Hegemonic Masculine Identities and Male Bonds

Abstract

The next two chapters enquire into ways that heterosexuality, gender and power are organised and articulated through friendship and wider social relations. This chapter begins by reviewing past and present debates about heterosexual male friendship. Male friendship has traditionally been articulated as a social and cultural resource through group memberships and networks. Traditional forms of male networking are explored in this chapter through the example of secret and male-only societies and clubs such as the Free Masons. Personal and formal single-sex relationships are, for men, a form of capital (Bourdieu, 1983a). I then address wider friendship bonds between men that perpetuate and cement hegemonic masculinities and examine challenges to those bonds. I argue that masculine friendship is circumscribed by discourses of fraternity and dependent on expressing difference from, and opposition to, femininity. Transformations in personal relationships that challenge or transcend heterodominant forms of bonding through gay and lesbian identities and social ties are addressed in Chapter 5, as new forms of belonging within queer communities and ‘families of choice’.