Hegemonic Masculinities and Camouflaged Politics

Unmasking the Bush Dynasty and Its War Against Iraq

James W. Messerschmidt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317258209
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Analyzing the speeches of the two Bush presidencies, this book presents a new conceptualization of hegemonic masculinity by making the case for a multiplicity of hegemonic masculinites locally, regionally, and globally. This book outlines how state leaders may appeal to particular hegemonic masculinites in their attempt to "sell" wars and thereby camouflage salient political practices in the process. Messerschmidt offers a fresh historical perspective on the war against Iraq over an 18-year period, and he argues that we cannot truly understand this war outside of its gendered (masculine) and historical context.

PART I

HEGEMONIC MASCULINITIES

1

Criticisms

Five principal criticisms of hegemonic masculinity have been advanced since debate about the concept began in the early 1990s. This chapter evaluates each criticism in turn, attempting to discover what is worth retaining from the original conception of hegemonic masculinity and what now needs reformulating.

The Underlying Concept of Masculinity

That the underlying concept of “masculinity” and/or “masculinities” is flawed has been argued from primarily a realist and a poststructuralist view. Hearn (1996, 2006) notes a number of difficulties with the concept, such as the wide variety of uses of terms, the imprecision in these uses, and their “use as a shorthand for wide range of social phenomena that appear to be located in the individual” (2006: 44). To Petersen (1998, 2003), Collier (1998), and MacInnes (1998), the concept of masculinity is flawed because it essentializes the character of men or imposes a false unity on a fluid and contradictory reality. Some versions of this argument criticize masculinity research because it has not adopted a specific poststructuralist toolkit—which would, for instance, emphasize exclusively the discursive construction of identities (Whitehead, 2002). The concept of masculinity is criticized for being framed within a heteronormative conception of gender, one that essentializes male/female difference and ignores difference and exclusion within the gender categories. The concept of masculinity is said to rest logically on a dichotomization of sex (biological) versus gender (cultural) and thus marginalizes or naturalizes the body.

No responsible mind can deny that in the huge literature concerned with “masculinity,” there is a great deal of conceptual confusion, as well as a great deal of essentializing. This certainly is common in accounts of masculinity in pop psychology, in the “mythopoetic” men’s movement, and in journalistic interpretations of biological “sex-difference” research. It is another matter, however, to claim that the concept of masculinity must be confused or essentialist or even that researchers’ use of the concept typically is.

Indeed, the fact that social science and humanities research on masculinities has flourished during the last twenty years is precisely because the underlying concept employed is not reified or essentialist. The notion that the concept of masculinity essentializes or homogenizes is quite difficult to reconcile with the tremendous multiplicity of social constructions that ethnographers and historians have documented with the aid of this concept (Connell, 2003). Even further removed from essentialism is the fact that researchers have explored masculinities enacted by people with female bodies (Halberstam, 1998; Messerschmidt, 2004). “Masculinity” is not a fixed entity embedded in the body or personality traits of individuals. Masculinities are configurations of practice that are accomplished in social action and therefore can differ according to the gender relations in a particular social setting.

The idea that a recognition of multiple masculinities necessarily turns into a static typology likewise is not borne out by the development of research. A paradigmatic example is Gutmann’s (1996) Mexican ethnography, mentioned in the Introduction. Gutmann is able to tease out different categories of masculinity—for example, the macho and the mandilón—while recognizing, and showing in detail, that these are not monadic identities but always are relational and constantly are cross-cut by other divisions and projects. Warren’s (1997) observations in a British elementary school provide another example. Different constructions of masculinity are found, which generate effects in classroom life, even though many boys do not fit exactly into the major categories; indeed, the boys demonstrate complex relations of attachment to and rejection of those categories. Even though the idea that the concept of gender embeds heteronormativity is now a familiar criticism (Hawkesworth, 1997), it is a contested criticism (Scott, 1997). Although it correctly identifies a problem in categorical models of gender, it is not a valid criticism of relational models of gender (e.g., Connell, 2009; Walby, 1997) or of historical approaches where the construction of gender categories is the object of inquiry. In the development of the concept of hegemonic masculinity, divisions among men—especially the exclusion and subordination of homosexual men—were quite central issues (Carrigan, Connell, and Lee, 1985). Moreover, the policing of heterosexuality has been a continual and major theme in discussions of hegemonic masculinity.

The idea that the concept of masculinity marginalizes or naturalizes the body (because it is supposed to rest on a sex/gender dichotomy) is perhaps the most startling of the claims in this critique. Startling, because the interplay between bodies and social processes has been one of the central themes of masculinity research from its inception. One of the first and most influential research programs in the new paradigm was Messner’s (1992) account of the masculinity of professional athletes, in which the use of “bodies as weapons” and the long-term damage to men’s bodies were examined. The construction of masculinity in a context of disability (Gerschick and Miller, 1994), the laboring body of working-class men (Donaldson, 1991), men’s health and illness (Sabo and Gordon, 1995), and boys’ and girls’ interpersonal violence (Messerschmidt, 2000, 2004) are among the themes found in research on how bodies are affected by social processes. And theoretical discussion has explored the relevance of the “new sociology of the body” to the construction of masculinity (e.g., Connell, 1995).

