Men and Masculinities recent issues

En-trenched Manhood: War and Constructions of Masculinity in George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia

Karpinski, E. C. — 2008-08-07

Using feminist approaches to life writing and subjectivity elaborated by Sidonie Smith, Leigh Gilmore, and Marlene Kadar, this article examines George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia as an example of complex and conflicting negotiations of masculinity in the extreme situations of war and political trauma. Orwell's constructions of male subjectivity reveal both complicity and resistance to traditional discourses of militarism and are less monolithic than usually assumed in feminist interpretations of his work. Orwell's male subject is viewed as a site of contradictory interpellations of ethnicity, class, and physicality of the body. Finally, it is argued that through his rhetoric, Orwell manipulates hegemonic and nonhegemonic notions of manhood and sacrifices a heroic potential of his war narrative to increase his political credibility in the cause of a socialist revolution.

Damned If They Do, Damned If They Don't: Tensions in Nicaraguan Masculinities as Barriers to Sexual and Reproductive Health Promotion

Sternberg, P., White, A., Hubley, J. H. — 2008-08-07

This article documents the authors' efforts to listen to Nicaraguan men and to explore with them the foundations of their sexual behavior and masculinities. In 1999 and 2000, the authors conducted focus groups involving ninety men from the Pacific side of Nicaragua. From analysis of the text of these interviews, five discourses were identified: a traditional patriarchal discourse (machismo), a Catholic discourse, a Western progressive (liberal feminist) discourse, a pro-feminist discourse, and a medical discourse. The authors argue that these discourses construct a series of tensions within Nicaraguan masculinities that greatly affect Nicaraguan men's ability to play a role in change and suggest strategies through which the men may be helped to resolve these tensions and therefore play an active role in the social and political changes that are profoundly affecting the positions of both women and men in Nicaraguan society.

Presidential Wounds: The JFK Assassination and the White Male Body

Warren, C. A. — 2008-08-07

Much of the literature about the assassination of John F. Kennedy focuses on and fetishizes the physical body of the president. This article examines how the president's wounded body—as represented in the Zapruder film and the autopsy photos especially— has become the subject of an enduring pornography of violence. In particular, the essay considers how his body has aroused in some white men feelings of not only horror and anxiety but also of exhilaration and guilty pleasure. By studying these contradictory impulses at work, we can draw closer to understanding why the damaged white male body has become, since the 1960s, an object of fantasy for many thousands of Americans.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Will Truman?: The Feminization of Gay Masculinities on Will & Grace

Linneman, T. J. — 2008-08-07

Although many gay men do not engage in effeminate behavior, they still may be feminized in social interaction. This article illustrates the importance of this distinction through a two-method study of the popular sitcom Will & Grace. The show includes multiple representations of gay masculinities, from the effeminate gay man to the more masculine "very straight gay." However, a comprehensive content analysis shows that both gay primary characters frequently are feminized by other characters on the show, often in efforts to castigate them. Very few of these feminizing moments occur as a result of the characters acting in effeminate ways, thus emphasizing the immanent femininity of gay men. Focus group participants' interpretations of this phenomenon include obliviousness to these moments, anger over their inclusion, and acceptance of their role in the show and in real gay life.

Inclusive Masculinity in a Fraternal Setting

Anderson, E. — 2008-08-07

This ethnographic research uses thirty-two in-depth interviews and two years of participant observation on a large chapter of a national fraternity to examine the construction of masculinity among heterosexual men. Whereas previous studies of masculine construction maintain that most men in fraternities attempt to bolster their masculinity through the approximation of requisites of hegemonic masculinity, this research shows that there also exists a more inclusive form of masculinity institutionalized in the fraternal system: one based on social equality for gay men, respect for women, and racial parity and one in which fraternity men bond over emotional intimacy.

Three Generations of Yankees: Masculinity, Memory, and War in an American Family, 1842-1975

Gorham, D. — 2008-08-07

This paper addresses the connection between war and masculinity through a case study of three generations of men in one family—the author's own. Gorham's great-grandfather, Charles Edward Gorham, born in 1842, served in the Union army during the Civil War. Her grandfather Henry Wilson Gorham wished he could have served in the First World War. Her father, postwar novelist Charles Orson Gorham, served in the Second World War. Using such primary sources as the Charles O. Gorham papers housed at the Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University; family papers in her possession; local history sources in St. Johnsbury, Vermont; as well as secondary literature on a variety of topics; Gorham presents an account of the experience of these three men. The case study is intended to contribute to a wider analysis of the intersections between dominant American conceptions of masculinity on the one hand, and war and violence on the other.

