Political Masculinity

Men with assault rifles, balaclavas and Hawaiian shirts pulled over bulletproof vests. Horned warriors with painted faces and fur headdresses draped over their naked torsos. The storming of the Capitol brought together men who had previously come across one another only online in the Manosphere. These were men with a common interest, followers of a male-supremacist ideology, who rioted in order to fight for their privilege. Before then, the world had looked on as devastating attacks were carried out by incels: those who seek to gain unfettered access to women’s bodies by redrawing the hierarchy of the sexes in order to ensure the subjugation of women. For all of these men, masculinity is a political project, and the events at the Capitol were one episode in a growing movement. From the US and Canada to New Zealand, from Poland to Brazil, right-wing extremists, religious fundamentalists and male supremacists are coming together in order to translate their reactionary dreams of male domination into politics, underscoring the masculine roots of the authoritarian backlash.

Political institutions and practices such as the state, parliament, citizenship and nationality, the vote, the military, and the making and implementation of laws have traditionally been treated as if they were un-gendered and guided exclusively by objective reasoning and rationality. Rationality and reason, though, have been habitually ascribed to masculinity, a fact which has often been ignored in favour of the apparent gender-inclusiveness of the realm of politics. In contrast to this view, this book explores the interdependence of the construction of masculinities, on the one hand, and the emerging, maintenance, and modification of concepts such as the state, citizenship, nationality and nationalism, democracy and militarism on the other. Illustrating the great amount of research activity in the field of political masculinities, the book offers many perspectives in its attempt to shed light on different modes of representing and constructing political masculinities across time and space. Findings from the fields of political science, history, media studies, literature, and film studies, as well as cultural studies, encourage an interdisciplinary debate of political masculinities in Europe and the United States from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century.

This volume explores the role that republican political participation played in forging elite Roman masculinity. It situates familiarly "manly" traits like militarism, aggressive sexuality, and the pursuit of power within a political system based on power sharing and cooperation. In deliberations in the Senate, at social gatherings, and on military campaign, displays of consensus with other men greased the wheels of social discourse and built elite comradery. Through literary sources and inscriptions that offer censorious or affirmative appraisal of male behavior from the Middle and Late Republic (ca. 300–31 BCE) to the Principate or Early Empire (ca. 100 CE), this book shows how the vir bonus, or "good man," the Roman persona of male aristocratic excellence, modulated imperatives for personal distinction and military and sexual violence with political cooperation and moral exemplarity. While the advent of one-man rule in the Empire transformed political power relations, ideals forged in the Republic adapted to the new climate and provided a coherent model of masculinity for emperor and senator alike. Scholars often paint a picture of Republic and Principate as distinct landscapes, but enduring ideals of male self-fashioning constitute an important continuity. Roman Masculinity and Politics from Republic to Empire provides a fascinating insight into the intertwined nature of masculinity and political power for anyone interested in Roman political and social history, and those working on gender in the ancient world more broadly.

The ideologies and practices of various populist movements are centered on issues of gender, especially idealized notions of masculinity. Offering cultural, political, and historical approaches from a range of interdisciplinary and international perspectives, The Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities analyzes articulations and performances that link populism to masculinity. In particular, the collection studies political participation in the form of public debates, media, and popular culture. The authors emphasize that in order to understand what can be defined as populism, we need to look at the culture that it inhabits and the efforts to claim, challenge, and reclaim the popular. Writing from a wide range of international contexts, the contributors to The Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities explore how populist masculinities are articulated and performed, whether there is something problematic about a specifically masculine populism, and whether there is hope for a pluralist, inclusive, even progressive form of masculine populism. Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities’ international range of contributors explore how populist masculinities are articulated and performed, whether there is something problematic about a specifically masculine populism, and whether there is hope for a pluralist, inclusive, even progressive form of masculine populism.

This book presents a unique analysis of the effects of individuals' gendered personality traits on their political attitudes and behavior. The empirical analyses demonstrate that, regardless of biological sex, individuals' levels of masculine and feminine personality traits help to determine their party identification, vote choice, ideology, and political engagement.

The field of masculinities research continues to expand, and has become increasingly complex. Much of the contemporary analysis of men, masculinity and power has been influenced by the work of a number of profeminist writers who have been leading figures in developing new political interventions around men’s identities and power. These men have been at the forefront of interrogations of the concept of masculinity and have attempted to develop new forms of radical gender-conscious politics for men who seek to extend gender justice. The New Politics of Masculinity is the first single-authored feminist text to engage critically with the theoretical frameworks which leading profeminist writers have developed in the field of masculinity studies. Drawing on new social movement and contemporary theory, the book examines the different models of politics that such writers have evolved for men who want to challenge dominant forms of masculinities and inequitable gender relationships. It also assesses the broader effects – on the field of men and masculinities research – of these writers’ diverse theorisations of key political concepts such as masculinity, subjectivity, power and resistance. Overall, The New Politics of Masculinity outlines the central theoretical issues for scholars and students working in the area of critical studies of masculinities, and evaluates the effects of men’s gender-conscious politics on feminist scholarship and research. The New Politics of Masculinity will be of great interest to students and scholars of gender theory, sociology, and politics.

In this collection, a group of historians explores the role of masculinity in the modern history of politics and war. Building on three decades of research in women's and gender history, the book opens up new avenues in the history of masculinity. The essays by social, political and cultural historians therefore map masculinity's part in making revolution, waging war, building nations, and constructing welfare states. Although the masculinity of modern politics and war is now generally acknowledged, few studies have traced the emergence and development of politics and war as masculine domains in the way this book does. Covering the period from the American Revolution to the Second World War and ranging over five continents, the essays in this book bring to light the many "masculinities" that shaped--and were shaped by--political and military modernity.

The profound changes wrought by the feminist movement were by no means restricted to women. In the years since feminism has taken root, the role of men and masculinity has begun to undergo its own redefinition. Michael A. Messner provides a sociological framework to understand the responses of men to the changes, challenges, and crises in the social organization of gender. By examining not only what certain groups of men say about gender but what they do, Messner helps to illuminate the various social movements engaged with the politics of masculinity. Politics of Masculinities is one of the first books in the new Gender Lens series, which will look at the social world through the lens of gender. The mission of the series is to unpack the assumptions about gender that pervade social life, and to examine the centrality of these assumptions to the way we perceive and interpret our world. Politics of Masculinities is an ideal introduction to the discussion of gender roles and masculinity. This book will be of interest to students and professionals involved in gender studies, sociology, and menrs studies.