I think that if men could menstruate it would be a openly discussed topic. Take a step into barracks and you’ll find that men aren’t very concerned with hiding their bodily movements, farts, burps, dip spit or really any other gross thing they do. The bathrooms in particular are a NSFW story to themselves. Men would openly make fun of each other’s periods and somehow it would come to be an insult just like being a dick is. We’d definitely see an increase in spending into how menstruation works and I think that charting your period would be a really normal thing.

Research into menstrual suppression would be driven by the professional sports leagues. The NFL only has 16 regular season games and they do everything they can to make sure that all of their players are in the best possible condition to perform on those days. Pitchers in baseball take the mound once every five games and are notorious for missing starts due to minor illnesses or even bruised fingers. To maximize performance, I think that professional sports leagues would heavily invest into menstrual suppression so that their athletes can feel in their prime physically and mentally. Even with that I’d be willing to bet that an athletes menstrual cycle would be taken into consideration during contract negotiations almost as a prior injury is today.

Teenage years would be especially difficult for young men if they had a large increase of testosterone every month. Already aggressive teenagers could be very difficult to deal with and I think that fights in middle and high schools would increase if young men didn’t learn to understand when they’re going to be PMSing. Having an app that would track your menstrual cycle would be very common and people would probably talk a lot more about their cycles if both men and women had a menstrual cycle. Since both men and women would be equal in that respect it would be a lot easier to talk about publicly.

Male and female circumcision is almost always a procedure that a child or newborn baby undergoes, without their consent. In both males and females, their parents are the ones deciding that they need to be circumcised. Whether it is for cultural, religious, or for medical purposes 200 million women worldwide have been circumcised and 1/3 of all men are circumcised. In all cases it is the parents making the decision for their child to be circumcised as a means to better their life. However, in western nations while male circumcision is seen as a beneficial medical practice female circumcision is seen as genital mutilation.

Male circumcision involves removing the foreskin of the penis in order to reduce the chances of developing an infection and as a means to reduce the transmission of STI’s. Female circumcisions vary in both amount of flesh removed and effects of the procedure. Type 1a circumcision is the removal of the clitoral hood to leave the clitoris more exposed. Types 1b, 2, and 3 vary in level of flesh removed but ultimately reduce a woman’s ability to experience pleasure from sex. Type 3 female circumcisions involve removal of the inner and outer labia, and then sewing together the affected area. Male circumcision can be looked at as comparable to a type 1a female circumcision where types 1b-3 would equate to removing all nerves from the penis to completely destroying the penis. Although female circumcision can easily be viewed as mutilation it is seen as a beneficial procedure in parts of Africa and southern Asia.

The practice of circumcision gives insight into how a culture values their women. In African and south Asian cultures where female circumcision is practiced women are seen as a means to an end. Sex for women is supposed to only be a means of producing children and they are not meant to derive pleasure from it, whereas the men are not mutilated and can experience pleasure from sex. Some in those cultures even view female circumcisions as a means of protecting their daughters so that they do not become promiscuous. In order to end female circumcision, it is going to take mass education of African and Asian cultures that continue the practice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation#WHO_Types_I.E2.80.93II

Breast Cancer in men vs. women

Although extremely rare, breast cancer does develop in some men. Over 99% of breast cancer patients are female and only 1/1000 men will develop breast cancer in their lives. Breast cancer is the 2nd leading cause of death in women. Although it may seem strange that a male would develop a disease that on the surface would seem like only women could contract, a man’s breast cells and tissue can still develop cancer. In women, the disease usually comes from genetic mutations. These mutations can either be passed down from generation to generation, or occur as a random mutation in an individual. A family history of breast cancer greatly increases an individual’s risk. For men, the risk is especially high when they have a family history of breast cancer associated with the BRCA2 gene.

The symptoms and development of breast cancer in males and females is very similar. Most patients experience a lump underneath of their breast tissue. However, the survival rate for women is much higher than the survival rate for men. This is mostly attributed to the way men and women are screened for breast cancer. Women over the age of 45 are recommended to undergo a mammogram every year to check for malignant tissue and tumors. Men however, do not undergo screening for breast cancer. Often times by the time that a male patient learns that they have breast cancer it is too late.

