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What's next for masculinity? Reflexive

directions for theory and research on
masculinity and education
a

Chris Haywood & Mirtn Mac an Ghaill

Media and Cultural Studies, School of Arts and Cultures ,

Newcastle University , Armstrong Building, Newcastle upon Tyne ,
NE1 7RU , UK
b

Department of Education , Newman University College , Genners

Lane, Bartley Green, Birmingham , B32 3NT , UK
Published online: 21 May 2012.

To cite this article: Chris Haywood & Mirtn Mac an Ghaill (2012) What's next for masculinity?
Reflexive directions for theory and research on masculinity and education, Gender and Education,
24:6, 577-592, DOI: 10.1080/09540253.2012.685701
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2012.685701

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Gender and Education

Vol. 24, No. 6, October 2012, 577 592

Whats next for masculinity? Reflexive directions for theory and

research on masculinity and education
Chris Haywooda and Mairtn Mac an Ghaillb
a
Media and Cultural Studies, School of Arts and Cultures, Newcastle University, Armstrong
Building, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK; bDepartment of Education, Newman
University College, Genners Lane, Bartley Green, Birmingham, B32 3NT, UK

Downloaded by [187.156.37.211] at 16:31 12 April 2014

(Received 16 November 2010; final version received 23 January 2012)

Research on masculinity has become an important area of gender and education that
includes a wide range of empirical concerns and theoretical approaches. This article
identifies a number of studies that are asking questions about the conceptual
usefulness of masculinity within educational contexts. The first section explores
how educational researchers are beginning to suggest alternative ways that
hegemonic masculinity may be configured. The second section draws upon work
that interrogates the disconnection of gender from sex. Such work considers the
importance of understanding schooling worlds through an untethering of gender
categories from physical bodies. The third section suggests the possibility of a
post-masculinity position by exploring research that questions the viability of
masculinity as a conceptual frame to understand gender. In conclusion, the paper
argues that such developments can be used heuristically to inform the critical
reflexiveness of future research in the area.
Keywords: gender; masculinity studies; queer theory; post-masculinity

Introduction
Over the last decade, across western societies masculinity has emerged as a key
analytical and political concept in making sense of gender relations (Dudink, Hagemann, and Clark 2008; Hearn and Pringle 2009). Of particular significance has
been the projection of education institutions as both the cause and the solution to
the suggested problem with boys (Epstein et al. 1999; Skelton 2001). In response,
educational researchers have been vigorously identifying, describing and explaining
how masculinity can help empirically and conceptually to understand what is going
on. In effect, the concept masculinity has been used to explain male behaviours
across diverse areas of the educational sector that includes primary schools (Frosh
et al. 2002; Paechter 2007; Woods 2009), secondary schools (Mac an Ghaill
1994a; Jackson 2006), further education and training institutions (Archer and Leathwood 2003; Parker 2006) and higher education (Simpson and Cohen 2004; Dempster
2009). Furthermore, masculinity has been applied within educational contexts in a
range of international and non-formal educational contexts (see e.g. Light 2008;
Bhana 2009). Such work has been useful in identifying how boys attitudes and

Corresponding author. Email: c.p.haywood@ncl.ac.uk

ISSN 0954-0253 print/ISSN 1360-0516 online

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C. Haywood and M. Mac an Ghaill

