Performing Hypermasculinity

Introduction

Hypermasculinity appears in the context of recent debates on gender as a superfluous concept linked to long-gone working-class cultures. Both theoretical and empirical studies have demonstrated the limitations of conceptualizing masculinity as hegemonic consistent performances of the “real man” (e.g., Anderson 2005; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Evans and Wallace 2008; Lander, Ravn, and Jon 2014; Roberts 2013). However, when I examine the everyday lives of young people confined in Danish young offenders’ institutions, and thus involved in crime, hypermasculinity appears highly important. Within this group of young people, the performance of masculinity leaves a clear hegemonic idea of what constitutes a real man, resulting in limited room for gender negotiations. Research on young people and crime has long recognized the role of hypermasculinity both in regulating interactions in institutions for young offenders and in the incarcerated young people’s identity work. However, little research has focused on what constitutes hypermasculinity and why it is not only an individual gender norm but rather an active frame for the young people’s gendered performances.

Drawing on two ethnographical situations from Danish young offenders’ institutions, ¹ this article contributes to the literature on hypermasculinity, crime, and gender. These situations fit well with Goffman’s (1990) argument that studying how people interact and perform in concrete situations reveals what is socially acceptable and possible. I have selected the two situations on the basis of the young people’s (one male, one female) interactions as they enter an institution because these situations reveal differences not only in gender but also in gender performances. By analyzing their interactions and performances at this critical social juncture, I demonstrate how their performances of gender reveal hypermasculinity as a significant frame not only within the institutions but also in these young people’s outside lives. The analysis also shows that the hypermasculine frame is narrowly composed of assumed male superiority, overt sexuality, and a willingness to engage in violence, with very limited room for subversive performances.

After a theoretical discussion, drawing primarily on Brickell’s (2005) work on masculinity to conceptualize hypermasculinity as a frame of interaction, I present the research method and the two previously mentioned situations of performing difference. I then show how these situations reveal the hypermasculine frame of interaction through the following analyses: sexuality and the institutional hierarchy, willingness to engage in violence, and subversive performances.

Theorizing Hypermasculinity in Young Offenders’ Institutions as a Frame of Interaction

Prisons and young offenders’ institutions are sites of hypermasculinity, as is the everyday life of the offenders on the outside (Abrams, Anderson-Nathe, and Aguilar 2008; Comack 2008; Curtis 2014; Earle 2011; Hallsworth and Silverstone 2009; Halsey 2007; Jewkes 2005; Pettersson 2014; Winlow 2001). Hypermasculine identities and cultures are maintained, constructed, and reproduced in ongoing interactions both within and outside society’s institutions of incarceration. The concept of hypermasculinity therefore also serves a prominent role in criminological studies focusing on the formation of gendered identity. This research has contributed great insights into gender as a key component in the formation of identity in connection to crime, imprisonment, and deviant subcultures in general, and with regard to working-class masculinity in particular (Evans and Wallace 2008; Hayward and Yar 2006; Nayak 2006; Roberts 2013).

Yet little attention has been paid to the characteristics of hypermasculinity, including how it is constituted in actual social interactions within institutions of incarceration. The literature has taken for granted the constitution and preservation of (hyper) masculinity as predefining the criminal identity. This assumption has led to the analysis of masculinity as something that already exists for individuals to draw upon in their personal identity formation or as linked to their psychological dispositions.

As a result, the concept of hypermasculinity and its link to hegemonic masculinity has been problematized in a number of studies, pointing out that the link between masculinity and crime is overlooking the fact that most men do not commit crime (Collier 1998; Gadd and Farrall 2004; Hood-Williams 2001). Rather, as pointed out by Hood-Williams (2001), most crime is carried out by very specific subgroups of the category “men,” that is, young, black, or working-class men or men experiencing the intersection of being young, black, and working class. It has also been addressed that not only men but also women in marginalized positions are more likely to be connected to crime and that the link between gender and crime can play out in different ways depending on the situation and the social structures defining both agency and social practice (Miller 2002). Complex debates have thus emerged around the post-structuralist and psychoanalytic work on masculinities within criminology discussing the relevance of the link between crime and masculinity.

