KARA-JANE LOMBARD*

MEN AGAINST THE WALL:

GRAFFITI(ED) MASCULINITIES

This paper invokes the categories of the masculine that have been discursively con-
structed in the historical and social context of hip hop and graffiti culture. The pro-
duction and performance of graffiti(ed) masculinities are the result of a complex
mix that samples notions of class, race, violence, space, commodification, gender,
resistance, and violence. Graffiti culture embodies the colonizers ideals of a mas-
culinity that is dangerous, aggressive and takes risks, while giving men a medium
with which to tell their stories and allowing them to express their emotions. The ar-
ticle argues that graffiti(ed) masculinities are composed of seemingly disparate and
complex components that shadow the masculine ideals of the colonizer, of hege-
monic masculinity, as well as borrowing from notions of subordinate and resistive
masculinities.

Keywords: hip hop, graffiti, masculinity, gender, race, national identity, working
class

Borrowing various versions of masculinity, the construction and production of masculin-

ities located in hip hop and graffiti culture fuses these disparate elements together in unique
ways. Graffiti(ed) masculinities draw on hegemonic notions of successful and correct
forms of masculinity, which are altered through damaged and subordinated masculinities
to produce new systems of meaning. Graffiti culture embodies the colonizers ideals of a
masculinity that is dangerous, aggressive and takes risks, while giving men a medium with
which to tell their stories, and allowing them to express their emotions and form deep and
lasting relationships with others based on trust, respect, and a sense of community. At-
tempting to understand the masculinities that are produced and performed within graffiti cul-
ture involves an understanding of the elements that are pieced together to inform them.
These masculinities emerge from a dialogue between politics of space, race, class, gender,
nationality, commodification and consumer culture, resistance, violence, and hip hop cul-
ture. Theories of class, race and space are important paradigms for understanding graffiti

* Curtin University.
Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to the author, School of Media, Culture and Creative
Arts, Curtin University, GPO Box U1987, Western Australia 6845. Email: k.lombard@curtin.edu.au

THE JOURNAL OF MENS STUDIES, VOL. 21, NO. 2, SPRING 2013, 178-190.
2013 by the Mens Studies Press, LLC. All rights reserved. http://www.mensstudies.com
jms.2102.178/$15.00 DOI: 10.3149/jms.2102.178 ISSN/1060-8265 e-ISSN/1933-0251

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 MEN AGAINST THE WALL

culture and the masculinities it enfolds. This paper invokes the categories of the masculine
that have been discursively constructed in the historical and social context of hip hop and
graffiti culture.
Influenced by a tradition of oral leaders and artists, (Lusane, 1993), hip hop is grounded
in Black and Puerto Rican street culture (Flores, 1987) and spans ethic, cultural and lan-
guage barriers. Hip hop comprises four elements: DJing, MCing, breakdancing, and graf-
fiti. All forms of hip hop are considered visible symbols of resistance (Brake, 1985). Hip-hop
graffiti emerged from the Black neighbourhood cultures of New York City in the early 1970s
as part of a larger, homegrown, alternative youth culture (Ferrell, 1995-96), and by the end
of this decade its aesthetic codes and stylized images began to disseminate to major cities
across America and throughout the globe. A unique form of inscription, it depicts words
and phrases in disguise (Gross & Gross, 1993), and is labelled apocryphal as the written
words both reveal and conceal their identitythey reveal themselves to the insider or ini-
tiated but conceal themselves from the uninitiated.
Hip-hop graffiti is comprised of three basic forms: tags, throw ups and pieces. A tag is a
stylized version of a signature, a mark of identification that is instantly recognizable, and
is the most basic form of graffiti. There are two types of tagging: individual and crew. Throw
ups are large two-dimensional versions of tags. The outlines of letters are usually drawn in
one color and filled in with another color. The piece, short for masterpiece, is the most so-
phisticated kind of graffiti. Usually designed and practiced beforehand in a piecebook,
pieces are most often completed by a crew or several writers. Pieces can include characters
as well as words and phrases, and are of complex design and style, featuring backgrounds,
patterns and multiple colors.
The production of graffiti(ed) masculinities transpires very much like that of a graffiti
piece, which fuses images from popular culture with those of the writers own imaginings
to create something unique. This kind of bricolage also operates in the construction of mas-
culinities involved in the graffiti scene. In the production of graffiti(ed) masculinities, space,
race, nationality, resistance, violence, language, the body, hip-hop culture, the politics of the
street and consumer culture, all come together in a complex exchange that informs a mas-
culine ideal that is both correct and damaged, dominant and oppressed.
Although modes of masculinity vary by race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation (Brod,
1987), conventional, phallocentric perspectives on masculinity repeatedly put forward im-
ages of the male and of maleness which conform to an enactment of the dominant element
which conform to an enactment of the dominant element of the binary pair (Lucas, 1996,
p. 209). The construction of a successful, modern, Western hegemonic masculinity usually
involves the valorisation of qualities such as authority, competition, physical strength, ag-
gression, power, activity, taming, colonisation, domination, violence, independence, pride,
resiliency, self-control, desire for control (Denborough, 1995; Fasteau, 1974; Lucas; Peter-
son, 1998; Thompson, 1987).
Masculinities must operate, or be competent at operating, some degree of power and au-
thority (Haywood & Mac an Ghaill, 1998). The hegemonic masculinity that functions in
America is the culturally idealized version of masculinity that is certainly identifiable as
the dominant form among several racial, sexual and class-based masculinities (Nagel,
1988, p. 246), all of which have their own notions of what constitutes power and authority.
If subjectivities are produced and determined within the spaces of power and difference

