Construction Of Masculinity Research Articles

The meaning of masculinity for educated young Bedouins.

Israel's Bedouin population-an Indigenous, traditional, collective, patriarchal society-is at the height of social change, introducing modernization, religion and altered gender relations. Young Bedouin men are experiencing the ramifications of their masculine identity. As in other collective societies that emphasize mutual dependence and cooperation, honour has great meaning and unlike individualistic societies, maintaining masculine and family honour is important in the construction of masculinity. These cultural differences may influence young men's views of honour, particularly family honour, which is a key principle in collective cultures. An exploratory qualitative study used semi-structured interviews of 20 educated Bedouin young men and grounded theory to investigate what masculinity means for them. They defined masculinity by comparing theirs to that of the 'other'. They also described the crucial evaluators of masculinity: the family's older men. Protection and close supervision of women were found to be key factors in the assessment of masculinity. Also evident was the influence of the men's education on their gendered perceptions and their use of Western-oriented language regarding egalitarianism and women's rights. The findings may contribute to social work practice, especially in patriarchal societies, and may help in understanding how men may use their patriarchal power to generate change.

“Why is your body a different shape?” fatness and masculinity in the superhero film

ABSTRACT In recent decades, American superhero films, and with them often very traditional constructs of masculinity, have become omnipresent in cinemas worldwide. This article examines a specific type of male representation, male fatness, in two examples of the genre, Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019). The author argues that in both films the fat male character is depicted as demasculinized, thereby standing in a tradition of male fatness stereotyped as outside of normative masculinity. In the superhero genre the body plays a particularly relevant role in signifying a hegemonic masculinity, which is highlighted by the way the two films position the characters’ fatness, or also behaviors associated with fatness, in contrast to the expectations of superhero masculinity.

Networks of Violence in the Covid-19 Era

Objective: From the review of the theories of the cycle of violence, gender violence and the social construction of masculine and feminine identities. Methodology: Carried out a non - experimental, exploratory and descriptive study with a nonrandom selection of students a public university with the aim of establishing a balance and a prospective expectation of violence. Results: The results show that of synaptic weights are explained by incoming, and outgoing latent layers on the pre-contemplation of violence, contemplation of aggressive relationships and personal change. Conclusion: Lines alluding to the kind of relationship research, negotiation and consensus decision making to warn couple conflicts.

Enabling Politeness: Perfumers and Male Self‐Fashioning in Britain, c. 1750–1800

AbstractPerfumers have long been associated with the manufacture and sale of cosmetic products for women in the eighteenth century. This article argues, however, that the place of perfumers as retailers of goods for men has been overlooked and that they were, in fact, key enablers in the construction of polite masculinity. In so doing, it also raises broader questions about the gendering both of particular types of retail and of shop spaces.

Greasing the wheel through bribes: interaction of national culture and local business conditions

Purpose: Corruption, which includes payments of bribes to government officials, poses a serious impediment to the advancement of developing countries. In this study, a model is developed based on anomie theory and research on ethical behaviour, culture and decision making to predict whether and to what extent small business owners bribe government officials.Design/methodology/approach: Using hierarchical linear modelling on a large World Bank data set, the study hypothesises that the business environmental conditions of crime prevalence, theft and disorder, transportation difficulties, and time-resource requirements for dealing with the government, function as obstacles that enhance small business owners’ informal payments to government officials. The study further proposes that the national culture constructs of masculinity and power distance moderate the relationship between business environment conditions and small business owners’ bribes.Findings/results: The study found support for the role of the proposed business environment conditions, as well as partial support for the role of masculinity and power distance as factors that strengthen the positive relationship between challenging business environments for small business owners and corrupt behaviour.Practical implications: The study proposes ways governments can address structural uncertainties which are impediments to small business survival. It also offers ways small businesses can counteract cultural and economic challenges that influence corrupt behaviour.Value: This study improves the understanding of the role of the supply-side of corruption. It also explains how the lens of anomie theory leads to a better understanding of the mechanism of action of inducements to deviate from the norm, as happens in corrupt behaviour practices.

