Youth Masculinity Research Articles

Youth Masculinities in Eastern Nepal

Abstract The study of men and masculinity is receiving increased attention within South Asia generally, and Nepal specifically. Within this emerging empirical context, this article analyzes the findings of a study undertaken by the UK NGO Saferworld in collaboration with two Nepali NGOs in Eastern Nepal in 2014. This qualitative study used a range of methods, including the participatory learning and reflections approach involving young men aged 16–25 years. Alongside gendered opportunities through negotiating their (young) masculinities, our young male participants felt significant pressures, confusion, and even frustrations. Our article considers changing expectations and opportunities with regard to gender equality and in gender roles, contributing unique insights into the performance of youth masculinities in post-conflict (post 2006) Nepal.

Introduction

Global North theories of being “young” or a “man” do not translate neatly onto the everyday lives of young men in the Global South (Jeffrey and McDowell 2004). The specters of colonialism, postcolonialism, and global capitalist inequalities, as well as the various politics of race, caste, class, sexualities, religion, and local histories, powerfully shape both the countries of the Global South as well as youth masculinities therein (Nayak 2016; Philip 2022; Mani and Krishnamurthy 2021). In such a context, this special issue seeks to put forward an empirically grounded understanding of youth masculinities from perspectives emerging and grounded in the Global South. The specific challenges, opportunities, desires, and practices of young men from the Philippines, India, South Africa, and Senegal, as well as various other contexts covered in this special issue, reveal the broader global dynamics shaping youth lives today.

The Men and the Monks

Abstract This article explores how young novice monks, studying at a Buddhist monastic school in a rural province of northern Thailand, come to understand their developing masculinities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2021, the article considers the plural forms of masculinity that novice monks are exposed to. In line with dominant strands of theory in gender studies, masculinity here is understood as taking on several potential forms. Forms adhering to normative understandings of how masculinity should be expressed are examined, with a focus on monastic masculinity as it has been described in Buddhist contexts, alongside local Thai lay-masculinities. By examining how novice monks interpret idealized archetypes conforming to each of these masculine forms, the article argues for the value of analyzing youth masculinities in light of normative frameworks.

Toxic Rhythms: Protest Masculinities of “Brown Indo-Canadians” versus “Surrey Jacks”

Bhangra music has generically functioned as the site for the articulation of a particular form of Jat masculinity that may be described as hypermasculine. In its glorification of Jat machismo and reification of the female as an object of the Jat’s adoration, it has perpetuated gendered stereotypes originating in feudal Punjabi cultures of honour. Several Punjabi folksongs or those attributed to legendary Punjabi folk singers map strength, courage, and virility on the Jat body in which the objectification of the female body is traditionally sanctioned as a desirable Jat attribute. In hybrid Bhangra genres, Punjabi hypermasculinity is remodelled in relation to the hypermasculinist aesthetic of black genres like rap to produce an explosive toxic masculinity. This article focuses on the hypermasculine ethic underpinning popular bhangra music, particularly the songs of two popular singers, Jazzy B and Yo Yo Honey Singh, to examine the Canadian Punjabi youth masculinities that converge on Punjabi music to reproduce traditional Punjabi patriarchies. It shows that while the appropriation of these bhangra genres enables brown Indo-Canadians and “Surrey Jacks” to constitute alternative protest masculinities in opposition to hegemonic white masculinities, they engender different forms of misogyny and violence.

‘Fraternity for Frustrated Females’: The Gender Dynamics of 1970s Feminist Organising at the University of Waterloo, Canada

AbstractIn 1970, a male student at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario deemed the campus women's liberation group to be a ‘fraternity for frustrated females’. This perspective was commonplace at the supposedly liberal school, as male dissent against autonomous women's organising continued throughout the early 1970s. While women organised protests against sexist campus events, held consciousness‐raising groups and encouraged discussion about gender roles in society, many male students turned away from women's pleas for change and were not receptive to encouraging equality on campus. This research examines the attempted involvement of male students in the women's liberation movement at the University of Waterloo and the anti‐feminist rhetoric that percolated on campus. By using a micro‐history of the University of Waterloo and analysing the student newspaper, The Chevron, it illustrates the ways in which women students organised despite backlash from male students and the daily sexism women faced on campus. It reveals the challenges women faced in gaining equality and the climate of youth masculinity in a period of tumultuous social change.

The Early Cultural Evolution of Baseball in Korea (1876–1945): Unilateral Product of Cultural Imperialism or Multilateral Process?