The overall result of these debates is a dismissal of the predominant focus on gender as a tenet of identity formation based on a static background from which actors (men) actively draw when “doing gender” in their identity work. The theoretical understandings developed in this article draw on these debates on how to conceptualize crime and masculinity and seek to nuance them through the following empirical analysis.

As Butler (2006) shows, we can only understand gender through what people do. Hence, gender cannot be understood with reference to a prior subject. She argues, “There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender: that identity is performativity constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results” (Butler 2006, 34). Thus, hypermasculinity does not become the expression of real men but rather constitutes real men as its subject. Nevertheless, according to Brickell (2005), analyzing the subject’s capacity for action within Butler’s framework of performativity is difficult because Butler’s subject is deconstructed while at the same time assigned the potential for action. Instead, Brickell argues for the necessity of reintroducing a reflexive and acting subject. Referring to Goffman’s concepts of self, performance, schedules, and frames in the study of masculinities, Brickell (2005, 32) argues,

The masculine self can be understood as reflexively constructed within performances; that is, performances can construct masculinity rather than merely reflect its preexistence, and socially constituted masculine selves act in the social world and are acted on simultaneously. Researchers can investigate how masculinities are done and how these performances are received within social interaction; how frames, schedules, and specificities of culture and history condition masculine performances and their reception; how tensions around front and backstage play out; and how illusions of masculine authenticity are reproduced and congealed.

According to Goffman (1986), a number of different frames may be active in any given situation. Thus, to focus on hypermasculinity as a frame of experience does not exclude the presence of other frames. Yet, as this study seeks to demonstrate, hypermasculinity exists as a dominant frame in structuring the experience of what constitutes a real man for young people remanded to young offenders’ institutions.

The frame of hypermasculinity is not unique to this type of institution but is strongly influenced by the young people’s everyday experiences outside the institution. As previous studies have shown, life in the “total institution” is characterized by an institutional hierarchy—one that often resembles the hierarchies of the outside street cultures (e.g., Comack 2008; Earle 2011; Hallsworth and Silverstone 2009). Consequently, the young people draw on their experiences, values, and understandings from their life outside the institution when interacting and positioning themselves on the inside (Bengtsson 2012a). Their everyday lives on the outside in what Wacquant (2008) has called advanced marginality is thus interacting with their positioning within the institutions.

Hypermasculinity therefore not only exists in the institutional setting for the confined young people but is also dominant form of masculinity outside. Studies about crime and men’s motivation to commit violent crimes have shown how those engaged in crime actively draw on idealized understandings of what constitutes a real man and how “normal men” act (Andersson 2008; Contreras 2009; Copes and Hochstetler 2003; Jensen 2010; Messerschmidt 2000; Nayak 2006; Newburn and Stanko 1995; Sim 1994). These studies show how general hegemonic understandings of real men become intensified for men in marginalized positions. The symbolic meanings of hegemonic masculinity are amplified in these men’s struggle to create meaningful masculine performances. The pre-assumed superiority of men embedded in hegemonic masculinity is, for example, acted out as an unquestionable right for men to have (heterosexual) sex (Messerschmidt 2000) or to defend themselves violently if they are not respected (Bourgois 2003) or feel threatened or assaulted (Treadwell and Garland 2011).

Hegemonic masculine values are more than merely tied to these young people’s limited understandings of what constitutes a real man; they are also infused with the ever-present risk of failure to be a real man (see also Whitehead 2005). Because there appear to be few or no other available masculinities for men at the margins of society, the failure to be a real man can have immense consequences (Nayak 2006). Failing to perform as a real man makes creating a meaningful gender self-performance as a man nearly impossible—highlighting hypermasculinity as the only meaningful masculinity for real men (Bourgois 1996; Jensen 2010; Jewkes 2005; Treadwell and Garland 2011).

