Abstract
This chapter explores continuing expressions, practices, beliefs and discourses of masculinity amongst advantaged men that constitute barriers to greater equality, considering these as examples of closed masculinities. It investigates the ways in which some men deploy discursive distancing as a means of balancing contemporary contradictory requirements for men to be both hard and softer. Older discourses of women as ruled by emotions, and as therefore less suited to career and friendships, are also unpacked and problematised, as is the salience of worries amongst some heterosexual men that they will be perceived as gay. These worries equate socially unacceptable male forms of homosexuality with femininity, but can exist alongside accepting and inclusive attitudes towards LGBTQIA+ people, as this chapter illustrates. The chapter concludes with an exploration of stories about fathers as traditional, distant and unemotional, contrasting with the more reworked or open expressions of masculinity emerging amongst some contemporary young men.
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Elliott, K. (2020). Closed Narratives of Masculinities. In: Young Men Navigating Contemporary Masculinities. Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36395-6_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36395-6_3
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