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What is masculinity?

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Abstract

This paper initiates analytic inquiry into the metaphysics of masculinity. I argue that individual masculinities (such as clone masculinity and incel masculinity) are distinct homeostatic property cluster kinds related to gender structures via processes of adherence, failed-adherence, selective adherence, and/or reinterpretation with respect to male-coded social norms

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I do not analyze or generate any datasets. All referenced texts are publicly available.

Notes

  1. P. Carl, Becoming a Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2020), p. 75.

  2. See R. A. Briggs & B. R. George, What Even Is Gender? (Routledge: London, 2023); Robin Dembroff, “Beyond Binary: Genderqueer as Critical Gender Kind, Philosophers’ Imprint (2020); Katharine Jenkins, “Toward an Account of Gender Identity,” Ergo (2018); Talia Mae Bettcher, “Trans Identities and First-Person Authority,” in You’ve Changed”: Sex Reassignment and Personal Identity, ed. Laurie J. Shrage (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

  3. For related normative discussion, see esp. Olúfẹmi Táíwò, “Stoicism (as Emotional Compression) is Emotional Labor,” Feminist Philosophy Quarterly (2020).

  4. See R.W. Connell, Masculinities (University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2005), p. 76.

  5. See Amia Srinivasan, The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), pp. 73–91.

  6. Richard Boyd, “Homeostasis, Species, and Higher Taxa” in Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. R.A. Wilson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999), p. 143.

  7. Here I remain agnostic about the causal non-redundancy of homeostatic property cluster kinds. Instead, I focus on the theoretical role of masculinity concepts in explanation and induction. For discussion of explanatory kinds in the context of social ontology, see Sally Haslanger, “Theorizing with a Purpose: The Many Kinds of Sex,” in Natural Kinds and Classification in Scientific Practice, ed. Catherine Kendig (New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 129-132. See also Richard Boyd, “Homeostasis, Species, and Higher Taxa,” in Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays, 143.

  8. Thanks to Ross Cameron for the example.

  9. See Richard Boyd, “Homeostasis, Species, and Higher Taxa,” in Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays, pp. 164–168; Robert Wilson, Matthew Barker, and Ingo Brigandt, “When Traditional Essentialism Fails: Biological Natural Kinds,” Philosophical Topics (2007), pp. 202–204. Note that I don’t endorse any particular theory of species in the context of this paper.

  10. Ibid., p. 202.

  11. Catalogue of Life, Certhidea fusca, www.catalogueoflife.org/data/taxon/T4V2.

  12. Robert Wilson, Matthew Barker, and Ingo Brigandt, “When Traditional Essentialism Fails: Biological Natural Kinds,” Philosophical Topics, p. 202.

  13. Ibid., pp. 202–3.

  14. Ibid., p. 203.

  15. Peter Grant, Ecology and Evolution of Darwin’s Finches (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2017), pp. 116–117.

  16. The specification to biological class is important because instantiating the property being an eater of small arthropods and nectar doesn’t universally create conditions favorable to instantiating the property being small beaked. Birds who eat small arthropods and nectar tend to have sharp beaks as opposed to hooked beaks or short beaks.

  17. Peter Grant, Ecology and Evolution of Darwin’s Finches (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2017), pp. 364–371. Furthermore: “Geographical variation in warbler finch colors may possibly be adaptively related to geographical variation in the colors of the dry season vegetation in which they feed,” ibid., p. 374.

  18. For example, Ron Mallon argues that social kinds are homeostatic property cluster kinds in which property co-occurrence is due to complex patterns of representational activity among individuals, see Ron Mallon, The Construction of Human Kinds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 92–93. While I expect that Mallon would agree that masculinities are homeostatic property cluster kinds, I emphasize that a theory of masculinity needs to explain why certain social kinds such as incel masculinity are masculinities, as opposed to other social kinds. Section (§2) provides a candidate explanation.

  19. David M. Halperin, “How to Do the History of Male Homosexuality,” Gay and Lesbian Quarterly (2000), p. 93.

  20. See Natalie Coulter, “Selling the Male Consumer the Playboy Way,” Popular Communication (2014), p. 144.

  21. Ibid., p. 147.

  22. Ibid., p. 149.

  23. There are several reasons to avoid directly quoting this sort of content, but I cite the following as a characteristic tweet (accessed May 2023) that has been viewed over half a million times: https://twitter.com/DanBilzerian/status/1642915650212605954?s=20

  24. On this point, I follow Erin Beeghly, who argues that it is permissible, under certain conditions, to make predictions on the basis of group membership; see Erin Beeghly, “Failing to Treat Persons as Individuals,” Ergo (2018), pp. 697–700; Erin Beeghly, “What is a Stereotype? What is Stereotyping?” Hypatia (2015), pp. 686–688. For further discussion of identity-based social cognition, see Carolina Flores and Elisabeth Camp, “‘That’s All You Really Are’: Centering Identities without Essentialist Beliefs,” in Mind, Language, and Social Hierarchy (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

  25. Martin P. Levine, Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone (New York University Press: New York and London, 1998), 62. For related philosophical discussion, see Matthew Andler, “Queer and Straight,” in The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Sex and Sexuality, eds. Clare Chambers, Brian Earp, and Lori Watson (New York: Routledge, 2022).

