Pub Date : 2022-11-16DOI: 10.1080/18902138.2022.2147758
Charlotte N. Hoppen
{"title":"Engaged fatherhood for men, families and gender equality: healthcare, social policy, and work perspectives","authors":"Charlotte N. Hoppen","doi":"10.1080/18902138.2022.2147758","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2022.2147758","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37885,"journal":{"name":"NORMA","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48050740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-02DOI: 10.1080/18902138.2022.2139522
Andrea Christofidou
ABSTRACT In this short article I provide a response to Steven Roberts, Karla Elliott and Brittany Ralph’s reply to my recently published article, Men and masculinities: a continuing debate on change. I address Roberts, Elliott and Ralph’s critique over the limitations of comparing the frameworks of inclusive and hybrid masculinities, and I respond to their claims over the use of intersectionality to account for the lack of change among less privileged men. Throughout the article I highlight the need for analysing men and masculinities in relation to wider systems of inequality and power hierarchies between men and women on the one hand, and among men on the other. I also keep insisting that research on changing men and masculinities should rely on intersectional, multi-layered analyses that take into careful consideration the contextual, interactional and situational factors that may affect men’s practices and (re)constructions of masculinity.
{"title":"Changing men and masculinities: a reply to Roberts, Elliott and Ralph","authors":"Andrea Christofidou","doi":"10.1080/18902138.2022.2139522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2022.2139522","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this short article I provide a response to Steven Roberts, Karla Elliott and Brittany Ralph’s reply to my recently published article, Men and masculinities: a continuing debate on change. I address Roberts, Elliott and Ralph’s critique over the limitations of comparing the frameworks of inclusive and hybrid masculinities, and I respond to their claims over the use of intersectionality to account for the lack of change among less privileged men. Throughout the article I highlight the need for analysing men and masculinities in relation to wider systems of inequality and power hierarchies between men and women on the one hand, and among men on the other. I also keep insisting that research on changing men and masculinities should rely on intersectional, multi-layered analyses that take into careful consideration the contextual, interactional and situational factors that may affect men’s practices and (re)constructions of masculinity.","PeriodicalId":37885,"journal":{"name":"NORMA","volume":"18 1","pages":"65 - 71"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43152679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/18902138.2022.2133819
Sam de Boise
When it comes to academic literature, a cursory survey of titles reveals that one constant in discussions of men and masculinities is change. Segal’s (1993) Slow Motion: Changing Men, Changing Masculinities was already raising the issue of change in relation to men and masculinities over thirty years ago. Interest in the subject, however has intensified since the early 2000s, with hooks’ (2004) The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love, Hidaka’s (2010) Salaryman Masculinity: Continuity and Change in Hegemonic Masculinity in Japan, Seidler’s (2006) Transforming Masculinities, Roberts’ (2013) Young Working-Class Men in Transition as well as his (2015) edited Debating Modern Masculinities: Change, Continuity, Crisis?, Anderson’s (2009) Inclusive Masculinity: The Changing Nature of Masculinities, and, recently, Luyt and Starck’s (2022) Masculine Power and Gender Equality: Masculinities as Change Agents to name just a few. Even before this organisations such as Achilles Heel in the UK (see Seidler, 1991) and the women’s liberation movement (see, for instance, Hanisch, 1969) were foregrounding the issue as important. Articles in recent issues of NORMA, too, have focused on the question of ‘newer’ forms of masculinity as well as central questions around what change is desirable and possible (Christofidou, 2021; Roberts, Elliott, & Ralph, 2021; Wolfman, Hearn, & Yeadon-Lee, 2021). The number of articles which deal with the issue of changes in the performance and charactertisation of masculinity and the position and performances of men, are innumerably larger (see, for example, Duncanson, 2015; Ratele, 2014; Ratele, 2015; Segal, 1993) and expanding this out to even those which do not include change in the title, the corpus of literature becomes unmanageable. There are essentially three aspects to this debate, revolving around theoretical, ethical and empirical considerations. The first concerns theories around if and why men change. CSMM, via Connell, has been indebted to a specific idea of hegemony, rooted in Gramscian notions of culture as something which is flexible and related to, but to a certain extent independent of, economic forces. Whilst Marx was notoriously economist in his approach to culture, Gramsci’s (1971) revisions emphasised the independence of the so-called superstructure from the base, observing that culture could shape political influence and subsequently economic power rather than simply the reverse. For Connell, the promise of hegemony for theorising change was one of the key dynamics which hegemony offered over sex role theory which failed to grapple with the question (Demetriou, 2001, p. 339). Connell notes specifically that “I stress that hegemonic masculinity embodies ‘a currently accepted strategy’. When conditions for the defence of patriarchy change, the bases of dominance of a particular masculinity are eroded...Hegemony then, is a historically mobile relation” (Connell, 1995, 77 emphasis added). Alongside these more str
