Masculinity and Race
Historically, masculinity in the United States has been constructed as being White Protestant Anglo-Saxon, furthermore heterosexual and in charge of all matters, and this definition sets standards against which other men are measured an evaluated. Michael Kimmel provides a good definition:
[…], Young, married, white, urban heterosexual, Protestant father of college education, fully employed, of good complexion, weight and height and a recent record in sports(271).
This definition refers to a so-called „hegemonic masculinity“ because it describes a man of power, in power and with power(272).
Racially and ethnically other men have always been equated with characteristics that symbolically effeminate and disempower them. Those other men are African Americans and Asian Americans as well as Latinos and Native Americans, which are not my concern in this essay. I want to argue that race and masculinity cannot be regarded as distinct matters but are closely linked and intertwined with each other because the hegemonic masculinity by definition is only valid for Caucasians and also constructed by them. Ethnically and racially other men can never fully become masculine by that definition, they have to content themselves with the role of a marginal other. To emphasize the importance and historical significance I like to quote Dollimore:
„No consideration of cultural and/or racial difference should ever neglect the sheer negativity, evil and inferiority with which „the other“ of such differences has been associated throughout history“ (Dollimore 18) .
These Others have the opportunity approach masculinity...
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...a. Nevertheless, the period of the „Blaxploitation“ era was an exception but it was mainly due to fiscal problems in Hollywood and those characters always floated in a hyper-reality and did things that could be attributed to superheroes more than to human beings.
List of works cited:
Brod, Harry and Michael Kaufmann, ed. . Theorizing Masculinities: Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity. Michael S. Kimmel . Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications , 1994 .
Ross, J. Steven, ed. . Movies and American Society. From Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Ed Guerrero . Oxford / Malden : Blackwell Publishers , 2002
Stecopoulos, Harry and Michael Uebel, ed. . Race and the Subject of masculinities: Desire and Difference. Jonathan Dollimore . Durham and London : Duke University Press , 1997
Many attributes and behaviors that society considers as masculine are typically associated with the idea of power. Overemphasis on power, particularly in the forms of physical and sexual aggression, can be described as hypermasculinity. African-American men have a long history of being subject to emasculation in many aspects, and thus are forced to perform their masculinity in other ways. Overcompensation results from hypermasculinity, and consequently contributes to the perpetuation of black males as more physically and sexually violent than their white male counterparts. In Chester Himes’s novel, If He Hollers, Let Him Go, Himes provides a representation of toxic, internalized masculinity through the main protagonist, Bob Jones. Bob’s experiences
In Gail Bederman’s Manliness and Civilization, she aims to describe the concepts of manliness and masculinity at the turn of the century. Bederman explains that the concept of what it means to be a man is ever changing as a result of the ideology of the time as well as the material actions of the men. During the Progressive Era, many forces were at work that put pressure on the supremacy of white, middle class men. Some of these forces included the growing move toward empowered women, the unionization of the working class, and the move from self-employment to big, corporate business. She delves into the way that both racism and sexism were used to build up the concept of masculinity and the turn of the century discourse on civilization.
Estes, Steve. I am a man!: race, manhood, and the civil rights movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Print.
Both Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler and Population: 485 by Michael Perry explore ideas of masculinity and manhood, but I think Butler shares a more diverse representation of masculinity through his different characters. What it means to be a man The concept of masculinity is considered as the qualities and characteristics of a man, typical of what is appropriate to a man. In this article, A Community Psychology of Men and Masculinity: Historical and Conceptual Review, the authors Eric S. Mankowski and Kenneth I. Maton, analyze four main themes: "Men as gendered beings, the privilege and damage of being a masculine man, men as a privileged group, and men’s power and subjective powerlessness. " The second and fourth themes are described as paradoxes that have created difficulty in efforts to analyze and understand men’s gender and masculinity." However, the point of view of masculinity that Perry raises in population 485 has a different aspect.
All over the world Masculinity has many different cultural definitions. Depending where someone is from, and what they were brought up to believe, defines what the term “masculinity” entails. Different Social institutions all over the United States, such as the military, sports, clubs, and fraternities, have been constructing their interpretation of masculinity. One major social institution that is active in thousands of Universities across the United States is campus fraternities. Campus fraternities create their own sense of masculinity by generating certain requirements and characteristics a man must hold in order to represent them as a part of their fraternity.
Masculinities.” Reconstructing Gender: A Multicultural Anthology. Ed. Estelle Disch. New York: McGraw Hill, 2006. 120-137.
