Masculinity on ice: masculinity, friendships, and sporting relationships in midlife and older adulthood

ABSTRACT

While researchers have established that young men’s sporting friendships are often structured by violence, minimal intimacy, competition, and the degradation of all things feminine (Messner, 1992b), we know relatively little about sporting relationships between older men. Drawing on interviews with and ethnographic research of older male hockey players in two Canadian cities, this article finds that while those in late midlife (ages 54–71) continue to enact patterns of male relationships associated with younger men, those in later life (ages 71–82) break with these masculine patterns. Instead, their team relationships involve joking about themselves in the locker room (instead of mocking others) and an ethic of care. Many defined true or close friendships as those which extended beyond sport. These findings suggest that men’s alignment with the dominant sporting masculinity of the young is not static over the life course and may wane in certain arenas as men reach later life.

KEYWORDS:

• Friendship
• ageing
• masculinity
• hockey
• sport
• life course

Men’s friendships with other men are an important site where men express masculinity – or ‘do gender’ (Messner, 1992b; West & Zimmerman, 1987). These friendships take place in a myriad of settings, often changing with age. Because of this, men’s friendships provide an instructive venue for thinking about how men express themselves as men and how this might change over the life course. In one of the only studies that explicitly focuses on men’s sporting friendships qua friendships, gender scholar Michael Messner (1992b) highlighted the significance of men’s sporting friendships, demonstrating how young men reproduced the gender order through their athletic friendships with other boys and men. Although empirically dated, Messner’s focus on the gender expressions of young men was in line with much of the foundational work on hegemonic masculinity and more contemporary scholarship focusing on its expression (e.g. Spector-Mersel, 2006). Yet it is also important to be attentive to the experiences of men beyond young adulthood (King et al., 2021; Spector-Mersel, 2006; Springer & Mouzon, 2019). Doing this aids our understanding of how sports masculinity operates, showing us how many old(er) men support a dominant gender order that ultimately works to marginalize them (see King et al., 2021; Thompson & Langendoerfer, 2016), but also how some break from it (Allain, 2022). Sport provides an interesting site to examine gendered friendships and their relationship to changing gender expressions across the life course, as it is one of few activities that boys and men might maintain from childhood, through youth, into adulthood, and sometimes even into old age. Within the Canadian popular imagination, it is team sports like hockey that are deeply associated with the enduring friendships of men and boys (Machtinger, 2018).

Using men’s sporting relationships as a marker of masculinity, I demonstrate how men’s enactments of masculinity may change over time, becoming less aligned with the competitive sporting masculinities of young men and boys. Situated at the nexus of gender, sport, age, and friendship, I examine how some men express masculine identities related to their age. Using qualitative interviews with two groups of men – one group in their 50s and 60s and the other in their 70s and older – I investigate the gendered meanings that men beyond midlife bring to their sporting relationships with other men. I argue for the value of examining gender expressions amongst old(er) men, which may differ from those of younger men in their particular social contexts. I attend to how the older participants’ understandings of sporting friendships have shifted from late midlife to old age, as they seem to break with the dominant meanings of friendship associated with the hockey institutions of earlier-life men and boys. Instead, they develop and privilege new standards of intimacy. Using sporting relationships as a marker to examine these changes, I show that the old men here have a more nuanced understanding of friendship, wherein they enjoy homosocial relations with other men but do not characterize these as friendships per se. Moreover, they do not engage in activities associated with young men’s sport, such as the degradation of women, the valorization of violence, or aggressive competition. In this regard, they create new ways of doing later-life sporting masculinity.

Review of the nexus of gender, ageing and friendship

For scholars examining social expressions of masculinity, Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity has been fundamental (Pringle, 2005). For Connell (1987), who conceptualizes gender ‘as a process rather than a thing’ (p. 140), hegemonic masculinity, although not practiced by most men, is defined as ‘the currently most honoured way of being a man’ (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005, p. 832). She understands that hegemonic masculinity maintains the gender order and is constructed in contrast to and in dialogue with various forms of femininity and marginalized masculinities (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005, p. 84). According to Connell and Messerschmidt (2005), non-hegemonic expressions of masculinity often take the form of complicit masculinity – an alignment with the gender order that privileges men and hegemonic masculinity. As Messerschmidt (2018) describes, ‘Complicit masculinities do not actually embody hegemonic masculinity yet through practices realize some of the benefits of unequal gender relations and consequently when practiced help sustain hegemonic masculinity’ (emphasis in original, p. 29).

Since its inception, Connell’s work has been subject to reformulation and critique from various scholars (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). Scholars have questioned if hegemonic masculinity, as Connell conceptualizes it, is a truly hegemonic process. If it is, they ask, then why are so few scholars attentive to the challenges from counter-hegemonic forces (e.g. Demetriou, 2001; Donaldson, 1993; Howson, 2012)? Yang (2020), for example, asserts that Connell’s argument that hegemonic masculinity ensures a gender order supporting patriarchy runs counter to a gender hegemony that is open to challenge, critique, adjustment, and change. Yang (2020) argues that when hegemonic masculinity moves to a definition focused on reinforcing inequality, it ‘fixes hegemonic masculinity to the personality types of a group of men. Moreover, it is defeatist to assume dominant masculinity always legitimates men’s power’ (p. 321).

