Exploiting Patterns: A Critique

of Hegemonic Masculinity
MICHAEL MOLLER

ABSTRACT The work of R. W. Connell has been extremely influential within the field of masculinity
studies for at least the past decade. In particular, his concept of hegemonic masculinity has been
used as a means of interrogating the practices, attitudes and meanings of both masculinities and
men. In this article the author problematises Connell’s tendency to map out an entire conceptual
system for theorising masculinity/ies and power. This is done in two ways. First, he argues that
Connell’s critical review of the different ways in which masculinity has been theorised tries to lay
claim to an objective position from which the patterns of masculinity will become obvious. This
reduces the complexity and nuances of what the subjects of masculinity (often, men) actually do.
Second, he illustrates how Connell’s determination of masculinity as dominating overdetermines
what men actually do, say and feel. Drawing on an example from Connell’s work on masculinity and
education, he argues that men’s practices and motivations are often more complex than the concept
of hegemonic masculinity allows.
KEYWORDS: Masculinities, theory, hegemony, critique, education

Introduction
Robert Connell’s work on masculinity has been widely used in recent years as a way of
understanding the formation, practices and meanings of masculinity within a range of
contexts. Connell’s emphasis on the constructed nature of masculinity/ies impresses upon
readers the centrality of power when we seek to understand the ways in which masculinity
is practised. As Demetriou (2001) suggests, a major strength of Connell’s theorisation of
masculinities lies in his cogent delineation of the problems with previous ways of thinking
about gender. Connell is particularly critical of sex role theory, noting that this approach to
gender ‘has a fundamental difficulty in grasping issues of power’ which leaves it unable to
satisfactorily account for changes in the performance and meaning of masculinity (2005,
p. 27). Framed in a way that suggests gendered power is a central conceptual problem that
sex role theory is unable to address, Connell’s work seems to provide an alternative, more
critical way of thinking about gender relations – and about masculinity in particular.
Demetriou comments: ‘Connell offers not simply an account of the problems of sex-role
theory but also, and more importantly, a transcendence of them’ (2001, p. 339). His notion
of hegemonic masculinity, for example, seems to provide a conceptual tool with which to
trouble the entrenched connections between masculinity and power. In a recent article,

Correspondence Address: Michael Moller, School of Philosophical & Historical Inquiry, Main Quad A14,
University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia. Tel.: 61 2 9351 7509; Email: michael.moller@usyd.edu.au
Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 16, No. 3 November 2007, pp. 263–276
ISSN 0958-9236 Print/ISSN 1465-3869 q 2007 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journal DOI: 10.1080/09589230701562970
264 Journal of Gender Studies

Hearn underscores the productive, critical potential of this term, noting that ‘the concept of
hegemonic masculinity has been particularly successful’ in identifying the ways in which
some men dominate both women and other men (2004, p. 58).
Of course, there are other reasons why Connell’s ideas have proven so adaptable, and
have been so widely used. For one, Connell eschews complex theoretical jargon in favour
of more digestible terms readily found in mainstream discourses of everyday life in
multicultural, highly urbanised settings. Straightforward terms like ‘diversity’,
‘multiplicity’, ‘hierarchy’ and ‘contradiction’, and a general awareness of how to
recognise masculine manifestations of them, means that readers can fairly easily cite
examples of them, at least in men’s lives. For example, it is not at all difficult for me to
note that my masculinity is different from that of my father. In a similar vein, claims that
masculinity is ‘dynamic’, or that it is liable to contestation and change, can be readily
understood and evidence found to support these hypotheses. For instance, keeping with the
familial theme, the different masculinities expressed by my father and I suggest that
masculinity is inseparable from ‘other’ social factors such as generation, race and class.
Connell’s model allows the articulation of masculinity to be seen as a response to, or
better, as intertwined with, these other factors.
A further appeal of Connell’s theorisation of masculinity lies in his understanding of
masculinity(ies) as actively, and socially, constructed. This recognition not only opens
masculinities to critique; arguably it also establishes the kinds of questions and problems
that can be asked within the field of masculinity studies. For if masculinities are socially
constructed, then there must be conditions under which masculinities can change. Further,
if masculinities are malleable, at least to some extent, then it becomes less necessary to
live with those articulations of masculinity that are damaging. The job of masculinity
studies, then, is to mount and sustain arguments for change. Thus, in the very act of
claiming that masculinities are actively and socially constructed, a specific interest in
those bodies and identities deemed worthy of change is foreshadowed.

