Kimmel tells the story of Kathy, a 26-year-old Cornell Grad:

I thought the only way I was going to fit in with the guys on campus was to sort of be one of them. You know, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em? Well I joined 'em. I drank myself stupid, had plenty of hookups, and kept score just like the guys. It was ridiculous. They not only didn't like me — they had complete contempt for me.

That description, of the bro-girl (bro-lerina? broette?) was sort of painful for me to read, because it reminded me of a time when I tried to be the bro. The scenario was a bit different — I had a serious boyfriend my sophomore year of college and desperately wanted his friends to like me — but the outcome was the same: utter contempt. My then-boyfriend only wanted to hang out with his boys, so if I wanted to see him, I had to hang out with them, too. I tried to smoke pot with them, to get in on their inside jokes and schemes, to be included in their homosocial bonding. And let me tell you, I failed miserably. I still cringe internally when I recall a climactic moment in one of their dorm rooms. It was maybe 2 in the morning and I had gotten in some fight with one of my boyfriend's friends. He told me, without even looking up from his computer monitor, "We wish you would just go away sometimes." My boyfriend was there. He didn't stand up for me, but he did comfort me when I started to sob.

"Certainly the goals of the feminist movement were not to enable women to be the best 'bros' in town," Kimmel writes, and what hits me now is that I was always playing by the rules of Guyland back then. I let my boyfriend dictate our social lives because I wanted to keep him. I hung around a group of knuckleheads who composed songs about "Wide Open Beavers," (I'm not even making this up) because I desperately wanted the male acceptance. This story has a happy ending though. The year after we graduated, one of my exes' friends came up to me at a party. His eyes met mine and he said, "I'm really sorry for the way we treated you back then. You were a nice person. You didn't deserve it." I forgave him, but I didn't forget, and now I have a great dude who meets me on neutral ground, miles away from south central Guyland.

Michael Kimmel Official Site
Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men [Amazon]

Guyland Debunks The American Douchebag In Academic Terms

Kimmel's theory goes something like this. Back in the day, middle class white men were entitled, but they generally got the jobs, the homes, and the social status they felt they deserved. But ever since the goals of the civil and women's rights movements have come to (some) fruition, middle class white men have found themselves competing with minorities and women for the things they felt they deserved as their birthright. These days, white male entitlement is thwarted, and it doesn't make white males any less hubristic; it just makes them angry.

Kimmel's point is not that all young white men are angry. His point is more that a social structure has formed around these men that enables and encourages bad behavior. This is where the culture of silence and the culture of protection comes in. To illustrate the twin demons of silence and protection, Kimmel brings up the Glen Ridge Rape. In the infamous case, 13 popular athletes gathered in one boy's basement for a pre-arranged gang rape of a 17-year-old "slightly retarded" teenage girl. Six of the boys were so disturbed by what was about to commence that they left. But seven stayed, and those boys forced the girl to give them oral sex and forced various large and painful objects into the girl's vagina.

While the crime itself is beyond appalling, what's more disturbing is that of those six guys who left, not a single one called the police or told his parents about what had happened. (The story is so epic that an excellent nonfiction book, Our Guys, was written about the Glen Ridge thirteen.) Of course, this is an extreme case, but who among us doesn't know someone who sat idly by when someone else was being bullied? And the parents — just as those in Joan Didion's 1993 New Yorker story on the Spur Posse of Lakewood, California — are implicated in the Glen Ridge guys' behavior too. Kimmel writes, "In the eyes of their friends, their parents, and their community, these guys were not pathological deviants. They were high-status athletes, well-respected in their schools and in their communities. They were not crazed psychotics, they were regular guys. Our guys."

So where do women fit into Guyland? Peripherally, at best, Kimmel says, and when we're considered, we're in a double-bind. "[Young women] want to be smart and pretty, feminine and successful. Yet this leaves many of them feeling like they have to live up to two impossible standards…In a now famous study of the life of women on its campus, researchers at Duke heard a phrase that seemed to capture the core of this new femininity on campus: 'effortless perfection.' You can do it all, but you mustn't try too hard," or else you'll scare of those guys who are deeply afraid of an assertive woman, Kimmel says. "The appearance of effortless is the way young women reconcile such conflicting demands. 'I just happened to be beautiful and brilliant. I can't help it. Don't hold it against me.'" (This makes me think of Sarah Palin, who has continuously downplayed her success in the few days since she's been running for Vice President. Just today, Palin demurred, "I never really set out to be in public affairs, much less to run for this office." Because trying hard is icky! I digress.)

There's a few ways that women, and all people, can prevent boys and men from being "guys." For parents, don't tell your kids that the sun shines out of their butts all the time. Give your children realistic ideas of what life holds for them and encourage hard work. For women, simply don't tolerate bad behavior. As Kimmel writes, "Feminism expects a man to be ethical, emotionally present, and accountable to his values in his actions with women — as well as with other men. Feminism loves men enough to expect them to act more honorably and actually believes them capable of doing so." Treating men like overgrown children incapable of making their own soup serves no one (and serves no one soup). I know, I know, much easier said than done. But wouldn't you rather be single than wasting your days with a lifetime resident of Guyland like Dante Moore, who makes you play by his rules?

Michael Kimmel Official Website [Concert Ideas]
Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men [Amazon]

Related: Why I Am Leaving Guyland [Newsweek]
Our Guys [Google Books]
Trouble In Lakewood [New Yorker, abstract only]

Earlier: Guyland Author: Working Women Leave A Lot of Men "Confused About Their Place" In Life
Campbell's Decides That 30-Year-Old Men Are Capable Of Making Their Own Soup
Dante Moore's Rules For Female "Re-Education" Include Cooking And Staying Skinny

Good thing Campbell's has decided to no longer run the pretty cute ads, which featured "National Football League greats and their mothers calling them inside for dinner and serving them soup." Apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, the ad wizards working for Campbell have decreed that "the company's target consumers — men in their 30s — are finally achieving soup independence." The brand manager for Campbell's Chunky soup also tells the Journal, "LaDainian Tomlinson doesn't need his mom to tell him which products have protein and which products don't…He's learned that for himself, and we've learned our consumers want to do that for themselves as well." Now that men are capable of making their own soup, masculinity crisis: solved.

Campbell's Soup Sacks NFL Mothers [WSJ]

Earlier: Guyland Author: Working Women Leave "A Lot Of Men Confused" About Their Place In Life