Yang asks that researchers be more attentive to Gramsci’s understanding of hegemony, suggesting that ‘instead of zooming into internal qualities of one masculinity, we should zoom out and interrogate its relation to other masculinities’ (p. 323). By following Gramsci’s work, Yang suggests that we can see how social relations between dominant and subordinate groups produce gender orders, as subordinate masculinities come to support and challenge dominant gender expressions through various processes of force and consent. This produces a gender hierarchy where those in subordinate positions may come to sustain (or challenge) the gender order. In this way, hegemonic masculinity is the leading form of masculinity, or, in Yang’s words, ‘a box fixed on top of a ladder’ – although the contents of that box are not themselves fixed (p. 325). This work is attentive to Yang’s critique, examining two different forms of hockey masculinity at two different points in the life course, and noting how they align with and differ from leading hockey masculinity – a masculinity connected to intense competition, violence, aggression, and misogyny, aligned with institutional power and supported by lauded cultural practices (see Allain, 2008).

It is important then to understand the forms that hegemonic sporting masculinities take, particularly in Canadian men’s hockey at this particular historical moment. First, many commercial sports are connected to hegemonic masculinities that celebrate the ascendency of men, aggression, and the degradation of women and femininity. As Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) argue, sport is an important field for producing hegemonic exemplars and securing the gender order (p. 846). Second, scholars have widely documented the many ways that men’s collision and combat sports (those most marketable and widely supported) produce celebrated forms of masculinity associated with physical dominance, aggression and even violence (Allain, 2008; Cooky et al., 2015; Gee, 2009). Allain (2008) has documented what she calls hegemonic Canadian hockey masculinity, showing that this celebrated form is premised on physical aggression, fighting, sacrificing one’s body and the debasement of femininity. She demonstrates how this form of hockey masculinity is celebrated throughout Canadian men’s and boys’ hockey, and is reproduced through hockey institutions, mass media and the enactment of masculinity by players – often via violence, coercion and exclusion.

Like sport, friendship is also an important site for the enactment of gender. Friendship intersects with social structures and relations, especially gender and age, as well as social institutions like sport, locating it squarely in the realm of the social (Paine in Blatterer, 2015, p. 88). Studies examining how gender structures men’s friendships show that they are part of the performative aspects of ‘doing gender’ (Levy, 2005; Migliaccio, 2009). In the past, public attitudes about friendship saw men’s friendships as more authentic than women’s, because they had easier access to fraternal clubs and other social institutions (Blatterer, 2015). More recently, these attitudes have changed, with homosocial relationships between women understood as more authentic and intimate, and relationships between men understood as shallower and lacking intimacy (Migliaccio, 2014, p. 121). Focusing mostly on those in midlife and younger, scholars have found that men’s friendships more often involve activity (or ‘doing together’) than the sharing of intimate bonds, with some scholars conceptualizing these relationships as superficial, particularly when compared with those amongst women (see Levy, 2005, pp. 200–202).

Lewis (1978) argues that the differences between men’s and women’s friendships lead men to develop friendships based in activities like sport (p. 114). More recently, Migliaccio (2014) finds that men’s friendships are variable but often focused on mutual pastimes (p. 142). The men in his study rarely broke with social conventions – especially those that might be understood as feminine (i.e. exhibiting attachment, intimacy and sharing) – limiting their ability to create close friendships.

This work points to the ways that gender structures men’s friendships, particularly the friendships of Western white men in early and midlife. Levy (2005) finds that men who expressed genders that were hegemonically complicit – defined as the privileging of ‘hierarchies’, ‘the subordination of women’, and the disavowal of all things feminine (p. 213) – were the least able to have satisfying and intimate friendships. Although many midlife men in Levy’s study had close friendships, they were those who ‘resisted’ hegemonic complicity (p. 221), while men who aligned with it experienced fewer close friendships.

Like gender, age structures friendships, and like scholars theorizing gender, critical ageing scholars are increasingly conceptualizing age as something one does rather than is (Wanka & Gallistl, 2018). Pahl and Pevalin (2005) find that friendships change over the life course, with those in later life putting a higher priority on close family relationships. Likewise, Blieszner and Ogletree (2017) argue that age is an important factor in friendships, asserting that older adults privilege close ties over casual ones (pp. 58–59). Siebert et al. (1999) establish that old(er) people choose their friends in such a way as to support their sense of self. They suggest that ‘friends who knew each other “back then” continue to contribute to identities as competent peers’ (p. 530) (see Lewittes, 1989).