Towards a Critique
Connell’s work, then, engages readers and researchers on a number of levels. However,
I want to interrogate two related aspects of Connell’s work. First, I argue that in his desire
to distance his theoretical and empirical work on masculinity/ies from other frameworks,
Connell intimates that there is a preferred model of reading and understanding the
‘patterns of masculinity’ (Connell, 2000, p. 12). The language of abstract patterns suggests
the need for a conceptual code capable of deciphering all that is conducted under the name,
‘masculinity’. Such a theoretical move has important disciplinary effects as it establishes,
or at least seeks to establish, particular modes of enquiry, and a specific set of arguments
and conceptual tools, as proper to masculinity studies (e.g. an explicitly critical tone, a
viewpoint of the ‘objective observer’, a statement about the truth of patriarchy). As I later
argue by way of an account of the research process I used in writing my PhD thesis on the
cultural practices of a community of rugby league supporters (Moller, 2002a), this
disciplinary strategy obscures the researcher’s ability to see masculinity in any terms other
than ‘political’. Of course, having an explicitly political, even critical tone in one’s
research and writing has been a key way in which ‘serious’ academic work in masculinity
studies has been distinguished from the ‘pop psychology’ Connell expressly condemns as
‘reinforc[ing] the imaginary identity of “men”’ (2005, p. xiii). But as a rugby league
 Exploiting Patterns 265

supporter and man myself, it felt incomplete to talk only about the game’s masculinism.
It took me a long time to realise, however, that I needed to write about the feelings of
male rugby league fans as well as the politics they espoused; that they might even be
connected.
This kind of disciplinary tunnel vision assumes even greater significance when it is
recognised that Connell’s work pointedly refuses an engagement with poststructural
feminist critiques of the ways in which gendered subjectivities have been theorised as
coherent, unified, whole. Thus, Stephen Whitehead (1999) argues that masculinity studies
has largely failed to keep pace with recent feminist thinking about gender, sexuality,
subjectivity and power. For example, Judith Butler’s work in Undoing Gender (2004) and
elsewhere suggests that there is often a component of radical ‘undecideability’ and psychic
vulnerability in the performance of gender, and especially of masculinity. Connell’s
model, however, insists on a distinct and legible hierarchy of masculinities. Within this
hierarchy some men exercise significant power while others have less access to power, but
all men are rendered coherent by and to Connell’s theoretical schema. Men have a single,
stable gender identity which can be mapped in relation to women and other men using the
concept of a hierarchy of masculinities. For example, where Butler (1995, p. 28) theorises
that the rejection of homosexuality is a psychic process which leads to heterosexual men’s
melancholia, Connell sees homosexuality more simply as the marginalised, disempowered
‘other’ of heterosexual hegemonic masculinity. In short, while much of Connell’s work
articulates a need for tools which will generate critical analyses of the ways in which
masculinity is practised, it also tends to overlook the complexity of the phenomena it
investigates: that is, masculinity per se.
Elaborating on this point, I then examine how Connell’s model of a ‘hegemonic
masculinity’ – defined in a recent book as ‘the most honoured or desired’ form of
masculinity among a multiplicity of alternative masculinities – interpellates readers and
researchers as critical subjects (Connell, 2000, p. 10). Put another way, I argue that
Connell’s theoretical apparatus seduces the way we, as scholars in masculinity studies,
think about our object/s of study.1 The concept of hegemonic masculinity invites readers
to look ‘out there’ for particularly nefarious instances of masculinist abuses of power.
More mundane practices of masculinity, and of masculine power, tend to go unnoticed.
As Jefferson (2002, pp. 70 –72) suggests, hegemonic masculinity is often used
attributionally. One effect of this is that it then becomes easy to lose sight of the
specificity of men’s practices, including the specificity of those ‘boring’ masculinities
which populate our everyday. Thus Hearn (2004) favours the term ‘hegemony of men’
over ‘hegemonic masculinity’.
At its strongest, I argue that Connell employs an identifying strategy by which one
names what one is looking for – that is, hegemonic masculinity – in advance of ‘finding’
something which seems to fit its description. Further, such a theoretical maneouvre
facilitates a disavowal of power and privilege on the part of the researcher/writer. Thus,
the people whose lives and practices fill the pages of research theoretically informed by the
concept of hegemonic masculinity frequently function as objects of critical scorn for a
more politically aware author. One problem with this model of researching and writing
about gender and power lies in the critical tendency to nominate particular qualities,
practices and figures of masculinity as problematic (a move which also ex-nominates the
specific power and privilege of the author).
266 Journal of Gender Studies

