Kurze Beschreibung von Maennlichkeit

1. Masculinities
Connell, Halberstam, and much more
Today (Oct 26th) is Intersex awareness day
https://guides.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/c.php?g=1084601&p=7906809

2. Cheerleading – the masculine endeavour
• https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/12/28/the-manly-origins-of-
cheerleading/ (historical pictures)
• https://www.theatlantic.com/membership/archive/2018/04/how-cheerleading-
went-from-raucous-and-male-to-restrictive-and-female/559172/
• “The Reputation of having been a valiant ‘cheer-leader’ is one of the most
valuable things a boy can take away from college” (1911) quoted in Mary Ellen
Hanson “Go! Fight! Win! Cheerleading in American Culture”, p. 13
• 3 US presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan. Mitt
Romney (former presidential candidate) was also cheerleader
• force, grace, leadership, valiance
• Women only allowed when men went to fight WWI (not valiant but cheerful,
good disposition, cute chants, big smiles, revealing uniforms)
• “Women cheerleaders became too masculine for their own good” (1938)
• from respected to sexualized show on the side

3. Result – male flight
• male flight – a phenomenon in which men abandon “feminizing” areas of
life people who identify as men flee professions or occupations that are
considered feminine, or that start to include women. Once an activity or
profession is feminized, its value is diminished under patriarchal gaze
• Hegemony – sociological concept that refers to a state of collective
consent to inequality secured by the idea that it’s inevitable, natural, or
desirable
• An idea is hegemonic when it is widely endorsed by both those who
benefit from the social conditions it supports, as well as those who do
not. Hegemony = widespread consent to relations of systematic
disadvantage

4. hegemonic masculinity
• type of masculinity idealized by all genders that functions to justify and naturalize gender
inequality, assuring widespread consent to most women and some men (Connell - Hegemonic
Masculinity, Rethinking the Concept 2005, p. 829-32)
• As a society, there is a practice of attributing individual traits to the category of “man” – even if
not all people who subscribe to the category “man” have all the traits, by sheer membership to
the category they get to identify with the characteristics attributed to the group in general. One
can thus lay a socially valid claim to advantage by virtue of the traits attributed to the category,
even if one does dot possess some of the attributes, personally.
• the “negative” stereotypes sometimes help men to get out of performing duties that are
“feminized” or simply unpleasant (men are “dirty”, so they should not be expected to keep the
house clean; men are bad with kids – should not be expected to share in the housework; they are
naturally aggressive, so it is okay/expected to lose their temper and be verbally violent towards
others; etc
• exculpatory chauvinism – a phenomenon in which negative characteristics ascribed to men are
offered as acceptable justifications of men’s dominance over women (bias in favor of men that
frees them from the blame) Tendency to absolve men of responsibility for performances that
embody negative male stereotypes while simultaneously offering rewards for such behavior (free
time, success at work, license to enjoy dominating over others)

5. Of course
• Benefits of masculinity are not awarded equally to ALL men
• Hierarchy of masculinity (multiple masculinities)
• men who are subordinated in other hierarchies are vulnerable to
being judged as failing to embody hegemonic masculinity and as
rightly belonging lower in this hierarchy

6. Fragility
• precarious masculinity – idea that manhood is more difficult to earn and
much easier to lose that womanhood
• compensatory masculinity = acts undertaken to reassert one’s masculinity
in the face of a threat of its diminishing
• hypermasculinity – extreme conformity to the more aggressive rules of
masculinity
• toxic masculinity – strategic enactments of masculinities that are harmful
both to those who enact them and to people around them While the
hegemonic ideal is not the same as the toxic versions that re drawn from it,
some men’s efforts to live up to it can be harmful (Michael Ian Black)
• patriarchal bargain /accepting and legitimating some of the costs of
patriarchy in exchange for receiving some of its rewards

7. Hybrid masculinities
• hybrid masculinities = versions of masculinity that selectively incorporate
symbols, performances, and identities that society associates with
femininity. (Demetrakis Demetriou also includes “low-status men” to the
woman/femininity here)
• formal gender equality ---leading to modified patriarchy (= societies in
which women have been granted formal gender equality but where the
patriarchal conflation of power with men and masculinity remains a central
part of daily life)
• androcentrism – gender-based prejudice (granting higher status and
respect /value/rewards/power to whatever is seen as masculine. It does
not rewards people for having male (or masculine) bodies, but it rewards
anyone who can do masculinity within the limitations of generally accepted
fixed gender boundaries.

