This paper initiates analytic inquiry into the metaphysics of masculinity. I argue that individual masculinities (such as ‘clone masculinity’ and ‘incel masculinity’) are distinct homeostatic property cluster kinds related to gender structures via processes of adherence, failed-adherence, selective adherence, and/or reinterpretation with respect to male-coded social norms.

This article considers what the implications of decertification would be for single-sex services such as domestic and sexual violence support. Some reform options attached to decertification could (re)allocate authority away from the state to organisations or individuals to determine gender criteria. What would the consequences of such re-allocation be in determining eligibility to receive or access services or excluding people on the basis of a characteristic protected under equality law? Engaging with this in the context of domestic and sexual violence (...) support service provision raises a number of questions. Firstly, does the existence of gender-based violence and/or of the effects it produces require a stable category in order to address them? What benefits may emerge from providing single-sex spaces that could not be replicated in other settings? And finally, what criteria of exclusion and inclusion are currently used to determine access to spaces beyond legal gender status? (shrink)

The complicated colonial history of the Philippines impacts notions of gender in the Islands. Specifically, institutions with strong foreign roots, such as universities, maintain and challenge gender relations. The Philippines sees multiple gender issues in universities despite government-mandated gender mainstreaming policies for education (CMO-1), yet the influence of colonial values remains overlooked. This article contributes to philosophising Philippine education by providing the history of the country’s universities and their role in shaping gender relations. A threefold model of gender structures, relations (...) of power, production and cathexis (emotional attachment), frames historical literature during the Philippines’ Spanish and American colonial periods and contextualises the country’s gender order. The interplay of religion and higher education during the Philippines’ Spanish colonial period reveals why sexuality remains policed by education institutions. The gendering of courses during the American Colonial period details the feminisation of certain disciplines and occupations. Harmful manhood practices adopted during this period continue to affect men in university systems through Philippine fraternities. Lastly, private education perpetuates and maintains power among the elite. The evolution of the Philippine university provides points for analysis for gender issues. These become building blocks to the discourse surrounding the Filipino philosophy of education, by understanding facets of Filipino identity construction, and proposing avenues to explore when decolonising the university. (shrink)

Gender ideologies are embedded in intersecting race, class, and gender systems. Yet Black masculinity is often defined one-dimensionally, without attention to class variation in gender enactment. Particularly, with regard to heterosexual partnering, representations of Black masculinity most often involve men enacting compensatory displays to account for having too little masculine capital to meet the dominant culture’s protector–provider prerequisites for accomplishing marital masculinity. Drawing from interviews with 42 never-married Black professional men, I explore their ideas about how masculinity ought to be (...) done within the marital relationship—a critical site for the reproduction of gender inequality. Findings reveal that these men construct “Black professional hybrid masculinity” around a simultaneously racialized and classed compensatory strategy of masculine protection and equitable spousal sharing, resisting simple classification as either hegemonic or counterhegemonic. Rather, it is a distinctly hybrid masculine strategy. These men cherry-pick hegemonic gender norms to reconstruct gender identities that reaffirm their sense of manhood and idealize their future wives as symbols of hybrid femininity—work-devoted women who are also femininely in need of masculine protection. This research offers an intersectional extension of hybrid masculinity and illustrates the need for heterogeneous and context-varied theories of how Black men do gender. (shrink)

This chapter presents a positive philosophy of male sexuality: one that is not rooted in so-called toxic masculinity and which is compatible with gender equality. I argue that, for such a sexuality to be possible, respect is the moral baseline. However, the status quo for male sexuality is shaped by white supremacy and heteronormativity. To resist these values, men must do more than merely cross some minimal moral threshold for permissible sex. Rather, they ought to develop a caring character so (...) that they would want to seek out their own and their partner’s (robust) sexual fulfillment. Men ought actively to develop ways to increase pleasure for themselves and their partners. (shrink)

Some feminist discourses blame some men for gender inequality, gender domination, and gender-based violence. Some women use such discourse as a perfect scenario to criticize some men’s behavior. Indeed, they usually do so with Oppressed Traditional Masculinities but not with Dominant Traditional Masculinities, who are the men who were violent with those women and with whom some of those women chose to have relationships. However, there have always been men who have been on the side of women and have never (...) committed violence against them. Therefore, New Alternative Masculinities reject being indicated as guilty of the violence committed against women by DTM. Through a communicative approach, applying six semi-structured interviews with a communicative orientation and a communicative data analysis of all information, this article explores both women’s communicative acts that blame OTM for what DTM have done to women and NAM’s reactions to these accusations to stop such blaming to make it possible to overcome hegemonic discourses. (shrink)

