Masculine Experience Research Articles

Where Repronormativity is Questioned: A Case Study of Male Pregnancy in Berlin

Some trans men can get pregnant and through that decision they question repronormative ideals. This study aims to explore the experience of these men and to understand how Berlin, where they live, may influence their experience of pregnancy. To do so, a case study was conducted and, using semi-structured interviews, two participants talked about their experiences in the city, parenthood, masculinity, pregnancy and social experience. The results were analyzed following the thematic analysis by Braun and Clarke. Four main themes emerged: (1) unseen pregnancy, (2) (un)identity challenges, (3) interpersonal experiences of a pregnant man and (4) specificities of life in Berlin. All the themes seem to be involved with negotiations between their personal experiences and the social expectations about their pregnancy. The main results reveal that pregnancy was conceptualized by participants as a masculine experience, despite the lack of recognition by society. Some characteristics of Berlin - as the existence of a supportive Queer community, the economic and political system, and the existence of certain laws - seem to have an influence on the decision of these people to get pregnant. However, participants reported experiences of discrimination and invisibility. Therefore, despite the evidence of some protector factors, the city is not completely free of the violence inherent to a cisheterosexist system. The principal practical implications of this work are the creation of inclusive and safe spaces, free of discrimination, to allow the integration of visibility around masculine pregnancy, if people decide to, in order to improve recognition and respect.

‘Becoming manly’: white South African defence force veterans negotiating masculinity

ABSTRACT This study examines how white South African men reflect on their experiences of being and becoming army veterans, while negotiating masculinity. In the context of ‘high apartheid’, Afrikaner domination of the socio-political landscape, ethnic and racialised inequalities, the veterans negotiated being white English-speaking men through reflecting on, critiquing and disassociating from military masculinity. An English South African masculinity was upheld by distancing from Afrikaner domination and values, violence and compulsory heterosexuality. These findings suggest that while a military masculinity offered men a powerful template to assert their authority as white men, such power was nuanced by English South Africans’ relative political impotence, the domination of Afrikaans as a language and illustrates the heterogeneity in the experience of white veteran masculinity under apartheid. At the same time, however, white English veterans were complicit in and benefitted from whiteness and the power accrued in the country by virtue of race, class and history of British colonialism. We argue that the experience of being and becoming conscripts and the reflection on military masculinity directs attention to the ways in which broader social and political contexts have effects for the shaping of masculinity reflecting hierarchies of power and fluidity.

(O-33) PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF PATIENTS WITH PENIS CANCER: REPORTS OF PATIENTS ACCOMPANIED AT THE UROLOGY ONCOLOGY OUTPATIENT CLINIC OF THE HOSPITAL DE CLINICAS DA UNICAMP

Abstract Penile cancer (PC) mainly affects lower socioeconomic groups and those with less education. Patients who develop PC often experience symptoms for months before consult a urologist. The delay of the treatment affects the severity of the prognosis. Penectomy is still the best treatment available. This study aims to understand the meaning of the experience of patients who had PC and underwent partial or total penectomy treatment. Patients were approached and invited to participate. Upon acceptance, the nature of the research, objectives and all ethical precautions were explained. All patients were seen by the same psychologist. The technique used was the open interview. We interviewed 7 patients who had and treated penile cancer with partial or total penectomy. Data were collected through recording. Data processing followed the following steps: literal transcription of the interviews; description of interviews in formal language; first reduction seeking the meaning of the reported experiences; listing of the units of meaning of each of the interviews collected. The next step was to specify what is common in the interviewees stories in relation to their lived experience. It is possible to see that CP is a debilitating experience for those who live it. QoL is affected, as is the experience of masculinity itself. It is a very uncomfortable experience, both before and after the treatment. The patient with CP lives with the symptoms for a long time before seeking a solution. It is concluded that the PC has multiple variables, and the number of reports that talk about how difficult it was to reach at the diagnosis, not only due to the patient's own denial of symptoms, but also due to the inefficient care received in countless consultations, brings the reflection on the quality of knowledge of the professionals who provide assistance to this population in relation to PC. Financing CAPES.

