Search Results

Through an exploration of one Chinese man’s efforts to navigate masculinities in Japan, this chapter conceptualises how masculine persona change. Li Xiaomu first gained notoriety as a guide to, and commentator on, Japan’s red light district, Kabukicho. Often exacerbating negative perceptions of Chinese-ness in Japan, Li’s masculine performances coopted hegemonic associations between Chinese men and underworld crime in the late 1990s and early 2000s. More recently however, Li has moved to perform other hegemonic masculinities through his new persona as a respectful politician and advocate for diversity in Japan. Based on ethnographic and media-text analyses of Li’s complex public persona, this chapter interrogates what it means for Chinese men to strive towards a cosmopolitanism ethos in transnational contexts.

Drawing from Umberto Eco and Federic Pagello, this chapter discusses superhero texts’ serialized narration in light of the repetition of storylines and how this is (or is not) produced in both comics and television format by elaborating on the link between hypermasculinity, physicality, and the powerful body through textual and extra-textual strategies. This chapter explores the way the main actor – Stephen Amell – narrates his masculinity and interlocks it with Oliver/Arrow’s, including Amell’s continuous communication with fans over social media and forays into WWE wrestling. The use of textual and extra-textual strategies highlights how serialization ritualizes the display of gendered bodies and how TV, with its use of live actors, further erodes the lines between reality and fiction.

Since the 1980s masculinity, more specifically ‘hegemonic masculinity’ has been a focal point of gender and sexuality discourses. The short story writings of Mantel, Hislop, and most particularly, Tremain, reflect, critique and problematize such understandings of masculinity. This chapter is shaped around three key areas that are often seen as defining masculinity: work, sexuality and the differences between male and female bodies. As with the historical strand of chapter three, in this chapter there will be a focus on history and one particularly significant historical moment for men and masculinity: the 1980s. It is through this analysis that questions will be addressed about how and why masculinity is a part of contemporary feminist discourses and, through the work of Judith Halberstam, will consider the ways in which queer theory and postmodern feminism have informed such debates. The momentary nature of the short story will be explored in greater depth too, in order to understand how the contemporary and historical moments interact in this narrative space.

This chapter relates mass-mediated abuses against Arabs and Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo to relevant U.S.-American films since the 1980s and to Middle Eastern films in order to show how such cultural representations are tied to the international power structure and what ideological premises underpin them. It argues that while depictions of physical abuse in U.S. and Middle Eastern films are interdependent and cross-referential, the two sets of film differ substantially in their choice of genres and modes of representation. Moreover, while characterizations of ethnic difference vary according to the particular political and racialized agenda being espoused, those relating to sexual difference follow a more uniform set of codifications. Emphasis on physical traits, such as weakness, passivity, and penetrability, are crucial to delivering a gendered political message that links recourse to torture to a drive for absolute power and gender domination.

This chapter is an in-depth analysis of how men and masculinity shape gun carry discourses, and it utilizes masculinity theories, including the importance of manhood acts and the cultural production of hegemonic masculinity via media. The construction of guns as men’s things is analysed, including the ways that men talk about guns in their childhoods and their socialization into shooting through participation in masculine institutions. Their explanations for wanting CHLs are analysed, and becoming fathers and husbands and aging are identified as important life experiences that compel some men to want to carry a gun in public. Bodies signify toughness and vulnerability, and as men age, some feel that their abilities to fight and convey invulnerability are diminished. The chapter ends with an analysis of victim discourse.

Chapter 4 examines the second micro-level factor influencing social movement participation: identity. Of the small proportion of local citizens who are involved in the coalfield environmental justice movement, an even smaller proportion are men. This chapter presents an interview study conducted with local environmental justice activists to examine the reasons for local men’s low levels of involvement in the movement relative to women. The analysis of the data suggests that the differing rates of environmental justice activism among women and men may be related to how readily their gendered identities are able to align with the collective identity of the coalfield movement. The findings suggest that, despite the tremendous declines in coal employment in Central Appalachia over the past sixty years, the hegemonic masculinity of the region is still closely tied with coal production. This coal-related masculine identity creates a barrier to local men’s ability to achieve what Snow and McAdam (2000) call “identity correspondence” with the collective identity of the environmental justice movement, in effect removing a major segment of potential social-movement participants from the pool of potential recruits.

Initially a ruthless and hypersexualized operative for the Hellfire Club, Emma Frost has transformed into a core member and leader of the X-Men. Frost engages with the world on her own terms, bypassing many of the stereotypes attached to superheroines. Her challenging personality functions as a dark mirror for other characters in the saga, inscribing emotions and attitudes that implicitly question the values of the X-Men and of the genre to which they belong. Focusing chiefly on her membership of the X-Men and her part in key developments of the Marvel Universe in the 21st Century, this chapter examines Emma Frost as exemplifying Butler’s concept of gender performativity as an explicit aspect of her superpowers. It explores whether the limitations of hegemonic masculinity can offer a way out and asks whether it is possible to consciously exploit hegemonic narratives in order to affect change.

Addressing the masculinist guise embedded in the term “mothers of the nation,” this chapter demonstrates how Danticat confronts hegemonic masculinity and nationalism by decoding the nationalist language of the term “mothers of the nation.” It examines how women were politicized as “a wife and mother of the nation,” prerequisites for good citizenship, and saddled with the duty to not only take care of her children but also her country. The language within which women are scripted is articulated and dominated by men. As such, men are projected on the national scene as protectors/defenders of women and the state and enforcers of state-regulated laws. The language of nationalism is used to not only restrict or limit women's public roles or appearances, denying them the ability to “practice citizenship,” but it also requires them to control their sexuality by espousing and practicing proper womanhood. Therefore, the nationalist language functions as an approved language through which sexual control and repression are justified and masculine prowess is expressed and exercised.