Journal
GENDER & SOCIETY
Volume 31, Issue 2, Pages 197-222Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/0891243217694823
Keywords
men/masculinity; hybrid masculinities; privilege; inequality; youth
Categories
Funding
- Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Institute at the University of Arizona
Ask authors/readers for more resources
In the past few decades, a multi-billion-dollar therapeutic boarding school industry has emerged for America's troubled upper-class youth. This article examines the therapeutic models prominent in these programs and the ways they conflict with dominant notions of masculinity. Using in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork inside a Western therapeutic boarding school, I show how privileged young men navigate this masculinity dilemma by constructing hybrid masculinities that incorporate qualities associated with femininities and subordinate masculinities. However, these qualities are incorporated strategically and in ways that reproduce and obscure privileges associated with students' positions as young, upper-class, white men. Using hybrid masculine styles that include humility, commitment to service, and open emotional expression, students re-assert dominant positions as leaders and as better men in contrast to various others.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available