Gendertyping sports: social representations of masculine,feminine, and neither-gendered sports among US university students

Sport is shifting from being hegemonically masculine but it is unclear how sports are viewed as gender segregated or gender integrated. Previous quantitative studies of gendertyping sports have reported mixed findings. Gendertyping constructs social representations that shape institutional and individual sport activities. This study examined how particular sports are represented as masculine, feminine and/or neither-gendered in one sample of 310 students at a US university. Qualitative open-ended recall questions asked students to name three masculine, feminine and neither masculine nor feminine sports. Results revealed that most students were aware of and used hegemonic gendertyped terms to describe sports. Recall questions elicited 2515 namings of 80 different sports that were arrayed as a spectrum of social representations of gendertyped sports ranging from masculine to neither-gendered to feminine. Some representations were hegemonic segregated masculine sports, many were integrated neither-gendered sports, and fewer were segregated feminine sports. Gendertyped social representations of sports offer cultural toolkits for calibrating the practices of doing and redoing gender in sport.     

Bulging biceps and tender kisses: the sexualisation of fatherhood

This article explores recent developments in masculinity, focusing on the sexualisation of fatherhood in Anglophone media. As it becomes socially acceptable for men to engage with “hands-on” fatherhood roles that had previously been primarily associated with motherhood, the appeal lies not just in this shift in gendered performance, but the representation of this as an opportunity for men to reveal a desirably body image. Where previously the hands-on fatherhood role had been glossed as “nappy changing duties,” this more recent development focuses on men’s bodies and in particular the act of carrying a young child which affords the chance for biceps to be flexed in juxtaposition with the gentle act of holding a child. Colloquially, this has led to the emergence of the “DILF,” particularly on social media where sites are devoted to photos of such men.     

Masculine responsibility across generations: living arrangements in a Norwegian parish around 1900

This article researches living arrangements longitudinally on the basis of census materials and church records from around 1900 in a Norwegian parish. We are interested in patterns of obligations and expectations between generations, and to what extent these were related to rules of inheritance practices. We hypothesize that the parity of children co-residing with elderly fathers in the census reflects expectations and attitudes towards filial responsibility. Based on linking the census records of elderly fathers to their fertility history in the church records, the article indicates that traditions in the circumpolar north differed from the usual practice of primogeniture among countries in the Germanic cultural area, including most of Norway. Irrespective of the father’s marital status, the majority of children living with their elderly fathers were sons. One important reason for this is the masculine character of the fisheries, where the transfer of knowledge from father to son was crucial for successful economic results, thus promoting masculine obligations across generations, strong enough to have a significant effect upon living arrangements.     

“香烟”弥漫的青春:作为一种“过渡期仪式”的青少年香烟消费

青少年吸烟不仅是一种健康风险行为,也是一个备受争议的学术话题。本文将青少年男性的吸烟行为视为一种"过渡期仪式",并从仪式道具、仪式剧本、仪式表演角色和仪式观众四个维度分析了青少年男性是如何借助仪式实践而顺利实现青春期的角色转变和身份认同。文章最后对过渡期仪式实践的起始与终结、男性气质与健康风险行为的内在关联进行了深入的思考。     

Power and inheritance

A widespread inheritance pattern in eastern and southeastern Europe was based on equally partible male inheritance and excluded women from inheritance and dowry. The western transition zone to the other predominant European inheritance systems coincided with the Hajnal line, which divides the distribution of European marriage patterns in historical times. New evidence is added to the historical depth of the cultural–historical transition zone already postulated by Mitterauer. Since the early Middle Ages, this zone also marked the border region of two basic European agrarian systems: the western Grundherrschafts system, which led to the intervention of landlords into inheritance patterns and family structures of the serfs and the non-interventionist tributary systems, which left inheritance practices based on customary laws untouched until the second half of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The above-mentioned inheritance pattern, which was also widespread in Asia, allocated a huge amount of power to the agnatic core of the family and was part of a patriarchal system shaped by patrilineality, patrilocality, low age at marriage, complex family forms, and fragmentation of the soil when demographic transition set in.     