{"title":"Changing men, changing masculinities","authors":"Sam de Boise","doi":"10.1080/18902138.2022.2133819","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2022.2133819","url":null,"abstract":"When it comes to academic literature, a cursory survey of titles reveals that one constant in discussions of men and masculinities is change. Segal’s (1993) Slow Motion: Changing Men, Changing Masculinities was already raising the issue of change in relation to men and masculinities over thirty years ago. Interest in the subject, however has intensified since the early 2000s, with hooks’ (2004) The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love, Hidaka’s (2010) Salaryman Masculinity: Continuity and Change in Hegemonic Masculinity in Japan, Seidler’s (2006) Transforming Masculinities, Roberts’ (2013) Young Working-Class Men in Transition as well as his (2015) edited Debating Modern Masculinities: Change, Continuity, Crisis?, Anderson’s (2009) Inclusive Masculinity: The Changing Nature of Masculinities, and, recently, Luyt and Starck’s (2022) Masculine Power and Gender Equality: Masculinities as Change Agents to name just a few. Even before this organisations such as Achilles Heel in the UK (see Seidler, 1991) and the women’s liberation movement (see, for instance, Hanisch, 1969) were foregrounding the issue as important. Articles in recent issues of NORMA, too, have focused on the question of ‘newer’ forms of masculinity as well as central questions around what change is desirable and possible (Christofidou, 2021; Roberts, Elliott, & Ralph, 2021; Wolfman, Hearn, & Yeadon-Lee, 2021). The number of articles which deal with the issue of changes in the performance and charactertisation of masculinity and the position and performances of men, are innumerably larger (see, for example, Duncanson, 2015; Ratele, 2014; Ratele, 2015; Segal, 1993) and expanding this out to even those which do not include change in the title, the corpus of literature becomes unmanageable. There are essentially three aspects to this debate, revolving around theoretical, ethical and empirical considerations. The first concerns theories around if and why men change. CSMM, via Connell, has been indebted to a specific idea of hegemony, rooted in Gramscian notions of culture as something which is flexible and related to, but to a certain extent independent of, economic forces. Whilst Marx was notoriously economist in his approach to culture, Gramsci’s (1971) revisions emphasised the independence of the so-called superstructure from the base, observing that culture could shape political influence and subsequently economic power rather than simply the reverse. For Connell, the promise of hegemony for theorising change was one of the key dynamics which hegemony offered over sex role theory which failed to grapple with the question (Demetriou, 2001, p. 339). Connell notes specifically that “I stress that hegemonic masculinity embodies ‘a currently accepted strategy’. When conditions for the defence of patriarchy change, the bases of dominance of a particular masculinity are eroded...Hegemony then, is a historically mobile relation” (Connell, 1995, 77 emphasis added). Alongside these more str","PeriodicalId":37885,"journal":{"name":"NORMA","volume":"17 1","pages":"213 - 218"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42048614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-15DOI: 10.1080/18902138.2022.2121534
L. Berg, Ida Linander
ABSTRACT For centuries, male hypogonadism has been defined as a clinical syndrome caused by the inability to produce physiological concentrations of testosterone and/or normal amount of sperm. In 2020, an information campaign started in Sweden with the ambition of increasing knowledge about hypogonadism and (lack of) testosterone, targeting both men and healthcare providers. In this study, we take a closer look at media discussions in Sweden on hypogonadism over the period 2018–2021. Through feminist thinking on biomedicalisation, we analyse the media material about the phenomena and issues being raised regarding masculinity, age and health in contemporary neoliberal and biocapital times. For some people, hypogonadism is a severe condition, but we can also see that the diagnosis becomes a response to a wide range of symptoms, expanding the realm for diagnostic practices and tying into normative ideas about age, time and lacking or fading masculinity. The media narratives about hypogonadism not only reflect cultural norms regarding masculinity and the plasticity of diagnoses but also create desires, needs and markets.
