Publications and Research

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-10-2022

Abstract

This article explores the gender complexities of men caught between social power and powerlessness. Specifically, I consider the cases of Jewish men and gay men in the late modern West, two demographics with deep historic ties to both abjection and privilege. Such "in-between-ness” steers many, especially those who are white, cisgender, and/or otherwise privileged, toward what I term liminal complicity, a normative adaptation whereby men embrace manly ideals while disavowing femininity in themselves and others. I synthesize cultural, interactionist, and psychoanalytic literatures on stigma, boundaries, and gender practice to articulate liminal complicity as both an emotional retreat from stigmatization and a rational means of accruing status and redrawing social boundaries. I conduct a comparative-historical analysis of gendered discourses and practices at different historical junctures to show how analogous processes of (1) normative identification, (2) self-transformation, and (3) distinction from and (4) aggression toward feminized others enable historically subordinated men to elevate themselves without disrupting broader systems of domination.

Comments

This is the manuscript version of an article originally published in Men and Masculinities, available at https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X221098365

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