The true servant: Self-definition of male domestics in an Italian city (Bologna, 17th–19th centuries)

Some historians have classed as servants only people living with their masters; some have excluded farm servants; some have included married domestics living with their own families. The archive of the Bolognese Confraternity of San Vitale, also known as Università dei Servitori, is analyzed in this article to show how one group of servants defined a “true” servant. Their solution was to exclude from their association people who performed what they deemed “filthy” tasks. They also excluded women, giving us a particular insight in the history of gender and masculinity. In their view, the “true” servants were bourgeois (and locally born) men rather than lower class (migrant) women who are often identified as the stereotypical servants. Moreover, most members of the association were married, they had their own families in Bologna and did not always live with their masters. This makes possible the analysis of married male servants living with their own families, a category of servant that has received less attention than life-cycle servants.     

Family in Dutch migration policy 1945–2005

This article looks at how and why the concept of ‘family’ was used in Dutch migration policy in the period between 1945 and 2005. Throughout this period differences were made between migrant women and migrant men. Whereas the migration of men was associated with labour migration, the migration of women was equated with family migration. Migrant women were constructed as wives and mothers (and not as workers). This construction of women was combined with a victimhood discourse in which women were presented as victims of repressive religion (usually Islam), domestic violence, trafficking and prostitution, and discriminatory government policy. The victimhood discourse was successfully used to acquire rights for migrant women (mostly the right to stay), but as a result all migrant women came to be seen as vulnerable and in need of protection. In this article, I show how this combined family and victimhood discourse was used by governments, by (migrant) organizations and, to a lesser extent, in court cases to create differences between migrant men and women. The ‘success’ of the victimhood discourse is not only explained by the fact that it fitted (Western) ideas on femininity. It was also used to give a humanitarian face – albeit beneficial to women only – to an essentially restrictive immigration policy.     

Oasis in the steppe: health and masculinity of Kazakhstani miners

ABSTRACT

This article studies the masculinities of Russian-speaking miners in Kazakhstan through an ethnographic study conducted in a miners’ sanatorium, a place of heightened sociality. Studies of gender in Central Asia have mostly focussed on women, and both masculinity and femininity are studied in relation to Islam and the nation-state. This article aims to make a contribution to the study of working-class masculinities in Northern Kazakhstan, arguing that labour and professional identities are important in performing masculinities. Kazakhstani miners wish to show that they are good colleagues, good drinkers, sexually capable and providers for the family. New economic pressures and deteriorating work conditions challenge the miner’s body and make it hard for miners to live up to the hegemonic masculinity.     

Beneath the surface: the masculine self and body in Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Green Tea’

This article examines the relationship between the masculine self and male body in Sheridan Le Fanu’s short story ‘Green Tea’ (1872), using a masculinity studies lens to analyze Mr Jennings’ destabilized masculinity within the parameters of Victorian male gender norms. I highlight the interwoven relationship between the masculine self and the body through looking at the physical depiction of Jennings, arguing that Jennings’ masculinity, his masculine self, is imprisoned as a reflection of the physical body; a relationship echoing Victorian gender norms regarding masculinity and the body. In the story, a demon follows and watches Jennings, appearing when Jennings is engaged in activity. Focusing on the relationship between the demon’s manifestation and Jennings’ activity, I show that the demon’s presence results from Jennings’ nonconformity to traditional notions of the masculine self. Le Fanu’s emphasis on the demon’s gaze serves to criticize Jennings’ masculinity as Jennings becomes submissive to the demon’s presence; as a result, this submission is mirrored in Jennings’ deteriorating physical body and health. By positing the masculine self within the body, the story acts to highlight Victorian society’s rigid male gender norms and the penalization of bodies that undermine those ideals.