This dissertation addresses the central research question--How does context matter for men's experiences of gender, sexuality, and race? --by analyzing interviews with 66 trans men, female to male transgender people, in the U.S. West, Midwest, and Southeast. This project contributes to four areas in the sociology of gender and sexuality: understandings of transgender people, regional variations in masculinity, inclusion of trans men in the study of men and masculinity, and understudied queer spaces. The first part of the analysis shows how being a man is a lifelong process of negotiating the expectations of different contexts in light of the gendered self and offers a conceptual framework for the subsequent analytic chapters, which focus on the different ways that context operates in the lives of trans men. The first of these chapters spotlights how emotional control, in this case appropriate emotion in particular contexts, is a hallmark of contemporary masculinities across spaces and a central way of marking distinctions between men and women and among men. The final two substantive chapters focus on how different spatial and institutional contexts affect trans men's fears and experiences of violence. The first centers on exploring the spatial distribution of fears of transphobic violence. This illustrates another aspect of context, how the ideas about who and what inhabit particular contexts shape men's actions in those settings. The second chapter shows how these fears and actual violence in particular institutional contexts act as powerful forms of social control that reproduce various forms of inequality. It illustrates how the structural arrangements of institutions are key contextual features that influence behavior and the reproduction of social inequality in ways that potentially reach outside of their institutional contexts. Finally, the dissertation concludes by returning to the research question and discussing the implications of this research on sociological understandings of inequality, the field of men and masculinities, and transgender politics.

This thesis examines the paradigms of masculinities during and after Northern Ireland’s conflict to understand how societal transition from intrastate conflict impacts males’ identities and mental health. Focusing on fieldwork conducted predominately in Derry/Londonderry and applying masculinity theories, this thesis explores the experiences of males aged 29 to 40 who grew up during the 1990s’ peace process. Social and mental health professionals and community and youth workers have expressed concern for the mental health and well-being of this population of men, as well as young men born after the peace process. With this concern in mind, this thesis argues that the continuous presence of contested images of masculinity that existed prior to the conflict and that emerged during the conflict, along with the cultural practice of silence, has resulted in an ambiguous understanding of masculinity in the post-conflict era, and has had a negative impact on males’ mental health.

O presente estudo teve como objetivo analisar as questões de gênero e sexualidade suscitadas a partir da presença de professores homens que atuam nos Anos Iniciais do Ensino Fundamental em duas roças no interior da Bahia. Ao longo do processo de generificação das profissões, diversos ofícios foram feminizados. Contudo, o magistério se destaca entre os demais, pois ainda hoje há uma acentuada demarcação dessa profissão como ideal para as mulheres. A pesquisa situa-se nos campos teóricos dos estudos de gênero, estudos culturais e pós-estruturalismo e estudos das masculinidades. A roça foi compreendida na pesquisa enquanto um lugar generificado e sexualizado que apresenta seus próprios discursos nas construções de gênero e sexualidade. Embora não seja o foco central da pesquisa a Educação do/no Campo também é abordada na dissertação, uma vez que é nessa modalidade de ensino que as duas escolas pesquisadas estão inseridas. A metodologia escolhida foi a etnografia e como procedimentos de produção de dados foram utilizadas a observação-participante, a elaboração do caderno de anotações e entrevistas-semiestruturadas Foram entrevistados dezesseis adultos, sendo pais, professores/as gestores/as e quatro crianças, duas de cada escola. Além das conversas informais com diversos atores sociais da comunidade escolar e rural, mas os três professores homens são considerados os principais informantes da pesquisa. A partir das análises realizadas é possível concluir que a presença dos professores homens na docência com crianças ainda desperta questionamentos, tensões e pânicos morais. Foi possível observar que essas construções discursivas refletem nas suas aulas e na relação com as crianças. A partir dos dados produzidos emergiram três categorias analíticas centrais: o medo da pedofilia, os questionamentos em torno das masculinidades dos professores e as práticas pedagógicas que buscam um distanciamento de qualquer elemento considerado culturalmente como feminino. Por meio de diferentes discursos esses homens ao optarem por uma profissão historicamente feminizada são vistos como fora do lugar. / The current paper aimed to analyze gender and sexuality issues aroused from the presence of two male teachers who work in the First Years of Elementary School in two different sites in the countryside in the State of Bahia. Along the gender formation process present in the occupations, several ones were considered feminine. However, the teaching stands out from the others, once even today there is a pronounced demarcation of this profession as ideal for women. The present research is located in the theoretical fields of gender studies, cultural studies and also post-structuralism. The countryside was understood in the research as a gendered and sexualized place which presents its own discourses in the construction of gender and sexuality. Although it is not the central focus of this research, the Education in/of the countryside is also approached in the dissertation, once it is in this teaching modality that the two researched schools are inserted. The methodology chosen was the ethnography and as the data production procedures the participative-observation was utilized, as well as the elaboration of a diary for notes and also semi-structured interviews Sixteen adults were interviewed, among parents, teachers, school administrators as well as four children, two from each school. Besides the informal conversations with several social actors from the school community and the rural community, the three male teachers were considered the main informers of the research. From the carried analyzes it is possible to conclude that the presence of male teachers within the context of the teaching practicing with children still provokes questionings, tensions and moral panic. It was possible to observe that such discursive constructions are reflected in their classes and in their relation with the children. From the produced data, three central analytic categories emerged: the fear of pedophilia, the questionings around the teachers‟ masculinities and the pedagogical practices which search for a distance from any element culturally considered as feminine. By means of different discourses, these men, by opting for a historically feminine profession are seen as out of their places.

