Masculinity

Research and critical studies into men and masculinity has originated as one of the most emerging areas of sociological investigation. More books and articles have been published on this study area alone as well as the introduction of two specialized journals and the creation of several websites all providing different explanations of their understanding of men and masculinity at the millennium age. Masculinity is an area of sociology that has, since the mid-1950s, drawn on many theories, including structural functionalism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, critical structuralism, and more recently, post-structuralism and theories of the post-modern (Whitehead & Barrett, 2001). Within popular culture, the media have also come across the perceived 'crisis of masculinity' in Western cultures – newspapers, documentaries and talk shows have increasingly pondered the changing meaning of manhood in our modern age (Alsop et al, 2002). The purpose of this writing is to understand men and masculinity in the modern world putting into consideration the sociology of masculinity, the social construction of masculinity, the crisis within masculinity as well as a fair contrast with masculinity and feminism.

Much recent writing on and by men suggests that male prerogatives are being sustained and lent authority by the new discipline of 'men's studies'. Dislocating Masculinity is an original and ambitious anthropological collection which raises important new questions about the study of men and masculinities. In a sustained cross-cultural enquiry, local experiences of 'hegemonic masculinity' are deconstructed to reveal the complexities of gendering and gendered difference. The familiar oppositions are analysed-male/female, man/woman and masculinity/ femininity-as are the other apparent certainties-that 'a man is a man' everywhere and that everywhere this means the same thing.

Japanese contemporary culture, including fashion, has increasingly gained popularity outside Japan, making it a timely topic for both scholarly and wider publics. Most current studies of popular culture focuses on manga, anime, and other such forms of visual culture, and dress and design studies are also emerging as a rapidly growing field. Building on the works of McVeigh (2000), Miller (2006), Slade (2010) and Steele (2010), this book addresses this new interest in an innovative fashion, expanding the significance of dress and delving into a wide range of examples from films, magazines, music videos and literature. By connecting diverse topic areas including dress, gender, media and cultural studies, Japanese Fashion Cultures analyzes the relationship of fashion aesthetics and gender identity within an increasingly interconnected, transnational world.
The book pays particular attention to the relationship of past and present. It examines contemporary Japanese fashion trends that adopt and restyle European historical clothing forms: the Edwardian dandy style, Victorian little girls’ dresses, and the Rococo and Romantic dress typical of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Japanese fashion culture actively promoted European clothing styles both politically and aesthetically, particularly since the country’s re-engagement with Euro-America in 1868. Throughout this book, I refer to the theory of “format” and “product” articulated by cultural sociologist Keiko Okamura (2003) where a cultural form, in this case Euro-American clothing styles, can be seen as a “format” when accepted globally. This standardized “format” becomes a carrier of the locality of cultures, allowing its “local” characteristics to be visible, measurable, and comparable with that of other cultures. Through this theoretical idea, I explain complex cultural theory using compelling examples. For instance, differences in preferred modes of masculinity and fashionability in Japan and Euro-America will be explained via garments and advertisement campaigns of Dolce and Gabbana. This process will therefore reveal the characteristics both universal and culturally specific to the Japanese context, including the ways in which Japanese men and women engage with fashion today. This poses a challenge to a widely held, often Eurocentric notion that Japanese men and women simply desire to imitate their Euro-American counterparts.

Japanese Fashion Cultures provides comprehensive insights into representations of clothes and gender in a society still poorly understood by outsiders. I dispel the popular misconception that Japan approves of gender inequalities and that women still occupy inferior social positions to men, expressed also in clothing. I argue that using the lens of fashion reveals the complexities of gender relations in Japan. Four contemporary case studies position the argument: young men’s fashion magazines, female performers’ use of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” in music video, “Lolita” fashion and Tetsuya Nakashima’s film Shimotsuma monogatari (Kamikaze Girls, 2004), and the continuing remarking of “Ivy-League” style in Japan. These four examples are notable for their adoption of historic European and American clothing forms. Their relatively “mainstream” stature in contemporary Japanese culture comes with a “twist” or unconventional characteristics. The “mainstream” standing of these types of popular culture indicates their reach, consumed by a great number of individuals within Japan. Certain qualities they manifest, on the other hand, impose a subtle, almost “delicate” kind of revolt against a set of idées fixes surrounding the relationship between clothes and gender. Using media and cultural texts as a primary source for discussion enables consideration of these complex links between distortion and reality. As Diana Crane (1990) has argued, both are parts of the “real” world where these case studies are first produced.

