Hybrid Masculinities and The Limits of Anti-Violence Efforts in BDSM Communities

This article interrogates the gendered consequences of men’s anti-violence work in pansexual BDSM communities. Based on interview data from BDSM practitioners, I demonstrate empirically that Bridges and Pascoe's heuristic split of hybrid masculine practices—strategic borrowing, discursive distancing, and boundary fortification—does not account for the necessary interrelationship of these practices. I argue that mutual constitutiveness allows for the further obfuscation and security of men’s dominance in the gender hierarchy. The hybrid masculine practices of men who engage in anti-violence work in pansexual BDSM communities are reliant upon narratives of women in need of saving, positioning women as victims and men as saviors who protect them. The women I interviewed were critical of the anti-violence work that men in their communities were doing to prevent or respond to violence; women’s general distrust of men doing this work signals a gendered disconnect between who is doing this work and the effects of it in kink communities more broadly. Although they intended to challenge and prevent sexual violence, men’s hybrid masculine practices in their anti-violence efforts in BDSM communities reproduce the gender inequality that maintains sexual violence both within and beyond these communities.

How to Be a Man Differently: Intersectionality of Gender and Disability in the Life Course of a Powerchair Athlete

This article focuses on the intersection of gender, dis/ability and other social forces in the life course of a young man who has had physical impairments from an early age. Drawing on interactionist theories and applying an ethnographic approach, we analyze the life experiences taking place in multiple social spheres throughout the life phases of Simon, a Swiss powerchair hockey player with cerebral palsy. During his childhood and adolescence, Simon was not in a position to embody the familial ways of performing hegemonic masculinity, and he was functionally dependent on women. Through his ongoing transition to adulthood, his commitment to sport and the process of technologizing his body enabled him doing gender differently and emancipate himself from the familial masculine figure, while remaining reliant on the care provided by women. Thus, we show how the body, context, and life phases contribute to the performances of gender and dis/ability.

Hunting in a Hostile Climate?: Hegemonic Masculinity and Emphasized Femininity on a Hunting Message Board

Based on prior research about other male-dominated leisure pursuits, we might expect game hunting to present a hostile climate for its women participants. However, our qualitative analysis of 293 threads posted between 2005 and 2019 on an online hunting message board suggests that women were welcomed within the pastime. While they did not overtly exclude women from their ranks, however, posters curated the boundary between masculinity and femininity, as well as staking out the territory of emphasized femininity. In particular, they accomplished this via benevolent sexism, hostile sexism, and sexual objectification. Our findings not only shed additional light on the gendered dynamics of this pastime but also enriched our knowledge of the ways that hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity can work in tandem—within male-dominated recreational activities, and more broadly.

Masculine Maneuvers: Male Baton Twirlers, Compensatory Manhood Acts, and Hybrid Masculinity

Men in women-dominated or feminized spaces use masculinizing strategies to circumvent stigma, yet this scholarship largely ignores sports which limits insights into how masculinity operates across social contexts. Drawing parallels from men’s experiences in other women-dominated settings, I address this gap by investigating how and to what end men in baton twirling “maneuver” masculinities. Using 30 qualitative interviews, I show how men in twirling bolster lost status using compensatory manhood acts (CMA) by demonstrating skill mastery and being the best. Twirlers in this study borrow masculine characteristics they deem valuable while also buying into an unequal social order that emphasizes differences between winners (white, heterosexual men) and losers (men of color or gay men). Findings from this study extend theoretical insights concerning how men maneuver within and across a variety of social structures by using similar tools to create a “hybrid” masculinity that reinforces gender privilege and hierarchies of inequality.

“The Model Man:” Shifting Perceptions of Asian American Masculinity and the Renegotiation of a Racial Hierarchy of Desire

Although Asian-descent men in the United States have been subjected to negative race-gender stereotyping and sexual racism, evidence suggests that mainstream perceptions and Asian American men’s self-definitions are in flux. Drawing on in-depth interviews of U.S.-born and -raised, middle-class, heterosexual Asian American men, supplemented by popular media textual analysis, we examine how these men are drawing upon a new form of alternative Asian American masculinity— one that we call “The Model Man”—in order to renegotiate their position within the present hierarchy of romantic preference. “The Model Man,” a hybrid masculinity construction that combines the elements of White hegemonic masculinity and model minority-based “Asian” masculinity, is co-opted and deployed by men as sexual/romantic capital—especially in relation to White women—because it enables the men to present themselves as desirable romantic partners. Although this masculinity strategy contains possibilities for further straitjacketing Asian American men via the model minority stereotype—and for re-inscribing heteronormativity and patriarchy/heterosexism—it may possess an unexpectedly subversive potential in allowing the men to contest their masculinity status and even remap hegemonic American manhood.

Societal Views of Surrogacy—Responding and Reframing: Gay Israeli Fathers

The present study aims to explore gay Israeli fathers’ responses and resistance to societal criticism on their decision to become parents through transnational surrogacy. The authors interviewed 39 Israeli gay men who became parents via transnational gestational surrogacy using in-depth, semistructured interviews. Analysis of the interviews suggest that the gay fathers responded to societal perceptions on their choice of surrogacy, which they interpreted as heterosexist and hostile, by relating them to Israeli dominant ideologies and constructing a counter discourse that frames surrogacy as an intimate process fostering gender and parental change. Yet, while the participants portray surrogacy as a catalyst for social change, their accounts are embedded within an Israeli context defined by pronatalist and neoliberal ideologies, showing how accounts of change are intertwined within hegemonic ideologies.

“Professionals, Merchants, and Industrialists Unite!” Middle-Class Masculinities, Subjectivities, and Nationhood, Chile 1932–1952

This article focuses on the formation of the masculine ethos of the middle classes in Chile as a result of their experience in the public sphere and covers the period between 1932 and 1952. The study is based on a discourse analysis of Acción Pública, a middle-class weekly; ANEF magazine, issued by the Asociación Nacional de Empleados Fiscales (Chile’s National Association of Public Servants, ANEF); En Viaje, the magazine published by Chile’s state-owned railway; and Ley 6020 Sueldo Vital (Living Wage Act), legislation benefitting white-collar workers. The article provides an examination of the impact of everyday nationalism on the formation of modern middle-class men identities and explores the extent to which the intersection between expectations of class, labor, and gender led to profound contradictions that may be considered subjectivities of both class and masculinity.

Abjection, Masculinity, and Sacrifice: The Reek of Death in Game of Thrones

The masculinities of HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011–2019) are marked not just by violence and exploitation, but by contingency, fragility, and abjection. This article draws on theories of abjection to read the abject masculinity of Sandor Clegane, Samwell Tarly, and Theon Greyjoy in the context of theories of hegemonic and hypermasculinity, and, through Greyjoy in particular, tracks his movement from hypermasculinity, through abjection and torture, to a custodial and sacrificial and thus life-giving masculinity, which stands in profound opposition to the hegemonic masculinity of power and domination.