Crisis of Masculinity Discourse

Recurrent claims that masculinity is 'in crisis' have appeared across modern history; scholars analyze these as a discourse responding to social change rather than a single empirical condition.

Definition

The recurring cultural narrative that masculinity or manhood is under threat or in decline, studied as a discourse that reflects anxieties about changing gender and economic relations.

Scope

This topic examines the periodic public discourse declaring a crisis of manhood, prompted by shifts in work, family, gender relations, and economy. It treats historical instances analyzed by Kimmel, the theoretical caution that 'masculinity' as a configuration of practice cannot straightforwardly be in crisis though the gender order can be disrupted, and journalistic accounts such as Faludi's. The treatment is descriptive and even-handed.

Core questions

• Why does the claim of a 'crisis of masculinity' recur across different historical periods?
• Is it masculinity that is in crisis, or the broader gender order and its relation to economic change?
• What political uses are made of crisis narratives?

Key theories

Crisis tendencies in the gender order

Connell's distinction between masculinity, a configuration of practice that cannot itself be in crisis, and the gender order, which can undergo crisis tendencies and disruption that crisis talk registers.

Recurring crises of manhood

Kimmel's historical analysis showing that American manhood has repeatedly been declared in crisis at moments of economic and social transformation, suggesting the narrative is a recurring response rather than a novel event.

History

Anxieties about endangered manhood appear from the nineteenth century through the present, often tied to industrialization, war, feminism, and deindustrialization. Kimmel traced these episodes historically, Faludi's Stiffed (1999) examined late-twentieth-century male disorientation, and Connell supplied a conceptual caution about how the term 'crisis' should be applied.

Debates

Crisis as description or rhetoric

Whether talk of a masculinity crisis describes a real social condition or functions as a rhetoric that can be mobilized for various, sometimes antifeminist, political ends.

Key figures

• Michael Kimmel
• Raewyn Connell
• Susan Faludi

Seminal works

• kimmel2006
• connell2005
• faludi1999

Frequently asked questions

Is masculinity really 'in crisis'?

Scholars are skeptical of taking the phrase literally. Many argue it is a recurring discourse responding to social and economic change, and that it is the gender order, not 'masculinity' as such, that can be disrupted.