. If you assume that violence is inherently bad, or that death is inherently bad, then if you find data which suggests people were dying at higher rates then of course you would come to that conclusion.
Maybe a belief that men need to be humanized into non-violent ways of acting is causing men to lash out and commit suicide at higher rates and committing crimes at higher rates leading to incarceration? So the data follows the assumptions of society rather than the other way around.
This is interesting but how do we know that men need to be humanized and that this way of doing it does in fact humanize them? It’s built on the assumption that the view of men as only able to express themselves through violence or anger is in fact the default. It also assumes that it’s a socialized thing that is done to men. How do we know that the belief that it’s socialized isn’t socialized itself?
I would argue that it is based in the research supported by sociologists and psychologist. It is supported by the fact that men die much younger than women on average in general, are much more likely to kill themselves when they're young men, much higher rates of incarceration, much more likely to die through good violence, engage in acts of violence against others at a much higher rate compared to women for example.
But how do we know that the sociologists and psychologists aren’t simply acting out the fact that they’ve been socialized into believing that men need to be humanized? Of course the research would conclude that if the researchers believed that and were looking to find that result.
As an example, I recall a very old study which showed that chocolate was good for your health. The sponsor of that study? Hershey’s Chocolate Company. Gee, I wonder how the research came to that conclusion?
Whether or not a study is valid depends in large part on what people assume when going into the research. If you assume that violence is inherently bad, or that death is inherently bad, then if you find data which suggests people were dying at higher rates then of course you would come to that conclusion.
Maybe a belief that men need to be humanized into non-violent ways of acting is causing men to lash out and commit suicide at higher rates and committing crimes at higher rates leading to incarceration? So the data follows the assumptions of society rather than the other way around.