Critiques of the concept of masculinity make better sense when they point to a tendency, in research as well as in popular literature, to dichotomize the experiences of men and women. As Brod (1994) accurately observes, there is a tendency in the men’s studies field to presume “separate spheres,” to proceed as if women were not a relevant part of the analysis, and therefore to analyze masculinities by looking only at men and relations among men. As Brod also argues, this focus is not inevitable. The cure lies in taking a consistently relational approach to gender—not in abandoning the concepts of gender or masculinity.

Ambiguity and Overlap

Early criticisms of the concept raised the question of who actually represents hegemonic masculinity. On the one hand, men who hold great social power do not necessarily embody a hegemonic masculinity. On the other hand, Donaldson (1993) remarked that there did not seem to be much masculine substance to those men identified by researchers as hegemonic models. He discussed the case, presented by Connell (1990), of the Australian “iron man” surf-sports champion, a popular exemplar of hegemonic masculinity. But the young man’s regional hegemonic status actually prevented him doing the things his local peer group defined as masculine—going wild, showing off, driving drunk, getting into fights, and defending his own prestige.

Martin (1998) criticized the concept for leading to inconsistent applications, sometimes referring to a fixed type of masculinity, on other occasions to whatever type is dominant at a particular time and place. Flood (2002) and Beasley (2008) likewise discussed this “slippage” from different applications, arguing that “dominant” forms of masculinity—such as those that are the most culturally celebrated or the most common in particular settings—may actually do little to legitimate men’s power over women and that some masculinities that legitimate men’s power may actually be culturally marginalized. Similarly, Schippers (2007) argued that the current notion of hegemonic masculinity disallows distinguishing masculine characteristics and practices that legitimate men’s power from those that do not. Wetherell and Edley (1999) contended that the concept fails to specify what conformity to hegemonic masculinity actually looks like in practice. Hearn (2004) asked whether hegemonic masculinity refers to cultural representations, everyday practices, or institutional structures. And Whitehead (1998: 58; 2002: 93) suggested there is confusion over who actually is a hegemonically masculine man—”Is it John Wayne or Leonardo DiCaprio; Mike Tyson or Pele? Or maybe, at different times, all of them?”—as well as confusion about who can enact hegemonic practices (2002: 93).

These critics have correctly pointed to ambiguities in usage. Accordingly, it is desirable to eliminate any usage of hegemonic masculinity as a fixed, transhistorical model. This usage violates the historicity of gender and ignores the massive evidence of change in social definitions of masculinity. Moreover, Martin (1998), Flood (2002), and Beasley (2008) are correct that dominant forms of masculinity are not necessarily analogous to hegemonic forms of masculinity, because the former may not always legitimate men’s power over women and they often center on actual groups of men. And Schippers (2007) is on the mark in conceiving a perspective that specifically speaks to such a distinction (which is further discussed here, in Chapter 2, and in the Conclusion).

Hegemonic masculinities often are constructed in ways that do not correspond closely to the lives of any actual men. Yet these models do, in various ways, express widespread ideals, fantasies, and desires. They provide models of relations with women and solutions to problems of gender relations. Furthermore, they articulate loosely with the practical constitution of masculinities as ways of living in everyday local circumstances. To the extent that they do this, they contribute to hegemony in the society-wide gender order as a whole. It is neither surprising nor inconsistent that men who function as exemplars at the regional level, such as the “iron man” discussed by Donaldson, exhibit contradictions.

At the local level, hegemonic patterns of masculinity are embedded in specific social environments, such as formal organizations. There are, for instance, well-defined patterns of managerial masculinity in the British corporations studied by Roper (1994) and Wajcman (1999). Socially legitimated hegemonic models of masculinity are also in play in families. For instance, men’s gender strategies shape negotiations around housework and the “second shift” in the U.S. families studied by Hochschild (1989). Hegemonic patterns of masculinity are both engaged in and contested as children grow up. Gender is made in schools and neighborhoods through peer group structure, control of school space, dating patterns, homophobic speech, and harassment (Mac an Ghaill, 1994; Thorne, 1993). In none of these cases would we expect hegemonic masculinity to stand out as a sharply defined pattern separate from all others. And a degree of overlap or blurring between hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculinities is extremely likely if hegemony is effective.

The overlap between masculinities can also be seen in terms of the social agents constructing masculinities. Cavender (1999) shows how hegemonic masculine models were constructed differently in feature films of the 1940s compared with those of the 1980s. This is not just a matter of the characters written into the scripts. Practice at the local level—that is, the actual face-to-face interactions that occur for an actor as a film is being shot—ultimately constructs hegemonic masculine fantasy models (in this case, “detectives”) at the societywide or regional level (this question of the relations between levels is explored in Chapter 2).