Child rape: moving toward visibility, voice, and an ethics of understanding in Tshepang: The Third Testament

Lara Foot Newton’s play, Tshepang: The Third Testament, is based on the 2001 rape of a nine-month-old child in South Africa (the child, who survived, was renamed Baby Tshepang, or “Hope”). Systemic exploitation and poor living conditions—including alcoholism, poverty, war, unemployment, lack of education, and toxic constructions of masculinity—have engendered child sexual abuse in post-apartheid South Africa. By analyzing how the play diverges from the searing media accounts of the 2001 rape case, the article will demonstrate how cycles of violence and structured oppression have contributed to the prevalence of child rape and the ways in which the play invites productive engagement with the issue. Part of this discussion will include an examination of the figure of the rapist as presented in the play: abused and traumatized throughout his childhood, he ultimately becomes the victimizer.

Men Who Brew: Masculinity and the Production of Drink in Medieval Icelandic Literature

Men Who Brew: Masculinity and the Production of Drink in Medieval Icelandic Literature

Male Perspective on Construction of Masculinity: Issues and Challenges in Lahore

Masculinity is the dominant gender discourse of masculine behaviour embedded in men’s everyday practices, behaviours, and actions. Since at least the 1980s, these gendered social norms have been argued to create stress, strain, and conflicts for men. Investigating those experiences and circumstances where gender patterns are less or more open to change is an important task of this research. Therefore, this study aims to include men in the “study up” approach of the gender research domain and include their experiences in the conversation of gendered lobbying under patriarchal perceptions. Using the Gender Role Strain paradigm as a guiding framework, the study intends to explore the male perspective on the construction of masculinity in contemporary Pakistani society. A qualitative phenomenological research design has been used, and snowball and purposive sampling techniques are used in conjunction for the recruitment of participants with the help of pre-defined inclusion criteria. The participants of the study are diverse in terms of age, educational background, and family situation. Each participant was interviewed at length using an in-depth interview guide, including topics from the beginning of childhood across the lifespan. The result of the interviews supports the social constructionist perspective of masculinity and also focuses on the strain and challenges of the masculine norms associated with the existing conceptions of masculinity and gender role strain.

Misogyny and the construction of toxic masculinity in the Spanish Manosphere (Burbuja.info)

The anonymity of the Manosphere has provided a fertile breeding ground for the spread of misogyny through increased hate speech on the Internet. In recent years, this virtual space composed mostly of men, has been the subject of numerous studies aimed at identifying the discursive mechanisms of identity constructions that underlie the denigration of women. This paper takes the findings from international research on the subject to address a phenomenon still little explored in Spain through the analysis of misogynistic comments on Burbuja.info. Economic forum. The analysis sample comprises 4,281 messages that include the lexeme “woman” posted over 2.5 years, 761 of which contain expressions that ridicule, disparage, or insult women. Thematic analysis demonstrates the repetition of misogynistic topics and tropes common in the most radical Reddit and 4chan subforums, such as hypergamy, objectification, and the constant disparagement of the world of women, not to mention criticism of feminism, left-wing political parties, and legislation on gender violence. The results obtained show that the “male identity crisis” is narratively constructed in the messages on Burbuja.info using the motif of sacrifice –the cornerstone of a monotypic story in which the purpose of the hero-man-victim’s journey is to punish the villain-woman. Furthermore, we also found that there are different configurations of identity related to attitudes toward women; these match up with the four most prominent masculinist subcultures identified in the leading literature on the subject: Men Rights activists (MRA), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), Pickup Artists (PUA), and Involuntary Celibates (Incels).

(Eco)horror of Masculinity: Confronting Abject Nature in the Films of Robert Eggers

ABSTRACT This essay argues that Robert Egger’s films, The Witch and The Lighthouse deconstructs gender relations and their effects on the environment. I illustrate how the films construct masculinity as perpetually in crisis and as a struggle for more accumulation, while the feminine is perceived as monstrous and abject. Both films, I argue, provide a visceral encounter with human’s own connections to nature and the damage that occurs when we deny that dependence. My analysis takes on an intersectional ecofeminist perspective informed by the concepts of the abject and monstrous-feminine, suggesting that these terms can be useful in illustrating and interpreting an affective confrontation with oppressive dualisms.

