What Is Hegemonic Masculinity?

Author(s): Mike Donaldson

Source: Theory and Society , Oct., 1993, Vol. 22, No. 5, Special Issue: Masculinities (Oct.,
1993), pp. 643-657
Published by: Springer

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/657988

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What is hegemonic masculinity?

MIKE DONALDSON
University of Wollongong, Australia

Structures of oppression, forces for change

A developing debate within the growing theoretical literatu

and masculinity concerns the relationship of gender syste
social formation. Crucially at issue is the question of the au
the gender order. Some, in particular Waters, are of the op
change in masculine gender systems historically has been c
enously and that, without those external factors, the syst
stably reproduce.1 For Hochschild, the "motor" of this socia
the economy, particularly and currently, the decline in the
power of the male wage, the decline in the number and pro
"male" skilled and unskilled jobs, and the rise in "female"
growing services sector.2 I have argued that gender relations th
are bisected by class relations and vice-versa, and that
moment for analysis is the relation between the two.3

On the other side of the argument, others have been trying to

"the laws of motion" of gender systems. Connell, for instan
sisted on the independence of their structures, patterns of
and determinations, most notably in his devastating critiqu
role theory. "Change is always something that happens to sex r
impinges on them. It comes from outside, as in discussions of h
nological and economic changes demand a shift to a 'mo
role for men. Or it comes from inside the person, from th
that protests against the artificial restrictions of constraining
role theory has no way of grasping change as a dialectic aris
gender relations themselves." It has no way of grasping soci
that can only be seriously considered when the historic
structure of gender relations, the gender order of the soci
point of departure.4

Theory and Society 22: 643-657, 1993.

? 1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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644

This concern with broad, historical movement is linked to the question

of male sexual politics. Clearly, if men wish to challenge patriarchy and
win, the central question must be, who and where are the "army of
redressers?" 5 But "the political project of rooting out the sexism in
masculinity has proved intensely difficult" because "the difficulty of
constructing a movement of men to dismantle hegemonic masculinity is
that its logic is not the articulation of collective interest but the attempt
to dismantle that interest." 6 It is this concept of "hegemonic masculini-
ty" on which the argument for autonomy of the gender structures turns,
for it is this that links their broader historical sweep to lived experi-
ence.

Put simply, if the gender system has an independe

movement, and determinations, then we should be
counter-hegemonic forces within it, if these are not
we must question the autonomy of the gender system a
of hegemonic masculinity as central and specific to it.

On the other hand, if gender systems are not auto

question "why, in specific social formations, do cert
male predominate, and particular sorts of men rul
answered, and the resistances to that order still remain

The political implications of the issue are clear. If th

dent structure of masculinity, then it should prod
monic movements of men, and all good blokes shou
them. If the structure is not independent, or the mo
ter-hegemonic, or the counter-hegemony not mov
practice will not be centered on masculinity ... and w
then, about the masculine images in and through wh
a world so cruel to most of its inhabitants?

Hegemony and masculinity

Twenty years ago, Patricia Sexton suggested that "

values such as courage, inner direction, certain for
autonomy, mastery, technological skill, group solidar
considerable amounts of toughness in mind and body
tively recently that social scientists have sought to link
the concept of hegemony, a notion as slippery and d
of masculinity itself.

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 645

Hegemony, a pivotal concept in Gramsci's Prison Notebooks and his

most significant contribution to Marxist thinking, is about the winning
and holding of power and the formation (and destruction) of social
groups in that process. In this sense, it is importantly about the ways in
which the ruling class establishes and maintains its domination. The
ability to impose a definition of the situation, to set the terms in which
events are understood and issues discussed, to formulate ideals and
define morality is an essential part of this process. Hegemony involves
persuasion of the greater part of the population, particularly through
the media, and the organization of social institutions in ways that
appear "natural" "ordinary," "normal." The state, through punishment
for non-conformity, is crucially involved in this negotiation and en-
forcement.8