As in earlier life, gender plays a key role in the ways that older adults understand and structure their friendships. Scholars have found that later-life women have more friends than men (Fischer & Oliker, 1983; Greif, 2009). They attribute this to structural factors, including differences in life expectancy (i.e. men tend to die at a younger age), and the loss of friends from work after retirement (see also Greif, 2009). Despite the challenges associated with maintaining later-life friendships, Shaw et al. (2014) and Greif (2009) find that later-life men value intimacy in their friendships, concluding that ‘older men’s friendships are rich and rewarding and offer great benefits and support in later life’ (p. 50). Thompson and Whearty (2004) also find that men desire closeness in their lives. While some of their research participants produced this covertly (i.e. through participating in activities together) and others privileged more overt forms of intimacy, those who preferred friendships tied to doing activities together were more satisfied with their later-life friendships. The authors explain this by linking it to social expectations related to normative masculinity, where being together was simply enough for these men.

Importantly, understandings of friendship are deeply embedded in structures of age and gender. Recognizing how these relationships shift through late midlife and into old age helps us better understand and conceptualize masculinities as fluid. As my research demonstrates, men’s enactment of masculinity in their sporting friendships does change over the life course and appears to break, at least partially, with hegemonic sporting masculinity. The old men discussed here privilege friendships beyond the hockey arena, value those with different abilities, and critique others who maintain a hegemonic sporting masculinity that devalues women or favours an overly competitive sports environment.

Methods

Data collection

This work stems from a larger project examining later-life men’s involvement in ice hockey, looking to highlight the intersections of Canadian national identity, masculinities, and ageing. It involved ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two Canadian cities, each with a high proportion of older residents – one small city located in Atlantic Canada and the other a mid-sized city in central Canada. The ethnographic fieldwork saw me spending time in both cities observing men as they played hockey, and speaking with family members, players, league officials, and others while I watched games and took field notes. This work was much more systematic for the group in central Canada, where I spent six weeks watching teams play their morning games twice a week. For the players in Atlantic Canada, I attended several old-timers hockey games for players over 45 at one local arena.

The ethnographic fieldwork helped me establish familiarity with the research field and the participants. I developed a deep knowledge of how older hockey-playing men engaged with one another and how sport and gender structured these relationships. Although I do not explicitly cite my fieldnotes here, they helped me obtain a more nuanced picture of the research field (see Nowell et al., 2017).

As part of this field work, I facilitated in-person, semi-structured interviews at various locations, including cafés, libraries, shopping centres, and local hockey arenas, with 26 older hockey-playing men. The men ranged in age from 54 to 82 years. They were white and ostensibly straight. Many working-class men participated in this research. The first group of 18 men, living in Atlantic Canada, had a mean age of 65 years (54 to 71 years) and played hockey in several different leagues. A couple of players played in a league devoted to men in later life (over the age of 55 years), some played in daytime mixed gender and age leagues, and nine participated in competitive old-timers hockey leagues designed for men over the ages of 35 or 45 years.¹ The second group of eight men were older (71 to 82 years old, with a mean age of 75.4 years) and played hockey in a mid-sized city in central Canada, in a league designed for older men, with their specific division accommodating men over the age of 70 years, the oldest players in the league.

I recruited participants through league officials and some snowball sampling, where participants forwarded others’ names and contact information. On one occasion I addressed a team directly, explaining the project and asking if anyone would like to participate. I do not know how many individuals decided not to participate and cannot say how this process of self-selection may have influenced these findings, but league officials reported that the players were enthusiastic and recruitment for this project was easy. Given those who approached me unprompted in the arenas, or who sat talking as they waited for their own games, it seemed that participants found speaking about their experiences as later-life athletes enjoyable.

These men were asked broad, open-ended questions about their participation in hockey over their life course. I generally began interviews by asking the men to tell me about their experiences as hockey players, starting when they were young and continuing to the present. In response to this question, men often spoke for a long time, cataloguing the ways that hockey was a part of their life – usually since childhood; describing the meanings they associated with hockey; and explaining how these meanings had changed through their life course. As I listened to their answers, I asked follow-up questions, highlighting issues associated with gender, ageing, and the body. After just a few interviews, it became clear that friendship, comradery, and sociability were important to their understandings of the game and the pleasure they found therein. As a result, I began asking specific questions about friendships, examining the depths of their hockey relationships.

Data analysis

I conducted thematic analysis on the 26 interviews, beginning with a close read of the interview transcripts. I structured this analysis according to the process set out by Nowell et al. (2017), who advise qualitative researchers to undertake a sequence of stages to enhance the trustworthiness of their findings. This sequence involves (a) ‘familiarizing yourself with your data’; (b) ‘generating initial codes’; (c) ‘searching for themes’; (d) ‘reviewing themes’; and (e) ‘defining and naming themes’. After generating descriptive and precise initial codes for the data, I grouped the codes together into broad explanatory research themes that adequately captured the issues I wished to address in this work: ageing, gender, and embodiment. Finally, I reviewed and refined these themes, examining codes related to sociability (including friendships and family), masculinities (including locker room banter, relationships between men and women, and on-ice play), and the body (ageing, injury, and pain).