Juggling Masculinities: Being a Middle-Class Young Man in Dhaka

To date, South Asian masculinity studies have largely investigated the construction of masculinities at the structural level, while subjective experiences have received little attention. This paper analyses data gathered from ethnographic research conducted among 40 adolescent boys living in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and asks: how do middle-class adolescent boys in Dhaka construct different ideals of masculinity and negotiate those in their everyday life at home and among peers? Which ideas about sexuality are involved? This analysis provides in-depth insights into the ways in which different models of masculinity are (re)constructed and embraced or resisted at the subjective level by adolescents in their everyday negotiations of sexuality. We will argue that this younger generation of men encounter unique gendered vulnerabilities in the contexts of fast urbanisation, an increasingly uncertain labour market and a lack of support in negotiating their emotional and social wellbeing.

“It was wrapped in a kind of normalcy”: The lived experience and consequences in adulthood of survivors of female child sexual abuse

BackgroundSurvivors' surveys on the frequency of sexual offenses committed by women indicated a prevalence rate of 9.9 % to 11.6 %. Nevertheless, only a few studies have explored the long-term consequences of abuse on survivors. ObjectivesExamine the lived experiences and the long-term consequences of child sexual abuse committed by women. ParticipantsFifteen adult participants who experienced child sexual abuse conducted by female offenders participated in the study. MethodsThe Interpretive Phenomenological Approach was applied to semi-structured interviews. ResultsThree central themes emerged: types of abuse, characteristics of the perpetrator, and consequences of abuse. Most survivors experienced direct or indirect forms of sexual abuse committed by their mothers. In most cases, the offenders masked their abuse in caregiving, disciplinary or playful behavior. The survivors perceived their mothers as narcissistic, controlling, hostile, and having tremendous difficulties with separation. The survivors reported the need to engage in extensive negative long-lasting psychopathologies, which they attributed partly to having been invalidated and silenced by society. Many participants expressed fears of re-enacting the survivor or perpetrator role, which has led to difficulties in various relationships. They described an altered perception of their bodies as shameful and repulsive, manifesting in self-harm, eating disorders, and the elimination of signs of femininity. ConclusionThis complex form of sexual abuse hampers the internalization and the construction of positive feminine, masculine, and parental identities.

Hustler Masculinity in the Nigerian E-fraud Novel

This article identifies the figure of the e-fraud hustler as a contemporary iteration of an African discourse of masculinity. Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani's I Do Not Come to You by Chance and Chuma Nwokolo's Diaries of a Dead African represent men's engagement in the e-fraud hustle as a neoliberal gamble to monetize their masculinity. As men's pecuniary agency is threatened and limited by the vagaries of neoliberal capitalism, it is equally mediated by yet another paradigm of neoliberal capitalist ideology, namely, (the criminal redefinition of) entrepreneurship. To be a man thus necessitates an ever-shifting performance of terminal and complicit masculinity, a paradoxical development in which men take risks to circumvent economic exclusion by imitating the expediencies of neoliberal capitalism. The novels register this money-governed sense of masculinity through gender discourses and narrative strategies that resist fixed constructions of African masculinity in favor of an ever-vigilant logic of its contingency and plurality.

Who Do You Think You Are? A Personal Response to Adrienne Harris's "Gender as a Soft Assembly: Tomboys' Stories".

Two decades ago, Adrienne Harris published "Gender as a Soft Assembly," a refreshing, far-reaching paper that intertwines both traditional and cutting-edge psychoanalytic gender theory with anecdotes from Harris's own life as a tomboy in the 1970s. In broadening staid models of development, "Gender as a Soft Assembly" provides the potential for freedom, fluidity, and creativity as an antidote to the rigid, binary constructions of masculinity and femininity. In response, I've summarized the most striking aspects of her paper that coincidentally commingle with my having been a tomboy and offer an opportunity for a reconsideration of my own history.