New forms of neoliberal femininity create demanding horizons of expectation for young women. For talented athletes, these pressures are intensified by the establishment of dual-career discourses that construct the combination of high-performance sport and education as a normative, ‘ideal’ pathway. The pressed time perspective inherent in dual-careers requires athletes to employ a variety of time-related skills, especially for young women who aim to live up to ‘superwoman’ ideals that valorize ‘success’ in all walks of life. Drawing on existential phenomenology, and (...) in-depth interviews with 10 talented Finnish sportswomen (aged 19-22), we explored their experiences of lived time when pursuing dual-careers in upper secondary sport schools. Exploring participants’ bodily experiences of inhabiting the achievement life-world, we analyze how these sportswomen either learned ways of living up to this ambitious script or came to understand the detrimental effects of the script, necessitating other ways of being. For those who experience a disjuncture between the ‘perfect’ and their embodied experience, self-care practices are needed to restore life-world harmony, and orient to alternative futures. (shrink)

I examine experiences of married couples to better understand whether economic shifts that push couples into gender-atypical work/family arrangements influence gender inequality. I draw on in-depth interviews conducted in 2008 with stay-at-home husbands and their wives in 21 married-couple families with children. I find that the decision to have a father stay home is heavily influenced by economic conditions, suggesting that men’s increased job instability and shifts in the relative employment conditions of husbands and wives push some men into at-home (...) fatherhood. However, this shift in family arrangements can promote change toward greater gender equality even in couples that initially hold entrenched, gendered beliefs. The data indicate that at-home fathers come to value their increased involvement in children’s care in ways that reduce gender differences in parenting and that have the potential to translate into institutional change, particularly when they reenter the labor force. Furthermore, at-home father arrangements generally appear to provide increased support for women’s employment and promote changes in women’s work behavior that may reduce inequities that stem from traditionally gendered divisions in work/family responsibilities. (shrink)

Research on gender inequality within different-sex marriages shows that women do more unpaid labor than men, and that the perception of inequality influences perceptions of marital quality. Yet research on same-sex couples suggests the importance of considering how gender is relational. Past studies show that same-sex partners share unpaid labor more equally and perceive greater equity than do different-sex partners, and that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are less gender conforming than heterosexuals. However, studies have not considered how gender conformity (...) might shape inequalities and marital quality within same- and different-sex unions. In this study, we analyze dyadic data from both spouses in same- and different-sex marriages to explore how sex of spouse and gender conformity influence perceptions of shared power within the relationship, which, in turn, influences marital quality. Results show that greater gender conformity is related to stronger perceptions of shared power in different-sex and male same-sex couples but not in female same-sex couples. Perceptions of shared power are positively associated with marital quality in all union types. Our findings suggest that maintaining hegemonic masculinity and power inequalities may be salient to marriages with men. In female same-sex couples, gender and its relation to power inequalities may carry less meaning. (shrink)

Women generally initiate, lead, and constitute the rank and file of environmental justice activism. However, there is little research on why there are comparatively so few men involved in these movements. Using the environmental justice movement in the Central Appalachian coalfields as a case study, we examine the ways that environmental justice activism is gendered, with a focus on how women’s and men’s identities both shape and constrain their involvement in gendered ways. The analysis relies on 20 interviews with women (...) and men grassroots activists working for environmental justice in the coalfields of Appalachia. We find that women draw on their identities as “mothers” and “Appalachians” to justify their activism, while the hegemonic masculinity of the region, which is tied to the coal industry, has the opposite effect on men, deterring their movement involvement. We explore the implications of these findings for understanding the relationship of gender to environmental justice activism. (shrink)

Explaining how stereotypes and norms influence role-identities during reflected appraisal processes, we develop a theory about diverse groups of minority men—the “minority masculinity stress theory”—and apply it to Asian American men. We conceptually integrate hegemonic masculinity, stereotypes, and mental health to examine how Asian American men experience masculinity and how their experiences are uniquely stressful. We analyze elicited text from an open-ended questionnaire to explain two experiences of masculinity-related stress: trying to live up to the masculine ideal and enacting work-related (...) role-identities. Regarding the former, we discuss four illustrations—toughness, body image, restrictive emotionality, and heterosexuality—and two involving the latter—achiever and provider. We found that Asian American men receive stereotypical reflected appraisals that contradict potentially positive self-concepts and emphasize achievement beyond typical standards of hegemonic masculinity. Moreover, Asian American men’s role-identities contradict hegemonic masculinity, resulting in reflected appraisals that predispose them toward stress. (shrink)

Analyses of gender-based violence during mass conflict have typically focused on violence committed against women. Violence perpetrated against men has only recently been examined as gender-based violence in its own right. Using narratives from 1,136 Darfuri refugees, we analyze patterns of gender-based violence perpetrated against men and boys during the genocide in Darfur. We examine how this violence emasculates men and boys through four mechanisms: homosexualization, feminization, genital harm, and sex-selective killing. In line with an interactionist approach, we demonstrate how (...) genocidal violence is gendered and argue that perpetrators committing gender-based violence perform masculinity in accordance with hegemonic gender norms in Sudan. We also show how gender-based violence enacts, reinforces, and creates meaning on multiple levels in a matrix of mutually reinforcing processes that we term the gender-genocide nexus. By extending the gender–violence link to the context of mass atrocity, this study facilitates an understanding of the mechanisms through which gender inequalities can be reproduced and maintained in diverse situations and structures. (shrink)