Heterosexuality and homophobia are the bedrock of hegemonic mas-

culinity and any understanding of its nature and meaning is predicated
on the feminist insight that in general the relationship of men to women
is oppressive. Indeed, the term "hegemonic masculinity" was invented
and is used primarily to maintain this central focus in the critique of
masculinity. A fundamental element of hegemonic masculinity, then, is
that women exist as potential sexual objects for men while men are
negated as sexual objects for men. Women provide heterosexual men
with sexual validation, and men compete with each other for this. This
does not necessarily involve men being particularly nasty to individual
women. Women may feel as oppressed by non-hegemonic masculin-
ities, may even find some expressions of the hegemonic pattern more
familiar and manageable.9

More than fifty books have appeared in the English language in the last
decade or so on men and masculinity. What is hegemonic masculinity
as it is presented in this growing literature? Hegemonic masculinity,
particularly as it appears in the works of Carrigan, Connell, and Lee,
Chapman, Cockburn, Connell, Lichterman, Messner, and Rutherford,
involves a specific strategy for the subordination of women. In their
view, hegemonic masculinity concerns the dread of and the flight from
women. A culturally idealized form, it is both a personal and a col-
lective project, and is the common sense about breadwinning and man-
hood. It is exclusive, anxiety-provoking, internally and hierarchically
differentiated, brutal, and violent. It is pseudo-natural, tough, contra-
dictory, crisis-prone, rich, and socially sustained. While centrally con-
nected with the institutions of male dominance, not all men practice it,
though most benefit from it. Although cross-class, it often excludes

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646

working-class and black men. It is a lived experience, and an economic

and cultural force, and dependent on social arrangements. It is con-
structed through difficult negotiation over a life-time. Fragile it may be,
but it constructs the most dangerous things we live with. Resilient, it
incorporates its own critiques, but it is, nonetheless, "unravelling." 10

What can men do with it? According to the authors cited above, and
others, hegemonic masculinity can be analyzed, distanced from, appro-
priated, negated, challenged, reproduced, separated from, renounced,
given up, chosen, constructed with difficulty, confirmed, imposed,
departed from, and modernized. (But not, apparently, enjoyed.) What
can it do to men? It can fascinate, undermine, appropriate some men's
bodies, organize, impose, pass itself off as natural, deform, harm, and
deny. (But not, seemingly, enrich and satisfy.)

Which groups are most active in the making of masculinist sexual ideol-
ogy? It is true that the New Right and fascism are vigorously construct-
ing aggressive, dominant, and violent models of masculinity. But gener-
ally, the most influential agents are considered to be: priests, jour-
nalists, advertisers, politicians, psychiatrists, designers, playwrights,
film makers, actors, novelists, musicians, activists, academics, coaches,
and sportsmen. They are the "weavers of the fabric of hegemony" as
Gramsci put it, its "organizing intellectuals." These people regulate and
manage gender regimes; articulate experiences, fantasies, and perspec-
tives; reflect on and interpret gender relations.'1

The cultural ideals these regulators and managers create and perpet-
uate, we are told, need not correspond at all closely to the actual per-
sonalities of the majority of men (not even to their own!). The ideals
may reside in fantasy figures or models remote from the lives of the
unheroic majority, but while they are very public, they do not exist only
as publicity. The public face of hegemonic masculinity, the argument
goes, is not necessarily even what powerful men are, but is what sus-
tains their power, and is what large numbers of men are motivated to
support because it benefits them. What most men support is not neces-
sarily what they are. "Hegemonic masculinity is naturalised in the form
of the hero and presented through forms that revolve around heroes:
sagas, ballads, westerns, thrillers," in books, films, television, and in
sporting events.12

What in the early literature had been written of as "the male sex role" is
best seen as hegemonic masculinity, the "culturally idealised form of

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 647

masculine character" which, however, may not be "the usual form of

masculinity at all." To say that a particular form of masculinity is hege-
monic means "that its exaltation stabilizes a structure of dominance
and oppression in the gender order as a whole. To be culturally exalted,
the pattern of masculinity must have exemplars who are celebrated as
heroes." 13

But when we examine these bearers of hegemonic masculinity, they

seem scarcely up to the task, with more than just feet of clay. A football
star is a model of hegemonic maculinity.14 But is a model? When the
handsome Australian Rules football player, Warwick "the tightest
shorts in sports" Capper, combined football with modelling, does this
confirm or decrease his exemplary status? When Wally ("the King")
Lewis explained that the price he will pay for another five years playing
in the professional Rugby League is the surgical replacement of both
his knees, this is undoubtedly the stuff of good, old, tried and true,
tough and stoic, masculinity. But how powerful is a man who mutilates
his body, almost as a matter of course, merely because of a job? When
Lewis announced that he was quitting the very prestigious "State of
Origin" football series because his year-old daughter had been diag-
nosed as hearing-impaired, is this hegemonic?

