‘Proper masculinities’ and the fear of feminisation in modern Cyprus: university students talk about homosexuality and gendered subjectivities

Abstract

The present article attempts to pay attention to the ways in which a group of young Cypriot students engage in the construction of conventional notions of masculinities through the negation and the fear of homosexual desire. Drawing on interviews with 12 male and female university students, I argue that many young men go through complicated processes of anxiety and fear in order to achieve a masculine heterosexual career and to prove that they are ‘real men’. In that way the male participants I interviewed expressed the idea that in the cultural space of Cyprus masculine subject positions are the most powerful ones. The participants commented on the unthinkable sexual choice of loving someone from the same sex and concluded that choosing to stay in Cyprus and live a gay life would be very painful if not unthinkable. The article concludes that gender anxiety in Cyprus is expressed through the abjection of homosexuality.

Keywords:

• gendered subjectivities
• gender anxiety
• abjection

Notes

1. Subjection, according to Butler (1997) in her discussion on Foucauldian subjection, refers to the making of a subject, understood literally as the principle of regulation according to which the subject is produced or formulated. For a further discussion, see Butler (1997, 84).

2. The word abjection, according to Butler (1993), derives from the Latin word ab‐jicere which means to cast off, away, or out. It implies a degraded or cast out status of the subject within the social, something which threatens the dissolution of the subject itself. Additionally, Kristeva uses the term of the abject to talk about the first separations of the child of its mother where the subject does not yet exist but is separating from the other, in abjection. For a further discussion, see Kristeva (2002, 157).

3. For a detailed review, see Onoufriou (2002).

4. Hall (1997) explains that, through discourse, Foucault emphasised cultural meanings and shared understanding with a main concern on historical specificities and relations of power. Foucault asserted that the subject is produced within discourse and it is subjected to the power of discourses. Specifically, Hall explains that by discourse Foucault meant ‘a group of statements which provide a language for talking about – a way of representing the knowledge about – a particular topic at a particular historical moment’ (1997, 44).

5. Hollway (1995) describes ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ or ‘heteropatriarchy’ as systems in which women are represented as having no meaningful access to power as men do. She argues that power asymmetry of gender differentiation is a position that people take up in terms of their interest in gaining enough power in relation to the other to protect their vulnerable selves.

6. Butler (1997) explains how gender formation can be seen as a melancholic process. Cultural prohibitions, according to Butler, foreclose homosexual love resulting a melancholic mourning for unlived possibilities. Therefore, as Butler points out, the heterosexual man who insists upon the coherence of his heterosexuality will claim that he never loved and lost another man. For a further discussion, see Butler (1997, 138).