{"title":"Hypogonadism. Diagnosis, masculinity, and capital in narratives about testosterone deficiency","authors":"L. Berg, Ida Linander","doi":"10.1080/18902138.2022.2121534","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2022.2121534","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT For centuries, male hypogonadism has been defined as a clinical syndrome caused by the inability to produce physiological concentrations of testosterone and/or normal amount of sperm. In 2020, an information campaign started in Sweden with the ambition of increasing knowledge about hypogonadism and (lack of) testosterone, targeting both men and healthcare providers. In this study, we take a closer look at media discussions in Sweden on hypogonadism over the period 2018–2021. Through feminist thinking on biomedicalisation, we analyse the media material about the phenomena and issues being raised regarding masculinity, age and health in contemporary neoliberal and biocapital times. For some people, hypogonadism is a severe condition, but we can also see that the diagnosis becomes a response to a wide range of symptoms, expanding the realm for diagnostic practices and tying into normative ideas about age, time and lacking or fading masculinity. The media narratives about hypogonadism not only reflect cultural norms regarding masculinity and the plasticity of diagnoses but also create desires, needs and markets.","PeriodicalId":37885,"journal":{"name":"NORMA","volume":"18 1","pages":"5 - 20"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48743924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-23DOI: 10.1080/18902138.2022.2104100
Rita Grave, Ana R. Pinho, A. Marques, Conceição Nogueira
ABSTRACT Hegemonic masculinity constitutes a relevant tool for understanding the genderization processes prevailing in men’s sexualities. Hence, we deployed this concept as a resource to analyse how sexual fluidity might apply to the sexuality of non-heterosexual men and how they experienced this. We carried out semi-structured interviews with 15 participants, ranging from 20 to 53 years old, who all reported having experienced sexual fluidity. This article presents experiences of sexual fluidity as a shifting identity amidst flexible sexual activities and concerns over normativity through personal and social reactions taking place in a heterostable social world. These results exhibit the negotiations of sexual fluidity with hegemonic masculinities, both reproduced and questioned.
{"title":"Sexual fluidity among non-heterosexual men: discourses and practices on sexual variability negotiated with hegemonic masculinity","authors":"Rita Grave, Ana R. Pinho, A. Marques, Conceição Nogueira","doi":"10.1080/18902138.2022.2104100","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2022.2104100","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Hegemonic masculinity constitutes a relevant tool for understanding the genderization processes prevailing in men’s sexualities. Hence, we deployed this concept as a resource to analyse how sexual fluidity might apply to the sexuality of non-heterosexual men and how they experienced this. We carried out semi-structured interviews with 15 participants, ranging from 20 to 53 years old, who all reported having experienced sexual fluidity. This article presents experiences of sexual fluidity as a shifting identity amidst flexible sexual activities and concerns over normativity through personal and social reactions taking place in a heterostable social world. These results exhibit the negotiations of sexual fluidity with hegemonic masculinities, both reproduced and questioned.","PeriodicalId":37885,"journal":{"name":"NORMA","volume":"17 1","pages":"219 - 235"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42508257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/18902138.2022.2103298
Ulf Mellström
This journal is founded upon the premise of an emancipatory call for investigating, presenting, finding and opening up for new and alternative masculine gendered subjectivities. We do that by collecting and presenting work that almost always offers us keys to possibilities for reconsidering, rethinking and possibly exiting historically inherited and contemporary forms of masculinity. As such we are of course part of a long history of feminist and profeminist work that articulates and frames our fears and hopes regarding ethically acceptable and potentially less destructive forms of masculinities. This is also true for the four articles in this current issue of Norma: ‘Intersectionality and social justice in programs for boys and men’ Keddie, Amanda; Flood, Michael & Hewson-Munro, Shelley; ‘The reflective process of the perpetrator: representations of rape in novels of C.N. Adidche and V.T. Nguyn’ Cohen, Omri; ‘Rituals of (un)changing masculinity: cohesion or diversity? A study of the fraternization traditions of Swedish cadets’ at the Military Academy’ Malmio, Irja; and ‘Filial obligations, affect and masculinities: Vietnamese-Australian young men being and becoming good sons’ by Garth Stahl and Yang Zhao. However, before giving a brief introduction to these articles in the end of this editorial, I will articulate some concerns in contemporary masculinity studies as well as reconnecting to some others that are part of our Norma’s scope of questions. As we are moving into new theoretical landscapes in masculinity studies where the connection to feminist theorizing is a constant junction to be revisited, we return to some of the ground pillars of masculinity studies such as the ‘Man question’. Such concerns are addressed in an upcoming volume (fc. Mellström & Pease, 2022) where several key thinkers in the field are taking on the question of how to calibrate masculinity studies in relation to the contemporary posthuman predicament