Singleness, Marriage, and the Construction of Heterosexual Masculinities: Australian Men Teaching English in Japan

Abstract

This article reports on a study of Australian men and their accounts of living and working in Japan as English language teachers. In this site, recent research has explored Japanese discourses of desire for the West, Western men, and English language learning. These patterns of desire have afforded white Western men a privileged personal and professional status in Japan, and enabled access to employment opportunities as teachers of English language. At the same time, white Western men working as English language teachers face the challenge of negotiating competing discourses that threaten their social status. In particular, their employment in a lowly-regarded profession and a reputation for sexual promiscuity potentially position Western male language teachers as the ‘white trash’ of Asia. My analysis of interview data focuses on the ways in which the men negotiate these discourses, and construct ‘respectable’ Western heterosexual masculinities by mobilising a binary distinction between singleness and marriage. Marriage to a Japanese spouse is presented as a bulwark against alignment with problematic discourses that threaten the status of white masculinity: it is associated with fidelity and maturity, and with integration into Japanese social, linguistic and professional communities. However, the articulation of marital status also reinforces a marginalised position for teachers who do not conform to heteronormative expectations.

White Western male teachers constructing academic identities in Japanese higher education

“…Observations such as those articulated in this section, and in other accounts of white Western men in Japan (Appleby 2013a(Appleby , 2013bHicks 2013), have led Yoko Kobayashi (2014) to suggest that white male native speakers of English may not only be benefiting from 'male-friendly hiring practices' (222), but also be 'tapping into a vein of masculinity in east Asia, which has long marginalized local women' and been denounced in the West as 'backward' and 'sexist' (220).…”

“…His account of marriage and masculinity providing a means of integration into professional life was not uncommon (Appleby 2013b) and points to just one of the ways in which Western men may be incorporated into the gendered institutional systems that circulate within higher education, and extend beyond institutional boundaries by linking work, leisure, and home life. In common with similar accounts, however, it is cultural integration and collegiality that are foregrounded in this account: the ubiquity of men in this narrative of professional practice may, ironically, mean that gender remains invisible as a naturalised feature of the cultural landscape.…”

“…The context of this study This paper arises from a larger research project conducted over a period of five years (2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013) that focused on the effects of gender on the experiences of men and women from Anglophone countries working as English language teachers in Japan (Appleby 2013a(Appleby , 2013b(Appleby , 2014. During that time, I travelled from Australia (my home country) to Japan on four occasions for ethnographic field work, visiting educational institutions and conducting interviews with teachers.…”

Exploration of English Teaching in Higher Vocational Colleges from the Perspective of Culture

“…A total of 600 students questionnaires were issued, and 592 valid questionnaires were collected, with a recovery rate of 98.7%. A total of 25 teachers questionnaires were issued, and 25 valid questionnaires were collected, with a recovery rate of 100% [3]. we use the statistical software Excel form to analyze the test paper, mainly for statistic of the accuracy of answers, and for correlation analysis according to the percentage data.…”

The abject single: exploring the gendered experience of singleness in Britain

“…According to Rich (1980), and reinforced more recently by Appleby (2013) and Martin (2009), the experience of singleness is overshadowed by compulsory heteronormativity -an ideological framework that institutionalises heterosexuality as a 'natural' sexual preference.…”