L’identité spectatorielle d’un étudiant est caractérisée par une émancipation dans ses pratiques cinématographiques, mais aussi par les traces, les cadres, qui ont été dessinés durant la socialisation primaire. L’identité de genre d’un étudiant est en constante négociation entre l’adéquation aux normes et la transgression. En cherchant à rendre visible la porosité de ces deux facettes de l’identité sociale, cette recherche propose une enquête qualitative qui laisse la parole aux jeunes hommes. À travers la mise en lumière de leurs goûts cinématographiques, leur panthéon personnel, et de leurs rapports à la masculinité, il sera possible de considérer que parler de films, c’est aussi performer le genre. / As a spectator, a student learns to own his cultural activities. He is also still determined by the first instances of socialization. As a gendered person, a student is between transgression and acceptation of the norms. This research aims to highlight that gender identity and spectatorship identity are both included in the social identity, but also that they are in constant interaction. Young men’s speeches are analyzed, with focuses on their movie tastes, their private pantheon, and their relationships with masculinity in order to show that talking about movies is also performing gender.

O presente estudo teve como objetivo analisar as questões de gênero e sexualidade suscitadas a partir da presença de professores homens que atuam nos Anos Iniciais do Ensino Fundamental em duas roças no interior da Bahia. Ao longo do processo de generificação das profissões, diversos ofícios foram feminizados. Contudo, o magistério se destaca entre os demais, pois ainda hoje há uma acentuada demarcação dessa profissão como ideal para as mulheres. A pesquisa situa-se nos campos teóricos dos estudos de gênero, estudos culturais e pós-estruturalismo e estudos das masculinidades. A roça foi compreendida na pesquisa enquanto um lugar generificado e sexualizado que apresenta seus próprios discursos nas construções de gênero e sexualidade. Embora não seja o foco central da pesquisa a Educação do/no Campo também é abordada na dissertação, uma vez que é nessa modalidade de ensino que as duas escolas pesquisadas estão inseridas. A metodologia escolhida foi a etnografia e como procedimentos de produção de dados foram utilizadas a observação-participante, a elaboração do caderno de anotações e entrevistas-semiestruturadas Foram entrevistados dezesseis adultos, sendo pais, professores/as gestores/as e quatro crianças, duas de cada escola. Além das conversas informais com diversos atores sociais da comunidade escolar e rural, mas os três professores homens são considerados os principais informantes da pesquisa. A partir das análises realizadas é possível concluir que a presença dos professores homens na docência com crianças ainda desperta questionamentos, tensões e pânicos morais. Foi possível observar que essas construções discursivas refletem nas suas aulas e na relação com as crianças. A partir dos dados produzidos emergiram três categorias analíticas centrais: o medo da pedofilia, os questionamentos em torno das masculinidades dos professores e as práticas pedagógicas que buscam um distanciamento de qualquer elemento considerado culturalmente como feminino. Por meio de diferentes discursos esses homens ao optarem por uma profissão historicamente feminizada são vistos como fora do lugar. / The current paper aimed to analyze gender and sexuality issues aroused from the presence of two male teachers who work in the First Years of Elementary School in two different sites in the countryside in the State of Bahia. Along the gender formation process present in the occupations, several ones were considered feminine. However, the teaching stands out from the others, once even today there is a pronounced demarcation of this profession as ideal for women. The present research is located in the theoretical fields of gender studies, cultural studies and also post-structuralism. The countryside was understood in the research as a gendered and sexualized place which presents its own discourses in the construction of gender