Issues Of Masculinity Research Articles

Obscuring Gendered Difference: The Treatment of Violence in Australian Government Alcohol Policy

Abstract Despite public debate about alcohol and public violence among young people in Australia, the issue of masculinities or gender is rarely visible in alcohol policy. Instead, policy recommendations aimed at reducing violence focus on changing the availability and consumption of alcohol. Drawing on concepts from feminist and science and technology studies scholarship, this article analyses how “alcohol-related violence” is constituted as a specific policy object, and how it coheres to obscure men’s contributions to and experiences of violence. Attention to the political effects of these policy practices is necessary for the development of more equitable alcohol policies.

Practices of resistance: The Antwerp fashion scene and Walter Van Beirendonck’s subversion of masculinity

The existing literature on the evolution of the Antwerp fashion scene is mainly concerned with the development of the Fashion Academy pedagogy from tradition to avant-garde, the role of the famous ‘Antwerp Six’ in putting the city under the international fashion spotlight, and the making of a specific cultural heritage which up to today continues to inspire young fashion designers. However, less has been said about its contribution to the redefinition of gender, and more specifically of masculinity. Consequently, the aim of the article is to contextualize Antwerp as a site for ‘creative resistance’ against the middle-class ideas of fashion, body and identity through the figure of Belgian designer Walter Van Beirendonck, articulating his contribution in deconstructing the normative understanding of the relationship between fashion and masculinity, providing a new metaphor to think about the process of body fashioning in everyday life. Therefore, Van Beirendonck’s creative practices as a sartorial form of resistance against the bourgeois understanding of masculinity and sexuality will be investigated through a qualitative analysis of visual and audio-visual archive materials generously provided by MoMu, the Antwerp fashion museum, showing how his creations are successful in stretching bodily borders and forming non-conventional masculinities. Far from offering an exhaustive overview of the field, the article constitutes a starting point for the understanding of a particular way of seeing the relationship between fashion, body and gender identity in the Antwerp fashion scene. Furthermore, it aims to stress the urgency to analyse the relevance of fashion in tackling issues of masculinity and the clothed body.

Changing Masculinity, One Ad at a Time

This paper takes a rhetorical perspective on how ads address the current debate of toxic masculinity and attempt to change its hegemonic ideals. We compare rhetorical strategies in two purpose branding campaigns, Lynx’s Is it ok for guys (2017) and Gillette’s The Best a Man Can Be (2019), to demonstrate how respective uses of formal and narrative tropes create vastly different narratives about masculinity and therefore also very different audience agency. We argue that Gillette repeats older versions of hegemonic masculinity ideals and call for men to take responsibility and act as protector of the weak, whereas Lynx invites the audience to embrace and identify with less stereotypical identities. We suggest that Gillette’s polemical rhetorical approach may generate more public debate on the issue of toxic masculinity, while Lynx’s approach builds on a more embracing strategy that encourages the audience to empathise with non-stereotypical forms of masculinity.

The New Metal Men: Exploring Model of Flexible Masculinity in the Bandung Metal Scene

The global metal scene has long provided narratives and methods for solving issues of masculinities since in their particular environment in the music industry, and they are generally considered masculine. This article explores the stereotypical construction of masculinities in the Bandung metal music scene. This analysis based on in-depth interviews with Bandung professional metal male musicians who are aged 39-44 years old and are married. This investigation examines how these metal musicians negotiate alternative masculinities in various contexts, taking into account the predominantly Muslim culture in Indonesia. Using an ethnographic approach and borrowing from Millett's concepts of temperament, role, and status, this paper argues that metal music, which is generally considered hypermasculine, does not display the same construction in their performing their functions in the family. Through their roles as breadwinner, musicians maintain normative Indonesian masculinity, as well as fulfilling their responsibility to their family. However, they negotiate equity in the private space, which regards household labor division, childcare, and sharing of income. This paper argues that to some extent, musicians in the metal music scene in Bandung provide a role model of masculinity that is more gender-sensitive and egalitarian.

