Unsettling Masculinity: Men's Fractured Responses to Pandemic Courtship Script Collapse

• In Event: 40820 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 12: Femininities and Masculinities

Abstract

This study assesses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on American men and masculine identities through an examination of shifting courtship practices and gender power dynamics. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally altered the American social landscape, and almost overnight, governments and individuals responded with mask mandates, social distancing, stay-at-home orders, increased hygiene protocols, and the closing of restaurants, bars, theaters, and businesses – all sites where people could meet, date, and engage in the courtship process. This abrupt social shutdown disrupted the logistics of dating, leading to what I call “courtship script collapse,” because long-standing courtship scripts could no longer be enacted in their entirety. Script collapse weakened normative conventions that governed men’s and women’s roles in the courtship process. Because men held a disproportionate amount of power in pre-pandemic heterosexual courtship contexts, script collapse could threaten to destabilize their position and performances of masculinity. Over 150 interviews with 103 men and women over the course of the pandemic and its aftermath suggest a polarized response among men to courtship script collapse, and their varied responses seem connected to the pre-pandemic problematics of masculinity. My findings show that while some men sought to maintain or reinstate male dominance (“neo-traditionalists”), others sought new, more flexible ways of being a man (“non-traditionalists”). In this paper, I historically contextualize and analyze these polarized responses, assess women’s perceptions of performed masculinity, and consider the implications for gender power dynamics and the future of courtship and marriage in a post-pandemic world.

Author

• Sam Kendrick, University of Tennessee-Knoxville