Beyond the appeal of arguments which are relatively easy to follow and substantiate, as
well as a legitimisation of critique, I argue that Connell’s iconic concept of hegemonic
masculinity encourages a critical and somewhat exclusive focus on certain forms of
masculine power: domination, subordination, oppression. Coupled with the well-
documented turn to the body as a site of power, masculinity studies informed by Connell’s
work tend to thematise power in a very specific way, equating ‘power’ with ‘domination’
and locating this power in the hands of exemplary men. Hegemonic masculinity, then,
is said to exist at sites where power is practised in an overt and excessive fashion.
It is not a power possessed by all or even most men, though many may benefit from it
(the patriarchal dividend). My interest here is in the effects of this disavowal of power; this
automatic sense that somebody else is doing masculine power and that others are less
directly involved in its articulation. I’m interested in the techniques by which masculine
power is named and located, how this act of localisation informs studies of masculinity,
and, in particular, in the extra-discursive effects of such an operation (for example, in
conferring critical legitimacy on those working within masculinity studies). For as Wendy
Brown (1995) suggests, a key strategy by which masculinity operates today is through the
disavowal of power and privilege. Late modern masculinity, Brown writes, is paradoxical
insofar as ‘its power and privilege operate increasingly through disavowal of potency,
repudiation of responsibility, and diffusion of sites and operations of control’ (1995,
p. 194). Any act of disavowal nevertheless requires that power be located somewhere, that
it be attributed to somebody or some particular group. Thus, in seeing power only as
domination practised by some men, we run the risk of failing to see how we – men and
women – subject ourselves to the subtle modalities of contemporary power; and that we
are also always subjects of power. Further, the framing strategy by which power is seen as
a form of domination practised by others, always others, not only goes a long way towards
legitimising masculinity studies as a critical discourse, but also tends to grant greater
disciplinary legitimacy to arguments which focus on the overtly problematic aspects of
some men and some masculinities.
I think it is vital that we retain a critical focus on the techniques by which patriarchal
domination is secured. However, this critical impulse needs to be tempered with a
recognition of some of the more mundane ways in which power and privilege are
exercised; for example, through negotiation and consensus building. Further, we need to
start thinking through the ethics of our own standpoints as masculinity studies scholars,
beginning, I would suggest, with a more careful delineation of how we frame our subjects
(objects?) of study. In other words, we need to recognise our own particular forms of
power and privilege. My concern is that in the extensive use that masculinity studies
scholars and researchers have made of Connell’s work, and particularly of the concept of
hegemonic masculinity, there is a tendency to occlude those techniques and tactics of
masculine power that do not quite make sense as dominating or oppressive: to see power as
only domination. An important consequence of this is that readers, researchers and writers
invariably seek to distance themselves from a masculinity which has already been
negatively anticipated. This act of establishing a critical distance between researcher and
researched, between the subject who writes and the object written about, has its theoretical
and methodological origins in Connell’s historical account of the analytical discourses by
which masculinity has been constituted as a site of knowledge. Of particular interest is
Connell’s attempt to distance his theorisation of masculinity/ies from positivist and other
approaches.
 Exploiting Patterns 267

On Seeing Patterns
Connell’s conceptualisation of masculinity as a legible form of dominating power is
evident in his critique of positivist understandings of gender, and his subsequent
formulation of gender relations as a ‘pattern’ within which hegemonic masculinity
operates. For Connell, it is a matter of some urgency that we understand how masculinity
has been defined, and he identifies four strategies which various humanities disciplines
have used to explain masculinity: essentialism, positivist social science, normative
definitions of men’s and women’s behaviour, and semiotic or discourse-based approaches
(Connell, 2005, pp. 67– 71). As a self-identifying ‘social constructionist’, Connell quickly
dispenses with two of these approaches, telling us that ‘the weakness in the essentialist
approach is obvious . . . [with] the choice of the essence . . . quite arbitrary’ (2005, p. 69),
while normative definitions of masculinity are paradoxical in that they describe a norm
that few meet. A third, the semiotic or discursive approach, is judged as having been ‘very
effective in cultural analysis . . . [but] limited in its scope’ (2005, pp. 70, 71).
While there are important questions to be asked regarding Connell’s interpretation of
these definitional approaches to masculinity – for example, how we are to understand the
social without discourse – I will concentrate on Connnell’s evaluation of the remaining
disciplinary and theoretical strategy he identifies: positivist social science. Connell’s
critical evaluation of positivism underpins his larger claim that masculinity studies needs
to become more interested in the dynamic nature of gendered power relations. Positivist
social science, Connell states, ‘yields a simple definition of masculinity: what men
actually are’ (2005, p. 69). Extrapolating from the local and particular, positivist
arguments see in men’s actions a pattern. This strategy is clearly problematic as it ignores
the many ways in which culture and context actively shape how masculinity is performed
and experienced.
As Connell notes in an earlier discussion of positivist ethnographic methods and ‘the
way they are put to use . . . the positivist method presupposes a stable object of knowledge
which is constant across all the cases’ (2005, p. 33). Thus masculinity is understood as
referring to a specific and already known set of qualities or attributes: for example, a
greater access to power, an exaggerated competitive ethos, etc. So positivist approaches
universalise masculinity/ies as men and, in doing so, impose a culturally specific
conceptualisation of masculinity on our understanding of men’s (and women’s) lives.
Connell, then, is critical of the positivist tradition within the social sciences for the way
it seeks, and inevitably finds, self-contained and deterministic patterns within men’s lives,
a pattern which is always already anticipated as ‘masculinity’. The question I want to pose
is whether Connell’s conceptual work on masculinities, especially the notion of a
hegemonic form of masculinity, also articulates a desire for such orderly patterns. To what
extent does Connell’s model of a hierarchy of masculinities, within which there is a
hegemonic form, operate as a theoretical and/or methodological mechanism with which to
whittle down the diversity and complexity of human subjects until they can be understood
in black and white terms as having a discernible place in the system of gender?
Throughout his work, Connell repeatedly signals that gender relations form an
identifiable pattern or system. Discussing the diversity of masculinities, for example,
Connell states ‘that there is no one pattern of masculinity that is found everywhere’ (2000,
p. 10; emphasis added). Barely a page later he reiterates the importance of macrostructural
ordering to the performance of masculinity, claiming that ‘the patterns of conduct our
268 Journal of Gender Studies

