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DeShon Tolbert
Professor Jon Beadle
English 115
8 December 2016
Men are Under Attack Through The Media
Violence occurs a lot in society, but who do we point our fingers at for all the crimes
happening? Violent masculinity is huge in our society because men are supposedly the huge
criminals in society that everyone blames men for everything bad that goes on. The media is
always showing statistics of men and women that commit crimes and the difference is huge
between the two. The image from 300 the movie shows violent masculinity with the the men
covered in blood and have weapons in their hands.Also the men have their abs out like any other
male on a cover of a movie. It is important to look closely at the visual text of the movie cover
300 because in the image men are looking dangerous, men are committing violent crimes, and
men are looking like fighters. Society needs to take action because when you look at the visual
text it shows violent masculinity and it is causing men to look bad.
Society tends to look down at men and see them as dangerous, but people need to look at how it
is going all down by looking at violent masculinity to see what can be fixed. In the image used is
from a movie called 300 and the picture is showing that men are very bloody and gory. Also
the main character is holding weapons and showing off his abs while hes yelling. This shows
how men are seen in covers in movies nowadays. Movies would not put a man on a cover
without the physical attributes of a strong man. Also movies would not put a man on a cover if
he was holding flowers because it is showing weakness. In the article, Why Performing

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Conventional Masculinity is Bad for Men by Benjamin Spoer states, Ninety three percent of
people killed in fatal workplace accidents in 2013 were men. "Men overwhelmingly participate
in the jobs that are more dangerous. Soldiers, miners, workers on an oil platform tend to be
men..." He talked about how men are the ones doing all the dangerous jobs out there like being
a soldier or working in the mines. In the movie cover 300, there are men who are soldiers that
are getting ready to defend their homeland. It is not required for women to go and fight in the
war so you know all the men have to fill those spots if we were to go into a war. In the article,
Fashioning Children: Gender Restrictive Dress Codes As an Entry Point For The Trans *
School to Prison Pipeline by Deanna J. Glickman says, A cynic may point out that dress codes
as a solution for gang violence merely target clothing as window dressing, leaving the underlying
problems that cause students to join gangs in the first place untouched. She talks about how
students dress in school can influence what they do after school like affiliating with gangs and
violence. Glickman is trying to say that students that are influenced in bad activities after school
can be influenced to join gangs depending the area. Girls would not do something like this
because girls do not wear baggy clothes and chains. That is what girls do not do and that is why
men are getting blamed at for violence like this. In the article, Becoming Members of Society:
The Social Meanings of Gender by Aaron Devor states, The ideology which the schema grows
out of postulates that the cultural superiority of males is a natural outgrowth of the innate
predisposition of males toward aggression and dominance, which is assumed to flow inevitably
from evolutionary and biological sources(Devor 40). The article is stating that men do all the
dangerous activities because men are born like this with all the superiority in them. Tying back
to the image, the media puts men in all these bloody movie covers is because everyone knows

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that men are meant to fight and kill. Men are seen as the ones who cause trouble because that is
how society sees men as the bad guys.
Take a look at violent masculinity to see that it is important to take action because men
are committing violent crimes. In the article, Why Performing Conventional Masculinity is Bad
for Men, Spoer talked about how men are usually the ones smoking, using alcohol, or driving
recklessly. This is true because men are the ones always that act out and you would not see
women doing this in public because that is not how women act. In the article, Fashioning
Children: Gender Restrictive Dress Codes As an Entry Point For The Trans * School to Prison
Pipeline Glickman states, For many students, the days of school missed, lack of safety or
comfort in the school environment, and inability to meet increasingly high standardized test
expectations push them out of the school system entirely prior to graduation. She talks about
how students should follow the rules and go to class because them not going then that can
influence into making bad decisions like not passing their classes. All the things students do that
is not school related is usually bad and can make these stupid decisions like not going to class or
not doing their school work. In the image from 300, it has those men on the movie cover with
weapons so the people that have not seen the movie probably are going to think that there is
killing involved. That is why we have to look at the situation of violent masculinity because men
are committing violent crimes.
Men are seen as fighters and it is cautious to look at the situation of violent masculinity to
see the problem. In the image from 300 the cover has men with weapons so society will
assume that they are going to be fighting/killing and doing that would be considered crimes. This
is showing that supposedly men do all the fighting and the killing in the world while women are

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looking pretty all the time out in public. In the article, From Women, Men, and Society by
Renzetti and Curran states, boys play involves competition and conflict, good guys versus
bad guys(Renzetti and Curran 83). Renzetti and Curran are saying that boys always have that
competitive mindset because they all want to win, but most of the time with all that competition
can lead to fighting. You always have that sore loser that hates to lose and those fights are
always going down. That is why we have to look at the situation of violent masculinity because
men are seen as fighters.
It is true that men tend to be the ones that usually commit crimes, murders, and rapes in
our society. However, Women can commit those same crimes and the media puts them in a
position where the image of women looks bad for what they have done because they arewomen.
Women are not suppose to be doing ridiculous things like that because it is not lady like. The
media always makes the biggest scene when women commits a crime or murders someone and
tries to make it the biggest scene on the news. If it were to be men that commits those things then
the media would not go crazy because society makes it look like men do this type of activities all
the time. The media always showing the statistics of the men and women committing all these
violent crimes; it seems like men are doing more than half of the crimes. Also men in covers of
movies are showing off their abs and holding a type of weapon, but you wont see a women
doing that on a cover because it is not what women want to be seen as in society. It looks like
society is out to get men by using the media because they are making up a random number for
statistics for men committing all the violent crimes.
The image from the movie 300 shows all the attributes of violent masculinity with all
the blood and weapons being held. It is important to take action on this violent masculinity

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because men tend to do violent activities to get themselves in trouble, men get into many fights,
and society start to point fingers at men for the reasoning of seeing them as dangerous. Feeling
like this will go on for a long time because men do all these things all the time. There has to be a
way to figure out how to even out the blaming because men are the ones getting caught in the act
of doing violent crimes. If we get society to lay down on making men so violent then the media
will make men more mellowed out as a whole.

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Work Cited
Devor, Aaron. Becoming Members of Society: The Social Meanings of Gender.Composing
Gender, Edited by Rachel Groner and John F. OHara, 1st Edition, Bedford/St. Martins,
2014, PP. 35-43
Glickman, Deanna J. "Fashioning Children: Gender Restrictive Dress Codes As an Entry Point
For The Trans * School to Prison Pipeline."The American University Journal of Gender,
Social Policy & the Law, vol. 24, no. 2, 2016., pp. 263-284
libproxy.csun.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.csun.edu/docview/178830
0542?accountid=7285.
Renzetti, Claire and Curran, Daniel. From Women, Men, and Society. Composing Gender,
Edited by Rachel Groner and John F. OHara, 1st Edition, Bedford/St. Martins, 2014, PP.
76-84.
Spoer, Benjamin. "Why Performing Conventional Masculinity is Bad for Men." Voice Male,
vol. 20, no. 68, 2016., pp. 18-19
libproxy.csun.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.csun.edu/docview/178791
5851?accountid=7285.
300 DVD Release Date July 31, 2007. DVDs Release Dates, Gianni Nunnari, 9 Mar. 2007,
www.dvdsreleasedates.com/movies/33/300-(2006).html.

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