Becoming a Super-Masculine

“Cool Guy”
Reflexivity, Dominant and
Hegemonic Masculinities, and Sexual Violence
James W. Messerschmidt

Abstract: In this article the author builds on the arguments articulated by Raewyn
Connell in her seminal work The Men and the Boys (2000) by summarizing and
analyzing a case study of an adolescent boy who was identified at school as a
“wimp” and who eventually engaged in sexual violence. Such subordinated boys
rarely are—if at all—discussed in childhood education, sociology, and feminist
literatures on violence. The synopsis reveals the interrelationship among in-school
bullying, reflexivity, embodiment, and the social construction of dominant and
hegemonic masculinities through the commission of adolescent sexual violence.
The analysis demonstrates the continued relevance of Connell’s work, and the
author builds on and expands on Connell’s formulation through, in particular, an
examination of reflexivity, dominant masculinities, different types of hegemonic
masculinities, and intersectionality.

Keywords: bullying, dominant masculinities, embodiment, hegemonic

masculinities, intersectionality, reflexivity, sexual violence

During most of this decade, I have focused much of my research on life

history interviews of adolescent boys and girls involved in violence and
nonviolence (Messerschmidt 2000, 2004, 2012, 2016). A partial synopsis
of a life story of one of the adolescent boys (see Messerschmidt 2016 for
the full life story)—which is the subject of this article—reveals a close rela-
tionship among in-school bullying, reflexivity, embodiment, and dominant
and hegemonic masculinities in understanding his eventual involvement
in sexual violence. In what follows, I first briefly explain Raewyn Connell’s
(1987, 1995, 2000) perspective on masculinities, especially hegemonic
masculinities, and how, in my work, I have built upon and advanced Con-
nell’s formulation. I then turn to one white working-class adolescent boy
that I interviewed, who ended up engaging in sexual violence. The partial
synopsis of this boy’s life history illustrates what in-school bullying, reflex-

Boyhood Studies 13, no. 2 (Winter 2020): 20-35 © The Author(s)

doi: 10.3167/bhs.2020.130203 ISSN: 2375-9240 (print) 2375-9267 (online)
 BECOMING A SUPER-MASCULINE “COOL GUY”:

ivity, embodiment, dominant masculinities, hegemonic masculinities, and

sexual violence by an adolescent boy looks like in practice. I conclude by
reflecting upon what we learn from this synopsis, in particular the rela-
tionship among reflexivity, embodiment, different types of hegemonic mas-
culinities, dominant masculinities, and how these social processes impact
eventual participation in sexual violence. Finally, I analyze this case study
to demonstrate the contemporary value of Connell’s ongoing formulation
of hegemonic masculinity as well as its strength in the intersectional exam-
ination of gender, age, sexuality, and violence/non-violence.

Connell’s Formulation and Beyond

Hegemonic masculinity was understood by Connell (1987, 1995, 2000) as

a specific form of masculinity in a given historical and society-wide social
setting that legitimates unequal gender relations between men and women,
between masculinity and femininity, and among masculinities. For Connell,
hegemonic masculinity is always constructed in relation to various subor-
dinated masculinities and subordinated femininities. Both the relational
and legitimation features were central to Connell’s argument, involving a
certain form of masculinity in unequal relation to “emphasized femininity”
and non-hegemonic masculinities. Arguably, hegemonic masculinity has no
meaning outside its relationship to emphasized femininity—and non-hege-
monic masculinities—or those forms of femininity that are practiced in a
complementary, compliant, and accommodating subordinate relationship
with hegemonic masculinity. And it is the legitimation of this relationship of
superordination and subordination whereby the meaning and essence of he-
gemonic masculinity is revealed. The emphasis on hegemony in gender rela-
tions underscored the achievement of hegemonic masculinity largely through
cultural ascendancy—discursive persuasion—encouraging all to consent to,
coalesce around, and embody such unequal gender relations between men
and women, between masculinity and femininity, and among masculinities.
Connell’s (2000) perspective in The Men and the Boys, then, concentrat-
ed on gender relations conceptualized as structured through power inequal-
ities and accordingly, the concept of emphasized femininity is essential to
Connell’s framework, underlining how this feminized form adapts to mas-
culine power. But Connell recognized additional femininities, such as those
defined through resistance or forms of non-compliance as well as feminin-
ities identified by combinations of compliance, resistance and cooperation.