In Australian surfing champion, iron man Steve Donoghue, Connell

has found "an exemplar of masculinity" who lives "an exemplary ver-
sion of hegemonic masculinity." But, says Donoghue, "I have loved the
idea of not having to work.... Five hours a day is still a lot but it is some-
thing that I enjoy that people are not telling me what to do." This is not
the right stuff. Nor are hegemonic men supposed to admit to strangers
that their life is "like being in jail." Connell reveals further contradic-
tions when he explains that "Steve, the exemplar of masculine tough-
ness, finds his own exemplary status prevents him from doing exactly
what his peer group defines as thoroughly masculine behaviour: going
wild, showing off, drunk driving, getting into fights, defending his own
prestige." This is not power. And when we look to see why many young
men take up sport we find they are driven by "the hunger for affiliation"
in the words of Hammond and Jablow; we see the felt need for "con-
nectedness" and closeness. How hegemonic is this?15

Homosexuality and counter-hegemony

Let us, however, pursue the argument by turning now to examine those

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purported counter-hegemonic forces that are supposedly generated by

the gender system itself. There are three main reasons why male homo-
sexuality is regarded as counter-hegemonic. Firstly, hostility to homo-
sexuality is seen as fundamental to male heterosexuality; secondly,
homosexuality is associated with effeminancy; and thirdly, the form of
homosexual pleasure is itself considered subversive.'6

Antagonism to gay men is a standard feature of hegemonic masculinity

in Australia. Such hostility is inherent in the construction of hetero-
sexual masculinity itself. Conformity to the demands of hegemonic
masculinity, pushes heterosexual men to homophobia and rewards
them for it, in the form of social support and reduced anxiety about
their own manliness. In other words, male heterosexual identity is sus-
tained and affirmed by hatred for, and fear of, gay men.17

Although homosexuality was compatible with hegemonic masculinity

in other times and places, this was not true in post-invasion Australia.
The most obvious characteristic of Australian male homosexuals,
according to Johnston and Johnston, has been a "double deviance." It
has been and is a constant struggle to attain the goals set by hegemonic
masculinity, and some men challenge this rigidity by acknowledging
their own "effeminacy." This rejection and affirmation assisted in
changing homosexuality from being an aberrant (and widespread)
sexual practice, into an indentity when the homosexual and lesbian
subcultures reversed the hegemonic gender roles, mirror-like, for each
sex. Concomitantly or consequently, homosexual men were socially
defined as effeminate and any kind of powerlessness, or a refusal to
compete, "readily becomes involved in the imagery of homosexuali-
ty." 18

While being subverted in this fashion, hegemonic masculinity is also

threatened by the assertion of a homosexual identity confident that
homosexuals are able to give each other sexual pleasure. According to
Connell, the inherent egalitarianism in gay relationships that exists
because of this transitive structure (my lover's lover can also be my
lover), challenges the hierarchical and oppressive nature of male het-
erosexuality.19

However, over time, the connection between homosexuality and effem-

inacy has broken. The "flight from masculinity" evident in male homo-
sexuality, noted thirty years ago by Helen Hacker, may be true no
longer, as forms of homosexual behavior seem to require an exaggera-

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tion of some aspects of hegemonic masculinity, notably the cult of

toughness and physical aggression. If hegemonic masculinity neces-
sarily involves aggression and physical dominance, as has been sug-
gested, then the affirmation of gay sexuality need not imply support for
women's liberation at all, as the checkered experience of women in the
gay movement attests.2"

More than a decade ago, Australian lesbians had noted, "We make the
mistake of assuming that lesbianism, in itself, is a radical position. This
had led us, in the past, to support a whole range of events, ventures,
political perspectives, etc. just because it is lesbians who hold those
beliefs or are doing things. It is as ludicrous as believing that every
working class person is a communist."2' Even though there are many
reasons to think that there are important differences in the expression
and construction of women's homosexuality and men's homosexuality,
perhaps there is something to be learned from this.