In most states in the U.S. it is legal to carry a concealed handgun in public, but little is known about why people want to do this. While the existing literature argues that guns symbolize masculinity, most research on the actual use of guns has focused on marginalized men. The issue of concealed handguns is interesting because they must remain concealed and because relatively privileged men are most likely to have a license to carry one. Using in-depth interviews with 20 (...) men, this article explores how they draw on discourses of masculinity to explain their use of concealed handguns. These men claim that they are motivated by a desire to protect their wives and children, to compensate for lost strength as they age, and to defend themselves against people and places they perceive as dangerous, especially those involving racial/ethnic minority men. These findings suggest that part of the appeal of carrying a concealed firearm is that it allows men to identify with hegemonic masculinity through fantasies of violence and self-defense. (shrink)

In this article, I examine how Syrian refugee men and women shifted their household divisions of labor in their initial years of resettlement in the United States. I combine and extend relational approaches from gender theory and economic sociology to examine how men’s and women’s behaviors shifted, the resources engendered by behavioral shifts, and how they interpreted and compensated for new behaviors and resources. I show that shifts in Syrian household divisions of labor occurred at the intersection of inequalities in (...) social policies, labor markets, and households. As a result of limited social assistance, the refugee families needed to earn an income within months of their arrival. The Syrian men entered the labor market, in keeping with a breadwinning expectation for their labor, but could only access menial jobs that limited their time and opportunity to learn English. Women, meanwhile, did not enter the labor market full-time and could attend English classes. By observing this divergence in men’s and women’s language learning, I theorize human capital as a gendered outcome of household divisions of labor. (shrink)

This study draws on semistructured interviews with 19 white, rural, straight-identified men who have sex with men to understand how they perceive their gender and sexuality. It is among the first to use straight men’s own narratives, and helps address the underrepresentation of rural masculinities research. Through complex interpretive processes, participants reworked non-normative sexual practices—those usually antithetical to rural masculinities—to construct normative masculinity. Most chose other masculine, white, and straight or secretly bisexual men as partners for secretive sex without romantic (...) involvement. By choosing these partners and having this type of sex, the participants normalized and authenticated their sexual encounters as straight and normatively masculine. The participants engaged in bud-sex, a specific type of male–male sex that reinforced their rural masculinity and heterosexuality. The married men framed sex with men as less threatening to marriage than extramarital sex with women, helping to preserve a part of their lives that they described as central to their straightness. The results highlight the flexibility of heterosexuality; the centrality of heterosexuality to normative rural masculinity; how similar sexual practices carry different meanings across contexts and populations; and the social construction of masculinities and sexualities by age, race, gender, time period, and place. (shrink)

Through 32 in-depth surveys with drag kings, I ask how do trans*/nonbinary individuals find a way to make a home in the Southeastern United States? I answer this by examining the use of drag kinging as a resource to explore gender identity and find resources for gender transition. This study adds to previous research on drag kinging by expanding beyond large cities and college towns to include a broader look at the Southeast, where queer lives have often been rendered invisible. (...) I highlight the importance of geographic location on attitudes about gender and resources available to trans*/nonbinary people. In contrast to other areas of the country, trans*/nonbinary drag kings in the Southeast use drag as a place to explore a “felt” identity that is stifled in the broader culture. (shrink)

When rape by an armed organization occurs frequently, it is often said to be a strategy of war. But some cases of conflict-related rape are better understood as a practice, violence that has not been explicitly adopted as organization policy but is nonetheless tolerated by commanders. The typology of conflict-related rape in this article emphasizes not only vertical relationships between commanders and combatants but also the horizontal social interactions among combatants. It analyzes when rape is likely to be prevalent as (...) a practice, emphasizing not only gendered norms and beliefs of the society from which combatants come but also how those might be transformed by the organization’s socialization processes. In the conclusion, I suggest that the typology is relevant for analysts of all forms of of political violence and also for prosecutors, policy advocates, and policymakers concerned with conflict-related rape. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article proposes a theoretical framework for thinking systematically about Muslim males’ involvement in criminality, derived from the philosophy of critical realism. This theoretical framework is deployed to explore primary data from life story interviews with 17 Muslim male offenders in a way that explains the role of structural and cultural factors, as well as individual agency, in participants’ involvement in crime at a range of ‘emergent’ ontological levels. As well as factors in common with offending by young males (...) generally, such as absent role models at home, experiences of socio-economic marginalization, the presence of hypermasculine hegemonic masculinities on the street and an inadequate experience of school, ‘unserious’ religion and ‘religious’ justifications for involvement in crime are factored into the ontology of the male Muslim offender as rendering some young Muslim males particularly vulnerable to offending. (shrink)