Findings

As I carried out this research, mentions of friendship arose unexpectedly, with players spontaneously speaking about hockey relationships during both casual discussion and formal interviews. I noticed that men in the younger research group (i.e. those in Atlantic Canada), who played hockey with younger players (mainly in old-timers hockey leagues), appeared to understand the relationships they forged through sport differently than the players in the league specifically designed for the old (i.e. the men in central Canada playing in the 70+ division). Although the players generally lived in different cities, geographic or cultural differences between the regions did not appear to account for this difference, as the older men in the younger Atlantic Canadian cohort tended to align more with the attitudes of the older athletes in central Canada. These differences were even more apparent when athletes left old-timers hockey for less competitive leagues. To highlight these differences, I analyse the younger and older groups separately in the sections that follow. When I refer to the older players, I am speaking about the players from central Canada, unless otherwise stated. Conversely, when I reference the younger players, I am speaking about the players from Atlantic Canada.

The younger players: the importance of late-midlife sporting relationships

Given the importance of homosocialibility in men’s sporting spaces, it is not surprising that each man interviewed for this project found team relations and comradery to be important features of his hockey-playing life. The men in the younger group described with remarkable frequency the importance of the relationships developed through hockey, and explained that those relationships contributed greatly to their love of the game and the pleasure that they found within it. Jim (65), a player who competed in his hometown over-35 hockey division, noted that he played ‘not only for the hockey … [but for] the social aspect of it too’. Mark (54), a player in the over-45 division, agreed, stating, ‘I would have to say that half, if not all of the players, play first and foremost because of the team’. Likewise, Norman (66), who started a masters league so players could continue beyond old-timers hockey, commented on his relationships within the game:

I just know them through the game. I know we bump into each other once in a while and we have chats and, you know. If it’s in the summer, we’ll say, ‘Oh, we’ll see you tomorrow morning at six for conditioning’ (laughs) and all that stuff. Or maybe we’ll see [them] at the pub tonight … . Brad and Mike, I’ve known them for years, so they are friends. Yeah, and people I would have never known. You know you strapped on a pair of skates and you get to know these people … . And that’s a good thing.

Like the young men that Messner (1992a) interviewed in his work on sporting masculinities, the late-midlife (or younger) men interviewed here privileged the importance of these relationships and described them as a key feature of team sport. In the words of Les (71), who played in different leagues five to six times a week, ‘The social aspect of it [is] probably more important than anything else’.

The younger players: the depth of late-midlife sporting relationships

The men in this group frequently described these relationships using the language of friendship, often commenting on the closeness of their hockey teammates. For example, Fred (68) considered those he played with ‘good, great friends’, remarking that after many years, these men ‘remain[ed] good friends’. Fred believed that ‘the friendships that you form [in hockey are] the most important thing’. He went on to describe how family relationships were more intimate but that hockey relationships were second to family, offering a network of men who were there for one another. Echoing Fred, Denis (60) ranked his hockey-playing peers second to his family in terms of closeness, commenting that ‘obviously your family life is a lot more important’ but ‘the dynamics of the teams, they are incredible’. François (61) used the language of ‘close friendships’ to describe the relationships he had with his teammates, while Peter (66) explained that his relationships with his teammates were ‘very close’, clarifying that during post-game beers players frequently sought advice about personal troubles, including ‘marital problems’ and ‘family issues’.

Despite the rhetoric of closeness used by many of the younger interview participants and Peter’s assertion that players regularly discussed personal issues with their teammates, I discovered, upon closer examination, that these relationships often lacked depth and intimacy. As Thompson and Whearty (2004) found, the closeness in these relationships was ‘covert’ and based on the act of being and doing together instead of sharing deeper forms of intimacy based on emotional bonds. As Mark (54) explained, ‘It’s probably related to … the male tendency to … not expose yourself too much’. He continued, ‘We do talk about what’s going on in our lives, but if someone is having trouble in their relationships at home like that, they probably wouldn’t bring it up with the team’. Andrew (67), another old-timers player, demonstrated the contradictions in these relationships, explaining that the social part of the game was its most important feature. He described his relationships with two or three of his teammates as ‘close’, as they had played together for decades. However, when pushed to speak further on the depth of these relationships, Andrew stated with an aura of confusion, ‘Uh, it (pause), it’s all, I guess, centred on (pause) on hockey’. The men desired closeness in their lives but here they produced that closeness through activity. Relationships among the younger group of men were structured largely by doing things together and not through bonds of sharing. In the words of François (61), the intimacy produced through these hockey relationships was ‘mostly superficial’. Similarly, although Stacy (64) felt the language of ‘superficial’ was ‘too harsh’, he explained that ‘for the most part, what goes on in people’s lives [is] totally unknown’.

