Guy Fi: The Fictions that Rule
Men’s Lives
Christopher Kilmartin, Ph.D.
ckilmart@umw.edu
Antifreeze.
The Mars and Venus Fiction
All
men are alike.
All women are alike.
All men are different from all
women.
The Gender Belongs
Everywhere Fiction
Drinks
 Mannerisms
 Goals in life
 Preferred activities
 Colors
 Ways of talking

Violence Fictions
Men
are naturally violent.
It’s natural for men to fight.
Men can’t help themselves
when they get angry.
Women like “bad boys.”
Violence solves problems.
Emotional Fictions
Tear ducts on men are like nipples on
men.
 Men have to deal with their feelings in
places outside of themselves.
 Manly is as manly does.

Where do these fictions come
from?
The marketplace: What is being sold as a:
 Product?
 Lifestyle?
 Identity?
 Life script?
 How is the product made desirable,
e.g., with visual strategies?
Marketers want everything to
be for sale
 Identity
 Sexuality
 Self-esteem
 Relationship
quality
 Happiness
 Competence
 Self-confidence
Where do these fictions come
from?
 Historical
Hangover.
Masculinity, Athletics, and
Drinking
 Confirmatory
and Compensatory
drinking.
 “Putting up numbers.”
 Goal setting.
 Competition.
 Social Pressure.
How does this relate to your
work?
Men abuse alcohol twice as often as
women and abuse other drugs four
times as often. Male student athletes
abuse substances at a higher rate than
those in the general population.
 Men are more likely than women
underestimate risks to their health.
 Men engage in much more violence and
other risk behaviors than women.
 Gender is a better predictor of negative
health outcomes than sex.

What is gender?
The social pressure to behave and
experience the self in ways that the
culture defines as appropriate for your
body.
 It is very difficult to resist a pressure that
you cannot name.
 We are not doing a good job of naming
it for men.

Gender is a significant factor,
yet:
 It
is rarely addressed in
discussions of health behavior.
 Resetting
“default options”
requires:
 Knowledge.
 Motivation.
 Skill.
We need to teach men to resist
gender pressure when:
It conflicts with an important life goal.
 It hurts another person.

When do we invest time and energy in
learning a skill?
When we value the outcome.
Preparing for the future

NCAA goal is to focus on the whole person,
not just the athlete.
 Which men will be able to use their fathers’
and grandfathers’ formulas to deal with work
and family pressures? Few, other than those
who become professional athletes.
 Sending college students out into the world
without gender awareness is like sending
them out without computer skills.
 Men who cling to archaic versions of
masculinity run the risk of being left behind.
Remember the Antifreeze: New
Questions





How can we educate athletes generally about
cultural pressure and specifically about
gender pressure?
How can we incorporate masculine gender
awareness into our current efforts?
How can we bring this information to athletes
with compassion and empathy?
How can we educate coaches and support
staff about the importance of gender?
How can we redefine positive aspects of the
masculine role: courage, independence,
loyalty?