Masculinities,Sport,and Violence Against Women: The Contribution of Male Peer Support Theory

Introduction

Feminist scholarship has been an important component of the study of sport and masculinities, starting with the earliest work that pointed to men as gendered beings and sport as an important arena where masculinities were developed and reinforced (Pringle, 2018). Although feminist scholars have devoted attention to the problem of masculinity in today’s world, and the role of power in the development of gendered relations in the context of sport, the relationship of sport to violence against women is not and has not been the field’s strongest area. More specifically, although masculinities studies have continued to expand into new areas, research on the specific relationship between sport and violence against women has stagnated over the past 15 years or so (McCray, 2015). For example, in a major new handbook of feminist theory and sport only one of the 54 chapters covering close to 900 pages was allotted to masculinities, and none to violence against women (Mansfield et al., 2018).

This article attempts to reinvigorate interest in that relationship by highlighting the value of male peer support (MPS) theory in explaining the connection between sport, masculinities, and violence against women. This theoretic was recently termed one of the two “most commonly used theories of masculinity and violence” (Morris & Ratajczak, 2019, p. 1980). We update earlier works on MPS theory to consider the broader understandings and findings of scholars in recent years.

When MPS theory was first explained in detail (Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 1997), the emphasis was on how some male groups provided messages, support, and training for its members to engage in violence against women they were dating or who were intimate partners. There were many groups for which this explanation might have been applicable, although most of the attention over the years went to fraternities and participants in group contact sports such as football, rugby, basketball, and ice hockey.

Since that time, close to 50 research articles and a variety of books (see DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2013) have tested smaller or larger pieces of the MPS theory, and have almost uniformly found that the messages and the support provided by male peers in favor of establishing power and dominance over women have been statistically linked to a variety of harms, including penetrative sexual assault, other sexual assaults, physical violence, stalking, sexual harassment, and image-based sexual assault (commonly and misleadingly termed revenge porn). In more recent studies, the lens has been widened to look at peer support from both men and women, and within LGBTQ communities (DeKeseredy, Hall-Sanchez, et al., 2017). The results are similar: a statistically significant association between peer support and the harms being studied. MPS has also been statistically linked to repeated or polyvictimization both within and across categories of harm (DeKeseredy, Schwartz, et al., 2019). Thus, persons exposed to higher levels of peer support were more likely to be victimized both multiple times and in multiple ways.

Overall, many feminists and other researchers have examined patriarchal and misogynist beliefs expounded, supported, and propagated by some participants in team sports, and attempted to link such beliefs to the harming of women in any of a broad variety of manners. For example, journalists and academics have argued that a pervasive misogynist language habitually used by some professional athletes can be connected to sexual violence that they or others commit (e.g., Jenkins, 2019). There was a burst of creative investigation into sports masculinities and violence against women in the 1980s and 1990s, but unfortunately this connection has been mostly ignored in more recent years (McCray, 2015). It is time to go back and take up this topic again.

It might be productive to admit early in the discussion of these problems that some enthusiastic authors and teachers may have overstated the point, suggesting that all fraternities, all sports teams, and pretty much every all-male environment were part of the problem. Of course, one can argue that all men are the beneficiaries of the operation of patriarchal structures (Brownmiller, 1975), but that is not the same thing as saying that all men are fervent participants in societal misogyny. Meanwhile, feminist theory developed and discovered that all women were not in fact similarly situated and similarly victimized; that a much more nuanced and intersectional approach was needed to look at these differently situated and differently privileged women. The problem, of course, is that it is just as theoretically likely that all men are not identically situated and privileged and thus are unlikely to be uniform offenders. Interestingly, although Schwartz and DeKeseredy (1997) made it clear that every male group could not be painted with an identical brush of misogyny, some of those who followed their work and the work of others in peer support tended to ignore this insight in favor of an underlying assumption that all fraternities and sports teams are problematic. As early as two decades ago, there were calls for feminist sport theory to change and grow with changes in the culture (Scraton & Flintoff, 2002). This cultural transformation has been reported to be a perceived reduced need for men to constantly act out masculinity that is virulently homophobic (even while arguing that there are pockets within sports where the problem remains resilient and as robust as ever).

Connell (2000), in one of the most influential concepts ever used in masculinity studies, began with the argument that there were multiple masculinities in most societies, all developed by social interaction and then supported by social institutions. These masculinities have social relations between them, usually built on a hierarchy, with some masculinities in a dominant position and others subordinate or marginalized. Usually there is one masculinity that is the most honored and desired, even if few men can attain it or live within its rules; this is termed hegemonic masculinity.