society defines as masculine . . . have an existence beyond the individual. Masculinities

are defined collectively in culture, and are sustained in institutions’ (2000; 11; emphasis
added). He also rejects the idea that men’s bodies ‘determine the patterns of masculinity’
(2000, p. 12; emphasis added). Clearly, then, Connell does see masculinity as forming
some kind of pattern. Further, Connell explicitly rejects the idea that individual men are
the authors of masculinity. If there is a pattern to masculinity, it would seem that men are
followers rather than designers. Logically, if one knows what pattern men follow, then
men’s practices will become rather easier to read as symbolic expressions of masculinity.
It is more difficult, however, to see how men might themselves seek to connect their
masculinity to other aspects of social and cultural life.
In what follows I examine one story contained in Connell’s work on masculinity and
school education, illustrating how the trope of masculine domination or achieving
hegemony is read into the actions, statements and attitudes of the men Connell
interviewed. I argue that Connell’s focus on ‘bad boys’, replicated in numerous other
‘boys and education’ studies, elides other aspects of the masculinity/schooling nexus,
especially those which only partially register as domination.2

Getting into Trouble

As intimated above, a major strength in Connell’s work is the apparent flexibility of his
arguments and conceptual tools. While the widespread application of his work is in some
ways problematic (Hearn, 2004, p. 58), the sheer volume and variety of research which
deploys Connell’s theorisation of masculinities attests to the capacity of his conceptual
tools to open up the experiences and expression of masculinities as sites of critical
analysis. To take just two examples, Sharon Bird (1996) draws on the concept of
hegemonic masculinity in her analysis of male homosocial heterosexual peer groups,
while, more recently, Robert Heasley (2005) creates a typology of ‘queer straight men’ in
a way that parallels Connell’s delineation of hegemonic, complicit and subordinated
masculinities. While there is clearly ground on which to recommend the adaptability of
Connell’s work on masculinities, I want to suggest that this conceptual mobility may also
conceal important aspects of the knowledge thus produced: namely, the exclusion of those
practices, statements and feelings which do not fit within this typology of masculine
objects. I’m particularly suspicious of the way Connell’s argument that gender relations
are structured by a ‘pattern’ of hegemonic masculinity seems to find ready expression in
such a huge range of social and cultural contexts. Some other questions I ask include the
following. What effect does the use of Connell’s model have on the way researchers come
to know specific practices of masculinity, at least those of others? How does the
straightforward and seemingly irrefutable notion of a hegemonic masculinity frame the
kinds of questions Connell and other researchers ask, and of whom they are asked? And,
finally, what are the theoretical and political consequences of thinking about masculinity
in this way?
My hypothesis here is that the concept of hegemonic masculinity conditions researchers
to think about masculinity and power in a specific and limited way: that masculine power
is possessive and commanding and that it is exercised by an identifiable few who can then
be rightly (even righteously) criticised. This is, I suggest, a rather formulaic mode of
thinking about power with which most of us are very familiar. Thus a central strategy in
the literature which draws on Connell’s work is to identify which groups of males possess
 Exploiting Patterns 269

a hegemonic masculinity, and to then elaborate how their masculinity subordinates women
and other men. In this vein, Scott Poynting and Mike Donaldson (2005) identify ‘ruling-
class boys’ boarding schools’ as sites at which a generation of future ruling-class men are
being trained in the techniques of hegemonic masculinity. They convincingly demonstrate
how ‘bullying’ – in the case they discuss, sexual assault – is condoned by private all-boys
school cultures as an important, if mostly unspoken aspect of the boys’ education. This
allows Poynting and Donaldson to unambiguously position the boys’ masculinity as
excessive, brutal and secretive. Their masculinity is clearly problematic and distant from
the accepted ethical norms of social behaviour. As Poynting and Donaldson put the case
against this troubling form of hegemonic masculinity, ‘ruling-class masculinity . . . has its
form of solidarity, but it is one that tolerates and even admires bullies’ (2005, p. 331;
emphasis added). The reader is expressly informed that there is something exceptional
about this masculinity. We are to approach it with caution, with the sense that this
masculinity is to be condemned, ipso facto. Logically, then, these articulations of
hegemonic masculinity have to be seen as different in practice and effect from the
masculinities exercised in non-elite schools. Thus, Poynting and Donaldson:

do not claim that ‘bullying’ cannot be found in working-class schools but rather that
the specific type of bullying identified . . . [in their article] . . . is endemic to the
culture of, and practically institutionalized in, ruling-class boys’ private schools.
(Poynting & Donaldson, 2005, p. 326)

