"A look at the American male as a crude, aggressive jerk"

My mom just sent me an article from the New York Times Book Review by Wesley Yang, detailing a new book that was just released called “Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men,” by Michael Kimmel. It begins by talking about how heterosexual women can possibly hope to have “healthy, empowering sex” if their generation is accompanied by counterparts in “emotionally misshapen men.” There is luckily now a book that will illuminate (for these women, one can only assume, since if men are already living in Guyland, they wouldn't need to buy the guidebook) the societal expectations placed on men that forcibly emotionally stunt them. This book mainly addresses the concerns of heterosexual, “young middle-class white men,” and I was impressed by the articles attention to how racially divisive this "separate space" can be, but the review's author quickly drops his concern for the effects of Guyland on women and race relations and doesn't bring it up again. My question is, if "Guyland" is what the majority of young heterosexual males inhabit, where do college-age, heterosexual women fit in?

Also, Yang's perspective on the validity of Kimmel's argument suggests that "the pressure to behave like a loutish Guylander is stronger now than ever before [which] youth-extending urban hordes will recognize as absurd on its face." I don't know if I identify as a member of these so-called "urban hordes," but I do believe there is incredible pressure for guys to abide by "Guy Code," maintain their masculinity through homophobic professions, and are brought up in a culture of instant gratification. Maybe I'm missing something here, but the title of my post is the byline of the article, and it does not deliver on its promise to explain away the aggression and domination of a generation. Instead it fails to mention the societal and systemic support systems that multiple generations of young boys have had at their disposal as they "mature" into men and live their lives as a member of a dominant culture. I'm not so interested in why this generation's masculinity, as Kimmel asserts, "is coerced and policed relentlessly by other guys," but instead why this generation is the first to be called out on this issue, and why Kimmel leaves out his own generation's definition of masculinity and benefits from the preferential treatment that is gendered and bestowed upon men, and has been for hundreds of years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/books/review/Yang-t.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=guyland&st=cse&oref=slogin