behaviours systematically harm girls schooling experiences (Reay 2001; Arnot 2002;
Kehily 2004; Ringrose 2008). At the same time, it has been vital to the development
of an expansive understanding of male power by arguing that boys also physically and
emotionally harm other boys (Epstein 2001; Stoudt 2006; Dalley-Trim 2007).
However, despite the immense analytical purchase of masculinity, educational
researchers are beginning to ask questions about the conceptual and empirical adequacy of masculinity. More specifically, they are modifying and rethinking how
masculinity is conceptualised, in order to achieve greater empirical and analytical purchase in their focus of study.
This article reports on recent educational research that is revising what masculinity
means and in so doing, it aims to document important conceptual shifts and modifications that may have a significant impact on the future use of masculinity in educational research. Rather than see a focus on the study of masculinity excluding
work on femininity, we recognise that particular forms of femininity are produced
in relation to and through particular, and highly valued, forms of masculinity
(Blaise 2009, 453). Therefore, the current theoretical revisioning of masculinity, with
its inherent relationality, has implications for how power, difference and desire is
mapped out, not only in terms of gender, but other social and cultural identifications,
such as ethnicity, sexuality and class. Importantly, the following discussion is not
simply a focus on boys and young men, but on educational research that is developing
ideas about masculinity in educational contexts. Although in their own work the
authors use the tension between materialist and post-structuralist approaches to think
through masculinity (Haywood and Mac an Ghaill 2003; Mac an Ghaill and
Haywood 2007), we aim to be inclusive and highlight approaches to the study of masculinity in education from diverse theoretical backgrounds. The selection of studies is
not meant to be random or representative; there may be other studies in the field of
gender and education exploring similar themes. Therefore, the case studies selected
here are used to underpin the articles aim of identifying how masculinity is being conceptually reconfigured (Onwuegbuzie, Leech, and Collins 2011). Furthermore, the
cases may stimulate readers to consider the similarities and differences of studies
across each of the sections, as well as those within the broader field of gender and education. Thus, evaluative judgements can be made on whether such work presents the
same old story or we are able to (or perhaps should be able to) represent the conceptual dynamics of gender and masculinity in alternative ways. In light of this, the first
section explores how educational researchers are identifying alternative configurations
of masculinity that are not dependent upon the cultural resources of homophobia or
misogyny. Furthermore, such work challenges theoretical assumptions that imbricate
masculinity with patriarchy and dovetails with Mollers (2007, 269) suggestion that
gendered power should not be equated with or reduced solely to a logic of domination. As such, research is suggesting that there may be discourses outside of traditional
patriarchal masculinity, where boys and young men can make their identities male.
The second section explores how recent educational research is borrowing from
queer theory to explore the disconnection of sex from gender. In other words, by
cutting masculinity loose from its ontological premise within physiology, it is possible
to envisage a more fluid embodiment of masculinities and femininities. This section
suggests that a recent discussion on tomboys and female masculinities have much to
offer the study of masculinity in educational contexts. The third section outlines a
radical departure for the use of masculinity in educational research. It explores
Butlers (2004, 43) suggestion that

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a restrictive discourse on gender that insists on the binary of man and woman as the
exclusive way to understand the gender field performs a regulatory operation of power
that naturalizes the hegemonic instance and forecloses that thinkability of its
disruption.

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It is thus guided by the question of whether it is possible to explain gender identities

without empirically documenting or analysing behaviours through the concept of masculinity. It explores this idea in two ways. First, it draws upon research that suggests
that some boys genders may not be cohered or made intelligible by masculinity,
and second, it examines the possibility of understanding gendered behaviour through
other social categories such as class, race/ethnicity, and sexuality. For this post-masculinity position, The question more precisely becomes how to operate within the
established terms of sexual difference, examining where those lines of difference
have been drawn, while at the same time upsetting the terms and redrawing the
lines (Elam 1994, 56).

Modifying hegemonic masculinities

One of the early approaches to accommodating differences between men has been to
pluralise masculinity to masculinities (Connell 1987; Mac an Ghaill 1994a). The
concept of multiple masculinities has enabled an understanding of male identities
that are both historically led and locally determined through the control and regulation
of contextually normative meanings (Martino 1999). Studies in education have tended
to position multiple masculinities within Connells (1995) concept of hegemonic masculinity and its attendant relations of marginalisation, complicity and subordination
with other men. Descriptions of hegemonic masculinities tend to involve a number
of the following traits that include physicality and muscularity, aggression and violence, misogyny, homophobia and heterosexuality (Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli
2003; Poynting and Donaldson 2005; Kimmel 2007; Pascoe 2007). As a consequence,
hegemony results in those dominant and dominating forms of masculinity which claim
the highest status and exercise the greatest influence and authority (Kenway and Fitzclarence 1997, 119). However, more recently educational researchers are beginning to
identify a more complex relationship between hegemonic masculinities and other masculinities.1 The implication is that there is a reconfiguration of power relations where
dominance is more fragmented and unpredictable. For example, Benders (2001) ethnographic study in a US high school explores young men who are marginalised
from dominant hegemonic masculine subject positions. According to Bender, young
men articulate masculine identities that were sometimes in opposition to dominant masculinities. In effect, they defined their male identities through a range of alternative
symbolic resources (dress, music affiliation and leisure practices). Although they
were positioned as marginalised within the broader school hegemony, they continued
to use practices characteristic of hegemonic masculinities, such as the objectification of
women and violence to other men, to stabilise their claims to authentic maleness. As
Christensen and Larsen (2008, 56) note What in some contexts appear as marginalized
masculinities may in other contexts be hegemonic.
In contrast, it has also been found that occupying a position of hegemonic masculinity does not necessarily lead to an undiluted expression of oppression. Stoudt (2006)
argues that it is possible to find the spaces where those who take up hegemonic masculinities can, in turn, question and restrict the articulation of power. He maintains that

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C. Haywood and M. Mac an Ghaill

schooling is an institution that reproduces social inequalities and, using Bourdieu

