This study explores the social construction of masculinity among young boys and its impact on gender relations at two township primary schools in South Africa. Drawing from the conceptual ideas of Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities this study explores the views and experiences of boys and girls on what it means to be a ‘real boy’. The inclusion of girls in the social construction of masculinity and the use of multi-data collection methods sets this study apart from the other studies carried out with young boys. A purposive sampling method was used in selecting the 37 boys and girls who participated in this qualitative study. Focus group discussions, diaries and detailed individual interviews were used to explore how masculinities are socially and individually constructed amongst Grade 7 peers. Focus group discussions helped in understanding the social face of male gender identity construction while the diaries gave insight into its private face. The fear of being labelled gay resulted in some boys adopting contradictory positions in the production of their public and private selves. During focus group discussions they argued against homosexuality but in diaries they refer to it in affirming ways. Various themes with violence and sexual objectification perpetrated by the boys being central were identified in this study. Failure to privilege male homosocial relations alongside hierarchical heterosexual relations results in boys being relegated to an inferior status within the gender hierarchy. Some boys in this study verified certain girls as ‘beautiful’ while feminising those boys who failed to endorse this division as ‘permanent cows with blind eyes’. Some boys also adopted bravery bravado to portray themselves as real boys to other boys and to acquire heterosexual partners. Social differences based on the binary of belonging and not belonging were also adopted to create and recreate dominant positions and inferiorise gendered ‘others’. Gender-based violence by these boys against girls reflects the violence against women in general in South Africa. However, some boys and girls deviated from the dominant positions on being a real boy by resisting the imposition of unequal and dehumanising gender and sexual designs. The views of some girls, mostly in their diaries, show that they were not passively accepting male domination as they denounced and also acted against certain practices of hegemonic masculinities. / Thesis (DPhil (Sociology))--University of Pretoria, 2021. / Sociology / DPhil (Sociology) / Unrestricted

The past three decades have seen a significant increase in the engagement of men and boys in both policies and programs that seek to promote gender equality. This response is driven in part by the realization of men's central roles in determining women's well-being, and the wider acknowledgment that earlier gender equality initiatives achieved limited success due to the exclusion of men and boys. This study builds on a growing body of scholarship that calls for increased attention to men and masculinities in gender studies, policies and programs. Even though there have been interventions aimed at engaging men and boys, the number of evaluation studies documenting the effectiveness of these interventions is inadequate. This study therefore attempts to show the significance of men's participation in gender equality programs with regards to participant perspectives and project outcomes. Central to this dissertation is the imperative for feminist policies and programs to broaden their scope to reflect the fundamental principles of social and economic justice. Programs and policies must be geared towards enacting a truly transformative vision for development that recognizes and addresses structural constraints and unequal power relations between distinct groups. The gender and development discourse since the 1970s has been premised on the fact that men occupy positions of power in many cultures and institutions of governance, and that the way in which men exercise power over women results in inequities, inequalities, discrimination, and the subordination of women. The themes emerging from the findings of this study illustrate three broad points. Firstly, resistance is significant in gender equality work in Ghana and in many parts of Africa. Secondly, change is taking place, particularly for educated men, those working in the development sector, and those who see opportunities for alternative masculinities. In the spirit of leveraging the current momentum for change, gender equality programs must be context-specific, and linked to strategies of negotiation that are culturally relevant. In other words, gender equality does not have to always mean the same thing in all places.

