Inclusive Masculinity and Facebook Photographs Among Early Emerging Adults at a British University

Central to debates about the construction of masculinity in sociology is the influence of culture and what constitutes acceptable displays of masculinity. This article adopts a novel approach in examining this question. It adopts a summative content analysis, combined with a semiotic analysis, of 1,100 Facebook photographs, in order to explore the underlying meanings within the photos and the performances of masculinity. Facebook photographs from 44, straight, White, male, early emerging adults attending the same university are used as a representation of an individual’s ideal self. These are then analyzed in order to determine the behaviors endorsed by peer culture. It was found that the sample overwhelmingly adopted inclusive behaviors (including homosocial tactility, dancing, and kissing each other), and inclusive masculinity theory was utilized to contextualize participants’ constructions of masculinity. Thus, this research shows that emerging adult males at this university construct their masculine identities away from previous orthodox archetypes. It is argued that the reducing importance of gendered behavior patterns may represent an adoption of what are perceived as wider cultural norms and act as a symbol of adulthood to these early emerging adults

The appropriation of hegemonic masculinity within selected research on men's health

Connell's hegemonic masculinity thesis (HMT) has occupied a relatively dominant position within contemporary research exploring the lives of men. Messerschmidt has conducted a review of recent literature that purports to use HMT, he describes in detail some of the ways Connell's work has been appropriated. Taking Messerschmidt's lead, this paper explores a small selection of men's health research that employ HMT as a central organising theme. Such a narrow focus and limited sample enables the theoretical, conceptual and empirical contributions of engagements with Connell's work to be critically explored in detail. This paper provides colleagues with clear examples of ways in which reified and reductive account of masculinity, are still being reproduced in contemporary analyses of men's lives. In calling for researchers to critically reflect upon their usage of Connell's thesis in more detail, my aim is to increase the subtlety and sophistication of such works. A further hope is that by highlighting specific examples of the need to appraise the relevance and adequacy of HMT as a conceptual frame of lived experiences, we might encourage researchers to access the multitude of different theoretical positions that speak to the lives of men

'It's a Form of Freedom': The experiences of people with disabilities within equestrian sport

This paper explores the embodied, gendered experiences of disabled horse‐riders. Drawing on data from five in‐depth interviews with paradressage riders, the ways in which their involvement in elite disability sport impacts upon their sense of identity and confidence are explored, as well as the considerable health and social benefits that this involvement brings. Social models of disability are employed and the shortcomings of such models, when applied to disability sport, are highlighted. The data presented here demonstrates the necessity of seeing disability sport as an embodied experience and acknowledging the importance of impairment to the experiences of disabled athletes. Living within an impaired body is also a gendered experience and the implications of this when applied to elite disability sport are considered

Suited for Success? : Suits, Status, and Hybrid Masculinity

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version. The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Men and Masculinities, March 2017, doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X17696193, published by SAGE Publishing, All rights reserved.This article analyzes the sartorial biographies of four Canadian men to explore how the suit is understood and embodied in everyday life. Each of these men varied in their subject positions—body shape, ethnicity, age, and gender identity—which allowed us to look at the influence of men’s intersectional identities on their relationship with their suits. The men in our research all understood the suit according to its most common representation in popular culture: a symbol of hegemonic masculinity. While they wore the suit to embody hegemonic masculine configurations of practice—power, status, and rationality—most of these men were simultaneously marginalized by the gender hierarchy. We explain this disjuncture by using the concept of hybrid masculinity and illustrate that changes in the style of hegemonic masculinity leave its substance intact. Our findings expand thinking about hybrid masculinity by revealing the ways subordinated masculinities appropriate and reinforce hegemonic masculinity.Peer reviewe

“I Kiss Them Because I Love Them”: The Emergence of Heterosexual Men Kissing in British Institutes of Education.

In this article, we combined data from 145 interviews and three ethnographic investigations of heterosexual male students in the U.K. from multiple educational settings. Our results indicate that 89% have, at some point, kissed another male on the lips which they reported as being non-sexual: a means of expressing platonic affection among heterosexual friends. Moreover, 37% also reported engaging in sustained same-sex kissing, something they construed as non-sexual and non-homosexual. Although the students in our study understood that this type of kissing remains somewhat culturally symbolized as a taboo sexual behavior, they nonetheless reconstructed it, making it compatible with heteromasculinity by recoding it as homosocial. We hypothesize that both these types of kissing behaviors are increasingly permissible due to rapidly decreasing levels of cultural homophobia. Furthermore, we argue that there has been a loosening of the restricted physical and emotional boundaries of traditional heteromasculinity in these educational settings, something which may also gradually assist in the erosion of prevailing heterosexual hegemony