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(Middleton, 1992), it is important to expose the origins of these differences and the ways
in which power operates by constructing particular male bodies as normal or natural and oth-
ers as pathological or unnatural (Peterson, 1998). Through control over the ideologies, in-
stitutions and knowledges that support power, White masculinity has been constructed as
the dominant, hegemonic masculinitycorrect, whole and undamaged. Black masculinity
became one of many subordinated masculinities, one of the pathological mirrors for White,
hegemonic masculinity. Racial taxonomies constructed a hierarchy upon which White Eu-
ropean males ruled and provided the standard against which all other human being and cul-
tures were judged (Peterson, 1998). This led to ethnocentric assumptions about Western
culture and the inferiority of all other races (Harris, Torres, & Allende, 1994), which a num-
ber of writers trace to the emergence of the institution of slavery in America.
While Europeans came to America voluntarily to seek new opportunity, Africans came in
chains to work an economic system in which they had no stake. Although the slave trade had
been in operation since before the fifteenth century, American slavery was set apart, in part,
by its racial basis. With only a few early and significant exceptions, slaves were of African
origin, and almost all Africans were slaves. This branded Black skins as inferior (Coombs,
1972). The historical construction of racial taxonomies and the grand narratives of White
Europeans produced a White-supremacist discourse and practice that declared Black mas-
culinity to be inferior and inconsistent. Denied citizenship rights, Black men were effectively
denied manhood rights, which applied to White males only. Thus the White master was rep-
resentative of hegemonic masculinity. Black men were also apprehended from acquiring
the symbols of this masculinity, denied both a physical and metaphorical space in America.
The parallels with those involved in the graffiti scene appear numerous. Graffiti writing is
not just a reclamation of space for those who use and inhabit it, it is also the rewriting and
renegotiation of that space.
African American men eventually came to occupy a space in Americathe ghetto. The
last remaining vestige of mass exploitation, poverty and crime in America (Booker, 1964),
the Black ghetto is pervaded by a sense of hopelessness and inability to move into the
mainstream of the nations life (Farmer & Black, 1971, pp. 42-43). In the past, many ghetto
dwellers found the mainstream closed to them, and they rejected it and many of the Amer-
ican values that operated within it (Farmer & Black). Whether or not this still holds true is
bound to be debated, however this remains the sentiment running through the veins of the
contemporary graffiti writereven if he does wear designer brands and want fame. In the
same way that graffiti writers tag symbols of the authorities that oppress and control them,
so Black citizens who burned their neighbourhoods down, rejected the sanctity of private
property and the white mans values imposed upon them, values which have helped keep
them in chains (Farmer & Black, p. 43). Like the slave who was not able to own property,
African Americans felt the property that they were burning down was not their property
they did not own it, it was a symbol of their continued exploitation. Burning that property
gave them a sense of destroying their prison (Farmer & Black).
In order to escape ghetto life and the position of permanent wagelessness, Black male
youth resorted to a life on the edges of crime (Mercer & Julien, 1988). Thus the hustler
or gang member was born. The hustler is an institutionalized figure in Black underclass so-
ciety that activates illegality as a style of life. The hustler accommodates himself to the sys-
tem of oppression, using illegal means to attain the normative ends of the White patriarchal

