Masculinities vary by organizational context, demonstrating that organizational culture shapes the gendering of work even within the same occupation. The author draws on comparative and ethnographic data collected in two retail environments to understand how a common organizational culture is differently gendered by the organization of work. In these music stores, organizational culture is driven by masculinist fantasies of the rock musician lifestyle. As the products and knowledge of the rock musician lifestyle are made popularly accessible and retail work is (...) deskilled, a style of masculinity based on fraternization and competition takes the place of formal knowledge and experience—reaffirming rock musician as a populist, but exclusively male identity. The article concludes with a consideration of how the de-skilling of retail work reproduces gendered interactions that affirm men’s control over work and its products, even as retail work is presumed to be feminizing. (shrink)

Gender is commonly thought of as dependent on sex even though there are occasional aberrations. Interviews with female-to-male trans people, however, suggest that sex and sex characteristics can be understood as expressions of gender. The expression of gender relies on both behavior and the appearance of the performer as male or female. When sex characteristics do not align with gender, behavior becomes more important to gender expression and interpretation. When sex characteristics become more congruent with gender, behavior becomes more fluid (...) and less important in asserting gender. Respondents also challenge traditional notions of sexual orientation by focusing less on the sex of the partner and more on the gender organization of the relationship. The relationship’s ability to validate the interviewee’s masculinity or maleness often takes precedence over the sex of the partner, helping to explain changing sexual orientation as female-to-male transsexual and transgendered people transition into men. (shrink)

This article addresses a paradoxical stance taken by young straight men in three groups who identify aspects of themselves as “gay” to construct heterosexual masculine identities. By subjectively recognizing aspects of their identities as “gay,” these men discursively distance themselves from stereotypes of masculinity and privilege and/or frame themselves as politically progressive. Yet, both of these practices obscure the ways they benefit from and participate in gender and sexual inequality. I develop a theory of “sexual aesthetics” to account for their (...) behavior and its consequences, contributing to a growing body of theory regarding the hybridization of contemporary masculinities and complicating theories of sexual practice. (shrink)