Like straight men, gay men may utilise stereotypically masculine attributes and behaviours in an attempt to accrue "masculine capital", a term referring to the social power afforded by the display of traits and behaviours associated with orthodox, "hegemonic" masculinity. Previous research findings suggest that gay sexual self-labels -conveying position preferences in anal intercourse between men -muscularity and voice quality may contribute to gay men's masculine capital. This study examined the relative contribution to gay men's masculine capital made by sexual self-labels, voice quality (deep/high-pitched) and physique (muscularity/thinness). It also assessed the beliefs gay men and straight people hold regarding the gendered nature of gay sexual self-labels in anal intercourse. Results from a survey of 538 participants showed that gay and straight people perceived the anally-insertive sexual selflabel as the most masculine and the anally-receptive self-label the least masculine. The findings also revealed that voice quality and physique are more strongly associated with perceptions of gay men's masculinity than their sexual self-label, although gay men who have masculine attributes and are anally-receptive are perceived as less masculine than those who have the same attributes and are anally-insertive.PERCEPTIONS OF GAY MEN'S MASCULINITY **Personal use only. Please do not reproduce. Manuscript subject to amendments** 2 Perceptions of gay men's masculinity may be influenced by the position they typically adopt in anal intercourse with other men. Anally-insertive men ("tops") are often defined as stereotypically masculine (powerful, dominant, and physically strong), whereas receptive men ("bottoms") are typically ascribed the feminine characteristics of passivity and submission (Carballo-Dieguez et al., 2004; Johns, Pingel, Eisenberg, Santana & Bauermeister, 2012; Kippax & Smith, 2001;Wilson et al., 2010). However, what is currently unknown is the extent to which sexual self-labels are associated with perceptions of gay men's masculinity compared with other gendered attributes.The expectation that gay men have feminine vocal characteristics is a strong component of the culturally-dominant stereotype of gay femininity (Madon, 1997), and muscularity has been identified as strongly associated with perceptions of men's masculinity (de Visser, Smith & McDonnell, 2009; Drummond, 2005;Ravenhill & de Visser, 2016).Therefore, this study examined the relative contribution to perceptions of gay men's masculinity made by sexual self-labels compared with voice quality and physique.
Cultural ideals of masculinityPerceptions and subjective experiences of masculinity may be associated with the extent to which men enact and endorse socially-constructed expectations of what makes a "real man" (Thompson, Pleck & Ferrera, 1992). According to Connell (1995), manhood is most successfully enacted by men who embody "hegemonic masculinity", a dominant form of masculinity that subordinates its alternatives. Hegemonic masculin...