Non-hegemonic Masculinities Research Articles

Masculinity and Homosociality in Western Cinema: Taking Close (2022) as a Case Study

Masculinity and homosociality in Western cinema undergo continuous evolution, transitioning from the construction of traditional ideals to contemporary, more diverse expressions, thereby presenting challenges and deconstructions. To contribute to the theorization of masculinity and homosociality in Western films, this study examines Lukas Dhont's Close to analyze how masculinity and homosociality are represented and negotiated to reproduce gender structures and heteronormative ideologies, and offer implications for future film presentations. Employing textual and formal analyses, along with relevant theories of masculinity and homosociality, this paper identifies different forms of masculinities embodied in hierarchical and horizontal homosociality. In doing so, this paper finds that homosociality provides space for some masculinities to assert and solidify their dominance while relegating others to subordinated or marginalized positions. The dynamic shifts in masculinity also correspondingly affect homosocial dynamics. Further exploration is warranted in presenting and constructing positive narratives surrounding non-hegemonic masculinity and horizontal homosociality, so that a diverse, anti-homophobic, and gender equality-supporting masculinity on screen may have the potential to achieve hegemony.

Control of Desire and Resistance to Torture: Masculinities and Virginity within Marriage in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints

ABSTRACT A commitment to virginity within marriage is far from normative in early medieval England. Yet three of the twenty-six saints' lives curated in one volume by Ælfric have virgin spouses as protagonists. Saints' lives provide an insight into behaviour that is, by definition, extraordinary, they also act as exempla. Thus, married virginity is not easily achievable, but it is of clear interest to Ælfric and his audience. In this article, I will examine the implications of this unusual identity for masculinity through an analysis of the legends of the married virgins Julian and Basilissa, Cecilia and Valerian and Chrysanthus and Daria in Ælfric's Lives of Saints (from this point, I will be collectively refer to them as The Lives of the Virgin Spouses). A virgin marriage can destabilise the process of gender performance through heterosexual desire. The virgin spouses, therefore, have the potential to subvert gender conventions by revealing the possibilities for alternative masculinities or a third gender, by troubling the more established masculinities present in hagiography such as martial or regal identities. Yet my analysis of these texts, through the lens of Douglas Schrock and Michael Schwalbe's theory of manhood acts, demonstrates that this potential is not realised as masculinity remains tied to concepts of dominance and female virginity is subordinated by its links to vulnerability. Schrock and Schwalbe describe how manhood acts can construct a more esteemed masculinity, compensating for perceived deficiencies in non-hegemonic masculinities. I explore how, in The Lives of the Virgin Spouses, manhood reinforces a contrast between masculinity and femininity, such as through alternative depictions of torture and sexual desire. Male virginity becomes centred around autonomy, self-discipline and commitment, producing a venerable identity in opposition to female virginity, which is focused on bodily enclosure. My discussion thus contributes to the understanding of manhood acts, as well as the functioning of masculinity within Old English literature. Virginity within marriage is more than an early-medieval Christian ideal unobtainable to most. Male virginity in hagiography provides new ways of understanding masculinity.

Red Badge of Courage and Jalan Tak Ada Ujung: Comparing Indonesia’s and America’s National Masculinity

Masculinity linked to conflict or war is often seen as hegemonic. This research offers two literary texts from two different countries: Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage (2005) and Muchtar Lubis’ Jalan Tak Ada Ujung (The Endless Road) (1952). By comparing and contrasting both countries in terms of non-hegemonic masculinities of the protagonist characters, the pattern of masculinities of each nation, which is often overlooked, can be explainable. We can identify variations of masculinities in classic fiction, which reflect the national discourses. By utilizing the notion of focalization, the method of narratology can locate the power relation and agency in the story. Post-war anxiety as well as the ideology of fatherism and momism constructs the national gendered discoures. Indonesia’s masculinity resists the legitimate and privileged as well as the status-quo concept of national masculinity. The resistance implies that Indonesia’s national masculinity is more diverse and progressive than America’s is.

Wakurugenzi Networks: Reframing Kenyan Vernaculars of Gender/Gendering in Abel Mutua’s YouTube Channel

ABSTRACT During the Kenyan Covid-19 lockdown, Abel Mutua, a renowned actor, scriptwriter and comic created a YouTube channel that has instructively transformed a virtual space into a storytelling platform. The channel presents narrations on a diverse range of topics presented in the format of a TV series. In this article, I analyse the channel as a popular art form that makes use of hegemonic platforms and architecture to assemble communities of engagement that radically disrupt the rhetoric of national political mobilisation and troubles Kenyan vernaculars of gender/gendering. In this regard, I consider Mutua’s mobilisation of an online community, and his representation of non-hegemonic masculinity’s navigation of male friendships and work, dating and family, Kenyan masculinist cultures of violence, change and growth in ways that subvert orthodox framings of manhood and challenge the reproduction of gender power. Ultimately, I argue that Mutua’s channel presents a networked community that links decentralised and fragmented voices, and a space for thinking through progressive and egalitarian conceptions of gender. Further, I posit that Mutua presents a significant space for rethinking the notions of text and genre, while at the same time creating a digital archive that debunks hierarchies of being, knowledge production and dissemination.