Messner (1992a) notes of early life sporting friendships, ‘Lurking just below the surface of this “family” rhetoric … lies intense, often cutthroat competition’ (p. 89). This focus on competition was present in some of the cases here. Although many players spoke of the importance of fun and comradery, more than one man described how his relationships with his teammates were compromised by a desire to win. Greg (68), for example, felt deep ‘comradery … in the dressing room’ but found that ‘on the ice, it gets competitive’. He continued, ‘It gets serious. It gets in your face’. Mark (54) explained that his team had a coach who was ‘cantankerous as all get out’. The coach was renowned for pouting when the team performed poorly and sparking competitive tensions amongst teammates. Denis (60) clarified that although he was close with his teammates, ‘Some guys [on the team] can be pretty rough if they’ve played high level [hockey]’, hurling verbal (and sometime physical) abuse at less skilled teammates and opponents. Although some participants were critical of players who were too competitive, others – such as Jim (65) and Mark – valued hockey rivalries and pushing themselves and others to their limits. In the words of Mark, ‘The social stuff … takes priority, although the competition certainly is there and … we like to win’.

This competitive attitude played out almost exclusively in the younger old-timers leagues comprised mostly of middle-aged and some late-middle-aged players. They often excluded older men from the teams when they were no longer able to contribute on the ice, even when they had played with the team for years. For example, Fred (68) had been asked to leave his old-timers team because his teammates felt his skills were slipping. Yet there was a disconnect between his understanding of these relationships and his team’s treatment of him:

You do strike up a lifelong friendship through [these activities], and I have through hockey … . Those friendships where you support each other on and off the ice, through thick and thin, and you know, everybody goes through hardships. And those comrades, those comrades, those friendships come through, and you can’t put a price on that.

Competitive attitudes align with the leading forms of hockey masculinity frequently celebrated in young men’s competitive leagues, which privilege being the best and winning, often through aggression, exclusion and sometimes violence (Allain, 2008). Here we see similar attitudes supported by some men in later midlife, either explicitly, through their celebrations of competitive (often aggressive) hockey that devalued and degraded older and less skilled players, or implicitly, through their continued participation in these leagues. As King et al. (2021) and Levy (2005) point out, middle-aged men appear to align with and support hegemonic gender expressions, even when it seems to be against their own self-interest. As illustrated by Fred’s story of being asked to leave his team (a story that was also mentioned by several other participants), men may justify their own marginalization on their hockey teams as they age, supporting features associated with the hockey masculinity of younger men, such as intense competition (see Robidoux, 2001).

The younger men: late-midlife relationships and the locker room

Within the culture of middle-aged hockey, locker room sociability seemed to focus on what Messner (2002) describes in the culture of boys’ sports as ‘cut fighting’: a form of competitive social engagement where boys and men attempt to cut each other down through ‘verbal sparring’ (p. 33). Although this relationship creates a closeness amongst some, it also disciplines players into conformity and can produce in groups and out groups (Harvey, 1999). Messner explains that boys develop and maintain their dominance over other boys through their ability to insult one another in front of an ‘audience’ (p. 34). This form of discourse symbolically debases those who are weak, centring a particular kind of masculine expression. These insults frequently centre around the degradation of traits associated with femininity (pp. 32–38).

Because cut fights are embedded in the dominant culture of the boys’ hockey locker room, a space where almost all the men here first learned what it meant to be hockey players, teasing and joking appeared to be central to homosocial bonding in this space. Greg (68) called the locker room environment ‘buddyship and bullshit’, and many others spoke about the culture of ‘teasing’ that took place therein. Jim (65) explained locker room activities: ‘I used to call them cut fights … . It’s always good fun. Nothing, nothing hurtful … “what’d you make that stupid play for?” Everyone knows what it is’. Mark (54) explained, ‘So these stories are told in the dressing room, and they’re told repeatedly, particularly the ones that are funny … somebody is … generally embarrassed … . So it’s the stories that keep us together’. Les (63), a devoted old-timers player, summed it up, stating that they ‘rib’ and ‘razz each other continually’. Linking this jocular culture to friendship, he claimed, ‘So really, it’s just like a whole bunch of really good friends’.