Of course, if we have discovered that men are not all equally situated and privileged, and if they are further not equally affected by a societal emphasis on hegemonic masculinity (having embraced or been forced into subordinate or marginalized masculinities), then certainly there are both gradations in the problem and newer shifts in some sports and social group messages. The question is whether critics were correct in suggesting that all participants in contact sports such as American football or Australian rugby are trained to be violent and that this training leads to higher rates of such crimes as sexual assault. What has escaped almost any attention (except to many players themselves), and therefore evaded virtually any theorization, is that some players, teams, and sports produce fewer problems. Of course, every sport based on competitive masculinity challenges produces some problematic men, from sailing to skiing to tennis to video gaming or esports. And there is also no question that American football and baseball seem to produce more than their share of violent and misogynist men. However, it is an unanswered empirical question as to how many of those men who receive this message on the field carry it out into society. That some do is obvious, but what is not obvious is whether those who get into public trouble for their violence are “the tip of the iceberg” or exceptions to the norm.

Masculinity and Violence

One place where feminist theory has been particularly useful has been in making the connection between violence and constructions of masculinity. This begins with the simple fact that men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of violence, in addition to being the most prevalent victims. As Fleming et al. (2015) point out, within the field of public health there is a growing recognition that in each of a wide variety of separate areas of violence against both women and men, and against intimates, acquaintances, and strangers, the main driver of this violence is learned cultural norms of masculinities. The complaint of these authors is that researchers have not combined their insights to see the relationships between all of these forms of violence. After a review of different theories of violent acts and men’s participation in them, they conclude that “social constructions of masculinity and male gender norms are an important root cause underlying men’s disproportionate violence perpetration” (p. 251). Importantly, these are not testosterone-driven biological violent tendencies, but rather learned behaviors that are taught to many young men as they learn how to live within their society.

Often, this making of manhood occurs within male peer groups where aggression, force, and contempt for women and marginalized men may be the markers of a “real man” (Connell, 2000; Sherriff, 2007). Still, this is another field that researchers seem to have mostly abandoned (Vito et al., 2018), which does seem unusual given the concern today with mass shootings and the publicity given to the men’s rights groups that promote a brand of aggrieved entitlement. As Kalish and Kimmel (2010) showed, there is a direct path for some of these group members to violence to pay their perceived oppressors back, with suicide part of the package.

MPS Theory

MPS theory grew out of a recognition that women from all racial, social, and economic positions in society were being regularly placed in a position of negotiating their safety with men, whether they were intimate partners, co-workers, or strangers. How was it that some men located throughout society felt that it was socially acceptable to sexually harass service workers, dating partners, classmates, or strangers they walked past on the street? To be sure, this was not a behavior committed by all men, or perhaps even most men, but the behavior was common and widespread. One of the things that have been learned in the #MeToo movement is that this observation of 30 years ago is at minimum just as relevant as before, and significantly more widespread than many observers had thought.

What was beginning to be understood three decades ago was that there were groups in society, and especially homosocial groups (all-male), that promoted and supported these notions: that some or all women deserved to be the objects of attack; that it was socially legitimate to act on this information and belief; and that such groups often provided both information and cognitive and emotional support for those who planned or had committed such assaults. In addition to the project of gathering empirical information on this support, what was needed was criminological theory explaining how and why these groups operate and why men are attracted to them.

Perhaps the first attempt to develop this theory came with Eugene Kanin’s (1967) reference group theoretical formulations. He suggested that men come to places like universities already trained and primed to treat women as objects and often to commit sexual assault. They then, according to Kanin, seek out like-minded men, which results in the formation of groups that provide on going social support for these harmful behaviors to its members. Another influential study was conducted among battered women by Lee Bowker (1983), who found that the more time men spent with their patriarchal friends, the more frequent their physical attacks on their wives. Bowker argued that a male subculture of patriarchal supports for violence against women could be found at all levels of society.

Although there are other influential early theorists, the most important step in this formulation began with Walter DeKeseredy’s (1988) MPS model based on social support theories. He claimed that insecure young men stressed by dating or hurt by women who rejected their advances commonly seek the support of male peers. These males might help in a variety of positive ways, but some peer groups instead encouraged aggressive responses up to and including sexual assault against women who pushed back against patriarchal domination.

This theory soon developed into a full-blown theoretical position (Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 1997). Although the original DeKeseredy model was empirically supported, it was based on individual factors that did not recognize that these men did not operate in a social vacuum, but rather in a complex world of influences and pressures. Of course, there are a wide number of such factors. Among those included in the first full theory were the ideologies of familial and courtship patriarchy. There are numerous regularly shifting forms of male domination in society, affecting men and women differently based on their position in society. Among the forms of male power systems in operation are familial patriarchy, which explains the dominance of males within the family structure, and courtship patriarchy, where the rules and customs of male dominance that not only explain dating behavior but also why women so often feel pressured to ignore violence based on a learned hope that love or marriage will conquer obstacles (Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 1997). Other factors included in the model were an atmosphere of excessive alcohol consumption; membership in formal social groups such as fraternities or sports teams that promoted a narrow view of hegemonic masculinity and an even narrower and objectified view of the place of women in society; group secrecy about their misogynist actions and especially their transgressions; and the almost complete lack of punishment or deterrence on college campuses. This last factor virtually guaranteed the marriage of an essentially total absence of consequences on all college campuses would be matched with the possibility of positive rewards within the peer support group. Sexual and physical aggressors were rewarded as players, successful men, and leaders (Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 1997).