It has been suggested that gender is a societal construct and as such its features can shift depending on the beliefs of society (Connell 77). If this is the case, then hegemonic masculinity, as defined by Raewyn Connell, should also shift its features based on societal changes. In this project I examine Seth Rogen’s representation of beta male masculinity in his performances in the television show Freaks and Geeks (1999), and the movies Knocked Up (2007) and This Is the End (2013). These texts were chosen because Rogen, an actor who I argue embodies the contemporary beta male in U.S. film and television, is a significant character in each. I use textual analysis of the films and television show to track how masculinity is portrayed and how one text paved the way for the others through the actor’s rising star status. I also briefly examine Jason Segel in Freaks and Geeks and Jay Baruchel in This Is the End. I explore how critics and fans receive Rogen, as well as the societal context surrounding Freaks and Geeks, Knocked Up, and This Is the End. I use discourse analysis to understand how these texts fit in to the cultural climate in which they were released. This project aims to identify the type of masculinities these texts endorse and whether they accept or challenge the most idealized societal norms of masculinity at the time of production. How do the masculinities depicted in these texts differ from dominant hegemonic masculinity as reinforced in prior decades of film? How can masculinities that historically fall outside of the dominant hegemonic standard now be framed as another type of hegemonic masculinity? Not only will this project look at how these masculinities function within the texts themselves, but I will also place them in context with the social and cultural landscape of the time in which the texts were released. / text

Faculty of Humanities School of Literature and Language Studies 0413458h edwardmooka@yahoo.com / This study explores the forms of masculinity which occur in a crisis situation as represented in Sembene Ousmane’s colonial text God’s Bits of Wood. The study relies on the theories of Robert Connell, Judith Butler, Judith Halberstam, and Ifi Amadiume amongst others in identifying the masculinities in the novel. The introduction discusses issues of masculinity and looks at how different types of masculinity have been defined, especially in relation to power. Chapter one focuses on the white hegemonic masculinities. Chapter two looks at black workers’ masculinities which were marked by opposition, complicity, and cowardice. The third chapter analyses the female masculinities and the violent boyhood masculinity that were forged during the crisis. The conclusion summarizes the arguments in the preceding chapters and indicates how Sembene Ousmane’s novel dispels certain stereotypes of black masculinity.

In Canada, there is the perception that boys are scoring consistently below girls in academic ranking, particularly in the area of literacies. Is there a bias? Is the school system promoting a certain type of 'boy'? Is hegemonic masculinity regularly promoted within the Grade 1 classrooms, in particular regarding literacies? If so, how? Are alternative masculinities encouraged and performed by the boys? This research was conducted over six months, from January to June 2009, in four Grade 1 public school classrooms in two schools in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Along with participant-observation in these classes, interviews were done with students, both individually and in groups. A theoretical framework supported by Butler's idea of performance of gender and Foucault's notions about the creation of self guide this exploration. The findings of this research concluded that, though alternative masculinites were performed, hegemonic masculinity was still regularly promoted within the schools.

In Canada, there is the perception that boys are scoring consistently below girls in academic ranking, particularly in the area of literacies. Is there a bias? Is the school system promoting a certain type of 'boy'? Is hegemonic masculinity regularly promoted within the Grade 1 classrooms, in particular regarding literacies? If so, how? Are alternative masculinities encouraged and performed by the boys? This research was conducted over six months, from January to June 2009, in four Grade 1 public school classrooms in two schools in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Along with participant-observation in these classes, interviews were done with students, both individually and in groups. A theoretical framework supported by Butler's idea of performance of gender and Foucault's notions about the creation of self guide this exploration. The findings of this research concluded that, though alternative masculinites were performed, hegemonic masculinity was still regularly promoted within the schools.