The Problem of Reification

That the concept of hegemonic masculinity reduces, in practice, to a reification of power or toxicity has also been argued from different points of view. Holter (1997, 2003), in the most conceptually sophisticated of all critiques, argues that the concept constructs masculine power from the direct experience of women rather than from the structural basis of women’s subordination. Holter believes that we must distinguish between “patriarchy,” the long-term structure of the subordination of women, and “gender,” a specific system of exchange that arose in the context of modern capitalism. It is a mistake to treat a hierarchy of masculinities constructed within gender relations as logically continuous with the patriarchal subordination of women. Holter (1997) tellingly points to Norwegian survey evidence showing that the gender identities of men do not map directly onto such equality-related practices as attitudes toward violence.

Holter certainly is correct that it is a mistake to deduce relations among masculinities from the direct exercise of personal power by men over women. At the least, we also must factor in the institutionalization of gender inequalities, the role of cultural constructions, and the interplay of gender dynamics with race, class, and region.

Indeed, research on these issues shows that the concept of hegemonic masculinity is not trapped in reification. Among the fruitful studies of institutional masculinities are those that reveal quite subtle variations, for instance, among the different branches of a single military force, the U.S. Navy (Barrett, 1996). There are studies of locally specific hegemonic masculinities constructed in spaces such as a New Zealand country pub that show the interweaving of masculinity with rural identity (Campbell, 2000). Other research, especially studies of school classrooms (Martino, 1995; Warren, 1997), shows the fine-grained production and negotiation of masculinities (and femininities) as configurations of practice.

Collier (1998) criticizes the concept of hegemonic masculinity through its typical use in accounting for violence and crime. In the “masculinity turn” in criminology, Collier suggests, hegemonic masculinity came to be associated solely with negative characteristics that depict men as unemotional, independent, nonnurturing, aggressive, and dispassionate—which, in this view, are the causes of criminal behavior. Martin (1998) similarly observes a drift toward a view of hegemonic masculinity not just as a type, but also as a negative type, for instance, in “saying that defending gun ownership is a defense of hegemonic masculinity” (473).

This criticism has force. It draws on McMahon’s (1993) accurate analysis of the psychologism in many discussions of men and masculinity. Men’s behavior is reified, then, in a concept of “masculinity” that in a circular argument becomes the explanation (and the excuse) for the behavior. This can be seen in many discussions of men’s health and problems of boys’ education—any of the contemporary troubles assembled under the banner of a “crisis in masculinity.” In pop psychology, the invention of new character types is endemic (the alpha male, the sensitive new-age guy, the hairy man, the new lad, the “rat boy,” etc.). In this environment, hegemonic masculinity can become a scientific-sounding synonym for a type of rigid, domineering, sexist, “macho” man (in the Anglo usage, e.g., Mosher and Tomkins, 1988), thereby expressing a nonrelational notion of the concept.

Because the concept of hegemonic masculinity is based on practice that permits men’s collective dominance over women to continue, it is not surprising that in some contexts hegemonic masculinity actually does refer to men engaging in toxic practices—including physical violence—that stabilize gender power in a particular setting. However, violence and other noxious practices are not always the defining characteristics because hegemony has numerous configurations. Indeed, as Wetherell and Edley (1999) ironically observe, one of the most effective ways of “being a man” in certain local contexts may be to demonstrate one’s distance from a regional hegemonic masculinity.

Collier (1998) sees as a crucial defect in the concept of hegemonic masculinity that it excludes “positive” behavior on the part of men— behavior that might serve the interests or desires of women. This hardly is a problem once we get beyond a rigid trait nonrelational theory of personality. Most accounts of hegemonic masculinity do include such “positive” actions as bringing home a wage, sustaining a sexual relationship, and being a father. Indeed, it is difficult to see how the concept of hegemony would be relevant if the only characteristics of the dominant group were violence, aggression, and selfcenteredness. Such characteristics may mean domination, but they hardly would constitute hegemony—an idea that embeds certain notions of consent and participation by the subaltern groups and must always be conceptualized in relation to femininity.

Collier (1998: 21) is right in remarking that what actually is being discussed in many accounts of hegemonic masculinity and crime (and, we may add, health and education) is “a range of popular ideologies of what constitute ideal or actual characteristics of ‘being a man.’” What Collier misses, however, is that sophisticated research consistently goes on to explore the relationship of those ideologies to the daily lives of boys and men—including the mismatches, the tensions, and the resistances.

It is men’s and boys’ practical relationships to collective images or models of masculinity, rather than simple reflection of them, that are central to understanding gendered consequences in violence, health, and education. This has been evident since the formulation of the idea that different crimes are used by different men in the construction of masculinities (Messerschmidt, 1993). Collier finds this idea unacceptable, either tautological and universalizing or too multitudi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Hegemonic Masculinities
• Part II Bush Senior
• Part III Bush Junior
• Conclusion
• References
• Index
• About the Author