It was always possible, of course, for there to be additional factors that could be added to the theory. Franklin, for example, in testing the entire theory, added a measure of low self-control, taking the reasonable position (much like Kanin’s earliest work in this field) that some men are more likely than others to be influenced by social groups and that these men came to college psychologically primed to transgress against women (Franklin et al., 2012). Other researchers have gone back to the starting point of MPS theory—that many men are under extreme stress in adolescence and teen years over interpersonal relationships–and pointed out that men have always been socialized to react to stress through externalizing behavior, such as violent and antisocial acts (Rosenfield & Mouzon, 2013).

Peer support theory has not stopped evolving, and no doubt others will find factors that improve the ability of the theory to explain various forms of sexual aggression. For example, Curry (2015) argued that it was more than social interaction with females that was stressful. For team athletes, the very nature of football itself created the stressful state that was the basis of MPS. Football players, he argued based on a participant observation study, operate under large levels of stress and strong emotions, fueled by competition and open-ended anxiety. As many others have pointed out, athletes often develop a culture of jibes and putdowns. To keep these characterizations from sticking to them, and to generally deflect these personal attacks on manhood and masculinity, athletes tend to develop a vocabulary of affirmed or hyper-masculinity. This set of assertions commonly involves the denigration of women and anything feminine, and in extreme cases can be promoted as an affirmation of the elements of rape culture.

More recently, there has been a recognition that the theory should cover more than men influencing men. Women may influence men to be sexually aggressive, by overtly encouraging such behavior or perhaps by simple passive comportment toward the men’s victimization of them or other women. But while the original theory specifically limited its purview to male-on-female heterosexual behavior (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2013), the same principles would apply to male-on-male, female-on-female, and female-on-male sexual aggression. Thus, recent work has renamed the theory pro-abuse peer support theory (DeKeseredy, Hall-Sanchez et al., 2017). Here, in studying the victimization of members of the LGBTQ community in physical, sexual, and stalking abuse, survey questions were specifically open to the negative support of any peers, not just male peers. This more open support that offenders might receive from either men or women was also termed negative peer support (DeKeseredy, Schwartz, et al., 2019).

Sports and Masculinities

Sports theorists have for many years reported that sports can play a unique formative role in the lives of young boys (Forbes et al., 2006). “Sport—a central socializing institution for masculinity among young men throughout the world—has codified and rewarded violence between men in sports ranging from boxing to football and rugby” (Fleming et al., 2015, p. 251). Both collegiate and professional athletes, and especially football team members, have been found to commit violence against women at a greater level than men generally in the population (MacGregor, 2018), although these studies have not been particularly rigorous (Fleming et al., 2015; Koss & Gaines, 1993). In one noted qualitative example, Gary Alan Fine (1987) looked at the lessons sport teaches boys at an age defined by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2019) as on the cusp between childhood and adolescence. In his landmark ethnography of Little League baseball, Fine found that boys are taught that failure is synonymous with anything feminine. Youth who on average have not begun puberty (National Health Service [NHS], 2018) are taught that being sexually aggressive is their proper orientation and that being too friendly with girls would subject them to group ridicule. Thus, lessons on manhood start at an early age, long before college fraternities or sports teams have a direct effect on them. Studies about the influences of sport on professional athletes often do not account for the misogynist attitudes that they bring with them to the professional ranks. Research on college athletes often does not consider the extent to which these young men arrive in college already primed with lessons learned in high school. But in many cases these attitudes were solidly in place in elementary school, long before even high school sports began to influence them.

A central feature of MPS theory has been that adolescent and teenage boys suffer from stress and angst brought on by the pressure of developing interpersonal relationships, especially with girls, combined with the pressures of puberty-driven body changes (DeKeseredy, 1988). MPS theory suggests that such young men in stress would turn to their male peers for advice, particularly in group settings. In a very similar vein, Frydenberg and Lewis (1993) argued that adolescent boys looking to cope with the various pressures involved in interpersonal relationships turned to sports as their main coping mechanism. They argue that the coping lessons that these adolescent boys often learned from teachers and peers are that they need to develop a strong variety of sports aggression to be successful on the playing fields. MPS theory included an element suggesting that one central feature of an ideal masculinity was athletic success (Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 1997). This sports aggression fostered by most youth sports teams was often produced by the promotion of an anti-female, homophobic culture. By secondary school, athletes may start to recognize the role that sport plays in this generation of hegemonic masculinity, but Dempster (2009) found despite this recognition that they still supported a specifically anti-female, homophobic culture.

