The place and potential of crisis/crises in critical studies on men and masculinities

Abstract

This article derives from considering the interrelations of two sets of long-term international work: that on interdisciplinary crisis studies and that on critical studies on men and masculinities. More specifically, it interrogates the place and potential of crisis and crises in the politics and problematics of men and masculinities, including how crisis can be a driver of critical studies on men and masculinities. Further to this, four main forms of deployment of crisis within critical studies on men and masculinities are interrogated. There is a wellelaborated debate on what has come to be called ‘the crisis of masculinity’. Interestingly, this takes very different shapes, sometimes even opposite constructions, in different parts of the world and within different discourses. Even with this diversity, crisis is often presented as ‘fact’, identity and a result of ‘role confusion’ for boys, young men and men around what it might mean to be a boy and man in contemporary times. This approach contrasts with those foregrounding more endogenous crisis tendencies, first, within patriarchal relations and then of gender itself, with associated deconstructions of men and masculinity. Meanwhile, within critical studies on men and masculinities, there has been a relative neglect, at least until recently, of large-scale global crises. Key examples include financial crisis, political crisis, ecological crisis and pandemic crisis. In short, there appears to have been over-recognition of the ‘crisis of masculinity’, some recognition of crisis tendencies of patriarchal relations and of gender, and under-recognition of crises created or reinforced largely by certain men and masculinities globally and transnationally.

Constituting affective identities: Understanding the communicative construction of identity in online men’s rights spaces

“…It arouses distorted judgements -judgements that claim, for example, that 'she deserved it' or 'she actually wanted it' -because misogyny itself is based in a distorted judgement about the inferior moral value of women. (p. 18) For example, misogyny emerges vis-à-vis backlash feelings and masculinity crises (Hearn, 2022) as social orders shift given various socio-political-economic changes, when (white) men's feeling of threat leads them to react in an exaggerated masculine performance (Reeser, 2019). Thus, misogyny is enacted in the affective sense in that there are feelings of displacement and crisis.…”

“…For example, misogyny emerges vis-à-vis backlash feelings and masculinity crises (Hearn, 2022) as social orders shift given various socio-political-economic changes, when (white) men’s feeling of threat leads them to react in an exaggerated masculine performance (Reeser, 2019). Thus, misogyny is enacted in the affective sense in that there are feelings of displacement and crisis.…”

“….as intensifying the masculinity of a male body” (p. 109). In online spaces, affective interactions are rooted in relative and hierarchical comparisons to other men and are organized in response to enduring perceptions of an ongoing “crisis of masculinity” (Hearn, 2022; Kimmel, 1994). As Schmitz and Kazyak (2016) argued, “MRAs’ online strategies are ideologically-charged in their attempts to make sense of complex realities that they interpret to be largely detrimental to men, which they argue is the result of feminism” (p. 11).…”

“…We argue that exploring how online MRA communities (like TRP) communicatively constitute a social identity through affective and gendered contradictions is necessary. Online spaces have emerged as fertile grounds for various affective, fear-based movements, including white supremacist, terror-based, and men’s rights organizations, thanks to their adoption of affective language (Allan, 2016; Hearn, 2022; Marwick and Lewis, 2017). When looking alongside and beyond the language used, we illuminate the affective states of belonging that the men of TRP experience even as they attempt both dispassionate (e.g.…”

Evaluating the concept of political masculinity/ies: a simple idea or a case of too many ideas?

“…These dire crises, until recently, with notable exceptions, downplayed in much CSMM, are increasingly taken up, along with the place of men and masculinities there, by scholars in and around CSMM. Political masculinities is not generally used as a productive concept in addressing such crises, but employing it might sharpen analysis of (individual/collective) gendered actors producing and resisting crises -including economic-financial-(de)growth, socio-political-(anti-)democratic and bio-environmental-ecological crises (Hearn, 2022). With limitations of space here, I focus on the last.…”