(2001), suggests that such inequalities are maintained through the application of both
physical and symbolic violence. Interestingly, through interviews with students in a
single-sex US school, Stoudt details how being subject to violence potentially
creates closeness, friendship and enhancement of social status. Furthermore, he discusses the experiences of Matt, a 14-year-old boy, who while affirming hegemonic
masculinity, restricts the policing of masculine borders through the intervention of a
case of bullying. Matts institutionally located sense of justice and fairness and his
own experiences of bullying suggest the fragility of hegemonic masculinity (see also
Redman 1996). Although Stoudt suggests that hegemonic masculinity is difficult to
contest, he argues that there are spaces of resistance where this can take place and
these are moments in need of further understanding if we are to create feasible alternatives to restrictive masculinities (2006, 285).
The apparent autonomy of masculinity identities from those deemed hegemonic has
also been identified in research by Redman et al. (2002) in their nuanced account of the
relationship between two primary school boys, Ben and Karl. Although the relationship
between the two boys is described as a close and intimate friendship, Redman et al.
resist understanding the relationship as structured by hegemonic masculinity. Furthermore, even though the boys use heterosexual discourses, it is not self-evident what
meanings are being ascribed to those discourses; the researchers resist transposing
adult definitions of such discourses onto the cultural worlds of children. At the same
time, rather than sexualise the relationship through a sexuality identity framework
(i.e. gay, bisexual and heterosexual) they attempt to capture the feelings shared
between the two boys without recourse to normative (adult) ascriptions. The importance of such analysis is that they suggest the possibility of versions of masculinity
that might be capable of tolerating difference, ambivalence and complexity around
gender and sexuality (2002, 190). This is of major significance as it points to a
means of understanding masculinity that is not dependent on a patriarchal dividend.
Swains (2006) work also explores this gendered space outside of hegemonic masculinity. In his research on three co-educational junior schools in the UK, he argues that
alongside hegemonic, complicit and subordinated masculinities, we should begin considering a mode of masculinity called personalised masculinities. For Swain, schools
operate as a location for action and agency and as an institutional agent that generates
hegemonic regimes of masculinity. He develops the idea of a space outside of hegemonic masculinities where alternative ways of doing boy could be identified. Focusing
on 10 11-year-old boys, he argues that there are boys who do not wish to subordinate
others. For example, recognising the hegemonic model of masculinity embodied in the
sporty boy, Swain argues that many of the boys did not wish to align themselves with
this idealised masculinity. He asserts that these boys see themselves as different rather
than subordinated. Swain (2006, 343) suggests that Although masculinity is constructed against femininity, a question that needs to be asked is whether the hegemonic
form always needs to produce subordinate forms of masculinity to maintain itself. The
implication is that the conceptual framework of hegemonic masculinities may not be
comprehensive enough to incorporate the range of relationships that boys have with
hegemonic masculinity. In response, Swain argues that personalised masculinities
may be one way to address this.
It appears that studies of masculinity in education are reconsidering how masculinity is being constituted. Anderson (2005) drawing upon interviews and participant
observation with 68 self-identified straight male collegiate American football

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cheerleaders reveals that heterosexual masculinity is not necessarily dependent upon

the objectification of homosexuality. His work is theoretically located in identifying
and linking a broader cultural positioning of masculinity within American society
and identifying how this is negotiated within particular education contexts. He
argues that a shift in broader cultural perceptions of homosexuality is leading to a recalibration of masculinities that is based upon inclusivity. One of the main ways of understanding this is by recognising the ebb and flow of homohysteria. The constitution of
masculinity is influenced by homohysteria and this is measured by the persistence of
homosexuality as a static sexual category, cultural perceptions of homosexuality and
its attendant feminine styles and levels of public disavowal of homosexuality (see
also Tagg 2008). Anderson uses the example of the male cheerleading community to
explore how the cultural perception of gay identities at the local level impacts upon
masculine subjectivities by identifying two forms of masculinity. The first is an orthodox masculinity achieved through the objectification of women and gay men. The
second is identified as inclusive masculinity a style of performance that does not
value or wish to achieve an orthodox masculinity. Therefore, because this group
had a positive association with homosexuality, homophobia ceased to be a tool of masculine marginalization (Anderson 2005, 351). Furthermore, this modified masculinity
questioned the efficacy of the masculine/feminine binary, thus challenging the notions
that masculinity is equivalent to heterosexuality and homophobia (see also Leib and
Bulman 2007). This notion of inclusiveness is also taken up by McCormack (2010),
whose work on three school six forms indicates that young men are able to form
their masculinities without the fear of being homosexualised. He cites one college
as having a near-total absence of homophobic discourse (McCormack 2010, 15).
Interestingly, one of the reasons that these young men take up anti-homophobic positions is that homophobia is indicative of immaturity. As McCormack goes on to
suggest (2010, 16) that . . .the near total absence of discursive marginalization and
physical domination means that the social mechanisms that produce a hegemonic
form of masculinity are not present (cf. Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). The implication is that the hegemonic structures that have been used to explain relationships
within schools need to be reconsidered as the resources through which masculinities
are made are subject to social and cultural changes.
Although the work of Anderson and McCormack offer a promising way forward in
terms of identifying different ways of constituting masculinity, they nevertheless
require a concept of masculinity to explain the social and cultural formation of
mens identities. It appears, for example, in Andersons work that orthodox and nonorthodox masculinities remain intrinsically connected to sexuality/gender identity frameworks. In other words, central to Andersons theorising and the identity formation of
his participants is a dimorphic notion of sex/gender. This means that gender becomes
defined, even in theoretical and practical strategies of refusal, by a sexuality dyadism;
heterosexuality/homosexuality remain the central cultural resource through which
gender identities become remade, contested, authorised and controlled. The relationship of masculinity to sexuality is explored further in the final section; however, of significance is that although traditional masculinities based upon heterosexuality,
homophobia and misogyny are becoming destabilised, a different masculinity
emerges that is still dependent on dyadic sexualities, albeit in a more complex and
more sophisticated manner. In contrast, an alternative approach to the exploration of
masculinity is to disconnect gender, sex and sexuality and in the process, question
the underlying linkages between masculinity and maleness.

