"Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity"
Thought that HOF would appreciate this. The article is by Michael S. Kimmel, from 2004. He's speaking directly to other men here. A few excerpts:
We (men) are under the constant careful scrutiny of other men. Other men watch us, rank us, grant our acceptance into the realm of manhood. Manhood is demonstrated for other men's approval. It is other men who evaluate the performance. Literary critic David Leverenz (1991) argues that "ideologies of manhood have functioned primarily in relation to the gaze of male peers and male authority" (769). Think of how men boast to one another of their accomplishments-from their latest sexual conquest to the size of the fish they caught-and how we constantly parade the markers of manhood-wealth, power, status, sexy women-in front of other men, desperate for their approval.
That men prove their manhood in front of other men is both a consequence of sexism and one of its chief props. "Women have, in men's minds, such a low place on the social ladder of this country that it's useless to define yourself in terms of a woman," (says) noted playwright David Mamet.
"What men need is men's approval." Women become a kind of currency that men use to improve their ranking on the masculine social scale. (Even those moments of heroic conquest of women carry, I believe, a current of homosocial evaluation.) Masculinity is a homosocial enactment. We test ourselves, perform heroic feats, take enormous risks, all because we want other men to grant us our manhood.
snip:
Homophobia is a central organizing principle of our cultural definition of manhood. Homophobia is more than the irrational fear of gay men, more than the fear that we might be perceived as gay. "The word "f-ggot" has nothing to do with homosexual experience or even with fears of homosexuals," writes David Leverenz. "It comes out of the depths of manhood: a label of contempt for anyone who seems sissy, untough, uncool" (1986, 455). Homophobia is the fear that other men will unmask us, emasculate us, reveal to us and the world that we do not measure up, that we are not real men. We are afraid to let other men see that fear. Fear makes us ashamed, because the recognition of fear in ourselves is proof to ourselves that we are not as manly as we pretend, that we are, like the young man in a poem by Yeats, "one that ruffles feathers in a manly pose for all his timid heart." Our fear is the fear of humiliation. We are ashamed to be afraid.
Shame leads to silence-the silence that keeps other people believing that we actually approve of the things that are done to women, to minorities, to gays and lesbians in our culture. The frightened silence as we scurry past a woman being hassled by men on the street. That furtive silence when men make sexist or racist jokes in a bar. That clammy-handed silence when guys in the office make gay-bashing jokes. Our fears are the sources of our silences, and men's silence is what keeps the system running..."
Full article:
http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/genderandmedia/assignments/kimmeletal001.pdf
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