Certainly, it is not original to argue that aggressive team sports are more likely to produce males subscribing to a toxic form of masculinity than is exhibited by men who do not participate in such team events, or who participate in sports that do not promote such values. Although this relationship is often assumed, it has only rarely been tested. One of the few direct tests of this proposition was provided by Forbes et al. (2006). They examined the attitudes of high school males who participated in aggressive team sports and compared them directly to males who were not on such teams. They found that the participants in these team sports engaged in more aggression toward their dating partners, including psychological aggression, physical aggression, and sexual coercion. At the same time, they caused their partners more physical injury, were more accepting of violence, had more sexist attitudes and hostility toward women, were more accepting of rape myths, and were less tolerant of homosexuality than other males on the same campus who did not participate in aggressive team sports.

Where do these attitudes come from? There is always the problem that such findings do not automatically eliminate the possibility that athletes are self-selected, in that such sports might appeal to men who are hyper-aggressive by nature. In other words, the possibility exists that hyper-masculine men play aggressive sports, while other men either are not athletes or engage in individual sports activities (e.g., track, golf, and swimming). This, of course, is the role of theory. Anecdotally, at least, we know that some of the training on “proper” aggressive behavior and attitudes is taught by coaches. Although some of the most egregious examples have been stopped by many school boards in recent years, American football coaches were once noted for occasionally using such techniques as leaving feminine hygiene products in the lockers of boys who did not perform to expectations or killing small animals during team meetings. O’Sullivan (2018) asks why it is that abusive and bullying behavior, which would not be tolerated anywhere else (say, in a math class on students who are slow to learn algebra), is not only allowed but often celebrated on a sports team. Some commentators claim that the pressure of the extraordinary amount of money involved leads to abuse. Although there were virtually no studies of the subject before the 1980s, others have argued that the bullying, brutality, and verbal and sexual harassment of both male and female athletes have been common for many years, and across most sports (Fasting, 2017). One recent study of 197 top Swedish athletes found that more than 16% of the women reported a history of sexual harassment (Timpka et al., 2019). A study a decade ago of Canadian Olympic athletes found that more than 20% had engaged in sexual intercourse with authority figures in their sport, and 25% reported bullying, verbal harassment, or beatings by authority figures (Stirling et al., 2011). Recently, some coaches have been fired for their physically and verbally aggressive attacks, perhaps mainly because more athletes seem to feel somewhat empowered by social media to complain more effectively than ever before (Wolff, 2015). However, the Washington Post recently highlighted the very limited options student athletes have, which mainly consist of filing complaints with people whose primary job is to protect the school and its identity (Strauss, 2019). For the most part, college and high school sports remain an arena where coaches are allowed to engage in extensive emotional, if not physical, abuse, and many accused coaches keep their jobs. There are no National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules prohibiting coaches from physically abusing athletes and no penalties for coaches even when their actions result in student deaths, as the NCAA claims that student wellbeing is not their job. Of course, if a student/athlete signs an autograph in return for a free hamburger, the NCAA has many very serious penalties available (New, 2016).

In addition to any lessons internalized by athletes with abusive coaches, MPS theory would predict and provide extensive support for the existence of many lessons taught, learned, reinforced, and supported by male peers. Whatever coaches do, for many athletes some of the most important attitudes and lessons are taught by fellow athletes, who themselves have been carefully taught through Little League, middle school, and high school to develop an aggressive masculinity style that often bodes ill for women. For example, Adams et al. (2010) found that coaches (former players/peers) were not alone in providing role models and support for hyper-aggression. The players themselves commonly used a discourse that emphasized warfare, sexuality, and gender to encourage or embarrass others, and in general to promote increased effort on the field. The discourse and conclusions thus engendered later allow sexual assault to be treated differently by players and coaches (Watson, 2018). All of these people have a shared discourse that makes it seem logical and sensible to treat athletes differently than anyone else when they are accused of sexual assault or other aggressions.

Furthermore, while it might seem particularly obvious in the sports under the most pressure to succeed, and where the most money is invested, sports that are far from the top revenue producers can also be highly active in promoting the attitudes and behaviors that form the backbone of hyper-masculinity. For example, in a study of high school wrestling, Fair (2011) found that an important aspect of the sport was the construction of a normative masculinity based on seeing penetrative sex as an act of dominance. The athletes themselves engaged in a linguistic discourse of portraying those who did not conform to this construction as “pussies.” This resulted, Fair claims, in a masculinity based on misogyny and homophobia.

To some degree, this discourse is facilitated by the segregation of sports players by sex. Anderson (2008) argues that this separation into homosocial groups fosters in male team sports the tapping into a dominant cultural discourse that promotes sexist, misogynist, and anti-feminine attitudes among these males. Their segregation limits their social contact with females, which makes it easier to adopt an oppositional masculinity that incorporates views that can support aggression against women. Interestingly, Anderson reports that these attitudes either do not develop or disappear when the men are involved in sex integrated sports. Of course, Anderson is comparing team sports such as cheerleading, track, and golf to sports based on direct physical contact such as football, basketball, and wrestling.