The first important issue this book raises is that, through negotiating male readers’ desire to attract admirers and to dress for their own pleasure, young men’s fashion magazines endorse the idea that crafting a pleasant look is the foundation of self-assurance and a successful life. Secondly, I show that female Japanese singers allow an accentuation of femininity without necessarily sexualization through the use of Japanese cute (kawaii) aesthetics. The third possibility this book explores is that highly decorative styles of Japanese Lolita fashion should not be read as symbolic of restriction and passivity. The fourth point this book addresses is that, as illustrated by the Japanese embrace of the “Ivy style,” both men and women engage with fashion in very similar ways. This is a major point of difference with the role of fashion historically in Euro-America.

These readings offer novel ways to understand the relationship between gender and dress, which is often blamed for maintaining repressive distinctions between “man” and “woman” in contemporary culture. Ultimately, this book aims to show that the Japanese appropriation of European clothing forms shows that there might be different, and hence less rigid approaches to understanding the relationship between fashion and gender. Japanese refashioning of European clothing concepts, this book argues, offers a compelling case for the implication of the aesthetics of fashion, gender, and cross-culturalism.

“Masafumi Monden's book is a gem. By bringing together and exploring colourful examples from Japan's vibrant street culture and fashion, he artfully demonstrates just how individualistic, innovative, and original the Japanese are. He also dismantles myths and misperceptions about gender relations, sexuality, and social relations in Japan.” –  Brian J. McVeigh, University of Arizona, USA,

“Monden provides a rich and detailed examination of the subtle intricacies of gendering and sexuality in contemporary Japanese fashion. While exploring the extremes of Tokyo street fashion he is able to illuminate some of the mechanism behind the perplexingly divergent ways to be a man or a woman in today's Japan.” –  Toby Slade, University of Tokyo, Japan,

“Masafumi Monden's fascinating and important book, Japanese Fashion Cultures, will be of great interest to everyone interested in fashion, gender, globalization, and youth culture. His research on young Japanese men and their attitudes towards fashion is especially significant, as it calls into question persistent stereotypes about how men and women are assumed to engage with fashion.” –  Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator, The Museum at FIT, New York City, USA

“From the possibility of subversion in lace-trimmed Lolita outfits and petite pinafores straight out of Alice in Wonderland, to the enchantments of Milkboy dandyism, Masafumi Monden's Japanese Fashion Cultures offers up a delightful combination of case studies that reveal the very best thinking in fashion theory today.” –  Laura Miller, Eiichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professor of Japanese Studies and Professor of Anthropology, University of Missouri–St. Louis, USA

"Masafumi Monden’s Japanese Fashion Cultures shines a spotlight on many of the looks that brought the world’s attention to an island nation which, like Britain, has consistently punched above its weight in matters of dress and appearance...In Japanese Fashion Cultures you have some most interesting comments about gender and I for one have learned a lot about the less reported (in the West at least) looks for young Japanese males." - Ted Polheums, Author of Streetstyle: From Sidewalk to Catwalk

This review examines the interlocking of violence, gender, and subjectivity within the overarching framework of the sexualization of the social contract. Tracking the question of gendered belonging to the nation state, the article discusses the anthropological literature along with feminist and critical theory to shed light on the relation between reproduction and death as a way of giving life to the nation-state.

This chapter argues that the gender politics of K-Pop videos are dependent upon their utopian narrative structures and performance conventions. Most Korean boy groups and girl groups present unrealistic social aspirations and ideal body types, but the narrative logics of K-Pop’s idyllic worlds also cannot be measured against the standards of social realism. Rather, genre specific expectations around homosocial performance create internal tensions in the presentation of K-Pop masculinity and femininity, tensions carefully negotiated by f(x) and dramatically unpicked in N.O.M’s ‘A Guys’, which I discuss in the final section of this chapter. At the same time, the estrangement between K-Pop’s performance spaces and tangible social lives also provides opportunities for audiences – and most conspicuously, for fanfiction writers – to reimagine Idols in everyday settings. Although narrow conceptions of gender, sexuality, race and age circumscribe the social imaginaries of K-Pop groups in deleterious ways, this chapter argues that critical responses must be attentive to the specificity of genre in the production of musical and viewing pleasures.