Book Review: de la Mora, Sergio. (2006). Cinemachismo: Masculinities and Sexuality in Mexican Film. Austin: University of Texas Press

Irwin, R. M. — 2008-08-07

Book Review: Horlacher, S. (2006). Masculinities: Konzeptionen von Mannlichkeit im Werk von Thomas Hardy und D. H. Lawrence. Gunter Narr Verlag, Tubingen, 721 pp., 78,00

Reichardt, U. — 2008-08-07

Book Review: Espana-Maram, L. (2006). Creating Masculinity in Los Angeles's Little Manila: Working-Class Filipinos and Popular Culture, 1920s-1950s. New York: Columbia University Press

Bonus, R. — 2008-08-07

Book Review: Gallagher, M. (2006). Action Figures: Men, Action Films, and Contemporary Adventure Narratives. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan

Donovan, B. W. — 2008-08-07

Book Review: Mansfield, H. C. (2006). Manliness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press

Ritter, G. — 2008-08-07

Book Review: Phillips, K. J. (2006). Manipulating Masculinity: War and Gender in Modern British and American Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Lea, D. — 2008-08-07

Introduction: Hegemonic Masculinities in International Politics

Elias, J. — 2008-05-06

Making Sense of Masculinity and War

Hutchings, K. — 2008-05-06

This article examines modes of theorizing about war in two contemporary literatures: on war and gender and on the changing nature of war. Both these literatures make a connection between masculinity and war. The article argues that, on examination, the link between masculinity and war does not depend on the substantive meanings of either masculinity or war, or on a causal or constitutive relation between the two; rather, masculinity is linked to war because the formal, relational properties of masculinity provide a framework through which war can be rendered both intelligible and acceptable as a social practice and institution.

Hegemonic Masculinities, the Multinational Corporation, and the Developmental State: Constructing Gender in "Progressive" Firms

Elias, J. — 2008-05-06

This article analyzes how the mainstream study of multinational corporations (MNCs) reflects a set of gendered assumptions that construct the firm as a hegemonically masculine political actor. It is suggested that the same masculinist assumptions that are found in these writings on MNCs take shape within firms in the form of a masculinist managerialism that constructs women workers in terms of their "productive femininity." There is an extensive literature on women's employment in MNCs and their subsidiaries; the author suggests that this focus on women workers is only a starting point for developing a gendered understanding of global production. Importantly, a focus on "feminine" work and the role that masculinist managerial practices play in underpinning this construction provides insight into the gendered structures and institutions that support the workings of the global political economy.

The Masculine State in Crisis: State Response to War Resistance in Apartheid South Africa

Conway, D. — 2008-05-06

External and internal forces threatened the apartheid state in the 1980s. The refusal to perform compulsory military service by individual white men and the increasing number of white South Africans who criticized the role of the military and apartheid governance had the potential to destabilize the gendered binaries on which white social order and Nationalist rule rested. The state constituted itself as a heterosexual, masculine entity in crisis and deployed a number of gendered discourses in an effort to isolate and negate objectors to military service. The state articulated a nationalist discourse that defined the white community in virile, masculine, and heroic terms. Conversely, "feminine" weakness, cowardice, and compromise were scorned. Objectors, as "strangers" in the public realm, were most vulnerable to homophobic stigmatization from the state and its supporters.

The Hegemonic Male and Kosovar Nationalism, 2000--2005

Munn, J. — 2008-05-06

The article addresses the link between manhood and nationhood in postconflict Kosova. Albanian Kosovars, like many "traditionally" patriarchal societies, have constructed identities of the patriotic man and the exalted childbearing woman as icons of national survival. These designated identities often negate the realities of war-affected communities. The gendered places of man and woman in political reality are marred by the traumatic events of conflict and postconflict life. By thinking about the masculine microcultures of nation building (daily life), especially the construction of over-sexed and under-sexed individuals (i.e., the soldier) and the promiscuous enemies within (i.e., the female rape victim), there develops a connection between monoracial and heterosexual preserves and the need for this society to hold onto the traditional vision of man, at least until there is the political union of nation and state.

Afterword: Hegemonic Masculinities in International Politics

Enloe, C. — 2008-05-06

But We're Men Aren't We!: Living History as a Site of Masculine Identity Construction

Hunt, S. J. — 2008-05-06

Living history—the presentation of a historical period using live actors—remains an under-researched area despite the range of disciplines that might be brought to focus. While living history became popular in North America from the mid-twentieth century as a means of education, it now constitutes the basis of a fast-growing leisure-time pursuit— one that signifies a number of engendered trajectories in the sphere of leisure. This article will explore the significance of living history in terms of male identity. It will argue that as patriarchal structures are eroded and challenged, the construction, indeed, reconstruction of perceived traditional masculinities, may be negotiated and manufactured through the site of a serious leisure pursuit that attempts to draw boundaries with the feminine.

