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Josep M. Armengol
Rewriting White
Masculinities
in Contemporary Fiction
and Film
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Chapter 1
Introduction
A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human
male.
—Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
If feminism was the great revolution of the twentieth century, changing men could be one of
the most important social revolutions of the twenty-first century.
—Victoria Sau, “Nueva(s) paternidad(es)” (2003)
This book focuses on the social construction and cultural (i.e., literary and film)
representation of hegemonic (i.e., white, heterosexual) masculinity.1 We must admit
that this may seem limiting, or even contradictory, from the start. As a globalized
society, our world is, after all, a mosaic of different cultural concepts of masculine
identity, which vary according to factors such as sexuality, age, racialization, and
social class, among many others. Thus, hegemonic masculinity, though dominant,
is just one model among other types of masculinities, including gay or racialized
masculinities (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005; Robinson, 2000, 194; Kimmel,
1997, 6). In Jack Halberstam’s words, “many […] lines of identification traverse
the terrain of masculinity, dividing its power into complicated differentials of class,
race, sexuality, and gender” (1998, 24). Moreover, some, women, as Halberstam
himself elaborates in Female Masculinity (1998), can be considered as “masculine”
as men. As a gender construct and not a biological inner essence, masculinity can
be, and is constantly, performed by both women and men. In Halberstam’s words,
“masculinity in the 1990s has finally been recognized as, at least in part, a construction
by female- as well as male-born people” (Halberstam, 1998, 36). Despite this, or
perhaps due to this, the materiality of the body continues to play a central role in
both the construction and the deconstruction of gender, especially by (self-identified)
males or females, as is obvious from current transgender theory and political practice.
1 In her already classic work Masculinities, Raewyn Connell was the first person to use the concept
of hegemonic masculinity, which involves the subordination of women but also of some men,
mostly homosexuals. Furthermore, Connell posits that patriarchal oppression is a mechanism which
interconnects different models of masculinity. See also Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) for an
update and (re)definition of the concept.
1
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2
1 Introduction
Halberstam’s use of the word “female” in the title suggests his specific material (ist)
or bodily approach to the subject. After all, feminism, as Judith Gardiner reminds
us, argues that masculinity and femininity play neither parallel nor complementary
roles, that masculinity and femininity affect male and female bodies differently and
that the relationship between gender (masculinity/femininity) and sex (maleness/
femaleness) depends on cultural factors (2002, 15). As Gardiner concludes in this
respect, “masculinity and femininity have differing meanings and uses in male and
female bodies and in differing cultural contexts” (2002, 15). Thus, the analysis of
hegemonic masculinity, particularly as embodied by white heterosexual males in
contemporary culture, may be said to be a subject worth studying in its own right.
However, by concentrating on the dominant model of masculinity, instead of
nonwhite or gay masculinities, this study might also be criticized for expanding on
the analysis of a model of masculinity that is already hegemonic in social, political,
and cultural terms. While acknowledging such potential criticisms as fair, it must
also be remembered, however, that hegemonic masculinity is not always as “visible”
as it may seem. From the eighteenth to approximately the mid-twentieth centuries,
the historical constructions of gender, racialization, and sexuality were associated
exclusively with the “marked” bodies of women, colonized or enslaved people, and
homosexuals, respectively. Thus, men—and, above all, white heterosexual males—
have largely remained invisible or “unmarked” in terms of gender (Haraway, 1991,
324; Robinson, 2000, 194).
In Western patriarchal discourse, the universal person and the masculine gender
have been synonymous. While women are commonly defined by their sex, (white)
men are considered representatives of universal subjectivity with no specific gender.
However, it seems obvious that males are also marked by gender, and this process
of gender acquisition—the transformation of biological males into men who interact
on a social level—is a fundamental experience for them. As Kimmel and Messner
(1998, x-xi) note, men always see themselves and the world from a gender perspective, even though it often seems that they act without taking this into account. If men
often seem unaware of their gender, this is probably because the mechanisms that
make us privileged tend to remain invisible to ourselves. Nevertheless, the traditional
conception of masculinity as the “invisible” norm contributes only to perpetuating
social and gender inequalities. Ultimately, invisibility is the fundamental condition
for perpetuating male supremacy, as it is difficult to determine what remains invisible (Robinson, 2000; Easthope, 1986).2 Because masculinity seeks to maintain its
hegemony by passing itself off as normal and universal, it is essential to make it
visible for analysis and critique.
2 Robinson speaks of two types of invisibility. On the one hand, there is the invisibility of the
marginalized, of those who inhabit the fringes of society, of history, and of culture. On the other,
there is the invisibility of those in power. “Whereas the former are invisible in the sense of being
underrepresented, the latter are invisible behind a mask of universality” (2000, 194).
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1 Introduction
3
It is true that, in a sense, men are already sufficiently visible.3 After all, the
majority of scientific studies, in the traditional sense, have focused on these topics.
Nevertheless, those who study masculinity insist that such works, in a deeper sense,
do not truly approach the masculine experience. For example, masculinity is treated
as an implicit category in many sociological studies, which frequently presume that
men are the dominant gender. Most of the texts by sociologists, such as Marx and
Durkheim, for example, use concepts such as “society”, “working class”, and “organization”, all of which implicitly refer to men. However, only a small amount of
work has approached masculinity explicitly as a gender category, and as a result, not
only the dynamics of masculinities but also their history remain largely unchartered.