Aligned with the work of Clarke and Lefkowich (2018), who found that strength, leadership and sexuality were ‘hallmarks’ of normative masculinity, locker room jokes here sometimes centred on the physical prowess of the men and their capacity to play the game well, but they also featured what players called ‘politically incorrect’ language (Mark, 54), gossip (François, 61), cut talk, and other troubling exchanges. Reg (62) confirmed that the locker room talk of his younger days, one that degraded women, faded as men aged, explaining, ‘When some guys are younger, they might be very less respectful of women’. Despite this, several players mentioned that sexist conversations about women and sex were still part of the culture of the hockey locker room for old-timers hockey. For example, Sandy (61), a professional artist who said he had difficulty fitting in with his more athletic teammates, described some of the challenges with the locker room, explaining that it was ‘kind of a … safe zone where you can let your hair down and not worry about saying something that is politically incorrect’. He clarified, ‘You know there are some sexist (stammers), there are some sex things’. Mark (54) recounted an exchange where his teammates ribbed him for missing a team function in order to spend time with his wife. Degrading his masculinity, his teammates teased that it was his wife ‘making [him] stay home’. While some commented that sexist attitudes towards women had faded as they aged – perhaps reflecting normative changes related to socially acceptable sexist discourse as well as changes in participants’ positions in the life course – some still demonstrated that old habits die hard, as certain men used the fraternal locker room space to demonstrate masculine prowess over both women and other men. These various styles of locker room discourse produced the supremacy of physically active men, showcased masculine privilege, and insulated them from more intimate conversations with their hockey-playing peers.

Many of the qualities expressed by these late-midlife hockey players seemed to align with dominant expressions of hockey masculinity (Allain, 2008), particularly the deprecation of the old, the celebration of physical prowess and competitive edge, and the sometimes-sexist locker room talk. These findings align with others’ work on competitive men’s sports cultures (see MacDonald, 2018; Messner, 2002). They also align with King et al. (2021), who find that the stories of middle-aged men (aged 42–61) demonstrate hegemonic complicity. They catalogue the ways their participants showed:

Collusive support for linked ideals of gender and age, in which advancing age threatens masculinity; marginal status in old age; and consent, expressed here as acceptance of (at least their own responsibility for) the marginal status that they will someday have. (emphasis in original, p. 8)

Their work demonstrates that men in midlife internalized ageism and were complicit in what would ultimately become their subordinate status when they reached old age.

In spite of this, those who had moved away from old-timers hockey, often due to their advanced age, appeared to distance themselves from masculine gender expressions tied, in part, to cut fighting, aggressive competition, and the devaluation of women. Stacy (64), who played drop-in hockey twice a week in an intergenerational league, noted a change in locker room culture that occurred with age: ‘When I first started playing with this crowd … in my mid-thirties … the primary discussion in the dressing room … was hockey and women’. He explained that this style of sexist talk continued until he was about 60 years old. However, he commented that as he edged towards 65, ‘I’ve noticed in the last, I don’t know five years, the primary discussion is now hockey and golf’, remarking that it was ‘a sad reflection of where we are in life’. Likewise, Reg (62), who played in a masters league for players over 55, said, ‘There’s a lot of silly talk when you’re a young guy that there might be more discussions about women, or something … . I just find [that in later life] they’re more respectful’. As men moved from late midlife to late(r) life, they appeared to embrace different expressions of masculinity. These attitudes, as seen through their expectations of late(r)-life friendships, appeared to be less complicit with hegemonic masculinity, expressing a late(r)-life sporting masculinity that affirmed relationships beyond the rink and avoided the objectification of women.

The older players: the depth of later-life sporting relationships

Like the late middle-aged (i.e. the younger group of men in this study), the late(r)-life men I interviewed also found joy in the sociability of hockey and valued the time spent with men their own age, but they nonetheless contended that these relationships were not close friendships and bore little resemblance to their relationships with family. Nevertheless, the men routinely commented on the importance of interpersonal relationships amongst the players on the team. Elmer (80), a retired social worker, told me that he ‘enjoy[ed] the guys’, maintaining, ‘I mean, if it hadn’t been for hockey … I don’t know if I would know a quarter of the people that I know’. Clyde (73), a retired labourer, remarked that ‘the comradery is really something’, comparing hockey to the masonic lodge and finding the relationships formed in the locker room much more rewarding. Amos (71) called his team a ‘fellowship’. He explained that as one of the younger men on his team, he often set others up to score goals, saying that his ‘reward’ for this act of caring was the time he spent in ‘the dressing room’.

Although all the players seemed to value these encounters – and some had developed close relationships beyond the dressing room with teammates – only two players called their relationships with men on the team ‘friendships’. Jerome (71), the youngest of this group, stated, ‘I enjoyed playing, and I enjoyed the guys, and I have a lot of fun’. He added, ‘[I] met a lot of guys too, eh? A lot of friends’. Bernard (79) also called his teammates friends, saying, ‘We’ve been friends for years. The guys I’m playing with now, I’ve played with for … 35–40 years’. Bernard explained that these ‘friendships’ transcended the hockey arena, with the players meeting regularly over the summer months for barbeques, fishing trips and overnight excursions to his cottage.

Most of the men in this group, however, made more careful determinations about what made a real friendship. Despite the joy they found in the company of other men, they were critical of the weak social bonds and attachments that they formed through their hockey participation. Elmer (80), for example, was quick to point out that not all the players on the team were friends and that he chose to spend social time with a select group he characterized as ‘good friends’:

I don’t think there’s any closer relationship than the people you go to school with, you know really, your high school friends, your Sunday school friends. And those are my really close friends. Other friends (pause), close friends I have here [at hockey], they just don’t go as deep.