and sexuality. Although it is not the central focus of this research, the Education in/of the countryside is also approached in the dissertation, once it is in this teaching modality that the two researched schools are inserted. The methodology chosen was the ethnography and as the data production procedures the participative-observation was utilized, as well as the elaboration of a diary for notes and also semi-structured interviews Sixteen adults were interviewed, among parents, teachers, school administrators as well as four children, two from each school. Besides the informal conversations with several social actors from the school community and the rural community, the three male teachers were considered the main informers of the research. From the carried analyzes it is possible to conclude that the presence of male teachers within the context of the teaching practicing with children still provokes questionings, tensions and moral panic. It was possible to observe that such discursive constructions are reflected in their classes and in their relation with the children. From the produced data, three central analytic categories emerged: the fear of pedophilia, the questionings around the teachers‟ masculinities and the pedagogical practices which search for a distance from any element culturally considered as feminine. By means of different discourses, these men, by opting for a historically feminine profession are seen as out of their places.

Rape cultures in the United States facilitate acts of rape by influencing perpetrators’, community members’, and women who survive rapes’ beliefs about sexual assault and its consequences. While much of the previous research on rape in university settings has focused on individual attitudes and behaviors, as well as developing education and prevention campaigns, this research examined institutional influences on rape culture in the context of football teams. Using a feminist poststructuralist theoretical lens, an examination of newspaper articles, press releases, reports, and court documents from December 2001 to December 2007 was conducted to reveal prominent and counter discourses following a series of rapes and civil lawsuits at the University of Colorado. The research findings illustrated how community members’ adoption of institutional discourses discrediting the women who survived rape and denying the existence of and responsibility for rape culture could be facilitated by specific promotional strategies. Strategies of continually qualifying the women who survived rapes’ reports, administrators claiming ‘victimhood,’ and denying that actions by individual members of the athletic department could be linked to a rape culture made the University’s discourse more palatable to some community members who included residents of Boulder, Colorado and CU students, staff, faculty, and administrators. According to feminist poststructuralist theory, subjects continually construct their identities and belief systems by accepting and rejecting the discourses surrounding them. When community members incorporate rape-supportive discourses from the University into their subjectivities, rape culture has been propagated. / Arts, Faculty of / Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, Institute for / Graduate

This is a qualitative study that explores meanings around fatherhood among Xhosa fathers in Cape Town. In so doing, the dissertation goes on to explore attitudes, beliefs, and needs of these township fathers have with regards to taking care of their children. This is a descriptive and exploratory qualitative study which was conducted with a sample of 4 Xhosa fathers. Responses around fathering clustered into the following themes: challenging notions of nurturing as women's roles, changing patterns in fatherhood, fatherhood as a process, multiple ways of fathering, communal and familial support structures, and deviation from ‘traditional' norms and ‘traditional' ideas around fathering. The fathers in this study identified a number of benefits and opportunities to being good fathers who were actively involved in their children's lives.

