Male emotionality: ‘boys don’t cry’ versus ‘it’s good to talk’

ABSTRACT

In this article, male affect within intimate relationships is examined as a product of the tension between two competing discourses: ‘it’s good to talk’ versus ‘boys don’t cry’. Central to this tension is how men perform ‘manliness’ within intimate relationships, a space where there is pressure to perform affect and emotionally participate. Using in-depth interview data (N = 16) from Scotland, I examine how far and in what ways emotions can be boundary breaking within performances of masculinity. It appears that men are drawn to being emotionally open, but find this difficult. A pervasive sense of vulnerability rooted in their identification of affect with ‘weakness’ underpins their difficulties. Accounts of reflexivity around affective moments within intimate contexts highlight the complex ways cultural discourses are negotiated. Through recognising affect as socially constructed in interaction, this paper considers how men manage their emotional lives and perform emotion work while navigating the boundaries between traditional, hegemonic performances of masculinity and more emotionally expressive ways of being manly. The concluding discussion examines how these arguments connect with debates in critical studies of masculinities and processes of social change.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• masculinity
• emotion
• couple relationships
• social change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Fiona McQueen is a lecturer in Sociology within the Social Science department in the School of Applied Science at Edinburgh Napier University, UK. She has a PhD in Sociology and her current research interests involve gender, emotion, gender equality and gender ideology.

ORCID

Fiona McQueen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0167-7761

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council and conducted at the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR) (M84722H).