of our world. My reasoning here draws upon some of the ideas raised in this forthcoming volume. In times of uncertainty caused by wars, climate crisis and political backlashes facing any progressive change concerning gender and sexuality, we are even more confronted with basic ontological questions connected to power and existence. Feminist theorizing has for a long time addressed such questions, not least in the theoretical wave of posthuman feminism, new materialism and theories of affect in the last decades. This wave of scholarship has come to reformulate and reinvigorate a large umbrella of onto-epistemological questions concerning subjectivity, sex, gender, sexual difference, bodily appearance, systems of affect, relationality, matter, agency, human and non-human, ecology and technology. The umbrella is far too extensive to meaningfully summarize here, but there are certain questions that reoccur with a new emphasis. The ‘Man question’ is no doubt one of those and where is that question better addressed than in mascu
{"title":"Returning to the ‘Man’ question in the posthuman predicament?","authors":"Ulf Mellström","doi":"10.1080/18902138.2022.2103298","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2022.2103298","url":null,"abstract":"This journal is founded upon the premise of an emancipatory call for investigating, presenting, finding and opening up for new and alternative masculine gendered subjectivities. We do that by collecting and presenting work that almost always offers us keys to possibilities for reconsidering, rethinking and possibly exiting historically inherited and contemporary forms of masculinity. As such we are of course part of a long history of feminist and profeminist work that articulates and frames our fears and hopes regarding ethically acceptable and potentially less destructive forms of masculinities. This is also true for the four articles in this current issue of Norma: ‘Intersectionality and social justice in programs for boys and men’ Keddie, Amanda; Flood, Michael & Hewson-Munro, Shelley; ‘The reflective process of the perpetrator: representations of rape in novels of C.N. Adidche and V.T. Nguyn’ Cohen, Omri; ‘Rituals of (un)changing masculinity: cohesion or diversity? A study of the fraternization traditions of Swedish cadets’ at the Military Academy’ Malmio, Irja; and ‘Filial obligations, affect and masculinities: Vietnamese-Australian young men being and becoming good sons’ by Garth Stahl and Yang Zhao. However, before giving a brief introduction to these articles in the end of this editorial, I will articulate some concerns in contemporary masculinity studies as well as reconnecting to some others that are part of our Norma’s scope of questions. As we are moving into new theoretical landscapes in masculinity studies where the connection to feminist theorizing is a constant junction to be revisited, we return to some of the ground pillars of masculinity studies such as the ‘Man question’. Such concerns are addressed in an upcoming volume (fc. Mellström & Pease, 2022) where several key thinkers in the field are taking on the question of how to calibrate masculinity studies in relation to the contemporary posthuman predicament of our world. My reasoning here draws upon some of the ideas raised in this forthcoming volume. In times of uncertainty caused by wars, climate crisis and political backlashes facing any progressive change concerning gender and sexuality, we are even more confronted with basic ontological questions connected to power and existence. Feminist theorizing has for a long time addressed such questions, not least in the theoretical wave of posthuman feminism, new materialism and theories of affect in the last decades. This wave of scholarship has come to reformulate and reinvigorate a large umbrella of onto-epistemological questions concerning subjectivity, sex, gender, sexual difference, bodily appearance, systems of affect, relationality, matter, agency, human and non-human, ecology and technology. The umbrella is far too extensive to meaningfully summarize here, but there are certain questions that reoccur with a new emphasis. The ‘Man question’ is no doubt one of those and where is that question better addressed than in mascu","PeriodicalId":37885,"journal":{"name":"NORMA","volume":"17 1","pages":"143 - 147"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49150892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-22DOI: 10.1080/18902138.2022.2091918
H. Andersson, Göran Eriksson
ABSTRACT This study analyzes how men’s domestic cooking is represented and masculinized in cookbooks, written by men for men and published in 1975, 1992, and 2010, respectively. Departing from the concept of domestic masculinities, it uses the methods of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis. It asks: what kind of values and ideas connected to men, food, and the home are realized in texts and images? And how are these legitimized and naturalized? As the study’s context is Sweden, a country known for its pursuit of gender equality, the study focuses on how men’s domestic cooking has been represented in cookbooks published roughly 20 years apart. The analysis shows that, while the first two books are characterized by a ‘real man’ discourse and working-class masculinity, the 2010 book represents a masculinity in line with a ‘new man image’ closely linked to consumption and materiality. However, structurally, there are few differences. Values associated with traditional middle-class masculinities, traditional gender norms, and gendered division of domestic labor are reproduced. Men’s cooking is recontextualized as a playful leisure activity. In all three books, cooking becomes another way for a man to appear successful – both in relation to other men and women, and in socioeconomic terms.