The dissemination of sports culture is not a unilinear or unilateral phenomenon. It depends on how the recipients perceive and react to it in the context of their lives. This study aims to shed light on the complex political, social, and cultural processes that led to the acceptance and popularization of baseball in Korea. In the era of imperialism, various modern sports cultures spread in the Korean society, but baseball emerged as the most popular. Baseball was initially introduced to Korea as a by-product of US and Japanese expansionism during the Korean Enlightenment period (1876–1910) and the Japanese colonial period (1910–1945). However, baseball’s germination during the Enlightenment period lay in the self-awareness of Koreans willing to embrace it as a cultural product of Western modernity, realizing its potential to meet the physical and cultural needs of their society. Additionally, during the Japanese colonial period, baseball functioned as a channel for expressing both nationalism and youthful masculinity, being popularized in the Korean society. The international exchange between US and Japanese baseball, which was developed with active recognition of baseball acceptance within the Joseon society during the Japanese colonial period, became the vital momentum driving the popularization of Korean baseball.

Definición de consumo de hombres universitarios. Exploración desde las redes semánticas naturales

In the face of the dominance of neoliberalism in Western societies the possibilities of consumption are overwhelming. This type of societies are associated with a consumerist culture and lifestyle, where the capacity of consumption is the fundamental criterion of inclusion/exclusion of the subjects. Consumption intervenes significantly in the construction of people's personal and social identity. The desires and longings generated by the consumer society are related to the acquisition of lifestyles. In this sense, subjects give meaning to objects and experiences. The interest of this research is in young people. Young people represent a segment of interest for the economic market; therefore, they constitute a group that is financially in risk. The high levels of indebtedness of the youth population in Chile must be considered. Specifically, men handle money from a young age and carry out certain paid activities, especially in popular sectors. Men are projected as active consumers in the economic market, an area where the traditional gender division has diminished, directing men to production and women to consumption. On the other hand, empirical evidence shows the association between masculinities and material possessions, money and orientation to success. It is also possible to mention a relative scarcity of studies linking men and consumption in Latin America. In this context, the present article explores the meaning of consumption as constructed by university men in three areas of professional training, who are pursuing undergraduate careers, in the Araucanía Region. A qualitative methodology is used to achieve the research objective, applying the technique of natural semantic networks. A case study is carried out. The sample was conformed by students of Social Sciences (18 subjects), Health Sciences (15 subjects) and Engineering Sciences (18 subjects), aged between 18 and 24 years old, with a total of 51 subjects. All students are from a private university in the Araucanía Region, Chile. From the study carried out, it is possible to point out the usefulness of the technique of natural semantic networks as a tool for a first exploration of the field of study. The results indicate an abundant general semantic network, formed by 129 words. The core of the semantic network is represented by the word “feed”, followed by meanings associated with money, buying (shopping) and need, giving an account of the material dimension of consumption. The definitions associated with drugs and alcohol are also relevant. For Social Science students, the SAM net for consumption is defined by money, expenses and need. The SAM net for young men in Health Sciences is defined by food, money and drugs. For engineering students, consumption is defined by expenses, food and money. In summary, the results of the overall SAM net indicate three major categories of exploration of meanings relevant to undergraduate college youth consumption in this study: food and eating; appropriation of material possessions in relation to acquisition and exchange for money from purchase, and consumption associated with drugs and alcohol. The findings suggest primarily exploring food and the relationship with the male body, as well as material possessions and orientations to success in young men and the relationship with the construction of youthful masculinities. https://doi.org/10.16888/interd.2022.39.1.10

4 - Youth Masculinities in Zimbabwe’s Congested Gerontocratic Political Space


 
 
 This article situates its discussion of young Zimbabwean men’s performance of masculinity in a restrictive political space in a broader continental context in which the majority of young people are politically and economically marginalised. It addresses how the older generation’s domination and monopolisation of political space presents obstacles to the youth’s aspiration to perform normative masculinity. The article also discusses various strategies the youth in Zimbabwe are devising to claim space in a political arena that can be characterised as a gerontocracy. The youth seek relevance in Zimbabwe’s congested and gerontocratic political space through strategies that range from co-opting gerontocratic masculinities to subverting them. Notwithstanding the divergence in these strategies, young people who adopt them to create and occupy space in Zimbabwe’s political terrain legitimise their choices by appealing to culture, thus showing how culture can be harnessed for contradictory objectives in the performance of masculinities. The strategies also draw from global trends involving the youth’s engagement in non-traditional political participation facilitated by their dominance of virtual, social media space.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Rose Jaji, University of Zimbabwe. Email: rjaji@sociol.uz.ac.zw
 
 

The Sporting Bubble as Gilded Cage

The Sporting Bubble as Gilded Cage

Beating the buzzer: The construction of ageing hockey masculinity

In spite of the fact that the media and the public often revere elite male hockey players as exemplars of masculinity, these same groups largely ignore these men when they become old. Moreover, there is very little scholarly research on old(er) hockey players. In contrast, this paper examines the gender expressions of the men who played for the Silver Skaters, an old-timers hockey league in a mid-sized central Canadian city. Although sometimes players met the standard of youthful hegemonic masculinity, they more often broke with it, expressing their own unique forms of ageing hockey masculinity focused on a censure of violence and aggression and an emphasis on an ethic of care and inclusion. In the wake of calls to change the culture of young men’s elite-level hockey, the gender performances of these late(r)-life men, shaped by the structure of their hockey league, demonstrates that alternative hockey masculinities are possible.