Walter (76) also made this distinction, explaining while the relationships at the rink were important, he characterized as ‘hockey buddies’ those with whom he generally didn’t socialize beyond the rink. He found these relationships enjoyable but lacking in depth, stating, ‘You don’t socialize with them … . You just get to the rink and you talk about hockey’. Similarly, Wilson (71) remarked, ‘I think there’s different levels of relationships. For me, most of the guys that I play with, that’s the only time I see or contact them’. He contrasted these relationships against the deep intimacy of his marital relationship, where he could openly share his feelings, remarking, ‘My partner is still my very best friend’. Finally, Amos (71) explained that while he appreciated the time with his hockey-playing peers as a welcome break from the caregiving work he provided to his ailing wife, these relationships were superficial, not friendships but ‘a different kind of relationship’. Much more so than the younger group, these older men were careful to distinguish between what they considered true friendship and a kind of hockey buddy-ship that players developed through their twice-weekly interactions.

Like the older men in Greif’s (2009) study, the older group of men here characterized true friendship as knowing each other beyond the rink. These men viewed relationships transcending the sports environment differently than those that did not go beyond jocular locker room encounters. Greif (2009) explains, ‘The ability to share thoughts and feelings with another person [is] important in the definition of friendship and is generally consistent with the affective descriptions of men’s friendships’ (pp. 627–628).

The older players: locker room relationships

Another contrast between this group and their more youthful comparators was the nature of locker room relationships. The older group of men also privileged a kind of jocular culture in the locker room, one that was no doubt inherited from their childhood experiences with youthful hockey masculinity. However, the nature of the jokes and teasing for these men took a different form than it did for their younger counterparts. Amos (71) commented on the prevalence of teasing in the locker room. He claimed that players often joked if someone missed a shot. However, he also said that players teased their teammates for taking the game ‘too seriously’. Taking the game too seriously meant that a player risked the well-being of older, sometimes disabled players through high-speed collisions on the ice and/or privileged winning over having fun. All the players in this league focused on creating a good hockey-playing environment and removed players from the team if they took the game too seriously or did not contribute to the physically inclusive atmosphere. These actions privileged enjoyment over success and left space for players who were physically or cognitively disabled to play the game. Although Wilson (71) characterized the locker room ambiance as ‘geriatric porn’, calling the interactions therein ‘adult adolescence’, where players could carry on like ‘teenagers’ into their 80s, he also described this teasing culture as ‘good-natured’, with players observing ‘good respect’ for one another. He explained that in this locker room, there was no joking about women. In many respects, the players described the locker room, and its relations, as a space for celebrating old age.

Much of the teasing pertained to what Walter (76) described as ‘senior’s moments’. He explained that when he forgot to put on an important piece of hockey equipment and had to remove all his clothing and start over, his teammates would joke, ‘What? Did you not bring your list with you?’ Although joking about a teammate’s cognitive decline appeared to be authorized, players often commented that making remarks about another player’s body was sensitive and off-limits. However, the players also tended to use the locker room as a place to joke about their own age-related weight gain. Jerome (71) described a conversation with a teammate as he struggled with his hockey pants: ‘I said, “What’s wrong?” He said, “My arms have gotten shorter”.’ Jerome clarified that these changes in body shape and size were ‘just natural’. Elmer (80) commented, ‘We joke a lot about how our wives shrink our pants’ (see Hurd & Mahal, 2021 for a discussion about ageing, fatness, and masculinity). Elmer even remarked that jokes about death and dying were common, explaining, ‘We’re always booking funeral arrangements and all stuff like that. We’re always joking with each other’.

Players in this group looked forward to their time together, when they could celebrate being old and being with others in the same stage of life. Elmer (80) explained:

Well, when we go to the nursing home, we’ll be able to play [hockey] down the hallway and stuff like this, you know (chuckle). They kid about their age, and I think that’s a good thing. (Pause.) You’re not … sitting at home and thinking … about how old you are and what the hell is going to happen to me in the next year … . You just trying to keep going.

As Siebert et al. (1999) point out, it is important for older people to have friends who do not degrade them as old, but rather can help them maintain and create positive self-identities in later life. The men in this group seemed to find these relationships in their hockey-playing peers, and through this demonstrated, at least in part, a break with the cultures of hegemonic masculinity associated with younger men’s and boys’ sport.

These players not only defined friendships as those relationships existing beyond the rink, but also challenged youthful hockey masculinities that were premised on misogyny and competition. They rejected a lack of care amongst players and were critical of conversations that debased women and those with disabilities. In this way, older men’s comradery broke with dominant expressions of masculinity, unlike the locker room talk of the younger athletes. These men enacted a form of masculinity that practiced acceptance of, and sometimes commiseration over, their ageing bodies, avoided the degradation of women, and defined their sporting friendships in different ways than their younger comparators.

