Preliminary Thesis and Annotated Bibliography for Research Paper #2

Dimitrios Tsoukalas
English 101.0800
Date: December 2 2010
Preliminary Thesis and Annotated Bibliography for Paper #2

Preliminary Thesis: Men need homosocial bonds with other men to be successful in their heterosexual relationships.

Grazian, David. "The Girl Hunt: Urban Nightlife and the Performance of Masculinity as Collective Activity". Men's Lives 8th Ed. New York: Allyn and Baron 2010.
In this article, Grazian describes about the nightlife ritual of girl hunting. He describes the importance of Girl Hunting to the masculinity of adolescent men as well as the importance to a group of men.
Grazian is a studied man with a PH.D in sociology. The source relates the Girl Hunt to how it strengthens homosocial bonds between men and can be used to objectify woman, making it easier for a man to approach them. Unlike the other two sources, this source focuses on the girl hunt. All of Grazian's claims are backed up with information from other sources and he is not biased in what he says.
Even though Grazian focuses on the ritual of girl hunting, he relates it to the strengthening of homosocial bonds. The entire ritual of girl hunting is to get girls, but Grazian claims that through this procedure, men strengthen their own bonds and masculinity of themselves. This article has proved to be that men need other men to get a girl sometimes, with the example of wingmen. Men strengthen their homosocial bonds in order for one of them to get a heterosexual bond.

Flood, Micheal. "Men, Sex and Mateship: How homosociality shapes men's heterosexual relations". Feminisms: An international Women's and Gender Studies Conference. University of Queensland. 12-16 July.
In this article, Dr Micheal Flood explains the homosocial relationships between man and relates them to mens heterosexual relationships. He also mentions that male to male relationships prioritize over male to female relationships.
The source does have a decent amount of research done, if only on one group of males. I believe it can still be applied for the majority of men. Also, it explains basically everything I am expecting from a source, answering my thesis directly. Though, because the research is done on one group, it could biased.
The source talks about men's relationships to each other, and because of these relationships, they are able to think of girls as objects, because they think of themselves as real men. It's made me think that men are more shallow then I initially thought. In the source, an example is given that these men pick their friends over a female, and are thought of as weak if they pick a heterosexual bond over their homosocial.

The 40 Year old Virgin Dir. Judd Apatow Pref. Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd. Universal Pictures 2005.
This is a source which explains how a man who has given up on the sexual part of life, is influenced by his guy friends to try to get sexual again. With example it shows how homosocial bonds between men boost and create heterosexual bonds.
While this source might be a movie and the information not completely reliable, I think this source can be used as a good example though.
This movie's entire focus is making the 40 year old virgin, not a virgin. The way they do it though, is through homosocial bonding, the other men try to teach him and edge him to it. Which does work, cause he does end up in a sexual relationship with the woman he was after. But he wouldn't have done it without the support the men gave him.