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role (Mercer & Julien). Adopting the idea of masculinity being constitutive of an active and
independent economic agent (Mercer & Julien) so characteristic of hegemonic masculini-
ties, the hustler adapts this to whatever means at his disposal. The survival strategies of the
hustler are informed by a machismo (Mercer & Julien) and bravado. It relies just as much
on the correct poses, posturing and costuming as it does on attitudes and actions. Machismo
is a self-made masculinity, in that it employs whatever means possible to ensure its sur-
vival, of which violence is a part.
Malcolm X (cited in Malcolm X & Hayley, 1964) elaborated on the survival strategies of
the hustler by describing his experiences:

I was a true hustler, uneducated, unskilled at anything honourable, and I considered

myself nervy and cunning enough to live by my wits, exploiting any prey. A hustler
knows that if he ever relaxes, if he ever slows down, the other hungry, restless foxes,
ferrets, wolves, and vultures out there with him wont hesitate to make him their
prey. (pp. 109-110)

The hustler continues to operate in the production of Black masculinities, and has been
appropriate by many Black men, regardless of social position. They argue that it is possi-
ble to be hustler on Wall Street or in the Projects (Manifest, 2001). It is the performance of
a subordinated masculinity based on hegemonic ideals.
Gangsta rap obviously invokes the stereotypes of Gz (gangsters) and hustlas. Mas-
culinities involved in the graffiti scene also adopt the hustlestealing paint and com-
mitting other petty crimes. As a symbol of a marginalized masculinity that despite all odds,
manages to succeed, it is an apt image for those males involved in graffiti culture. The hus-
tle is actually quite destructive. It is a masculinity that must remain largely invisible to
achieve its goals, a masculinity that must never let its guard down, retaining an almost para-
noiac watchfulness.
Moral panics, created by official discourses on race-related crime issues, have created the
problem category of Black youth (Marriott, 1996). The dominant representations of Black
male youth are as deviant and criminal, and their social relations have acquired the status
of a state ideology that reinforces negative stereotyping and characterizes Black masculin-
ity as in constant need of policing and surveillance. Institutions such as the criminal justice
system, the state and the media, have become racialized in their representations of Black
youth (Marriott). The problem of the young Black male becomes even more critical with
the arrival of hip hop.
Initially an underground movement, by the late 1980s, rap and the broad spectrum of
Hip Hop had become the dominant cultural environment of young African-Americans, par-
ticularly males (Lusane, 1993, p. 42). Run-D.M.C. was one of the first groups to make
headlines, and are widely recognized as the progenitor of modern raps creative integration
of social commentary, diverse musical elements, and uncompromising cultural identifica-
tion (Dyson, 1993). D.M.C.s debut was the genres first gold record, attracting the atten-
tion testosterone-fuelled males (Collins, 1998). But with lyrics like guess what America,
we love you, D.M.C. would never raise hell like Niggaz With Attitude. N.W.A. did not
love America. They were angry, controversial, misogynistic. Gangsta rap had arrived. Like
the separatist politics of Black nationalism, the rap artist often essentializes Black people,
mimicking racist discourses and denying the heterogeneity of Black identity.