Knightly Dueling is a complete overview of the fighting arts of German chivalric dueling, on horse and on foot, during the late Medieval and early Renaissance. Through the words and pictures of original source texts of the great German fight-masters of the 14th through 16th centuries – extraordinary works that poetically preserved medieval methods of the true knightly dueling of mortal combat over grave matters with battlefield arms & armour.Until now, no single book has encompassed and clarified the scattered existing historical information on German dueling with swords, lances, daggers, pollaxes etc. Knightly Dueling shows the ruthless reality of man-to-man combat of the German Kunst des Fechtens (art of fighting), providing a thorough understanding of Johannes Liechtenauer's Roszfechten (horse fighting) and Kampffechten (duel fighting). It gives Middle High German transcriptions, as well as the first and only modern English translations, of works from various fight books by Liechtenauer's renowned masterly interpreters, including Hanko Döbringer, Peter von Danzig, Hans Talhoffer and Andre Lignitzer. The book also presents an illustrated blow-by-blow account of a deadly duel from a German Fechtbuch (fight book); primary source information regarding specific training of noblemen for duels and the training of noble youth in the combat arts; and a unique glossary of historical German chivalric terms for arms and armour.Lavishly illustrated with lots of period artwork, Knightly Dueling restores the concept of German chivalry to its rightful martial role and is a must for any serious scholar of the dynamic field of European martial arts.

Objectives: To help students: (1) think critically about how they perform gender through clothing choices; (2) recognize how different cultures define masculinity and femininity.
Courses: Communication Theory, Gender and Communication, Popular Communication, Rhetorical Theory, Visual Rhetoric

South Korea enjoys much success with the exportation of popular media, including music, movies, and TV shows. One underlying component of this success seems to be Korea’s powerful and precise media manufacturing system. For Korean boy bands, Jung (2011) claims that constructing a “transnational” identity that relies on the production of a “manufactured versatile masculinity” allows idol boy groups to appeal transculturally to fans across borders with their flexible masculine identities. This hybrid masculinity is “multi-layered, culturally mixed, simultaneously contradictory, and most of all strategically manufactured”. Consistent with the performative nature of gender (Butler 1990), this multi-faceted masculinity is constructed through performances in different outlets such as music programs, reality TV, and game shows.

In the past, Kpop idol groups largely focused on the pretty-boy, soft-masculine image. In the last decade, though, more “tough, manly, and beast-like” groups have emerged, combining their hyper-masculine image with “soft masculinity” performances (Jung 2011). According to Jung’s analysis, each of the members in these idol groups is capable of producing a variety of masculinities individually. However, I argue that some boy bands adopt a strategy by which their group’s collective hybrid masculine image is constructed cooperatively through discourse, distributing the gender-work across its members. This effort, what I call distributed masculinity, depends on the discursive work done by all participants involved, including band members and TV hosts. By looking at the interaction that takes place in “Aegyo Contests,” a common segment on Korean variety TV, I show how each group member’s masculinity is negotiated and defined vis-à-vis requested performances of aegyo. Aegyo is a concept that is shaped largely by culturally shared ideas of cuteness in South Korea. One aspect of aegyo is a speech style that is strongly associated with women and femininity (cf. Moon under review, Abelmann 2003).

This collective expression of hybrid gender shows that gender’s performative nature allows for creative expressions of femininity and masculinity beyond that of just an individual. The process suggests how groups can express collective gender identity and how that identity is molded interactionally.

This paper examines feedback from a number of male fans of Korean popular culture based in Malaysia. It argues that the model of Soft Masculinity represented in these texts allows men who are marginalised by restrictive and inclusive models of hegemonic masculinity in Malaysia to build new forms of masculine identity through which to express themselves. Building upon the corpus of recent research addressing male fans of texts coded as female-cen-tric, the article concludes that while this engagement represents a form of resistance to state-control in an increasingly authoritarian context, such fandom does not necessarily challenge existing patri-archal hierarchies of gender relations within Malaysia.