21
 JAMES W. MESSERSCHMIDT

In Connell’s (1987) theory of practice, she argues that hegemonic mas-

culinity and emphasized femininity are patterns of practice positioned with-
in particular structural gender relations and thus are fundamentally a social
construction. Gender practices are creative and inventive, yet they are in
response to particular social situations defined through structured gender re-
lations. In gender practice, “there is a strong sense of the constraining power
of gender relations (and other structures like class and race), a sense of some-
thing that people fetch up against” (Connell 1987: 61). Connell (1987: 211)
emphasized that gender practices are never fully determined by structured
gender relations because such practices involve the process of constructing
oneself through agentic choices that transcend given circumstances: “Hu-
mans project themselves into their future by their choices, by the way they
negate and transcend the circumstances that are given to them to start with.
The person is constructed as a ‘project’ of realizing oneself in a particular
way.” Connell argued that the orchestration of specifically hegemonic mas-
culinities and emphasized femininities involves a process of “configuring”
gender practices that are historical and thereby always subject to change.
Connell (2000) also argued in The Men and the Boys that hegemonic
masculinity is constructed in relation to four specific nonhegemonic mas-
culinities: first, complicit masculinities do not actually embody hegemonic
masculinity yet through practice realize some of the benefits of unequal
gender relations and consequently when practiced help sustain hegemon-
ic masculinity; second, subordinate masculinities are constructed as lesser
than or aberrant and deviant to hegemonic masculinity, such as effeminate
men; third, marginalized masculinities are trivialized and/or discriminat-
ed against because of unequal relations that co-constitute gender relations,
such as class, race, ethnicity, and age; and finally, protest masculinities are
constructed as compensatory hyper-masculinities formed in reaction to so-
cial positions lacking economic and political power. All such masculinities
involve “body-reflexive practices” whereby the body becomes both an agent
and object of practice. Masculinities are configurations of social practice
“that constantly refer to bodies and what bodies do, they are not social
practices reduced to the body” (Connell 2000: 27). And Connell (2000)
specifically analyzes in The Men and the Boys how different inequalities
co-constitute each other by demonstrating how local, regional, and global
gender practices and relations are mutually yet variably constituted by race,
class, sexuality, and nationality.
For Connell, these concepts were abstract rather than descriptive,
defined in terms of the logic of unequal gender relations. They assumed

22
 BECOMING A SUPER-MASCULINE “COOL GUY”:

that gender relations were historical, so gender hierarchies were subject to

change. Connell argued that hegemonic (and non-hegemonic) masculin-
ities and emphasized (and non-emphasized) femininities came into exis-
tence in specific circumstances and were open to historical change. More
precisely, there could be a struggle for hegemony whereby older types of he-
gemonic masculinity actually might be displaced by newer forms. This was
the element of optimism in an otherwise rather bleak theory. It was perhaps
possible that a more humane, less oppressive means of being masculine
might become prevalent, as part of a process leading toward an abolition of
gender hierarchies and more equal gender relations.
Connell’s initial perspective found significant and enthusiastic appli-
cation from the late-1980s to the early 2000s, being utilized in a variety of
academic disciplines and areas. Despite this considerable favorable reception
of Connell’s approach, however, the concept of hegemonic masculinity nev-
ertheless attracted criticism. And fifteen years ago, Connell and I (2005) re-
sponded to these criticisms, and we reformulated the concept of hegemonic
masculinity in numerous ways. The reformulated model affirmed a holistic
grasp of gender inequality that recognized the agency of both hegemonic
masculinity and emphasized femininity and that underlined their local (con-
structed in arenas of face-to-face interaction of families, organizations, and
immediate communities), regional (constructed at the level of the culture or
nation-state), and global (constructed in transnational arenas such as world
politics and transnational business and media) constitution with such other
social inequalities as class, race, age, sexuality, and nation. In other words,
Connell and I underscored the whole variety of ways worldwide that hege-
monic masculinities and emphasized femininities are constructed. Connell
and I specifically rejected scholarly work that concentrated exclusively on
masculine practices because that occludes any understanding of the rela-
tional nature of the concept (among hegemonic masculinity, emphasized
femininity, and nonhegemonic masculinities) and that this relationship is a
pattern of hegemony—not a pattern of simple domination.
Scholars have continually applied this reformulated concept of hege-
monic masculinity in a number of ways, yet despite this, problems remain
(Messerschmidt 2018). For example, Pat Martin (1998) raised the issue
of inconsistent applications of the concept of hegemonic masculinity, in-
sightfully observing that some scholars equated the concept with a fixed
type of masculinity or with whatever type of masculinity that happened
to be dominant at a particular time and place. This misapplication of the
concept continues to appear in the critical masculinities literature. Martin