Working beyond the inclination to inaugurate alternative theoretical traditions alongside canonical sociology, this article demonstrates the value of recovering latent gender theory from within classic concepts—in this case, Weber’s “charisma.” Close readings of Weber reveal, (a) tools for theorizing extraordinary, non-masculinist agency, and, (b) clues that account for the conventional wisdom (popular and scholastic) that charisma is “not for women.” While contemporary movements may be tempted to eschew charismatic leadership per se because of legacies of dominance by men, there is (...) value in Weber’s formulation, which anticipated the performative turn in social theory that would destabilize biologistic gender ontologies. Value in this exchange also flows back to Weber: by confronting his intermittent tendency to describe charisma in terms that we now recognize as “customs of manly power,” we reveal heretofore unseen imperfections (i.e., traditionalist modes of legitimation) in his ideal-type. This engagement thus demonstrates an empowering mutuality between contemporary gender theory and “the classics.” The article ends by theorising the nexus of gender and charisma in the case of Trump, pointing to possibilities for vitiating Donald Trump’s charisma, as well as for anti-Trumpian charisma. (shrink)

:This article interrogates “masculinity” as a named object of study for the social sciences, and sociology in particular, by drawing on the analysis of sense and language in Gilles Deleuze's The Logic of Sense. While rejecting essentialist definitions of masculine attributes, sociologists have long insisted that masculinity can be defined as a strategic articulation in the pursuit of social goals. Developing Deleuze's notion of the “singularity” within signifying series, this article argues that sociological emphases on goal-oriented practices have elided important (...) problems around the individuation of social relations, as well as neglecting the subsequent textual work of naming such relations as masculine. To develop this argument, the article begins with R.W. Connell's concept of “hegemonic masculinity” as one example of empirical investigation that proceeds by way of specialised metaphors – strategies, positions, goals – that make masculinity appear self-evident as an innate communication between men. In scrutinising the efficacy of such metaphors, the article questions the paradigm of homosociality as a methodological a priori in social scientific research. Finally, the article asks how masculinity studies might engage a more critical relationship to observation and description, a question that remains urgent for developing the ethical vision of gender studies more broadly. (shrink)

The relation between hegemony and masculinity needs reassessment in the light of postcolonial critique. A fully historical understanding of hegemony is required. The violence of colonization set up a double movement, disrupting gender orders and launching new hegemonic projects. This dynamic can be traced in changing forms through the eras of decolonization, postcolonial development, and neoliberal globalization. Specific configurations of masculinity in the contemporary metropole-apparatus can be traced, together with their relations with local power. A gender order is emerging in (...) transnational space and minimal conditions for hegemony within it can be defined. Counter-hegemonic projects among men have multiplied but have limited reach. Hegemony under construction, rather than achieved hegemony, is the key concept. (shrink)

Drawing on the themes of men and masculinity, this article examines texts in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports of local multinational enterprises (MNEs) in South Korea, an emerging economy. This article explores how Korean male hegemony is hidden and naturalized in CSR reporting. Focusing on the discursive construction of gender identity, we analyze how CSR reports portray gendered identities in ways that may foster gender inequality by examining how the texts reflect the inferior position of women and marginalized male (...) workers in the workplace. We review 15 CSR reports from Korean MNEs as a primary data source for examining corporate policies and disclosure on gender‐equality issues in the workplace. We explore the inherently embedded meaning of CSR reports to evaluate the masculine tone of gender relations in these texts. To deepen our understanding, we retrieved the original text segments, coded them by using a categorical framework and revisited our data to critically examine our interpretation of the narrative structures that we argue reflect and reproduce certain discourses of masculinity, through the (in)visibility of women, the marginalization of women and (part‐time) men, and the silencing of their voices by the Korean male hegemony. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to draw attention to the fact that the constructions of gender - frequently quantified in scientific research —are unstable across time and space. In this regard, we look at the genesis of the measures and definitions reflective of the social change and knowledge that has shaped views on the gender dimensions. Our analysis of gender measures shows that the majority are based on definitions that conceive of femininity and masculinity as stable personality traits and (...) that these measures are part of essentialist assumptions on gender roles and gender identity. We consider these measures to be strongly stereotypical and “outdated”. In the second part, we put forward evidence, from research findings, that indicates that perceptions of gender have not just changed over time. Different interpretations of masculinity and femininity exist within specific cultures, social categories and spaces. (shrink)

This study examines the representations of male and female social actors in selected Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) textbooks. It is grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis and uses van Leeuwen’s Social Actor Network Model to analyze social actor representations in the gendered discourses of compulsory heterosexuality. Findings from the analysis show that the representations endorse the discourse of compulsory heterosexuality which is an institutionalized form of social practice in Iran. Three male and three female students were interviewed to (...) find out what they think about these representations. Their responses with regard to whether they think textbooks should also include representations of other forms of sexuality were non-committal and vague. To them LGBT people are the ‘‘Other’’ practicing a form of sexuality that is not normal. Such exclusions could obscure the reality regarding the existence of such gender identities and represent the world in a particular manner. (shrink)