My point here is not so much whether Poynting and Donaldson are correct in their critique
of the way hegemonic masculinity is practised by boys and managed by school
administrators. Indeed, prior to conducting such an evalation, we need to question the way
hegemonic masculinity functions – here – as a conceptual apparatus that produces
discrete objects of study (i.e. some elite boys’ masculinity) and marks them as unique (i.e.
as ‘hegemonic’). That is to say, we need to question the performative effects of the very
term, ‘hegemonic masculinity’, and the quite particular way in which it identifies a subset
of men and/or men’s practices as being examples of this conceptual apparatus. Put simply
we need to ask: what are the effects of the concept of hegemonic masculinity on the way
we ‘read’ men’s (and women’s) practices? In problematising the concept of hegemonic
masculinity in this way, in suggesting that it tends to overdetermine gender practices, I am
not arguing that masculine power and privilege are not at times, even often, secured
through techniques of domination and oppression. But it seems important to me that the
exercising of power, and of gendered power in particular, not be equated with or reduced
solely to a logic of domination. For in doing so we will, quite understandably, seek to
locate masculine power, authority and privilege elsewhere.
This analytical desire to locate and name problematic forms of masculinity is, I suspect,
central to the appeal of Connell’s work. As an act of nomination, it can be safely
performed because its taxonomic logic prevents one’s own (gendered) practices of power
from coming under scrutiny. For example, in a review of the ways in which masculinity
and education inform one another, Connell concerns himself with the macrostructural
question of ‘where the school is located in a larger process’ of constructing gender
(Connell, 1989, p. 292). To this end, Connell draws on life-history interviews conducted
with adult men in which they reflect on their experiences of school. Such a method
invariably introduces a certain temporal and subjective distance, for the men are no longer
270 Journal of Gender Studies

immersed in the daily routines of high school education and the subtle differentiations
which distinguish specific actions, attitudes and feelings from one another. His
interviewees, it has to be remembered, are representing to Connell their memories of
school and masculinity, representations which he, in turn, represents to us. At every level,
these memories function as objects, as symptoms of gendered relations of power and
identity. Condensing their ‘individual narratives’ into ‘key moments in the collective
process of gender construction’, Connell (1989, p. 292) argues, for example, that
resistance to authority is a defining feature of these ‘unrespectable’ working-class boys’
masculinity. He suggests that such boys experience school as a state-sanctioned authority
structure against which they feel compelled to struggle as a means of constructing a
macho, oppositional identity. Thus Connell categorises a wide array of acts under the label
of ‘getting into trouble’: ‘fights with other boys, arguments with teachers, theft, poor
learning, conflicts with parents, are all essentially the same’ (1989, p. 294, emphasis
added).
Now while each item on this list may well lead boys into confrontation of some kind,
I want to trouble the assertion that they are ‘essentially the same’ in terms of how they
articulate and empower masculinity, which is Connell’s larger claim. For it seems to me
that each item on this list, to which Connell (1989, p. 294) later adds the consumption
of pornography and male students’ talk about women and sex, can only be said to
articulate masculinity in the same way if our thinking about gender and power remains at
a macrostructural level. Putting this more strongly, Connell’s model of masculinity
imposes – or as Jefferson (2002) puts it, attributes – a preconceived model of power and
identity to the messy complexity of real people’s lives; an attribution which has the effect
of obscuring the complexity of how people experience and perform both gender and
power, and much else besides.
However, if we abandon the logic of patterns we might begin to see that the practices on
Connell’s list are actually quite different and more complex than the notion of hegemonic
masculinity as an exercise in domination allows. For instance, Connell (1989, p. 294)
describes pornography – ‘getting the “dirty books” out’ – and ‘talking about women’ as
two of the ways in which the boys’ challenge to authority is gendered and sexualised.
Positioning these as further articulations of resistance to school authority, he then claims
that ‘at the same time [they are] a means of maintaining order, the order of patriarchy, via
the subordination of women and the exaltation of one’s maleness’ (1989, p. 294).
Of course, men’s or boys’ use of dirty books and sexual talk might well exalt both
heterosexuality and masculinity while subordinating femininity and alternative
sexualities. Positioned at the bottom of the school hierarchy, the actions and attitudes of
the less privileged boys at the school certainly lend themselves to readings which suggest
that they are centrally about empowerment. But is that really all that’s going on here? One
of Connell’s informants, Mal, suggests a rather more prosaic interpretation of what
Connell has read as a masculine articulation of power, as an insistence on patriarchy.
Smoking, not going to class, getting out the dirty books, etc., Mal tells Connell, are ‘just
the things you do at high school in the first year’ (Connell, 1989, p. 293). They are things a
male student might do in order to adapt to their new location; they are a mode of
experimentation and perhaps, even, of learning. However, in describing the boys’ talk
about women and use of pornography as ‘flatly exploitative’ behaviour, Connell dismisses
their supposed rebelliousness with a remarkable level of knowingness. It is a telling
comment, for with it Connell advises the reader that it ought to be obvious what the boys’
 Exploiting Patterns 271