Barriers and facilitators to depression care among Latino men in a primary care setting: a qualitative study

BackgroundIn the United States, Latinos face a wide array of cultural and structural barriers to accessing and utilizing mental health care. Latino men specifically are at high risk of receiving inadequate mental health care, possibly due to additional obstacles they experience that are related to masculinity. Among men more generally, greater adherence to emotional control and self-reliance is associated with higher depression severity and less depression help-seeking. Men experience more stigma toward depression and help-seeking and are less likely to be diagnosed with depression than women. However, Latino men’s barriers and facilitators to depression care remain largely unexplored. The objective of this study was to examine barriers and facilitators to depression care that are related to masculinity among English- and Spanish-speaking Latino men in a primary care setting.MethodsWe used convenience and purposive sampling to recruit primary care patients who self-identified as Latino men, spoke English or Spanish, and screened positive for depressive symptoms on the Patient Health Questionnaire-2 or had a history of depression. Semi-structured interviews were conducted between December 2020 and August 2021. The interview guide examined views and experiences of depression, masculinity, and barriers and facilitators to engaging in depression care. Utilizing consensual qualitative research and thematic analysis informed by modified grounded theory, barriers and facilitators to depression care were identified.ResultsWe interviewed thirteen participants who varied in English proficiency, education, income, and country of origin. Barriers and facilitators were placed into three domains—Self-Recognition of Depression, Seeking Help for Depression, and Depression Diagnosis and Treatment. Participants described aspects of masculinity as barriers (emotional control and pressure to provide), facilitators (honesty, courage, collaboration, practicality, and responsibility), or both (self-reliance and autonomy).ConclusionsMasculinity influences barriers and facilitators for depression care among Latino men at the levels of self-recognition, seeking help, and diagnosis and treatment. Clinicians may promote Latino men’s engagement in depression care by understanding patients’ values and framing depression care as affirming masculinity. Providing education to primary care physicians and other healthcare professionals on gender and depression and addressing structural barriers are essential to providing access to all who need depression care.

Alcohol and masculinity within community sports clubs in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT Traditionally, males have been more involved in community sports, and they also consume alcohol at higher rates compared to other genders in Aotearoa NZ. The present study drew on notions of gender and hegemonic masculinity to explore people's experiences of sports clubs, alcohol and masculinity. In-depth individual interviews were undertaken with 12 participants (10 males, 2 females, aged 23–56), who belonged to a range of sports clubs. Following transcription, the data were analysed thematically, and three key themes were identified: (1) pervasiveness: alcohol is everywhere; (2) masculine behaviours dominate; (3) feeling alienated. Findings reinforce how hegemonic masculinity and alcohol consumption remain pervasive within many community sports settings. This impacts on feelings of belonging and views on what constitutes appropriate behaviours. Those who do not belong to the dominant group, or conform to the status quo, are subordinated and formal hierarchies continue to favour dominant groups. Harmful behaviours linked with hegemonic masculinity were also exacerbated by alcohol consumption. Findings are considered in terms of how to change power dynamics and drinking practices perpetuated by hegemonic masculine norms to promote a more inclusive and safer space for all members of community sports clubs.

Formation of Feminine Truth in Poststructuralism

This essay traces the origin of feminine thought in poststructuralism, which opens up new vistas of experience that differ from traditional philosophical thinking based on a conceptual grasp of the world. Rather than viewing the feminine as the essence of the woman gender, it is seen here as the experience of a plurality of truths produced in the affectedness of the human body by the world. The representative function of language and methodology in traditional philosophy cannot capture the plurality of truths. Feminine experience is not a prerogative of women philosophers or feminist writers. It is accessible even to male philosophers. Since it is the outcome of the affectedness of the body by phenomena, it is accessible to all human beings, irrespective of their gender identities. The construction of the truth of entities in terms of their universal essence has a significant role in forming masculine and feminine experiences. Masculine experience is produced by the representation of conceptual truth by the self. Feminine is a kind of existence prior to self-formation that is in operation in all humans. The linguistic turn in philosophy created by Nietzsche and Saussure is the main force behind the growth of feminine thinking in poststructuralism. It marks the end of the abstract, concept-based thinking of the masculine sort and the formation of the differential thought of the feminine.

