The Trail of No Tears: Traditional Masculinity Ideologies and The Cycle of Dismissing-Avoidant Attachment

Raising boys in accordance with traditional masculinity ideologies is creating a mental health crisis among men. Socialization in accordance with traditional male gender roles causes boys to develop dismissing-avoidant attachments with their primary caregivers. Approaching subsequent relationships with a dismissing-attachment style creates disconnection between men and male peers, female partners, and their children. Many researchers advocate clinical interventions that perpetuate men's traditional fears of intimacy, however attachment theory provides an alternative lens through which clinicians may approach therapy with men. By engaging men in therapeutic attachment relationships, clinicians can inspire implicit and explicit learning of new attachment patterns. This experience by nature challenges traditional definitions of masculinity, and men may develop more congruent, adaptive, and healthy definitions of masculinity.

Intersectionality in the Language and Writing Classroom

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Masculinity-femininity as a national characteristic and its relationship with national agoraphobic fear levels: Fodor's sex role hypothesis revitalized

Hofstede's dimension of national culture termed Masculinity-Femininity [Hofstede (1991). Cultures and organizations: software of the mind. London: McGraw-Hill] is proposed to be of relevance for understanding national-level differences in self-assessed agoraphobic fears. This prediction is based on the classical work of Fodor [Fodor (1974). In: V. Franks & V. Burtle (Eds.), Women in therapy: new psychotherapies for a changing society. New York: Brunner/Mazel]. A unique data set comprising 11 countries (total N = 5491 students) provided the opportunity of scrutinizing this issue. It was hypothesized and found that national Masculinity (the degree to which cultures delineate sex roles, with masculine or tough societies making clearer differentiations between the sexes than feminine or modest societies do) would correlate positively with national agoraphobic fear levels (as assessed with the Fear Survey Schedule-III). Following the correction for sex and age differences across national samples, a significant and large effect-sized national-level (ecological) r = +0.67 (P = 0.01) was found. A highly feminine society such as Sweden had the lowest, whereas the champion among the masculine societies, Japan, had the highest national Agoraphobic fear score. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Fighting, anger, frustration and tears: Matthew's story of hegemonic masculinity

This paper draws on Matthew's story to illustrate the conflicting discourses of being a boy and being a student. Matthew is 12 years old and in Grade Six, his final year at Banrock Primary ( a K- 6 Australian State School). School is far from a happy place for Matthew - his tearful accounts of his combative relationships with his peers and his teacher highlight his emotional distress. The paper's analytic focus draws attention to some of the ways Matthew's harmful storylines of hegemonic masculinity are made possible through, in particular, his teacher's gendered philosophies and her strategies of individualism and control. In this regard, Matthew's story provides insight into the potentially counterproductive realities of teacher practice in relation to addressing issues of masculinity within the school environment. Against this backdrop, the paper stresses the importance of teachers drawing on a sound research-based framework of gender knowledges that can illuminate how masculinities are constructed, regulated and, indeed, transformed through the power relations of everyday social practice, including teacher practice.