The Fechtbuch (Fight-Book) from 1459 AD by Hans Talhoffer is truly an uncanny work. In this edition of his work, the fight-master opens a window for us to his world. He shares knowledge from his own field of expertise – the martial arts of Renaissance Europe. Yet he also presents works from masters of the same and other fields – Zwaintzig Ussrichtung (Twenty Directives) by fight-master Johann Liechtenauer; Bellifortis (Battle Force) by military engineer Conrad Kyeser; and Hie Lert (Here Teaches) by astrologer-physiologist Jud Ebreesch. By text and by pictures, numerous diverse and lively scenes are shown that are sometimes quite bizarre – vigorous fighting lessons, for judicial dueling and for battle; war-machines, strange inventions and secret formulas; and treatises upon cosmology and physiology.

In this rich personal edition of his work, Talhoffer deals with a wide variety of things, from the lofty to the earthy. He has something to offer everyone – whether fighter, artist, botanist, philologist, herbalist, chemist, metalsmith, carpenter, jurist, kinesiologist, astronomer, culinarian, theologian, costumer, physician or otherwise.

Although fighting-arts are the focus of Talhoffer’s book, it is really something of a kaleidoscopic view of the interests and pursuits of the Renaissance German warrior, inclusive of manifold things meaningful to his life. However atavistic or unreal his world may be deemed now, it did truly exist and held wonder and honour worthy of our admiration.

The diversity of this book stands witness to Hans Talhoffer as one of the dynamic personalities of his generation – one whom we must deem was a true Renaissance Man.

All imagery herein is from the 1459-Thott edition, courtesy of the original 15th Century manuscript held by sterwardship of Det Kongelige Bibliotek in Copenhagen Denmark. I made this PDF to present that work here for the free learning of all sincerely interested persons. It may be viewed via personal computer, saved onto CDR and/or printed into hard-copy, allowing complete archiving of the document in whatever quality format one may choose – with the understanding that it is meant for noncommercial and nonprofit educational usage. The imagery herein is colour-corrected; and where needed in four folios, the action of the artwork is conceptually restored. The original uncorrected DKB facsimile still exists online. DKB is found in the Web at this URL: http://www.kb.dk

So first is the facsimile of the original book itself, which lets you see the words and pictures for yourself. Next are my transcription of its German and my translation of that into English – the transcription gives you direct comprehensible reference to the original German wording, while the translation gives you the first and only rendering of that wording into English. Lastly is my interpretive commentary, which helps you better understand many aspects of the words and pictures.

What are the effects of circumcision  on sexual function and experience? And what does sex—in the sense related to gender—have to do with the ethics of circumcision? Jacobs and Arora (2015) give short shrift to the first of these questions; and they do not seem to have considered the second. In this commentary, I explore the relationship between sex (in both senses) and infant male circumcision, and draw some conclusions about the ongoing debate regarding this controversial practice.

This rough essay is compiled from the notes for a short lecture presented to the Esoteika Lodge No. 227 of Oregon on February 18, 2015. This essay introduces the original meaning of the word "junzi" (the Gentleman) and explores the role and characteristics of such ideal person.

This qualitative study investigated the lived experiences of highly sensitive persons (HSPs) to better understand the way they experience careers.  Sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) is the underlying personality trait and is present in approximately 20 percent of the population, equally distributed across gender and racial lines.  SPS is considered a non-normative personality trait in some Western societies and subcultures.  Thus, many HSPs experience difficulty finding an appropriate match between innate temperament and career.   
This qualitative research perspective employed semi-structured interviews with 35 participants recruited through social media web sites and snowball sampling.  Participants in the study were primarily from the U.S., but also from five foreign countries.  Participants were chosen based on answers to a recruitment questionnaire and Elaine Aron’s HSP Self-Test.  Major findings reveal a complex, interwoven dynamic interplay between nine major themes: (1) empathy, (2) childhood’s influence, (3) self-care, (4) a rich inner life, (5) creativity, (6) high sensation-seeking, (7) the sociological perspective, (8) the experience of work, and (9) the integral being.  The significance of this study is that it is the first of its kind to investigate this topic in a systematic, scientific manner.

