MASCULINE BODIES, SEXUALITIES AND SUBJECTIVITIES

Abstract

The increase in social inequality, which the author attributes to the spread of neoliberalism around the world, complicates the system of power relations between men, their bodies and sexualities. This leads to a differentiation of masculinities. Forty-three biographical interviews are applied to a critical rethinking of the configuration of power relations among male blue-collar and white-collar workers. The author concludes that work guides emotional relationships and consequently regulates the sexual life of men from both social environments. In addition, the regimes of industrial and office work generate different logical manipulations of male corporeality, which are carried over into the private sphere and employed in structuring masculine subjectivity. Physical skills and strength are the main factors on which blue-collar manual workers base their masculinity, while bodily representations and performance serve in that capacity for white-collar workers. This social differentiation in the structure of work results in uneven chances for creating a “successful” masculine subject. Male blue-collar workers call themselves “losers”, while white-collar workers perceive themselves as “successful” even though men from both environments are exploited. The physical labour of a blue-collar worker is alienated by the process of corporeal management on the job, while the body of a white-collar office worker is commoditized and becomes a sign in the system of symbolic exchange. At the same time, the research shows that the boundaries between social environments are becoming blurred and class consciousness is weakening. This allows both blue-collar workers and white-collar workers to follow similar sexual strategies which differ only in form and style. The masculine subjectivities of blue-collar and white-collar workers include the very same structural components derived from the traditional, liberal and new versions of masculinity, which are distinct in the means and forms of their expression.