However, what is particularly interesting, but has not been a major focus of sports feminism thus far, is the effect of hyper-masculine attitudes in sports on people who are not athletes at all, but are supporters, observers, and spectators. In a variety of ways, these constructions of reality “leak” out of major team sports to affect many others in society. For example, the American language has elements that are significantly more violent than other major languages, or English used in other countries, ranging from “killing time” to “beating the clock” to “wars on poverty or drugs” to describing opponents as “being in your crosshairs” (Beinart, 2017). Such language can influence people, desensitize them to violent acts, and make them in favor of violent responses (Kalmoe et al., 2018). In fact, it would be hard to imagine the continued influence of sports in this manner unless it were actively or at least tacitly supported by the society at large or powerful elements of it. Although talking about hate crimes, Levin and Nolan (2017) identify a variety of supporters such as hatemongers, dabblers, and sympathizers, and strongly argue that while a smaller number of people commit these crimes, the enabling support of ordinary members of mainstream society is essential for it to continue.

Thus, one of the ways that sports, especially team contact sports, influence the production of particular forms of masculinities is through their contributions to and participation in a societal discourse. In the sense suggested by Foucault (1977), a discourse such as masculinity being narrowly construed is most widespread and effective when it resonates and coordinates with a broader discourse found in society at large and across different institutions. A discourse like masculinity is most effective when it is supported not only by sports, but also by parents, schools, religious institutions, and activities such as scouting. In Fine’s (1987) study of Little League, he found that boys who received these messages from baseball coaches could find it reinforced through the media, the military, and at home, where they are taught that showing emotion or failing to excel at sports marked them as sissies, a tag that drew upon both anti-female and homophobic references. MPS theory centered on this proposition, by suggesting that patriarchal society concerns supported and fed the much more specific peer advice that adolescent men were receiving. Thus, in adolescence children quickly learn that although girls may be allowed or encouraged to plot or to promote certain alliances with males, boys remain the ones who call upon girls, who ask girls out, who pay for dates, who drive the cars used to pick them up, and who eventually propose marriage. It is not a long step away from demanding this type of subservience to seeing males as the decision-makers in all things. Meanwhile, the growing financial, social, and sexual independence of women in society has complicated this picture for many young men, as will be seen in the next section.

Society at large and some institutions such as fraternities have emphasized the production of a particular form of masculinity by emphasizing a narrow conception of masculinity, or what Connell (1995) called “hegemonic masculinity.” Boys are taught very early to avoid the color pink, to never cry, to respond to many attacks with force, to carefully avoid anything that might be branded “feminine,” and to be forcefully homophobic. It is best if they always have money and are successfully athletic (Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 1997). Of course, few men, no matter how hard they are, can live up to the complete ideal of hegemonic masculinity (Allison, 1996), but Connell (1995) was careful to note that the real value of this concept was that it served as a benchmark for all men. It was something to react to, to develop an alternative masculinity against, to see yourself as a failure for being unable to live up to this ideal or some other accommodation. Whether they rejected it, or felt rejected by it, or wholeheartedly lived up to it, most if not all men were affected by these rules for men’s behavior and attitudes.

Newer Masculinities?

The entire field of masculinities has become significantly more variegated and complex since the days when Connell (1995) was developing the notions of hegemonic, subordinate, and alternative masculinities (Pearson, 2019). The rise of the manosphere has complicated the excellent theoretical work done in those days on power and dominance. It is possible to ask serious questions about the continued role of patriarchy in MPS theory.

One of the problems in this field of masculinities and violence is that there has always been a tendency to exaggerate and conflate. Connell’s (1995) sophisticated analyses have been reduced to something called toxic masculinity. Rather than a complex cultural phenomenon that changes over time, and is constantly contested by other forms of masculinity, we now are mostly given a psychologically rigid condition that provides a global explanation for all male violence and sexism (Pearson, 2019; Salter, 2019). This simplification paves the way for many people to portray a society where all men are equally affected by and contribute to the patriarchy. More recently, a number of newly identified groups have complicated the picture, which has led to newer claims to drop patriarchy as an overarching concept. However, those who proclaim that the new toxic masculinities are divorced from concepts of patriarchy are no doubt moving faster than the culture, which retains enormous gendered power relations. To some degree, the discovery of these new masculinities may reflect more of a renaming of similar beliefs rather than a splintering of the movement into newer formations (Morris & Ratajczak, 2019). Of course, the largest and most used formulation in this field, the notion of hegemonic masculinity, presumes that only a smaller number of men can reach this ideal and that there are numerous marginalized masculinities of people who formed their own alternatives, and subordinate masculinities of people who did not expect to fully live up to the ideal (Connell, 1995).

