What is Masculinity

June 12, 2008 at 7:00 am (Wst 300) (Culture, John Beynon, Masculinity)

Summary and Response to: What is Masculinity? Chapter 1 of Masculinities and Culture – by John Beynon

This chapter by itself could have been an entire book. The question of what masculinity is starts with the realization that there is no one definition but rather a set of rules and guidelines. Masculinity is in fact the way males interact with each other and the environment. Mr. Beynon tried to make it so everyone could understand this complicated social construction but in doing so he almost trivialized the first chapter of his book. There was a very black and white understanding of some topics leaving out proportions of the community such as Transexual/Transgendered individuals and the influence of race, ethnicity and sexual expression in the masculine world. He does do a very good job explain the lack of biological proof that masculinity is inherent and gives many authors/scientists opinions on the matter but it is all in a every ethnocentric backlighting.

I was very interested in the idea of the nostalgic loss of the ‘young manhood’. I’ve never considered young manhood to be any different in orientation, even though the expectations have change, then male masculinity. The ever-changing ideology and glorification of the true man was, I assume, been spread across the globe ever since the invention of the patriarchal ladder and the ‘breadwinner’ strategy to living and supporting the local economic structures. But young manhood’s history could very possibly be even more confusing and chimerical. As one grows up there are more susceptible to social changes and influences in my mind. So with each new generation of ‘males’ a new definition of manhood and masculinity would have been evolved tangential but not separate from the definitions of their fathers; a form of hybridized masculinity. An ever changing straitjacket keeping the populous from feeling they have no control by allowing slight altercations but in the end it still tries to keep everyone strait.

Now as masculinity changes so does what it means to be feminine for our social structure has set them as dichotomies. When women step more and more into what has been known as the traditional masculine light men have had to adjust as well. Some adjustments have been towards a nullification of gendered stereotypes and others have been towards super-masculinity. These changes are effecting the ever changing straitjacket of youth today for the messages of appropriate behavior are slowly getting altered in two very different directions.