23
 JAMES W. MESSERSCHMIDT

also noted that the emphasis on the centrality of embodied practice in the
construction of hegemonic masculinity obscured the role played by dis-
course in reproducing notions of hegemonic masculinity. More recently,
Michael Flood (2002) and Christine Beasley (2008) labeled inconsistent
applications of the concept as “slippage,” arguing that “dominant” forms
of masculinity—such as those that are the most culturally celebrated or the
most common in particular settings—may actually do little to legitimate
men’s power over women and, therefore, should not be labeled hegemon-
ic masculinities, and that some masculinities that legitimate men’s power
actually may be culturally marginalized. Indeed, there remains a funda-
mental tendency among some scholars to read hegemonic masculinity as a
static character type and to ignore the whole question of gender relations
and the legitimation of gender inequality. And some scholars continue to
equate hegemonic masculinity with particular masculinities that are simply
dominant—that is, the most culturally celebrated or the most common
in particular settings, but do not legitimate gender inequality. Or those
masculinities that are practiced by certain men—such as politicians, corpo-
rate heads, and celebrities—simply because they are in positions of power,
ignoring once again questions of gender relations and the legitimation of
gender inequality. And Mimi Schippers (2007) has argued that it is essen-
tial to distinguish masculinities that legitimate men’s power from those
that do not.
In response to Martin’s, Flood’s, Beasley’s, and Schippers’s concerns,
since 2010, I have argued that to elucidate the significance and salience
of hegemonic masculinities and emphasized femininities, gender scholars
must distinguish masculinities and femininities that legitimate gender in-
equality from those that do not. And over the course of various writings, I
have differentiated hegemonic masculinities and emphasized femininities
from dominant masculinities and dominant femininities (Messerschmidt
2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018). Hegemonic masculinities acquire their le-
gitimacy by embodying materially and/or discursively culturally supported
“superior” gender qualities in relation to the embodiment or symbolization
of “inferior” gender qualities (Schippers 2007). That is, certain culturally
defined “superior” gendered qualities legitimate unequal gender relations
when they are symbolically paired with culturally defined “inferior” charac-
teristics attached to femininity (Schippers 2007). Dominant masculinities
and dominant femininities differ from hegemonic masculinities and em-
phasized femininities in that they are not always associated with and linked
to gender hegemony but refer fundamentally to the most celebrated, com-

24
 BECOMING A SUPER-MASCULINE “COOL GUY”:

mon, or current form of masculinity and femininity in a particular social

setting. Dominant masculinities and femininities do not necessarily legiti-
mate a hierarchical relationship between men and women, masculinity and
femininity. Although hegemonic masculinities and emphasized femininities
at times may also be dominant, I theorize that dominant masculinities and
femininities are never hegemonic or emphasized if they fail culturally to
legitimate unequal gender relations. However, dominant masculinities and
femininities necessarily acquire meaning only in relation to other mascu-
linities and femininities (Messerschmidt 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018).
Distinguishing between “hegemonic” and “dominant” masculinities (and
femininities) is important because it allows for more solid research on when
and how both types of masculinities are actually constructed and when they
are not. That research question is essential because of the widespread confu-
sion among scholars, especially regarding slippage, and thus wrongly label-
ling dominant masculinities as actually existing hegemonic masculinities.
Finally, through my life-history research I uncovered the importance
of what Margaret Archer (2007) refers to as “reflexivity.” In reflexivity we
exercise our conscious mental ability to consider ourselves in relation to the
particular social context and circumstances we experience. This conscious
mental capacity in reflexivity involves engaging in internal conversations
with oneself about particular social experiences and then deciding how to
respond appropriately. In reflexivity, we internally mull over specific social
events, interactions, structures, and discourses, we consider how such social
circumstances make us feel, we prioritize what matters most by defining our
immediate concerns, and then we plan and decide how to respond (Archer
2007). Although we internally deliberate and eventually make such reflex-
ive choices to act in particular ways, reflexivity is based on the situational
and socially structured practices, discourses, and interactions that we con-
front. Reflexivity mediates the role social circumstances play in influencing
social action and thus is indispensable for explaining the decision to engage
in everyday social actions. Although individuals often engage in routine
social actions, I emphasize here conscious and deliberate practices that nec-
essarily involve reflexivity.
In the next section, I provide a partial synopsis of the life story of a
boy, concentrating on some of his particular experiences in school. The
information he provides demonstrates the continued relevance of Connell’s
formulation of hegemonic masculinity and illustrates several ways to build
upon and advance that formulation.

25
 JAMES W. MESSERSCHMIDT

Sam

Following Connell’s (1995) lead in the use of life-history methodolo-

gy—which is a less commonly noted part of her work (Tarrant and Ward
2019)—in the early 2000s I completed life-history interviews of teenage
boys and girls from the New England region of the United States. The
purpose of the study was to examine the construction and formation of
gender and sexual practices through violent and nonviolent social action.
Thirty white working-class youth (fifteen boys and fifteen girls) were inter-
viewed after obtaining informed consent from each participant and their
parent/guardian. A “maximum variation” sampling procedure was used to
ensure a selection of interviewees from a wide range of home life and other
background situations. Although not a representative sample, the thirty life
history case studies reveal the more elusive elements of teenage life that
are often difficult to capture in quantifiable variables. Each life story deep-
ens and augments our understanding of how eventual sex/gender/sexuality
construction is related to personal life history. In what follows, I present a
partial synopsis of the life story of one of the boys from the sample—who
was 18 years old at the time of the interview and I gave him the name
Sam (a pseudonym)—concentrating on his experiences of being bullied
as a “wimp” at school and how this impacted his reflexivity and eventual
embodiment of hegemonic masculinity through sexual violence. Sam was
convicted of the crimes he committed, and I interviewed him in a youth
prison (for the full life story, see Messerschmidt 2016).
Sam was a short, overweight, boyish-looking 18 year old with short
blonde hair. He lived with his two adoptive parents and his younger bio-
logical sister. From elementary to high school, Sam was subjected to con-
sistent verbal bullying from the dominant “popular” boys. Sam was bullied
because of his physical size and shape (he was shorter and heavier than the
other boys), for his inability to respond to the bullying as the masculine
culture of the school dictated—that is, to physically fight back—and for his
lack of participation in sports. Sam was regularly labeled a “wimp” and was
thus feminized through abusive comments made by the dominant popular
boys about his inability to fight back, about his nonmuscular “fat” and
“wimpish” body, and his complete lack of participation in sports. Sam told
me that internally he decided not to respond to the bullies because of his
physical size—he did not want to be “beat up” and thus, “I felt like I was a
girl” (Messerschmidt 2016: 68–69).

