Introduction: complicating the emotions of men and masculinities

Masculinity studies has for a long time been interested in emotions. Two models that predominate in the literature are the ‘unemotional man’ and the ‘angry man’. Considerations of the unemotional man center on the importance of the control of emotion and its centrality to masculinity. In this gendered morphology, men treat emotion as signs of weakness, which renders it difficult to display feelings as the act threatens their sense of masculinity. This behavior may make men emotionally incompetent and can pose substantial problems for individual men, while it also upholds the gender order since stoicism and rationality are culturally idealized. Ironically, this emotional regime has also been said to cause men’s anger and violence. From this perspective, men’s emotional incompetence may make them too emotional since they are unable to deal with difficult emotions.

The contributions to this special issue problematize this binarized discourse and its often essentialist understanding of men and their emotional lives. We find evidence of the prevalence of the unemotional/angry man, for instance in Irene Rafanell and her colleagues’ study of young men in Glasgow gangs, where emotional control and aggressiveness are valued traits. But other contributions to this issue rather suggest that men’s affective lives are changing, or are at least provide evidence of a more complex relation between emotions and masculinity. Several contributions to this volume highlight how men relate to two competing emotional regimes. These are expressed as: tensions between expectations of being emotionally communicative but not displaying weakness (Fiona McQueen), ‘work’-oriented versus ‘care’-oriented emotions (Roger Patulny and colleagues), being a ‘weekend father’ but also experiencing communicative and emotional proximity with one’s child (Sebastián Madrid), and the ambivalence of embracing traditional forms of masculinity while feeling differently about those forms in everyday interactions with women (Philip Martin). One contribution even suggests that we view the ‘emotionally adept man’ emerging as a new masculine ideal. This argument does not, however, imply that emotional men necessarily exhibit greater gender equality, but rather that emotionality is a reconfiguration of masculinity more suited to a neoliberal era (Marci Cottingham). That emotionality could be instrumental is central to Anders Axel Wallace’s paper on the affective labor in seduction communities, where men develop emotional capacities in order to have greater social agency. It is also a key element of the way in which Vladimir Putin uses ‘paternalist sentimentality’ in order to justify discriminatory antigay legislation. This kind of homophobia, along with Putin’s performance of masculine bravado, Alexandra Novistakaya argues in her paper, is to be understood as expressing anxieties and vulnerabilities that result in political overcompensation. Taken together, the contributions to this special issue demonstrate how the unemotional/angry man binary is far from universal, and that the relation between masculinity and emotions is often ambivalent but always complicated.

ORCID

Lucas Gottzén http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3605-8664