  26. Instead of ‘being disposed to recognize members of the kind clone masculinity as members of the kind clone masculinity’, which would quickly become unwieldy, I’ll use phrases such as ‘being disposed to recognize members of the clone kind’.

  27. Martin P. Levine, Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone (New York University Press: New York and London, 1998), pp. 58–65.

  28. Ibid., p. 39.

  29. Ibid., p. 70.

  30. Ibid., p. 75.

  31. Ibid., pp. 71–73.

  32. For discussion of camp as a response to marginalization, see José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (University of Minnesota Press: London, 1999), pp. 128–135.

  33. Sally Haslanger, “Systemic and Structural Injustice: Is There a Difference?” Philosophy (2023), pp. 3–4.

  34. See Robin Zheng, “What is My Role in Changing the System? A New Model of Responsibility for Structural Injustice,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (2018), pp. 873–875.

  35. Margaret Robinson, “Two-Spirit Identity in a Time of Gender Fluidity,” Journal of Homosexuality (2020), p. 1678.

  36. Ibid., p. 1679.

  37. See Sally Haslanger, “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be,” in Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique, pp. 227–235. My point here is neither about the nature of gender identity nor the meaning of natural language terms such as ‘woman’ but rather the membership conditions of social positions in binary gender structures; for related discussion, see Elizabeth Barnes, “Gender and Gender Terms,” Noûs (2020), pp. 711–713.

  38. See Maria Lugones, “The Coloniality of Gender” in The Palgrave Handbook on Gender and Development, ed. Wendy Harcourt (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 27–32.

  39. See Debbie Ging, “Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere,” Men and Masculinities (2019), pp. 11–12.

  40. Martin P. Levine, Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone (New York University Press: New York and London, 1998), p. 29.

  41. The concept of disidentification is from José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (University of Minnesota Press: London, 1999).

  42. Ibid., pp. 11–12.

  43. For readers not yet familiar with butch expression, here is a description from Gayle Rubin: “Butch is the lesbian vernacular term for women who are more comfortable with masculine gender codes, styles, or identities than with feminine ones. The term encompasses individuals with a broad range of investments in ‘masculinity.’ It includes, for example, women who are not at all interested in male gender identities, but who use traits associated with masculinity to signal their lesbianism or to communicate their desire to engage in the kinds of active or initiatory sexual behaviors that in this society are allowed or expected from men,” see Gayle Rubin, “Of Catamites and Kings: Reflections of Butch, Gender, and Boundaries,” in The Transgender Studies Reader, eds. Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 472.

  44. Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998), pp. 1 and 9.

  45. Ibid., p. 276.

  46. Jennifer McKitrick, “A Dispositional Account of Gender,” Philos Stud (2015), p. 2581.

  47. Ibid., pp. 2586–2587.

  48. See ibid., pp. 2582–2585.

  49. Martin P. Levine, Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone (New York University Press: New York and London, 1998), p. 66.

  50. Ibid., 62. For related discussion, see Nicholas O. Rule, “Perceptions of Sexual Orientation from Minimal Cues,” Archives of Sexual Behavior (2017).

  51. See R.W. Connell, Masculinities (University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2005); R.W. Connell and James Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept,” Gender and Society (2005).

  52. R. W. Connell, Masculinities (University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2005), p. 77.

  53. Ibid., pp. 71 and 72.

  54. See ibid., p. 75.

  55. Ibid., p. 164.

  56. Ibid. pp. 180–181.

  57. Tommy J. Curry, The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 2017), pp. 211–217.

  58. Tommy J. Curry, “Decolonizing the Intersection: Black Male Studies as a Critique of Intersectionality’s Indebtedness to Subculture of Violence Theory” in Critical Psychology Praxis: Psychosocial non-alignment to modernity/coloniality, ed. Robert Beshara (New York: Routledge, 2021), p. 150. Thanks to Lionel K. McPherson for the reference.

  59. R. W. Connell, Masculinities (University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2005), p. 67.

  60. Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It (Washington, D.C., 2022), p. 122.

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  1. Saint Louis University - Madrid Campus, Madrid, Spain

    Matthew Andler

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Andler, M. What is masculinity?. Synthese 202, 101 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04296-y

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