{"title":"Making Sense of Increasing Physical Touch in Australian Men’s Friendships","authors":"Brittany Ralph, Steven Roberts","doi":"10.3167/jbsm.2024.01of10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/jbsm.2024.01of10","url":null,"abstract":"The increasing incidence of platonic hugging and kissing among men has sparked considerable debate in scholarly literature, particularly surrounding Eric Anderson’s articulation of inclusive masculinity theory (IMT). Aiming to move productively beyond Anderson’s critics, we propose a feminist poststructuralist reframing of IMT that emphasizes the discursive dynamics underpinning men’s uptake of “feminized” practices. Drawing on data from interviews with 14 pairs of fathers and sons living in Australia, we conceptualize their increasing engagement in platonic physical intimacy with other men as an assertion of queer-inclusion discourse and contestation of masculinist discourse that is neither linear nor necessarily consistent. Ultimately, we argue this approach allows scholars to retain some of Anderson’s key theoretical contentions, while better accounting for change, continuity, and contradiction in men’s gender practice.","PeriodicalId":475565,"journal":{"name":"Journal of bodies, sexualities, and masculinities","volume":"74 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140085148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spectacles of Masculine Super-Heroism","authors":"Raj Sony Jalarajan","doi":"10.3167/jbsm.2024.01of11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/jbsm.2024.01of11","url":null,"abstract":"Krishnan Nair, popularly known by his screen name Jayan, is often hailed as the first-ever “superstar” actor in Malayalam cinema. The metamorphosis of Jayan’s cinematic stardom signifies the masculine prototype with which Indian film stars attain cultural dominance by aestheticizing their corporeal self. This article approaches the earlier superstardom in Malayalam cinema by deciphering the centrality of Jayan as a Superman-superstar figure. It argues that the heroic screen image, dialogue delivery, stylized stunts, and trendsetting costumes introduced by Jayan in the 1970s–1980s established a new reception of the masculine body that glorified the semiotics of the “Superman.” Using the spectator–spectacle discourse on superstardom, this article examines how different shades of superstardom, especially its posthumous restructuring and reproduction, affect the fate of superheroes in regional cinemas.","PeriodicalId":475565,"journal":{"name":"Journal of bodies, sexualities, and masculinities","volume":"31 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140082757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Erasing the Foreskin","authors":"Shawn Welch","doi":"10.3167/jbsm.2024.01of09","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/jbsm.2024.01of09","url":null,"abstract":"Despite growing criticism from human rights scholars and international medical experts, non-therapeutic penile circumcision of newborns in the United States continues to be widely accepted among American healthcare practitioners. While a wealth of literature exists on the topic, it can leave out cultural depictions of the foreskin as aesthetically displeasing, unhygienic, or as extra skin, presumptions that normalize its physical and psychological erasure. Highlighting how a cultural attitude treats a healthy body part as worthy only of excision, I show how this vilification rationalizes the wide-scale performance of a practice that in any other context is seen as grossly unethical: the painful and unnecessary modification of the sexual anatomy of a non-consenting person. I also discuss how this rationalization enables profit-driven trafficking in infant sexual tissue.","PeriodicalId":475565,"journal":{"name":"Journal of bodies, sexualities, and masculinities","volume":"112 22","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140089668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Before the Last Car","authors":"A. W. Strouse","doi":"10.3167/jbsm.2024.01of12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/jbsm.2024.01of12","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the early queer history of the Mexico City Metro (from its planning stages in the late 1960s—and especially the subway’s embeddedness in the political and sexual repression emblematized by the student massacres of 1968 and 1971—through its first decade of operation). Drawing evidence from a variety of sources—literary works, essays and chronicles, newspaper accounts, and popular music, as well as from biographies of the planners of the Metro—the article argues that, from its inception, the Metro was understood by the state and by sexual-political dissidents as a mechanism for political and sexual control. But as the Metro more efficiently connected upper-class neighborhoods with of barrios populares, the Metro gradually became a zone of queer rebellion.","PeriodicalId":475565,"journal":{"name":"Journal of bodies, sexualities, and