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Fe(male) masculinities/(fe)male femininities

According to Peterson (2003), scholars on masculinity need to question the epistemological foundations of masculinity/masculinities by refusing to insist on the primacy of
masculinity or masculinities as analytical categories. The intention is to problematise
the implicit reductionism of masculinity as a social, cultural and physical adjunct of
a male body. Peterson forecloses the relationship between men and masculinity by
destabilising the presumption of pre-existing binaries of sex/gender and nature/
culture oppositions. In short, Peterson argues that such a dualistic logic is historically
produced and that in order to achieve a more expansive understanding of men/masculinity, the underlying premises need to be destabilised. Educational researchers have
been engaged in such destabilisations and have drawn upon queer and transgendered
theorists to disconnect the relationship between men and masculinity. This echoes
Sedgwicks (1995, 12) reflection on the Presupposition that everything pertaining to
men can be classified as masculinity, and everything pertaining to masculinity pertains
in the first place to men. Flood (2002) reinforces this by arguing that if we suggest that
male and masculinity have to go together, this may be in contradiction to social constructivist approaches in the field of inquiry. However, he also suggests that: if we
sever the assumed link between masculinity and male, do we render meaningless the
concept of masculinity? (Flood 2002, 211).
The disconnection of masculinity from physiology has been undertaken by educational researchers who have drawn primarily upon Halberstams (1998) concept of
female masculinities. Research using the concept of female masculinity brings into
focus the relationship between gender and sexuality (the formation of masculinities
through heterosexuality), and how such gender formations are imbricated in inclusionary and exclusionary structures of power (and the possibilities of empowerment). Such
themes are explored by Bhana (2008, 412) whose feminist research in South African
schools aims to challenge static representations of African schoolgirls. She suggests
that
The possibility of a conjunction between female and masculinity that challenges the pathology associated with transgressive women and applied to young girls in this study makes
it possible to argue that African women are not waiting to be victims that female masculinity can be empowering and suggests the multiple forms of power and domination
not the exclusive preserve of boys and men.

This also dovetails with Renolds (2009) ethnographic research with 1011-year olds
in two UK primary schools. She explores how some girls take up masculinised practices, embody hegemonic masculinity and in effect, negotiate the ascription of heterosexualised femininities. Of key importance for Renold is that girls queer and contest
the implicit relationship between masculinity and heterosexuality through the adoption
of a tomboy positionality. One feature of the masculinity practiced by the girls was the
rejection of that deemed feminine, including associating with their peers. One of the
consequences of this subject position is that
being a tomboy is perhaps one of the few remaining legitimate subjects of girlhood that
can directly deflect the male heterosexual gaze and subvert or queer (heterosexualised)
girlie culture. Erica (year 6) and Sadie (year 5), for example, exclusively positioned themselves and were positioned by others as tomboys (as one of the boys, as honorary
boys). Their longitudinal performative masculinity and queering of gender and
sexual norms (e. g. tomboy as drag) seemed to shield them from a number of

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heterosexualizing processes within their local power culture, from sexual harassment and
innuendo to coercive romantic positioning within an increasingly compulsory boyfriend/
girlfriend culture. (Renold 2009, 236)

