A decade ago, the “new sociology of masculinity” emerged as an exciting new paradigm for understanding gender, emphasizing the study of “hegemonic power relations” among men and women. However, subsequent research has not fully redeemed the promise of the NSM, failing to seriously engage the theoretical implications of studying hegemony. This article addresses the lacunae by presenting a theoretically informed analysis of life history interviews with Chinese American men. Its chief empirical question is how Chinese American men “achieve” masculinity in (...) the face of negative stereotypes. This is accomplished, it is found, through four possible gender strategies: compensation, deflection, denial, or repudiation. The author then fashions a theoretical account of these strategies to show how they can reproduce the social order by striking a hegemonic bargain, which occurs when a Chinese American man's gender strategy involves consciously trading on—or unconsciously taking advantage of—the “privileges” of his race, gender, class, generation, and/or sexuality for the purposes of elevating his masculinity. (shrink)

In this article, I explore how masculinity and gender nonconformity are viewed by 37 migrant Puerto Rican gay men who had been raised in Puerto Rico and migrated Stateside as adults. Most of these migrant men note the importance of masculinity in their development and interactions with others, particularly other men. They resist identification of themselves as effeminate and distance themselves from locas. They associate locas with overt homosexuality, disrespect, and marginality. I argue that migrant Puerto Rican gay masculinities are (...) maintained within the precept of hegemonic masculinity through various social mechanisms, including a gendered construction of male homosexuality; the connection of social and interpersonal respect with masculinity; the socially allowable and pervasive ridicule and punishment of male femininity; and marginalization based on multiple social statuses. Through these interconnected social mechanisms, heteronormative perspectives on gender, gender binaries, and power are incorporated into homonormative migrant Puerto Rican gay masculinities. (shrink)

In this article I report findings from interviews with 26 openly gay male athletes who came out between 2008 and 2010. I compare their experiences to those of 26 gay male athletes who came out between 2000 and 2002. The athletes in the 2010 cohort have had better experiences after coming out than those in the earlier cohort, experiencing less heterosexism and maintaining better support among their teammates. I place these results in the context of inclusive masculinity theory, suggesting that (...) local cultures of decreased homophobia created more positive experiences for the 2010 group. (shrink)

We are all living deep inside an oppressive gender legacy called patriarchy. On some level, most people know that gender is tied to a great deal of suffering an injustice, from inequality in the workplace to violence and sexual harassment to the conflict between work and family roles. Millions of women are weary from the struggle simply to hang on to what's been gained, and many well-intentioned men do nothing because they can't see how to acknowledge what's going on without (...) inviting guilt and blame simply for being men. The result is a knotted tangle to fear, anger, blame, defensiveness, guilt, pain, denial, ambivalence, and confusion. The more we pull at it, the tighter it gets. Unraveling the knot begins with getting clear about what patriarchy really is, about what it's got to do with each of us, and about how both men and women can see themselves as part of the process of change toward something better. Based on more than twenty years of work on gender issues, The Gender Knot charts a course organized around three questions: What are we participating in and how are we choosing to participate in it? How do typical ways of thinking about gender blind us to what's going on? What can men and women do to make a difference? Johnson writes as a man passionately committed to the belief that oppression is not an inevitable feature of human life, and that each of us makes it matter more than we can ever know. He offers a practical, compassionate, and readable guide to understanding what we're stuck in and how to search for a way out. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to advance a new understanding of gender as a routine accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction. To do so entails a critical assessment of existing perspectives on sex and gender and the introduction of important distinctions among sex, sex category, and gender. We argue that recognition of the analytical independence of these concepts is essential for understanding the interactional work involved in being a gendered person in society. The thrust of our remarks is toward theoretical (...) reconceptualization, but we consider fruitful directions for empirical research that are indicated by our formulation. (shrink)

As a central organizing institution in society, marriage presents an idealized package for sociosexual relations that reproduces and intertwines gender power dynamics and heterosexual desire. This package is sustained, in part, by the ideology of romantic love—a set of beliefs that constructs only a particular configuration of sexual and gender practices as natural, normal, and right. Drawing on interviews with 45 people, this study examines how people negotiate marital relationships that do not fit into this normative configuration— mixed-orientation marriages. Participants' (...) resolutions to these situations, whether they divorced or created asexual or sexual nonmonogamous marriages, were heavily shaped by their belief in the ideology of romantic love, illustrating how heteronormative relations can be held in place by normalizing ideologies. (shrink)

This article examines gay men’s efforts to break into the exclusive traditional fraternity institution by adopting the hegemonic model on their own terms. The authors examined to what extent members of a national gay fraternity, Delta Lambda Phi challenged or modified the entrenched fraternity culture that was hostile to homosexuals and whether they resisted or reproduced hegemonic masculinity in their efforts to redefine the meaning of college fraternities. This research examines gay fraternities in relation to two dimensions of hegemonic masculinity. (...) The authors explore how members of gay fraternities negotiated their stigmatized status among other men—that is, within the internal dimension of hegemonic masculinity. They explore the external dimension of hegemonic masculinity by analyzing how gay brothers, as men, related to all women. The authors further examine the connection between these two hegemonic dimensions and provide evidence showing how these two dimensions are coupled or disjointed. (shrink)

The purpose of this research is to investigate the masculinity politics of the ex-gay movement, a loose-knit network of religious, scientific, and political organizations that advocates change for homosexuals. Guided by Risman's gender structure theory, the authors analyze the individual, interactional, and institutional dimensions of gender in ex-gay discourses. The authors employ critical discourse analysis of representative ex-gay texts to deconstruct the movement's gender ideology and to discuss the social implications of its masculinity politics. They argue that gender is one (...) of the ex-gay movement's most potent social movement resources, enabling it to consolidate power by enlisting new populations and to globalize by adapting to cultural contexts beyond the United States. The authors conclude that the ex-gay movement is an antigay countermovement and an antifeminist Christian Right men's movement. (shrink)