According to Michael Kimmel,
Men […] have no history. Sure, we have libraries filled with the words of men about the
works of men–stacks of biographies of the heroic and famous, and historical accounts of
events in which men took part, like wars, strikes or political campaigns. We have portraits
of athletes, scientists, and soldiers, histories of unions and political parties. And there are
probably thousands of histories of institutions that were organized, staffed, and run entirely
by men. So how can I claim that men have no history? Isn’t virtually every history book
of men? After all, as we have learned from feminist scholars, it’s been women who have
had, until recently, no history. In fact, if the book does not have the word women in the
title, it’s a good bet that the book is largely about men. Yet such works do not explore how
the experience of being a man, of manhood, structured the lives of the men who are their
subjects, the organizations and institutions they created and staffed, the events in which they
participated. American men have no history of themselves as men. (1997, 1-2)
Thus, rather than being marked by gender, (white) men seem to have been consistently universalized. Women’s studies have shown how the act of equating males to
generic humans has frequently led to ignoring the specific experiences of women in
an eminently androcentric society. Nonetheless, masculinity studies point out that
our knowledge about men and masculinities has also been limited by these universalizing concepts. The incorrect idea that the male experience equals the human
experience has influenced the way women have been treated, but it has also limited
our perceptions of men themselves. Hence the need for masculinity studies,4 which
Harry Brod defined early on as
3 In the same way that Robinson points out different connotations of the term invisibility, she estab-
lishes two different meanings for visibility: “Making the normative visible as a category embodied in
gendered and racialized terms can call into question the privileges unmarkedness, although visibility
can also mean a different kind of empowerment, as the history of movements for social equality in
the United States has taught us. Identity politics—what Peggy Phelan refers to as “visibility politics”—is largely based on the assumption that invisibility is both the cause and effect of political
and social exclusion” (2000, 2).
4 In fact, Brod uses the term men’s studies, not masculinity studies, which is preferred here. Although
widespread, the use of the term men’s studies is ambiguous. It is not clear, for example, if it refers
to studies by men or about them. Hence Kimmel’s claim that we should drop the term altogether
and begin to use the name studies of masculinities instead. Henceforth, in this study, then, I will
use the term studies of masculinities, instead of men’s studies and sometimes masculinities studies,
simply for abbreviation purposes.
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4
1 Introduction
the study of masculinities and male experiences as specific and varying social-historicalcultural formations. Such studies situate masculinities as objects of study on a par with
femininities, instead of elevating them to universal norms. (1987, 40)
Focused on the “specific and varying social–historical-cultural formation” of white
masculinity, particularly its cultural (i.e., literary and film) representation, this book
is thus divided into several chapters. While the first three Chapters (2–4) focus on
an introductory and mostly theoretical perspective on the study of masculinities
in general and on the study of hegemonic masculinity in particular, the following
Chapters (5–7) concentrate on applying the theoretical findings on masculinities to
the analysis of a select number of themes—namely, the politics of emotion (with a
special emphasis on new fatherhood models), homosociality and friendships between
men, as well as gender-based violence. These themes were selected not only due to
their obvious relevance and because they are key social issues but also due to their
central role in masculinity studies, including their cultural representations, many of
which implicitly or explicitly address these aspects.
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8
1 Introduction
Braidotti, Rosi. “Envy: Or with My Brains and Your Looks.” Men in Feminism. Ed. Alice Jardine
and Paul Smith. New York and London: Methuen, 1987. 233–41.
Brod, Harry. “The Case for Men’s Studies.” The Making of Masculinities: The New Men’s Studies.
Ed. Harry Brod. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987. 39–62.
Bueno, Eva P., Terry Caesar, and William Hummel (eds.). Naming the Father: Legacies, Genealogies, and Explorations of Fatherhood in Modern and Contemporary Literature. New York:
Lexington Books, 2000.
Carlton, Sara et al. “Conceal, Don’t Feel: Gender Differences in Implicit and Explicit Expressions
of Emotions.” Modern Psychological Studies 25.1 (2020): 1–26.
Connell, Raewyn and James W. Messerschmidt. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept.”
Gender and Society 19.6 (2005): 829–59.
Easthope, Anthony. What a Man’s Gotta Do: The Masculine Myth in Popular Culture. Boston:
Unwin Hyman, 1986.
Fricker, Miranda. “Reason and Emotion.” Radical Philosophy 57 (1991): 14–7.
Gardiner, Judith Kegan. “Introduction.” Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions.
Ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 1–29.
Halberstam, Jack. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.
Haraway, Donna J. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York and
London: Routledge, 1991.
Kimmel, Michael. Manhood in America: A Cultural History [1996]. New York: The Free Press,
1997.
———. “Masculinity Studies: An Introduction.” In Debating Masculinity. Ed. Josep M. Armengol
and Àngels Carabí. Harriman, TN: Men’s Studies Press, 2009. 16–30.
Kimmel, Michael and Michael Messner. “Introduction.” Men’s Lives. Ed. Michael Kimmel and
Michael Messner [1989]. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998. ix–xvii.
River, Jo, and Michael Flood. “Masculinities, Emotions and Men’s Suicide.” Sociology of Health
and Illness 43.4 (2021): 910–27.
Robinson, Sally. Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press,
2000.
Sau, Victoria. “Nueva(s) paternidad(es).” First Catalan Conference on Masculinities, Diversity, and
Difference. Barcelona Center for Contemporary Culture (C.C.C.B.), Barcelona, 14 March 2003.
Scheibling, Casey. “‘Real Heroes Care’: How Dad Bloggers Are Reconstructing Fatherhood and
Masculinities.” Men and Masculinities 23.1 (2020): 3–19.
Schoene-Harwood, Berthold. Writing Men: Literary Masculinities from Frankenstein to the New
Man. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000.
Scholes, Robert. “Reading Like a Man.” Men in Feminism. Ed. Alice Jardine and Paul Smith. New
York and London: Methuen, 1987. 204–18.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire [1985].
New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.
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