In this research, the space for the rejection of hegemonic masculine forms through the
adoption of masculinity by girls leads to the possibility of a transgressive space. This
offers an extremely useful understanding of how masculinity may emerge. At the
same time, it appears that the disconnection of sex and gender does not always lead
to transgressiveness. Tong (2008) draws out the complexity of taking up a female masculinity. Her research on lesbian schoolgirls in Hong Kong highlights how their rejection of feminine cultural forms gave them a cultural space to take up a range of
masculine practices. This, however, was a more complex identification as the girls
took up a more conventional approach to effeminate gay men, perceiving them as
disgusting. The implication is that with these particular girls in this specific
context, they maintained masculine as dominant and to be celebrated and feminine
as subordinate and unvalued.
This conceptualisation of gender enables a more complex understanding of the
dynamics of masculinity. Such complexity can also be found in Paechters (2006,
254) useful critical discussion on how we might grasp the interplay between gendered
structures of power and lived experience. An insightful contribution to the area of
female masculinities and male femininities is undertaken by Paechter, who explores
how the ways that we use the terminology around gender produces the parameters of
how it is thought about. While she identifies the political and analytical limitations
of female masculinity, she also explores the implications of its grammatical arrangement. Paechter argues that earlier approaches to masculinity and femininity used
male/female as stable concepts, with masculinity and femininity as much more variable
qualifiers. According to Paechter, Halberstam inverts this relationship with the female
becoming the qualifier and masculinity becoming more stable or solid. As a consequence, using masculinity as the noun produces something socially and culturally contingent as stable. By reverting to a notion of female masculinities, she suggests that we
may lose empirical and conceptual purchase on the everyday structures underpinning
ways of being masculine and feminine. One of the points to emerge from this particular
work and other contributions to this theoretical approach is the importance of lived
experience not simply how gender is embodied, but what that embodiment means
within specific communities of practice.
In effect, Paechter argues for the inclusion of a range of attributes within the identity
categories, both acknowledging the social structural formation of masculinity and the
local individual subjectivities that create the possibility for other forms of identification.
She (2009, 452) writes
By taking ones identification as male or female, and ones recognition as such by a community of masculinity or femininity practice, as the basic position from which a variety of
masculinities and femininities can be constructed, differing according to time, place, and
context, I am trying to at least reduce the power of the masculine/feminine dualism, while
recognising the ways in which it can be used to mobilise power.

This work offers a productive way forward to consider how we make sense of gender in
school-based contexts (see also Mendick 2006; Renold 2008; Francis 2010).
However, she has been criticised by Rasmussen (2009), whose particular reading of
Paechter suggests that there is a reification of individual agency, a positing of gender

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within a rigid gender dualism and that the reversal of female masculinity does not
necessarily lead to more flexibility in how to explain gender relations. Although the
specific applicability of these criticisms to Paechters position remains questionable
(2009), it provides a useful critical reminder of the difficulties faced by those attempting
to think through gender categories.
The work on female masculinities offers those exploring gender in schooling a
different emphasis than those who focus on a modification of hegemonic masculinities.
The tension between the ascribed meanings of masculinity at a structural level and local
identifications has produced other ways of engaging with the sex/gender relation. For
example, one way to do this is to draw upon Bakhtins work on dialogism and heteroglossia to explore the constitution of student experiences. Ryan and Johnson (2009)
suggest that
Bakhtins (1994) philosophies of dialogism and heteroglossia are useful to consider the
ways in which the individual and the social interact to constitute the diverse, multifaceted identities or subjectivities of individuals as they construct and express meaning.
These intersubjective understandings about how self is both socially constructed and individually experienced sees individuals drawing upon an intricate and continuous interplay
between self and the ideologies of society. (248)

It is argued that young peoples identities are implicated within a series of intersubjective moments, where dialogic relations are negotiated. Dialogic here refers to the multitude of voices providing the resources through which identities may be spoken. This
provides more fluidity in terms of the range of ways gender identities are constituted.
Francis (2010) also uses Bakhtins notions of monoglossia and heteroglossia to explore
gender identities in educational contexts. For Francis, monoglossia appeals to the dominant definitions of gender stereotypical notions of masculinity, while heteroglossia
refers to micro-level interactions. She argues that binary notions of masculinity and
femininity and their interdependency with sexed bodies limit how we capture the fluidity of the everyday experiences of gender. For example, Francis cites a number of incidents where boys and girls take on masculine/feminine behaviours. In effect, their
behaviours and practices appear to be transgressive of normative gender behaviours.
Importantly, the pupils do not take up counter-identities in terms of male femininities
as studies on transgender self-identification indicate rather there is a complex
arrangement of monoglossic and heteroglossic events. Importantly, Francis argues
that there needs to be a more subtle method of explaining the diversity of behaviour
without the reduction to identity categories. This conceptual division between monoglossia and heteroglossia enables her to locate gender practices that do not fit easily
with notions of masculinity and femininity. As a consequence, the broader social structures of gender remain enduring, while the local practice of gender identities allows for
a range of gendered configurations, such as male femininities and female masculinities.
Although the use of Bakhtin is popular across a range of disciplines, in educational
research on masculinity, it is in its infancy and is beginning to provide a productive
analytical framework. As a result, there is scope to develop the framework further.
For example, monoglossia and heteroglossia exist unequally where power remains
top down; as Bakhtin suggests monoglossia is clearly more powerful and ubiquitous, and in contrast heteroglossia is, less powerful and have complex ontological
status (1984, xix). Further research might explore another space identified by
Bakhtin as polyglossia. Polyglossia is a space that fully frees consciousness from
the tyranny of its own language and its own myth of language (1984, 61). In many