26
 BECOMING A SUPER-MASCULINE “COOL GUY”:

The consistent and agonizing bullying led Sam to have frequent in-
ternal conversations about bodily inadequacy because of his physical size
and shape, as well as a sense of masculine powerlessness for his inability to
fight back as his peers expected. Sam spent much time internally deliberat-
ing about the contradiction between his body as a hindrance to masculine
construction and the in-school cultural stipulation that he fight back to be
recognized as masculine. To avoid further assessment of his body and con-
duct, Sam eventually reflexively decided to become a loner at school and do
all he could to elude any interaction with the bullies.
Despite the above, Sam’s major concern was to be like the dominant
popular boys—tall, strong, tough, sporty, and muscular—but he internally
reasoned that his short and obese body impeded that construction; he con-
cluded that he was bodily ill-prepared to construct this in-school dominant
form of masculinity. By the time he was fifteen years old Sam’s masculini-
ty was seriously challenged—he lacked situationally acceptable masculine
resources and therefore reflexively felt extremely powerless, distressed, and
subordinate at school. Sam was unable to accountably construct a domi-
nant in-school masculinity as he wished and instead, he was seriously sub-
ordinated and feminized in this setting.
At the same time Sam was confronting being continually bullied, he
began to sexually objectify and desire girls. He learned to objectify and de-
sire girls from interaction at school and not from his parents. Sam constant-
ly heard the dominant popular boys’ “sex talk” about sexual objectification
of girls, as well as their alleged heterosexual exploits and experiences. He
therefore started to reflexively desire to participate in heterosexuality, but
he was unable to meet any girls his age. As Sam told me, he constantly had
internal thoughts that centered on the bullying and it made him think, “I
wasn’t good enough. I didn’t have the trust enough to gain access to a girl. I
didn’t think any girl would be interested in me” (Messerschmidt 2016: 73).
Nevertheless, Sam concluded during his internal conversations that he
very much desired to participate in heterosexuality because he is “a guy”
and this is something that “every guy” is expected to do. In other words,
Sam reflexively defined sexual contact with girls as now another major con-
cern at this time in his life in order to “learn what it was like” and to be “like
the other guys.” Sam internally determined that engaging in heterosexuality
is in part what people with assigned “guy” bodies do with those bodies.
But through his continued internal conversations he resolved that he was
unable to fulfill this situationally defined dominant masculine criteria; he
reflexively concluded he was unable to construct a dominant heteromas-

27
 JAMES W. MESSERSCHMIDT

culinity at school, a construct he wholly coveted. Instead, Sam reflexively

chose to turn to a masculine behavior that was available to him: expressing
physical control and power over younger girls through sexuality outside the
confines of school.
Sam decided that babysitting in his basement at home would be a
means to satisfy his deep concern to be heteromasculine, and his parents
thought babysitting was a splendid idea. He internally decided that he was
in “need” of “some kind of sexual experience,” and he thought that through
babysitting he would come into contact with younger girls whom he would
“be able to take advantage of easily” and, thus, he would then be “a real guy”
(Messerschmidt 2016: 74). Sam stated that during his internal conversa-
tions he discussed with himself “how my life was, how I feared the people
at school, so I figured I could get a girl I was babysitting easier. That’s why I
wanted to babysit” (2016: 74). Consequently, Sam began babysitting a few
neighborhood girls (6–8 years old) in his house after school.
Sam decided to babysit because he thought he could both physically
control and gain bodily access to “vulnerable” and “innocent” girls. Once
he began to babysit, he internally realized that he was now situated in a
place “where I was in control because I was taking care of kids and I had
control over them.” He then devised ways to manipulate two of the girls
into fondling him and performing oral “sex” on him for two years. Sam
reflexively decided upon specific strategies to gain access to the girls and
conveyed to me that he kept thinking of “ways to manipulate, ways to, like,
bribe, like, act like I was helping them, act like I was doing good things for
them, like, playing games with them” (Messerschmidt 2016: 74–75). Sam
considered himself successful.
I conclude this synopsis with an extended excerpt in which Sam ex-
presses for me his inner thoughts as to what the sexual violence accom-
plished for him (2016: 75–77):
I was getting away with something that nobody else that I saw was getting away
with. I felt that I was number one. I didn’t feel like I was small anymore, because
in my own grade, my own school, with people my own age, I felt like I was a
wimp, the person that wasn’t worth anything. But when I did this to the girls, I
felt like I was big, I was in control of everything. And that’s why it was hard for
me to stop, because I’d have to return to that old me of being small and not being
anything. I wasn’t good at sports, and tough and strong and stuff, so I wasn’t fit-
ting in with anybody that was really popular. I was like a small person, someone
that nobody really paid attention to. I was the doormat at school. People walked
all over me and I couldn’t fight back. But I felt like I should be able to have sexual
contact with anybody that I wanted to [because], well, I’m a guy. I’m supposed
to have sex. I’m supposed to be like every other guy. And so I’m like them, but