A Prison within a Prison?: The Masculinity Narratives of Male Prisoners

Evans, T., Wallace, P. — 2008-05-06

This study uses a narrative analysis to explore the masculinity narratives of male prisoners. Individual interviews were conducted with nine men aged twenty-two to forty-seven. Using a method described by Agar and Hobbs, extracts were taken from each narrative and grouped around local, global, and themal coherence. These showed that participants fell into three groups: one accepting and internalizing the normative codes of hegemonic masculinity, another growing up within these codes but transforming them through key life turning points into something "softer and gentler," and the third defining their sense of self outside hegemonic norms. The implications of these findings for the men's emotional well-being and for working with hypermasculinity in prisons are discussed along with ideas for developing this research.

Book Review: Gardaphe, Fred L. (2006). From Wiseguys to Wise Men: The Gangster and Italian American Masculinities. New York: Routledge

Baker, A. — 2008-05-06

Book Review: Malin, Brenton J. (2005). American Masculinity Under Clinton: Popular Media and the Nineties "Crisis of Masculinity." New York: Peter Lang

Shary, T. — 2008-05-06

Book Review: Forth, Christopher E. (2004). The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press

Garelick, R. — 2008-05-06

Book Review: Ouzgane, L., ed. (2006). Islamic Masculinities. New York: Zed Books

Kanaaneh, R. — 2008-05-06

Book Review: Benemann, William. (2006). Male--Male Intimacy in Early America: Beyond Romantic Friendships. San Francisco: Harrington Park Press

Jabour, A. — 2008-05-06

Inventing the "All-American Boy": A Case Study of the Capture of Boys' Issues by Conservative Groups

Weaver-Hightower, M. B. — 2008-03-10

In the United States and internationally in recent years, a great deal of attention, particularly within popular publications, has been paid to boys, their rearing, and their education. While much of this concern has clearly had conservative aims or at least conservative overtones, even the more progressive elements of the concern over boys have been "pulled into" the conservative camp. Indeed, the entire advocacy position for boys has often been (discursively, at least) relegated to conservatism. This article examines why this happens and, more important, shows how this occurs on a small scale. The author focuses here on how conservatives "pull in" rather than how the Left "pushes out." Using frameworks laid out by Apple, Bernstein, Bourdieu, and others, the author shows how an unlikely artifact—a toy catalog—might serve as a case study for the methods conservative groups use to pull the debate, as well as those teachers and parents who are intimately affected by its outcomes, under the "umbrella" of conservative modernization. These techniques include mobilizing general similarities to the boys debate, appealing to the tastes of particular class fractions, using recontextualizing processes, appealing through visual forms, accounting for dissonances, creating the constitutive outside, and perhaps most important, providing a possible solution to the "problem" of boys. I discuss implications of these techniques and advocate a reclaiming of the debates by progressive forces.

Individual Bodies, Collective State Interests: The Case of Israeli Combat Soldiers

Sasson-Levy, O. — 2008-03-10

The primary question this article raises is how democratic societies, whose liberal values seem to contradict the coercive values of the military, persuade men to enlist and participate in fighting. The author argues that part of the answer lies in alternative interpretation of transformative bodily and emotional practices. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Israeli combat soldiers, the author claims that the warrior's bodily and emotional practices are constituted through two opposing discursive regimes: self-control and thrill. The nexus of these two themes promotes an individualized interpretation frame of militarized practices, which blurs the boundaries between choice and coercion, presents mandatory military service as a fulfilling self-actualization, and enables soldiers to ignore the political and moral meanings of their actions. Thus, the individualized body and emotion management of the combat soldier serves the symbolic and pragmatic interests of the state, as it reinforces the cooperation between hegemonic masculinity and Israeli militarism.

Measuring Attitudes toward Gender Norms among Young Men in Brazil: Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the GEM Scale

Pulerwitz, J., Barker, G. — 2008-03-10

This article describes the development and psychometric evaluation of a twenty-four-item scale to measure attitudes toward gender norms among young men: the Gender-Equitable Men (GEM) Scale. Scale items on gender norms related to sexual and reproductive health, sexual relations, violence, domestic work, and homophobia are designed. Items are based on previous qualitative work in the community and a literature review and administered to a household sample of 742 men, including 223 young men ages fifteen to twenty-four, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The current analysis focuses on the young men, as they were the main audience for a planned intervention to promote gender equitable and HIV risk reduction behaviors. Factor analyses support two subscales, and the scale is internally consistent (alpha = .81). As hypothesized, more support for equitable norms (i.e., higher GEM Scale scores) is significantly associated with less self-reported partner violence, more contraceptive use, and a higher education level.

