“Sensitive and Real Macho All at the Same Time”

Abstract

What is the place of romance in young men's lives? Do young men enact a romantic masculinity? This article examines young men's experience of romance and what investments they have in romantic identity. Drawing on a New Zealand—based sample of seventeen-to nineteen-year-olds, the author investigates the way in which romantic masculinity is evoked during seventeen focus-group discussions. The article explores whether romantic masculinity offers a new form of masculinity in New Zealand and to what extent it departs from hegemonic practices of “hard” masculinity. Its potential as a nonhegemonic form of masculinity that challenges oppressive heterosexual relations is also analyzed. It is argued that the particular expression of romantic masculinity evidenced in this research no longer constitutes a subordinate form of masculinity in New Zealand. Instead, “doing romance” is theorized as being reconfigured within the operation of hegemonic masculinity in a way that highlights the flexibility and stability of these practices of power.

Expanding Hegemonic Masculinity: The Use of Irony in Young Men’s Stories About Romantic Experiences

“…Rather, they seem to be experimenting with new ways of being cool or heroic about romance. As Allen (2007) notes, romance is no longer reserved for effeminate or sensitive men. When intermingled with hard masculinity, in this case through the subtleties of irony, romance can be formulated by ordinary men to expand the horizons of what is normatively masculine.…”

“…Traditionally nonhegemonic forms of masculinity, such as displaying relational sensitivity, househusbanding, and even manscaping, have begun to shed their once feminine-friendly facades, bluffing their way back into the hegemonic realm, thereby reinscribing the hegemonic tendencies that they seek to subvert. A range of social practices has emerged that simultaneously subvert and reinforce traditional masculine norms, thereby circulating new ways of being masculine that do not necessarily refute subordinated forms of masculinity but rather hybridize them within the confines of the traditional hegemonic bloc (Allen, 2007;Demetriou, 2001). As Connell (1995) forewarned, and as Demetriou (2001) has elaborated on, the flexible, resourceful, and inscrutable composition of hegemonic masculinity has enabled it to increasingly accommodate nonhegemonic masculinities and, in so doing, ensure its perpetuation.…”

“…For example, Benwell (2002), Brayton (2007), and Messner and Montez de Oca (2005) have each uniquely revealed the incipient "laddism" in various media gambits that mix a conservative frat-boy ethos with feminine-friendly lifestyle advice and faux selfdeprecation. In remarking on the "generous nonchalance" in heterosexual college-aged men's stories about heterosexual breakups, Gilmartin (2007) and Allen (2007) have reported how men work to appear romantically invested, but in ways that are casual, retractable, and easily jettisoned. In two similar studies, Thorne (2006, 2007) identified that young men would openly display vulnerability in talking about romantic problems but would playfully mitigate the seriousness of such problems so as to appear nonchalant and at times mildly amused by their own and each other's troubles.…”

“…Deborah Tolman and colleagues (2004) have argued that adolescent male heterosexuality is no longer simply a unilateral drive toward acquiring belt notches but is a complex and contradictory process shaped not only by the pressure to conform to sex-role stereotypes but also by yearnings for intimacy and emotional connection with females. Psychologists have argued that the negotiation of such pressures constitutes important identitybuilding projects for young men, particularly during adolescence and emerging adulthood (Allen, 2007;Arnett, 2004;Frosh, Phoenix, & Pattman, 2002;Korobov, 2006;Korobov & Thorne, 2006Redman, 2001;Tolman et al, 2004). What psychologists have not fully explored is how these negotiation processes actually unfold in the lives of everyday men.…”

“…The purpose of this study is to examine the constitution of young men's romantic identities through a discursive analysis of their conversations with close male friends about romantic and sexual experiences. Because romantic experiences play a central role in the constitution of a heterosexual self (Redman, 2001), and because they are increasingly constituted in relation to both laddism and the simultaneous avowal and disavowal of effeminacy, they offer unique glimpses into the real-time oscillation between complicity and resistance to hegemonic masculine norms (Allen, 2007;Korobov & Thorne, 2006;Redman, 2001). This oscillation is likely to be evident discursively in the form of mitigating or distancing strategies such as irony, nonchalance, humor, and parody.…”