Gendered performances in sport: an embodied approach

Despite significant advances in recent years, gender inequalities remain apparent within the context of sport participation and engagement. One of the problems, however, when addressing gender issues in sport is the continued assumption by many sport practitioners that the experiences of women and men will always be different because of perceived physiological characteristics. Adopting a focus based solely upon perceived gendered differences often overlooks the importance of recognising individual experience and the prevailing social influences that impact upon participation, such as age, class, race and ability. An embodied approach, as well as seeking to move beyond mind/body dualisms, incorporates the physiological with the social and psychological. Therefore, it is suggested that while considerations of gender remain important, they need to be interpreted alongside other interconnecting and influential (at varying times and occasions) social and physical factors. It is argued that taking the body as a starting point opens up more possibilities to manoeuvre through the mine field that is gender and sport participation. The appeal of an embodied approach to the study of gender and sport is in its accommodation of a wider multi-disciplinary lens. Particularly, by acknowledging the subjective, corporeal, lived experiences of sport engagement, an embodied approach offers a more flexible starting point to negotiate the theoretical and methodological challenges created by restrictive discourses of difference

Exploring the relationship between homosexuality and sport among the teammates of a small, Midwestern Catholic college soccer team.

Despite decreasing homophobia, openly gay male athletes are still rare in organized, competitive teamsports. In this action research, we explore two aspects of homosexuality and sport: (1) the effect of a gay male soccer player coming out to his teammates; and (2) the effect of having an openly gay researcher in the field. This is, therefore, the first-ever first-hand account of an athlete's coming-out process with researchers in the field. Even though this is action research and, therefore, not generalizable, we highlight that this research contributes to the body of literature on sexuality and sport because we document the interactions of straight athletes with a gay player and a gay researcher among the heterosexual players at a small, Catholic college in the American Midwest. We use interviews to show that players were accepting of homosexuality before the beginning of this research and show that discussions with these two gay men further promoted players' perspectives on homosexuality. This led to an increase in the team's social cohesion and a decrease in heteronormativity

Theorizing Masculinities in Contemporary Britain

This chapter examines two key issues about masculinities in contemporary Britain. First, we examine what the evidence says about the extent to which British masculinities are changing, and how this is manifest in contemporary society. Second, we explore how theoretical understandings of masculinities both shape one’s findings, and evolve in relation to a changing culture. We thus provide a partial history of masculinity theory and contextualise the chapters of this edited volume, in order to advance theoretical and empirical understanding of British masculinities. We argue that far from being a crisis of masculinities, the gendered changes in the social lives of British men are positive and to be welcomed

"It is what it is": masculinity, homosexuality, and inclusive discourse in mixed martial arts

In this paper we make use of inclusive masculinity theory to explore online media representations of male homosexuality and masculinity within the increasingly popular combat sport of mixed martial arts MMA). Adopting a case-study approach, we discuss narratives constructed around one aspirational male MMA fighter, Dakota Cochrane, whose history of having participated in gay pornography became a major talking point on a number of MMA 'fanzine'/'community' websites during early 2012. While these narratives attempted to discursively 'rescue' Cochrane's supposedly threatened masculinity, highlighting both his 'true' heterosexuality and his prodigious fighting abilities, they also simultaneously celebrated the acceptance of homosexual men within the sport which Cochrane's case implied. Thus, we suggest that these media representations of homosexuality and masculinity within MMA are indicative of declining cultural homophobia and homohysteria, and an inclusive vision of masculinity, as previously described by proponents of inclusive masculinity theory

What’s Sex (Composition) Got to Do with It? The Importance of Sex Composition of Gangs for Female and Male Members’ Offending and Victimization

Sex composition of groups has been theorized in organizational sociology and found in prior work to structure female and male members’ behaviors and experiences. Peer group and gang literature similarly finds that the sex gap in offending varies across groups of differing sex ratios. Drawing on this and other research linking gang membership, offending, and victimization, we examine whether sex composition of gangs is linked to sex differences in offending in this sample, further assess whether sex composition similarly structures females’ and males’ victimization experiences, and if so, why. Self-report data from gang members in a multi-site, longitudinal study of 3,820 youths are employed. Results support previous findings about variations in member delinquency by both sex and sex composition of the gang and also indicate parallel variations in members’ victimization. These results are further considered within the context of facilitating effects such as gender dynamics, gang characteristics, and normative orientation