behaviour means: that the gender politics of males using (heterosexual) pornography and
talking about women in explicitly sexual terms requires no elaboration, no need for
nuanced description. It is, supposedly, a type of objectifying speech with which we are all
familiar and we would all like to see eradicated. It is a type of speech, moreover, which is
the same wherever it occurs. Not only are such acts without depth of political or subjective
meaning, neither do they require any kind of qualification on the part of those who might
have reason to judge them.
Given Connell’s (1989) description of the boys’ sexual conduct as ‘flatly exploitative’,
it is perhaps not surprising that we are offered little insight into what those practices
actually meant and felt like to the boys themselves. Instead we are told to read any and
every such practice as an attempt to increase masculine power. In terms of a nuanced
analysis of what the boys actually do behind the toilets, Connell’s account cannot imagine
what illicit smoking and talking about women feels like or meant to them at the time. For
the definition of masculinity as always oppressive guarantees that the accounts the men
give of their boyhood actions will function, must function, as symbolic objects of
masculine power.
Susan Bordo’s (1994) work on men and pornography provides a very different way of
thinking about masculinity and power. Where Connell sees the consumption of
pornography as the instantiation of masculine power, Bordo argues that this only holds
true if we continue to privilege the phallus as a symbol of power and control. In terms of
Connell’s example of the schoolboys’ use of a macho, heterosexualised imagery (dirty
books and sexual talk about women), these only make sense as ‘flatly exploitative’ if we
persist in seeing them as symbolic. Bordo rejects this kind of symbolic reading of gendered
power, arguing that such symbols are a ruse, that they function as a diversionary strategy
by which masculine power and privilege are rendered inviolable and inevitable.
If masculine sexuality and power is flat, as Connell suggests, then it is unlikely that any
given point will be different, weaker or more susceptible to change than any other. Thus,
Bordo insists that richer, more interesting and challenging understandings of masculinity
and their intersection with men and power will result if we explore the lived reality of male
bodies as ‘place[s] of shame, self-hatred and concealment’ (Bordo, 1994, p. 266).
For Bordo, the key critical trope in understanding masculinity/ies and male experiences
is weakness rather than strength, vulnerability rather than impregnability, disempowerment
rather than power. She writes: ‘Far fresher insights can be gained by reading the male body
through the window of its vulnerabilities rather than the dense armour of its power – from
the “point of view” of the mutable, plural penis rather than the majestic, unitary phallus’
(Bordo, 1994, p. 266). Moving from the male body as a site of power/disempowerment to
masculinity as a concept for articulating it, we need to go beyond the flatness, the self-
obviousness, of masculine power and explore – exploit – those moments of vulnerability
behind the toilet block.
An example of just such a conceptualisation of masculinity, and of the work done
through this kind of cultural analysis, can be seen in a recent study of Australian male
surfers. Clifton Evers (2004) combines insights drawn from ethology, Tomkins’ theory of
affect, and a desire to ‘move away from defining male bodies and attempting to “fix”
masculinity’ (Evers, 2004, p. 29) in a way that allows him to detail how surf culture both
enables and limits the performances of male participants. Drawing on his own experience
as a surfer Evers maps the textured feelings of what it actually feels like to be a surfer, and
how these can and frequently do change, rather than, say, anticipating in advance that the
272 Journal of Gender Studies

gender politics of surf culture is exploitative. In the place of an ‘underlying masculinity’

(2004, p. 39), Evers conceives of male bodies and identities as always actively being
configured and reconfigured. They are ‘sets of embodied relations felt and becoming’
(2004, p. 39). Echoing Bordo’s desire to envisage male bodies and masculinities in a way
that disrupts their idealisation as rational, coherent and self-contained, Evers concludes
that his ‘mapping . . . stresses the uncontrollable, excessive, irrational, disruptive and
active movement of male bodies’ (2004, p. 39).
Similarly, my own PhD work on supporters of the South Sydney Rabbitohs (hereafter
referred to as ‘Souths’) rugby league football club and their attempt to win back a place in
Australia’s premier rugby league competition – the National Rugby League (NRL) –
seeks to appreciate what the club means to its mostly male fans. As part of a strategy to
reduce the number of clubs and lower costs, in October 1999 the NRL announced that the
club would not be part of its competition the following year. While Souths’ exclusion had
been widely expected by rugby league journalists and fans alike, the announcement was
met with disbelief, sadness and anger by many Souths supporters. Elsewhere I have
examined the grassroots ‘political’ movement that emerged from these feelings in detail
(Moller, 2002b, 2003), but for the present argument I want to emphasise the importance of
emotional vulnerability and loss experienced by many Souths supporters – male and
female.3 George, a 40 year old solicitor I spoke to in June 2000, felt this loss very keenly as
a disorientation of his weekly routines. I interviewed George at a time when Souths fans
realised that the legal action the club had initiated against the NRL would not be resolved
quickly, and possibly not in the club’s favour. His testimony grapples with what this
prolonged absence means to him personally.

