Module I

Masculinity and
Femininity
DR. SHIVANI SINGH
 Objectives:
After studying these concepts, you will be able to:
 understand the various contemporary concerns that masculinity and feminity
evokes
 examine the interrelationship between masculinity and femininity.
Masculinities and Femininities
According to Oxford Bibliographies, “Masculinity refers to the behaviors, social
roles, and relations of men within a given society as well as the meanings
attributed to them. The term masculinity stresses gender, unlike male, which
stresses biological sex”.

However, masculinity does not always favor all males, it brings along the feeling
of discontentment, dissatisfaction or disappointment for many. "Connell argues
that culture dictates ways of being masculine and "unmasculine." She argues that
there are several masculinities operating within any one cultural context, and
some of these masculinities are: hegemonic; subordinate; compliant; and
marginalized”.
Masculinities and Femininities
During the nineteen seventies, in response to the ‘second wave’ of feminism, there
was a brief promotion of a ‘men’s movement’ in the United States of America
(USA), led by figures like the poet Robert Bly, but a consistent and consolidated
field of ‘men’s studies’ – which later became ‘masculinity studies’ evolved only in
the late nineteen eighties, in response to what was seen as the ‘third wave’ of
feminism.

Raewyn Connell sought to address this by defining masculinity as “a configuration

of practice around the position of men in the structure of gender relations”. The
intent is to retain “the way in which reproductive capacities and sexual differences
of human bodies are drawn into social practice” (Connell, 1996).
Masculinities and Femininities
John Beynon (2002) for instance identifies an analytical frame entailing a threefold
approach: formal or representational, experiential, and performative, and in each
instance focuses on men as the primary agents determining and being determined
by the significations and practices of masculinity.

Masculinity studies should be understood in relation, firstly to notions of

femininity; and secondly to a larger set of structural and institutional factors. As
Marj Kibby notes: “the study of masculinity inevitably leads us back to issues of
femininity and sexual orientations and the links between gender, and race, class
and national identity, to the construction of individual subjectivities”.
Masculinities and Femininities
But when control of much public and private space is largely in the hands of men,
as in all patriarchal societies, how that control is operationalized, shared, lost,
may come to define the qualities of the men in control and their masculinity.

This tends to suggest a possible dissociation from femininity and a definitively

sufficient association of masculinity with power.

Masculinity has almost come to replace patriarchy as an analytical category in

masculinity studies.
 Masculinities and Femininities
Origin of Masculine studies lie in the confluence of anthropological ‘discoveries’ of
‘other’ constructions of gender, feminist insights into the operations of gender relations,
and the political emergence of gay and lesbian work on the formation of sexual identities.

Feminist writers argue that biological differences get heightened through social
descriptions of masculinity and femininity. Patters of differences by gender is seen when
the character is either masculine or feminine.

Moira Gatens points masculinity is not valued unless performed by biological male.

According to Judith Butler any theorization about gender introduces the notion or idea of
performance of gender in terms of masculinity and femininity.
Masculinities and Femininities
Points to keep in mind:

● In everyday language, femininities and masculinities do not map onto biological

sex. Femininities and masculinities are not descriptors of sexual orientation.

● Femininities and masculinities are plural. What gets defined as feminine or

masculine differs by region, religion, class, national culture, and other social factors.

● Any one person engages in many forms of femininity and masculinity, which she or
he adopts depending on context, the expectations of others, the life stage, and so forth.
Masculinities and Femininities
● Cultural notions of “feminine” and “masculine” behavior are shaped in part by
observations about what women and men do.

● Femininities and masculinities are learned. Messages about “feminine” and

“masculine” behaviors are embedded in advertising, media, news, educational
materials, and so forth.
Masculinities and Femininities
But what does it mean to be masculine or feminine?

• Are there certain intrinsic characteristics that are masculine and feminine? Are
there neurological differences between men and women?

• Or are differences between men and women merely cultural? And if they are, do
they stereotype the sexes and thereby do an injustice to each of us as a distinctive
individual?

• And finally, how does a person live within a culture that espouses to certain
views of masculinity and femininity?
Masculinities and Femininities
Femininity and masculinity are acquired social identities: as individuals become
socialized they develop a gender identity, an understanding of what it means to be a
‘‘man’’ or a ‘‘woman’’ (Laurie et al. 1999)

Class, racial, ethnic, and national factors play heavily into how individuals
construct their gender identities and how they are perceived externally (hooks
2004).

Gender identities are often naturalized; that is, they rely on a notion of biological
difference, ‘‘so that ‘natural’ femininity (in a white, European, middle class context)
encompasses, for example, motherhood, being nurturing, a desire for pretty clothes
and the exhibition of emotions’’ (Laurie et al. 1999)
 Masculinities and Femininities
Masculinities and femininities must be recognized as socially constituted, fluid, wide ranging,
and historically and geographically differentiated (Connell 1997; Halberstam 1998; Laurie et al.
1999).

Early second wave feminist scholars such as Simone de Beauvoir (1980) argued that women’s
subordinated status in western societies was due to socialization rather than to any essential
biological gender difference.

Particularly since the 1980s, at least three areas of research on gender identity have helped shift
the debate on femininities and masculinities: (1) masculinity studies, which emerged primarily in
the 1980s and 1990s; (2) queer studies and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)
studies, including the pivotal research of Butler (1990); and (3) gender, race, ethnic, and
postcolonial studies.
Masculinities and Femininities
In contrast to feminist scholarship that focused primarily on women’s experiences
with femininity, Connell’s (1987) research on hegemonic masculinity and
emphasized femininity was among the first to systematically analyze both sets of
constructions as they contribute to global gender inequality.

Connell argues that hegemonic masculinity is always constructed in relation to

various subordinated masculinities as well as in relation to women.
 Masculinities and Femininities
As Kimmel (2002) notes: ‘‘The ‘invisibility’ of masculinity in discussions of [gender] has
political dimensions. The processes that confer privilege on one group and not another group
are often invisible to those upon whom that privilege is conferred. Thus, not having to think
about race is one of the luxuries of being white, just as not having to think about gender is
one of the ‘patriarchal dividends’ of gender inequality.’’

Butler (1990) argues feminism has made a mistake by trying to assert that ‘‘women’’ are a
group with common characteristics and interests. Butler suggests, like Connell, that certain
cultural configurations of gender have seized a hegemonic hold. She calls for subversive
action in the present: gender trouble, the mobilization, subversive confusion, and proliferation
of genders, and therefore identity. This idea of identity as free floating and not connected to
an ‘‘essence’’ is one of the key ideas expressed in queer theory.
Masculinities and Femininities
Critics have defended normative femininity and masculinity on religious, moral,
and/or biological grounds. Some, for example, have argued that these social
norms (what Connell would call hegemonic masculinity and emphasized
femininity) are ‘‘naturally’’ aligned with men’s and women’s assumed biological
roles in reproduction and/or with their assumed heterosexual desire (Lorber 1994;
Messner 1997).