‘Now You See a Great Many Men Pushing their Pram Proudly’

ABSTRACT

The image of a man pushing a pram could provoke much controversy in mid-twentieth-century Britain. Many contemporary commentators argued men should be and were pushing their child in a pram with pride, yet others felt this compromised manliness. The article explores this image to analyse the relationship between fatherhood and masculinity, and between cultural norms and social practice in this period. It argues that this image was used to symbolize a new emotionally close relationship between father and child and suggests that a ‘family-orientated’ masculinity came to prominence in this period, partly instigated by certain popular cultural norms.     

Pigeon Racing And Working-Class Culture in Britain,C. 1870–1950

ABSTRACT

Pigeon racing was immensely popular amongst male industrial workers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article offers an overview of the history of pigeon racing in this period before moving on to explore the sport's multiple meanings for those who took part. Pigeon racing offered not only the thrills and excitement of racing but also the more sedate and intellectual rewards of breeding and rearing the birds. The pigeon loft was a masculine enclave and a retreat from the pressures of domestic life for some, although for others it was an opportunity to share time with their family. As such, pigeon racing demonstrates the complexities of working-class masculinity. Pigeon keeping was also expensive, time consuming and required space. The article thus concludes by arguing that despite the agency workers were able to exercise over their leisure, they were still restricted by wider material constraints.     

‘The Supposed Paradise of Pen and Ink’: Self-education and Social Mobility in the London Public Library (1880–1930)

ABSTRACT

Borrowing from prosopography, collective biography, sociology and genealogy, this article describes the ‘bookish’ workplace experiences of 90 chief and deputy public librarians to revisit debates around the upwardly mobile metropolitan lower middle class in the long nineteenth century. It finds that the border between the manual and white-collar classes was more easily (and enduringly) breached than previously supposed. It also suggests that those moving from the former group to the latter retained elements of their ‘working class’ origins and character across the late-Victorian period. These discoveries complicate historical assessments of the lower middles, but support sociological surveys that propose more fluid and open class borders from the mid-nineteenth century.     

大观园中的风流名士——《红楼梦》中女性的男性气质研究

以当代女性主义批评和性别研究以及西方现代心理学的相关理论为依据,以史湘云、薛宝琴为中心,跳脱出人物单纯的生物性别,重点把握人物更深层次上的社会性别,对人物的性别视角进行多方位解析,探讨并重新阐释《红楼梦》中众多女性形象身上特殊的文化意义,并在特定角度概括《红楼梦》中“女性的男性气质”这一超越人物所处时代的人格特征,揭示出其超越生物性别的独特性,从而展现出作者曹雪芹卓越的艺术追求和人文创作     

Romancing ‘kung fu master’ – from ‘yellow peril’ to ‘yellow prowess’

Present study critically investigates the cinematic depiction of leading Chinese masculine figures in Hollywood film productions, with a specific focus on how the positioning of white female characters romantically involved with Chinese martial arts fighters serves to construct Chinese masculinity. In noted films such as The Tuxedo (2002), Kiss of the Dragon (2001), and Dragon: Bruce Lee Story (1993), Chinese martial arts fighters not only managed to fight off white antagonists but also succeeded in winning the ‘heart’ of white heroines. Drawing on Gestner's theoretical assertion that white women's falling for a man of color signifies the invasive movement of a new masculine discourse into the space traditionally bounded by the ideal of white masculinity, and grounded on Hall's conception of articulation, my critical examination of these three film texts revealed how the privileged cultural and racial position of whiteness was reformulated and rejustified via the strategic dramatic construction of romantic encounters between Chinese martial artists and their white partners. More importantly, the current study sheds light on an emerging form of cultural politics that transformed conventional mediated construction of interracial romance and yet perpetuated the racial hierarchy sustained through racist assumption and ideology.     

‘Dicks are for chicks’: Latino boys,masculinity, and the abjection of homosexuality

Employing social constructivist theories and the concept of abjection from gender studies, this article examines how and why a group of low-income, USA-born Dominican and Puerto Rican middle-school boys constructed masculine identities by invoking and repudiating homosexuality. Ethnographic data from a 2.5-year study indicate that the abjection of homosexuality was a place of performativity wherein the boys utilised their bodies, cultural referents, and bilingualism to delineate masculinity, reiterate heteronormativity, and distance themselves from homosexuals, who they perceived as a threat to their sexuality, personal safety, and physical dominance. At school, the boys enacted a hypermasculine, heteronormative variant of their ethno-racial identities. As a result, their gender construction was heavily influenced by dominant gender practices present in their neighbourhoods and in segments of the broader US, Dominican, and Puerto Rican cultures. Together, these cultural influences shaped the gender regime within the boys' school peer group. This article concludes with a call for additional research examining the intersection of ethno-racial identity, sexuality, gender, and class.     

What are white progressive masculinities? Counternarratives and contradictions of committed white male teachers in inner-city schools

This life history reflection aims to constitute, generate, and proliferate complex progressive masculinities for male teachers and advance notions of progressive masculinities writ large in education and elsewhere. This reflection, working with life story interviews of white male teachers in US inner-city schools, positions this research within the researcher's life history. Informed by existing literatures on male teachers emphasising crisis-shortage and gender workplace issues, this reflection expands these literatures by developing life narrative concepts that replace static masculinities with narrativised identifications, lived counternarratives, and contradictory progressive masculinities. Key to respondents' progressive masculinities, this life history reflection provides four lived counternarratives including respondents' illegal drug use, process spirituality, alternative media, and critical politics. Through these counternarratives, respondents' contradictory progressive masculinities emerge as bifurcated phenomena that reify privileges yet drive respondents, precariously situated between nihilistic impotency and political potential, towards passively conjugated alliances with subaltern others.     

The Moral Controversy Over Boxing Reform

Lesbian athletes, no matter their gender performances, are viewed as masculine. The on-court persona of Amélie Mauresmo illustrates this. Even though Mauresmo’s gender expression was indistinguishable from other women on the pro tennis tour, her sexuality, being an out lesbian, led the public to view her as masculine. Judith Butler’s ‘heterosexual matrix’ (a sex-gender-sexuality tripartite system) accounts for how we make assumptions based on what we see. Her theory explains the experiences of most people, where sex and gender are the known categories, so the viewer, then, assumes a particular sexuality. However, the concept does not work for people who are out, when the known categories are sex and sexuality. This leads the viewer to assume a particular gender and, for Mauresmo, the assumed gender was masculinity. This paper transforms Butler’s theory, extending the usefulness of her ‘heterosexual matrix’.     

论杨映川小说的男性审美空间

广西当代女作家杨映川以温和的女性主义书写让她的作品独树一帜。在一系列以男性为主人公的小说里,她通过梦、暴力等场景的细致描绘,展开了一系列的"唤醒"工作。正视男性的固有缺点,并在此基础上进行了深入地探讨,使得杨氏小说的男性审美空间极具特色。     

White Western male teachers constructing academic identities in Japanese higher education

In research on gender and teaching in higher education, the experiences of male teachers as men, and of whiteness in a non-majority-white context have received little attention. As one step towards addressing this gap in the literature, this paper analyses interview accounts of white Western men working as English language teachers in Japanese higher education. The paper demonstrates, first, ways in which disembodied academic identities are constructed by erasing the men's racialised gender and sexuality. Second, it shows how favourable images of white Western male teachers are produced through a series of negative contrasts based on gender and race. Third, it suggests that men's homosocial networks may serve to facilitate male predominance in the Japanese university system. The analysis contributes to current understandings about the construction of white Western masculinities in academic institutions, in international education, and in English language teaching as a globalised industry.