Intellectual origins of the topic

Patriarchy – ‘father rule’

• Social, economic, legal, religious, customary dominance by men

 

Masculinity

• The state of possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of, or appropriate to, a man
• ‘unwomanly’
• implies a relational construct (Roper & Tosh) based on either gender, race, class

 

history of masculinity

• evolved from
• •  work on women’s history
  • men’s movement of late 1970s and early 1980s
    • men pay a v. high price for patriarchy
    • society’s expectations on men too high
    • prevent them from expressing their emotions

 

• response to certain orthodoxies
• • history writing focussed on men which

• treated masculinity as an unproblematic, all-inclusive category

• assumed men’s behaviour regulated by ‘hegemonic’ definitions of masculinity

• marginalised forms of male behaviour that were deemed ‘unmanly’

 

Models of masculinity

•  Importance of religious belief and thinking on constructions of masculinity

 

• 18c elite  - variety of notions

  • • based on military and public power + private pursuits of hunting, drinking, duelling

      • libertine culture
        • ‘the rake’
        •  ‘civil society’

  David Hume

• early 19c – influence of Evangelical religion

• • home was central to masculinity (Tosh)

• domestic ideology

• • influenced masculinity as well as femininity

  • this model of masculinity beset with contradictions and inherent tensions (Davidoff & Hall)

• homo-sociability
  • male bonding
    • drinking – culture of the pub or tavern (Anna Clark)
    • consumption and display
    • blood sports, incl. bare-knuckle boxing matches

• appealed to libertine members of the aristocracy and rougher strands of working class

• often associated with violence towards women, other men, animals

 

• late 19c/early 20c - hegemonic masculinity
  • ‘all embracing male stereotype’
    • combination of external qualities (e.g. physical strength and endurance, courage) and internal qualities (e.g. self-control, stoicism)
    • qualities typical of the English public school system
      • chivalrous and protective of women
      • frequently centred on Empire
        • civil servants
        • missionaries
        • businessmen
        • muscular Christianity’ – confusing and controversial phenomenon

• appealed to the middle class, less popular with sections of working class

• mid 19c onwards - work-based norms of masculinity
  • complex, probably only achievable by a minority of working-class men
    • ‘aristocracy of labour’
    • respectable artisans

This version of masculinity - product of domestic ideology transmitted from middle class or an independent working-class identity?

• Fatherhood

• Most important masculine role?

• Multiple models of fatherhood

• 3 most common – polar opposites

• distant/brutal

• involved/loving

• absent from home/constant presence

• fatherhood and masculinity – based on

• birth and rearing of legitimate sons

• successful inter-generational  transmission of ideas of masculinity

• 19c models of  fatherhood

• elite – contained contradictions and paradoxes but re-inforced dominant models of masculinity (David Roberts)

• upper-class fathers typically

• remote (physically and emotionally) from their sons

• benevolent

• dominant

• working class – multiple models

• (Lummis) – fathers absent for extended periods but involved when at home

• (Chinn, Ross) – fathers largely alienated from their homes

 

• Alternative models of masculinity

• temporary or permanent condition?

 

• homosexuals

o  early c19 – law concerned with prevention of homosexual activities in public

o  1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act

• homosexual acts in public or private were criminalised

• punishable by 2 years’ imprisonment, with or without hard labour

• 1895 trial of Oscar Wilde, sentenced to 2 years + hard labour 

• late c19 – differing views of homosexuality

• legal and scientific (Michel Foucault, Jeffrey Weeks)

• police and legislators – homosexuality = a crime

• doctors, psychiatrists – scientific methods, particularly medical treatments for nervous and sexual disorders

• results of this debate

• failed to reduce incidence of homosexuality

• encouraged development of

• distinctive homosexual identities

• visible homosexual subcultures

• classification of deviance based on powerlessness

 

Crisis of masculinity

• Situation where traditionally dominant forms of masculinity have become so distorted that men no longer know what being a ‘real’ man means

• Problematic and complex issue

• Historical explanations

• Late 19c – part of fin de siecle pessimism

• ‘hegemonic’ masculinity challenged by

• ‘New Women’

• visible homosexuals

• early 20c – masculinity challenged by

• WWI (dealt with later in course)

• Historical explanations unsatisfactory

• identification of periods of ‘crisis’ implies that masculinity is stable at other times

• men’s anxiety about their gender identity

• based on need to free themselves from ties to their mothers and

• to make transition from boyhood to manhood distinctly and irrevocably

• Roper and Tosh –

• masculinity is always in crisis

• masculinity is in a continual process of contestation and transformation

• masculinity is a relational construct

• mens’ power over women/other men is an organising principle of masculinity

• method of organisation may change over time

• but dominance and subordination remain