Men and Masculinities

In the United States and internationally in recent years, a great deal of attention, particularly within popular publications, has been paid to boys, their rearing, and their education. While much of this concern has clearly had conservative aims or at least conservative overtones, even the more progressive elements of the concern over boys have been “pulled into” the conservative camp. Indeed, the entire advocacy position for boys has often been (discursively, at least) relegated to conservatism. This article examines why this happens and, more important, shows how this occurs on a small scale. The author focuses here on how conservatives “pull in” rather than how the Left “pushes out.” Using frameworks laid out by Apple, Bernstein, Bourdieu, and others, the author shows how an unlikely artifact—a toy catalog—might serve as a case study for the methods conservative groups use to pull the debate, as well as those teachers and parents who are intimately affected by its outcomes, under the “umbrella” of conservative modernization. These techniques include mobilizing general similarities to the boys debate, appealing to the tastes of particular class fractions, using recontextualizing processes, appealing through visual forms, accounting for dissonances, creating the constitutive outside, and perhaps most important, providing a possible solution to the “problem” of boys. I discuss implications of these techniques and advocate a reclaiming of the debates by progressive forces.

The primary question this article raises is how democratic societies, whose liberal values seem to contradict the coercive values of the military, persuade men to enlist and participate in fighting. The author argues that part of the answer lies in alternative interpretation of transformative bodily and emotional practices. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Israeli combat soldiers, the author claims that the warrior's bodily and emotional practices are constituted through two opposing discursive regimes: self-control and thrill. The nexus of these two themes promotes an individualized interpretation frame of militarized practices, which blurs the boundaries between choice and coercion, presents mandatory military service as a fulfilling self-actualization, and enables soldiers to ignore the political and moral meanings of their actions. Thus, the individualized body and emotion management of the combat soldier serves the symbolic and pragmatic interests of the state, as it reinforces the cooperation between hegemonic masculinity and Israeli militarism.

This article describes the development and psychometric evaluation of a twenty-four-item scale to measure attitudes toward gender norms among young men: the Gender-Equitable Men (GEM) Scale. Scale items on gender norms related to sexual and reproductive health, sexual relations, violence, domestic work, and homophobia are designed. Items are based on previous qualitative work in the community and a literature review and administered to a household sample of 742 men, including 223 young men ages fifteen to twenty-four, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The current analysis focuses on the young men, as they were the main audience for a planned intervention to promote gender equitable and HIV risk reduction behaviors. Factor analyses support two subscales, and the scale is internally consistent (alpha = .81). As hypothesized, more support for equitable norms (i.e., higher GEM Scale scores) is significantly associated with less self-reported partner violence, more contraceptive use, and a higher education level.

Male-male social bonds have a powerful influence on the sexual relations of some young heterosexual men. Qualitative analysis among young men aged eighteen to twenty-six in Canberra, Australia, documents the homosocial organization of men's heterosexual relations. Homosociality organizes men's sociosexual relations in at least four ways. For some of these young men, male-male friendships take priority over male-female relations, and platonic friendships with women are dangerously feminizing. Sexual activity is a key path to masculine status, and other men are the audience, always imagined and sometimes real, for one's sexual activities. Heterosexual sex itself can be the medium through which male bonding is enacted. Last, men's sexual storytelling is shaped by homosocial masculine cultures. While these patterns were evident particularly among young men in the highly homosocial culture of a military academy, their presence also among other groups suggests the wider influence of homosociality on men's sexual and social relations.

The author recounts his long personal involvement in the abortion drama of over 400,000 males annually found in the waiting rooms of over 400 clinics. He shares research findings from four waves of survey data from 1984 through 2004 involving 3,000 males. Highlights include the desire of almost all to stay with the clinic patient throughout the procedure and afterwards in the recovery room, though very few clinics allow this. A majority would like family planning education sessions, and some would appreciate personal counseling, though very few clinics offer these services. Clinics that pioneer in helping men could be honored, others pressured to do so, and laws considered to force reforms across the board. To date the Men's Movement has ignored the entire matter, and thereby missed a major opportunity to help many males claim a new and better manhood in what for many remains a secret and exceedingly trying matter.