Yet acknowledging that gender is not created solely in the interaction between men and women but is present in all interactions is important. Masculinity and femininity is not to be interpreted as exclusive to the expressions of men and women, but as West and Fenstermaker (1995, 31) conclude in their work on “doing difference,” “Situations that involve more than one sex category, race category, and class category may highlight categorical membership and make the accomplishment of gender, race, and class more salient, but they are not necessary to produce these accomplishments in the first place.” Thus, the diversity and consistency between categories (here, gender) is not what produces the differences, and thus hypermasculinity, but rather an analytical way of highlighting characteristics of the hypermasculine frame and how this frame is created in complex intersections between gender, age, social class, and ethnicity. Demonstrating that performances of hypermasculinity are closely linked to social interaction and the relational context of both the intuitional setting and the young people’s experiences outside the institution, this article seeks to contribute to our understanding of masculinity as a continually negotiated and challenged social process.

Methods

The data were derived from an ethnographic study of young people’s everyday lives in young offender’s institutions in Denmark (Bengtsson 2012b). Although these institutions in Denmark are not the same as prisons, they have a number of prison-like characteristics: locked doors, barred windows, surveillance cameras, and fences. Both the social services and the criminal justice system are mandated to remand young individuals to such institutions. The most common reason (78 percent) for placement is as an alternative to adult jail, pending trial.

In contrast to most other countries, Denmark has no tradition of separating males and females in adult prisons (Mathiassen 2011). This custom of nonsegregation is also followed in institutions for young offenders. Consequently, young women are sent to units housing mostly young men and serve under the same conditions. Indeed, the share of young women in these institutions has increased from only 2 percent in 2000 to 10 percent in 2007. ² Nonetheless, the institutional setting remains dominated by young men, with women still perceived as an exotic exception. Given that prisons are traditionally occupied by only one gender, prior studies of prison life have largely excluded gender from the analysis, and the role of gender has been thought superfluous (Jewkes 2005). The mixed-sex tradition of Danish young offenders’ institutions provides a valuable ground for introducing the role of gender.

I conducted twenty-one formal and nineteen informal interviews with young people in young offenders’ institutions or jails, and approximately three months of fieldwork at two institutions. The analysis of the two situations appearing in this article will be informed by the totality and variety of the overall fieldwork experience. While through this approach I seek to understand the social and cultural meanings of the hypermasculine frame within the institutional setting, I do not claim to represent the experiences of all confined young people (Slavin 2004).

Altogether, I conducted about 350 hours of fieldwork in young offenders’ institutions, often arriving in the morning and leaving at night for several days in a row. I wrote extensive field notes afterward, recalling the day and using the few notes on pieces of paper that I kept in my pocket. In organizing and analyzing the field notes, I used a relational approach to identify patterns of meaning structures within the data by focusing on the notion that the meaning derives not from the individual but rather from the individuals’ relations to other individuals (Emirbayer 1997). The two situations in this article are taken from my field notes. While remaining close to the original style language of the field notes, I have rewritten them to create meaningful coherent narratives (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 2011). All persons have been given synonyms reflecting both their gender and ethnic background to secure their anonymity but at the same time hold on to analytically important traits. Although the analysis does not directly address ethnicity, the young people’s different ethnic backgrounds form part of their experiences and thus interact with their gendered performances.

Doing the fieldwork, I spent as much time with the young people as possible, but I did not attempt to create activities with them. I made a situational “ethical strategy” that the young people should have the power to refuse to take part in the study as much as possible, even when they already once agreed to talk and interact with me (Christians 2000). To continually secure them the option not to be part of the study, I made sure that they had the power to ask me not to “hang out” with them. I regularly informed them that they had the power to refuse to be interviewed, and they had the power not to interact with me so that although they could not tell me to leave the unit, they could refuse to directly be part of the study.

I obtained a restacked research approach positioning me primarily as an observer and an inactive participant, giving me the in-between role of being neither staff nor young person. Most of the time, once the young people realized that I was not a staff member, they appeared to accept my presence. This acceptance surprised me. As a woman, I had anticipated some difficulties in entering a field dominated by younger men and, as I came to learn, by a hypermasculine frame. At first, the young men challenged me, trying to flirt with or provoke me. In these situations, I played ignorant, seeking the identity of “last-gendered” (Pascoe 2007, 180–83): I neither chatted, giggled, nor wore makeup or tight clothing. After two weeks, they stopped challenging me, leaving me in a position at the periphery of the interactions and allowing me to closely observe their self-performances (Goffman 1986).