Drawing on Connell's notion of gender projects, the authors assess the degree to which contemporary evangelical ideals of men's headship challenge, as well as reinforce, a hegemonic masculinity. Based on 265 in-depth interviews in 23 states across the country, they find that rather than espousing a traditional gender hierarchy in which women are simply subordinate to men, the majority of contemporary evangelicals hold to symbolic traditionalism and pragmatic egalitarianism. Symbolic male headship provides an ideological tool with which individual evangelicals may (...) maintain a sense of distinctiveness from the broader culture of which they are a part. At the same time, symbolic headship blunts some of the harsher effects of living in a materially rich, but time poor, culture, by defusing an area of potential conflict, creating a safe space within which men can negotiate, and strengthening men's material and emotional ties to their families. (shrink)

This article examines the reproduction of gendered workplace inequalities through in-depth interviews with female-to-male transsexuals. Many FTMs enter the workforce as women and then transition to become men, an experience that can provide them with an “outsider-within” perspective on the “patriarchal dividend”—the advantages men in general gain from the subordination of women. Many of the respondents in this article find themselves, as men, receiving more authority, reward, and respect in the workplace than they received as women, even when they remain (...) in the same jobs. The author argues that their experiences can make the underpinnings of gendered workplace disparities visible and help illuminate how structural disadvantages for women are reproduced in workplace interactions. As tall, white FTMs see more advantages than short FTMs and FTMs of color, these experiences also illustrate how men's gender advantages at work vary with characteristics such as race/ethnicity and body structure. (shrink)

This article presents a theoretical framework that views interpersonal power as interdependent with broader structures of gender and class inequalities. In contrast to oversimplified, gender-neutral or gender-static approaches, this approach illuminates the ways that structures of inequality are expressed in ideological hegemonies, which enhance, legitimate, and mystify the interpersonal power of privileged men relative to lower-status men and women in general. The discussion centers on how the relational construction of ascendant and subordinated masculinities provide men with different modes of interpersonal (...) power that, when exercised, construct and reaffirm interclass male dominance. Examples of how the construction of femininity can undermine women's interpersonal power and implications for other forms of masculinities and femininities are discussed. Examples are drawn from an analysis of conjugal power in the accounts of remarried individuals' first and second marriages to illustrate the main points of this perspective. (shrink)

Domestic violence represents a crucial underpinning of women's continued subordination, which is why much scholarly and activist energy has been expended in designing, implementing, and evaluating programs to reduce it. On the basis of three years of fieldwork, the authors analyze the interactional processes through which masculinity was constructed in one such program. They find that facilitators had success in getting the men to agree to take responsibility, use egalitarian language, control anger, and choose nonviolence, but the men were successful (...) in resisting taking victims' perspectives, deflecting facilitators' overtures to be emotionally vulnerable, and defining themselves as hardworking men entitled to a patriarchal dividend. The authors' analysis contributes to understandings of how hegemonic masculinity is interactionally constituted, and it adds evidence to the debate about such programs' effectiveness by raising the issue of how well the program met its goal of transforming masculinity. (shrink)

The concept of hegemonic masculinity has influenced gender studies across many academic fields but has also attracted serious criticism. The authors trace the origin of the concept in a convergence of ideas in the early 1980s and map the ways it was applied when research on men and masculinities expanded. Evaluating the principal criticisms, the authors defend the underlying concept of masculinity, which in most research use is neither reified nor essentialist. However, the criticism of trait models of gender and (...) rigid typologies is sound. The treatment of the subject in research on hegemonic masculinity can be improved with the aid of recent psychological models, although limits to discursive flexibility must be recognized. The concept of hegemonic masculinity does not equate to a model of social reproduction; we need to recognize social struggles in which subordinated masculinities influence dominant forms. Finally, the authors review what has been confirmed from early formulations and what needs to be discarded. The authors suggest reformulation of the concept in four areas: a more complex model of gender hierarchy, emphasizing the agency of women; explicit recognition of the geography of masculinities, emphasizing the interplay among local, regional, and global levels; a more specific treatment of embodiment in contexts of privilege and power; and a stronger emphasis on the dynamics of hegemonic masculinity, recognizing internal contradictions and the possibilities of movement toward gender democracy. (shrink)

Bears comprise a subculture of gay men who valorize the larger, hirsute body. This research interrogates Bear culture as a gendered strategy for repudiating effeminacy that simultaneously challenges and reproduces norms of hegemonic masculinity. In this research, the author situates his ethnographic study of a major metropolitan Bear community in its social and historical context to illuminate this paradox, with special emphasis on the embodiment of Bear masculinity and its effect on sexual practice. The author concludes that through a process (...) of embodied agency, Bear culture yields a number of sexually innovative practices that disperse pleasure across the body and disrupt genitally centered, phallusandreceptacle interpretations of sex. However, the subversive potential of these practices is significantly undermined by an attendant set of practices that reflect heteronormative and hegemonically masculine interpretations of sex. (shrink)

This article examines the tensions in the identities of men who belong to the Promise Keepers movement by uncovering the social conditions that lead men to rethink gender and racial ideologies. Using participant observation and in-depth interviews, the author draws on gender and social movement scholarship to reveal how contradictory gender and racial ideologies shape PKs' identities. Furthermore, the PKs' impact on gender and race relations is also contradictory. PK fosters men's growth on an interactional level, allowing men to embrace (...) a more expressive and caring masculinity that includes cross-racial bonding. Simultaneously, however, PK ignores, and indirectly reinforces, the structural conditions that underpin gender and racial privilege among white men. (shrink)