Millennials and Generation Z: Men’s Perspectives on Hashtag Feminism

In contemporary politics, feminist activism is largely conducted through social media and hashtag activism and is often called “hashtag feminism.” The feminist hashtags #MeToo, #HeForShe, and #HowIWillChange are well-known symbols of the modern feminist movement. This interpretive phenomenological study explored how Millennial and Generation Z men perceive the hashtag feminist movement. It also aimed to capture how these men experienced and perceived their masculinity as it related to contemporary gender politics. We conducted interviews with 12 social media-using Millennial and Generation Z men about their experiences of masculinity and hashtag feminism. We found that men’s views on hashtag feminism were contradictory and overlapping, changing in response to different contexts. Additionally, findings indicated that participants did not see hashtag feminism as representative of the feminist movement. Results suggested that features of online activist discourse deterred men from engaging in hashtag feminism.

Prostate Cancer and the Emotionology of Masculinity: Joking, Intellectualization, and the Reconstruction of Gender

This article builds on data gathered through focus group interviews with Swedish men treated for prostate cancer. First, we aim to analyse how the participants talk about and handle sensitive issues and common side effects. Second, we investigate how the participants’ feelings about their disease affect or interfere with their understanding of masculinity. The findings illustrate how participants partly break with historical expectations of men as emotionally inexpressive. Instead, in the groups they talk openly about incontinence, erectile dysfunction, and other sensitive issues. At the same time, these discussions can be positioned within certain discursive coping strategies. Using jokes and intellectualizing their health narratives, combined with a problematization and partial redefinition of gender and masculinity, most of the men adapt to their new life situation. The men’s ways of handling their emotions can be situated in the interface between discursive and gendered emotion ideologies, and lived experiences of masculinity.

Examining the Measurement Invariance of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory (CMNI-30) by Sexual Orientation.

An abbreviated version of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory, the CMNI-30, was developed with several strengths. However, its measurement invariance across men with different sexual orientations has not been examined in a U.S. sample, so it is unclear whether these different populations understand the items similarly. In addition, no studies have compared conformity to masculinity norms across sexual orientations. This would be important to understand sexual minority men's experience of masculinity and how it differs from heteronormative masculinity. This article explores the measurement invariance of the CMNI-30 among 882 heterosexual, gay, and bisexual+ men using confirmatory factor analysis, and compares their CMNI-30 subscale scores. Results indicated that the CMNI-30 demonstrated residual invariance between men of different sexual orientations, suggesting that men of different sexual orientations interpreted the items similarly. We also found higher levels of conformity to the masculine norms of Winning, Heterosexual self-presentation, and Power over women among heterosexual men relative to gay and bisexual+ men, and higher levels of Pursuit of status among gay men relative to the other groups. Results provide support for the use of the CMNI-30 in research with men of different sexual orientations.

What about older men? Towards a critical interrogation of conceptions of masculinities in northwestern Ghana

While research on older men’s constructions and experiences of masculinity has gained scholarly attention from the humanistic, medical, and social sciences, much of the debates tend to focus on experiences from contexts in the global North. The current study draws on the everyday experiences of fifteen older men in a rural setting in northwestern Ghana to foreground a critical understanding of the multiple ways in which ageing, and masculinities are experienced, challenged and negotiated on a daily basis. Our findings highlight the links between everyday experiences, gendered subjectivities, and culturally normative constructions of manhood. The participants of the study perceive ageing as a major setback to achieving hegemonic masculine status and based on the limitations it places on them, they conceptualise alternative notions of masculinity. These alternative ways of theorising hegemonic masculinity among older men focus on wisdom, experience and mentorship rather than independence, virility and emotionless as pervasive in contemporary discourses on masculinities.