This essay analyzes the connections between some of the theories about masculinities and the sociopolitical context of Chile under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in the movie Tony Manero, by Pablo Larrain, and the novel Mala onda, by Alberto Fuguet. It proposes that the dictator and consequently the ideology of dictatorship are exacerbated representations of masculinity, and this study signals their inherent contradictions and repercussions in this country\'s social environment during its period of authoritarian regime. From this perspective, the protagonists of both fictional works, who come from different social and economic sectors of the Chilean society, can be considered oppressed individuals and oppressors themselves within this context, establishing different kinds of relationship with it. The oppression that they suffer is not only characterized by the authoritarian practices in force but also "and mainly" by the explicit and implicit guidelines of a "code of masculinity" that is put across by the regime and which affects society as a whole. Additionally, actively or passively and in a more or less conscious way, from the male groups to which they belong, both leading characters dominate (or try to do so) the groups of men from lower levels of the hierarchical social ranking and all groups of women. Therefore, oppression is an effective tool used to help maintain the structure of the dictatorship itself and, as a result, the ideological basis of men\'s domination. / Master of Arts

The image of a kufiyah-clad Palestinian teenage boy brandishing a stone laden slingshot, facing-off against an Israeli tank, has long pervaded images of Palestinian resistance around the globe. Notwithstanding the disparity in might, and the legitimate discussion around whether wielding a slingshot when faced by a tank should indeed be considered armed resistance in the first place, this dissertation explores the Orientalist shaping of Palestinian resistance and its repercussions for Palestinian men engaged in resistance. In the aftermath of the Oslo Accords, at an unprecedented rate, international aid flowed into Palestine under the pretexts of peacebuilding and statebuilding. Deeply embedded within the liberal peace paradigm, some of this funding went towards interventions targeting Palestinian civil society and the promotion of 'nonviolence'. We know from other examples around the world, donor interventions targeting the political, economic, and social spheres of recipient countries have profound impacts outside of their stated goals. And while this has been noted by scholars in Palestine and beyond, what remains underexplored is the way that these interventions, and the embedded frameworks, discourses, and ideologies, have shaped both the unarmed resistance movement within Palestine, and more specifically, the individual social and cultural lives of those engaged in resistance. There is no way to explore, debate, or even talk about armed and unarmed resistance without first asking how the terms are defined and positioned within a particular framework. Here I find Orientalism, critical feminist theory, and critical peacebuilding literature useful perspectives from which to survey the shifting terrain of Palestinian unarmed resistance in the post-Oslo era and the subsequent shaping of male identity within the resistance movement. This dissertation answers the calls of post-colonial academics for the need to engage in resistance research that aims to understand resistance from the perspective of those who are resisting. At the same time, this dissertation challenges straightjacketed links between representation and domination by expanding our understanding of the role of Orientalist narratives in the Palestinian resistance movement. It argues that Palestinian men engaged in resistance are not just screens on which donors and CSOs/NGOs project their narratives of violent Arabs in need of civilizing (through the adoption of nonviolence). Rather, Palestinians too represent themselves in different ways, conceiving a gendered sense of self in social, public and political spaces. Such contested practices of representation produce cracks and dislocations in understandings of identity, agency, structure, and power in conflict contexts.

Abstract This study examines Barbara Kimenye’s imagination of boyhood masculinities in the selected adventure stories from the Moses series. It is based on the understanding that gender is a social construct. The Research Report contributes to children’s literature and gender scholarships. In particular, through textual analysis of primary texts and gender related theoretical framework, I highlight various categories of masculine behaviour based on boy characters’ power, control and popularity at Mukibi Educational Institute – Kimenye’s fictitious boarding school in Moses series. I tease out complexities of both individuals’ and groups’ notions of manliness and how they manifest in various locales. I argue that there are many ways of being a boy. I also highlight how the author deploys satire to imagine a boarding school and how this space allows construction and performance of specific boyhood masculinities. In addition, I highlight Kimenye’s depiction of corporal punishment and family relatives and how these also allow for construction and performance of particular man-like behaviour by her boy characters. Kimenye’s imagination of girlhood masculinities is also explored by examining boy characters’ stereotypes on girls and how through Sekabanja – a girl character – the author manages to deconstruct this by portraying her [Sekabanja] as behaving as expected of a boy. In addition, I highlight Kimenye’s representation of enactment of gender inequalities in a mixed sex school. I also underline how illustrations also participate in the imagination of girlhood masculinities. I argue that by portraying a girl – Sekabanja – as behaving as expected of boys if not better, Kimenye is highlighting gender as a social construct and participating in deconstruction of stereotypes on girls and women through a literary technique.