Masculinity and Meat Consumption: An Analysis Through the Theoretical Lens of Hegemonic Masculinity and Alternative Masculinity Theories

Research has found that men are more likely to choose to eat meat, particularly red meat, when compared to fruits and vegetables. This study examines the theory of hegemonic masculinity and discusses how the consumption of meat assists in the production of a masculine identity. Specifically, eating meat allows one to be seen as masculine, and the avoidance of meat permits one to be viewed as feminine. This narrow depiction of gender pushes alternative masculinities and unique eating habits to the sideline, ignoring the agency individuals possess when deciding the fate of their perceived gender. This paper seeks to discover if men, who participate in alternative eating practices, have the ability to define a new variation of masculinity. Four alternative theories will challenge hegemonic masculinity: multiple masculinities, natural masculinity, protest masculinity, and hybrid masculinities. Three examples will display the way marginalized men consume meat: historical upper‐class male fasting, meat consumption within men's ministries, and the vegetarian practices among men. Overall, this paper analyzes the basic concepts of hegemonic masculinity, the gendered consumption of meat, and questions if marginalized men are redefining the way others perceive their masculinity or if they are, in fact, striving to become exemplars of hegemonic masculinity.     

Between Money,Morality and Masculinity

Abstract

This paper focuses on the supply-side of Chiang Mai's gay bars, that is, the male sex workers called dek bar or “bar boys”¹ in Thai. I formulate some explanations why these young men -more than half of whom do not consider themselves to be “homosexual” -take on a job as a male sex worker. In this analysis I focus on certain notions in traditional Thai society, trends in contemporary urban Thai society, the economics of work in a gay bar, as well as the sexual behaviour of male sex workers and the concepts they use to describe their work.     

Masculinity,Gender, and Rural Policy*

Abstract This paper explores the operation of gender relations in the context of rural policy. Framed by debates on new rural governance, it considers how both the content and the culture of recent rural regeneration policy reflect highly masculine values and the maintenance of traditional power relations. New forms of decision making in rural areas promote a style of policy making that values and grants priority to male networks in the construction of elite groups and styles of management, and devalues community participation. We use examples from the United Kingdom to demonstrate the implications of shifts in the mechanisms and practice of policy making and implementation for men's and women's differential involvement and experience with rural regeneration. We go on to show how gender relations are also reflected in the content of contemporary rural regeneration policy. Decisions concerning the most appropriate types of initiative are predicated on a male‐oriented view of previous economic activity and local labor markets, and represent a highly masculinist approach to regeneration.     

Masculinity, consumerism, and appearance: a look at men's hair

Historically, being concerned about appearance was stereotypically associated with women. Now masculinities too have become embedded in appearance norms. Consequently men too are increasingly concerned about their appearance. Via interviews with 14 Canadian men, the role of hair in self-identification and both satisfaction and dissatisfaction with appearance is examined. Emergent themes suggest that masculinity and appearance are increasingly intertwined, and consumer culture cultivates a climate that encourages men to view their appearance as something worthy of investment. Findings suggest that men are concerned about their appearance-specifically their hair-and that there is a relationship between masculinity, appearance, and self-identification. Findings are discussed within theories of masculinity and consumerism.     

Imagining Gender Research: Violence,Masculinity, and the Shop Floor

This paper starts by arguing that visual data enriches gender research in management and organizations. Through an analysis of drawings by factory shop‐floor workers, we show that organizational climate is interwoven with gender dynamics, that shop‐floor masculinity is not necessarily heterosexual, and that masculinity in the shop‐floor context includes oppression as an element of man's symbolic violence against man. We discuss the usefulness of this type of data in gender research in organizational analysis and explore the ways in which gender violence is expressed in organizations. Moreover, the drawings gathered at a newspaper printing site located in the North of England provide a means of showing the relationship between gender violence and the exercise of masculinities, sexuality and oppression. We conclude that the exercise of hegemonic masculinity is associated not only with sexuality but also with the oppression of subaltern enactments of masculinity.     

Imagined Masculinity: Body,Sexuality, and Family among Israeli Military Reserves

This article explores how middle‐class Jewish men on reserve duty in the Israel Defense Forces form a “proper” masculinity through humor and jokes. Reserve service creates a fruitful territory for researching four issues that have not been extensively studied in the literature on masculinities: the relation between gender and age, the periodic reaffirmation of masculinity along the life course, how women are perceived as sexual objects and how informal social pressure is placed on singles to marry and begin families, and how men not only are motivated by homophobia but use images of women and homosexuals to map and interpret power relations and competition between men.     