By selecting and presenting two situations, each in a different Danish young offenders’ institution, I highlight how hypermasculinity is not only tied to a particular gendered subject’s identity but is also a frame guiding the relations and interactions within these institutions. As both the situations involve a young person entering the institution, they focus on the newcomer’s negotiation for a position within an already established group. The categorical diversity of gender represented in the first situation presented is a sixteen-year-old male, Adam, entering a unit with four other young men. In this situation, the categorical consistency serves as an analytical tool for revealing that hypermasculinity is not the result of difference in gender but actively created in the young people’s interaction. The second situation is that of a seventeen-year-old female, Jessica, also entering a unit of four young men. This difference in gender serves as an analytical tool for revealing how hypermasculinity is not tied to specific gender constellations but created in the interaction between the young people (West and Fenstermaker 1995).

Two Situations of Performing Difference

Sexuality and the Institutional Hierarchy

What these two situations reveal is a strong notion in these institutional settings of what a real man is (Messerschmidt 2000). Both situations show that this setting is a highly gendered social space where the young people continually seek to occupy the right to define and redefine the dominant understanding of how a real man behaves. In both situations, the young people’s ideas of what to expect when a new person arrives are influenced by their right to define what constitutes a real man.

In the second situation (before Jessica enters the institution), Murray, through hegemonic masculine values of male heterosexuality, sexual experience, and the positioning of women as subordinate, tries to create a self-presentation as a real man. By drawing on his previous experience with women—girls fighting—he portrays himself as a sexually experienced man. Murray seeks to strengthen this self-presentation when he continues to argue that he will have sex with the young woman newcomer and by assuming that she will willingly participate. Through this sexual objectification of women, Murray seeks to present himself as a sexually attractive heterosexual man and thus a real man (Messerschmidt 2000).

Further, by announcing that every woman would willingly have sex with him, Murray tries to position himself at the top of the group hierarchy. He indirectly defines the other young men as less sexually attractive and therefore subordinate. Murray’s attempt at positioning himself this way is supported by Alex, who struggles to perform being sexually experienced by stating that he, too, has seen “plenty” of “girl fights.” But as Murray does not acknowledge Alex’s performances, Alex’s attempt to present himself as a real man fails. Thus, Murray’s performance becomes even more successful by comparison. However, Murray fails to secure his place at the top of the hierarchy because Mark forcefully challenges Murray by calling him “stupid.” When Mark questions Murray’s sexual experience, he also questions Murray’s performance as a real man. Moreover, by openly attacking Murray’s performance in such a way, Mark also seeks to position himself in the hierarchy of real men, that is, by acting more mature and knowledgeable.

Mark’s putting down of Murray’s self-presentation shows that although sexual hegemonic masculine values are intensified and exaggerated in the young men’s interaction, they are also strictly regulated and controlled. While defining oneself as a real man is closely connected to overt heterosexual performances, these must be adjusted according to the institutional hierarchy, which resembles that of the street and dominates the young people’s lives outside the institution (Abrams, Anderson-Nathe, and Aguilar 2008).

That the young people’s performances of heterosexual masculinity are continually negotiated as part of their hierarchy is also evident in the first situation, at the time of Adam’s arrival. Here, being a real man is also closely connected to understandings of the real man as heterosexual. When Adam declares Bilal’s friend, Rashad, to be a “homo,” he not only assaults Bilal by attacking his friend, but he also draws on a shared homophobia. However, as Pascoe (2005) shows, being a “fag” (homosexual) is linked not only to sexual identity but also with generally failing to be a real man by not showing competence, strength, and power in interactions with other young men. Although Adam does not directly call Bilal a homo, the Code of the Street (Anderson 1999; Brookman, Copes, and Hochstetler 2011) dictates that an attack on a friend of Bilal’s friends is also an attack on Bilal’s honor, which he must rightfully defend. Adam is thus provoking Bilal by questioning his capability of making friends with real men, thereby attacking Bilal’s heterosexual prowess.

