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The rise of “strong man” politics in the Philippines brings attention to manhood narratives. Machismo remains a strong presence in the upper echelons of society, despite gender equality initiatives and a strong feminist movement. With Rodrigo Duterte portraying the “father-figure” of the nation, one questions what this type of manhood means for the Filipino family.

This study traces the construction of Filipino manhood in relation to the country’s strongest unit of the family. Utilizing a systematic review of seminal outputs on masculinity, this piece explores the definition of Filipino manhood using texts from various Filipino gender and development scholars. Sikolohiyang Pilipino or Indigenous Filipino Psychology frames the identified themes that surround the image of a Tunay na Lalaki or True Man. The labas (outer world) and loob (inner self) are then framed in relation to Filipino men’s roles. Intersections between one’s peer group, socio-economic class, and the situation in the global migration context inform the formation of one’s labas (outer self/identity). The findings indicate that Filipino manhood traits, as seen in one’s loob (inner self) contextualize one’s understanding of manhood’s construction as familial. By unearthing the nuances of manhood in the archipelago, this chapter showcases masculinities from the subaltern and purports possible ways of decolonizing “from below.”

bell hooks says in “Reconstructing Black Masculinity” that n[c]ollectively we can break the life threatening choke‐hold patriarchal masculinity imposes on black men and create life sustaining visions of a reconstructed black masculinity that can provide black men ways to save their lives and the lives of their brothers and sisters in struggle. Toward the work of political (re)unification of the genders in black communities today, black men must acknowledge and begin to confront the existence of sexism in black liberation struggle as one of the chief obstacles empeding its advancement. Making womanist space for black men to participate in allied relation to feminist movement to oppose the opression of women means black men going against the grain of the racist and sexist mythology of black manhood and masculinity in the U.S. Its underlying premise rooted in white supremacist patriarchal ideology continues to foster the idea that we pose a racial and sexual threat to American society such that our bodies exist to be feared, brutalized, imprisoned, annihilated‐made invisible.

By the term “identity stakes” I mean all the side bets (Becker, 1960) that ride on being able to convince an audience that we are who and what we claim to be. These stakes are both material and psychic. Getting a monthly paycheck from my university depends on having convinced a host of people in that organization that I am indeed Michael Schwalbe, professor of sociology. Many more side bets ride on getting that check every month.

The United States military, like most militaries, has traditionally been a male-dominated organisation. Contemporary military historians argue that wars and the militaries that fight them are “an entirely masculine activity” (Keegan, 1993, p. 76) and “[b]efore it was anything else, war was an assertion of masculinity. When everything else is said and done, an assertion of masculinity is what it remains” (Van Creveld, 2001, p. 161). Because the military's “core activity” is combat (…), a task viewed primarily in masculine terms because it has generally been defined as “men's work”, a “deeply entrenched cult of masculinity pervades US military culture” (Dunivin, 1997, p. 2). Language has codified the long history of the masculine warrior paradigm. Van Creveld notes that the Old Testament utilises the same term for “adult man” and “warrior” while medieval Germans used “becoming a man” and “carrying a sword” interchangeably (Van Creveld, 2001, p. 164). James Webb, former Secretary of the Navy in the late 1980s, called combat the “quintessentially male obligation in any society” (Webb, 1997, p. 4). If societies have obligated men to combat, they have rewarded them by connecting combat to the achievement of manhood. Men bestow manhood on one another: men are made, not born (Goldstein, 2001). According to Kimmel (2000a, p. 214), “What men need is men's approval (…) we test ourselves, perform heroic feats, take enormous risks, all because we want other men to grant us our manhood.”

The aim of this paper is to help in understanding the relationship between the construction of the male identity and how social violence may be “reproduced” (using the concept of habitus after Pierre Bourdieu), in poor and socially excluded contexts. The paper aims to inform debate and policy making.

The paper draws on empirical data collected in 2008, in the form of life‐history interviews with male youths – including members and non‐members of gangs – from two poor and very violent neighbourhoods in Medellín, Colombia's second largest city.

Masculinities alone do not account for urban violence, but they play an integral role why violence is reproduced. In socio‐economically excluded contexts the gang becomes an attractive vehicle for “doing masculinity” for boys and young men. Youths who did not join gangs tended to have family support to develop a “moral rejection” of gangs, crime and violence during childhood, which contributed to them finding non‐gang pathways to manhood. Youths who joined gangs were less likely to develop this “moral rejection” during childhood, often due to family problems; and were more likely to admire older gang members, and perceive the gang as an attractive pathway to manhood.

As the sole researcher a limited number of 32 individuals were interviewed.

There is a lack of research on masculinities and gang affiliation in the UK and across the globe. This paper provides new conceptual ideas for understanding why young men make up the vast majority of violent gang members, whilst providing an original data set from a very violent urban setting.

