Hyper-Masculinity Essay

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Recommended: Race, class and gender intersect in the social construction of masculinity

Hyper-masculinity is often exaggerated and distorted and has been studied by psychologists since the 1920s. “Hyper-masculinity is a trait associated with the assertion of power and dominance often through physically and/or sexually aggressive behaviors” (Mosher & Sirkin, 1984). Expressing hyper-masculinity is a social phenomenon that is seen in many racialized circles. It gives these males the opportunity to vent frustration that black men face in a racist society. By expressing hyper-masculinity, it also serves the added purpose of avoiding the questioning about a male’s sexual orientation. For some black males, hyper-masculinity “also operates as a mask for their hidden need and desire to be sexually intimate with another man, which they …show more content…

This includes gender difference, dominance, male solidarity, hetero-sexism and contradicts relationships with other men which are highly desirable but threaten heterosexuality. The masculine subject involves two kinds of subject(iviy). This includes the subjectivity of the individual as well as the subject acted upon by cultural discourses, which are represented in this essay by covering aspects of racialization, embodiment and sexuality. While racialization places emphasis on claiming and creating identity, which was built off of social constructs that have since been conformed and practiced in Black communities, embodiment places importance on the flexibility of disabled masculinities in producing a self of identity and work towards recuperating a masculine identity. To add, sexuality focuses more on the masculine subject produced through sport, based on the rejection of the other. This self is masculine and based on the colonization of space, and the rejection of the other. The significance of studying these subjectivities is the growth that comes with masculinity, proving its fluidity and paving the way for masculine subject’s denying normative masculinity in the

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