Rituals of Royal Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Frederick, Prince of Wales, Takes a Mistress

Although scholars have examined the history of middling and elite masculinity in eighteenth-century Britain, few consider how ideals of manhood shaped the representation and perception of early Georgian rulers. This article re-examines the relationship of Frederick, Prince of Wales, with his publicly recognized mistress, Anne Vane, as a symbolic rite of passage that helped enhance his manly prowess, prestige and position at court. Their affair included social rituals of deference and patronage through which the Prince asserted his maturity, independence from his parents and rank as heir to the throne. Through an analysis of little-studied contemporary scandal literature about Frederick and Vane, this essay argues that royal mistresses were generally accepted figures at the eighteenth-century British court and that expressions of extramarital sexuality were tolerated as a component of youthful elite masculinity. Published discussions of the Prince’s intimacies were central to his emerging reputation as an accessible regal figure and recognizable personality, and masculine images of rulers appealed to men and engaged gendered forms of allegiance.

Ogawa Yōko and the Horrific Femininities of Daily Life

In Ogawa Yōko’s (b. 1962) writing from the late 1980’s and 1990’s, female narrators often revel in the fantastical beauty of youthful masculinities, while they themselves cannot escape the disgusting disorder of feminized domestic spaces. First, I read death and violence in kitchens depicted in the story collection Revenge (1998) to show how Ogawa rewrites this space associated with the housewife and her duties as one of horrific possibilities overturning idealized images of domesticity. Next, building on earlier readings of food, I argue that spectacles of sweetness—cakes, jam, and ice cream desserts—play a particularly crucial role in articulating female desire and violence, such as with the earlier works “Pregnancy Diary” (1991) and Sugar Time (1991). Returning to Revenge, I observe how “sweet” images appear in scenes of violence to outline how female homosocial gazes reflect a constant engagement with femininities seen in other women, particularly those marked by the transgression of anger and murderous desire. I end by considering ways in which Ogawa’s self-reflexive depiction of the woman writer in Revenge playfully problematizes the “mad” fantasies of women who write.

The other side of coastal towns: Young men’s precarious lives on the margins of England

English coastal resorts are among the most deprived towns in the country, with levels of economic and social deprivation often exceeding those of the inner areas of large cities and former industrial settlements. Their dominant image in the media and other forms of representation, however, is of places of innocent fun and leisure, often associated with their history as holiday destinations for working-class families, although the darker side of these towns is not completely ignored. The lives of white working-class, year-round residents in these towns, however, seldom feature in representations or in policy and academic research. Here, we focus on the everyday lives of one group: young white working-class men whose employment opportunities have been adversely affected by economic decline, austerity and rising inequality. In places where employment is largely restricted to customer-facing jobs in the holiday trade, the dominant construction of youthful masculinity and the associated rhetorical view of these men as troublesome not only excludes them from the labour market but exacerbates their marginality. Through interviews in four English resorts, we explore the causes and consequences of their precarity.

Sylvester Stallone and the economics of the ageing film actor

ABSTRACTSylvester Stallone’s stardom has been inexorably linked to notions of youthful masculinity and an image that was constructed more than thirty years ago. Recent academic attention has been largely concerned with the ways in which age is gradually moving the star away from the idealised image that had previously defined his stardom. Exploring how he is negotiating the realities of ageing, the impact this has on the roles available to him, and his ability to endure the physical requirements of these roles has been the subject of much academic interest, with many concluding that the star is increasingly redundant. This chapter will offer an economic reading of the star and an examination of the ways in which the veteran actor has sought to, and in many cases, succeeded in, extending his celebrity status in a contemporary global media marketplace. By considering two aspects that are central to Stallone’s contemporary stardom, his harnessing of social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to publicise new projects and to capitalise on earlier screen successes, and the his recent economic success in the Chinese film market, the chapter will explore how ideas of redundancy may have been applied to the star prematurely.

“It used to be called an old man’s game”: Masculinity, ageing embodiment and senior curling participation

The sport of curling, popular among older populations in Canada and conventionally imagined as a sport for older people, offers an important window into what it means to be an older man participating in sport. While researchers have extensively studied expressions of youthful masculinity in sport culture, scholarship about the confluence of gender expression and old age in sport is much rarer. Using Connell and Messerschmidt’s (2005) reconfiguration of hegemonic masculinity, and drawing on 19 interviews with older men who curl in mid-sized Canadian towns, we argue that later-life men negotiate complex models of appropriate masculinity that borrow from hegemonic exemplars available in earlier life, deploying certain forms of intellectual, class and gender privilege to do so. At the same time, they disrupt these hegemonies through an emphasis on interdependence, caring relationships and the acceptance of bodily limitations.

