This ethnographic research uses one year of participant observation and 24 interviews to examine the construction of masculinity among team-members within a highly successful rugby squad, at a high-ranked academic university in England. We find that the players and coaches share a sporting field in which variations in their gendered belief systems are sharply contested. Teammates believe their coaches to be exhibiting an out-of-date, orthodox version of masculinity, and instead of adopting their coaches' perspectives on masculinity, players take a more inclusive approach to masculinitymaking. The players on this team -all of whom identify as heterosexual -contest three fundamental principles of orthodox masculinity: homophobia, misogyny, and excessive risk-taking. These men do not degrade women or gay men in any measureable manner, and they are emotionally supportive of each other when ill or injured. We suggest that these results require a new way for theorizing about masculinity, and we therefore propose inclusive masculinity theory to frame our data and discuss our participants' complicated association with the political project of adopting more inclusive attitudes toward masculinity.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.