Abstract
In The Declining Significance of Homophobia: How Teenage Boys Are Redefining Masculinity and Heterosexuality, Mark McCormack documents contemporary young men’s friendships, gendered identities, and understandings of sexuality. According to McCormack, the west, and specifically Great Britain, is exiting an age of “homohysteria” (p. 71), a time in which fear of being “homosexualized” (p. 71) characterized boys’ enactments of masculinity. As the west moves away from this particular cultural moment, definitions of masculinity become less restrictive and more egalitarian. This cultural shift manifests in a cohort of boys who espouse pro-gay attitudes, are not misogynistic, and enact identities characterized by emotional connection, physical touch, and egalitarian relationships. McCormack examines three schools, Standard, Fallback, and Religious High, where “there is a total absence of evidence suggesting that homophobia is present or esteemed” (p. 123). As a result, he argues that the young men at these schools “are redefining heterosexuality and masculinity for their generation” (p. 124).
The Declining Significance of Homophobia is the latest in a growing field of literature endeavoring to enrich the theoretical project begun with Raewyn Connell’s model of hegemonic masculinity. To do so, McCormack uses Eric Anderson’s “inclusive masculinity theory” (p. 44), which argues that there are two forms of contemporary masculinity: “inclusive” and “orthodox.” According to this model, the concept of hegemonic masculinity works as an analytic tool in “homohysteric cultures” (p. 135), like the United States of the twentieth century, not Great Britain of the early twenty-first. Orthodox masculinity refers to a constellation of gendered practices and selves that, much like hegemonic masculinity, is predicated on subordinating others. Inclusive masculinity, on the other hand, is a new cultural identity in which a gendered self for men is not dependent on domination, homophobia, or sexism.
Boys at the schools McCormack studies illustrate inclusive masculinity in their friendships, attitudes toward homosexuality, and popularity rankings. Boys at Standard, Fallback, and Religious High Schools engage in intense emotional and physical relationships. They talk warmly about their male friends, occasionally calling their mates their “boyfriends” (p. 117), sit on each other’s laps and engage in tender caresses. McCormack makes much of the fact that these young men do not deploy homophobic language (save for three instances at Fallback High) or bully gay students. In fact, young men at all three schools speak fondly of their gay classmates. McCormack documents that popularity at these three schools is not determined by hierarchies of gender or sexuality. It is not the extent to which a boy displays a valorized masculinity that makes him popular; rather, it is his ability to be his “authentic” (p. 102) self or to display charisma (p. 101) that elevates his social status.
Many gender and sexuality scholars may welcome the discovery that young British men are transforming definitions of masculinity in the way McCormack describes. However, a close reading of the evidence presented indicates that the story of gender in these three schools might be slightly less straightforward. For instance, the claim that “there is a total absence of evidence suggesting that homophobia is present or esteemed” (p. 123) is seemingly contradicted by jokes about same-sex desire and evidence that students at Religious High used “gay” to describe things about which they felt negatively. McCormack argues the “negativity of homosexually themed language has been expunged” (p. 115) because his respondents express pro-gay attitudes and claim that these comments do not refer to men who desire other men. Similarly, these boys’ intimate physical and emotional relationships may be more complex than they initially appear. Relationships such as these are sometimes characterized by themselves and others as “bromances,” a phrase that ensures that a given boy is viewed as heterosexual, regardless of his homosocial tactile or emotional practices. Finally, this discussion of popularity largely ignores the way in which authenticity or charisma may be gendered and sexualized, even as one boy is criticized for not being authentic when he discusses sports. None of this is to say that these boys aren’t participating in changing enactments and understandings of masculinity, but that the evidence may be more complex than the reading given in this book.
This particular reading of data may be a result of McCormack’s short duration in each school site (anywhere from three to six months) and assumptions in the book about biological underpinnings of gender and psychological framings of homophobia. Such a limited ethnographic experience as well as particular investments in biological and psychological understandings may not have allowed for documentation of the richness, complexity, depth, and contradictions of boys’ practices, identities, and interactions. As Michael Kimmel’s Manhood in America documents, shifts in the gender order often bring with them new forms of exclusion and domination. The Declining Significance of Homophobia begins to tell a story of the most recent shift, but in this text that story remains unfinished.