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The rapper performs a validized version of Black masculinity that evokes the stereotype
of the Nat (a vengeful savage bent on physical confrontation) produced through the slav-
ery narrative, and is a potent source of White fear and desire. Rap artists frequently exam-
ine the realities of existence in ghetto, detailing the unemployment, miseducation,
discrimination, homicides, gang life, class oppression, police brutality, drug and alcohol
abuse and the regressive gender politics that many Black male youth find themselves trapped
in. For bell hooks (1994, p. 117), Black males have been seduced into making money by
producing lyrics that promote violence, sexism, misogyny. The tragedy is that a great deal
of Black male aggression is often directed at other Black men, as was evinced in the East
versus West Coast rivalry in rap that led to the death of Notorious B.I.G. a.k.a. Biggie Smalls
and Tupac Shakur. The versions of masculinity these Black men reproduce not only serves
to maintain their bondage, but literally serves (to do in or do over another) them as
well. hooks (1994) argues that the sexist, misogynistic, and patriarchal ways of thinking
and behaving that are glorified in gangsta rap are a performance of the prevailing values in
our society that are created and sustained by White supremacist capitalist culture. She be-
lieves it is much easier to attack gangsta rap than to confront the culture that produces that
need (hooks).
By the mid-1990s, raps popularity transcended divisions of class, race and gender, and
images of gangsta rap became commodified by the corporate and White, middle-class world.
Its elements of machismo and misogyny attracted the attention and emulation of White
teenage boys who appropriated the signifiers of Black, hyper-masculinity as symbols of so-
cial prestige. White boys adopted significations of Blackness to enhance their masculinity
(Rutherford, 1997). They were simply purchasing a masculine performance. Rutherford
states that masquerading Blackness is part of a short-lived adolescent revolt, a means of
asserting themselves against parental authority and stabilising an uncertain masculine iden-
tity (p. 151). I am more inclined to believe that White males are attracted to the hard-
ness and hypersexuality of this Black masculinity that confirms their masculine prowess.
The consequence for Black boys are more severe, as stereotypes can trap them in the tra-
ditional representations which present a restricted and unrepresentative image of Black mas-
culinity (p. 51). Young White males appropriate these badges of masculinity but can always
leave them in their closet, while Black male youth are trapped behind their badges.
The popularity of hip hop with White, Anglo males is essentially the pimping of Black cul-
ture to its oppressors. It perpetuates and maintains an underclass (hooks, 1994). The com-
modification of graffiti works in the same way. The art markets response to graffiti was
phenomenal, but short lived. Marketed for its novelty value, graffiti art became popular
primarily because it offered insight to the lives of the inner-city culture (Powers, 1996,
p. 141), depicting an exciting and dangerous life on the edge.
Life on the edgethe life of the male African American, hip-hop artist and graffiti
writeris inevitably an existence bound up with violence and crime. Crime is a resource
subordinate masculinities utilize to achieve an undamaged masculinity, it is a strategy for
the accomplishment of successful masculinity. Graffiti is not only constructed as a crime,
it is also considered a form of violence. As far as masculinity is concerned, violence equals
competence (Haywood & Mac an Ghaill, 1998). Violence is seen as an appropriate way for
males to behave (Thompson, 1987), being brought up to believe a part of them that has an
affinity for violence, and indeed, thrives on it (Fasteau, 1974). It is rooted in the social and

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cultural systems of the West (Formaini, 1990) and built into patriarchal masculinity (Robin-
son, 1994). That Black men are denied patriarchal rights and yet are perceived to be the
cause of so much violence, is a contradiction hegemonic masculinity has yet to resolve. The
graffiti writeras a masculine underdogcannot employ violence without being further po-
sitioned as damaged and dangerous. As a form of semiotic violence as well as a violence en-
acted upon the landscape, the practitioners of hip-hop graffiti are often viewed as deviants
or non-conformists, having failed to internalize societys condemnation of violence (Brod,
1987), unless, of course, they are using violence to uphold institutions of hegemonic power,
systems that are sustained through violence themselves. Violence is only an appropriate
function/ mode of communication/ process/ strategy for dominant masculinities. It is an ap-
propriate and necessary behaviour of power and control (Thompson, 1987).
Whether actual physical violence is a part of graffiti culture is an area of contention, and
no doubt where graffiti(ed) masculinities intersect with gang life, actual physical violence
is bound to increase. Both hip-hop and graffiti culture are constructed through violence by
hegemonic masculinities, the middle classes, but they themselves also construct their worlds
as violent. The graffiti threat is articulated by the victims as a form of violence. Susan
Stewart (1994, p. 222) argues that the faade that graffiti inscribes is clearly a projection
or an externalization of the private body of the middle classes. It must also be an exter-
nalisation of the hegemonic male body (whose realm has been traditionally considered that
of the urban and public), which is perhaps why it is so crucial that the graffiti be policed with
such militance.
Class is another important paradigm for understanding graffiti culture. Born out of the
economic, political and ethnic inequalities prevalent in America (Ferrell, 1995-96), graffiti
is formally overdetermined as the medium of the urban poor (Fleming, 1997, p. 5)even
if it is increasingly produced by middle-class, suburban exponents (Ferrell). Whether a graf-
fiti writer bombs (writing graffiti prolifically) alone, with a group of friends, in a crew,
or as part of a gangthe masculinities involved in the graffiti scene take something of
working-class masculine ideas.
The successful performance of working-class masculinity involves fighting and drinking
(Canaan, 1996). Fighting is to the working-class male what tagging or piecing is to the graf-
fiti writer. It arranges masculinity into a hierarchy, and provides a means of affirming their
place in society, and a context for reversing the outcome of a prior psychological drama
(Canaan). So whereas Neil got in a fight after an argument with someone close to him
(Canaan), graffiti writer GKAE went on an intense graffiting spree one summer after hav-
ing some girl troublebombing three to four pieces a night for thirty-five nights straight
(Powers, 1999). He comments that, going all out like that, Im not normal I detach my-
self (p. 79). In working-class masculinities, the fight also severs the link between body
and self (Canaan). In a similar way, graffiti fragments the body and self, however instead
of projecting the self through violence onto the body of another, graffiti writers project
pieces of their selves onto walls and trains. With violence (and graffiti writing), there is a
sense that to maintain or gain control, one must lose control, and that the greatest moment
of consciousness and self-control comes from this severance between body and self.
In working-class culture, drinking becomes a measure of hardness as it allows for, and per-
mits the loss of self control (Canaan, 1996), which leads to increased risk taking (Canaan).
Successful masculinities operating in graffiti culture involve the manly cogito: I risk there-

