Green is the New Pink: When Masculinity Obstructs Environmental Protection

• In Event: 2251 - Section on Environmental Sociology Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 14. Everyday Environmentalism: Critical Perspectives

Abstract

In cultures where male power is hegemonic, mobilizing a masculine identity and avoiding the feminine can become problematic for environmental sustainability. I draw on critical gender theory and masculinities studies to reinterpret key scholarship on gender and environment and I combine this analysis with insights from the limited literature on masculinities and environment. Recent research suggests that anti-environmental attitudes and behavior as well as indifference or skepticism about environmental science and risk can be explained in part as performances enacted to signal a masculine identity to access material and social rewards in androcentric societies where eco-friendly attitudes and behaviors are considered unmanly. In addition to these direct anti-environmental performances, research suggests that enacting core masculine-coded performances not directly related to the environment – privileging the rational, technical and competitive, and avoiding feminine-coded emotion and cooperation – can also obstruct environmental protection. In market-centric political hierarchies, distancing from the feminine can result in environmental policies that exclude environmental justice arguments and favor economic growth and risky technologies like climate geoengineering over effective multi-lateral cooperation and greenhouse gas emissions regulation. This article suggests that environmental degradation ultimately belongs in the same category of masculine dominance acts as sexual violence and homophobia.

Author

• Kathryn Anderson, University of Wisconsin