28
 BECOMING A SUPER-MASCULINE “COOL GUY”:

[when I did this to the girls I thought] I’m even better than them [dominant
popular boys], because I can manipulate. They don’t get the power and the ex-
citement. They have a sexual relationship with a girl. She can say what she wants
and she has the choice. But the girls I babysat didn’t have the choice. It was like
I made it look like they had a choice, but when they stated their choice, if they
said no, I like bugged them and bugged them until they didn’t say no. I was, like,
better than every other guy, because there was no way I could get rejected. It was
like, okay, they can have their relationships, I’m gonna do whatever I want. I’m
better than they are.

Reflection

This brief glimpse into Sam’s rationale for engaging in sexual violence al-
lows us to “see” a genuine masculine project as a trajectory through time, as
a pattern of agency. Sam’s reflexivity mediated his particular social experi-
ences at school, and it is this subjective deliberation that is essential to un-
derstanding his decision to engage in sexual violence to solve his masculine
dilemma. The life-history interview with Sam recorded multiple factors: the
particular structural, discursive, and situational social conditions impact-
ing him; the specific reflexive deliberations that mediated and negotiated
those social conditions; how those social conditions made him feel; what
he defined as his immediate concerns; and how he planned and ultimately
decided to engage in sexual violence. For Sam, it is through reflexivity that
he defined his major concerns and his sense of self; that is, his perception
of who he is and who he wanted to be. Reflexivity is not separate from
the social but rather a dimension of it—Sam literally brought the social
inside—and it is through his reflexivity that he located himself in relation
to others. Sam was not, however, free to make and remake his gendered
self as he chose; he was constrained (and enabled) by the social structures,
discourses, and interactions situationally available to him. This research on
reflexivity builds on and indeed expands upon Connell’s notion of “choice.”
What we additionally “see” in this synopsis is Sam attempting to prac-
tice complicity with two different types of in-school masculinities: one
dominant and one hegemonic. Regarding the former, in Sam’s view all of
the boys who bullied him played sports, attended parties, participated in
heterosexuality, and had lots of friends; they were the popular boys and
-
represented the most celebrated form of masculinity in Sam’s school. For
the most part these boys constructed an in-school dominant masculini-
ty because they did not in and of themselves legitimate gender inequality
between boys and girls, masculinity and femininity. During his reflexive

29
Designators merinos mas .

JAMES W. MESSERSCHMIDT masculine

deliberations about this situation, Sam developed and defined his initial
major concern and what he mostly cared about—to construct a mascu-
linity like the dominant popular boys at school. However, Sam reflexively
-

perceived he was unable to do that at school.

These same dominant boys however occasionally constructed an in-
school dominating hegemonic masculinity. One way they did this was
through the practice of verbally bullying Sam. In the succinct bullying se-
quence of events, the dominant boys momentarily construct a discursive
dominating hegemonic masculinity because in the instance of verbal bully-
⑦ ing they embody aggressiveness, invulnerability, and the capacity to engage

E-
in physical violence (culturally masculine qualities) while Sam embodies
passivity, vulnerability, and an inability to engage in physical violence (cul-
turally feminine qualities). Unequal masculine and feminine relations are

-
therefore constructed within the localized confines of the school. By means
of verbal bullying, we have the discursive orchestration of hegemonic mas-
culinity and emphasized femininity—both embodied in youth assigned
“male” at birth—that legitimates gender inequality. And this is a domi-
nating hegemonic masculinity because the bullies were commanding and
controlling the violent verbal interaction, they were exercising aggressive ④
and dominating power over Sam, they were calling the shots and running a. site
the show. Accordingly, the term “hegemonic” is different from “dominant”

relationship between masculinity and femininity whereas the construction

of a dominant masculinity does not. And this example spotlights the flu-
Egg
in the sense that the situational bullying relationship legitimates an unequal do

idity of masculinities—from dominant to hegemonic and back to domi-

nant—as well as emphasized femininities, which in this case is embodied legitimism
-

