For the past 30 years, I’ve asked students in my classes on gender, sexuality, and masculinities about their personal role models. Who are the people who best exemplify those traits we identify as more than merely admirable, people who are not only the best at what they do but also embody those traits we want to emulate?
Over those three decades, I’ve noticed several trends. There have always been the predictable categories: politicians, sports heroes, and entertainers heralded for their personal greatness. So the list has ranged from Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jordan, and Harrison Ford in the 1980s to LeBron James, Johnny Depp, and Barack Obama in the 2010s.
But as we learn more and more about the private lives of public figures, the number of male students who name their fathers as their role models has steadily increased, from about 10 percent three decades ago to about 30 percent today, and the number of men who say, “I don’t have any” has gone up, from almost zero to about 10 percent.
Male students enroll less, graduate less and more slowly, and misbehave more. With insights from “masculinity studies,” colleges are trying to teach them constructive ways to be a man. Critics on the right call the effort male-bashing. Critics on the left say it coddles an already privileged population.
Well, to put it mildly, 2017 hasn’t exactly been a banner year for male role models. There are fewer Hollywood stars, Senate stalwarts, or sitting U.S. presidents who embody the collection of traits we would want to emulate. And there are more men in the lineup of “men behaving badly.” In an era when 16 women have accused our own president of sexual assault, when influential newscasters like Charlie Rose and Bill O’Reilly are fired for such allegations, when Hollywood bigwigs like Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., and Harvey Weinstein leave a trail of alleged abuse or rape … well, let’s put it this way: In the era of Roy Moore, not having been a pedophile sets a rather low bar for heroism.
Maybe instead of developing a catalog of new male role models, it might be time to retire the concept altogether. Do young men need role models anyway?
For one thing, there is not much substantive evidence that male role models are decisive in healthy boys’ development. They might be nice to have, but the male role model — the elementary-school teacher, the father, the stern but supportive coach — by himself, as a single variable, doesn’t really have much of an independent effect on boys’ development. And that’s why single moms, lesbian moms, female teachers, and female coaches can provide exactly what boys might need to develop a healthy identity.
Besides, the role models my students have always celebrated are “out there,” abstract, distant, and only partial glimpses of real people. It’s almost inevitable that the more you find out about these heroes, the less you like them.
Here’s a thought. My favorite book in sixth grade was John F. Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage, in which the then-senator profiled eight political figures — including John Quincy Adams, Sam Houston, and Robert Taft — who had put principle over political expediency and had done the “right thing” for the country despite knowing that it would cost them personally. Indeed, virtually all were never re-elected.
Kennedy’s criteria for courage set a high bar for role models. (It’s perhaps ironic that even JFK, one of my role models, might not qualify these days, and not only because of his sexual dalliances. It turns out that his speechwriter Ted Sorenson wrote most of the book, and that it won the Pulitzer, for which it had not even been a finalist, apparently only after Kennedy’s father intervened on his behalf.)
But let’s use that as a rough criterion: Do the right thing — even if nobody notices, even if there are no cameras rolling. Walk your talk, live by the principles you espouse.
Maybe it’s time for the unsung heroes of everyday life to be our role models — the ones who do what’s right simply because it’s the right thing to do. And the good news is that they are all around us.
Failed role models’ complicit silence or even cheering for deplorable behavior is what predators need to continue to assault women.
With so many men behaving badly, there are other men on the sidelines who have enabled them, promoted them, spurred them on. What if Bob Weinstein had grabbed his brother by the shoulders and shouted, “Harvey! Stop! I’ll kick you out of the company if you don’t stop!” What if Billy Bush (and the other guys on that Access Hollywood bus had looked disdainfully at the reality-TV star Donald Trump and said, “That is disgusting, not to mention illegal,” when he boasted about grabbing women by their genitals. What if Roger Ailes had tried to stop Bill O’Reilly instead of paying off his accusers. (OK, that last one isn’t such a good example, because it would have taken Rupert Murdoch to stop Ailes.) The enablers are the failed role models; their complicit silence or even cheering for deplorable behavior is what predators need to continue to assault women.
So here are some campus role models we could all emulate:
- The intervening bystander: the frat brother or teammate or just that random guy at a party who confronts another guy who is about to do something that is at best sketchy and at worst a felony assault. He’s not about rescuing a damsel in distress; he’s just doing the right thing.
- The young woman or man who hears a story about something that happened at that party the other night and stands by the victim, accompanies her to the hospital, the police, or the Title IX coordinator.
- The coach who suspends a player — even his star quarterback — when allegations of sexual assault surface.
- The professor who takes all of his or her students seriously as intellectual equals and makes the classroom safe enough for everyone, so that each student can take the intellectual risks that real learning requires.
- The college president who has the chutzpah to kick a fraternity off campus for hazing and not allow it to simply regroup in an off-campus residence.
- The team of students and professors who dig through dusty old archives to document the shameful role their hallowed university might have played in the slave trade.
- The students who campaign for gender-neutral bathrooms around the campus because they don’t want others to feel uncomfortable
- The alumni who threaten to collectively withhold their money until the administration addresses racial, sexual, and gender inequalities.
Here’s to you, unsung heroes and heroines, the ones who support the vulnerable and challenge the powerful, regardless of the personal cost.
And to answer the question about whether young men need role models in the first place? Maybe not. Maybe they just need to be role models.
Michael Kimmel is a distinguished professor of sociology and gender studies at Stony Brook University. He is the author, most recently, of Angry White Men (Nation Books, 2013), and the forthcoming Healing From Hate (University of California Press, 2018).