Finally, it is not "gayness" that is attractive to homosexual men, but

"maleness." A man is lusted after not because he is homosexual but be-
cause he's a man. How counter-hegemonic can this be?

Changing men, gender segmentation and paid and unpaid work

Connell notes, "Two possible ways of working for the ending of patri-
archy which move beyond guilt, fixing your head and heart, and
blaming men, are to challenge gender segmentation in paid work and to
work in men's counter-sexist groups. Particularly, though, counter-
sexist politics need to move beyond the small consciousness raising
group to operate in the workplace, unions and the state." 2

It is hard to imagine men challenging gender segmentation in paid work

by voluntarily dropping a third of their wage packet. But it does
happen, although perhaps the increasing trickle of men into women's
jobs may have more to do with the prodding of a certain invisible
finger. Lichterman has suggested that more political elements of the
"men's movement" contain human service workers, students, part-
timers, and "odd-jobbers." Those in paid work, work in over-
whelmingly female occupations - counselling, nursing, and elementary
teaching are mentioned. In this sense, their position in the labor market
has made them "predisposed to criticise hegemonic masculinity, the
common sense about breadwinning and manhood." It can also be seen

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as a defense against the loss of these things, as men attempt to colonize

women's occupations in a job market that is increasingly competitive,
particularly for men's jobs.23

If we broaden the focus on the desegmentation of paid work to include

unpaid work, more interesting things occur. While Connell has sug-
gested that hegemonic masculinity is confirmed in fatherhood, the
practice of parenting by men actually seems to undermine it. Most men
have an exceptionally impoverished idea about what fatherhood in-
volves, and indeed, active parenting doesn't even enter into the idea of
manhood at all. Notions of fathering that are acceptable to men con-
cern the exercise of impartial discipline, from an emotional distance
and removed from favoritism and partiality. In hegemonic masculinity,
fathers do not have the capacity or the skill or the need to care for
children, especially for babies and infants, while the relationship be-
tween female parents and young children is seen as crucial. Nurturant
and care-giving behavior is simply not manly. Children, in turn, tend to
have more abstract and impersonal relations with their fathers. The
problem is severely compounded for divorced fathers, most of whom
have extremely little emotional contact with their children.24 As
Messner has explained, "while the man is 'out there' establishing his
'name' in public, the woman is usually home caring for the day-to-day
and moment-to-moment needs of her family.... Tragically, only in mid-
life, when the children have already 'left the nest'... do some men dis-
cover the importance of connection and intimacy." 25

Nonetheless, of the little time that men spend in unpaid work, propor-
tionally more of it goes now into child care. Russell has begun to ex-
plore the possibility that greater participation by men in parenting has
led to substantial shifts in their ideas of masculinity. The reverse is
probably true too. Hochschild found in her study that men who shared
care with their partners rejected their own "detached, absent and over-
bearing" fathers. The number of men primarily responsible for parent-
ing has grown dramatically in Australia, increasing five-fold between
1981 and 1990. The number of families with dependent children in
which the man was not in paid work but the woman was, rose from
16,200 in 1981 to 88,100 in 1990. Women, however, still outnumber
men in this position ten to one.26

Not only a man's instrumental relations with others are challenged by

close parenting, but so are his instrumental relations with himself.
Men's sense of themselves is threatened by intimacy. Discovering the

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 651

affection, autonomy, and agency of babies and children, discon-

certed by an unusual inability to cope, men are compelled to re-
evaluate their attitude to themselves. In Russell's study, the fathers
who provided primary child care "constantly marvelled at and wel-
comed the changes that had taken place in their relationships with
their children."27 Even Neville Wran, the former premier of the
Australian state of New South Wales whose most renowned political
activity was "putting the blowtorch to the belly" of political opponents,
said of fatherhood, which occurred in his sixties, "It's making me a
more patient, tolerant, understanding human being. I'm a real marsh-
mallow." 28