Gender and the navigation of STEM careers in higher education institutions: Narratives of female faculty in post-Soviet Tajikistan

ABSTRACT The underrepresentation of female faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines is a globally acknowledged gender equity concern; however, it remains under-researched in post-Soviet contexts. Using a theoretically informed analysis, this paper explores how female STEM faculty members navigate their gender identities in domestic and academic spheres in post-Soviet Tajikistan. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 female faculty members. The results indicated that parental discourses and family circumstances enabled female faculty members to defy the gendered oppositional inscription of STEM, while the performance of non-hegemonic masculinities by spouses, male mentors, and academic supervisors supported their career advancement. However, the gendered micropolitics of higher education institutions significantly undermined the performance of female STEM faculty members’ identity and subjected them to discrimination, marginalisation, and isolation.

Intersections of race and gender in sexual assault trials

This essay traces the development of intersectionality theory within the field of language and gender in relation to research on the language of rape trials. In early work on the topic, I used Judith Butler’s notion of the ‘rigid regulatory frame’ to understand the cultural intelligibility of certain kinds of rape victims in the legal system and the unintelligibility of others. But the inequities that complainants often experience in rape trials are not merely the result of sexism; rather, it is sexism and racism which together interact to disadvantage complainants and protect white male perpetrators, who occupy a privileged position within these contexts vis-à-vis men of colour. In line with recent work in the field, I end with an analysis of a rape case that demonstrates the necessity of attending to nonhegemonic masculinities and intersectionality.

Is Traditional Masculinity Still Valued? Men’s Perceptions of How Different Reference Groups Value Traditional Masculinity Norms

Traditional masculinity norms are generally defined as hegemonic because they contribute to maintaining men’s favorable position in the gender hierarchy. Nevertheless, many observers argue that traditional masculinity norms are fading away under the pressure of feminist movements and are being replaced by more progressive, non-hegemonic masculinity norms. The present research examines men’s perceptions of how traditional masculinity norms are viewed by three reference groups: society as a whole, other men, and women. We assessed these perceptions via two experiments based on the self-presentation paradigm and involving American ( N = 161) or British ( N = 160) men. Participants in both experiments perceived traditional masculinity as being valued by other men but not by society as a whole or by women. We discuss the implications of these findings in the light of current changes in masculinity norms.

Masculinidades no hegemónicas en el Chile neoliberal. Reflexiones sobre intervención social

El presente artículo busca profundizar la reflexión entre la intervención social y las carácterísticas de las masculinidades no hegemónicas que resurgen en el contexto del neoliberalismo postdictadura. Este vínculo se evidencia como una necesidad urgente para acercar la intervención social a las subjetividades abyectas que se desarrollan en contextos de profundas desigualdades sociales, característica que se evidencia en américa latina y especialmente en Chile, con el surgimiento de dictaduras cívico-militares en la segunda mitad del siglo XX y la transformación de la sociedad a través de la implantación del modelo neoliberal como proyecto homogeneizador que instala al individuo por sobre la comunidad, atomizando al sujeto de intervención. Las masculinidades no hegemónicas en este contexto, se pueden entender como resultado de la relación entre sociedad e individuo marginal y/o marginado en función de su orientación sexual, requiriendo su caracterización que privilegie miradas desde la complejidad

A Battle for Supremacy? Masculinities in Students’ Profane Language Use

This article investigates what students from University of Ghana’s Commonwealth Hall consider as marks of masculinity, through how they represent themselves and other males in their use of profanity. Data are sourced from songs, observations, and interviews. Drawing from hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculinities and theory of ideologies, findings indicate how these students portray themselves as embodying true masculinity, as they represent themselves as superpowers, virile, and assertive. They however marginalize other males by representing them as weaklings, “uncircumcised”, and vagina police. It is their attempt to keep these binary categories in place, which sometimes leads to confrontations between them and other male students. When they believe and articulate that they embody true masculinity, similar practices can only be interpreted as threats. The article, therefore, recommends a bigger study that includes other public universities and assesses the link between these students’ language use and their “radical” behavior.