Girls' Violence: Beyond Dangerous Masculinity

In this article, we review criminological perspectives of girls' violence. To do this, we first look at the 20th-century tendency to view violent girls as being the same as violent boys or as taking up dangerous types of masculinity. Second, we consider the contemporary ways that researchers have tried to move beyond male-centered and masculinized explanations of female violence. Noting potential problems with current perspectives, we argue that researchers need to address the contexts surrounding female offending, which includes understanding the effects and nature of gender, race, and class inequalities and how they (singly and in combination) predict popular representations and treatment of violent girls. We conclude by cautioning contemporary researchers to avoid returning to androcentric perspectives of girls' physical aggression. Not only are such perspectives logically problematic, they are also consequential. In particular, they have facilitated the masculinization and punishment of poor or working-class girls of color who are filling US detention centers and juvenile prisons in ever increasing numbers.     

Culture,Son Preference,and Beliefs About Masculinity

We examined whether endorsing hyper‐masculine attitudes positively related to the psychological well‐being of adolescent boys (N=233) in an extreme son preference community, in Tamilnadu, India. A survey with masculinity and measures of psychological well‐being was administered. We predicted that endorsement of masculinity would positively relate to personal strength, academic achievement, and positive psychological outcomes. Using regression analyses, we found that greater endorsement of masculinity predicted lower self‐reported depression (b=?.48, p<.001), lower internalized shame (b=?.48, p<.001), higher academic performance (b=.15, p<.05), and higher personal strength (b=.43, p<.001). We discuss the relevance of our findings for developing interventions to combat extreme female neglect.     

Masculinity and Visual Representation: A Butlerian Approach to Dirk Bogarde

Judith Butler's work allows for a liberating consideration of the formulation of gender by foregrounding its socially constructed nature and historical specificity. In this essay, the author discusses how the theoretical analysis of gender constructed by Butler in foundational works such as Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity can be applied to the study of gender outside of feminist/queer discourses and, in particular, to visual representations of masculinity such as those produced in popular cinema. The author extrapolates three central methodological strands from Butler's work: the transient nature of gender identification; the need to place constructions of gender within a specific historical context; and a consideration of the role of fantasy or masquerade as it relates to the expression of socially-repressed desires and in its function within the production of representations of masculinity. The author applies these approaches in turn to a case study analysis of the British film star, Dirk Bogarde. The author demonstrates how theory such as Butler's can be used to provide both a sound theoretical and methodological basis for developing a practical form of film analysis, and as a means to problematise the concept of traditional male identity.     

Engendering a Therapeutic Ethos: Modernity, Masculinity & Nervousness

This article considers discourses of "nervousness" as an important historical dimension of the "therapeutic turn". By tracing an emerging therapeutic sensibility through Australian medical literature and the popular print media of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it provides an Antipodean perspective on the discursive and cultural terrain receptive to Freudian ideas and psychology, which were central to the ascendancy of a psychotherapeutic ethos. Through a particular focus on concerns about "nervous men", the article explores how perceived problems of "nervousness" destabilized masculine ideals and helped engender a greater concern with personal distress, factors significant for the florescence of therapeutic culture.     

Farm Boys and Wild Men: Rurality,Masculinity, and Homosexuality*

Abstract In this paper I explore cultural constructions of “rural gay masculinity,” focusing first on the stereotype of the “rustic sodomite” seen in a number of Hollywood movies; second, on the construction of an idyllic Eden in the gay imaginary; and third, on gendered and sexualized performances among members of the men's movement and the “radical fairies.” In doing so, I suggest how the rural/urban divide is meshed, in complex and distinct ways, with homosexual/heterosexual and masculine/feminine dichotomies in cultural texts and practices. Set against these representations, of course, are the lives of homosexual men born and raised in the country: I discuss accounts of the lives of “farm boys” as a way of contextualizing and complexifying the dominant modes of representation outlined. In all of these portrayals, “rural gay masculinity” is figured in distinct ways, especially in relation to urban effeminacy. I end by calling for further exploration of these issues in an effort to more fully theorize the cultural meanings and experiences of “rural gay masculinity.”     