Cultural capital and hegemonic masculinity are two concepts that have received intense attention. While both have received serious consideration, critique and analysis, the context or field-specificity of each is sometimes ignored. They have been used in a diversity of ways. Using ethnographic and interview data from a US male bodybuilding community, this study highlights one useful employment. Hegemonic masculinity takes different shapes in different fields of interaction, acting as a form of cultural capital: gender capital. Inherent in this discussion are (...) the cultural contradictions apparent among individuals striving for either physical or ideological embodiments of gender capital. Individuals can attempt to embody hegemonic idealizations, but bodies are not only inscribed with gender, inscriptions are read, and read differently by different social actors and in different settings. The capacity of gender capital to remain elusive is precisely what enables gender practices and projects like bodybuilding to retain passionate participation. (shrink)

Civility is formed by social norms that guide our behavior and allow us to interact appropriately with others. These norms affect everyone and are learned through the socialization process. However, in the same process, people also learn gender norms that dictate how men and women should behave, leading to gender stereotypes and differentiated behavioral characteristics. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between gender and civility, and how we react to those who behave uncivilly given their gender. (...) The results of Study 1 showed that even in a fictional and gender-neutral society, uncivil behaviors were associated with stereotypically masculine characteristics, and those who behaved uncivilly were dehumanized. In Study 2, gender differences were observed in incivility. Women were harsher when facing uncivil transgressors than men, especially if the transgressor was another woman. Our findings support the notion that gender norms are applied to civility, leading those supposedly equal social norms to unequal perceptions and evaluations. (shrink)

One of the intriguing issues connected to power relations in the world of cinema that has yet to be adequately explored is what has happened over the years concerning the dominance and privilege of masculinity as signifying preferred social status. This qualitative study explores this subject based on transcribed semi-structured interviews with 13 award-winning Israeli directors over the age of 55. The research examines two questions: How has the film industry changed its relation to leading, award-winning film directors as they (...) grow older? And, what challenges confront the directors, in terms of their own self-perceptions? These questions capture the collisional intersection between hegemonic masculinity and ageism, because they examine the loss of power attributed to men in the film industry as they reach the second half of their lives. The findings led to the formation of a theoretical model of ageism within the cinematic industry, allowing for the dismantling of the different factors that create obstacles for directors as they get older. The four layers of the model are: arbitrary ageism, manifested in the demands of a rapidly changing industry in a changing world; passive ageism, expressed through encounters with negative attitudes; active ageism, reflected in preventing older directors from receiving funding and from screening their films; and self-ageism, manifested in the directors’ attitudes toward themselves. (shrink)

Research with predominately minority, urban students has documented an educational “gender gap,” where girls tend to be more likely to go to college, make higher grades, and aspire to higher status occupations than boys. We know less, however, about inequality, gender, and schooling in rural contexts. Does a similar gap emerge among the rural poor? How does gender shape the educational experiences of rural students? This article explores these questions by drawing on participant observation and student interviews at a predominately (...) white and low-income rural high school. I find a substantial gap favoring girls in this context, and I analyze how understandings of masculinity shaped schooling using the theory of hegemonic masculinity. The findings suggest that boys' underachievement is actually rooted in masculine dominance and related to particular constructions of gender and social class. (shrink)

Previous research analyzing masculinity and domestic violence has focused on men’s accounts of the violence they have committed; relatively little research has focused on men’s accounts of victimization. This article critically examines how men negotiate the competing discourses of victimization, hegemonic masculinity, and stereotypes about domestic violence when filing for a domestic violence protection order against a woman partner. Three themes related to gender and victimization emerged from the men’s narratives. First, the men’s descriptions of the violence they had experienced (...) focused on their power and control over their intimate partner. Second, the men described their active resistance to the abuse but were careful to note that their actions were not “abusive” and that they were not the “abusers.” Finally, although most of the men described both verbal and physical abuse, most did not express a fear of their partner. I discuss the results of this analysis in the context of the recent increase in men claiming victimization in a number of realms. (shrink)

Veterinary medicine has undergone dramatic, rapid feminization while in many ways remaining gendered masculine. With women constituting approximately half of its practitioners and nearly 80 percent of students, veterinary medicine is the most feminized of the comparable health professions. Nevertheless, the culture of veterinary medicine glorifies stereotypically masculine actions and attitudes. This article examines how women veterinarians understand the gender dynamics within the profession. Our analysis reveals that the discursive strategies available to women sustain and justify the status quo, and (...) thus preserve hegemonic masculinity. Women use strategies previously used toward female tokens in nontraditional jobs, such as role encapsulation, and strategies previously used by male tokens in traditionally female jobs, such as distancing from the feminine. Through this discursive “gender work,” women help to maintain the institutionalized inequality and the masculine ethic of the profession. Veterinary medicine illustrates the importance of considering organizational context in studies of feminization. (shrink)

