Sex, Violence, and the Religious “Other”

Abstract

This article examines the gendered portrayals of religion in Scandinavian men’s magazines. Based on verbal and visual material from Slitz, M!, and Mann, focusing on the years 1998 and 2008, the study asks how are gendered ideas of religion and religiosity constructed in Scandinavian men’s magazines? and how can these constructions be interpreted, both in light of the specific contexts of the men’s magazines and broader cultural notions of gender and religion? The findings show that the magazines construct gendered religious subjectivities: the “crazy religious girlfriend” in 1998, the sexualized Christian woman in 2008, and “the bad, patriarchal religious man,” prevalent in both years. This article proposes that the constructions are shaped and informed by dominating cultural ideas of religion and gender, for example, informed by the construction of “the bad Muslim Man” and more specifically set into the gendered scripts on intimate relationships and violence characterizing the new lad discourse.