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FORMULATION
Key Concerns
Emerged from the matrix (Gender Studies/ Social Research/ Psychoanalysis) in the mid 1980s. It is similar to power structure research in political sociology and focuses the spotlight on a dominant group. Hegemonic masculinity was understood as the pattern of practice that allowed men’s dominance over women to continue.
i) Major Formulations
HM is not normal in statistical sense, only a minority of men might enact it.
HM is normative.
It embodies the most honoured way of being a man, and requires all men to position themselves in relation to it.
There are masculinities; especially subordinated masculinities
HM ideologically legitimate the global subordination of women to men
ii)Features of HM emerged in 1980s
Abstract than descriptive
Gender relations were historical, hence subject to change
HM came into being in specific circumstances and were open to historical change
Struggle for hegemony- older form of masculinity displaced by new one
Application
Hegemonic Masculinities emerged in the late 1980s and Early 1990s as an Academic Study. It was applied infields such as Education,Criminology,Media representation of Men,Men’s Health Practices,Organization Studies,Art,Geography,Law etc...
The study engages with four aspects
Document consequences and costs of hegemony
Uncovering mechanisms of hegemony
Show diversities in masculinities
Trace changes in masculinities
Critiques
As a new field of academic study, several criticisms were raised against HM studies. Here are some of them and the responses from the authors.
Realists and poststructuralists criticise that, in Hegemonic Masculinity studies the underlying concept of masculinity is flawed.
The concept of masculinity is blurred, is uncertain in its meaning, and tends to deemphasize issues of power and domination. It is ultimately unnecessary to the task of understanding and contesting the power of men.
The concept of masculinity is criticized for being framed within a heteronormative conception of gender that essentializes male-female difference and ignores difference and exclusion within the gender categories.
The concept of multiple masculinities tends to produce a static typology and the concept of masculinity is flawed because it essentializes the character of men or imposes a false unity on a fluid and contradictory reality.
The concept of masculinity is said to rest logically on a dichotomization of sex (biological) versus gender (cultural) and thus marginalizes or naturalizes the body.
Answer to Critiques
The argument is true in popular use - not in humanities or social science research.
Ethnographers and historians have documented tremendous multiplicity of social constructions with the aid of this concept.
researchers have explored masculinities enacted by people with female bodies
Masculinity is not a fixed entity embedded in the body or personality traits of individuals. Masculinities are configurations of practice that are accomplished in social action and therefore, can differ according to the gender relations in a particular social setting.
Answer to heteronormativity
It is not a valid criticism of relational models of gender nor of historical approaches where the construction of gender categories is the object of Inquiry.
In the development of the concept of hegemonic masculinity, divisions among men - especially the exclusion and subordination of homosexual men-were quite central issues
Answer to static typology
Gutmann's (1996) Mexican ethnography, Warren's (1997) observations in a British elementary school - the boys demonstrate complex relations of attachment and rejection to those categories
Answer to Masculinity naturalises or marginalises body
Interplay between bodies and social processes has been one of the central themes of masculinity research from its beginning
Messner's (1992) account of the masculinity of professional athletes, in which the use of "bodies as weapons" and the long-term damage to men's bodies were examined.
The author dismisses the above mentioned criticism as insignificant as many of them are born out of misunderstanding the field. Instead, he lists out significant criticisms raised against Hegemonic masculinity studies which demand proper attention as they question some of the key formulations. They are given below.
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