Loreto Malinowski

WGSS
March 22, 2019
1. Title of Research Project: The Male Role in Feminism: An Evolution

2. Aims (100-200 words): For my paper, I’d like to focus on the male involvement throughout

the evolution of feminism, as we know feminism is the equality between genders, and I

believe that men are often seen as unsupportive or nonexistent in this timeline. What I would

like to incorporate is the different male movements that occurred during the 70’s and 80’s,

bringing in their different backgrounds and goals, comparing them. Through this, I’d like to

develop into modern day male movements, such as the meninism movement, that was

brought in satirically during the 2010s. Men have always been expected to be masculine,

macho, and for many, that began to stop when the feminism movements came to light and

they felt free to speak their mind. I want to focus on how closely related the evolution of the

male gender and feminism is to one another.

3. Background and significance (300-600 words): Most of my knowledge comes from the

readings that occurred throughout my Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies class, as well

as my history class that focused on the Scottsboro case in the early 1900s. Through both

classes I was able to delve through the female mind, learning their experiences and their

hardships when living in time of agony and hardship. In a brief overview of the Scottsboro

case, it started with different groups of boys leaving home to find work, in order to send

money to their families – these boys ranged from 13 years old to 20. Half of these boys were

just that – boys – but to the society they grew up in, they were expected to go work, that they

were men. These ideas are drilled in their heads from a young age, especially for people of

color, like these young, black boys. And there was another case in the book The Bridge

Called My Back, where a young Latin woman spoke of her experience with her mother, not

being able to hug her or get close to her, because it was deemed inappropriate, but to the boy,
Loreto Malinowski
WGSS
March 22, 2019
he was coddled and loved upon. And for immigrant families, these boys would start working

at a young age, often starting at 12 or 13 years old. These boys of color grew up too fast, they

lived through so much. These boys were expected to grow up fast, to toughen up, because

their parents and the situations they lived in told them to. I want men to be able to realize that

being “a man” does not mean you cannot enjoy simpler things. That being “a man” does not

mean you cannot be empathetic. I want to find out when they started to realize that being

anything other than macho or masculine was acceptable. I want to be able to tell if all races

and ethnicities have opened up to the possibility of men being more open.

4. Research Plan (200-500 words): When visualizing the final product, I see myself starting

with the beginning of feminism, who was evolved, when, where, et cetra. Followed by this

information I will begin to delve into the men who helped throughout the different waves,

leading into the two main movements – men’s liberation movement and the men’s right

movement. Both of these started back to back, one in the 70’s and the other in the 80’s,

respectively, but they had more or less a different audience in mind, and I want to focus in on

that. A lot of my research will be conducted by searching for publications that speak of men

in feminism or meninism or the male movements and their effects throughout time. I want to

also try and find interviews or writings by some of the men who began these

events/participated in them. Because of this, the primary of my research will be qualitative,

as there is hardly any quantitative data involved, besides the number of men who participated

and dates. One thing that would be interesting to conduct is to give a brief overview of the

topic of meninism feminism to a random group of women and men and as if they seem

similar to one another, or not. And a follow up question would be do women believe that

men seek equality as much as women? As I currently live on a college campus, and our
Loreto Malinowski
WGSS
March 22, 2019
generations have grown to be more ‘inclusive’ and ‘open-minded’, the students would be my

primary survey, with faculty and staff from around campus being taken into consideration for

their answers as well. All of this information would be qualitative, but I would also write up

as data their ages, identified sex, majors/minors, (for faculty and staff, their jobs/specialties),

race/ethnicity, and cultural background (something I also think would be good to include as

information is what state/country did they grow up in, as different geographical cultures play

part into our developmental growth). I currently do not have approval by the Institutional

Review Board, but I will draft an outline along with questions, giving them an indication of

the project so to help them better understand my end goal, before asking for their permission.

5. Literature Cited: Provide a bibliography of all works cited.

Fox, John. "How Men's Movement Participants View Each Other." SAGE Journals. Accessed

March 20, 2019. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.3149/jms.1202.103

Malti-Douglas, Fedwa. Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender. Vol. 3. Detroit, MI: Macmillan

Reference, 2007. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/Mens-Movements

Messner, Michael A. "The Limits of "The Male Sex Role": An Analysis of the Men's Liberation

and Men's Rights Movements' Discourse." https://www.jstor.org/stable/190285

Urschel, Joanne K. "Men's Studies and Women's Studies: Commonality, Dependence, and

Independence." SAGE Journals. Accessed March 20, 2019.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/106082650000800303

6. Related Coursework: Please list courses completed and/or in progress that have prepared

you for this research project.

a. HIS 199 – Scottsboro – Dr. Yellin

b. WGSS 200 – Dr. McWhorter