Masculinity: Shutting Out the Nasty Bits

Books reviewed in this article: John MacInnes, The End of Masculinity Lee H. Bowker (ed.), Masculinities and Violence caroline Sweetman (ed.), Men and Masculinity     

Men,Masculinity, and Cancer: Risk-factor Behaviors,Early Detection,and Psychosocial Adaptation

Abstract

Men and women experience cancer differently. More men than women get cancer, more men than women die from cancer, and men usually adapt less well than women after a cancer diagnosis. In this article, the author suggests that the consequences of male gender-role socialization may explain some of these differences. The focus of the article is on (a) cancer risk-factor behaviors; (b) screening, early detection, symptom recognition, and help seeking; and (c) psychosocial adaptation. Research that has identified gender differences is reviewed and the impact of male gender-role socialization is offered as a potential explanation for these differences. In addition, practice implications for college health professionals are offered.     

Identity Transformation,Hegemonic Masculinity and Research on Professionalization

Despite more than two decades of antidiscrimination policies, diversity measures, and greater gender equality in graduate school admissions, recent studies reveal that hegemonic masculinity remains dominant in the socialization processes common to most professions. Hegemonic masculinity refers to the current dominant form of masculinity, which is a culturally idealized form of behavior that creates and reinforces institutions of male dominance over women and other men, including working class and men of color (Connell, Masculinities, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2005). These socialization processes involve the transformation of cognitive skills, the inculcation of ethical values, and emotions. I address the masculine nature of professionalization and suggest that centering on the ‘female’ professions in future research would provoke important questions about alternatives to standard ‘male’ forms of professionalization. I conclude by identifying directions for future research, particularly using action research to examine resistance and the institutionalization of inequalities in the professions.     

A Different Take on the Deliberative Poll: Information, Deliberation, and Attitude Constraint

Opinion pollsters, political scientists, and democratic theoristshave long been concerned with the normative and methodologicalimplications of nonattitudes (Converse 1964). Of the proposedremedies to the weak and labile attitudinal responses profferedby an uninformed and disinterested public, perhaps the mostambitious to date has been Fishkin’s concept of the deliberativepoll (Fishkin 1991, 1995, 1997). Combining probability samplingwith information intervention and increased deliberation affordsa unique insight into what might be considered the true "voiceof the people." Yet, while deliberative polling draws heavilyon the general notion of political sophistication (Luskin 1987),empirical analyses have tended to focus almost entirely on howthe process of deliberation impacts on marginal totals of attitudeitems at both the individual and aggregate level (Fishkin 1997;Luskin, Fishkin, and Jowell 2002; Sturgis 2003). Little attention,in contrast, has been paid to outcomes that relate to otherdimensions of opinion quality, such as attitude constraint.Constraint refers to the level of consistency between attitudeswithin an individual belief system that arises from a combinationof logical, social, and psychological factors (Converse 1964).In this article we analyze data from five deliberative pollsconducted in the United Kingdom in the 1990s in order to investigatethe impact of political information and deliberation on attitudeconstraint. Across a broad range of issue areas we evaluatethe extent to which the deliberative process impacts on statisticalassociations among attitude items between the first and subsequentwaves of the polls. We conclude by discussing the implicationsof our results for the validity and reliability of survey measuresof the attitude and the broader utility of the deliberativepolling method as a tool of social scientific inquiry.     

The Crisis of Masculinity for Gendered Democracies: Before,During, and After Trump

The mobilized masculinity of democracies today is often presented as either a natural way for men to respond to the economic and political challenges of globalization or as a return to the patriarchal style of politics of the past. This article argues instead for an understanding of liberal democracy itself as gendered, being the collective masculinity of brotherhoods representing rivalrous nations. The first great transition from patriarchies and monarchies to brotherhoods and democracies is not being unmade now but facing a second transition to a different understanding of gender and power. This normative rise of a partnership model in families and politics is incomplete and highly contested everywhere. In the United States, it has become a partisan conflict expressed in gender terms. The Republican defense of the brotherhood state and its exclusive version of national good is countered by a newer but increasingly institutionalized vision of democracies as representing women and men equally. By more explicitly demasculinizing family headship and political leadership, social justice movements and the Democratic Party symbolically resist the restoration of gender norms privileging breadwinners and brotherhoods.