An ongoing study examining the discursive negotiation of ethnic and gendered embodied identities of adolescent girls in Japan with Japanese and `white' mixed-parentage is extended to also investigate and compare boys. This study draws on Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis which views women and girls as `simultaneously positioned as relatively powerless within a range of dominant discourses on gender, but as relatively powerful within alternative and competing social discourses'. Here, this is taken further by also giving voice to boys. Furthermore, ethnic (...) discourses are examined alongside of gender discourses. Not only girls constructed the `idealized Other', within discourses of femininity, but boys similarly viewed their bodies against a model of idealized masculinity within discourses of masculinities. The boys revealed a feminized, narcissistic body consciousness where they struggled to resist a `discourse of foreign grotesqueness' and instead worked to embody themselves within a positive `discourse of foreign attractiveness', as did the girls. (shrink)

This research explores how gender shapes contraceptive management through in-depth interviews with 40 men and women of color ages 15 to 24, a life stage when the risk of unintended pregnancy is high in the United States. Although past research focuses on men’s contraception-avoidant behaviors, little sociological work has explored ways men engage in contraception outside of condoms, such as contraceptive pills. Research often highlights how women manage these methods alone. Our research identifies how young men of color do help (...) manage these methods through their engagement in contraceptive decision making and use. Men accomplish this without limiting their partners’ ability to prevent pregnancy. This is despite structural barriers such as poverty and gang-related violence that disproportionately affect low-income young men of color and often shape their reproductive goals. However, men’s engagement is still circumscribed so that women take on a disproportionate burden of pregnancy prevention, reifying gender boundaries. We identify this as a form of hybrid masculinity, because men’s behaviors are seemingly egalitarian but also sustain women’s individualized risk of unintended pregnancy. This research points to the complexity of how race, class, and gender intersect to create an engaged but limited place for men in contraceptive management among marginalized youth. (shrink)

Drawing on theories of masculinities, I analyze how a U.S. government funded “responsible fatherhood” program utilized a political discourse of hybrid masculinity to shape disadvantaged men’s ideas of successful fathering. Using data from three sources that uniquely traces how this discourse traveled from policy to program implementation—including analysis of the curriculum, in-depth interviews with 10 staff, and in-depth interviews and focus groups with 64 participating fathers—I theorize hybrid fatherhood. As a discourse of paternal involvement that incorporates stereotypically feminine styles such (...) as emotional expressiveness, hybrid fatherhood discursively reconfigures patriarchy by drawing distinctions between mothering and fathering and dominant and subordinate forms of masculinity as they relate to men’s parenting. I analyze how the promotion of hybrid fatherhood for poor men of color legitimates and sustains gender, race, and class inequalities through U.S. welfare policy. (shrink)

This article aims to unveil how male identities are constructed in a corpus of male toiletry TV ads through a pragmatic and multimodal analysis of a set of implicit assumptions conveyed about the male participants in the ads. The validity of these assumptions is first empirically tested with a group of 10 male informants and then those implied meanings are bundled into thematic cores for their qualitative and quantitative description. Findings reveal that these ads still rely on stereotypical constructs and (...) traditional discourses of what it takes to be a man. For example, men are invited to consume grooming products but reminded to do it the men’s way. Men are also reminded of their sexual power to seduce and attract women with the aid of the product. Likewise, by portraying male ad personae in traditional manly activities while emphasizing their toughness and body strength, or their resourcefulness when faced with challenging situations, the ads portray a rather skewed view of contemporary men, which fails to take into account the myriad roles a modern man can play in contemporary societies. (shrink)

How are masculinity and nationalism intertwined? This question has received scant theoretical attention, and existing theories tend to focus on their shared ideals and are embedded in a heteronormative, homophobic, and patriarchal framework. Such views imply a static relationship between the two phenomena and are incompatible with the recent phenomenon of homonationalism and the incorporation of some homosexual bodies within the nation. Addressing this theoretical gap, this article develops a more holistic framework of the relationship between nationalism and masculinity. Drawing (...) on relational sociology, it conceptualises nationalism as competing masculinities. It argues that the link between masculinities and nationalism is not found in their overlapping substantive ideals, but rather that the two phenomena are co-constructed through their overlapping Othering processes. The proposed theoretical framework does not only provide a more dynamic understanding of the link between masculinity and nationalism, but it also helps to overcome the apparent duality between homonationalism and heteronationalism. It is shown that both phenomena are in fact two sides of the same coin, with the main difference between them being the location of homophobia as a technology of Othering within different types of Self/Other relations. Overall, the article provides an analytical tool that allows for the contextualisation and understanding of seemingly contradictory features of nationalism and its relationship to masculinity. (shrink)

Our paper focuses on the philosophical perspective of constructing active caring masculinities agencies in the contemporary feminist discourse. Since contemporary feminisms are not simply anti-essentialist, but more importantly, polyphonic, we believe that it is far more appropriate to talk about ‘masculinities’ as opposed to ‘masculinity’. We are proposing a revised understanding of the self in which the self is not defined primarily in the dichotomous, categorical one-other relationship. We use Paul Ricoeur’s anthropology to describe the self as relational, as well (...) as Joan Tronto’s recent perspective on care which fits well with a Ricoeurian reconstruction of the self. We also engage with Raewyn Connell’s discourse on masculinity and more specifically, hegemonic masculinity. By using ‘caring masculine agencies’ as an alternative to ‘masculinity as reactive anti-femininity’, we are proposing a paradigm shift that hopefully is flexible enough to respect the dynamism inherent to any act of gender-identification. (shrink)

