In search of masculinity

Doc M. Billingsley

18 March 2007

Sex, Gender, & Power: In search of masculinity

Connell, R.W. and James W. Messerschmidt

2005 Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept. Gender & Society 19 (6): 829-859.

I have to preface my comments this week by expressing some apprehension over the choice of male subjects for this unit of the course: drug dealers in East Harlem and fraternity gang rapists(?!). Given the demographics of the class, I have a feeling I may be put on the defensive for the next 3 weeks, even though I don’t personally sympathize with – much less identity with – the latter group of men. It’s interesting how the tables can turn as we move from exploring diverse femininities to diverse masculinities: When we read about pasinja meris I never once considered the possibility that some members of the class might feel uncomfortable exploring a subversive / rebellious feminine subject, but now I find myself in exactly that position with regard to the examples of masculine subjects that we will be exploring. I identify as a man, and I feel especially involved or attached or otherwise tied up in the questions that Connell and Messerschmidt raise and that Bourgois and Sanday will elaborate upon.

On a pragmatic level, I question whether these images feed into the negative evaluation of hegemonic masculinity that Connell and Messerschmidt identified as an artifact of essentialist stereotypes and psychoanalytical tautologies (2005:840). What is the “family resemblance” (Ibid.:850) between the sexual exploits of professional and college athletes that get tremendous air time on the media, and stories told by my own friends or acquaintances about sexual experiences of their own? Even more unsettling to consider, how do my actions compare to those of individuals who try to “act like a [hegemonic masculine] man” by demonstrating violent behavior, exerting physical control over women, and pursuing sexual conquest through the objectification and symbolic consumption of women? I use the terminology of Connell and Messerschmidt (who borrowed it from Wittgenstein) because they raise the intriguing possibility that all these diverse masculinities – my own included – may be informed by the same regional or global hegemonic examples (850-851). As the latest luxury watch commercial would have me believe, every man wants (or should want) to be James Bond, despite his violent temperament and the pathological superficiality of his relationships with women. If I share with a fraternity gang rapist a certain admiration for the suave romanticism of Agent 007, does that make me somehow complicit in whatever objectionable behaviors or attitudes the rapist expresses?

It’s important (e.g., for maintaining my own sanity) to recall Connell and Messerschmidt’s point that there are dynamic and diverse masculinities, and even hegemonic ideal types are transient at best. Especially given the global circumstances of international human rights discourse, economic development, etc., gender relations and hegemonic role models are undergoing perpetual revision even as I type. This leads me to an area of thought that Connell and Messerschmidt noted repeatedly but couldn’t fully develop within the limited parameters of their article: the influence that goings-on in one gender have on the other, both at the level of individuals (e.g. mother-son, wife-husband interactions) and at social-level interactions such as media images and political actors and movements (848,

Without wishing to disregard or downplay men’s dominant positions vis-à-vis women, I wonder whether it is entirely accurate to counter-pose “hegemonic masculinity” to “emphasized femininity” (848). The term “emphasized masculinity” seems equally accurate to me for representing men’s intentional strategic adoption of discursive practices and statures to achieve certain aims

The expressions “be a man” or “act like a man” imply some hegemonic standard “man” to imitate; “being a man” involves emphasizing certain traits (which vary individually and in relation to the hegemonic standard du jour) that would presumably help achieve the given goal. (I have even heard women tell men to “be a man,” and men tell women half-jokingly to “be a man,” but I’ve never heard anyone say “be a woman.” Is this where the hegemonic aspect of masculinity appears?)

Bourgois, Philippe

2006 In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. 2^nd edition. Cambridge University Press.

Bourgois does a great job of preserving the idiosyncratic individuality (i.e., the humanity) of Primo and Caesar and the other subjects in his ethnography, even while discussing the structure of “apartheid” in which they’re embedded. He makes it clear that the political and ethical implications of their actions are far more complicated than New York City’s “quality of life” laws suggest. One of the major contributions of his book is in problematizing the stereotypical and simplistic equation of “cops = good, drug dealers = bad,” as portrayed in media and especially in educational materials for children. The instrumental use of violence by both groups is unsettling, though presumably police brutality (“terrorism with a badge”) is less necessary (35-37), given the legal and political dominance of police officers over street dealers and minority criminals / suspects, while the underground economy of drug dealing seems to rely on strategic (and possibly irrational and self-destructive) displays of violence as a means of maintaining one’s capital (24).