The groups arising today raise several important questions. For example, the one receiving the most attention currently is the Red Pill culture, which has brought together an array of racists, White supremacists, alt-right extremists, and anti-feminists into a conspiracy-based culture that takes its name from the movie, The Matrix, where those who choose to take the red pill have the ultimate hidden truths revealed to them. This meme has for more than a decade been the delusional symbol for online misogynists (Read, 2019), but more recently it has also appealed to the alt-right, which believes that elites are favoring immigrants and women over White men (Ganesh, 2018).

The Red Pill movement has been praised for its valorization of video games and the permission it gives to men to move to more effete clothing styles and to not only reduce homophobia but in fact to discuss the edges of bisexuality. Some have proclaimed these moves as the beginning of a new positive way of thinking, although others looking at the same picture find that scenario difficult. Read (2019) explains:

Feminism, the Red Pill theory tells its mostly young male adherents, is a cruel fabrication that causes personal unhappiness, societal disorder, daily chaos, global strife, and, worst of all, is the reason that you’re not having sex. Only through the red pill can you see the world for what it really is, and—finally!—get laid. (Para. 7)

The solution for these young men, of course, is to dominate and control women, which is what the women themselves truly want, they are told. Other observers find it difficult to see the entire effort as a new movement, except in the packaging. Marche (2016), for example, sees the entire Red Pill concept as one that just shakes up and puts a slightly different and youthful face on male dominance.

There are other newer movements organized around social media, which various studies have identified as marked by extensive misogyny and male entitlement. Perhaps the major change from the earlier hegemonic masculinity ideal is the victimhood proclaimed by these men in the face of women’s growing economic, sexual, and social independence (Lumsden, 2019). Of course, it is also hard not to see clear racism in the concern these groups have over the growing equality of racial minorities and the alt-right’s fixation on Muslim immigrants.

In many ways, the analyses of these newer online discussion groups can be dovetailed with MPS theory, although the peer groups are online rather than face-to-face. Much like MPS theory, which suggested that the stress of being rejected by young women caused them to seek the advice of their peers, the Red Pill youth claim to suffer from the stress of an inability to obtain the sex-on-demand that they feel is their entitlement as men. The extensive use of video games, complaints about unfulfilled entitlement and about enforced celibacy do sound much more like the whining of a prolonged adolescence than a change in male domination patterns. Marche (2016) concluded from studying Red Pill posts:

In the hours upon hours I spent wandering this online neighbourhood, I saw mostly feral boys wandering the digital ruins of exploded masculinity, howling their misery, concocting vast nonsense about women, and craving the tiniest crumb of self-confidence and fellow-feeling. (Para. 6)

Is the Problem Being Reduced?

On the question of changes being made, some researchers have been arguing that a “soft masculinity” is now being found in such places as Australian football, where homophobic masculinity is on the decline, and with it the need for men to forcefully and vocally act hyper-masculine to prove to themselves and others that they are not homosexual (Murray & White, 2017). There have been similar findings of reduced homophobia in other observations (Morris & Ratajczak, 2019), but the question remains as to whether these behaviors are real behavioral and attitudinal changes that must be accounted for or superficial changes that allow men to look progressive while at the same time enabling these same men to both reap and promote the advantages of gender privilege (Bridges & Pascoe, 2014). It is difficult to discover from the studies thus far whether these changes are real, or even if they are widespread. However, even if it turns out that a growing number of men are losing their homophobia, this still leaves behind an enormous continuing problem of hyper-homophobia and toxic masculinity being acted out in sports environments today (Lamont & Hing, 2019). There is no way to know if the amount of violence against women perpetrated by collegiate and professional athletes has been reduced in recent years since we are looking at events that are massively underreported and extensively covered up or ignored even if they are reported. Even today, there is no way to conclusively count or even estimate the number of athletes who victimize intimate partners or other women. If we do not know how many men were victimizing women in the past, and we do not know how many men are victimizing women in the present, it is very difficult to justify conclusions on whether the problem is better or worse than for previous generations. Obviously, as with most violence against women, victims are hesitant to report these cases, and police and prosecutors are loath to prosecute. In 1997, the National Football League (NFL) in the United States began a program to suspend players arrested for domestic violence or sexual assault cases or at least caught doing so on videos that were so widely spread on social media that the NFL could not ignore them (Brown, 2016). Most often, local prosecutors drop charges against professional football players, and the NFL does not impose any punishment unless the player is found guilty of a serious crime (USA Today, 2020). Of course, in some cases such as Johnny Manziell and Antonio Brown, the league took no action at all because they were fired, and therefore not affiliated with a team.