The men who come to full-time fathering do not, however, regard

themselves as unmanly, even though their experiences have resulted in
major shifts in their ideas about children, child care, and women. In
fact, one quarter of them considered these changes a major gain from
their parenting work. This was despite the fact that these men's male
friends and workmates were highly critical of their abandonment of the
breadwinner role, describing them, for instance, as being "bludgers," "a
bit funny," "a bit of a woman," and "under the thumb." 29 This stigma-
tism may be receding as the possiblity of securing the children's future,
once part of the father's responsibility in his relations with the "public
sphere," is becoming less and less possible as unemployment bites
deeper.3 Child-minders and day-care workers have confirmed that the
children of active fathers were "more secure" and "less anxious" than
the children of non-active fathers. Psychological studies have revealed
them to be better developed socially and intellectually. Furthermore,
the results of active fatherhood seem to last. There is considerable evi-
dence to suggest that greater interaction with fathers is better for chil-
dren, with the sons and daughters of active fathers displaying lower
levels of sex-role stereotyping.31

Men who share the second shift had a happier family life and more har-
monious marriages. In a longitudinal study, Defrain found that parents
reported that they were happier and their relationships improved as a
result of shared parenting. In an American study, househusbands felt
positive about their increased contribution to the family-household,
paid work became less central to their definition of themselves, and
they noted an improvement in their relationships with their female
partners.32 One of the substantial bases for metamorphosis for Con-
nell's six changing heterosexual men in the environmental movement
was the learning of domestic labor, which involves "giving to people,

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652

looking after people." In the same sense that feminism "claimed

emotional life as a source of dignity and self respect," active fathers are
challenging hegemonic masculinity. For hegemonic masculinity, real
work is elsewhere, and relationships don't require energy, but provide
it.33 There is also the question of time. The time spent establishing the
intimacy that a man may crave is also time away from establishing and
maintaining the "competitive edge," or the "public face." There are no
prizes for being a good father, not even when being one is defined nar-
rowly in terms of breadwinning.34

Social struggles over time are intimate with class and gender. It is not
only that the rich and powerful are paid handsomely for the time they
sell, have more disposable time, more free time, more control over how
they use their time, but the gender dimensions of time use within
classes are equally compelling. No one performs less unpaid work, and
receives greater remuneration for time spent in paid work, than a male
of the ruling class.

The changes that are occurring remain uncertain, and there is, of
course, a sting in the tail. Madison Avenue has found that "emotional
lability and soft receptivity to what's new and exciting" are more appro-
priate to a consumer-orientated society than "hardness and emotional
distance." Past television commercials tended to portray men as Marl-
boro macho or as idiots, but contemporary viewers see men cooking,
feeding babies, and shopping. Insiders in the advertising industry say
that the quick and easy cooking sections of magazines and newspapers
are as much to attract male readers as overworked women. U.S. Sports
Illustrated now carries advertizements for coffee, cereal, deodorants,
and soup. According to Judith Langer, whose market-research firm
services A.T. & T., Gillette, and Pepsico among others, it is now
"acceptably masculine to care about one's house." 35

The "new man" that comes at us through the media, seems to reinforce
the social order without challenging it. And he brings with him, too, a
new con for women. In their increasing assumption of breadwinning,
femocratic, and skilled worker occupations, the line goes, women
render themselves incomplete. They must "give up" their femininity in
their appropriation of male jobs and power, but men who embrace the
feminine become "more complete.' 36

And if that isn't tricky enough, the "new men" that seem to be emerging
are simply unattractive. Indeed, they're boring. Connell's six changing

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 653

heterosexual men in the environmental movement were attracted to

women who were "strong, independent, active."37 Isn't everybody
attracted by these qualities? Gay men find "new men" irritating, and
new men are not too sure how keen they should be on each other, and
no feminist worth her salt would be seen dead with one.

The ruling class: Really real men?

If the significance of the concept of hegemonic masculinity is that it

directs us to look for the contradictions within an autonomous gender
system that will cause its transformation, then we must conclude it
has failed. The challenges to hegemonic masculinity identified by its
theorists and outlined above seem either to be complicit with, or
broader than, the gender system that has apparently generated them.
I can appreciate why Connell is practically interested in and theoret-
ically intrigued by arguing against the notion of the externality of gen-
der change. "Both experience and theory show the impossibility of liber-
ating a dominant group and the difficulty of constructing a movement
based not on the shared interest of a group but on the attempt to dis-
mantle that interest," 38 (My emphasis). The key is the phrase, "con-
structing a movement." It is only a system which has its own dynamics
that can produce the social forces necessary to change radically that
system.