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fore I am. Graffiti itself is imbued with riskfrom being discovered by authorities and pun-
ished, to occasions of injury and sometimes even death. Status within graffiti culture is
gained by taking risks and hitting dangerous locations, which gains the individual writer or
crew further respect.
Territory is also an important part of the working-class males life, as it is central to their
identities and indicative of where they came from, and where they could go to (Canaan,
1996, p. 121). Territory is similarly important to the graffiti writer, especially the gang
writer, whose purpose it is to mark the territory of a gang. Notions of territory also serve to
establish a strong sense of community (Canaan). Working-class males may fight among
themselves, as graffiti writers compete with each other, and yet both groups are infused
with a strong sense of connectedness and community. Prominent graffiti authority Jeff Fer-
rell (1995-96) describes how these alternative communities bring graffiti writers a sense of
family, love and deep bonds, even as they cut across language, gender, racial, and class bar-
riers.
In Stiffed, Susan Faludi (1999) examined the shift in notions of what it means to be a
man that occurred with Americas shift toward a more corporate future. Industrial society
distanced fathers from their sons and put into place a peer culture, as fathers are replaced
as role models for their sons by the boys peers (Badinter, 1992). Thus an apprentice-type
relationship develops between young males as they join together under the rule of another
male who is slightly older, slightly stronger, or slightly brighter, a sort of older brother, the
leader who is admired and copied and whose authority is recognized (p. 91). This is sim-
ilar to what happens with the formation of crews in graffiti culture. This way of becoming
a man is that of an alternative to hegemonic masculinity, which asserts authority over other
men while the mentor system places men in command of a body of knowledge (Faludi,
1999). The masculinities emerging from Americas industrial past are versions that favour
inclusion and a sense of community, often with a mentor system (Faludi). The masculini-
ties represented by the corporate future, on the other hand, are evocative of the slave era in
that they are based on exclusion of privilege, individual performance and competition. Graf-
fiti(ed) masculinities take something from both these models.
Another aspect common to the experience of being a working-class man is to have ex-
pressed feelings that government policies constrained them and intruded on their lives
(Canaan, 1996, p. 117). Graffiti writers are also opposed to the structures, institutions and
ideologies that attempt to control their lives. Through the production of graffiti, they resist
the existing forms of power, social, legal and political control levelled against them, as well
as constructing alternative arrangements (Ferrell, 1995-96). One foci of graffitis resistance
is considered to be spatial control and the regulation of urban environments (Ferrell). Fer-
rell explores the ways in which the practitioners of youthful graffiti attempt to resist the
increasing segregation and control of urban environments and show how participants in the
graffiti underground undermine the efforts of legal and political authorities to control them
(p. 73). Graffiti disrupts the orderly latticework of authority (p. 79) that confines to pre-
arranges patterns of social and spatial isolation (Ferrell).
Modern cities are systematically fractured by ethnic, class, and consumer segregation
(Ferrell, 1995-96) and increasingly defined by the segregation and control of urban space
(Ferrell). For Johanna Garvey (1995, p. 108), the city can be seen as initially gendered
feminine, only to be filled in and thus conquered, to become a space of male power. It be-

