Exploring Masculinity

The issue of masculinity is personal and I would argue that it is therefore political.  It’s personal because I am, as all men are, confronted with the issues surrounding masculinity on a daily basis. From my life experience over the past five decades I have seen the evolvement of what is meant by masculinity.  Not only this, but for each man as he passes from youth, young man, mature man, middle aged man, older man to old man how does his masculinity continue to be defined/re-defined?  How does his gender and sexual identity evolve?  Do these items become less relevant to the individual men or do they maintain the same significance.  Our (western) society’s youth based culture would have us believe issues of masculinity are for the young, however it is contended that these issues continue throughout men’s lives. Society evolves, I evolve, and my masculinity evolves. Media constantly markets and images what it is to be masculine.  But even these forms are chameleon-like.  Magazines targeting blue-collar workers present a different form of masculinity to those targeting white-collar workers for example (Vigorito and Curry 1998).  Ideas of masculinity as SNAG (sensitive new-age guy), metro-sexual or uber-male are promoted.   Images in advertisements, for example Bonds and Calvin Klein, compete to define the ideal/idol of masculinity.  Men are constantly confronted with imagery and text that promote paradigms of masculinity.  It can be argued that an expectation has been created in our western culture that a man has to be all things.  If he is not then he does not measure up to this standard: how can the average man measure up to the David Beckham Calvin Klein man or to the Pat Rafter Bonds man?

 

Feminism has had a significant impact on what it means to be masculine; Horrocks (1994) recognises that feminism has been able to mount a profound critique of patriarchal society. The importance of the feminist critique, it would seem, is that masculine roles are no longer clearly defined.  Similarly gay men, over the past fifty years, have produced their own analysis of sexuality and gender and have been concerned to distance themselves from the traditional image of the heterosexual male (Horrocks 1994).

 

Writers, including, Roger Horrocks, C.J. Pascoe, Victor Seidler (Jim Tushinski and Jim Van Buskirk, Jeffrey Weeks, Jo-Anne Berelowitz,  Tom Buchele, Mick Leach Ros Minsky, Anthony Vigorito and Timothy Curry all deal with these central issues of identity, gender and  masculinity from many divergent perspectives.  However one thing they all seem to agree that masculinity is a construction and is embedded with culture.  Horrocks (1994, p.33) contends that the kernel of masculinity is ‘I am not a woman’ as there are all shades of masculine identity, ranging from macho to the effeminate.

 

In looking at identity it can be argued that three identity types can be distinguished: sex identity based on the external genitals at birth; gender identity and sexual orientation (Horrocks 1994).  Again, it can be seen that these are cultural constructions or classifications.  Society politicises the personal.  Our inner values have been incorporated from society’s (Horrocks 1994).  Internal values and an external world are the two arenas that me(n) have to wrestle.  With the rise of Feminism the traditional patriarchal role of masculinity has been challenged.  Horrocks (1994) contends that there is a new ‘male autism’.  This me(n) is deeply ashamed, especially of feelings of vulnerability and need, which threaten to betray me(n) (Horrocks 1994).