But Connell himself has written that gender is part of the relations of
production and has always been so. And similarly, that "social science
cannot understand the state, the political economy of advanced capital-
ism, the nature of class, the process of modernisation or the nature of
imperialism, the process of socialisation, the structure of consciousness
or the politics of knowledge, without a full-blooded analysis of
gender." 3 There is nothing outside gender. To be involved in social
relations is to be inextricably "inside" gender. If everything, in this
sense, is within gender, why should we be worried about the exteriority
of the forces for social change? Politics, economics, technology are
gendered. "We have seen the invisible hand," someone wittier than I re-
marked, "It is white, hairy and manicured."

Is there, then, some place we can locate exemplars of hegemonic mas-

culinity that are less fractured, more coherent, and thus easier to
read? Where its central and defining features can be seen in sharper
relief? If the public face of hegemonic masculinity is not necessarily

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654

even what powerful men are, then what are they necessarily? Why is it
"no mean feat to produce the kind of people who can actually operate a
capitalist system?" 40

Even though the concept "hegemony" is rooted in concern with class

domination, systematic knowledge of ruling class masculinity is slight
as yet, but it is certainly intriguing. One aspect of ruling class hegemo-
nic masculinity is the belief that women don't count in big matters, and
that they can be dealt with by jocular patronage in little matters. An-
other is in defining what "big" and "little" are. Sexual politics are simply
not a problem to men of the ruling class. Senior executives couldn't
function as bosses without the patriarchal household. The exercise of
this form of power requires quite special conditions - conventional
femininity and domestic subordination. Two-thirds of male top execu-
tives were maried to housewives. The qualities of intelligence and the
capacity for hard work which these women bring to marriage are
matched, as friends of Anita Keating, the wife of the Prime Minister of
Australia, remarked, by "intense devotion ... her husband and her
children are her life." Colleen Fahey, the wife of the premier of New
South Wales, had completed an 18-month part-time horticulture
course at her local technical college, and she wanted to continue her
studies full-time. "But my husband wouldn't let met," she said. "He said
that he didn't think it was right for a mother to have a job when she had
a 13-year-old child ... I think if I'd put my foot down and said I'd really
wanted a career, he'd have said, 'You're a rotten mother leaving those
kids' "41

The case for this sort of behavior is simply not as compelling for
working-class men, the mothers and the wives of most of whom under-
take paid work as a matter of course. Success itself can amplify this
need for total devotion, while lessening the chances of its fulfilment
outside of the domestic realm. For the successful are likely to have dif-
ficulty establishing intimate and lasting friendships with other males
because of low self-disclosure, homophobia, and cut-throat competi-
tion. The corporate world expects men to divulge little of their per-
sonal lives and to restrain personal feelings, especially affectionate
ones, towards their colleagues while cultivating a certain bland affabili-
ty. Within the corporate structure, "success is achieved through individ-
ual competition rather than dyadic or group bonding." The distinction
between home and work is crucial and carefully maintained. For men
in the corporation, friends have their place - outside work.42

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 655

While William Shawcross, the biographer of media mogul Rupert

Murdoch, found him "courageous" and "charming," others close to
Murdoch described him as "arrogant," "cocky," "insensitive, verging on
dangerous," "utterly ruthless," and an "efficient Visigoth." Murdoch
himself described his life as "consisting of a series of interlocking wars."
Shawcross also found that Murdoch possessed "an instinctive feel for
money and power and how to use them both," had a "relentless, unceas-
ing drive and energy," worked "harder and more determinedly" than any-
body else, was "sure that what he was doing was correct," "believed that
he had become invincible," and was driven by the desire "to win at all
costs." 43 And how must it feel to know that you can have whatever you
want, and that throughout your life you will be looked after in every
way, even to the point of never having to dress and undress yourself?