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comes a male space: one of domination, hierarchy and conquest, a sprawling, showy space,
a full space (p. 108). Men appropriate the city and then fill in its space (p. 113). Of course,
modern graffiti is a writing that fills space (Fleming, 1997), authenticating hegemonic forms
of masculinity. At the same time, graffiti resists this idea of masculinity, as writers bomb or
tag on the symbols of the systems they opposelarge businesses, public buildings and such
(Ferrell), reducing the urban landscape to a sort of anarchy. Urban, public space is the site
for hegemonic masculinity, but dangerous masclinities are also seen to operate in the street.
The street is one of the spaces in which male youth are especially pathologizedespe-
cially if they are Black male youth, or young male graffiti writers. Uniformed masculini-
tiesthe police and security guards who serve and protectattempt to regulate these
damaged masculinities by maintaining spatial control and the dominance of hegemonic
masculinity.
Writers violate the citys spatial sorting by climbing fences and tagging private prop-
erty (Ferrell, 1995-96). Graffiti erodes the divisions between public and private space, re-
claiming public space for those who primarily inhabit it (Stewart, 1994), as well as those
masculinities who inhabit it. Graffiti raises questions of exclusion and inclusion regarding
space and race, class, gender, as well as versions of masculinity. In inscribing the landscape,
graffiti also rewrites it from the inside out, and interrupts the spaces between the different
arenas in which varieties of masculinity perform.
Graffiti not just resists but imposes its own order and values over those of the hegemonic
authorities. Graffiti writers often argue that it is ethical to write on spaces that have been
abandoned or poorly maintained (Stewart, 1994, p. 218). Social commentary often ac-
companies pieces (we are the sons of the ghetto and we will survive by Skeme, Spins
stop Koch and war is selfish death), and messages like Gregs we are unstoppable, we
are uncatchable, we are nasty and to the boys in blue, catch me if you can serve as re-
minders that public space is still public, and attempts to maintain hegemonic masculinity
through control of space and those who inhabit the segregated city will be disturbed.
Even though the realm of the public is considered that of the masculine, men are effec-
tively defined as a social group for whom only a limited range of forms of interaction are
valid within public space (Middleton, 1992, p. 120). Repressive masculine roles that im-
poverish men from expressing feminine traits are challenged by graffiti culture. Graffiti
writing allows men a public stage upon which to tell their stories. As Rev Suicide (cited in
Powers, 1999, p. 98) graffitied,

TO JOE Public YOU MIGHT BE ASKIN YOURSELF RIGHT NOW, WHAT IS

THIS SHIT ITS ABOUT A KID WHO IS JUST LIVIN HIS LIFE AND
TELLING HIS STORY, THE ONLY WAY HE KNOWS HOW.

Another of his pieces reads, I WAS BORN ON APRIL 17, 1967 IN BROOKLYN, NY.
THE HOSPITAL VICTORY MEMORIAL. Graffiti allows Rev Suicide (and many others,
including the oppressed) to tell their storiesstories that might not otherwise be visual-
ized. Whether as detailed as Revs, or a simple tag of someones namegraffiti is telling a
story. It is the story of a complexly woven masculinity that performs through graffiti writ-
ing and the culture surrounding it.
Greater divides of space are also crucial in informing the construction and performances
of masculinities in the graffiti scene. Devon D. Brewer (1992) informs us that in America,