The Affective Intensities of Gender Transformative Work: An Actionable Framework for Facilitators Working with Boys and Young Men

Facilitating critical discussions with young men about issues of masculinity is not easy work. Gender transformative programs must engage with difficult conversations about issues such as heterosexism, homophobia, and masculine entitlement. The affective force of these issues tends to be downplayed in the pedagogic approaches within these programs, as does the complex facilitation skills required to engage boys and men in these difficult conversations. This paper draws on interview data gathered from a broader study that sought to identify new educative approaches to gender justice in four different sites in the United States. The data were generated through discussions with facilitators and researchers involved in the delivery and evaluation of a gender transformative program for disadvantaged boys and young men. The paper presents four stories that foreground concerns expressed in the interviews about facilitator bias and the feminist delivery of the program. These stories highlight the affective intensities involved in gender transformative work with young men. The paper brings together important work in the area of critical pedagogies, affect, and feminist theory to offer an actionable framework to support facilitators and participants to critically engage with the affective intensities of gender transformative work.

Vita Longa, Ars Breva

ABSTRACT As a cisgender, white, heterosexual male who typified the classic comics ‘kick-sand-in-the-face’ nerd, bullied substantially in school, this evolved into an eating disorder (a mental illness), body dysmporphia and sexual dysfunction. Throughout my career, I have used the comics medium to explore the issue of masculinity in Western society, from the perspective of male characters who do not perform their gender according to mediated, culturally accepted standards (sporty, alpha, strong, etc.). My comics essay will chronologically explore how my mental and bodily state of being was reflected in the choices I made to tell and depict stories, from self-erasure or disguise (a literal revulsion at depicting oneself) via the use of proxies, to the current state of wellness, wherein I now produce overtly autobiographical works. I will contextualise my own story with the work of other creators whose own stories gave me ‘permission’ to explore my own issues, and how the comics medium appears to be curiously fruitful for such stories by people who feel like ‘outsiders’ and misfits from society.

Missing Men: Canadian Prisoners of War in Alan Cumyn’s Great War Novel The Famished Lover

This article focuses on the representation of Canadian prisoners of war in Alan Cumyn’s Great War novel The Famished Lover (2006). Relying on historical sources, I attempt to show how the experience of captivity, marginalized for a long time in historical research, alters our understanding of the First World War and the evolution of forced labour in the twentieth century. I approach Canadian POWs as missing persons, disappeared in the biopolitical regime of the POW camp, the post-war discourses of commemoration, and the gaps in cultural memory. The article explores Cumyn’s representation of the camp as a biopolitical space and the production of the POW as Agambenian bare life. Central to the analysis are issues of trauma, masculinity, and heroic defiance. I also engage with the long-lasting sequelae of captivity, as well as the difficult reintegration of the returned POW, based on the example of the protagonist of the novel.

Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature ed. by Trevor Boffone and Cristina Herrera

Reviewed by: Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature ed. by Trevor Boffone and Cristina Herrera Selene Lacayo (bio) and Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez (bio) Trevor Boffone and Cristina Herrera, editors. Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature. UP of Mississippi, 2020. What is it like to be a young Latinx in the United States? Trevor Boffone and Cristina Herrera's edited collection Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature explores the complexities and nuances of young Latinxs' identities, particularly those who have felt or been cast as "outsiders." Through analyses of a diverse range of youth literature and media, the twelve essays in this collection challenge and reclaim images of Latinxs and Chicanxs that are pervasive in texts and media, particularly the cholo/homeboy, paying much-needed attention to literature for young people. As the editors point out, there is a resurgence in the representation of Latinxs as "outsiders" within "an already marginalized community" (4), but much of the existing Latinx literary scholarship has focused on texts for "adults." By expanding the purview into youth literature, this collection, then, offers a timely examination of an important growing sector of Latinx literature that focuses on "weirdness," "nerdiness," and "other 'taboo' identities" (5). [End Page 342] One of the strongest aspects of this work comes from the theoretical frameworks that authors employ. For instance, they engage with José Esteban Munoz's theory of disidentification, exploring how misfits negotiate their belonging between their communities and the Anglo world (7). Outsiders transform the dominant culture, writing themselves in without conforming to the expectations of what Latinx identity is (7). The essays also provide and expand terminology to understand the experiences of young people, often girls, especially their intersecting identities: intellectual achievements (geek/nerds), sexual orientation, self-fashioning, and hybridity, among others. The authors do so with a fresh perspective, utilizing new works of literature and theater while relying on the lineage of Chicanx literature and feminism, including Anzaldua and Cisneros and showing how the different stories build from a legacy of Latinx writers who are often erased from the curriculum and the so-called Western "canon." The collection is divided into four sections, each presenting a variant of Latinx identities, that explore the challenges of adolescence alongside those of being an outsider both in the mainstream culture and in their communities. Section 1, "Artists and Punks," examines how art is utilized as a means of self-exploration, identity development, and healing. The protagonists of the works covered in these chapters deal with the changes of puberty while developing their Latinidad through writing, zines, punk music and self-fashioning. They are rebels in the sense that they defy their family's expectations of what means to be a proper senorita while being outsiders in the dominant Anglo community. The essays in Section 2, "Superheroes and Other Worldly Beings," use the supernatural to explore themes of spatial belongings, rejection of one's own culture, gender, code-switching, and adaptation. The protagonists must go on a quest to find their true self and to develop their identity. While they face rejection from their communities, they manage to find allies in friends/love interests that learn to appreciate their cultural differences creating a relationship outside of the mainstream expectations. The third section, "LatiNerds and Bookworms," covers the image of the bookish Latinx youth that is most often missing in the media. The protagonists use their intellectual abilities as their main means of growth. This intellectuality places them as outsiders within their own Latinx community, creating internal and external conflicts that they must resolve. The chapters in this section reiterate the importance of Latinx youth to see themselves represented in their very nuanced identities in the media and texts, including theater, which gets introduced as a genre worth studying. The final section, Section 4, "Non-Cholos in the Hood" sheds light to the harmful effects of the pervasive cholo stereotype. The chapters included engage with issues of masculinity and the Latinx LGBTQ+ community. Protagonists deal with [End Page 343] building a community of friends who understand the challenges they...