8. BY NEFISSA NAGUIB
• Dispelling the illusion that Middle
Eastern men can be fully
understood through the lenses of
domination and patriarchy, this
book looks at contemporary
Egyptian foodways to better
understand how men enact
masculinity in displays of caregiving
and love through food.
• November 2015

9. Raewyn Connell

10. Masculinities: Liberation
through Photography (2020)
• This photographic exploration draws
together the work of approximately
fifty artists of different ethnicities,
generations, and gender identities to
look at how ideas of masculinity have
evolved since the 1960s.
• A playlist that accompanied a former
photo exhibition on masculinity here
• https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-
on/2020/event/masculinities-
members-pre-exhibition-talk

11. See the video clip at the bottom of the page
(scroll for it)
• “To speak of masculinities is to speak about gender relations. Masculinities are
not equivalent to men; they concern the position of men in a gender order. They
can be defined as the patterns of practice by which people (both men and
women, though predominantly men) engage that position.
There is abundant evidence that masculinities are multiple, with internal
complexities and even contradictions; also that masculinities change in history,
and that women have a considerable role in making them, in interaction with
boys and men.
I have been an interested observer of masculinities all my life, but began to think
of this as a researchable issue in the late 1970s. At that time, anyone interested
in power structures could see that the feminist challenge to patriarchy must
mean changes in the lives of men.”
• http://www.raewynconnell.net/p/masculinities_20.html

12. group work
• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hbO9mVdI674DK4s4q_c0AvP
3LDABtsUGCDo4lBHRBEU/edit?usp=sharing

13. Connell
• Below are the elements that led to the production of masculinity according to Connell (p.
186-187) - in your interpretation, what kind of masculinity is Connell talking about?
1. cultural changes that produced new understandings of personhood in metropolitan
Europe (Renaissance, Protestant reformation, “crumbling” of monastic system, new
emphasis on individuality, emphasis on reason and science in opposition to the natural
world and emotion; masculinity defined as a character marked by rationality,
“rationality” as legitimation for patriarchy and for empire-building.
2. empire as gendered enterprise based on segregated men’s occupations “Soldiering
and trading”/ ”masculine cultural type” in the modern sense as the conqueror at the
colonial frontier (187)
3. growth of cities as centers for commercial capitalism (more individualism, sexual
subcultures, shift in medical ideologies of gender to a dichotomous interpretation of
bodies that created “deviance”)
4. civil wars (military prowess, honor, nationalism, opposition to non-combatant
femininity)

14. And a final question
• Could indeed pressure for gender equality create a market for
representations of male power, as Connell suggests (214-215)? What
would be the mechanisms for producing that?

15. Jack Halberstam
“Every few weeks, I get an email from a colleague, a friend or a student asking me what
pronoun I prefer. I mostly go by “Jack” nowadays, although people who have known me for
a really long time and some family members still call me Judith. Then there are a few
people, my sister included, who call me “Jude.” I have debated switching out Jack for Jude
to try to compress the name ambiguity into a more clear opposition between Judith and
Jude. But then again–and contrary to my personality or my politics–when it comes to
names and pronouns, I am a bit of a free floater. This goes against my instincts and my
general demeanor – I don’t hang in the middle ground on much, not politically, not socially,
not in terms of culture, queer issues, feminism or masculinity. I am a person of strong
opinions so why, oh why, do I insist on being loosey goosey about pronouns? [… I think my
floating gender pronouns capture well the refusal to resolve my gender ambiguity that has
become a kind of identity for me.] So, if you are wondering about my pronoun use and
would like it resolved once and for all, I cannot help you there. But if, like the UK in the
1980’s, you are ready to give up on the “imperial” systems of measurements in favor of
new metrics, then consider my gender improvised at best, uncertain and mispronounced
more often than not, irresolvable and ever shifting.”

16. • Gaga feminism (privileges gender and sexual fluidity, resisting
categorizations)
• Trans: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn3QQFuvS0Y

17. A few considerations
• What is heroic masculinity in your understanding and why does it “depend
absolutely on the subordination of alternative masculinities”?
• What are some attributes of masculinity that Halberstam conjures up?
• Can you think of instances in which “excessive masculinity turns into a
parody or exposure of the norm”? (4)
• Nonce Taxonomies (8) - according to Halberstam “categories that we use
daily to make sense of our worlds but that work so well that we actually fail
to recognize them”; describes and performs a double act of occupying
names and images that limit and harm while also deploying the strategic
image-making power of classification; it is a system of naming for a specific
purpose that should be disposed of and remade differently when it
becomes unusable

18. Meta-conversations
• Terminology that seems antiquated even after less than 20 years
• How does Halberstam explain the use of “Queer Methodologies”? What is
such a methodology for Halberstam, how could one create/use such a
methodology, and what would be some disadvantages?
• How would you explain/paraphrase the following phrase: “naming confers,
rather than reflects meaning”?
• Explain the following statement: “the bathroom as we know it, actually
represents the crumbling edifice of gender in the twentieth century” (24)
• If a “third space” is created in order to break a binary, would this third
space stabilize the other two? What kind of a space would this be?