Masculinity Varies

Cason Honea

Communication of Gender and Sexuality

3/31/12

            In our new textbook we started reading, Dude You’re A Fag, there was a section in the first chapter titled, What Do We Mean By Masculinity, which discussed about how masculinity can come in different forms. When most consider the attributes that define a person who is masculine, we tend to associate with someone who is aggressive, dominant, strong, and perhaps even a leader. But, in this section of the book, the author broke down four different types of masculinity. The typical masculine description that I previously described is similar to what the author likes to call hegemonic masculinity in which the author describes as “the type of fender practice that, in a given space and time, supports gender inequality, is at the top of this hierarchy” (Pascoe, p. 7). Unfortunately, this view of and form of masculinity seems to be the most normal/dominant ones, which I feel is one of the bigger reasons that so much oppression exists among opposite sex, and even at times, race. “Hegemonic masculinity is very public through the mass media. It is not what men who are powerful are, but what sustains their power and what they support”( http://www.csub.edu/~jgranskog/inst205/connell.htm). I myself would have to say that I fit more in the description of complicit masculinity which “describes men who benefit from hegemonic masculinity, but do not enact it” (Pascoe, p.7). When I read this statement, two things that I immediately associated with it were bystander behavior, and white privilege. These two things I just stated are similar to complicit masculinity because they both deal with groups of people who perhaps benefit from either there race or gender, but do nothing to address the oppression faced by the opposite race or gender, because it is easy to just sit there and do nothing about something that isn’t really affecting you. But, in order for there to be more of an equality between gender and an acceptation of other sub-groups of gender, it is important that people who fit the description of a complicit masculinity utilize there hegemonic benefits in order to act as a liaison to address these forms of oppression to the oppressors themselves.

Sources

 http://www.csub.edu/~jgranskog/inst205/connell.htm

Pascoe, C.J. (2007). Dude You're A Fag, (p. 7). University of California Press.