{"title":"The masculinization of domestic cooking: a historical study of Swedish cookbooks for men","authors":"H. Andersson, Göran Eriksson","doi":"10.1080/18902138.2022.2091918","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2022.2091918","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study analyzes how men’s domestic cooking is represented and masculinized in cookbooks, written by men for men and published in 1975, 1992, and 2010, respectively. Departing from the concept of domestic masculinities, it uses the methods of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis. It asks: what kind of values and ideas connected to men, food, and the home are realized in texts and images? And how are these legitimized and naturalized? As the study’s context is Sweden, a country known for its pursuit of gender equality, the study focuses on how men’s domestic cooking has been represented in cookbooks published roughly 20 years apart. The analysis shows that, while the first two books are characterized by a ‘real man’ discourse and working-class masculinity, the 2010 book represents a masculinity in line with a ‘new man image’ closely linked to consumption and materiality. However, structurally, there are few differences. Values associated with traditional middle-class masculinities, traditional gender norms, and gendered division of domestic labor are reproduced. Men’s cooking is recontextualized as a playful leisure activity. In all three books, cooking becomes another way for a man to appear successful – both in relation to other men and women, and in socioeconomic terms.","PeriodicalId":37885,"journal":{"name":"NORMA","volume":"17 1","pages":"252 - 269"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46153150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-21DOI: 10.1080/18902138.2022.2091919
Nicola Brajato, A. Dhoest
ABSTRACT The study of masculinity has recently become relevant to the field of fashion studies. However, fashion is still underrepresented in the field of men’s studies, which hardly takes into account its importance in the cultural construction of masculinities. This article aims to build a bridge between these two fields through the analysis of fashion designer Dirk Bikkembergs. Known as part of the internationally established ‘Antwerp Six’ and for his strong representation of masculinity and the muscular body, Bikkembergs’ imagery is interesting to any scholar wishing to reflect on the cultural definitions of the male body, especially when that body is being presented on the border between normativity and homoeroticism. The article explores the evolution of the visual representation of the male body in photography, and particularly fashion photography, demonstrating how the relationship between masculinity, the male body and the gaze changed over time. We then use the proposed framework for a critical investigation of the visual imagery of Bikkembergs’ world, which revolves very much around masculinity and the male body, to pinpoint an ambiguity at the base of the brand: despite the brand’s normative narrative and orientation, we posit that its photographic production leaves space for a queer reading.