masculinities","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140271540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Homohysteria","authors":"Steven Dashiell","doi":"10.3167/jbsm.2023.05of03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/jbsm.2023.05of03","url":null,"abstract":"This article uses a feminist lens to critique and repurpose the concept of homohysteria. Eric Anderson (2005) created the term homohysteria to explain seismic changes in social behavior of men, particularly noting how a society’s relationship with homosexuality will explain sanctions enacted on men’s behavior. I argue that while Anderson and his adherents developed a novel concept to discuss shifts in male behavior, the all-encompassing nature of a macro-concept, applies too broad a stroke in terms of explaining modifications in relations with manhood. Instead of dismissing the theory, I assert Anderson’s original scope was limited, and that homohysteria is best understood at a meso-level of implementation and change. Further, I argue the concept of effeminophobia must be central to homohysteria, given the fear of the effeminate in a masculine form (Allan 2018). This research is pivotal in demonstrating wider use for Anderson’s concept by expanding its relevance.","PeriodicalId":475565,"journal":{"name":"Journal of bodies, sexualities, and masculinities","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136281129","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Letter from the Editors","authors":"Joseph Henry Hancock II, Vicki Karaminas","doi":"10.3167/jbsm.2023.040101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/jbsm.2023.040101","url":null,"abstract":"It has only been in the last twenty years that men's fashion has gained attention as a discreet disciplinary area of study across the arts and humanities. Up until as late as 1994, when fashion studies entered the academy, information about men's fashion was not included in studies of masculinities; if anything, a cursory mention was made in an occasional book chapter or academic article. This was because fashion was considered frivolous and narcissistic, and not worthy of any serious scholarly attention, unless you were a woman or queer. Fashion was regulated to the domain of the feminine and the body, as opposed to art and architecture, which were deemed masculine and placed in the sphere of the mind and the psyche. Up until the mid-eighteenth century, men's clothing was made of plush fabrics, constructed silhouettes, and refined forms that signaled wealth and aristocratic status. Influenced by the Enlightenment ideas of reason and rationality, men's clothing became more utilitarian and functional, abandoning wigs, stockings, and high heels in favor of garments such as the suit. Exaggerated forms were left to women's fashion, as men relinquished their claim to adornment and beauty and fashion became associated with femininity and frivolity. It was, as John Flügel claimed, the Great Male Renunciation that was to burden masculinity for the next four hundred years.","PeriodicalId":475565,"journal":{"name":"Journal of bodies, sexualities, and masculinities","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135469547","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Frank G. Karioris, Jonathan A. Allan, Chris Haywood
{"title":"About the Cover Image","authors":"Frank G. Karioris, Jonathan A. Allan, Chris Haywood","doi":"10.3167/jbsm.2023.040102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/jbsm.2023.040102","url":null,"abstract":"Since our first Issue, the Journal of Bodies, Sexualities, and Masculinities has sought to find ways to meld our form with our content. This has come in the shape of trying to publish unique research articles, pushing the boundaries of the book forum genre, and—something that has been consistent—in continually working towards having a cover image that provides some insight or connection (or even new angle) on the issue at hand.","PeriodicalId":475565,"journal":{"name":"Journal of bodies, sexualities, and masculinities","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135469544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"About the Cover Image","authors":"J. Allan, Chris Haywood, F. Karioris","doi":"10.3167/jbsm.2020.010102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/jbsm.2020.010102","url":null,"abstract":"On the cover of this issue is an image taken from the Wellcome Collection. Titled “Dance of death: death and the pedlar”, the image shows a skeletal personification of Death picking through a basket of goods. In the basket are included masks, crosses, a deck of cards, swords, and a variety of other items. Published in the 18th Century, it is based on, and an interpretation of a piece in Basel on the Dance of Death. It is black and white and a print produced via etching a plate and using this to print the image.","PeriodicalId":475565,"journal":{"name":"Journal of bodies, sexualities, and masculinities","volume":"57 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141226205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}