-=aqa8
by Sam who was assigned “male” at birth.
The distinction between hegemonic and dominant masculinities fur-
design
-

ther develops Connell’s formulation because it enables a specific conceptu- al

alization of how hegemonic masculinities are unique among the diversity of centre
masculinities. The distinction also allows scholars to recognize and research mask
various dominant masculinities and how they differ from hegemonic mas- linide
culinities as well as how they differ among themselves. de e
At school, Sam found himself in a social situation where he was haunt-
femi
-

ed by the inability to resemble the dominant popular boys, he was tor-

mented by the specter of femininity, and he was anguished by his perceived ÷
“need,” yet incapacity, to practice heterosexuality. Within the confines of
the school, then, Sam was unable to find a way to adequately demonstrate
that-he was not feminine and that he was a heterosexual “cool guy.” He re-

30
Emoluments
feminine
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BECOMING A SUPER-MASCULINE “COOL GUY”:
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flexively decided that the only possible option out of this dilemma was to to-do
engage in sexual violence. For Sam, engaging in sexual violence was a prac- queé
tice rendering himself normally masculine—he was attempting, and he saw acute
himself as succeeding, at invalidating the feminine “wimp” label, conquer- relive
-

ing the specter of femininity, and overcoming his virginity by constructing

-

#n•€_-
what he interpreted as a legitimate form of heteromasculine expression.
Sam reflexively designed manipulation strategies to gain sexual access Moni -

to the girls he was babysitting—to triumph over their resistance (“I, like,
nos
bugged them and bugged them until they didn’t say no”)—and he reflex-
Ala
ively felt entitled to such sexual access. Recall Sam’s comment: “I felt like
I should be able to have sexual contact with anybody that I wanted to. frente
And I couldn’t do that with girls my own age. So, I felt like, okay, I’ll get it
from the girls I was babysitting.” And Sam further decided he was entitled
to sex because: “I’m a guy. I’m supposed to have sex. I’m supposed to be Constantinos
like every other guy.” Sam defined “having sex” as involving girls providing
sexual pleasure to him through fondling and oral “sex,” and when he “suc- comes
cessfully” manipulated the interaction so that occurred, he saw himself as
femi
-

super-heteromasculine because he had complete control over the girls he

_
babysat. And through this presentation - of a definite heterosexual identity winos
by means of sexual violence, any vestige of the feminine is squashed, and
hate
Sam is able to claim not simply a credible, but a superlative, embodied
masculine presence. Sam reflexively constructed a nonthreatening context days
in which a dominating hegemonic heteromasculinity could be performed corn
according to the in-school cultural masculine criteria. or
The sexual violence engaged in by Sam produced a dominating hege-
monic masculine/emphasized feminine relationship because it inscribed the theni
-

girls, who embodied weakness and vulnerability, as feminine and Sam, who hosdo
embodied strength and invulnerability, as masculine, thus constructing

funder
“inferior” emphasized feminine survivors and a “superior” hegemonically
masculine perpetrator. Gender difference and inequality were established
through Sam’s heterosexual violent practices. By engaging in sexual vio-
lence, Sam simultaneously attempts to align himself with what he reflex-
ively perceived as the “cool guys” and their accompanying dominant and
dominating hegemonic masculinities. This process of attempted alignment
resulted in Sam constructing a different type of dominating hegemonic
masculinity than the “cool guys” whereby he was commanding and con-
trolling the violent interaction, he was exercising aggressive and dominating
power over girls, he was calling the shots and running the show. And spe-
cifically through babysitting, Sam concurrently had access to young girls,

31
 JAMES W. MESSERSCHMIDT

-8
which was agentic for Sam. Accordingly, gender, age, and sexuality were
mutually constituted by each other through the same practice; at once all
three were salient to this violent practice in this particular social situation,
and this intersectionality contributed to structured gender, age, and sexual-
ity inequalities. This then amplifies Connell’s notion of intersectionality as
discussed in The Men and the Boys.
The above discussion also elaborates the Connell and Messerschmidt
reformulation of multiple hegemonic masculinities because it suggests that
different types of dominating hegemonic masculinities were constructed
by the dominant popular boys and by Sam. The two types of dominating
hegemonic masculinities are similar in the sense that both the dominant
popular boys and Sam are commanding and controlling a particular in-
teraction, they are exercising aggressive and dominating power over other
people, and they are calling the shots and running the show. Nevertheless,
the dominant popular boys engaged in a dominating hegemonic mascu-
linity through the discursive bullying of Sam, whereas Sam fashioned a
dominating hegemonic masculinity through embodied sexual violence.
They were therefore different in how they commanded and controlled spe-
cific interactions and with whom they exercised aggressive and controlling
power over. What this indicates then is that gender hegemony essentially is
decentered in the sense that hegemonic masculinities are multifarious and
found in a whole variety of social settings. Hegemonic masculinities do not
discriminate in terms of race/ethnicity, class, age, sexuality, and national-
ity, and hegemonic masculinities do not represent a certain type of man
but, rather, they personify and symbolize an unequal relationship between
men and women, masculinity and femininity, and among masculinities.
And hegemonic masculinities often are fluid, contingent, provisional, yet
omnipresent, and they collectively constitute a social structure that rela-

