Connell (1995)

Question 1

What does Connell conclude about gender order? (Masculinity and femininity)

(Overall view)

Answer 1

Masculinity and femininity are a structure of social practice, where we build them through daily actions. They can be seen as dynamic projects

Question 2

Skipped two other brief descriptions on chapters not assigned here! (see if they’re talked about in confrence)

Question 3

Say someone says they are unmasculine. We would have presumptions about their character ( rather than violent,
conciliatory rather than dominating, hardly able to kick a football,
uninterested in sexual conquest, and so forth)

What does this difference assume?

Answer 3

a belief in individual difference and per-
sonal agency (individual that differs from the norm)

Question 4

Can masculinity exist without femininity?

Answer 4

No, inherently related

A culture which does not treat
women and men as bearers of polarized character types, at least in principle, does not have a concept of masculinity in the sense of modern European/American culture.

Question 5

What are the four main strategies for defining masculinity?

Essentialist

Answer 5

pick a feature that defnes the core of
the masculine, and hang an account of men’s lives on that

Ex. freud said men were active, vs the passivity of women (others say; aggression, risk-taking, etc)

Problem: Whole thing depends on which term u select

Question 6

What are the four main strategies for defining masculinity?

Positivist

Answer 6

This definition is the logical basis of masculinity/femininity (M/F) scales in
psychology,

Question 7

What are the three issues with the positivist strategy?

Answer 7

1. The apparently
   neutral descriptions on which these definitions rest are themselves under-
   pinned by assumptions about gender
2. , to list what men and women do requires that people be already sorted into the categories men' and women’. (requires preexisting categories)
3. To defne masculinity as what-men-empirically-are is to rule out the usage in which we call some women masculine' and some men feminine’, or some actions or attitudes masculine' or feminine’ regard-
   less of who displays them

Question 8

What are the four main strategies for defining masculinity?

Normative

Answer 8

offer a standard:
masculinity is what men ought to be.

• Social norm of behaviour for men

Question 9

How is the normative strategy criticized?

Answer 9

• It’s assumption is that it is based on a norm

but most men don’t act like that

What is `normative’ about a norm hardly anyone meets? Are we to say the majority of
men are unmasculine?

Question 10

What are the four main strategies for defining masculinity?

Semiotic

Answer 10

s abandon the level of personality and define masculinity through a system of symbolic difference in which masculine and
feminine places are contrasted.

Masculinity is, in effect, defined as not-
femininity.

Question 11

What is the “third site of gender configuration”

Basically where do they think gender is being learned?

Answer 11

The state / institutions

The state is gendered (masculine)

Question 12

Why are The overwhelming majority of top office-holders men?

Answer 12

there is a gender configuring of recruitment and promotion, a
gender configuring of the internal division of labour and systems of
control, a gender configuring of policymaking, practical routines, and
ways of mobilizing pleasure and consent

Question 13

Explain the three-fold model of the structure of gender?

(a) power

(b) production

(c) cathexis (emotional attachment).

Answer 13

(a) power
- subordination of women and dominance of men

(b) production
- Men often head major companies

(c) cathexis (emotional attachment).
-Sexual desire seen as natural
- The practices that shape and
realize desire are thus an aspect of the gender order
- connection of heterosexuality with men’s position of social dominance

Question 14

Are there different types of masculinity?

Answer 14

Yes

EX. is a black masculinity or a working-class
masculinity

Question 15

What is Hegemonic masculinity?

Answer 15

configuration of gender practice which
embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy
of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant
position of men and the subordination of women

Question 16

What does Hegemony cause within gender relations of groups of men?

Answer 16

dominance and subordination between groups of men
Ex. Gay men are subordinated to straight
men by an array of quite material practices

Question 17

How are all men complicit in hegemonic masculinity?

Answer 17

The number of men rigorously practising the hegemonic pattern in its entirety may be quite small. Yet the majority of men gain from its hegemony, since they benefit from the patriarchal dividend, the advantage men in general gain from the overall subordination of women

Question 18

How is gender relations used to push marginalization?

Answer 18

relations between the masculinities in dominant and subordinated classes or ethnic groups.

Marginalization is always relative to the
authorization of the hegemonic masculinity of the dominant group

Question 19

How can marginalization be weaponized against people within an intersection?

Answer 19

Oscar Wilde, one of the first men caught in the net of modern anti-homosexual legislation. Wilde was trapped because of his connections with homosexual working-class youths, a practice unchallenged until his legal battle with a wealthy aristocrat, the Marquess of Queensberry, made him vulnerable.

(Was allowed to get away with it untill class was brought in)

Question 20

Women are often the ones being harmed or taken advantage of, what are “two patterns of violence that follow”?

Answer 20

1. many members of the privileged group use violence to sustain their dominance.
   Intimidation of women ranges across the spectrum from wolf-whistling
   in the street, to office harassment….
2. violence becomes important in gender politics among men. Most episodes of major violence (counting military combat, homicide and armed assault) are transactions among men

• Violence can become a way of
  claiming or asserting masculinity in group struggles

Question 21

What is the crisis described in the reading?

Answer 21

crisis of a gender order as a whole

Might cause: attempts to restore a dominant masculinity

Question 22

How does crisis appear in the three
structures of gender relations?

1. Power relations
2. Production relations
3. Relations of cathexis

Answer 22

Power relations: show the most visible evidence of crisis tendencies: a
historic collapse of the legitimacy of patriarchal power, and a global
movement for the emancipation of women.

Production relations: after ww2 more women work

Relations of cathexis: lesbian and gay sexuality as a public alternative within the heterosexual order. This change was supported by the broad claim by women for
sexual pleasure and control of their own bodies, which has affected heterosexual practice as well as homosexual