Thus the view that hegemonic masculinity is hegemonic insofar as it

succeeds in relation to women is true, but partial. Competitiveness, a
combination of the calculative and the combative, is institutionalized in
business and is central to hegemonic masculinity. The enterprise of
winning is life-consuming, and this form of competitiveness is "an
inward turned competitiveness, focussed on the self," creating, in fact,
an instrumentality of the personal.44

Hegemonic masculinity is "a question of how particular groups of men

inhabit positions of power and wealth, and how they legitimate and
reproduce the social relationships that generate their dominance."45
Through hegemonic masculinity most men benefit from the control of
women. For a very few men, it delivers control of other men. To put it
another way, the crucial difference between hegemonic masculinity and
other masculinities is not the control of women, but the control of men
and the representation of this as "universal social advancement," to
paraphrase Gramsci. Patriarchal capitalism delivers the sense, before a
man of whatever masculinity even climbs out of bed in the morning,
that he is "better" than half of humankind. But what is the nature of the
masculinity confirming not only that, but also delivering power over
most men as well? And what are its attractions? A sociology of ruling-
class men is long overdue.

Notes

1. M. Waters, "Patriarchy and Viriarchy: An Exploration and Reconstruction of Con-

cepts of Masculine Domination," Sociology 7 (1989): 143-162.

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656

2. A. Hochschild with A. Machung, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revo-
lution at Home (New York: Viking, 1989), 257.
3. M. Donaldson, Time of Our Lives: Labour and Love in the Working Class (Sydney:
Allen and Unwin, 1991).
4. R. Connell, "Theorising Gender," Sociology 19 (1985): 263; R. Connell,
"The Wrong Stuff: Reflections on the Place of Gender in American Sociology," in
H. J. Gans, editor, Sociology in America (Newbury Park: Sage Publications 1990),
158; R. Connell, "The State, Gender and Sexual Politics: Theory and Appraisal,"
Theory and Society 19/5 (1990): 509-523.
5. Connell, "Theorising Gender," 260.
6. R. Connell, Which Way is Up? Essays on Class, Sex and Culture (Sydney: George
Allen and Unwin, 1983), 234-276.
7. T. Carrigan, B. Connell, and J. Lee, "Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity," in
H. Brod, editor, The Making of Masculinities: The New Men's Studies (Boston:
Allen and Unwin), 75.
8. R. Connell, Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics (Sydney:
Allen and Unwin, 1987), 107; Carrigan, Connell, and Lee, 95.
9. Carrigan, Connell, and Lee, "Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity," 86; Con-
nell, Which Way is Up, 185.
10. Connell, Which Way is Up; Connell, Gender and Power; R. Connell, "A Whole New
World: Remaking Masculinity in the Context of the Environmental Movement,"
Gender and Society 4 (1990): 452-478; R. Connell, "An Iron Man: The Body and
Some Contradictions of Hegemonic Masculinity," in M. Messner and D. Sabo, edi-
tors, Sport, Men and the Gender Order (Champaign, I11.: Human Kinetics Books,
199(); Connell, "The State, Gender and Sexual Politics"; Carrigan, Connell and
Lee, 86. R. Chapman, "The Great Pretender: Variations in the New Man Theme,"
in R. Chapman and J. Rutherford, editors, Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity
(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988) 9-18; C. Cockburn, "Masculinity, the Left
and Feminism," in Male Order, 303-329; P. Lichterman, "Making a Politics of
Masculinity," Comparative Social Research 11 (1989): 185-208; M. Messner, "The
Meaning of Success: The Athletic Experience and the Development of Male Iden-
tity," in The Making of Masculinities, 193-210; J. Rutherford, "Who's That Man?"
in Male Order, 2 1-67.
11. Connell, Which Way is Up, 236, 255, 256.
12. Connell, Which Way is Up, 185, 186, 249.
13. Connell, "Iron Man," 83, 94.
14. Connell, "Whole New World," 459.
15. D. Hammond and A. Jablow, "Gilgamesh and the Sundance Kid: The Myth of Male
Friendship," in The Making of Masculinities, 256; Messner, "The Meaning of Suc-
cess," 198; Connell. "Iron Man," 87, 93; Donoghue in Connell, "Iron Man," 84-85.
16. Carrigan, Connell, and Lee, "Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity"; Connell,
Gender and Power.