Men, Sex, and Homosociality: How Bonds between Men Shape Their Sexual Relations with Women

Flood, M. — 2008-03-10

Male-male social bonds have a powerful influence on the sexual relations of some young heterosexual men. Qualitative analysis among young men aged eighteen to twenty-six in Canberra, Australia, documents the homosocial organization of men's heterosexual relations. Homosociality organizes men's sociosexual relations in at least four ways. For some of these young men, male-male friendships take priority over male-female relations, and platonic friendships with women are dangerously feminizing. Sexual activity is a key path to masculine status, and other men are the audience, always imagined and sometimes real, for one's sexual activities. Heterosexual sex itself can be the medium through which male bonding is enacted. Last, men's sexual storytelling is shaped by homosocial masculine cultures. While these patterns were evident particularly among young men in the highly homosocial culture of a military academy, their presence also among other groups suggests the wider influence of homosociality on men's sexual and social relations.

Men, Me, and Abortion: On Doing the Right Thing

Shostak, A. — 2008-03-10

The author recounts his long personal involvement in the abortion drama of over 400,000 males annually found in the waiting rooms of over 400 clinics. He shares research findings from four waves of survey data from 1984 through 2004 involving 3,000 males. Highlights include the desire of almost all to stay with the clinic patient throughout the procedure and afterwards in the recovery room, though very few clinics allow this. A majority would like family planning education sessions, and some would appreciate personal counseling, though very few clinics offer these services. Clinics that pioneer in helping men could be honored, others pressured to do so, and laws considered to force reforms across the board. To date the Men's Movement has ignored the entire matter, and thereby missed a major opportunity to help many males claim a new and better manhood in what for many remains a secret and exceedingly trying matter.

Book Review: Reich, Jacqueline. (2004). Beyond the Latin Lover: Marcello Mastroianni, Masculinity, and Italian Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 216 pp., $21.95

Laberge, Y. — 2008-03-10

Book Review: Kaplan, Danny. (2006). The Men We Loved: Male Friendships and Nationalism in Israeli Culture. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books

Shor, E. — 2008-03-10

Book Review: Grasmuck, S., & Goldwater, J. (2005). Protecting Home: Class, Race and Masculinity in Boys' Baseball. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press

Wazienski, R. — 2008-03-10

Book Review: Reichert, J. (2006). In the Company of Men: Representations of Male-Male Sexuality in Meiji Literature. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 282 pp., $60 (cloth)

Miller, S. D. — 2008-03-10

Book Review: Abdel-Shehid, G. (2005). Who Da Man? Black Masculinities and Sporting Cultures, Toronto: CSPI, 198 pp., $19.95, paperback

Robinson, V. — 2008-03-10

Book Review: Brokeback Mountain. Produced by James Schamus; directed by Ang Lee; screenplay by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, based on the short story by Annie Proulx

Rodriguez, N. — 2008-03-10

"Sensitive and Real Macho All at the Same Time": Young Heterosexual Men and Romance

Allen, L. — 2007-09-18

What is the place of romance in young men's lives? Do young men enact a romantic masculinity? This article examines young men's experience of romance and what investments they have in romantic identity. Drawing on a New Zealand—based sample of seventeen-to nineteen-year-olds, the author investigates the way in which romantic masculinity is evoked during seventeen focus-group discussions. The article explores whether romantic masculinity offers a new form of masculinity in New Zealand and to what extent it departs from hegemonic practices of "hard" masculinity. Its potential as a nonhegemonic form of masculinity that challenges oppressive heterosexual relations is also analyzed. It is argued that the particular expression of romantic masculinity evidenced in this research no longer constitutes a subordinate form of masculinity in New Zealand. Instead, "doing romance" is theorized as being reconfigured within the operation of hegemonic masculinity in a way that highlights the flexibility and stability of these practices of power.

