Imagined Masculinity: Body, Sexuality, and Family among Israeli Military Reserves

Abstract

This article explores how middle‐class Jewish men on reserve duty in the Israel Defense Forces form a “proper” masculinity through humor and jokes. Reserve service creates a fruitful territory for researching four issues that have not been extensively studied in the literature on masculinities: the relation between gender and age, the periodic reaffirmation of masculinity along the life course, how women are perceived as sexual objects and how informal social pressure is placed on singles to marry and begin families, and how men not only are motivated by homophobia but use images of women and homosexuals to map and interpret power relations and competition between men.