Masculinities and Emotions

Connell and Bourdieu allege men are collectively and structurally privileged; to be a man is to feel entitled to patriarchal advantages. This gender dualism in masculinities’ studies, particularly in Bourdieu, makes an important point about how the gender order is structured to privilege men and disadvantage women. Men receive a patriarchal dividend in terms of higher pay and better working conditions, command more power and have one’s (heterosexual) sex politically represented, and men’s interests are taken as the cultural and universal standard (Connell 1987; Stutcliff 2001; Fraser 1995; Richardson 1998). A dualistic perspective, however, stands accused of overlooking the extent and nature of differences among men and between men and women and simplifying the complex intersection between gender and power. Seidler (2006) has argued that the understanding of men’s lives only in terms of power makes it difficult to theorise men’s experiences of powerlessness and vulnerability, nonetheless it is also true that theorising men’s vulnerability can make it difficult to theorise men’s power. Masculinities studies are apprehensive about theorising power and vulnerability but in truth men’s lives are lived out in complex ways expressing both power and vulnerability, and men inhabit multiple relational identities and social locations. We cannot appreciate masculinities without understanding relations of power and dominance, but we cannot understand power and dominance without also appreciating men’s emotional lives. Moreover, we cannot deconstruct male power without reconstructing the emotional lives of men.