George: [ . . . ] I miss not going to games. I miss my Sunday afternoons. Monday was
looking forward to the following Sunday. Like I said to you before, by Tuesday,
depending on whether we’d lost, I’d calmed down and I was looking forward to the
next game. And if we’d had a win, Saturday afternoon you’d be looking forward to
the next game. I really miss not being able to go out to watch games. I guess that’s
been offset a little bit by being able to go and watch my kids play. I mean if they
weren’t playing I don’t know what I’d do. My wife says that she’s noticed a change
in me this year. I’ve been having a few personal problems and she reckons that
not being able to go and watch Souths play is probably – not the cause of my
problems – but certainly isn’t helping my problems. It was an outlet for me to
release a lot of pent-up emotion. I miss it, I really do.

MM: You’re probably not alone there.

George: I’m sure I’m not alone. [Pause] It’s been a way of life for me for a long, long
time. People say it’s only a game; it’s more than a game. To me it is anyway. It was
something to look forward to, something to aspire to. Wanting to see Souths win.
I mean Souths won competitions when I was young but I didn’t really appreciate it.
I’d love to enjoy a premiership with my family; it’d just be the best feeling I reckon.

Feelings such as those expressed by George were vital to Souths’ fight against the NRL.
They generated a desire on the part of supporters to, as one slogan put it, ‘reclaim the
game’ from the corporate interests which had diminished fans’ sense that they were rugby
 Exploiting Patterns 273

league’s true custodians. For example, in an interview with Matthew, a lifelong supporter
in his mid-30s, I asked him to explain why Souths’ campaign had elicited a lot of goodwill
from supporters of other rugby league clubs. He answered succinctly: ‘I think it’s just hit a
raw nerve’.
The sense of rawness Matthew talks about – a deeply felt sense of loss and injustice –
surfaced repeatedly in my discussions with supporters. Phrases like, ‘I mean, I get
emotional’, ‘If I didn’t get emotional . . . ’ and ‘It makes me mad [sometimes sad] to see
. . . ’ are littered throughout my interviews with Souths fans. Reworking Bordo, I realised
that the lived reality of fans’ passion – and the need for social connection this emotional
display seemed to require – frequently prefaced comments about a planned course of
action or a description of something they had done. Fans’ emotional attachment to the club
was made stronger by a sense that this passion both hurt – revealed in numerous
comments about having nothing to ‘love’ any more, and helped strengthen their ties with
other supporters. From my interview with Matthew again:

MM: So you think there’s a bond between the players and the supporters, and
between the supporters themselves?

Matthew: Yeah, and in fact that’s . . . [pauses] . . . ironically that’s even become
strengthened now that the team is no longer on the playing field in the NRL
competition. I’ve mixed with a few players and ex-players in the last twelve months
or so and seen them get quite emotional about it. People respond to that.

Over the course of my research it became clear to me that the passion these men had for the
South Sydney club was central to their sense of self as well as their political sensibilities, at
least within this particular context. Methodologically, if I wanted to understand these
men’s performance and experience of masculinity, as well as its meanings, I had to begin
by observing the outward bodily manifestations of these emotions. Participant observation
was therefore a key technique in my project. So, for example, when Souths lost their first
court case (a failed bid to obtain an order from the Federal Court preventing the 2000 NRL
competition from beginning without the club) I went to Souths’ headquarters in the inner-
city suburb of Redfern. It was early afternoon and the tables in the upstairs lounge were
populated by fans nursing beers. Some of the men there had clearly been crying; some still
were. A heavily tattooed man at a nearby table was on his mobile phone talking to his
mother. She later joined the wake for Souths.
So, while I’d started my PhD research armed with various theoretical tools gleaned from
Connell, moments such as these brought about a realisation that the concept of hegemonic
masculinity – and of most men’s complicity with it – prevented me from understanding
these kinds of experiences. Having recently read Connell’s work, it took some time before
I was able to appreciate the complexity of what Souths fans were feeling, doing and
saying. In Connell’s (2005) terms, Souths fans’ masculinity would be considered deeply
complicit with the production of footballers’ ‘hegemonic masculinity’. Indeed I’d begun
my research in this vein, believing that if I used Connell’s typological model of
masculinities, I’d be able to understand the pattern male fans’ behaviour followed. Thus,
for a long time I was troubled by the hagiographical way in which Souths’ president,
former ‘great’ George Piggins, was represented in the media as the club’s saviour.
274 Journal of Gender Studies

Renowned for his physical and mental toughness, Piggins seemed to epitomise the concept
of hegemonic masculinity, albeit with a strong dose of nostalgia.
Gradually, however, I realised that my interviewees only seemed interested in Piggins
as a figurehead who converted their need for connection and belonging into a coherent,
rational plan of action. So while I could conceivably have used the concept of hegemonic
masculinity to analyse Piggins’ statements and his representation in the mainstream
media, Connell’s model of hierarchical masculinities didn’t help explain male Souths
fans’ need for belonging, nor how their feelings were expressed. Connell’s model couldn’t
help me appreciate the nuances of these men’s experiences of emotion and the way their
expressions of loyalty were connected to memories of family and friends who had moved
on, grown up or passed away; or how their expressions of resistance were borne from a
desire for greater social intimacy and regeneration. Within this model I could criticise
fans’ complicity in the reproduction of heroic narratives of masculinity; I just wouldn’t be
able to understand the feelings those narratives were connected to or why fans stood up for
them so fervently.

