MASCULINE SACRALITY is the designation of some domain of the supernatural universe as masculine. It is a feature of numerous religious systems in human societies around the world. A comparison of such systems reveals three levels of expression for the...

The workplace is an important site for the reproduction of men’s masculine power and status. As entrepreneurs, owners, executives, managers, trade unionists and employees, men have both produced and been shaped by the organisations that now...

Since the inception of the modern women’s movement in the 1960s there have been a great many social/political responses that address the place of men and masculinity with respect to this movement. Of course, the women’s movement itself was...

The concept of masculinity is well established; the concept of masculinities is much more recent, dating from the late 1970s. The word ‘masculinity’ derives from the Middle English masculin, from Middle French and from Latin masculinus...

The appearance of distinctly gay masculinities came in the wake of advances made by the homosexual liberation movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Its successor, gay liberation, was less defensive than the earlier homosexual activism and had considerable...

Clatterbaugh, K. (1997) Contemporary Perspectives on Masculinity, Boulder, CO: Westview. Farrell, W. (1975) The Liberated Man, New York: Bantam. Fasteau, M.F. (1974) The Male Machine, New York: McGraw-Hill. Pleck, J.H. (1981) The Myth of Masculinity,...

Developed in the 1980s (Carrigan et al 1985) to provide a relational and socially constructed conception of men and masculinities, the term ‘hegemonic masculinity’ describes the hierarchical interaction between multiple masculinities and...

Male sexual anxiety (MSA) is a term that we use to describe the thoughts, feelings and faulty ideations that many men come to experience from their childhood and lifelong socialisation in stifling, limiting patriarchal masculine arrangements, in...

Brod, H. (ed.) (1987) The Making of Masculinities, London: Unwin Hyman. Brod, H. and Kaufman, M. (eds) (1993) Theorizing Masculinities, Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Carrigan, T., Connell, R. and Lee, J. (1985) ‘Toward a new sociology of...

‘Female masculinity’ refers to traditionally masculine traits of character or appearance occurring in biological women. Female Masculinity (1998) is a book by American cultural theorist Judith Halberstam that describes masculinegendered...

Brenner, J. (2000) Women and the Politics of Class, New York: Monthly Review. Brown, C. (1981) ‘Mothers, fathers and children’, in L.Sargent (ed.) Women and Revolution, London: Pluto, pp. 239–67. Burstyn, V. (1999) The Rites of Men,...

Anderson, B. (2001) ‘Just another job?’ Gender and Development, 9 (2):25–33. Engels, F. [1884] (2001) The Origin of the Family: Private Property and the State, Seattle, WA: University Press of the Pacific. Friedan, B. [1963] (2001)...

Carrigan, T., Connell, R. and Lee, J. (1985) ‘Toward a new sociology of masculinity’, Theory and Society, 14:551–604. Connell, R. (1987) Gender and Power, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Demetriou, D.Z. (2001)...

Applebaum, H. (1981) Royal Blue: The Culture of Construction Workers, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Beynon, H. (1973) Working for Ford, London: Penguin Books. Cherry, M. (1974) On High Steel, New York: Quadrangle Press. Germov, J. (1999)...

Adkins, L. (2002) Revisions, Buckingham: Open University Press. Christie, A. (2006) ‘Negotiating the uncomfortable intersections between gender and professional identities in social work’, Critical Social Policy, 26 (2):390–411....

An adjective used to describe any physical or behavioural trait that is typically displayed by males of a given species. Physical or phenotypic traits, such as male anatomy (such as the penis) are obviously viewed as genetic in nature. However, it is...

Clatterbaugh, K. (1997) Contemporary Perspectives on Masculinity, 2nd edn, Boulder, CO: Westview. Flood, M. (1994) ‘Men’s groups’, XY: Men, Sex, Politics, 4 (2), available at http://www.xyonline.net/groups.shtml Messner, M. (1997)...

// adj. A conventional label in certain gender languages for a gender category which shows some degree of semantic correlation with male sex. See the remarks under...

Masculinity is manly character (manliness). It specifically describes men; that is, it is personal and human, unlike male which can describe animals, or masculine which can describe noun classes. When masculine is used to describe men, it can have...