Social Media, Other Media, and MPS Theory

Various forms of the media have been important for generations in producing both hegemonic masculinity and several forms of alternative masculinities. In the 19th century, newspapers, magazines, and dime novels taught many men that “real men” were muscular, brave, and unemotional. For example, the National Police Gazette was a very popular publication distributed mainly in homosocial sites, including saloons and barbershops. It devoted extensive energy and was an important pioneer in using sport to both reflect and shape this American form of masculinity, teaching men what it meant to be male in a time of major societal changes (Reel, 2006). It promoted unceasingly, and was an important element in advocating for, “manly” sports, such as boxing, and exercise to build muscles. Thus, even 100 years ago the media was an important arena for young men to learn about the role of sports in the definition of manhood.

Today, social media has joined the ranks of those who support and shape conceptions of masculinity. Of course, this runs a broad gamut, from the usual sports fans, to what McCray (2015) calls a particularly toxic form of anti-feminism. More than ever before, it is no longer necessary to leave the house to develop a cohort of peers who can shape and support views that promote or excuse violence against women. As one example, a female reporter covering a sporting event (a race) was slapped and grabbed on the buttocks live on TV by a 42-year-old race participant, who is a youth minister and boy scout leader, as he ran past, an event that went viral on social and broadcast media (Maule, 2019). Most interesting were the comments on a variety of platforms. Some said it was the reporter’s fault, for standing where he could run off the course and molest her. The overwhelming majority said it was a minor event and that she should just ignore it and move on, despite the fact that the police arrested and charged the man with sexual battery.

Very similarly but more broadly, Ash et al. (2017) analyzed thousands of Twitter posts on sexual assault, athletes, race, and class in response to various assaults reported in the press. They found that while numerous posts decried the violence, the majority of posts supported various components of rape culture. Most tweets attacked the victims of sexual assault, framed the offender as the true victim in a rape case, and in general provided support and reinforcement for attitudes commonly cited as indicative of rape culture.

However, as pointed out by Schwartz and DeKeseredy (1997) in their first major exposition on MPS theory, one does not need to be on a sports team or in a fraternity to be influenced by a male peer culture that is anti-female and homophobic. For example, the more rabid followers of sports teams, whether it is English, Australian, American, or Canadian football, rugby, or soccer, are often bound up in a culture that promotes the same hyper-masculinity values among nonathletes. A variety of MPS groups exist to give concrete support for these constructions. One such MPS group centers around sports betting, where success in wagering brings high status in a world of alcohol, risk-taking, and loud group competitive social interactions before and during games. Interestingly, another important part of these groups is something else identified in the MPS theory formulation: group secrecy. Here, the goal is to hide the activities of group members from the women with whom they are intimately involved. The problem, Lamont and Hing (2019) found, was that both prospective and current intimate partners were perceived as unhappy with risky and large-scale sports betting. Thus, what these researchers discovered was a “softer” masculinity projected in the company of these partners, leaving Lamont and Hing (2019) to theorize:

Sports betting as an augmentation to sport as a bastion for the construction of hetero-normative masculinity, whilst lending further support to conceptualizations of masculine identities as plural and fluid. (p. 245)

Conclusion

As early as 2002, Scraton and Flintoff were arguing that previous feminist theoretical analyses that demonstrated the alignment of power relations with hegemonic masculinity have been surpassed by newer formations. Still, the speed at which these new masculinity formulations have been announced increased dramatically since they published their views. Although there is no disagreement that sport remains an important source of masculinity learning and bonding, there have been a variety of newer cultural discourses proclaimed and analyzed. The question remains open, however, as to whether these new masculinities are going to be an important change in the nature of gender relations, or whether institutions such as sport will continue to be an important socializer for men who commit violence against women, with proponents of the newer formations remaining on the sidelines, perhaps loudly.

One of the more popular newer ideas is the notion of the “manosphere,” which McCray (2015) suggests among other things incorporates what was originally identified by Kimmel (2013) as “aggrieved entitlement.” The manosphere refers to an analysis of how certain class, race, and gender variables intersect to create men who feel entitled to women’s bodies and to having control over them. Although there are, of course, a variety of groups designed to promote the primary tenets of the manosphere, the entire concept underlines that, with the use of technology, these men do not need to belong to a specific group to feed these attitudes (Jaki et al., 2019). Through alt-right talk radio in the regular media, podcasts, blogs, and the numerous outlets of social media, these White men have developed virtual support groups (Ging, 2017) that have added several expanded variables to the MPS theory mix. One important feature of the manosphere centers around victimhood. Some men claim to be victims because women are unwilling to provide the sex on demand that they have come to see as their privilege as men (DeKeseredy, Dragiewicz, & Schwartz, 2017). This leads to a condition termed in the manosphere as “incels,” which refers to the involuntary celibacy imposed on deserving men by unwilling women (Ging, 2017). Some of these men also call themselves “betas,” a recognition that they are unlikely to be confused with alpha males. Other members of the manosphere have developed a political pose that borders on, or directly reflects, White nationalist ideology. Rather than blaming major corporations or neo-liberal governments for the reduction in good-paying jobs or the state of the economy, these men have found their anger instead redirected against previously excluded groups that these men see as stealing all of the good jobs away from the White men who are entitled to them (Kimmel, 2013). MPS here develops a masculinity that feeds a furor among many men who are not cashing in on the rewards of American society. This masculinity blames these failures not on the rich and powerful, or the men’s own inadequacies such as education, social skills, or lack of effort, but on women, immigrants, and people of color whom they see as entering the workforce to the unfair exclusion of White men. Peer support groups provide an articulation of this aggrieved manhood (McCray, 2015).