#
tionally and discursively legitimates unequal gender relations between men
and women, masculinities and femininities, and among masculinities (see
further Messerschmidt 2018).
The combined dominant and occasional hegemonic masculine rela-
tionship between the bullies and Sam objectively shaped the particular so-
cial situation that Sam confronted involuntarily. Sam internally responded
to the objective structures, discourses, and interactions at school by reflex-
ively designing the course of action he pursued. Reflexivity was an emergent
personal power possessed by Sam, he was an “active agent” who internally
-

developed and determined his particular response to the social circumstanc-

es that he experienced at school. Although Sam was unable to construct any

32
 BECOMING A SUPER-MASCULINE “COOL GUY”:

form of masculinity at school, he did not give up and become a passive vic-
tim of his circumstances. Instead, Sam actively used his reflexivity to devise
a particular practice for himself—sexual violence—whereby he could now
claim masculinity as his own.
Finally, it is important to note that Sam’s body was reflexively scruti-
nized by him and therefore became party to a surrogate masculine practice
that directed him toward a course of social action that was bodily realiz-
able. At school, Sam reflexively deliberated about his body in relation to
the bodies of the dominant popular boys. And in so doing, he determined
that his short and obese body was no match for the tall, strong, and mus-
cular bodies of the dominant boys; Sam therefore decided not to respond
in any way to the bullies because he did not want to be “beat up.” Sam
also reflexively studied his body and subsequently he identified as “a guy,”
eventually establishing that engaging in heterosexuality is in part what peo-
ple with “guy” bodies do with their bodies; nevertheless, he was unable to
accomplish that at school. Because Sam’s body served as antagonist in his
construction of masculinity, he had a desperate need to abandon his sub-
ordinate and feminized embodied position and to align himself with in-
school dominant and hegemonic masculinities. His embodied subordina-
tion and feminization at school was reflexively deliberated and he decided
to fixate on a specific site, the home, and a specific form of body-reflexive
deployment, sexual violence, where such surrogate practices could be re-
alized. At home, Sam had access to the means—that is, “innocent” and
“vulnerable” 6-8-year-old girls whom he would “be able to take advantage
of easily”—through which his body could attain what he perceived as a
dominant masculine expression. The contrast primarily in age and body
size created a power differential that was agentic for Sam but devastating
to the young girls, who were physically, mentally, and socially weaker. The
available opportunities at the home site was therefore especially attractive,
became obsessive, and provided a powerful and exclusive means of doing
dominant and eventually hegemonic masculinity. It was in the site of the
home that Sam’s body took on a relatively new size and shape (he was
physically larger and stronger than his victims) and his body moved in a
different way than at school (he was physically bold, competent, and con-
trolling in the home). By reflexively concentrating his interactional effort
outside the context of the school, Sam was able to transform how he inter-
acted with and through his body; his body was an object and agent of his
practices. Sam was now living through his body in a new way and therefore
he became, in his own eyes, a super-masculine “cool guy.”

33
 JAMES W. MESSERSCHMIDT

Permit me to close this article with a personal note. I have known

Raewyn Connell for 30 years and following our initial meeting in 1991
we became intellectual friends. We have collaborated professionally on two
projects: we co-authored the 2005 article, “Hegemonic Masculinity: Re-
thinking the Concept,” Gender & Society 19 (6): 829–859, and we co-edit-
ed (with Michael Messner and Pat Martin) Gender Reckonings: New Social
Theory and Research (New York: New York University Press, 2018). Connell
advanced an approach in social science—exemplified in The Men and the
Boys—that combines detailed empirical research with ambitious theory de-
velopment, and she organized both these around issues of social justice,
including strategies for change. It is this synthesis that makes her work dis-
tinctive. Connell’s work on masculinities and their possibilities of change
has influenced policy debates, activism and professional practice in educa-
tion, health, crime and violence prevention, youth work, bullying, counsel-
ing, sports, and related fields. Her work on such applied topics is collected
in The Men and the Boys. I dedicated my most recent book (Messerschmidt
2018) to Connell with the following inscription: “For Raewyn: Cherished
Friend, Perceptive Mentor, and One of the Most Important Intellectuals
of Our Time,” and I am honored to contribute to this special issue on The
Men and the Boys.