The "Malestrom" at Christie Pits: Jewish Masculinity and the Toronto Riot of 1933

The night of August 16, 1933 witnessed one of the most brutal riots in Canadian history. When Nazi sympathizers waved a swastika flag at a baseball game in Toronto’s Christie Pits park, Jewish players and spectators retaliated. For the next six hours, thousands of Jewish and gentile teenage boys attacked each other with unprecedented ferocity. As the issue of Jewish masculinity at Christie Pits has gone largely unexplored, two questions arise for the gender historian: to what extent did gender play a role in the actions of the Jewish rioters?; and how has gender shaped the way the riot is remembered in the Jewish community? This article argues that Jewish masculinity helped shape both the character and collective memory of the riot through the “macho-mensch” model, which highlighted the attributes of male physicality, ethics, and Jewish identity, and which excluded the role and commemoration of women.

وھبۃ الزحیلی بطور فقیہ: الفقہ الاسلامی و ادلتہ کا مطالعہ

The development of Islamic Jurisprudence tradition over time produces the Juris-prudential product with different approaches, methodologies, and interpretations. Nowadays, the difference of opinion in the Islamic Jurisprudence is marked by the reconstruction of the jurisprudential tradition because they are no longer relevant to address the issue of masculinity. In this study, the author discusses one of the recent literatures of Islamic Jurisprudence, Al Fiqh Al Islami wa Adilatuhu, written by Wahbah Al-Zuḥaylī (1932-2015 AD). In this article, he tried to reach a compromise between classical jurisprudence with a contemporary one; this is due to some modern views that classical account is no longer able to solve the recent problems. Therefore Al-Zuḥaylī tried to integrate classical interpretation to the contemporary style with a consistent method. To find some pictures of his jurisprudential approach, the author discusses the different aspects of his masterpiece in this paper.
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MASCULINIDADE(S) NO BALÉ: GÊNERO E SEXUALIDADE NA INFÂNCIA

Fundamentado nos Estudos Feministas, Culturais e de Gênero, este texto analisa a relação de meninos e dança, a partir do caso do Rodrigo, praticante de balé e hip-hop, especialmente as condições de possibilidade que constituíram a prática dele. Foram realizadas observações etnográficas e entrevistas. Após a discussão sobre gênero e sexualidade na infância, analisou-se o caso de Rodrigo e discutiu-se a questão da dança e masculinidades, destacando que a experiência se deu desde o ensino infantil e com apoio da família, o que ilustra linhas de fugas possíveis na norma heteronormativa. Finaliza este trabalho uma reflexão sobre as condições de possibilidade às quais Rodrigo teve acesso para a prática do balé, apontando como elas possibilitam pensar sobre a relação práticas corporais e gênero/sexualidade.