BANGTAN SONYEONDAN IN AMERICA: SOFT MASCULINITY PERFORMANCE AND AUDIENCE RESPONSE

Before their name resonates in American music charts and award shows, BTS experienced a shift in their display of masculinity, from showcasing complicit masculinity towards hegemonic norms to challenging the socially accepted values of being men by performing soft masculinity. Nonetheless, they still manage to snatch tens of thousands of fans' hearts, especially in the United States. Since female fans dominate the fandom, BTS's male fans are often overlooked in existing studies. With the purpose of analyzing BTS’s display of soft masculinity and comparing female and male fans' perceptions of non-hegemonic masculinity, this research studies BTS’s performances and does not only focus on female fans' views on soft masculinity but also those of male fans. Online surveys and in-depth interviews were conducted to unravel American fans' perception of soft masculinity. Using Jung’s concept of soft masculinity alongside with Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity, this research found that although soft masculinity is widely accepted among American BTS fans, hegemonic masculinity continues to remain among male audience.

Nuevas masculinidades y narrativas de excombatientes de la Farc después del posacuerdo de La Habana

una publicación de ámbito nacional e internacional interdisciplinar de carácter científico-académico y divulgativo, que pretende fomentar el intercambio de ideas y trabajos en el campo de los medios y los nuevos media aplicadas a la educación y de formación en general

The Non-hegemonic Masculinities in The Female Impersonator Comedy as the Mirror Image of Hypermasculinity in 1960's South Korea

The Non-hegemonic Masculinities in The Female Impersonator Comedy as the Mirror Image of Hypermasculinity in 1960's South Korea

Crafting a DIY Campervan and Crafting Embodied, Gendered Identity Performances in a Hyper-masculine Environment

This paper presents a multi-media textual collage that shows rather than tells the lived experiences of my conversion of a DIY campervan over several months in a diesel mechanic workshop in Sydney, Australia. This is a “small culture,” (Holliday, 1999) to which I gained limited access as I developed craft skills and the confidence to speak back to relative, milieu-specific, gendered power. I use autoethnographic textual fragments written shortly after the moment to depict the struggle to acquire skills, build confidence, and cross “small” cultures in an unusual crafting context. Grounded theoretical insights are suggested as they relate to three things. First, I examine the nature of individual, self-directed learning as engendered by the non-expert, hands-on doing of craft supported by YouTube instructional videos. Second, I consider positive and negative affective identity factors, particularly feelings of competence or incompetence and challenges to my own (female, middle-aged, injured, and non-expert) embodiment. Third, I consider the collaborative, discursive ways in which hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities were talked into being as contingent, relational identities against the foil of a constructed “other.”

Narrating the Modern Relation between Masculinity and Care

Abstract The article is based on the debate about care concepts and care practices currently being held in the cultural and social sciences. It is shown how gender, and in particular concepts of masculinity, have been linked with care since the 19th century. It turns out that the feminine connotation of care that was popular for a long time only represents one side of the relationship between care and gender. From a transdisciplinary perspective, the complex interdependency between care and modern concepts of masculinity is demonstrated. Based on historically and theoretically meaningful texts, processes of excluding and including care aspects in aesthetic-literary, philological, philosophical, and socio-scientific narrations, constructions and discourses of masculinity are revealed. In reference to a critical reading of the tradition of the art of living, these considerations seek to offer and to point out alternative, non-hegemonic masculinities by incorporating practices of everyday (self-)care in male forms of existence. Particular emphasis is placed on contemporary literature.

Para além do colonizado e do subalterno: masculinidade num poema de Francisco José Tenreiro

This essay examines the formation of masculine identities in the colonial context of Portuguese-speaking African literatures. It does so by considering the dialectic of the colonizer/colonized in relation to hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities and the emergence of the "new man" in the Estado Novo and African national liberation movements.

What is there to learn about violence and masculinity from a genderqueer man?

ABSTRACTBackground: In light of the global health burden of violence, which is predominantly perpetrated by men, studies have explored the relationship between masculinities and violence. However, there is a relative lack of work focusing on non-hegemonic men and masculinities in relation to violence. Such work has the potential to advance violence prevention work.Objective: This article aims to show the shifting relationship between constructions of violent and non-violent masculinity in the talk of a genderqueer man. The article also aims to demonstrate how qualitative approaches are able to reveal the complexity and contradiction in accounts of masculine identities as these are negotiated within the context of the research interview.Methods: The article is based on a case study of Adam, a middle-class, ‘white’, ‘genderqueer’ man who participated in a larger study which explored the ways in which gender is constructed within 18 South African families. Adam’s interview is analysed using a Foucauldian discourse analysis.Results: The analysis demonstrates the complex and contradictory process involved in negotiating and resisting a violent version of masculinity. Constructing male violence as rooted in particular psychosocial and cultural assumptions, rather than as an automatic biological response, enables Adam to resist this violence. This deconstruction of violent masculinity is linked to Adam’s ‘genderqueer’ identity or ‘in-betweenness’, which facilitates a critical consciousness in relation to notions of gender. The analysis also demonstrates how notions of masculinity are deliberated and co-constructed within the relational context of the interview.Conclusions: This article shows that resisting and reformulating masculinity in non-violent ways is a complex process. This suggests that violence prevention efforts need to focus on the creation of spaces for ongoing dialogues about non-violence. As demonstrated by the context of the interview, relational, conversational spaces have the potential to facilitate the co-construction of non-violent masculinities.