However, Adam’s attack backfires when Imran and Rick interfere by saying that none of the boys will befriend Adam because he, too, is a homo. Their response places Adam at the bottom of the hierarchy as the homo. The other boys’ support for Bilal not only expresses their common homophobia but also regulates their social hierarchy. Given that any boy can be labeled a homo, the social acceptance of the label depends on the boy’s position in the hierarchy and thus on his general performance as a real man.

Both Adam and Jessica pose an interference in the social balance, but only Adam creates trouble by assuming superiority and a right to more privileges than the others. Adam makes it difficult for both the other young people and the staff to maintain the social order and thus the superficial harmony. Jessica on the other side “plays the game right” and negotiates her place in the young people’s hierarchy without breaking the superficial harmony with the staff. While both situations show that hypermasculine sexuality plays an important role in narrowly regulating the young people’s hierarchy, they also demonstrate that their understanding of hypermasculine sexuality is not static but under continual negotiation.

Willingness to Engage in Violence

Jessica’s arrival shows that she, too, must face this overt hypermasculine sexuality. While she unknowingly was the object of Murray’s sexuality before her arrival, all objectification of her as a sex symbol evaporates in her first meeting with the boys. Their first encounter is thus dominated not by overt sexuality but by their surprise at her willingness to engage in violence. Although Murray hoped that Jessica would engage in what he considered the erotic violence of “girl fighting,” he did not anticipate her having been violent toward an adult man. In her readiness to use violence toward men, Jessica embodies values traditionally associated with hegemonic masculinity (see also Ericsson and Jon 2006; Halberstam 1998; Young 2009).

By being ready to defend a female friend, she draws on a core masculine value of the street (Anderson 1999). Just as when Bilal defended his friend’s honor, Jessica has also defended a friend’s honor against an assaulting man. The one clear difference is the young men’s expectations: while they would expect Bilal to defend his friend, even violently, their surprise shows that they do not expect a girl to use violence. The principles organizing the events thus become twisted, as Jessica at once actively draws on the core masculine value of violence and breaks with it because she is not male. She clearly assigns herself the “heroic presentation” that males traditionally perform when facing danger and conflict, and thus legitimates the use of violence (Andersson 2008; Wetherell and Edley 1999; Winlow 2001; Young 2009). However, because of her gendered position as female, Jessica’s claim to the “heroic presentation” destabilizes the established institutional frame of hypermasculinity, creating an atmosphere of tension and nervousness.

In this new atmosphere, the young men, especially those at the top of the hierarchy, must find new ways of performing their self-presentation so as to maintain their power. In so doing, the young men apply different gendered strategies. Murray seeks to handle Jessica’s performance by continuing to position her as an object for his sexual desire. However, this strategy fails when Jessica neither appears intimidated nor accepts the role of object. On the contrary, she once again draws on hypermasculine values by demonstrating a willingness to use violence to defend herself (Henriksen and Miller 2012).

Mark chooses a different strategy by accepting Jessica’s performance and siding with her against Murray’s displays of overt sexuality. He therefore not only establishes a positive relationship with Jessica but also appears a more mature and adult, and thus as more experienced. Mark manages to accept Jessica’s performance without stepping outside the hypermasculine frame because he accepts her performance of violence—one that despite her gender falls within the hypermasculine frame. Hence, he is not ceding his position at the top of the hierarchy but actively using it for another traditional masculine presentation, that of the “gentleman.” By accepting Jessica’s use of the hypermasculine value of violence and adopting a more mature self-presentation, he integrates both the “gangster” and the gentleman (Payne 2006).

Different strategies for dealing with and positioning oneself in relation to violence are also at play in Adam’s case. Clearly, in this situation, none of the young men perform as gentlemen, and heroic presentations also appear differently in these young men’s interactions. In their first meeting, both Adam and Bilal defend either their own or a friend’s honor by not accepting the label of homo. However, as neither acknowledges the other’s defense, their attempt at making a heroic self-presentation therefore fails. Adam and Bilal struggle to position the other unfavorably and in this struggle also come to exclude themselves from heroic self-presentations. In their attempt to defend themselves, neither leaves room for tolerance of or forbearance with his opponent.