The purpose of this thesis is to suggest why Athenian oligarchs reacted against the democratic agenda of Panhellenism in 413–411. Panhellenism was a gradual process of Greek cultural unification, which took on a politicized connotation after the Persian Wars calling for the accession of a hegemon to oppose the Persian Empire. This thesis examines the differences in political ideology between oligarchs and democrats, the increasing economic burdens on oligarchs to finance the Peloponnesian War, and the rift between oligarchic restraint (sophrosyne) and democratic courage (andreia) as the reasons for the oligarchs’ opposition to Panhellenism after the failed Sicilian Expedition. By examining Thucydides’ History, various speeches of the Attic orators and Athenian plays, as well as incorporating inscriptionary evidence, this thesis shows that Panhellenism was indeed not a universally held notion in Athens, and that further study must be done on the fragmentary nature of Athenian Panhellenism in the Classical Period.

The archetype of the superhero has long been related to cultural imaginings of masculinity and manhood. As geek culture has become more mainstream, there has been a steady rise in popularity of films featuring superheroes and supervillains. While deconstructions and analyses of superheroes’ masculinity and sexuality are very common, there has surprisingly been little attention paid to supervillains in their own formulations of gender and identity. Common ways of approaching the supervillain have generally been through designations of being a feminised or emasculated Other. However, the supervillain can also be representative of conflicting and new ways of being masculine. This paper moves beyond typical focus on the male superhero, to the supervillain, and dismantle the assumption that he can only be understood as feminised, marginalised, or emasculated. Using Megamind (2010) as a point of analysis, and drawing from sociological conceptions of masculinity, this paper explores the masculine construction of the supervillain in film, and examines the ways such productions not only reflect certain ideals about masculinity and manhood, but are also affirmed, problematised and reimagined. I argue that Megamind’s inversion of the superhero/supervillain narrative links to broader social shifts, anxieties and concerns pertaining to men, masculinity and manhood in Western culture, potentially challenging traditional models in a consumerist, globalised and post-feminist environment. This paper explores how anti-intellectualism, sexuality, vulnerability, and binaries of the material/natural are entangled within complex imaginings of what it means to be a man, and what such entanglements can bring to our understanding of masculinity in the broader socio-cultural and political environment.

Con el objetivo de reducir la relativización e invisibilización de la violencia infantil en contextos educativos que
aún subyace en frases que la justifican como “cosas de niños”, en este artículo se analiza la intersección entre edad,
violencia y masculinidad, poniendo de relieve el carácter productivo que la violencia -contra uno mismo, entre
pares y contra otredades feminizadas- juega en la tensión que media entre la infancia y la adultez masculinas. En
los contextos educativos, los constantes “exámenes de masculinidad” entre pares, repletos de proscripciones y
prescripciones, contribuyen a la construcción de otredades feminizadas -niños, mujeres, homosexuales- de la que los
niños, en su afán por hacerse hombres, deben distanciarse. Advertir y subvertir este proceso es una responsabilidad
de toda la comunidad educativa y en este artículo se ofrecen algunas herramientas para ello.

This paper is an overview of the shifts in discourses of masculinity in Japan at a particularly crucial period in that country's recent history-the 1990s and the early 2000s. It contends that without a proper appreciation of the significance of these years, it is next to impossible to get a sense of the socio-cultural, economic, and political dynamics of Japan today. Japan's "Lost Decade" (ushinawareta jûnen, in Japanese) 1 pertains to a period of economic slowdown, corporate restructurings, and rising unemployment rates, coupled with a growing sense of collective socio-cultural insecurity and anxiety (Shimokawa, 2006, pp. 3-11). These years followed in the wake of several decades of consistent economic growth from the 1950s until the "bubble" economy boom years of the 1980s, during the course of which Japan had emerged as a major industrial superpower, and in many respects had become something of a global economic role model for developing nations. The bursting of the largely real estate and speculation-driven "bubble" boom in the early 1990s, however, put an end to these economic "glory years" and ushered in a period of prolonged economic ABSTRACT The "Lost Decade" of the 1990s, extending into the early 2000s, was a particularly crucial period in Japan's recent history. On the one hand, these years were characterized by significant economic and social upheaval. At the same time, these years were witness to increasing challenges in the public sphere to societally dominant discourses, including those relating to gender, and in particular, masculinity. This paper provides an overview of the shifts in discourses of masculinity over these years. It contends that an understanding of the changes that occurred during the "Lost Decade" is necessary in order to appreciate the dynamics of men's lives in Japan today.