The authors draw upon the African proverb: “How Do You Eat an Elephant?” One Bite at a Time to couch emerging practices and programs connected to and within California community colleges that are specifically designed to counter historical and topical institutional neglect and exclusion one initiative at a time. To this end, we discuss the Umoja Community, Men of Ujima Manhood Development Program, and the African American Male Educational Network and Development (A²MEND) organization. The authors maintain that the study of Black men in general is in need of its own theoretical framework that can articulate their position and trajectory in the world drawing on and accounting for their pre- and post-enslavement experiences while capturing their spiritual, psychological, social, educational development and station. Thus, we first build upon critical race theory (CRT) and African-centered theory to construct an emergent conceptual approach that more accurately articulates the experiences of African American men in community colleges and that both explains the existence of the aforementioned independent educational programs and organizations and provides the framework to produce and maintain additional self-determined spaces. Beyond theory and research, however, the authors call community college educators to a personal accountability and action to create spaces, initiatives, programs, organizations, and institutions based on the conceptual framework outlined in this current chapter.

Decades after feminist scholars first applied the lens of patriarchy to explain gender inequalities, and wrestled with the consequences of the patriarchal order, masculinity studies have moved from an emphasis on hegemonic masculinities to more nuanced constructions of men’s gendered performances. However, many analyses about men’s social interactions still focus on a limited set of behaviors, and men’s relations with women are often presented as problematic. Many accounts pay insufficient attention to changing contexts and men’s own explanations or perspectives, so we do not see men’s struggles or fully understand why and how some men resist patriarchal norms and perform less conventional masculinities, and what the costs and benefits of contesting dominant constructions are. One of the abiding ideologies of manhood is related to the role of the provider. In this chapter, we propose that the persistence of the social expectation that men should be the (main) family providers, despite changing economic circumstances and historical evidence to the contrary, is profoundly implicated in the tenacity of social expectations for men to perform dominant roles. We explore this contention through conversations with young African men in six cities on the continent and in the diaspora, namely Accra, Kampala, London, Nairobi, Philadelphia and Pretoria.

Gender distinctions were central to the ideological and discursive construction of ‘freedom’ in colonial plantation societies, but so too were ethnicity and national identity. This article examines the contested nature of masculinity in the making of free citizens in post-emancipation Jamaica through an analysis of government and missionary sources, popular petitions, public speeches, and newspapers from 1834 to 1865. Close readings of the tensions within these public texts and their official reception demonstrate how freed men worked within and against the dominant discourses of Christian liberalism and masculine individualism as the bases for national citizenship. The key argument is that in laying claim to a Christian and British identity, African-Jamaican men constituted their freedom not so much through a seclusion of women in a private domestic role, but more importantly through an exclusion of indentured East Indians who were negatively defined as ‘foreign’ heathens.

There is an African proverb that says, “I am because we are, and, because we are, therefore, I am.” One aspect of this blended perspective is that one's identity is tied to a larger body than the self. This proverb not only characterizes the wisdom and philosophy of African people, it serves as a point of reference in how one might begin to understand the self and one's distinct group identity or consciousness (Cross, 1995; Jackson, 2001; Kambon, 1992). In this lies the dilemma, unfortunately, of oppressed people whose identity have been racialized and suppressed by derogatory epithets, who have been labeled and called by a variety of racial and cultural categorizations – notoriously branded as Negro, nigger, Colored, Black, African, Afro-American, African American, etc. (Jackson, 2001; Kennedy, 2002).

In 1990s America, the question of what made a ‘real’ man was at the forefront of debates about sex and gender. During this pivotal moment, hegemonic masculinity was experiencing numerous threats to its ontological security. For instance, masculinity was infamously pronounced in crisis, the advent of the ‘new man’ betrayed anxieties about an image-conscious and feminine performance of masculinity, and there was mounting pressure from civil rights, feminist and queer groups for straight, white, masculinity to be held accountable. In short, the issue for masculinity in the 90s was that of legitimacy. The response from Hollywood was hardly to be expected: during this time of ontological crisis for masculinities, cinema experienced an influx of crisis films which featured leading men in disguise or masquerade. Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break is one such film that represents the masculinities of its protagonists as masquerades to represent a crisis in the definition of manhood. Through Judith Butler's pioneering theory of gender as a performance, this chapter argues that Point Break's depiction of masculine masquerade both complicates and confirms masculinity's insistence on invoking the rhetoric of ‘the real’ in order to retain hegemonic dominance. Masculinity crisis cinema has been extensively studied, yet the action genre is frequently left out of this discussion (the exception being David Fincher's Fight Club) despite its unique questioning of how manhood is built. Thus, in this chapter there will be an exploration as to how Point Break demonstrates that masculinities both abhor and need crisis in order to secure their continuation in patriarchy.