Over the course of history, the definition of manhood has changed and morphed according to society’s rules. In his essay “Masculinity as Homophobia,” number four in The Matrix Reader, Michael Kimmel tackles the truth about what manhood has become and how society has challenged the meaning of homophobia. He begins with an analysis of history, and then proceeds to relate masculinity and homophobia to power, women, and violence. Manhood had not always existed; it was created through culture. Depending on the era, masculinity has a different meaning.
Masculinity is an idea that people, usually men, set, to achieve their ego. From generation to generation, men put on this mask of masculinity to hide their true self, to put up a front that’s made up of lies and discomfort. In the collection of stories Drown, by Junot Diaz, Diaz portrayed, through the perspective of Latino men, an overall idea of masculinity, and how masculinity is being used and misunderstood. From Ramon to his two sons, Yunior and Rafa, Diaz portrayed a pass of this idea of masculinity through family, passed down from the first to the next generation. Ramon, during the youth of Yunior and Rafa, sets up an image of how a man should be, how to show people their masculinity. The concept of masculinity, portrayed by Diaz through
The nineteenth-century saw great changes within America and from these changes an ideology was created in an effort of understanding and unification among white men. Changes were occurring so rapidly that they could not be digested and readily accepted, therefore opposition to these rose very significantly. The nineteenth century saw for a great number of political changes as the black race began to collect rights, the arrival of immigrants on an unprecedented scale, the colonization of the remaining world, and the change of women’s roles. White women started to become more educated and moved out of the house and into workplace disrupting the domestic order that was essential to keeping men’s lives stable as Tocqueville claims that the “regularity of [women’s] affection was the safeguard of American men’s lives” and without this regularity a hysteria and insanity developed. (Barker-Benfield 47) White women were immediately labeled as threat to the lineage of white men because the civilized woman began to be considered a “Race of Hysteria.” (Briggs 1) Women were considered hysterical as it was believed that as a civilization became more civilized it became a “breeding place for insanity” and these ideals were pushed upon women because their roles in society were significantly changing and men were not apt to accept these changes readily. (Barker 52) White Masculinity was developed out of the idea of making sure that white women would not become a “racial threat” to white men’s lineage; white women were supposedly becoming civilized and hysterical at the same time and then began to significantly lose in population because of these problems to the other...
Summers, Martin. The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity. Chapel Hill: University of Carolina Press, 2004.
In the views of Micheal Kimmel “hegemonic masculinity” is a socially constructed process where men are pressured by social norms of masculine ideals to perform behaviors of a “true man” and its influence on young male’s growth. It is the ideology that being a man with power and expressing control over women is a dominant factor of being a biological male. The structure of masculinity was developed within the 18th to 19th century, as men who owned property and provided for his family with strength related work environments was the perfect example of being a generic “American man.” Kimmel introduces Marketplace Manhood and its relation to American men. He states, “Marketplace Masculinity describes the normative definition of American masculinity.
According to Kimmel, the earliest embodiments of American manhood were landowners, independent artisans, shopkeepers, and farmers. During the first decade of the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution started to influence the way, American men thought of themselves. Manhood was now defined as through the man’s economic success. This was the origin of the “Self-Made Man” ideology and the new concept of manhood that was more exciting, and potentially more rewarding for men themselves. The image of the Self-Made Man has far reaching effects on the notion of masculinity in America. Thus, the emergence of the Self-Made Man put men under pressure. As Kimmel states,
...ground or where they are located in the world, it is ignorant to put these differences up as a way to distinguish one people from another, or to say that one race has greater hierarchal significance than another. These constructions provide insight into how people have come to see one another and can also help to see ways through which avoiding racism in modern society may one day be possible.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to take the study of Geert Hofstede’s Masculinity index of countries and apply them to the individual states of the United States. This will apply the different cultural dimensions that Hofstede used to rank the countries. While not every criteria can be applied, similar ones will be used to create a Masculinity index for the United States.
Masculinity is having qualities traditionally ascribed to men, as strength and boldness. The movie Full Metal Jacket spends an ample amount of time demonstrating the masculinity of the characters. Masculinity doesn’t mean the same thing for every man though because every man doesn’t prioritize things the same way. The things men prioritize in their lives they believe atribute to their masculinity. Kubrick demonstrates masculinity in different forms through different characters: Animal mother’s masculinity derives from his aggression and physical ability, Joker was more thoughtful and articulate, and Pyle goes insane because he couldn’t conform to the other men’s meaning on masculinity and they couldn’t understand his.