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writers on the West coast are more likely to participate in legal graffiti projects than those
in New York. He attributes this to the differing histories and community responses in the re-
gions. Hip-hop graffiti on the East coast has had a longer history and more aggressive com-
munity response than its Western counterpartfacts that appear to have entrenched the
illegal focus of activities there and contributed to the outlaw ethos of New York writers.
Thus, for an East Coast writer, bombing illegally is evidence of a successful, undamaged
masculinity, as writers who do legal pieces are scorned. By not doing illegals you have no
right to refer to yourself as a graffiti writer or a participant of aerosol culture for in essence
you have ignored the raw principle of writinggetting up illegally, said one writer I spoke
with. Writers in California are less likely to associate illegals with a damaged masculin-
ity.
Thus it follows that the masculinities at work in the Australian scene should be different
from those operating in America. Not only because the two countries have had different
graffiti histories, but because they also have different histories of masculinity. America is
founded on injustice, its history is written in blood (Young, 1971), even though it was col-
onized by free and independent people who relocated there of their own accord. Australia
has built its house on quite a different foundation, and yet European settlement of Australia
began with the establishment of a penal colony. Informed by its British roots, Australia is
also affected by the overwhelming influence of America. Australian national identity is
marked by the conflicting politics of mateship and meritocracy.
Peter Looker (1994) argues that Australia, Britain and North America encompass a shared
economy of gender relations, although each country has local inflections. Whereas Ameri-
can masculinity has an ethos of masculine individualism (Lucas, 1996), Australian mas-
culinity accesses ideologies of mateship, characterized by obnoxious larrikinism, giving
your mates a hand, fierce loyalty, as well as a reckless element, enterprise, courage and
daring (Townsend, 1994). Mateship is a part of the human phenomenon of male bonding
(Townsend), and as one of the great Australian institutions (Townsend), it is a culture of
youthful self-congratulatory Aussie masculinity, which highlights standing up for oneself
and ones mates, against authority or anything else; physical prowess; and daring or excit-
ing escapades. To be successful in this culture is to be a legend (Walker, 1988). Mateship
is a code, a tribal thing, that appears to play a greater part in mens lives during adoles-
cence and early adulthood (Townsend, 1994, p. 214). It can be dominated by its less at-
tractive characteristicschauvinism and a booze-based, adolescent way of relating (p.
213). The ideals of mateship play an important role in both American and graffiti scenes,
and this is perhaps where the masculinities involved in graffiti scenes of both countries part
ways.
The masculinities involved in the graffiti scene are by no means coherent, however. The
homogenous appearances of these masculine performances are deceitful, and ignore the
complexities and disparities involved in the construction of these masculinities. Attitudes
toward female writers is one area in which these disparities are exposed. When asked why
they thought women did not have a stronger presence in contemporary hip hop, SPIEone
cited the usual (patriarchal) suspects and called for respect for females. Neonski replied:
cause theyre not strong. Writing isnt a womans thing. Its a messy, lonely art form with-
out much credit or acknowledgement (Spie, Poem, Neonski & Art Student, 2001a). For
Neonski, there appears to be something essentially male about writing.

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Just as essentialist notions that establish Black stereotypes and argue that Blacks are prone
to crime by their nature, some writers believe that graffiti writers possess qualities that fe-
males do not havestrength, the ability to endure loneliness and disregard for authority.
Hegemonic masculinity constructs the subordinate masculinity of the graffiti writer as dan-
gerous within the public sphere, who in turn subordinate females by also relegating them
to the private. MC Tash says,

another writer tried to tell me that graf isnt in a girls nature etc. Well it isnt
easy being a woman in the world of hip hop, yet we still manage to prove the fellaz
wrong in the form of dope walls and trains on our own all over the world. Well
all this sexism [and having babies] hasnt faze us coz international female pioneers
are still goin sick. (cited in MC Tash, Lotus & Cruel Die, 2001)

Lotus agreed with her: who said graf was for boys only anyway? Hip Hop is not about
racism or sexism, but within the egotistical graf scene a lot of guys are stuck in a time warp,
sticking with outdated notions such as all girls are toys etc (2001). Clearly, attitudes to-
wards women are not as clear-cut in the graffiti scene as they are in rap music.
Political, legal and religious authorities paint a picture of a damaged masculinity involved
in graffiti writing. An Australian National Conference on Graffiti Control in 1996 was told
of Toddbullied at school, he did not find his father easy to talk to. Jeremy was described
as having an unsettled home life, involved in primary school mischief and is now into drugs,
shoplifting and graffiti. He had injured himself quite badly while hitting (graffiting). Mark
was labelled as musical and enjoying drawing but teased by his father and unable to express
his sensitive side (National Conference on Graffiti Control, 1996). For all these boys graf-
fiti provides an outlet for their emotions, their sensitivity even. Something must be going
on that the majority of these young men seem to have problems with older boys and men.
These graffiti(ed) masculinities are quite obviously sick. They are perhaps not the once
dangerous masculinities of the subordinated male in a public space, but clearly, they will be
if left unchecked.
Who do you think the first New York graffiti writers were, Black or White? And before
answering, do you even think its important? Ask these questions to graffiti writers and one
is bound to get a sense of the diversity in graffiti culture. Neonski says, the first writers were
of all nationalities (Spie, Poem, Neonski & Art Student, 2001b). Juan Flores (1987, p. 582)
argues that most of the New York graffitists have been black and Puerto Rican youth, and
that some of the best subway artists are youths of Italian and other national origins. There
is clearly an important working-class basis to the graffiti movement that should not be over-
looked majority of the practitioners are black and Puerto Rican (p. 583). He does con-
cede however, that determining the relative ethnic sources of subway graffiti is the most
complicated of all (Flores). With few exceptions, this subculture featured black and His-
panic minorities in low-income neighbourhoods, says Lynn Powers (1996, p. 138). She
only has it half right. Ethnically, racially and culturally diverse, graffiti(ed) masculinities are
just as varied. Contemporary writers today are increasingly middle class, of European de-
scent and from suburbia. Yet these writers, perhaps once the embodiment of that elusive
hegemonic masculinity, draw from the same systems that the original writers employed
clearly of an inferior masculinity, whether it be class, economical or racially based. It is

