There’s Nothing Feminine about Her: Hegemonic Masculinity and its Maintenance Practices in a Women's Prison

• In Event: 100 - Regular Session. Continuity and Change in Contemporary Masculinities

Abstract

This article examines how hegemonic masculinity might be enacted by individuals with female bodies in specific social settings. By differentiating between hegemonic masculinity and practices that sustain hegemonic masculinity, the author finds that prisoners co-create and maintain an ideal definition of masculinity that centers on status, resources, and dominance. Both masculine and feminine individuals engaged in a variety of maintenance practices, including reinforcing essentialized conceptions of gender that value masculinity and devalue femininity, policing masculine individuals’ gendered behavior if they stepped outside of the boundaries of the prescribed definitions of masculinity, and reframing social behavior that contradicted with the public definitions of hegemonic masculinity. Several also engaged in resistance practices that challenged dominant gender definitions or specific maintenance practices of dominance and aggression. Most, however, engaged in both maintenance and resistance practices of hegemonic masculinity.

Author

• Allison Gorga, University of Iowa