Black males have been characterized as violent, misogynist, predatory rapists by gender theorists dating back to mid-nineteenth–century ethnologists to contemporary intersectional feminists. These caricatures of Black men and boys are not rooted in any actual studies or empirical findings, but the stereotypes found throughout various racist social scientific literatures that held Black males to be effeminate while nonetheless hyper-masculine and delinquent. This paper argues that contemporary gender theories not only deny the peculiar sexual oppression of racialized outgroup males under patriarchy, (...) but theories like intersectional invisibility actually perpetuates the idea that racialized males are disposable. To remedy the imperceptibility of sexual oppression and violence under the male category, the author gives an historical account of the development of racist (anti-Black) misandry throughout the centuries and proposes a theory of phallicism to describe the seemingly contradictory constructions of Black men as sexually predatory as in the case of the rapist, but nonetheless sexually vulnerable and raped under patriarchy. (shrink)

Steve Jobs (1955-2011) was not only a businessman renowned for his legacy of technological innovation and entrepreneurship. His life history indicates eras or seasons as prankster, hippie, family man, and cancer fighter. This psychobiographical case study entailed a psychosocial-historical analysis of Jobs’s development interpreted through Levinson’s theory of the human life cycle, and was undertaken against the background of Merleau-Ponty’s ontological philosophy that elucidates a human science phenomenology where the individual cannot be separated from his/her social world. The primary objective (...) of this study was to uncover the eras and transitions within Jobs’s life cycle. The secondary objective was to illustrate and test the relevance of Levinsonian theory as applied to Jobs’s life. Jobs’s life cycle was uncovered through an analysis of published and publically available materials, which included both primary and secondary data sources. Alexander’s psychobiographical model was employed to extract salient evidence for analysis. A conceptual psychosocial-historical matrix guided the analysis. Key findings indicate that the central components of Jobs’s life and social world (e.g., his occupation, family, friendships and terminal illness) had a significant influence on his psychosocial development. In conclusion, Jobs’s development generally conformed to Levinsonian theory as well as to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological ontology and illustrated the relevance of these conceptual models for understanding the individual’s connectedness to his/her social world. (shrink)

The recent process of deinstitutionalization of the psychiatric treatment system, in both Denmark and other European countries, has relied heavily on the involvement in treatment and recovery of cohabitant relatives of diagnosed people. However, political objectives regarding depression and involvement rely on a limited body of knowledge about people’s ways of managing illness-related problems in everyday life. Drawing on a discursive notion of gender laid out by Raewyn Connell, the aim of the article is to elucidate how the involvement of (...) relatives is guided by an extra- individual rationale about gender and caregiving, and how this gendered discourse might frame different challenges and burdens, depending on the gender of the diagnosed person and the cohabitant relative. Drawn from a larger, multisited field study on involvement processes in Danish psychiatry, t he article is based on field notes and 21 interviews with seven heterosexual couples. The analysis shows that gender works as a decisive premise for the division of caregiving labour among the couples, and clarifies how the couples’ gendered institution is disrupted after the onset of depression. The article argues that gender-blind involvement strategies could produce divergent treatment outcomes and varying social effects in relation to couples’ everyday family lives. (shrink)

Hegemonic masculinity, a framework where stereotypically masculine traits are over-emphasized, plays a central role in sport, partly due to an excessive focus on winning. This type of masculinity marginalizes those that do not possess specific traits, including many women and men. I argue sport reform focused on mitigating hypercompetitive attitudes can reduce this harmful and marginalizing hegemonic masculinity in sport. I make this argument first by challenging the dichotomous nature of sport, especially in recognizing that all outcomes are a blend (...) of winning and losing, that ties are relevant and informative outcomes to contests, and that winning and losing do not always tell accurate stories of the outcome. Secondly, I contend that expanding the potential outcomes in sport can help broaden the emphasis of competitive sport to take into account playing well and improving, in terms of both the test and the contest. I conclude that these reforms decrease hegemonic masculinity, making sport better for all. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate the connection between forms of sustainability and masculinity through a study of everyday life in a Danish alternative slaughterhouse. In contrast to the predominant form of slaughterhouses today in Western contexts, the ‘alternative’ slaughterhouse is characterized as non-industrial in scale and articulating some form of a sustainability orientation. Acknowledging the variability of the term, we firstly explore how ‘sustainability’ is understood and practiced in this place. We then illuminate the situated manifestations of masculinities, which appear (...) predominantly- though not exclusively- hegemonic in nature. We next reflect on how the situated and particular sustainability of this site come to bear on a workplace long characterized as a masculinized site of, e.g., violence and repression, showing how the sustainability of the alternative slaughterhouse has potential to nourish alternative masculinities. We finally call for more attention at this nexus of sustainability and masculinities studies, to examine how the broad sustainability turn in food systems needs to be further examined in relation to what masculinities it perpetuates, as well as how a focus on masculinities may enhance our understanding of varying forms of sustainability, especially their potential for ecologically and socially just food systems. (shrink)