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ways, Bakhtins concept of polyglossia suggests the potential for gender to be considered and understood outside of existing conceptual frames that are currently being
used. More work could be undertaken to explore the possibility of understanding masculinity outside the language through which it is constituted. Although not in the scope
of this article, there is potential for a conceptually transgressive approach that would not
only question the viability of masculinity as a concept to understand notions of gender.

Post-masculinity: towards a reflexive refusal

The emphasis in this section is not on the relationship between gender and sex, but on
the relationship between gender and masculinity. This means that gender identities,
subjectivities and identifications may be understood without reducing them to a
notion of masculinity. Butler (2004) provides a useful discussion on the apparatus
that underpins the notion of gender as being read through binaries such as male/
female and masculine/feminine. She suggests that Gender is the mechanism by
which notions of masculine and feminine are produced and naturalized, but gender
might very well be the apparatus by which such terms are deconstructed and denaturalized (Butler 2004, 42). The strategy, therefore, is to theoretically distance gender
from masculinity (and femininity) to enable gender to be constituted through alternative
social and cultural forms. In other words, the use of masculinity as a conceptual tool to
explore educational space may be instantiating a regulatory system of gender that is
dependent upon sex/gender binaries. By undermining the regulatory system that configures gender, we can, in turn, begin to undo gender. This refusal of the binary categories is illustrative in Frank, Davison, and Lovells (2003, 129) suggestion that
Quite simply, then what we are advocating is the need to think differently about how we
think (Flax 1987) about boys and men, about masculinity and sexuality, and more
broadly, how we have come to know the world through the more general artificial
polarities which modern investigation and theorising has invented as real.

Therefore, one way to disengage the artificial polarities that regulate gender is to
explore how particular attitudes, behaviours and practices are being rearticulated or
reassembled in ways that are not intelligible through the identity category of masculinity. Working in the field of cultural studies, Noble (2004, xxxix) in her excellent
exploration of female masculinity differentiates her project from that of Judith Halberstam: What I argue is that the subjects under discussion not only refuse categorization
as a teleology but that they also rearticulate, or reassemble, the intelligibility of categorization itself. So, whereas the first section of this article explored how the conceptual
integrity of masculinity is maintained through notions of hegemonic masculinities, or as
Butler (2004, 43) suggests the multiplication of genders, the second section loosens or
unfastens an interpretive schema that naturalises of masculinity and femininity as gendered norms. In this final section, a post-masculinity approach severs masculinity as the
primary interpretive frame through which to explain gendered subjectivities.
In the introduction, we identified how masculinity has been used unproblematically
as a concept to explain male behaviours in diverse educational contexts that range from
3-year-old boys (pre-school) through to 21-year-old boys (higher education). In these
instances, it appears that masculinity and being have theoretical proximity; to understand maleness we can use the concept of masculinity. One strategy to undo gender
might be to let go of gender and consider how maleness is constituted through