17. G. Herek, "On Heterosexual Masculinity: Some Physical Consequences of th

Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality," in M. Kimmel, editor, Changin
Men, New Directions on Men and Masculinity (Newbury Park: Sage, 1987), 71-72;
Connell, "Whole New World," 469.
18. Carrigan, Connell, and Lee, "Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity," 93;
C. Johnson and R. Johnston, "The Making of Homosexual Men," in V. Burgmann
and J. Lee, editors, Staining the Wattle. A People's History of Australia Since 1788
(Fitzroy: McPhee Gribble/Penguin, 1988), 91; Connell, Gender and Power, 80;
Carrigan, Connell, and Lee, 86.

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 657

19. Carrigan, Connell, and Lee, 85; Connell, Gender and Power, 116.
20. Johnston and Johnston, "Homosexual Men," 94; Carrigan, Connell, and Lee, 74; J.
Hearn, The Gender of Oppression: Men, Masculinity and the Critique of Marxism
(Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1987); Connell, Gender and Power, 60; Connell, Which
Way is Up 234,177-178.
21. Otto in L. Ross, "Escaping the Well of Loneliness," Staining the Wattle, 107.
22. Connell, "Whole New World," 474-475,477.
23. Lichterman, "Making a Politics," 187-188, 201,204.
24. Hochschild, Second Shift, 239; V. Seidler, "Fathering, Authority and Masculinity,"
Male Order, 276; G. Russell, The Changing Role of Fathers? (St. Lucia: University
of Queensland Press, 1983), 98, 117; Seidler, "Fathering," 287; Hochschild,
Second Shift, 249; Connell, Which Way is Up, 32.
25. Messner, "Meaning of Success," 201.
26. Russell, Changing Role; Hochschild, Second Sift, 2, 217, 227; C. Armitage, "House
Husbands, The Problems They Face," Sydney Morning Herald (4 July 1991): 16.
27. Seidler, "Fathering," 298, 290, 295; Russell, Changing Role, 177.
28. Bicknell, "Neville Wran: A Secret Sadness," New Idea (May 11, 1991): 18.
29. Russell, Changing Role, 128-129,135-136.
30. Seidler, "Fathering," 283.
31. Hochschild, Second Shift, 218, 237; P. Stein, "Men in Families," Marriage and
Family Review 7 (1984): 155.
32. Hochschild, Second Shift, 216; Defrain in Stein, "Men in Families," 156; E. Pres-
cott, "New Men," American Demographics 5 (1983): 19.
33. Connell, "Whole New World," 465; Seidler, "Fathering," 275.
34. Donaldson, Time of Our Lives, 20-29.
35. Chapman, "Great Pretender," 212; Prescott, "New Men," 16, 20, 18.
36. Chapman, Great Pretender, 243.
37. Connell, "Whole New World," 465.
38. Connell, "Whole New World," 476.
39. Connell, Gender and Power, 45; Connell, "The Wrong Stuff," 164.
40. Connell, Which Way is Up, 71.
41. R. Connell, Teachers' Work (Sydney: George Allen and Unwin, 1985), 187; Con-
nell, Which Way is Up, 71; Hochschild, Second Shift, 255; N. Barrowblough and P.
McGeough, "Woman of Mystery, The Trump Card Keating Hasn't Played," Sydney
Morning Herald (8 June 1991): 35. D. Cameron, "Just an Average Mrs. Premier,"
Sydney Morning Herald (28 Nov. 1992): 41.
42. M. Barrett, Women's Oppression Today: Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis
(London: Verso, 1980), 187-216. Messner, "Meaning of Success," 201; R. Och-
berg, "The Male Career Code and The Ideology of Role," in The Making of Mas-
culinities, 173, 184; Hammond and Jablow, 255-256; Illawarra Mercury, "Family
Comments Greeted with Fury," (4 December 1992): 7.
43. W. Shawcross, Rupert Mulrdoch, Ringmaster of the Information Circus (Sydney:
Random House, 1992).
44. Carrigan, Connell, and Lee, 92; Connell, Gender and Power, 156; Connell, "Iron
Man," 91; Seidler, "Fathering," 279.
45. Carrigan, Connell, and Lee, 92.

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