James W. Messerschmidt is Distinguished University Professor Emer-

itus of Sociology at the University of Southern Maine in the United
States. In addition to over 80 research articles and book chapters, he
has authored 14 books, most recently Hegemonic Masculinity: Formula-
tion, Reformulation, and Amplification and Gender Reckonings: New So-
cial Theory and Research co-edited with Patricia Yancey Martin, Michael
Messner, and Raewyn Connell. His research interests focus on: cogni-
tive sociology; inequalities and intersectionality; gender, masculinities,
and sexualities; youth crime and violence; and political sociology. Email:
[email protected]

34
 BECOMING A SUPER-MASCULINE “COOL GUY”:

References

Archer, Margaret. 2007. Making Our Way through the World: Human Reflexivity
and Social Mobility. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Beasley, Christine. 2008. “Re-thinking Hegemonic Masculinity in a Globalizing
World.” Men and Masculinities 11 (1): 86–103.
Connell, Raewyn. 1987. Gender and Power. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Connell, Raewyn. 1995. Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Connell, Raewyn. 2000. The Men and the Boys. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Connell, Raewyn and James W. Messerschmidt. 2005. “Hegemonic Masculinity:
Rethinking the Concept.” Gender & Society 19 (6): 829–859.
Flood, Michael. 2002. “Between Men and Masculinity: An Assessment of the
Term ‘Masculinity’ in Recent Scholarship on Men.” In Manning the Next
Millennium: Studies in Masculinities, ed. S. Pearce and V. Muller, 203–213.
Chicago: Black Swan Press.
Martin, Patricia Yancey. 1998. “Why Can’t a Man Be More Like a Woman?
Reflections on Connell’s Masculinities.” Gender and Society 12 (4): 472–474.
Messerschmidt, James W. 2000. Nine Lives: Adolescent Masculinities, the Body, and
Violence. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Messerschmidt, James W. 2004. Flesh & Blood: Adolescent Gender Diversity and
Violence. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Messerschmidt, James W. 2010. Hegemonic Masculinities and Camouflaged
Politics. Boulder, CO.: Paradigm Publishers.
Messerschmidt, James W. 2012. Gender, Heterosexuality, and Youth Violence: The
Struggle for Recognition. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Messerschmidt, James W. 2014. Crime as Structured Action. 2nd Edition.
Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Messerschmidt, James W. 2016. Masculinities in the Making: From the Local to the
Global. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Messerschmidt, James W. 2018. Hegemonic Masculinity: Formulation,
Reformulation, and Amplification. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Schippers, Mimi. 2007. “Recovering the Feminine Other: Masculinity,
Femininity, and Gender Hegemony.” Theory & Society 36 (1): 85–102.
Tarrant, Anna and Michael R. M. Ward. 2019. “Hegemonic Masculinity.”
In SAGE Research Methods Foundations (online), ed. Paul Atkinson, Sara
Deamont, Alexandru Cernat, Joseph W. Sakshaug, and Richard A. Williams.
doi:10.4135/9781526421036821346.

35
 BECOMING A SUPER-MASCULINE “COOL GUY”:

References

Archer, Margaret. 2007. Making Our Way through the World: Human Reflexivity
and Social Mobility. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Beasley, Christine. 2008. “Re-thinking Hegemonic Masculinity in a Globalizing
World.” Men and Masculinities 11 (1): 86–103.
Connell, Raewyn. 1987. Gender and Power. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Connell, Raewyn. 1995. Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Connell, Raewyn. 2000. The Men and the Boys. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Connell, Raewyn and James W. Messerschmidt. 2005. “Hegemonic Masculinity:
Rethinking the Concept.” Gender & Society 19 (6): 829–859.
Flood, Michael. 2002. “Between Men and Masculinity: An Assessment of the
Term ‘Masculinity’ in Recent Scholarship on Men.” In Manning the Next
Millennium: Studies in Masculinities, ed. S. Pearce and V. Muller, 203–213.
Chicago: Black Swan Press.
Martin, Patricia Yancey. 1998. “Why Can’t a Man Be More Like a Woman?
Reflections on Connell’s Masculinities.” Gender and Society 12 (4): 472–474.
Messerschmidt, James W. 2000. Nine Lives: Adolescent Masculinities, the Body, and
Violence. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Messerschmidt, James W. 2004. Flesh & Blood: Adolescent Gender Diversity and
Violence. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Messerschmidt, James W. 2010. Hegemonic Masculinities and Camouflaged
Politics. Boulder, CO.: Paradigm Publishers.
Messerschmidt, James W. 2012. Gender, Heterosexuality, and Youth Violence: The
Struggle for Recognition. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Messerschmidt, James W. 2014. Crime as Structured Action. 2nd Edition.
Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Messerschmidt, James W. 2016. Masculinities in the Making: From the Local to the
Global. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Messerschmidt, James W. 2018. Hegemonic Masculinity: Formulation,
Reformulation, and Amplification. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Schippers, Mimi. 2007. “Recovering the Feminine Other: Masculinity,
Femininity, and Gender Hegemony.” Theory & Society 36 (1): 85–102.
Tarrant, Anna and Michael R. M. Ward. 2019. “Hegemonic Masculinity.”
In SAGE Research Methods Foundations (online), ed. Paul Atkinson, Sara
Deamont, Alexandru Cernat, Joseph W. Sakshaug, and Richard A. Williams.
doi:10.4135/9781526421036821346.

35