Using Social Media Networks to Engage Men in Conversations on Masculinity and Suicide: Content Analysis of Man Up Facebook Campaign Data

We analyzed comments published on the Man Up Facebook page ( manuptvseries) during the roll-out of the Man Up digital campaign. The aim was to gain insight into how the public perceived the Man Up campaign and the conversation topics that the campaign instigated. We downloaded Facebook threads (posts and comments) from the manuptvseries page using NCapture and performed conventional content analysis on a random set of comments ( n = 2,236) to identify how the campaign was perceived and what were the popular conversations. Overall, the campaign was perceived extremely positively by the Facebook audience showing many comments endorsing the content of the campaign by sharing among their Facebook community. The strongest themes were expressing emotions, help and support, and masculinity/gender roles which related to the higher level theme of expressions of masculinity. Another strong theme was suicide and topics related to suicide. Comments acknowledged the importance of discussing the issues of male suicide and masculinity publicly. Men were less engaged with topics on masculinity and expressing emotions compared with women and recognized stigma around help-seeking for mental health issues. The Man Up Facebook campaign did foster a public discussion on masculinity and suicide. A gendered approach in mental health promotion is needed with stigma still present for men when seeking help for mental health problems. Social media holds considerable potential for the use of health promotion campaigns aiming to increase interpersonal communication on challenging health topics. Yet, these campaigns need to carefully manage the risk of reinforcing stereotypes.

Jack Benny and The Golden Age of American Radio Comedy

Jack Benny and The Golden Age of American Radio Comedy

Maleness to Manhood: A Transformational Model to Explore Unresolved Issues of Masculinity to Address Black Adolescent Male Gang Violence

Maleness to Manhood: A Transformational Model to Explore Unresolved Issues of Masculinity to Address Black Adolescent Male Gang Violence

Confucian Masculinity: State Advocacy of Active Fatherhood in Singapore

This article examines representations of fathers and fatherhood in the advertising campaigns of Singaporean government agencies. The introduction of paternity leave and encouragement for fathers to play a bigger role in childcare and child-raising suggest that the government is sympathetic to the pursuit of gender equality, but I argue that state advocacy of active fatherhood serves to reinforce patriarchal tendencies in Singapore. Current scholarship on the problematization of women in state discourses has highlighted the power and privilege of a particular social group in Singapore: heterosexual men. However, there has been a developing body of theoretical and empirical research that looks more critically at the discursive constructions of masculinities, particularly along the dimensions of class, race, and sexuality. This article takes up this issue of different masculinities and the implications this diversity has for understanding patriarchal culture and its intersecting hierarchies. I propose the concept of Confucian masculinity to explain how the depiction of active fatherhood reinforces the ubiquitous “normal family” that upholds patriarchal ideology and perpetuates patriarchal power, thereby obscuring the contradictions of class, race, and sexuality that exist in Singapore.

Black Boys Look Blue in Moonlight; Queering the Black Identity in the Film Moonlight

The depiction of homosexuality has seen a great change over the past few decades. The shift has been in a positive direction where sensible portrayals have been made. However, the mainstream cinema has often dealt with white homosexuality at its centre with the black characters being ignored or sidelined. There are only a few films which have made the effort to portray Black lives realistically. Barry Jenkins’ Oscar winning film, ‘Moonlight’(2016) is significant in this aspect. The film depicts both the beauty and the precarity of Black lives.The film also addresses the homophobic tendency prevalent within the Black community. The film talks about the issue of normative masculinity and the difficulty faced by young boys to live up to the societal expectations.The insightful representations of Black gay identity are absolutely necessary, especially in the sense that such representations would give room to healthy discussions about homosexuality in the Black community. Moreover, it gives a space for coming out of the closet and embracing one’s true identity and feeling proud about it. It also becomesessential because of its crucial function of helping to comprehend the complex and difficult network entwining homosexuality, homophobia and Black Americans. These efforts would prove to be beneficial in a society that is diverse and multi cultural.

Gender boundaries in Saiyūki by Kazuya Minekura: the queer family as a model of leadership

ABSTRACT In the fantasy world created by Kazuya Minekura for the manga series Saiyūki, the Buddhist monk Genjō Sanzō and his three companions are asked to travel from China to India because sinister experiments undermine the possibility of peaceful coexistence between humans and demons in the lands of Tōgenkyō. While the series’ motto ‘Go West’ would seem to suggest clear geographical, cultural and racial frontiers, masculine issues complicate the portrayal of gender boundaries. Accordingly, by drawing on psychoanalysis and gender studies, this contribution will provide insight into Saiyūki’s male relationships, arguing that the protagonists’ journey towards the setting sun may stand as a metaphor for the pursuit of a father figure that is continuously lost and recreated. The persistent hybridisation between the sun and the moon may thus epitomise the attempt to promote androgynous models of leadership, inviting the main protagonist to explore himself through an imposed fatherhood that is nonetheless achieved without the feminine other.