INTERSEKSI MASKULINITAS DAN AGAMA DALAM CERPEN ROBOHNYA SURAU KAMI KARYA A. A. NAVIS

This research aims to find out how gender and narrative correlate to each other. Traditionally speaking, gender is only related to one of the intrinsic aspects, the character, which is usually inside the plot. Although in this short story the narrator is character-bound narrator, the narrator is not in the fabula or plot. The implication is that it can be assumed that gender plays its role. The narrator in this short story obviously gets involved in the contestation of masculinity of the characters. The method of narratology is employed to dig out all of the masculine contestation, among the main characters (Ajo Sidi and Sang Kakek/the Oldman) and the narrator. The result shows that the masculinity of Ajo Sidi belongs to the hegemonic masculinity and the masculinity of the Oldman belongs to the non-hegemonic masculinity. The contestation of masculinity represents the binary opposition between active and passive masculinity. In this respect, the masculinity of the Oldman, which is passive, can be binarized as the feminine rather than masculine one.

Masculinities and Femicide

The relationship between masculinity and femicide has been virtually ignored in the literature on both masculinities and femicide. The aim of this paper then is to concentrate on the relationship between masculinities and femicide by first briefly summarizing feminist theorizing in the 1970s and 1980s and its relation to the emergence of Raewyn Connell’s concept of “hegemonic masculinity.” Following that, new directions in scholarly work on hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities are discussed, with particular attention directed to the recent work of the author on the relationship among hegemonic, dominant, dominating, and positive masculinities. Finally, the paper concludes by briefly illustrating how this new conception of masculinities can be applied to two types of femicide: intimate partner femicide and so-called “honor” femicides.

Virtual Warfare: Masculinity, Sexuality, and Propaganda in the Russo-Ukrainian War

This paper explores the intersection of sexual and political discourses as a particular aspect of the body politics that Russia has employed, among other strategies, in its massive propaganda offensive during the hybrid warfare against Ukraine.While recognizing sexuality as one of the mainstream concepts in political analysis, the paper draws on sexually explicit imagery and idiom used in Russian social media, and public discursive space in general, as propaganda techniques, and maps their “genealogy” within wider sociocultural and political contexts. Being conceptualized in terms of Russian hegemonic masculinity in relation to subordinated femininity and non-hegemonic masculinities of its adversarial others, these setups reveal how sexuality constitutes uneven and contradictory nexuses of power once being co-opted by Putin’s propaganda machine. It is noteworthy that Russia’s neo-imperial discursive tactics of homologizing sexual and political dominance—when supplemented with the official rhetoric of restituting Russia as a great power, Orthodox Christian fundamentalism as an integral part of Russian unique “state-civilization,” state-sanctioned homophobia, and traditional macho gender ideology—contribute quite effectively to sustaining public support in Russia for aggression against Ukraine in the process of Russian reimperialization of the former Soviet space.

The differentiation of masculinity as a challenge for the concept of hegemonic masculinity

ABSTRACT‘Hegemonic masculinity’ is applied worldwide as the predominant concept in research on men and masculinities. The theoretical and empirical origins of the term can be traced back to the work of Raewyn Connell. Connell suggests that gender is a dynamic process and that gender orders emerge in and through everyday practices and relations. Even though the concept is well established in men and masculinity studies, explanations of the hierarchical relations between forms of masculinities still needs to be reconfigured. This includes questions about the relation between hegemonic forms of masculinity and non-hegemonic masculinity formations as well as about the relation between hegemonic masculinities, masculinity formations that support and strengthen hegemonic masculinity and those that resist and challenge hegemonic masculinity. We propose that the current focus on a vertical structuring of forms of masculinity with hegemonic masculinity at the top, inflates the hierarchical super- and subordination of forms of masculinity. Based on two empirical studies we explore to what extent the transformation of hegemonic masculinity is challenged by the appearance of new legitimate forms of masculinity, which emphasises the ever-changing negotiability of masculinity and a horizontal logic of masculinities.