At the turn of the millennium, cultural and gender commentators were announcing that an apocalypse was under way. Men were changing. Patriarchy was crumbling. Masculinity, in short, was in crisis. Inaugurating a collective of ‘masculinity in crisis movies’, this thesis contends that Hollywood cinema also had its own relationship to the millennial crisis in masculinity. A relationship that was in fact so prevalent and extensive, that it came to the tune of 23 titles all released in the fin de millennium moment. Each film replicating the terms of wider cultural discourse, each with a representational concern with the crisis and the apparent ‘masculine malaise’.The thesis also proposes that a dichotomous structure underpinned this cinema in which two altering identity complexes were voiced. On the one side, a presence that is distinctly feminine, where existential suffering is relieved through consumerism and conformity; whilst the other, which vitally is (re)-presented as the ‘preferred’, offered a deeply masculine, often hyper-sexual, anarchic and more violent presence. This thesis will seek to investigate these representations, whilst attempting to place them in a broader macro sphere of American socio-cultural history and commentary.From visceral male anger spectacles like Fight Club (1999) and American Psycho (2000), to ‘New Man’ white collar bashing in Office Space (1999) and American Beauty (1999), this cinema seemed to be in direct dialogue with a larger, and vitally elegiac, commentary on masculinity-in-crisis.By marking key distinctions and comparisons between ‘masculinity-as-experienced’ in socio-cultural and historical readings and ‘masculinity-as-represented’ in textual approaches to the films and their surrounding paraphernalia, this work engages with both the real and reel at the fin de millennium moment. The thesis demonstrates why the concept of a single, fixed and unified ‘authentic’ definition of masculinity may be untenable, and why perhaps this cinema seemed to struggle to avoid essentialism, irony and self-parody as fragmented characters seemed to offer equally fragmented promises of redemption through ‘traditional’ displays of masculinity.What were the origins of the ‘crisis’, and how far was the crisis an actual or primarily a discursive one? Did this cinema help create or propel the crisis rather than sooth it, and how did the representation of ‘schizophrenic’ or ‘bipolar’ masculinity speak to the crisis and its audiences in general? Why did this section of Hollywood cinema decide to re-present these identities and what, if anything, can we learn from them? This research seeks to provide answers to these questions.

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This thesis includes a novel of eight short stories and a critical preface. The preface begins with a section placing the stories in their literary historical context in regards to masculinity theory. It goes on to discuss the craft of fictionalizing autobiographical stories. Finally, the preface talks about the choice of a first person narrator. Each of the stories should stand alone, though they follow the narrator's life for a number of years. Todd Welles is the narrator of all the stories, with the exception of a few. In the stories where Todd does not do all of the narration, he is interrupted by the narration of his "friend," Percy 2 Hard Welles, III.

Gender research throughout the last two decades has positioned sport as one of the central sites in the social production of masculinities. In particular, body contact, confrontational sports have been identified as central to the reproduction of a dominant but problematic form of masculinity, typically known as hegemonic masculinity. Whether it is through participation, opposition, resistance, complicity or media consumption, contact sports have been identified as constructing individual understandings of masculinity as well as contributing to the continued marginalization and subordination of other types of masculinities. Researchers working within schools have also linked rugby to similarly negative understandings of masculinities. The majority of these school based studies have been conducted in countries where contact sports are traditionally respected or in schools where rugby is tied to traditional and institutionalized understandings of masculinity. As yet little attention has been paid to boys who play rugby in countries or schools where rugby is not tied to traditional and institutionalized understandings of masculinity. As a New Zealand teacher working in an American school, in Taiwan, I set out to examine the rugby experiences of high school boys and to investigate the influence that rugby has on their understanding of masculinities. My study employed in-depth interviews with seven boys. Cognizant of the fact that the majority of gender based sport research has utilised Connell's theory of hegemonic masculinity, I adopted a 'Foucauldian method' to analyse the data. In doing so it was my intention to contribute to the field of sport and gender studies by utilising an alternative perspective instead of creating repetitive and redundant research which could lead to some problems being explored exhaustively. My main findings revealed a number of dominant discourses surrounding and constituting rugby within the American School of Taiwan. These included discourses of rugby as a masculine sport, as a foreign/western sport, and as a low status sport. Drawing upon these discourses I examined how the participants' gendered subjectivities were influenced by their rugby participation. The results revealed that within the general context of the school, rugby players were generally regarded as low status male athletes. However, within the western cultural group of students, rugby players were regarded as high status male athletes. This study contributes to gender and sport studies by suggesting that contact sports such as rugby need not always contribute to structured and hierarchical understandings of masculinities.