On resistance and pluriversal voices of subversive archaism

On resistance and pluriversal voices of subversive archaism

Stereotip gender lintas generasi: Eksplorasi konstruksi gender kontemporer generasi milenial (Y) dan generasi pascamilenial (Z) di Bandung

Millennials (Y), born between 1981-2000, and post-millennial (Z), born in 2000 and after, grew up in two very different socio-economic-political contexts. The Gen Ys were born and grew up in Soeharto's authoritarian era, and Gen Zs were born after the fall of Soeharto, but both grew up in the democratic era with the massive development of information technology. Both Millennials and post-millennials face different gender issues from previous generations. Even for similar gender issues, different context demands a different approach in understanding the issues. This research explores the construction of masculinity and femininity that is understood and believed by the Bandung’s millennials (Y) and post-millennials (Z) generation. Data collection was carried out in two stages. The first stage used the photo-interviewing method with 20 participants. The second stage was conducted with an online survey method of 184 respondents. The results show that millennial and post-millennial generations have an understanding of gender that tends to be non-stereotyping, not many signifiers are categorized as feminine or masculine.

“Why Should a Married Man Fetch Water?” Masculinities, gender relations, and the embodied political ecology of urban water insecurity in Malawi

ABSTRACT In sub-Saharan Africa, water insecurity is intertwined with gender and sociocultural norms. While extensive scholarship exists on gender-water relations in the region, it predominantly focuses on women’s roles and responsibilities, seldom considering the role of masculinities. This paper examines masculinities, gender relations, and women’s embodied experiences of water insecurity. It situates women’s embodied experiences of water insecurity within household and community masculinities. The study was conducted in Lilongwe, Malawi, and data were drawn from interviews, focus groups, observations, and household surveys. The findings advance the gender-water literature in at least three significant ways. First, they demonstrate how gendered labour underpins women’s embodied experiences of water insecurity. Second, they show that women’s decisions and strategies for coping with water insecurity are themselves an embodied consequence of water insecurity. Finally, they illuminate how men’s perceptions and constructions of masculinity, expressed through marital expectations of femininity, shape women’s embodied experiences of water insecurity. Together, the findings reveal intricate intersections between masculinities, gender relations, and women’s everyday embodied experiences of water insecurity, validating the body as a significant site of geographic inquiry.

“Date me date me”: AI chatbot interactions as a resource for the online construction of masculinity

This study examines how interactions with a “female” chatbot are drawn as a resource for the construction of masculine identity in the context of the South Korean web. I analyze three posts shared in an online community where users of Luda Lee, an open-domain AI chatbot, gather to talk about their interactions with her, often to sexually harass her. Drawing on Kiesling's (2011) discussion of alignment in the discursive construction of gender, I examine alignment in users' interactions with and about Luda as reflective of their desire to achieve and be recognized as achieving dominance over women and other men. My analysis demonstrates how Luda, as a friendly female chatbot, becomes a convenient resource for users to draw on in their construction of masculinity. This study contributes to discussions of masculinity in online discourse, as well as to conversations on ethical considerations in AI on the female gendering and harassment of bots.

Peruvian Masculinities: A review

This article is an overview of Peruvian studies and research on men and masculinities. This field of study has around forty years of existence and Peru has contributed with scholarship that advances the field both theoretically and methodologically. This overview identifies seven main areas prioritized by Peruvian social scientists: 1) the construction of masculinities; 2) masculinities and gender violence; 3) reconstruction and relearning of masculinities; 4) paternities; 5) emotions and corporality; 6) representations of masculinities in the media and literature; and 7) masculinities and gender diversity. I conclude this overview by highlighting new ways for research.

Alcoholic herbal sex drinks and the construction of masculinities in Nigeria

Extant works on masculinities have focused on their differential patterns in Nigeria. However, none of these studies has examined how masculinities are constructed through the metaphorical representation of alcoholic herbal sex drinks and their functions. Drawing insights from Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory, Forceville’s visual metaphor and van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach to ideology to analyze the names together with verbo-visual conceptualization of alcoholic herbal sex drinks, this paper discusses some of the subcultural ideologies that delineate masculinities among the manufacturers, sellers, and consumers of these drinks in southwestern Nigeria. Analysis of the data reveals the construction of masculinities by this group in terms of the territorial and subordinating sexual status of the male. Also, the male sex organ and muscular male body are conceptualized by this group as sexual weapons, controllers of the female sexual satisfaction, and the cleaning agents for vagina. The paper concludes that these drinks and the associated sexual beliefs reflect some of the trending subcultural ideologies that discursively shape the construction of masculinities in Nigeria.