Adam and Bilal each attempts to position himself by excluding the other as an unworthy opponent. Whitehead (2005, 417) distinguishes between inclusive and exclusive violence. When violence is inclusive, the victim is recognized as a rival who can affirm the attacker’s superior masculinity while still recognizing the other as a worthy rival and thus a real man. When violence is exclusive, however, the “victim is positioned as a Non-Man, through violence designed to humiliate and/or feminize, thus affirming […] the perpetrator’s masculinity by negating the victim from the category ‘man’” (Whitehead 2005, 417). Adam and Bilal continually use excluding violence in their attempts to position the other as a “non-man.” Bilal has the most success because the other young men support him. Yet in the incident involving actual physical violence, Bilal does not take the “winning man” position but seeks to explain what happened as accidental. Thus, although Bilal tries to exclude Adam from the real man category, Bilal does not actively use his violent attack on Adam to do so. This incident shows that although violence is an integrated part of the young men’s self-presentation, its role in different situations is context dependent.

What stands out in both situations is that, regardless of the gender of the young people involved, violence is an ever-present possibility. Violence can always be part of interactions, making it integral to the institutional frame and something to which the young people must continually relate. The close link between the young people’s willingness to engage in violence and their understanding of being a real man is challenged by the presence of the feminine. At the same time, however, violence as a legitimate action is not challenged but reinforced. The overall hypermasculine frame dominating the young people’s presentations and interactions is thus not replaced or significantly altered.

Subversive Performances?

These reflections on sexuality and violence lead to the question of possible subversive performances within the institution. Is breaking with the hypermasculine frame that dominates the young people’s interactions possible, or is the frame so rigid that only perpetuating performances is possible? Brickell (2005, 37) argues, “Subversion would open up possibilities for new means of understanding and enacting masculinity, for example, both individually and collectively.” Jessica’s performance and self-presentation in some ways are subversive. She actively breaks with preestablished norms for meaningful gendered interaction within the institutional setting by acting both within the hypermasculine frame and because of her gendered self-presentation as a feminine woman, outside, and in opposition to it (Young 2009).

Jessica is successful in creating a meaningful performance and self-presentation because she expands the gendered pre-understandings and norms “without disrupting the ‘jointly inhabitable mental world’ that is collectively presupposed” (Brickell 2005, 37). Her performance challenges not the core values of overt sexuality and willingness to engage in violence but the accepted ways of being gendered. In her success, while Jessica does not alter the dominant hypermasculine frame guiding interaction within the institutions, she nudges the frame, thus creating new permissible ways of being gendered—as a “real woman” (Brickell 2005). Jessica’s gendered performance is accepted because in it she does not seek to become a real man; rather, she retains her real woman performance while rejecting the subordinate position that the young men automatically assign her (Halberstam 1998; Henriksen and Miller 2012). She thus actively relates to the hypermasculine frame, carefully combining her sexuality with a willingness to engage in violence. Hence, she can perform meaningfully as a real woman without subordinating herself in the young people’s hierarchy (Young 2009).

Despite Jessica’s success, her actions in her performance neither reject nor challenge the overall power relations guiding the young people’s interactions. Therefore, her subversive performance does not radically transform the hypermasculine frame in the institution. Moreover, the young men, especially Murray, put up a fight in their attempts to make her performance fail. Jessica’s performance is pushed to the edge of the frame, almost forcing her to be physically violent with Murray so as not to lose face. Hence, although her performance is subversive, it must by necessity be more hypermasculine, that is, more violent than the young men’s. Jessica’s performance thus not only challenges the hypermasculine frame of the institution but also reproduces the hegemonic logic of the frame (Budgeon 2014; Halberstam 1998).

Adam is somewhat in the same situation as Jessica, as from the start the others view him as the new underdog. Unlike Jessica, however, Adam is the underdog not because of his gender but because of his reputation (not being able to “make it” in his old unit) and lack of physical strength which was possibly reinforced by his ethnicity as an ethnic Dane. In the units, ethnic Danes are at times seen by young people with different ethnic backgrounds as weaker and lacking in both physical and mental strength. Moreover, Adam is unsuccessful at creating a meaningful performance in challenging his assigned position at the bottom of the hierarchy. Indeed, his actions reinforce the dominant pattern within the group by actively integrating the hypermasculine frame, for example, by introducing the homo discourse. Because through his performance he legitimizes the power inherent in the hypermasculine frame, Adam’s performance is both constituted by that frame and a constituent of it (Brickell 2005).