Conclusion
My aim in this essay has been to elaborate how Connell’s theorisation of masculinity risks
limiting how researchers are able to understand the experiences and meanings of men’s
lives. I argue that the concept of hegemonic masculinity is particularly problematic
because it encourages fairly thin readings of boys’ and men’s power. Further, it is
particularly susceptible to disavowal on the part of the researcher; I have yet to come
across any male masculinities scholar who entertains the notion that he might enjoy the
privileges of hegemonic masculinity himself. One effect of failing to recognise the
privilege of naming others as bearers of hegemonic masculinity is that it becomes very
easy for the researcher to see practices of hegemonic masculinity everywhere. My point is
that using the term and concept ‘hegemonic masculinity’ has subtle but important effects:
not only on how men’s practices are understood, but also on the way masculinity studies
scholars think about themselves and the work they do.
Further, while Connell’s model of a hierarchy of masculinities offers a powerful tool
with which certain practices and images of masculinity can be readily critiqued as
undesirable, it lacks any way of appreciating the complex meanings which may be
articulated through an image or practice. As I argued earlier, the dual concepts of hierarchy
and hegemony articulate men’s lives as a pattern, but in doing so risk overdetermining
men’s lives as solely concerned with following a pattern. I am concerned that
apprehending masculinity as an exercise of gender power occludes an appreciation of how
masculinity might be productive in ways that, at first glance, don’t appear to be about
gender at all.
Notwithstanding these reservations, I do think the concepts of hegemonic and
hierarchical masculinities can be used insightfully, especially in the analysis of discrete,
privileged and relatively small peer groups of men, such as in Messerschmidt’s (1995)
account of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Messerschmidt uses the concept of
hegemonic masculinity to illustrate how a particular risk-taking version of managerial
masculinity was a central factor in the explosion which killed the seven people on board
the Challenger. Messerschmidt convincingly evokes a sense of the compulsion
experienced by the male managers at Morton Thiokol, Inc. (MTI) who decided to press
 Exploiting Patterns 275

ahead with the launch of the Challenger despite the advice of engineering experts warning
that safety measures were inadequate. This seems to me an appropriate use of the concept
of hegemonic masculinity. Key to its success, I think, is the apparent uniformity of MTI
managers’ statements and actions, and Messerschmidt’s argument that this uniformity was
largely a product of the competitive corporate context in which high technology industries
operate.
I am less convinced about the use of Connell’s theoretical concepts in other research
contexts such as in the analysis of sports cultures or boys’ performance of masculinity at
school, or in reading images of masculinity in popular media. These spheres of lived
experience are highly diverse but, as I argued a moment ago, the concepts of hegemonic
and hierarchical masculinities do little to help researchers understand that diversity and
complexity. Indeed, I think they reduce our capacity to understand the ways in which the
performance of masculinity may be productive of new socio-cultural practices, meanings,
alliances and feelings.
In my own research I try to create a space in which these ‘other’ aspects of masculinity
can be heard. Taking my cue from Bordo’s suggestion that men’s feeling of weakness and
vulnerability offer fresh insights into how masculinity is lived, one of the key questions
I asked in my work on rugby league supporters focused on how male supporters’ obvious
passion and emotion made them vulnerable, a vulnerability which strengthened their
connection to a community of fans. My research suggests that a desire for strong
interpersonal connection lies at the heart of male rugby league fans’ enthusiasm for the
game, and that this profound social need motivates their resistance to the globalising
tendencies of the NRL and its major shareholder, News Limited. Echoing Bordo, I argue
that we need to explore the plurality, complexity and contradictions of masculine
experiences and feelings rather than seek only to locate their respective positions in
relation to a single, coherent pattern of masculinity.

Notes
1
Throughout this essay I use possessive pronouns to refer to those scholars working within the field of
masculinity studies who in various ways engage with Connell’s work.
2
This research focus on bad boys occurs in a political context in which conservative social commentators argue
that young men and boys today are experiencing a ‘crisis of masculinity’, a crisis which on at least some
accounts is seen as having origins in a supposed feminisation of curricula and a lack of male teachers/role
models. Perhaps as a way of responding to this kind of gender conservatism, numerous education researchers
have sought to problematise ‘masculine’ behaviours within schools. Crucially, in seeking to identify the
particular aspect(s) of masculinity that are of concern, researchers tend to focus on individuals or small groups
of boys (e.g. bullies) who represent trainee bearers of hegemonic masculinity, or as Keddie (2003) terms them:
‘tomorrow’s macho lads’ (as a sample, see Connell, 1989; Renold, 2001; Keddie, 2003; Swain, 2003; Poynting
& Donaldson, 2005; Robinson, 2005).
3
The activities of Souths fans in resisting the NRL’s decision to exclude the club from the competition took a
number of forms. Two public rallies attracted tens of thousands of supporters, the clubs legal actions were
largely funded by supporters donations, and supporters effectively used the media to promote the club’s cause.

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