Conclusion

In this work, I examined how age and gender structure men’s late(r)-life friendships. Through a comparative analysis, I contrasted the ways that men in later life and late midlife understood and defined their social relationships with teammates, and the expressions that those relationships took both in the locker room and on the ice. I found that late middle-aged men understood their hockey relationships as important friendships in ways that mirrored the sporting relationships of young men (see Messner, 1992b), even if those relationships sometimes lacked depth. Late midlife hockey provided a space where certain participants valued competition and formed bonds around cut-talk. In contrast, ageing beyond late midlife appeared to allow other, older participants to break with prior understandings of sporting friendships as well as some of the most troubling aspects of locker room culture. These men reflected on the lack of intimacy among their teammates and did not understand their hockey relationships as friendships. This work importantly demonstrates that hockey-playing men’s expressions of masculinity do not appear to remain static over the life course. I have argued that ideas about appropriate gender expressions connected to sporting relationships change as men age, moving specifically from alignment with dominant understandings of Canadian hockey masculinity in late midlife to a more substantive break with it in late(r) life. Specifically, those who were older did not express the same conceptions of sporting relationships as those who were even slightly younger. They appeared to be, in many ways, misaligned with the gender expressions that predominate in North American boys’ and men’s competitive hockey (see Allain, 2008).

Yang (2020) argues that empirical work should not focus solely on singular masculine expressions, but instead should assess how different forms of masculine expression align with or break from those that sit atop the gender hierarchy. Through this examination, researchers can come to evaluate which forms are leading, if they are hegemonic, and under what conditions they come to occupy their social positions (p. 327). It is through this kind of analysis that researchers may unearth ways to produce ‘feminist agendas for social change’ (p. 327). In this vein, recent work by King et al. (2021) examines the gender expressions of midlife men, and suggests that these men disavow ageing masculinities, perpetuating hegemonic masculinity in the process. Their work shows how hegemonic masculinities operate through a process of consent, where even though most men may not enact dominant gender ideals, they may still actively support them.

Although my work here with mid-life men aligns with the findings of King et al. (2021), I find something else when I look at the sporting experiences of men in late life. Once men pass through the threshold from late midlife to late(r) life, their support of the dominant masculinity expressed in men’s competitive sport seems to diminish. Although younger men appear to support the dominant ideal of sporting masculinity associated with their youth, they may break with these expressions in old age, showing different ways of doing masculinity. This importantly suggests that masculinities associated with competitive men’s and boys’ team sports are not static over the life course, but change in important and interesting ways. The social positions of the old, oftentimes distanced from the hegemonic influence of those in midlife, appear to allow these men new and perhaps more inclusive ways of expressing masculinity, at least in this context. In Spector-Mersel’s (2006) words:

While in relation to early and middle adulthood we find clear models of dignified masculinity, these become vague, even non-existent, when referring to later life. Capitalistic societies do not provide clear final phases for their exalted masculinity stories. Put somewhat extremely, Western masculine scripts are not designed for elderly men, and thus are concluded somewhere before ‘old age’. (p. 73)

The research summarized here focuses on the sporting relationships of late(r)-life men, and as a result we cannot know for certain if and how masculine expressions shift and change in other aspects of men’s lives. However, given the importance of sport as an institution that men often engage with throughout their life, this work provides important early insights into the ways that late-life masculinities may differ from their mid-life counterparts. Further, as late(r)-life men embody many different and often competing social positions, there is reason to believe that this might be the case for non-athletes as well. For many of the men in the older group, complicity with hegemonic notions of masculinity did not carry forward from late midlife to late life.

Yang (2020) argues, ‘An alliance … can be forged among a heterogenous bloc of non-violent masculinities and among a heterogenous group of people who enact/embody these masculinities or are affected by them’ (p. 328). Although those in late midlife might support or express complicity with the hegemonic understandings of masculinity that denigrate the old (see King et al., 2021), these same attitudes appeared to be less present, and even sometimes directly opposed, in the old men. Further research on life course masculinities that is particularly attentive to the gender expressions of older men might provide further insight into the actors and methods that alternately perpetuate and oppose hegemonic complicity, assessing the possibilities for men in late(r) life to contribute to progressive change and challenging the often taken-for-granted assumptions about men, masculinity, and the gender order.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [Canada Research Chair Program].

Notes on contributors

Kristi A. Allain

Kristi A. Allain is a sociologist and Social Science and Humanities Research Council Canada Research Chair in Physical Culture and Social Life. Operating at the nexus of national identity, gender and ageing, her work examines issues of power in Canadian sport” NOT “IS Canadian sport.

Notes

1. Despite being called old-timers hockey, these leagues generally accommodate men in midlife, with leagues devoted to players over 35 and 45 years of age.