Introduction
Masculinity is best understood not as a fixed package of traits naturally possessed by men but as a set of social meanings, practices, expectations, and identities that vary across history and culture. The plural masculinities is especially useful because gendered expectations are shaped by class, race, sexuality, age, religion, disability, occupation, nationality, and institutional setting. A corporate executive, a working-class father, a gay man, a transgender man, an athlete, and a woman who adopts masculine styles may all encounter different standards of what counts as legitimate masculinity. Connell’s influential framework emphasizes that these forms are relational rather than equal lifestyle choices: some are culturally honored, others are subordinated or marginalized, and many people gain advantages from a gender order without fully embodying its dominant ideal (Connell, 2005). This perspective avoids reducing masculinity to biology while also recognizing that bodies, material conditions, and institutions matter. Masculinity is therefore produced through interaction between embodiment, social expectations, opportunity, power, and repeated practice.
Masculinity, Hierarchy, and Social Power
Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity explains how a culturally celebrated form of manhood can legitimize both men’s collective advantage over women and hierarchies among men. Hegemonic masculinity is not necessarily the most common behavior; it is an ideal associated, in a particular setting, with authority, heterosexuality, competence, independence, toughness, or control. Complicit masculinities may fall short of that ideal while still benefiting from institutions that privilege men. Subordinated masculinities are devalued, as seen historically in the policing of gay or feminine men, while marginalized masculinities reflect the intersection of gender with race, class, citizenship, or disability (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). These distinctions show why masculinity cannot be analyzed by asking whether an individual is simply “masculine” or “not masculine.” A racialized man may be stereotyped as physically threatening while being denied institutional authority; a working-class man may be praised for toughness while lacking economic security. The framework is most useful when it identifies the specific institution, historical period, and mechanism through which one masculine ideal gains legitimacy.
Embodiment, Work, and Gendered Institutions
Masculinity is socially constructed, but social construction does not mean that bodies or material circumstances are irrelevant. Gender expectations are organized through workplaces, families, schools, sports, militaries, religious communities, media, law, and the gendered division of paid and unpaid labor. A breadwinner ideal, for example, depends on access to stable employment and on the expectation that caregiving will be performed by someone else. When industries decline or work becomes insecure, some men may experience a loss of status that is economic as well as symbolic. Institutions also reward different forms of conduct: a workplace may praise assertiveness in men while judging the same behavior as abrasive in women, or a sports culture may treat pain tolerance as evidence of masculine commitment. Connell’s earlier analysis of gender relations through power, production, and emotional or sexual attachment helps connect identity to these structures (Connell, 2005). People perform masculinity within constraints, but they can also reinterpret those expectations, especially when policies and institutions make alternative practices viable.
Female, Queer, and Trans Masculinities
Jack Halberstam’s concept of female masculinity challenges the assumption that masculinity naturally belongs to male bodies. Masculine identities and styles among women, lesbians, butch people, and other gender-nonconforming individuals have long histories and should not be treated merely as copies of male behavior (Halberstam, 1998). Queer and transgender experiences similarly demonstrate that masculinity can be formed through different embodied and social histories. A transgender man’s masculinity is not less authentic because recognition may involve legal documents, healthcare, clothing, voice, or changing social relationships. Camp and other forms of stylized performance further reveal that gender depends on recognizable codes of dress, gesture, speech, pose, and expectation. Exaggerating those codes can expose their constructed character, although camp is not automatically liberating and can reproduce stereotypes when detached from its queer histories. These perspectives expand masculinity studies beyond a narrow focus on heterosexual cisgender men. They also caution against labeling every assertive woman as masculine, because doing so can reinforce the idea that authority, ambition, or emotional restraint properly belong to men.
Violence, Care, and Changing Masculinities
Masculinity should never be treated as synonymous with violence, because most men are not violent and violence is not exclusive to men. However, cultures that reward entitlement, humiliation of weakness, control over women, and dominance over peers can make aggression available as a recognized masculine resource. Research on hegemonic masculinity is valuable when it explains how institutions and peer groups normalize these practices without assuming that violence follows automatically from male identity (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). Alternative masculinities demonstrate that strength can be organized around care, cooperation, emotional literacy, responsibility, and nonviolence. Fatherhood is an important site of change when men participate in daily caregiving rather than defining their contribution only through income. Mental-health stigma can also weaken when boys and men are allowed to express fear, grief, uncertainty, and the need for assistance without losing social respect. Institutional changes matter alongside personal attitudes: parental leave, anti-harassment enforcement, equitable caregiving expectations, and accessible mental-health services can make caring practices easier to sustain rather than leaving individuals to resist restrictive norms alone.
Intersectionality and the Limits of a Single Masculine Ideal
Intersectional analysis prevents masculinity theory from treating “men” as a single undifferentiated group. Race, class, sexuality, nationality, disability, and age alter both the opportunities available to men and the stereotypes imposed on them. Black men may confront racist assumptions of aggression while simultaneously facing pressure to demonstrate strength; Asian men in Western media have often been feminized or desexualized; Indigenous masculinities have been reshaped through colonial violence, cultural survival, and resistance; and disabled men may be denied adulthood or sexuality because dominant masculinity idealizes bodily autonomy and control. These patterns cannot be explained by gender alone. They also show why the language of a universal “crisis of masculinity” can be misleading. Economic insecurity, discrimination, family change, or political resentment may affect men differently depending on social position. Masculinity studies are most persuasive when they explain these relationships without turning men’s identity struggles into excuses for harmful conduct. Explanation should identify pressures and structures while preserving responsibility for choices and attention to the people affected by domination, exclusion, or violence.
Conclusion
Masculinity is most accurately understood as masculinities: multiple, relational, embodied, historically changing forms of gender practice that are shaped by institutions as well as individual action. Connell’s framework clarifies how hegemonic, complicit, subordinated, and marginalized masculinities are organized through power, while Halberstam’s work demonstrates that masculine identities cannot be confined to male bodies (Connell, 2005; Halberstam, 1998). Queer, trans, and intersectional perspectives further show that recognition depends on race, class, sexuality, disability, nationality, and social context. The plural does not imply that all forms are equally harmless or equally powerful. A masculinity organized around domination has different consequences from one organized around care, mutual respect, and shared responsibility. The most useful purpose of masculinity theory is therefore both descriptive and critical: it explains how gendered practices are produced and asks which arrangements restrict human freedom. Masculinity becomes less coercive when strength can include vulnerability, authority is separated from domination, caregiving is socially supported, and people can express gender without being punished for failing a single ideal.
References
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