This article draws from critical discourse analysis to explore motifs in editorial information produced on images by the South African photographer Jock in postwar physique magazines aimed at (mostly white) gay readerships. The research shows that these recurrent narratives turned on homoerotic fantasies of Africa as a rural idyll for actualizing white masculinities suspended outside of modernity. Read against the backdrop of anxieties about the domestication (and possible effeminization) of American men at mid-century and the masculinization of gay culture at the same historical juncture, such photo-texts therefore met demands for the return of white men to “the wild”. More precisely, this aspirational ideal is discussed as historically framed via primitivism in relation to Jock’s photography, satisfying an appetite for representations of exotic, virile white men among American gay reader-tourists.
This article draws selectively on three cases of young heterosexual fathers to highlight nuances, complexities, and tensions that could complicate understandings of “caring masculinities” and contribute to the debate concerning caring masculinities, hegemony and domination. It suggests that there is a need to consider forms of domination beyond gender and notes that masculinities are dynamic and may therefore be enacted in different ways as men move across contexts. Considering these issues, as well as the discrepancies that may characterize men’s caring practices and discursive formations, can reveal inconsistencies that may challenge current understandings of caring masculinities as antithetical to hegemonic masculinity. To theoretically frame these tensions, the article brings caring masculinities and “hybrid masculinities” into critical dialogue.
Research shows how sexualized violence is moving online and becoming digitalized; however, little is known about the relationship between the manosphere and sexualized violence. This paper aims to explore how content with and about sexualized violence manifests in the Danish manosphere and advance our understanding of conditions conducive to this. Based on a (n)etnographic study in the Danish manosphere, the paper shows that content with and about sexualized violence is present in two ways: Firstly, in leak communities, where sharing sexual imagery of women without consent seems governed by a feeling rule of misogyny. Secondly, in men’s rights communities where critique of #MeToo and the consent-based rape law seems governed by a feeling rule of himpathy. With the concept cathartic shaming the paper suggests how distinct communities may share the use of ridicule and condemnation of women to reduce feelings of humiliation, shame, injustice and unfairness rooted in social expectations about hegemonic, heterosexual masculinity.