Recognising the regenerative impacts of Canadian women tourism social entrepreneurs through a feminist ethic of care lens

PurposeThe overarching aim of this project is to understand the role women tourism social entrepreneurs (TSEs) play in contributing to regenerative practices in Canada.Design/methodology/approachSemi-structured interviews were carried out with women food TSEs with snowball sampling. This paper challenges the assumption that the masculine experience is the human experience. Accordingly, this research is informed by a feminist ethic of care lens to recognise the important role of Canadian women TSEs. Methodologically, the authors employed the strategies of a constructivist grounded theory to guide the analysis (Charmaz, 2011). This process involved carefully engaging in a close line by line reading of the transcripts, developing codes based on the authors’ dealings with the data including summarising, synthesising and sorting the data (Charmaz, 2011).FindingsThe analysis revealed three categories: (1) Adopting a regenerative mindset and enhancing well-being, (2) Supporting the consumption of real food and (3) Educating communities for regenerative and just futures. The analysis revealed the importance of women TSEs in adopting a regenerative and caring mindset to enhance the well-being of their communities and beyond.Research limitations/implicationsThe study focusses on the learnings from 11 entrepreneurs from Canada. There is a scope to expand the discussion with more interviews. The impact of this pandemic on the small businesses resulted in affecting the researchers’ participation by presenting some unique challenges in participant recruitment. Maybe the studies in the near future will focus on grounding the research papers based on other sexual orientations and indigenous social entrepreneurs.Practical implicationsThe authors hope future studies centre diversity and attend to the role of women in their communities to better under the diverse contributions. The work presented here is part of a broader study on the role and impact of women TSEs and so only reveals the tip of the Canadian iceberg. Forthcoming studies will attend to some of the gender-specific barriers faced by women TSEs and the supports required particularly in the wake of COVID-19. The authors hope other scholars continue to build on this work, adopting feminist approaches to enhance our understanding of the role women play in contributing to just, caring and regenerative futures.Social implicationsContributing to Higgins-Desbiolles and Monga's (2021) in-depth case study using an ethic of care to examine an Australian events business supporting homeless individuals, the analysis of the 11 in-depth interviews with Canadian TSE provides evidence of alternative ways women are delivering social value. Using an ethic of care lens has elicited the impacts created by the informants and the ripple effects particularly in light of regenerative practices which are crucial in the tourism sector as borders and destinations reopen to tourism as noted by Ateljevic (2020).Originality/valueThere are few studies in the tourism social entrepreneurship literature that recognise the agency and centres the vocies of women. Kimbu and Ngoasong (2016) made a call for more research to understand how women engage in social entrepreneurial activities and benefit their local communities. There are limited analyses on regenerative tourism in practice in the scholarly literature. To respond to this gap the authors examine the regenerative practices of women TSEs in Canada.

Jazz Feminism is to Soul as Purple is to Lavender

Jazz Feminism is to <i>Soul</i> as Purple is to Lavender

Male pre-service teachers: navigating masculinities on campus and on placement

ABSTRACT This paper reports on research examining how male pre-service primary school teachers negotiate masculinities during their time within majority-female spaces. Four white undergraduate pre-service teachers in the North of England, UK, who were training to teach children aged 5–11 years were recruited. Interviews took place pre-and-post their seven-week practicum within primary schools, relating to their experiences of masculinity within their course and practicum. Participants kept a solicited diary for the duration of the practicum. Using thematic analysis, we highlight how participants were both subject to and complicit in the (re)production of gendered stereotypes. Findings evidenced the participants’ awareness of gendered assumptions placed upon them; however, this did not necessarily predicate their rejection of such positions, suggesting male and female teachers share responsibility for largely maintaining current hegemonic constructions of masculinities within schools.

Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust

Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust

Desi Butch (Where the ’Twain Shall Meet)

The terms “desi” and “butch” are difficult to define separately but open up new possibilities for thinking sexuality and borders when located next to each other on the page. “Desi” can mean people from South Asia, and gestures toward land as home. “Butch” can mean queer masculinity, female masculinity, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual women’s subcultures. This article uses autoethnography to experiment with desi and butch next to one another to think about what desi queer and trans masculine genealogies and experiences might tell us about transnational logics of sexuality, space, home, and body. The article thinks through desi, butch, and desi butch as potential analytics of sexuality, movement, masculinity, intimacy, and desire, and attends to the work of the risks and costs of these shared terms. What does desi butch do to spatial modes of intimacy, alienation, care, fragmentation, and genealogy, in multiple vocabularies of land and home? The author asks after the complicated affects, temporalities, and desires signaled by desi butch as a category that troubles and has trouble with heteronormative border regimes and futurities across geohistories of North America and South Asia. This includes questions of translation, embodiment, and citizenship. Attending to their own desires, orientations, and experiences, the author asks what forms, spaces, and practices of care and collectivity are made possible through desi butch as negotiations of borders, and experiences of melancholy and alienation produced by different lines.

Intimations of Futurity: Masculinities, Traumatic Memories and Spatial Dynamics in Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus (2004)

Drawing on an eclectic theoretical formulation, this paper explores how African writers reconfigure futurity by focusing on representations of masculinities, space and trauma using Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus. The central animating principle in this paper is that scholarship on gender relations within the last decade have shifted from placing the female at the centre of discourse to more diversified discussions – particularly to frame the experiences of the male as a site for a counter-discourse. Emerging debates, have largely focused on the heterogeneity of the masculine experience, de-affirming the oppressive patriarchal default of being and spatial markers that define maleness. There is also now a new surge of scholarly interests on the relevance of trauma in postcolonial contexts mainly focusing on trauma and related themes such as testimony, trauma and power, memory and survival. While these studies serve as critical interventions within the literature, the seemingly neglect of re-reading the interconnectedness between masculinities, spatiality and post-colonial traumas deprives us of a better appreciation of the critical utopias in African literary imagination.

On masculinities: navigating the tension between individual and structural considerations

In this short piece the author uses the recent publication of an edited collection, Men, Masculinities and Intimate Partner Violence (Gottzen et al, 2021) as a springboard to focus on the pertinent questions this raises within feminist academic, policy and practitioner work. This book highlights a greater awareness of the multiplicity of masculinities and the impact this is having on work in the domestic abuse sector, particularly in perpetrator interventions. Focusing on individual experiences of masculinity and associated traumas humanises perpetrators, but the risk is that it individualises abuse perpetration away from a structural understanding of patriarchy. This is a tension within the movement, which raises questions about how we seek to understand men’s individual lives with respect, yet view masculinity through a feminist lens.

The “Supermen” Club: Organizational Secrecy and Masculine Identity in an Israeli National Security Organization

How does secrecy shape narratives of militarized hegemonic masculinity? This article assesses a gap at the intersection between theories of masculinities and organizational secrecy. Supported by 15 interviews with current and former male workers of a covert section of an Israeli national security organization, it argues that secrecy is experienced as both an external hurdle and a central component to the way that men internalize masculinity. Unable to access social capital outside the security organization, the respondents of the study construct a social field inside it through which they can assert their masculinity. They do so by conceptualizing their jobs, themselves, and the organization through a prism of sacrificial warriorhood, and actively incorporate secrecy’s constraints into a narrative of “super-men”. This study thus examines secrecy in the context of a militarized environment, showing the experience of masculinity and a perceived lack of power-access among members of a dominant group.

Experiência da masculinidade performada por homens transgêneros: evidências qualitativas e metassíntese

Abstract Masculinity is a construct associated with cisgender men; however, transgender men also perform masculinities. This study aimed to synthesize, analyze, and reinterpret the findings of primary qualitative studies about transgender men’s experience of masculinity. The research question developed through the SPIDER strategy was: What is the qualitative evidence of masculinity performed by transgender men? Eighteen studies involving over 200 transgender men between the ages of 19 and 65 were selected. Three descriptive themes emerged: “Bodily performance of masculinity,” “Social performances of masculinity,” and “Sexualities.” Analytical themes were generated: “The appearance of masculinity” and “Far beyond appearance”. The results point to complementary experiences of masculinity: concerning physical appearance and body modifications; and the practices contesting the hegemonic masculinity standard. The experience of masculinities is outlined by body changes, culminating in the passability and social recognition of the transgender man.