{"title":"Ambiguous gaze: masculinity and the male body in Dirk Bikkembergs’ fashion and photographic production","authors":"Nicola Brajato, A. Dhoest","doi":"10.1080/18902138.2022.2091919","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2022.2091919","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The study of masculinity has recently become relevant to the field of fashion studies. However, fashion is still underrepresented in the field of men’s studies, which hardly takes into account its importance in the cultural construction of masculinities. This article aims to build a bridge between these two fields through the analysis of fashion designer Dirk Bikkembergs. Known as part of the internationally established ‘Antwerp Six’ and for his strong representation of masculinity and the muscular body, Bikkembergs’ imagery is interesting to any scholar wishing to reflect on the cultural definitions of the male body, especially when that body is being presented on the border between normativity and homoeroticism. The article explores the evolution of the visual representation of the male body in photography, and particularly fashion photography, demonstrating how the relationship between masculinity, the male body and the gaze changed over time. We then use the proposed framework for a critical investigation of the visual imagery of Bikkembergs’ world, which revolves very much around masculinity and the male body, to pinpoint an ambiguity at the base of the brand: despite the brand’s normative narrative and orientation, we posit that its photographic production leaves space for a queer reading.","PeriodicalId":37885,"journal":{"name":"NORMA","volume":"18 1","pages":"21 - 46"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43966751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-28DOI: 10.1080/18902138.2022.2075666
Josef Olsson, Johanna Lauri
ABSTRACT In this article, the Swedish gender-equality initiative Men and Gender Equality is analyzed. The goal is to empirically examine some of the affective dimensions at play in the ways in which a ‘norm-critical’ perspective on masculinity is articulated as a solution to gender equality. Our analysis reveals ambivalences operating within the initiative’s use of norm-critical perspectives. Despite the apparent intention to offer men the hope of emancipating themselves from sedimented practices and modes of being men, these end up potentially reinforcing certain assumptions and aspects of extant society. They include (neo-)liberal assumptions about individual responsibility as well as post-feminist and anti-feminist discursive logics and tropes. With a theoretical focus on fantasy, we show how a reformist attempt to reimagine what male identities could be ends up perpetuating certain myths and assumptions that work against the emancipatory vision nurtured within such discourses.
{"title":"The fantasy of the new man: norm-critique, vulnerability and victimhood","authors":"Josef Olsson, Johanna Lauri","doi":"10.1080/18902138.2022.2075666","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2022.2075666","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article, the Swedish gender-equality initiative Men and Gender Equality is analyzed. The goal is to empirically examine some of the affective dimensions at play in the ways in which a ‘norm-critical’ perspective on masculinity is articulated as a solution to gender equality. Our analysis reveals ambivalences operating within the initiative’s use of norm-critical perspectives. Despite the apparent intention to offer men the hope of emancipating themselves from sedimented practices and modes of being men, these end up potentially reinforcing certain assumptions and aspects of extant society. They include (neo-)liberal assumptions about individual responsibility as well as post-feminist and anti-feminist discursive logics and tropes. With a theoretical focus on fantasy, we show how a reformist attempt to reimagine what male identities could be ends up perpetuating certain myths and assumptions that work against the emancipatory vision nurtured within such discourses.","PeriodicalId":37885,"journal":{"name":"NORMA","volume":"17 1","pages":"236 - 251"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42587839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-17DOI: 10.1080/18902138.2022.2076528
Grant Andrews
ABSTRACT The figure of the patriarchal white Afrikaner male was central to conceptualising and maintaining the system of apartheid in South Africa, and lingers in the imaginary of white identities in the country. Idealised white masculinity, embodied by the patriarch, is marked by strict gender roles and the rejection of same-sex sexualities, as these sexualities are seen as threatening to institutions like the heteronormative family and conservative Christianity. The 2018 South African film Die Stropers (The Harvesters) by Etienne Kallos represents queer sons in the rural farm setting. The film offers possibilities for disentangling white masculinities from heterosexist ideologies. Mirrors, mirroring and recognition/misrecognition are analysed as devices that represent the reproduction of ideology in the film, but queer sons are able to challenge these forms of mirroring and ultimately disrupt hegemonic masculinities that would stifle their identities, desires and forms of gender expression.
{"title":"South African queer sons challenging the white father’s legacy: forging new Afrikaner male identities in Etienne Kallos’s Die Stropers (The Harvesters)","authors":"Grant Andrews","doi":"10.1080/18902138.2022.2076528","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2022.2076528","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The figure of the patriarchal white Afrikaner male was central to conceptualising and maintaining the system of apartheid in South Africa, and lingers in the imaginary of white identities in the country. Idealised white masculinity, embodied by the patriarch, is marked by strict gender roles and the rejection of same-sex sexualities, as these sexualities are seen as threatening to institutions like the heteronormative family and conservative Christianity. The 2018 South African film Die Stropers (The Harvesters) by Etienne Kallos represents queer sons in the rural farm setting. The film offers possibilities for disentangling white masculinities from heterosexist ideologies. Mirrors, mirroring and recognition/misrecognition are analysed as devices that represent the reproduction of ideology in the film, but queer sons are able to challenge these forms of mirroring and ultimately disrupt hegemonic masculinities that would stifle their identities, desires and forms of gender expression.","PeriodicalId":37885,"journal":{"name":"NORMA","volume":"18 1","pages":"122 - 136"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42768339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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