This paper argues that, in order to take place, space and scale more seriously in the study of our discipline, we have to complement the pervasive understanding of geography as a tradition of thought or an extended conversation with an understanding of our discipline as a tradition of practice, in which the main focus is on the becoming of geographers. It is argued that the theme of 'what it takes to be a good geographer' is a fertile way to study this process of becoming. The four main advantages of this approach are illustrated empirically in the body of the argument by the author's reflections on his socializing within two very different geographical traditions.

This study analyzed the impact of organizational culture values; power distance, individualism and masculinity on employee’s creativity under the mediating role of employee's cognitive ability. The data was collected from banking sector of Pakistan and total respondents were 254. The results showed strong relationship between employee’s creativity and organizational culture values. Employee’s cognitive ability has positive impact on employee’s creativity. This study revealed that individualism has higher relation with employee’s creativity as compared to masculinity and power distance. However by the addition of mediator employee’s cognitive ability, masculinity has more impact as compared to individualism and power distance. Individualism and employee’s cognitive ability has more significant relation with employee’s creativity but weaker relation between power distance, employee’s cognitive ability and employee’s creativity in banking sector of Pakistan. Limitations have also been discussed.

Dans quelle mesure l’identification de genre façonne-t-elle la phase de la transition vers l’âge adulte ? Les incertitudes
et l’instabilité liées à cette phase de vie sont-elles révélatrices, entre autres, de nouvelles formes de construction du
sujet au prisme du genre ?
Mes recherches portent sur l’étude de la condition du jeune adulte à travers l’analyse des expériences sexuelles vécues
pendant la période préconjugale. Je travaille en particulier sur une population de jeunes hommes marocains,
musulmans, immigrés en France et en Italie et, suivant une lecture genrée de la catégorie d’âge, je m’intéresse
notamment à la construction des masculinités.
Cette communication cherchera à montrer comment ces jeunes hommes utilisent la représentation hégémonique de
la masculinité hétéronormative afin d’affirmer leur « rôle d’hommes » aux yeux des pairs, des membres de leur
famille d’origine, des membres de la population majoritaire, voire du chercheur lui-même dans le cadre de la relation
d’enquête, tout en révélant l’intrication et l’articulation de ces différentes dimensions dans la construction du passage
vers l’âge adulte à l’étranger.
J’analyserai notamment le rapport que les jeunes interrogés entretiennent à trois représentations hégémoniques de
la masculinité hétéronormative : (1) l’homme sexuellement actif qui affiche et biologise son hétérosexualité par la
mise en scène du script viril et prédateur – tout en dissimulant aussi d’autres formes subordonnées de la masculinité
hégémonique, comme la masculinité homosexuelle ; (2) l’homme qui définit son rôle par la référence au mariage, à
son cadre hétérocentré et à l’image de sa femme en tant que « dépositaire » de sa propre réputation sociale ; (3)
l’homme qui fait de la mise en scène du rôle de « protecteur de ses femmes » l’espace pour la négociation d’une
place identitaire à l’étranger vis-à-vis de la population majoritaire, en distinguant entre les conduites sexuelles de
« mes femmes » (et notamment sa copine ou sa sœur, ou plus généralement les femmes marocaines et musulmanes) et
« vos femmes » (notamment européennes et non musulmanes, voire « européanisées » descendantes d’immigrés).