For Adam and the young men, the room for subversive performances appears to be very limited: in their interactions, none questions the hypermasculine understanding of what constitutes a real man (Messerschmidt 2000). Hypermasculinity as the only form of masculinity is thus continually perpetuated, not resisted, by the young men in their interactions with each other, with the staff, or with me (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). The result is that the actual room for performing masculinity within the institutional setting is limited to performances within a narrow understanding of the masculine, with very little room for the plural masculinities found in other settings and other groups (McCormack and Anderson 2010; Roberts 2013).

Conclusion: The Hypermasculine Frame

When viewing hypermasculinity as a frame regulating the dominant definitions and possible performances in the interactions of young people confined in young offenders’ institutions, that masculinity is not tied to the individual young person becomes clear. Rather, masculinity is a frame of symbolic meaning that the young people actively constitute and use in their creation of meaningful performances of a gendered self (Brickell 2005). It is thus influenced by the performer’s gender but also by the performer’s age, ethnicity, social class, and the hypermasculine frame in the institutions are therefore dependent on the young people’s particular intersectional experiences. Hypermasculinity thus no longer becomes the expression of men but a frame for meaningful performances of gender in concrete situations regardless of the performer’s ascribed gender identity as a man or a woman (Halberstam 1998; Hood-Williams 2001).

What makes the frame guiding the young people’s interactions hypermasculine and not merely masculine is closely linked to the very narrow understanding of what a real man is and, equally important, what a real man is not (Messerschmidt 2000). As only hypermasculinity is defined as an acceptable masculinity, room for other forms of masculinity is almost nonexistent. Gendered social interaction is thus narrowly controlled by extensive hegemonic masculinity that denotes a real man as heterosexual, always attractive to women, and able to protect himself and his honor both physically and verbally.

The young people’s performances in the two situations make clear that the hypermasculine frame is based on an exaggerated and unique combination of existing values traditionally found in hegemonic masculinity. The young people’s performances appear extreme, as they are taken to the edge of what one can define as a meaningful gendered performance. However, when the edge is crossed and the performance becomes too extreme, that is, untrustworthy, it is heavily condemned in the interaction. This kind of condemned performance carries the risk of the young person being seen as ridiculous and thus not performing as a real man or real woman. To present oneself as a real man or real woman in interactions within these institutions, the young person must perform and negotiate narrowly within the codes and values constituting the hypermasculine frame, with no room for the plural masculinities emerging elsewhere (McCormack and Anderson 2010; Roberts 2013).

The hypermasculine frame of interaction, as this article shows, is locally negotiated but grounded in a shared understanding of a masculinity that builds on assumed male superiority, overt sexuality, and a willingness to engage in violence. The young people’s not questioning the hypermasculinity frame shows that it is not only a meaningful gendered frame for negotiating self-performances within the institutional but also an integrated frame in their everyday outside lives in advanced marginality (Wacquant 2008). The hypermasculine link to their everyday lives outside legitimizes this form of masculinity on the inside and constitutes it as the primary frame guiding social interaction in establishing their internal hierarchy. Subversive performances breaking with the hypermasculine frame are thus not tolerated as legitimized gender performances, and are almost always punished, for example, by the use of violence. This limited room for gendered performances influences both the young men’s and the young women’s performances, leaving both locked in the confined performances allowed within a hypermasculine frame characterized by violence, overt sexuality, and limited room for subversive performances.

This article demonstrates that to capture the complexities of young offenders’ gendered performances, it can be useful to shift focus from the individual young person’s performance and instead focus on the frames of meaning that are collectively drawn on in concrete situations. The dominant frame guiding the young people’s gendered performances in Danish young offenders’ institutions is as demonstrated that of hypermasculinity and its construction of narrow notions of what constitutes a real man. Thus, to grasp the complexity of gendered performances, our analysis must take social frames into account in order to show that specific notions of both masculinity and femininity are social constructs influencing the young people’s room for performing gender but also continually negotiated in their performances.