Overall, while the appearance of something new and different is generally a reason for increased activity among journalists and researchers, in the field of masculinities the question remains to be answered as to whether newer formations are changing the nature of patriarchy, misogyny, and male gender roles. To be sure, anyone who has followed national American politics in recent years is aware that Kimmel’s (2013) description of angry White men and their outsized sense of aggrieved entitlement is correct. An economy that is transitioning from manufacturing to service has resulted in many men today suffering from downward mobility. This is particularly true for those without an education or social skills, as jobs in such industries as steel, coal, auto assembly, and agriculture that provided jobs for such men in previous generations are disappearing or moving away. This has left many behind and they are outraged, believing that societal movement toward racial and gender equality is taking away jobs and societal position that by rights belong to them. As Yates (2019) points out, even powerful critiques of the excesses of capitalism can easily morph in this manner into a discourse of White male injury.

However, it is commonplace in the United States for men faced with stress and frustration to have been trained to respond externally, perhaps with interpersonal violence. That could manifest itself in relationship violence, bar fights, gay-bashing, or demeaning sexual harassment against female strangers (Fleming et al., 2015). There is no question that some of the aggrieved men who are aligning themselves with the newer men’s rights groups are resorting to violence, and most worryingly in several instances in the United States and Canada resorting to mass murder as the answer to their complaints (DeKeseredy, Dragiewicz, & Schwartz, 2017; Vito et al., 2018). There is a direct path in these masculinity acts from murder to the exclamation point of suicide (Kalish & Kimmel, 2010).

Thus, it is entirely possible that there has been less change than it would seem from media accounts. With all of the mass killings in the past few years, we only know of a couple who have been affiliated in any way with the newer masculinity groups. Any explanations of mass shootings will need to be much broader than blaming Incels, Red Pills, or Betas. Without reliable estimates of the number of men involved, a tentative alternative explanation might be that a small but loud group with access to social media has fascinated spectators but is not very important in the overall scheme of things. For example, are the Red Pill enthusiasts truly a groundbreaking change in the very nature of Western masculinity, or perhaps only a group of young men who have found each other online to join in commiserating about living out a prolonged adolescence? So far, there have been few attempts to discover whether these young men are the advance guard of the coming revolution in masculinity, or else perhaps a small and unimportant spin-off youth movement of Kimmel’s (2013) “Angry White Men,” concerned that the patriarchal entitlement that they expect has not come to them while they played video games.

More likely, and again this must be tentative until a major study uncovers how many people are involved in various ideologies, we are, with the rest of society, seeing a continuation of relationships, gender role development, and the resulting harm that a variety of institutions teach and foster in adolescents and men. Of course, there are some major changes, as anyone who has followed Donald Trump’s presidency has noted. But across Western society, peer support groups that have nothing to do with the newer movements continue to train men to be misogynist, homophobic, and violent toward both women and other men. Sports, from Little League through high school, college, and the professional ranks are substantially the same as they have been in the past, teaching the same or similar lessons to participants, spectators, gamblers, and followers.

This does not mean that peer support theory cannot be improved or brought up to date. As mentioned above, several newer issues need to be included in the traditional MPS work. Theoretical work has begun to be inclusive of messages given out by women (DeKeseredy, Dragiewicz, & Schwartz, 2017), messages given out within and to the LGBTQ community (DeKeseredy, Hall-Sanchez, et al., 2017), and the role of aggrieved entitlement in the development and justification of men’s violence (DeKeseredy, Burnham, et al., 2019).

One strong suggestion for the future of this theory is to incorporate the type of analysis that was provided by Schrock and Schwalbe’s (2009) manhood acts theory. MPS theory deals with the many influences, including peer support, that convince men that they are entitled to the privileges of patriarchy and that on some occasions it is acceptable to use force to require women to behave accordingly. MPS theory emphasizes the information and emotional support given to many men to engage in patriarchal and sometimes violent acts. Manhood Acts Theory is strongest in describing just what those acts and behaviors are that men learn and perform to maintain dominance. It is a more microlevel theory, centering on the actual things that men do to claim patriarchal privilege and to act out claims of ownership of relationships, place, and space. Morris and Ratajczak (2019) argue that because this theory and MPS theory share presuppositions there is room for such a merger.