Making, Unmaking, and Remaking “Men”: New Work in Feminist Masculinity Studies

Making, Unmaking, and Remaking “Men”: New Work in Feminist Masculinity Studies Sally Robinson (bio) BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY Unbound: Transgender Men and the Remaking of Identity. By Arlene Stein. New York: Pantheon Books, 2018. Men in Place: Trans Masculinity, Race, and Sexuality in America. By Miriam J. Abelson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019. Black Boys Apart: Racial Uplift and Respectability in All-Male Public Schools. By Freeden Blume Oeur. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018. Healing from Hate: How Young Men Get Into—and Out of—Violent Extremism. By Michael Kimmel. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media: Sexism, Trolling, and Identity Policing. By Anastasia Salter and Bridget Blodgett. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. when eve sedgwick published Between Men in 1985, she launched feminist masculinity studies in the United States, followed a few years later by Susan Jeffords’s painstaking documentation of the “remasculinization of America” through representations of the Vietnam War.1 While Sedgwick’s brilliantly articulated critique of homosocial bonding in English literature has been hugely influential, it is to Jeffords that a particular strain of feminist masculinity studies owes its aims and objectives. What Jeffords did was to raise the alarm about a set of ideological maneuverings that were not only literary, but also, frighteningly, real and material. The violence that attends the remasculinization of the United States was not, in Jeffords account, the mere side effect of efforts to heal the wound to national masculinity; it was, instead, a primary mode for the articulation of that masculinity. Although the texts she attends to in her study reflect a subgroup or subculture of American masculinity, embodied in the Vietnam veteran, her analysis suggests that responses to a threatened national masculinity are perhaps first glimpsed in a [End Page 455] subculture, only to spread out to the wider cultural and social terrain. Subcultures of masculinity are a particularly fertile place to look not only for what’s new in feminist masculinity studies, but also what’s new in the social construction and experience of masculinity. As many scholars have noted, masculinity is not monolithic, and much of the work produced by feminist scholars has focused on the relationships between dominant and subordinate forms and constructions of masculinity. Phillip Brian Harper’s Are We Not Men?: Masculine Anxiety and the Problem of African American Identity,2 published in 1996, was one among many books that addressed the specific dilemmas of men of color as they measured themselves against dominant white ideals of male identity. Peter M. Nardi’s Gay Masculinities3 and Jack Halberstam’s Female Masculinity4 [End Page 456] pushed masculinity studies to think and to unthink the relation of gender to sexuality, a direction institutionalized by renaming “Women’s Studies” programs “Gender and Sexuality” programs and including courses on men and masculinities within university curricula.5 More recently, the focus on masculine identities — on how different groups of men embody different modes of masculinity — has given way to an emphasis on performances of masculinity, on how different groups of men and different modes of discourse illustrate complex negotiations of power and powerlessness and, in the process, remake the meanings of masculinity. The idea that hegemonic masculinity structures the social and psychological meanings of masculinity differentially for different groups of men and in different local contexts, first developed by R. W. Connell,6 remains a guiding force in feminist masculinity studies even as scholars have questioned the utility of posing one form of masculinity as hegemonic. We have, I think, moved away from the impulse to theorize masculinity per se and moved toward analyzing how struggles over the meaning of masculinity can best be understood by paying attention to specific configurations of gender, race, class, sexuality, and geographical location. Although I am a literary and cultural studies scholar by training, I have found myself most compelled by the books that aim to understand masculinity not by reading texts, but by paying attention to how men talk about their relation to dominant and subordinate ideas about masculinity within particular social and institutional contexts. Each of the books I discuss here focuses on a specific subculture of masculinity and, together, they constitute flashpoints...