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particular cultural discourses. This is something evident in the research of Hills and
Croston (2011). They argue that the category of masculinity and femininity are restrictive, in that, they limit the possibilities of capturing cross-gender attitudes and behaviours. The danger of this approach is that understanding gender outside of
masculinity may lead to reducing gender to maleness. The argument from a post-masculinity position might suggest that we have a different social and cultural construction
of gender that is not premised upon masculinity and femininity. Thus, one area that
Butler (2004) identifies as creating theoretical distance between gender and masculinity
is by highlighting the . . .possibilities for gender that are not predetermined by forms of
hegemonic heterosexuality (54). Such a position is developed by Miller (2006, 19)
who argues that Gendered and sexualized bodies are only rendered visible if they
align within the bounds of the heterosexual matrix. . .. Therefore, in order to explore
gendered identifications and experiences outside masculinity, we may need to
explore gendered forms that are not dependent upon heterosexuality. For example, in
the context of River High School, Cheri Jo Pascoe argues that masculinity and femininity are forged through a heterosexual matrix (Butler 1995) that involves the public
ordering of masculinity and femininity through the meanings and practices of sexuality
(2007, 27).
However, if there is little recognition or identification with the heterosexual matrix,
the cultural forms of masculinity and femininity may be more ambiguous. In short, the
intelligibility of gender that is premised upon heterosexuality may be ruptured through
identifications that are unable to be cohered through masculinity. This was something
found in the early work by Thorne (1993). She identifies how younger children cross
genders particularly in the absence of a developed heterosexual meaning system and
suggests the importance of recalibrating the relationship between gendered subjectivities and (hetero)sexual structures. For example, there is often a tendency to use
adult-led (heterosexual) masculinities to explain boys schooling experiences. Davies
(1989, 2006) also explores the dynamics of category maintenance by children who
transgress masculine- and feminine-orientated discourses and practices. She suggests
the possibility of opening up a third category of gender that results in breaking up
the gender binary (2006, 88). Research by Haywood (2008) reports on how the gendered meaning systems of boys aged 812 years in a UK state school were not located
within easily definable heterosexual and homosexual binaries. As a consequence, erotically charged behaviours between boys and between boys and girls were not collapsed
within a logic of (homo/hetero)sexuality. With the structures of normative heterosexuality that underpin the articulation of masculinity (and femininity) being less salient, a
masculinity identity that Othered femininity, employed homophobia and celebrated
heterosexuality was not taken up by these boys (see also Leck 2000).
The theoretical distance between gender and masculinity is also methodologically
and analytically challenged by Talburts (2010) use of the subjunctive. Based on readings of the film, the History Boys, Talburt highlights how the theoretical framing of subjectivities through identity creates reified categories that demand a rigid indexicality of
being and doing. In the History Boys, Talburt outlines how knowledge, desire and identity are secured through the interpretive boundaries embedded in pedagogic and administrative structures of schooling. However, she identifies particular incidents in the film
where such boundaries are transgressed. For example, she suggests that the students
articulate a queering that is uncoupled from identity categories and circulates across
and beyond heteronormative circuits of desire. The boys do not express the sexual
and gender phobias expected of males of their age: they comfortably act like

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women in class, openly enact queer desires, and take turns on Hectors motorbike
(Talburt 2010, 61). [Hector is a Humanities teacher, who routinely gropes each of
the boys when he gives them a lift]. Thus, Talburt suggests that educational research
should endeavour to capture subjunctive validity that among a range of aspects,
is concerned with undecidables, limits, paradoxes, discontinuities, complexities
(Lather 2007, 128, cited in Talburt 2010, 62). From this perspective, queer experiences
are disconnected from identity categories and can be used to suggest alternative ways of
conceptualising gender.
One of the critiques of Talburts position, and that of a post-masculinity position, is
that there is a marginalisation of the institutional context and that discontinuities circulating through sexual categories are facilitated by the unspoken continuities of institutionally driven privilege and status. It could be argued that the films narrative and the
subjunctive potential appear to underpin a masculinity that is achieved through the
pursuit of an intellectual muscularity (Redman and Mac an Ghaill 1996).2 Furthermore,
work by Skelton et al. (2009) suggests that children use discourses of masculinity and
femininity to structure relationships between themselves and their peers. There is also a
broader criticism of a post-masculinity position in that it does not appear to sufficiently address the issues concerning systems of social and cultural inequality. Furthermore, suggesting that masculinity can be understood beyond categorical identities may
result in a politics of cultural difference that
. . .works in the service of maintaining a compulsory ignorance, and where the break
between the past and the present keeps us from being able to see the trace of the past
as it re-emerges in the very contours of an imagined future. (Butler 1999, 18)

In other words, by thinking about masculinity being reconfigured differently, there is a

risk that we lose the analytical purchase on the structuring processes that support
inequalities. The consequence is that gender identities become reduced to an individualism that is socially and culturally relative. Thus, there is a risk that there is a return to
earlier criticisms made of Halberstam and how local identifications and broader social
structures are held together. In response, Noble usefully suggests that by exploring how
identity categories are reassembled, the effect is to resignify what that gender looks
like and, indeed, how it dys-articulates them as subjects similar, but ultimately not
reducible, to it (152). Therefore, although power continues to be distributed via
axes of inequality, the challenge for the educational researcher is to identify and document how subjectification takes place outside of a patriarchal dividend, homophobia
and compulsory heterosexuality and in turn, imagine how structures of power and
inequalities can be mapped out differently.
Finally, another strategy to dislocate masculinity as the interpretive frame of gender
can also be found in the early work of Mac an Ghaill (1994b, 156), who attempts to
understand the complex interplay between schooling, masculine cultural formations
and sexual/racial identities. In his consideration of black gay students in English
schools, Mac an Ghaill identifies how racial identities are spoken through sexual and
gender codes that are also embedded by generation. This case study reveals the
racial/ethnic hierarchies that were ascribed by teachers in their administration and
pedagogy.
So for example, in working class schools where there was a majority Asian student population with a mainly white minority, the dominant representations of Asian youth tended