Constructing, reproducing and challenging masculinities in a participatory intervention in urban informal settlements in South Africa

Participatory interventions with men and boys to transform masculinities are increasingly common to improve health and reduce intimate partner violence and HIV-related risk. Yet, despite this, there has been little consideration of how facilitators’ own masculinities shape interventions. In this analysis of Stepping Stones and Creating Futures, a gender-transformative programme delivered to young men (aged 18–30 years) in urban informal settlements in Durban, South Africa we explore how facilitators’ masculinities were employed to engender change in the masculinities of participants. We argue facilitators had to negotiate two tasks existing in some tension, the first, overt and the main aim of the programme: namely, challenging elements of the youthful masculinity at play in the lives of participants, such as exerting violent power over women. A second task was more covert: namely, establishing facilitators’ credibility ‘as men’ in order to do this work with participants. Through strategies including clothes, mobile phones, jokes and storytelling, facilitators demonstrated to participants their ‘successful’ masculinity and could then engage with participants around emotions, non-violence and consistent condom use. This enabled facilitators and participants to undergo a limited processes of change, without ‘compromising’ their sense of masculinity, and without fundamentally challenging men’s patriarchal privilege.

‘I play with the baby so that people can see that I'm a man’: Young fathers' involvement in the first 1 000 days of a child's life in South Africa

ABSTRACTThere is a growing focus on men's involvement in the first 1 000 days of a child's life (i.e. conception through to two years of age). Men's involvement is understood to improve child health and as a pathway to gender equality. We sought to understand the forms of care and support men provided during the first 1 000 days of a child's life in an urban informal settlement in Durban, South Africa. We conducted in-depth interviews with 20 men and 15 women and three focus groups with men to understand men's involvement. Men and women described multiple ways in which men were involved in care and support during the first 1 000 days and reasons supporting and hindering this. In contrast to much literature that situates men's involvement in care as intrinsically gender equitable, we argue that while men do become involved in care and support, it is not linked to a wider commitment to gender equity. Rather it bolsters a relatively conservative understanding of masculinity, linked to the establishment of a household. Where men do not become involved in care, this is linked to men seeking to retain a more youthful masculinity. We suggest interventions working with men to increase caregiving need to engage around transforming gender norms.

Rethinking Homophobia and Deviant Youth Masculinities: Constructing and Interrogating Progress Toward Equality

AbstractIn this article, I examine the discourse of progress toward equality for gender and sexually deviant youths to show that overemphasizing progress decenters the lived experiences of these young people. A survey of masculinity theories like hegemonic masculinity, inclusive masculinity, and fag discourse illuminates divergent ways of thinking about progress as it relates to youth masculinities and social inequality. While young people may have more opportunities to explore meanings of gender and sexuality in schools or in the media, current scholarly debates complicate the presumptions that marginalized youths have reached full equality within these institutions. Cases of bullying based on gender presentation or sexual orientation appear in daily news feeds, and this phenomenon is supported by empirical data. Harder to detect are the less visible, emergent homophobias and microaggressions which must be considered when theorizing about masculinities and progress toward equality.

Juventudes y masculinidades desde los márgenes. Experiencias socioculturales de jóvenes en reclusión

The purpose of this article is to give an account of youth masculinity experienced in what we have called from the sidelines, in the case of young men who are deprived of their liberty in internment Specialized Center for Adolescents (CIEA) Villa Crisol, in Berriozabal municipality, Chiapas. The prison inmates and sociocultural strategies that these young people to live and socialize pose that, in turn, provide insight into the plurality of experiences and experiences of men according to their class, age, sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity analyzed and skin color. Thus, (re) construct their masculinity, many times invisible, marginalized or oppressed within a broad framework of power relations.

Transition, Crisis and Nostalgia

This article explores the representation of youth masculinity in contemporary Hollywood comedy. By focusing on the intersection of gender and generation, it emphasizes the importance of relationality in a consideration of representations of boyhood. Using Superbad as a case study, this article reveals the nuanced ways in which the crisis of masculinity is represented in popular culture in a postfeminist context. Foregrounding issues of homosociality in coming-of-age narratives, it emphasizes the tensions between generational expectations and performances of gender. Themes of loss and nostalgia are explored through analysis of the juxtaposition of adult and adolescent male characters in Superbad, providing insight into and understanding of the complexities of boyhood. Superbad is contextualized in relation to teen comedy more broadly, highlighting the important cultural space that contemporary Hollywood comedies play in (re)constructing discourses of masculinity.