Heightened Expectations: The Rise of the Human Growth Hormone Industry in America by Aimee Medeiros

Reviewed by: Heightened Expectations: The Rise of the Human Growth Hormone Industry in America by Aimee Medeiros Howard I. Kushner Aimee Medeiros. Heightened Expectations: The Rise of the Human Growth Hormone Industry in America. Nexus. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2018. xii + 195 pp. Ill. $39.95 (978–0–8173–1910–6). Aimee Medeiros has produced a nuanced and persuasive examination of the origins and evolution of human growth hormone industry in America. Its wider implications for historians of medicine, especially those examining the role of the pharmaceutical industry, are profound. Medeiros shows that the attitudes and interventions toward short stature in boys predated the pharmaceutical interest and development of human growth hormones. Only decades later would the pharmaceutical industry add its voice to the health effects of short stature. Medeiros makes a persuasive case that stigmatization of short stature among boys had its origins long before the application of growth hormone therapy. It was not, she demonstrates, driven by the pharmaceutical industry. The book has three main “themes.” First, as discussed above, “the pharmaceutical companies cannot be considered the sole culprits in framing short stature as a disease” (p. 3). Rather she points to the role of the development of the rise of pediatric specialty and its growing reliance surveys and height charts as “diagnostic tools” which set “standards” for “normal” child growth and development. A second theme focuses on the “origins of growth hormone therapy in the United States, and in doing so resets the beginning of the GH (growth hormone) industry to the early twentieth century” (p. 3). Here Medeiros examines the period preceding the reliance on cadaver-based human growth hormone and traces the history its ineffective application and the substitution in the 1950s of the male sex hormone, testosterone. [End Page 137] Her third theme “focuses on how, in the twentieth century, changing sociological notions about gender and masculinity influenced the development of medical treatment of children with short stature” (p. 4). For Medeiros “the history of the rise of the human growth hormone industry is a poignant example of the creation of a ‘desire machine,’ demonstrating how anxieties processes of production, and desires get grafted on to one another” (p. 5). Drawing on the work of Georges Canguilhem, she revisits scientific notions of what constitutes the normal and the pathological, as well as more recent work on what constitutes disability. A wide range of scholarship informs this study, “including the history of hormones, feminist scholarship on gender in medicine, men’s studies on hegemonic masculinity, and disability studies” (p. 9). Medeiros draws on a wide variety of popular sources including film, photography, and popular music. She uncovers the roots of these policies and attitudes in such diverse places as Barnum and Bailey Circus and in the munchkins of L. Frank Baum’s, Wizard of Oz film, and the seven “dwarfs” in the Disney film Snow White. Its late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century origins can be traced to the Progressive concerns with the health effects of child labor. She provides elaborate discussion of the progressive photographer, Lewis Hine to illustrate that short stature among boys was used as evidence of the harmful effects of child labor. Nevertheless, in these early years interventions were ineffective, despite the ubiquity of school height charts which established “normal” versus “abnormal.” Medeiros examines how changes in attitudes toward gender and normality affected attitudes toward short stature. Only later would the development of human hormone interventions insert itself in these long-held attitudes and practices. This is the historical perspective in which Medeiros examines the rise of what would become a billion-dollar industry that reinforced the messages of the need to intervene against what was labelled as short stature, and, more widely, as a threat to the health and development of short stature children. In a series of chapters she examines the evolution of short stature as a problem as an issue of masculinity, the medicalization of midgets, the early and unfulfilled promise of growth hormone, news coverage of GH, and how this failure impacted those with short stature. With a medical diagnosis, but without an effective treatment, those of short stature continued to be stigmatized. Medeiros examines the...

Violence against Women in Algeria : Raising Awareness through Teaching Issues of Gender and Masculinities

Violence against Women in Algeria : Raising Awareness through Teaching Issues of Gender and Masculinities

Wolf Warrior 2: Imagining the Chinese Century

How has contemporary Chinese cinema responded to China's new outward focus as global trade and military presence? Until recently, representations of the country's overseas military presence have been few and far between, that is until the release of Zhanlang 2 (Wolf Warrior 2, 2017), a phenomenally successful Rambo-style action adventure. This article explores the ways in which Wolf Warrior 2 adapts Hollywood conventions to China's current nationalist ambitions, with particular regard to issues of genre and masculinity.