This article explores the challenge of developing a feminist law reform proposal to decertify sex and gender based on research conducted for the ‘Future of Legal Gender' project. Locating the proposal to decertify within a do-it-yourself, prefigurative approach to law reform, the article asks: Can a law reform proposal be both instrumental and radical? Can a proposal take shape as a viable legislative text and as a more subversive intervention to unsettle and reimagine gender’s relationship to law? This article explores (...) this at two levels. First, it considers the ontological challenges of developing a controversial law reform proposal in terms of its realness (or fictiveness), contours, and temporality, turning to ‘slow law' as a credible way of approaching radical reform. Second, it explores the design-based challenges of legal prototyping—foregrounding questions of legitimacy, participation, and purpose, which arise in designing a decertification law. At the heart of this discussion is the relationship between representation and enactment—between what a proposal presents and what its presentation does and does not accomplish. (shrink)

Research on couples’ earnings arrangements has focused on men’s and women’s conformance to the male-breadwinner/female-homemaker model. By doing so, research has ignored the following: Breadwinning can be a source of stress for men; the male-breadwinner/female-homemaker model does not apply to all racial groups; and the proportion of women in an occupation may moderate the stress process associated with divergent earnings arrangements. To address factors overlooked, I applied mixed-effects models to the 1999–2017 Panel Study of Income Dynamics data to examine the (...) internalizing and externalizing responses to stress among married, non-Hispanic white and Black men and women. Greater relative earnings reduce Black women’s psychological distress and heavy drinking, but increase Black men’s heavy drinking. Among white men, greater relative earnings reduce psychological distress and demonstrate a curvilinear relationship with heavy drinking, whereas no significant pattern emerges for white women. Occupational sex composition moderates these relationships. Among Black women, greater relative earnings lower psychological distress the most for those in women-concentrated occupations, and moving from economic dependency to equal breadwinning decreases heavy drinking the most for white men in men-concentrated occupations. Findings showcase the value of an intersectional approach to capture the diverse meanings associated with earnings arrangements. (shrink)

Using the threat of a severe AIDS epidemic in a collection of rural villages in South Africa, we illustrate how men and women reconsider gendered sexualities through conversations and interactions in everyday life. We draw from data collected by local ethnographers and focus on the processes through which men and women collectively respond to the threat posed by AIDS to relationships, families, and communities. Whereas previous research has shown that individuals often reaffirm hegemonic norms about gender and sexuality in response (...) to disruptions to heteronormative gender relations, we find that the threat of AIDS provokes reconsideration of gendered sexualities at the community level. That is, our data demonstrate how men and women—through the interactions and exchanges that make up their daily lives—debate, challenge, make sense of, and attempt to come to terms with social norms circumscribing gendered sexual practices in a context where the threat of a fatal disease transmitted through sex looms large. We argue that ethnographic data are particularly useful for capturing communal responses to events that threaten heteronormative gender relations and reflect on how our findings inform theories of gender relations and processes. (shrink)

Hooking up is a term commonly used in contemporary American society to refer to sexual activity between two people who are not in a committed romantic relationship. Data show that although many college students are engaging in hookups, there is no consensus on how to define a hookup. The author uses the concept of “strategic ambiguity” to explore the intentionality and usefulness of the vagueness of this term. Specific to hookups, strategic ambiguity is when individuals use the term “hookup” to (...) describe their sexual activities rather than give details about their sexual activities as an impression management strategy to protect their sexual and social identities. Analyzing data gathered through interviews with heterosexual students at a mid-sized public university in the South, this article addresses the normative character and the myriad definitions of hookups; addresses the underlying heterosexist bias in the definitions of hookups; and analyzes how the ambiguity of the term “hookup” serves women and men in different ways and both reinforces and challenges the current gender order, allowing men to conform to and preserve components of hegemonic masculinity and women to conform to and preserve components of emphasized femininity. (shrink)

The present study investigates the importance of emotional disclosure and vulnerability in the production of hegemonic masculinities. Of particular interest is the role that silence and invisibility play in how men talk about recent stressful life events. One-on-one interviews with men who experienced a stressful life event in the past year illustrate how men often talk about these events in simultaneously visible and invisible ways. We use the term “cloudy visibility” to describe this engagement, identified both in terms of what (...) men articulate in relation to their past stressful experiences and how they articulate these experiences within the present moment of the interview. The conversational consequences of these linguistic devices are analyzed to illustrate how men obscure their inner emotional lives, thus reproducing hegemonic masculine ideals of staying strong and stoic in the face of adversity, while they also seek to make aspects of their inner lives seen and heard to an interviewer. (shrink)