Normally breast cancer originates in the ducts that carry milk to the nipple. It can also occur in the glands that produce breast milk. For this reason, it is both extremely rare, and odd for men to develop breast cancer. Breast cancer can also develop in tissue of the breast not associated with milk production and are considered to be sarcomas or lymphomas and are not usually considered to be true breast cancer. Breast cancer can spread from the breasts to other parts of the body through the lymphatic system. This contributes to its high mortality rate when detection is late. For most men and women who have late detection of breast cancer it is extremely difficult to be cured.

http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/male-breast-cancer
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/breast-cancer/about/how-does-breast-cancer-form.html

One of the points that hit me in Guyland was that calling something gay or calling someone a faggot is the go to insult for any locker room or middle school and high school boys. The speaker was absolutely right that it had nothing to do with being gay or anything to do with homosexuals, it was just the insult that young adult men favored to call each other. I think that Steve Carrel acting as Michael Scott does a really good job of explaining how young adults use the word faggots after he accidently called a closeted homosexual co-worker a “faggot.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOLbuFVG0fs

This strikes close to home for me because Junior year of high school one of my close friends came out of the closet. Up until that point my friends and I treated him like anyone else and would mess with him, call him gay or faggot just jokingly like adolescent males do to anyone other males their close with. But then when he came out, everyone in my friend group had to take a step back and say that it was pretty messed up to call him all of those insults now that we knew that he was a homosexual. However, if he had never come out we would have never considered anything we said to him to be wrong or to be offensive, or as Michael Scott would say, “in bad taste.”

Obviously being gay is much more accepted now than it was when my parents grew up, and even when I was born in the 90’s. However, the way that young men talk to each other hasn’t really changed. The speaker in Guyland talked about how when he was a kid calling something gay was still insulting. But it’s not the 90’s anymore and the stigma towards homosexuals is significantly less than it was and is almost disappearing entirely in my generation. However, we still talk the same way that young men have talked for years and there needs to be a change. It’s no longer acceptable (not that it was in the first place) to use a person’s sexual identity as an insult, or as a way to describe something that you think is dumb or unfair.

So, because of this change, my group of friends had to change the way we talked, but most adolescents don’t have an experience like this, and for us it was still too late to make a difference for our friend. It makes a lot of sense in retrospect that he seemed to be sad more often than most of my friends. It will be interesting to see in the future with generations that are more accepting of different sexual preferences if the language adolescents will change or remain the same.

Pornland:
-Porn is an industry
-Porn promotes sexual violence
-Porn is becoming more violent
-Porn affects the way that men view women

Guyland:
-Adults are developing slower
-Young adults are switching jobs horizontally instead of working at a career vertically
-Gender inequality is perpetuated a a male dominated society

The Navajo are a tribe of American Indians that traditionally resided in pueblo dwellings in Southwest of the United States. These dwellings were traditionally governed by female patriarchs and consisted of several closely related matriarchal families. the Navajo depended on horticulture as their means of providing for themselves. While both men and women were involved in farming, women engaged in foraging and domestic tasks as well, only spending part of their time working in the fields while men traditionally spent all of their time working in the fields. Men were also responsible for creating raiding parties that would engage in raids and wars of local Navajo and American settlers.

The head of a Navajo dwelling is always a matriarch. Family ties are decided by the mother’s lineage. Men work for their mother’s family until they are married, in which case they go to live with their wife’s family and work for them. However, men in Navajo culture still have rights. They are allowed to own property, typically sheep, and their property will transfer from their family with them to their wife’s family in marriage. Both men and women can ask for a divorce and rates of spousal abuse are extremely rare in Navajo culture. Especially early in a marriage divorce was fairly common. Men would only bring over a token number of their livestock at first in a marriage and then slowly bring more over as the relationship became more stable. Men are allowed to take multiple wives, however will typically marry sisters as they must live with their wife’s family.

Unfortunately, gender roles have changed since the Mexican-American War. After slaughtering all but 8,000 of the Navajo in the Indian Wars U.S. officials refused to negotiate with matriarchs and instead insisted on communicating with male leaders. For this reason, men became responsible for interacting with the United States government and have since held more of a leadership role. In the great depression, many Navajo men and women had to go into wage labor in order to sustain their families. Gender differences occurred in the Navajo community because men were paid more for their labor than women were. The types of jobs that men and women took were also gender linked. Men worked in construction, building maintenance, railroad and highway repair, mining, and forestry while women were employed as service sector employees, school aides and as factory operatives. For the first time in Navajo history men and women’s work was wholly separated. Although men and women held different responsibilities before relying on wage labor they still held common ground while working the fields.

Despite these western based gender differences male dominance has not developed. Women’s autonomy is respected and their rights have in no way been undermined. Although women’s economic contributions have been weekend underlying social and religious ideologies have maintained balance between the genders.