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interesting that these boys wish to insert themselves in the discourses of the oppressed and
subordinated.
According to SPIEone, writin is the voice of the young and oppressed (Spie, Poem,
Neonski & Art Student, 2001b). Notions of class and race are important in this respect
not only are their concerns the concerns of the graffiti culture but graffiti is the signifier of
those oppressed through race and classeven if it is practiced by middle-class, suburban
youth. According to Ferrell (1995-96), increased physical control, severe legal restrictions
and militancy directed at graffiti writers by anti-graffiti activists and the authorities are met
by new forms of resistance, vigilance and militance on the part of graffiti writers. Writers
transform political pressure into personal and collective pleasure (p. 82) as increased il-
legality heightens the excitement involved (Ferrell). Thus the authorities amplify the mean-
ing and intensity of the very activity they work to suppress (Ferrell). Graffiti contributes to
alternative economic arrangements and underground economies (Ferrell). The underground
and alternative systems involved in hip-hop and graffiti culture point to the fact that, in the
face of a loss of meaning for mens roles and masculine identities (Looker, 1994, p. 154),
the men involved in these subcultures have formed new ideas of masculine identity and
what constitutes a successful masculine performance. Graffiti violates the citys ethnic seg-
regation by bringing together people of all races (Ferrell). By bombing on large businesses,
public buildings and other symbols of the system they oppose, writers make clear their re-
sistance to urban control (Ferrell), the segregation of masculine varieties, and the valorisa-
tion of hegemonic masculinity. Graffiti writers also construct their own aesthetic and value
systems. If we regard the power structures of society as masculine, then graffiti resists dom-
ination and control by hegemonic forms of masculinity as well.
In her study of graffiti, identity and gender, Nancy MacDonald (2002) writes that graffiti
allows men to create a more defined sense of their masculinity. Graffiti(ed) masculinities are
complex formations. Shadowing the masculine ideals of the colonizer, of hegemonic mas-
culinity, they also borrow from notions of subordinate and resistive masculinities. These
masculinities are also composed of both industrial and corporate ideals of masculinity. Local
and situational inflections aside, graffiti writerswhether from the hood or suburbia,
whether White or Blackdraw upon the same ideals in their masculine performance. Bor-
rowing from the masculine constructions of subordinated races and classes, they amalga-
mate these elements with those of hegemonic masculinity. Graffiti writing is just as much
about rivalry as it is about a system of apprenticeship and a network of compassionate
friendships that allows men to express themselves openly. It employs that sign of proper
training, discipline, control and knowledgegood handwriting and the written formand
places it in the discourse of criminality. Masculinity authority Peter West (1995, p. 4) says
that, we tell boys their lives must be risky, wild and aggressive. I do not suppose we
imagine they become graffiti writers.
The versions of masculinity that operate within the graffiti scene and the performance of
these masculinities are a legacy of its hip-hop heritage. Borrowing the techniques of sam-
pling employed by hip-hop music, graffiti(ed) masculinities are often composed of seem-
ingly disparate and complex components that are arranged to produce masculinities that
subvert as well as conform to dominant, hegemonic notions of masculinity. The production
and performance of graffiti(ed) masculinities are the result of a complex mix that samples
notions of class, race, violence, space, commodification, gender, resistance, and violence.

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The figure of the robot - so often used in hip-hop and graffiti imageryis not an image that
easily comes to mind when picturing graffiti(ed) masculinities. These are not roles confined
to a metal straightjacket, an unyielding and mechanical masculinity, but one that allows
men the complexities of the experiences and rituals they face everyday.

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