Despite the many announcements of its death, the western has recently reappeared in American cinema and literature, reinvigorating a tradition that spans from James Fenimore Cooper’s Hawkeye to the Lone Ranger and John Wayne. Among the many recent productions, this volume considers American films, literature, and music, produced between 1985 and 2011: movies such as The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Roberto Ford, The Ballad of Little Jo, Brokeback Mountain, 3:10 to Yuma, Don’t Come Knocking, the TV series Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman, the novels Blood Meridian, God’s Country, and hick-hop music. Matching western, men’s, literary, and film studies, Bordin reads the western as a gendered cultural product, which comments on pivotal contemporary themes such as issues of fatherhood, homosexuality, gaze, and race and gender appropriations. Building upon Judith Butler’s notion of the performative nature of gender, Bordin analyzes how the western interacts with models of American masculinity, confirming the genre’s crucial role in the American cultural and ideological landscape at the turn of the new millennium.

Gender role norms may play a crucial role in the “male experience” of eating disorders. The masculinity hypothesis proposes that conformity to masculine gender roles including dominance, confidence, sexual success, and physical and emotional self-control places men at risk for muscularity-oriented body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. However, despite some empirical support for this hypothesis, several gaps in the literature remain. The present study was the first to use multidimensional instruments of gender role conformity to investigate whether masculinity and femininity are associated with male body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. Participants were 246 young heterosexual men who completed an online survey that asked questions about muscle dissatisfaction, body fat dissatisfaction, thinness- and muscularity-oriented disordered eating. Results from four simultaneous multiple regressions showed that increased conformity to masculine norms predicted greater muscle dissatisfaction and muscularity-oriented disordered eating, but not body fat dissatisfaction or thinness-oriented disordered eating. Conformity to feminine norms predicted greater muscle dissatisfaction, thinness- and muscularity-oriented disordered eating. The results provide support for the masculinity hypothesis and extend it to include muscularity-oriented disordered eating. Furthermore, the results suggest that the femininity hypothesis, which proposes that feminine norm endorsement is a risk factor for body dissatisfaction and disordered eating in women, may also generalize to men. Clinicians should consider integrating gendered perspectives into treatments for men with eating disorders. Future research into the mechanisms through which gender role conformity influences body image and eating outcomes in males is necessary.

"The text presents an analysis of categories of public and private sphere, which are connected with the social division of roles based on gender. The sphere was recognized as a sphere of participation, i.e. as a special kind of interaction, presentation, and legitimacy of collective or individual identity. It is important for the analysis to indicate that a particular discourse, within science and in society, strengthen the interpretation of human life and specific practices. Consolidated in this way discourse facilitated the exclusion of women from public life, and, therefore, also reverse process, that means emancipation (subsequent waves of feminism).

In the text three elements that could affect the consolidation of sexism were presented: (1) demographic descriptions of the population, (2) religious exclusion, (3) social practices within specific areas of activity. Demographic description of the human population, which can be found in the various fields or trends, such as environmentalism, sociobiology and bio-politics, affects quantitative interpretations. Qualitative elements were brought to the analysis of human reproductive functions, and the woman in the analysis had a definite role in society. However, the religious exclusion was only stressed on the example of Christianity. An analysis of exclusion in the case of religion may be considered on two levels – internal and social. In the first case we deal with the exclusion of women within the church structure itself, in the second case we deal with using the ideological content to shape the roles and functions of women in society. The last element contributing to the perpetuation of sexism are defined social practices described on the example of the concept of fields and capital of P. Bourdieu and the idea of economic, political and ideological domination of Karl Marx.

It should be noted that the dominance of men in society influenced the possibility of significant accumulation of capital (e.g. social, cultural, symbolic). The presence of men in many spheres combined with the exclusion of women, helped to set up rules, practices and interpretations of social reality in accordance with an androcentric matrix. It affected to a large extent the assignment of women to certain social roles in public and private area."

This paper aims to compare three different countries Italy, Germany and Serbia in seven different dimensions proposed by Hofstede (1984; 1990; 2001; 2008): power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism-collectivism, and masculinity-femininity, long term orientation vs. short term orientation, and indulgence-restraint. We set different hypotheses to check similarity between this countries. Data was used from  Hofstede  website, and sample of questioners by World Value Surwey. Our results show that Italy has higher index of individualism, Germany highly rank in terms of professionalism, and Serbia lowest GDP, highly collectivism society, and higher power distance. In the case of Serbia the predictive power of cultural values is likely to be more stronger when people face uncertainty.