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to be negative with caricatures of them as sly and not real men. However, in working
class schools which included significant numbers of African-Caribbeans, the students
felt that the Asians were caricatured in a more positive way in relation to the African-Caribbeans, who were perceived as of low ability, aggressive and anti-authority. (158)

As a consequence, racial/ethnic categories are immediately gendered, classed and sexualised with social relations of ethnicity, simultaneously speaking gender and sexuality. The result is a process of subjectification, where masculinity becomes an
articulation of multiple differences, and power and powerlessness exist in simultaneous
positions, or as Butler (1997, 116) has argued, submission and mastery take place simultaneously, and it is this paradoxical simultaneity that constitutes the ambivalence of
subjection. Therefore, the argument is not to reify masculinity and deselect other
social categories, but to return to sites of gendered experience and theorise out of
them, as situated knowledge (Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis 2002). This post-structural
emphasis on simultaneity can be identified in Youdells (2010) exploration of pedagogy and boys with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. Rather than
deploy social and cultural categories as intersecting, the use of simultaneity facilitates
a conceptual liminality. This liminality is a position that is necessarily ambiguous,
since this condition and these persons elude or slip through the network of classifications that normally locate states and positions in cultural space (Turner 1969, 95).
In the minutiae of the classroom space, Youdell identifies the fluidity in the ascription
of identities to boys, who have been educationally disenfranchised from a learner identity. She suggests that
There is no either/or here the binary machines of subjectivation seem not to operate.
Boys are not either student and learner or SEDB [social, emotional and behavioural difficulties] boys or cool boys. Rather there is a simultaneity and fluidity to these positions.
(Youdell 2010, 320)

Consequently, alongside the lack of discourses that are taken up by the teacher to establish an adult identity, the boys who are at one moment in an educational system signified as abject, are simultaneously located as becoming-student, becoming-learner,
becoming-boy (Youdell 2010, 322). One of the features of studies that use masculinity
is to cohere difference and similarity. This tends to reflect Benjamins (1988, 17) observation that . . .difference is defensively incorporated into rigid representations rather
than recognised in tension with commonality and we should begin to make visible
the boundaries that enclose the identical. So rather than interpreting social and cultural
processes as feminisation or re-masculinisation, a post-masculinity position might
draw upon other categories such as age or race/ethnicity to designate gender. The
overall direction of the post-masculinity position is to destabilise and disconnect masculinity from gender; there is a conscious intention to avoid trying to make gendered
subjectivities fit theoretical and empirical representations of masculinity.

Conclusion
This article has offered a particular mapping of the field, to track the different ways that
masculinity has been conceptualised. It does not attempt to capture all of the literature
and cover the range of intricacies that theories have developed. Research on masculinity in education continues to be a source of theoretical and conceptual excitement.
Although the authors are keen to explore further a post-masculinity approach to

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understanding male gender, we advocate a need for an inclusive approach to masculinity that encourages a range of ways of engaging with the subject field. However, it is
important to restate Butlers (2004) claim that a notion of gender that relies on masculinity and femininity (or even the shift to masculinities and femininities) can operate as
a regulatory process that can foreclose other theoretical and empirical possibilities. Furthermore, it brings into focus how conceptual frameworks may politically contribute to
the instantiation of hegemonic systems of thinking. The claim is that a theoretical distance between the normative categories or characteristics (masculinity/femininity, masculine/feminine) and gender may produce alternative ways of thinking. It could be
argued that the approaches discussed in this article provide different moments of
such theoretical distance.
To summarise, we have suggested that researchers could begin to explore how the
cultural resources that are used to constitute masculinities may be disconnected from
their traditional location within a patriarchal dividend. We have also highlighted how
masculinity theorists might begin to think through the disconnection of gender from
culturally ascribed notions of physiology. The emergence of empirically led descriptions of how gender is being transgressed offer an important theoretical reflexivity to
studies that simply align masculinity with men. Such work urges us to question the
implicit conceptual linkages that underpin theoretical building blocks. The linkages
embedded in current academic usage of concepts, such as misogyny, homophobia
and heterosexual fantasies, demand that boys and young mens practices are already
configured through power relations. The final section focuses specifically on how
we might begin to think through the possibility of understanding gender that is not constituted by masculinity. This is perhaps the most conceptually and methodologically
challenging approach. Asking the question of what is next for research on masculinity
in education requires more than an engagement with approaches that conceptualise
masculinities, it requires us to focus on not the ontological claims of identity, but
the conceptualization made possible precisely because of what is unthought (Britzman
1997, 36).

Notes
1. Connell has maintained a critical engagement with her original concept of hegemony and the
way it has been taken up by others (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005).
2. Special thanks to second reviewer for pointing this out.

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