Silence, Condoms, and Masculinity: Heterosexual Japanese Males Negotiating Contraception

Castro-Vazquez, G., Kishi, I. — 2007-09-18

To investigate how some Japanese graduate students understand their masculine identity and negotiate sexual encounters and condom use, the authors interviewed sixty twenty-four-year-old to twenty-six-year-old heterosexual men during the summer of 1997. They used a set of three interviews covering three areas: home, school and/or job, and sexual life. In talking about sexual encounters and decision making about contraception, they found that male's responsibility and protection are considered the main reasons for keeping decisions under their control. Allusions to sexuality as an act closely related to reproduction make condoms to be regarded as a barrier, which negates the pleasure of sex and interferes with arousal. The authors did not find any reference to "safer sex." Inaccurate information and ignorance about methods of contraception seemed to be constant. The association of condoms with contraception seemed to deny the possibilities of condoms as protection against sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

Hegemonic Masculinities in East and West Germany (German Democratic Republic and Federal Republic of Germany)

Brandes, H. — 2007-09-18

Proceeding from Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity, this article examines the effect of differing social structures and culturally dominant patterns on masculinities in the German states, separated until 1989, German Democratic Republic and Federal Republic of Germany. The article starts with interviews with East German men, who were questioned about their understanding of masculinity and their view of the differences compared with West German men. The results of the interviews are analyzed against the background of the differing social developments in both German countries. Two different hegemonic patterns are identified: the hegemonic masculinity in West Germany is described as a pattern oriented on the lifestyle and aesthetic standard of modern middle classes and transnational entrepreneurship, while the hegemonic masculinity in the former German Democratic Republic is shaped through a proletarian-petty bourgeois lifestyle and taste. The thesis is formulated that after the unification of the two countries, the proletarian-petty bourgeois pattern lost its hegemonic role and, compared with the West German pattern of masculinity, has become marginalized.

Race to the Top: Masculinity, Sport, and Nature in German Magazine Advertising

Worsching, M. — 2007-09-18

This article focuses on the myth of hegemonic masculinity in the context of discourses of gender, sport, and nature in advertising, with reference to Der Spiegel, the leading German news magazine, and to Dav Panorama, the largest European mountaineering magazine. The article considers commodity advertisements that employ masculinist sports metaphors (in Der Spiegel) and contrasts them with others designed to sell a range of outdoor sports equipment and/or to promote the idea of sustainable human interaction with the natural environment (in Dav Panorama). Advertisements targeting affluent men are critically discussed, and the symbolic codes of masculinist aesthetics—visualizations of the desire to "conquer" all social constraint—are highlighted. Sports metaphors of all-out competition are compared with broader, less masculinist concepts of sport and nature to underline the ideological character of promotional constructs produced to exploit men's—and women's—fears of failing within a social and cultural order dominated by men.

Telling It Like a Man: Masculinities and Battering Men's Accounts of Their Violence

Mullaney, J. L. — 2007-09-18

Despite the increase in recent decades in research on men's violence against women, few studies focus exclusively on men's verbal accounts of this violence. In this article, the author compares men's accounts offered to her as a researcher with those accounts reportedly given to female partners. Although the author expects men to attempt to excuse their violence when accounting to her as a researcher, men make overwhelming use of justifications. Somewhat as expected, they say they apologize to their partners following a violent incident, but surprisingly, they also refuse to account to their partners at times. A deeper look into these contradictory accounts reveals the creative ways men use verbal strategies as redress for various forms of masculinity they feel have been taken from them by their partners and/or agencies of the state and how hegemonic masculinity enables them to use certain accounts in the first place.

Performative Masculinities in Eric Bogosian's Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll

Goins, D. — 2007-09-18

Eric Bogosian's Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll provides a case study of masculinities as they were performed in society in the 1980s and performative directions for masculinities in the future. In this article, using Arthur Frank's sociology of the body as an organizing lens, I examine the rich narratives Bogosian wrote and performed. The problematization of the performance of the male form provides fertile ground for testing what it meant to be a man at the time and more importantly how masculinities danced across popular culture using consumer, aggressive-consumer, aggressive, and communicative forms. I interrogate Bogosian's performance as a text that argues against the "sex," "drugs," "rock & roll" lifestyle of the era in favor of a more communication-based orientation.

Book Reviews: Miescher, Stephan F. (2005). Making Men in Ghana. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press xxxii + 323 pp., $65.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper)

Ejikeme, A. — 2007-09-18

Book Reviews: Newton, Judith. (2005). From Panthers to Promise Keepers: Rethinking the Men's Movement. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 295 pp., $26.95 (paper). 304 pp., $70.00 (cloth)

Read Barton, E. — 2007-09-18

Book Reviews: Anderson, Eric. (2005). In the Game: Gay Athletes and the Cult of Masculinity. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. 208 pp., $19.95

Sabo, D. — 2007-09-18