Lost Childhoods by Soyer Michaela

Author:Soyer, Michaela
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520296701
Publisher: University of California Press

MASCULINITY AND VICTIMIZATION

The “doing gender” paradigm asserts that gender is a malleable concept subject to negotiation and established in relation to the social environment (West and Zimmerman 1987). Messerschmidt (1993), who was among the first to introduce the idea of “doing gender” into criminology, argues that the disproportionate involvement of men in crime is related to masculinity enacted outside of institutional structures. Crime is a form of expressing masculinity when other resources for asserting male identity are absent.

In Learning to Labor Willis (1981) shows that working-class boys utilize a specific kind of masculinity to express their opposition to the middle-class culture that excludes them. The narratives of Julian, Josiah, Jesus, and Tyler are classic representations of this relationship between masculine habitus and criminal behavior. Julian expresses his masculinity through physical dominance over others. Josiah presents himself as the male provider who supports the lifestyle of the “females” in his family. Jesus and Tyler more explicitly than the other two admit that they were pursuing materialistic goals. All four practice what Adam Reich (2010) refers to as “outsider masculinity.” Reich shows that men who embody outsider masculinity “conceptualize power, as something physical, worn on their bodies” (24). “Outsider masculinity” as a response to social closure thus becomes a trap that further alienates already marginalized young men from the middle class (ibid.).

The narratives also reveal that the young men fashioned their masculine habitus as a coping mechanism, a protective layer against a social environment that repeatedly brutalized them. Just as masculinity can be expressed differently depending on the individual’s resources and social context, masculinity fulfilled different functions depending on the social situation in which the young men found themselves. The respondents also activated their masculine identity to cope with their own victimization. The script of masculinity, as something that is expressed physically, by leaving marks on someone’s body, minimized their own physical and emotional pain. As much as this specific enactment of masculinity enabled the respondents to victimize others, it also made it easier for family members and outsiders to inflict pain on them.

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