This is a comparison of Agathon’s role in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae and Plato’s Symposium. Firstly, I examine the Platonic version, and the unique, idiosyncratic part Plato gives Agathon to play, as a host to all, and a hostage to Socrates. Secondly, I discuss his interaction with Inlaw, the ordinary Athenian, in Aristophanes’ play. Such parallel reading allows us not only to refine our outlook on the dramatic construction both of the “talking party” and of the comic performance, but also to capture how really poikilos, for better or worse, that urban love could be. Finally, I analyze the significance of this juxtaposition, as an intertext. Plato, I argue, produces a proper palinode of Agathon, as an erotikos and a mimetic poet. By taking seriously the face-to-face between Agathon and Agathon, two dissonant and yet compatible variations on one man, our picture of Athenian erotic culture emerges sharper, and in greater detail. 
Key words:
Eros, sensuality, praise, blame, softness, manliness, effeminacy, body, language.

Dorian Gray is a Gothic caricature of the lives of many ordinary Victorian men: an outwardly respectable veneer disguising a hidden, dark private life ". Discuss what Wilde's novel has to tell us about masculinity in the late nineteenth century.

Anthropology has always involved men talking to men about men, yet until fairly recently very few within the discipline had truly examined men as men. This chapter explores how anthropologists understand, utilize, and debate the category of masculinity by reviewing recent examinations of men as engendered and engendering subjects. Beginning with descriptions of four distinct ways in which masculinity is defined and treated in anthropology, special attention is paid to the relations of difference, inequality, and women to the anthropological study of masculinities, including the awkward avoidance of feminist theory on the part of many anthropologists who study manhood. Specific topics discussed include the diverse cultural economies of masculinity, the notion of cultural regions in relation to images of manhood, male friendship, machismo, masculine embodiment, violence, power, and sexual faultlines.

This study investigates how age, gender, social class and dialect influence how frequently speakers of British English use intensifiers (e.g. 'very') in private conversations and whether this has changed over the last two decades. With data drawn from over 600 speakers and 4 M. words included in the British National Corpus 1994 and 2014, it is the most comprehensive study of intensifier usage to date, taking into account 111 intensifier variants. Results show that, in most age groups and social classes, men use intensifiers less frequently than women, and gender differences have diminished to a very limited extent, notably for the middle class. Moreover, intensification rate has increased across the board over time. This could be due to a shift towards a stereotypically more feminine communicative style as the perception of gender roles has changed, a process by which the middle class might have been particularly affected.

El fútbol más allá de un simple deporte o entretenimiento, representa un espacio organizado desde el género: un espacio que da raíz y ayuda a mantener la masculini- dad. Esto desde una idea generalizada de este deporte. Pero en espacios como la Liga Parroquial de La Floresta en la ciudad de Quito, intervienen otros factores: la presen- cia de mujeres futbolistas, el fútbol practicado desde distintos cuerpos y una forma particular de dividir los distintos grupos practicantes del fútbol. Haciendo uso de la observación y entrevistas, la investigación que da raíz a este artículo se enfocó en el componente performativo del fútbol y en la narrativa que este nos regala. Partiendo fuera de vínculos estrictos y binarismos existentes, fue posible concluir que el juego no solo permite ampliar la discusión sobre el lugar del género en el fútbol, sino que cuestionar el género como principio organizador.

Study of the construct of masculinity has undergone substantial change since the feminist critique of gender in the 1960–70s. This review focuses on constancies and changes within empirical psychological theories and measurement because measures represent masculinity and their underlying assumptions are often obscured. After a brief historical introduction, 5 distinct movements are identified by their assumptions. These movements discuss masculinity as a unipolar construct, an ideology, a source of strain, a socially constructed entity, and, most recently, as a blend of these different movements. The lack of developmental accounts of masculinity and the positioning of masculinity as an acontextual, superordinate organizing element of individual lives are also addressed. Concluding comments address the lack of influence by masculinity researchers on broader psychological thought.