GS HIST 6050
A Man? A Boy? OrSomething In Between?
Reflections on the History ofMasculinity
Nelson Marques4/15/2013
Submitted To: Professor Rogers
Marques 1
Masculinity is a problem. As a word its task is to provide
an all-encompassing set of characteristics which allows the world
at large to determine, beyond the shadow of a doubt, what
constitutes a man. As a historical concept it is a virtual
minefield. Over the last twenty to twenty five years the study of
masculinity has been juxtaposed with feminist historiography. By
necessity it has adopted the language of feminism in order to
tease out the realities of male existence. The problem for the
history of masculinity is how to do this in terms that do not
discount the advances made in feminist historiography. For some
the danger in the history of masculinity, as part of the broader
history of gender, is its ability to abstract the realities of
sexual inequality. The idea of a specifically masculine history
is, and has been, seen as dangerous because of this.1 The
introduction of Gender as a uniquely analytic category attempts
to present the idea that representations of bodily difference can
give meaning to categories that are at once separate and
intertwined.2 Using this formulation masculinity becomes easy to
1 Karen Harvey, “The History of Masculinity, circa 1650-1800,” Journal of British Studies 44 ( April 2005), 296-3112Joan Scott, “Introduction,” in Gender and the Politics of History, ed. Joan Scott, 1-14(New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 2.
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define. To do this all that needs to happen is for a compilation
of the patterns of speech, patterns of behaviour, and
expectations of one sex and assign the opposite end of that
spectrum to the other sex.
If the opposite sex is removed from the equation then the
problem for masculinity, or femininity for that matter, becomes
crystallized. How does masculinity define itself? How do men
establish what it means to be a man? These questions have been
examined over and over again. These queries came to prominence in
1994 when John Tosh famously asked, “What should historians do
with masculinity?”3 The only apparent consensus to emerge from
the existing historiography is the emphasis on power as a
mediator of masculinity.4 Where the historiography diverges is on
the question of where exactly this power comes from. In other
words, when men enforce their own dominance on other men by what
authority do they exercise this power? What the historiography
appears to boil down to is the issue of whether masculinity is,
3John Tosh, “What Should Historians do with Masculinity? Reflections on Nineteenth Century Britain,” History Workshop Journal 38 (1994): 179-202.4Harvey, “History of Masculinity,” 297.
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at its core, an expression of social behaviour or a sexual
identity.5
This paper will argue that sexual identity underpins all
formulations of masculine identities. This is not to suggest that
there is a uniform conception of masculinity that spans all
manner of historical time, nor is to suggest that the social is
absent. Rather it suggests that periodic reformulations of
masculinity take their cue from what is expected of a man as a
sexual being. This sexual element is not as prominent as it
should be because of its inability to make itself as visible as
social interactions. The question asked by Tosh should not be the
first point of inquiry. That place should belong to questions
such as: What is masculinity? Can we see it? Is it tangible? By
understanding the universal nature of sexual identity masculinity
does in fact come forward as a subjective reality for men across
the historical time. However the taboo nature of sexual activity
makes the nature of sexuality much harder to see, precipitating
the prominence of social behaviour as birth place of masculinity
within the broader historiography. Ultimately this requires a
5Harvey, “History of Masculinity,” 301.
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full understanding of proper sexual conduct between men and women
and men and men. For it is in these preliminary interactions that
men can begin to navigate the social worlds in which they live.
The interactions are not exclusively internal and they are not
unique to any one period. These encounters are at the same time
inter- and intra sexual, they occur in homes, streets, and
countries throughout historical time. In this way even the spaces
in which men engage in their social dialogue are constructed by
the sexual codes of conduct these men have internalized.
Social behaviour came to dominate the field as it provided a
thorough and relatively simple explanation to a variety of
interactions between men of differing social classes. Ideas
concerning social behaviour take as their centre R.W. Connell’s
formulation of ‘hegemonic masculinity’.6 With this concept
Connell posited that only one idea of masculinity came to
dominate at any one time. Usually this was the ethos of the upper
middle classes, who would dominate the discourse on proper
masculinity.7 Other foundations of masculinity existed, but how6 R.W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).7Karen Harvey and Alexandra Shepard, “What have Historians done with Masculinity? Reflections on Five Centuries of British History, circa 1500-1950,” Journal of British Studies 44 ( April 2005), 274-280.
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tolerable they were depended exclusively on their distance from
the dominant form. Alexandra Shepard sees the makeup of social
identities the point of continuing change in masculinity. Over
the course of time what changes is how the qualifiers of
masculinity come to be arranged. No new qualifiers are added,
they are simply rearranged depending on what constitutes proper
sociability.8Shepard sees this rearranging as a product of new
discourse on social relations.9 The discursive process indicates
what is deviant and what is normative in forming masculinities in
the early modern world.10 As a result the model for masculine
social organization is exemplified in four variants of manhood.
Shepard classifies these as: Patriarchal Manhood, which is linked to
house holding status and marriage, Subordinated Manhood, which
exemplifies the unmarried bachelor or male servant, Antipatriarchal
Manhood, deliberate attempts to overthrow the patriarchal
imperative, and Alternative Manhood, which is independent but not
necessarily opposed to patriarchal imperatives.11Where Shepard
displays ingenuity is in the proposition of accessibility.8Alexandra Shepard, “From Anxious Patriarchs to Refined Gentlemen? Manhood in Britain. Circa 1500-1700,” Journal of British Studies 44 ( April 2005), 281-295.9Shepard, “From Anxious Patriarchs,” 292.10Ibid., 294.11Ibid., 291.
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Shepard wants to argue that multiple forms of masculinity existed
without much in the way of change. What changed across time was
the way different men gained, and lost, access to these forms of
masculinity and the benefits and disadvantages that came with
them.12 Where this change originates from is the social dialogue
that occurred between men between the years 1500-1700. What is
‘new’ is the discourse itself; the qualities which these men are
engaging with are ultimately the same throughout this period.13
Karen Harvey operates along similar lines in emphasizing the
dominance of social interaction in determining masculinity.
Unlike Shepard Harvey openly acknowledges the boundaries of the
debate in which she has situated herself. Harvey recognizes the
importance of certain assumptions about masculinity in regards to
their existence as sexual beings. However this is but a limited
understanding. Harvey’s recognition of sexuality rests solely on
her recognition of the ‘honour’ of men and its association to the
domination of wives, a feature of her formulation shared with
Shepard.14 The character, or rather the perceived character, of a12 Shepard, “From Anxious Patriarchs,” 281-282.13 Shepard, “From Anxious Patriarchs,” 292.14 Harvey, “A History of Masculinity,” 298; Shepard, “From Anxious Patriarchs,” 283
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woman as a wife and sexual being directly effects the ability of
a man to navigate his social world. While there is mention of the
image of a woman as a purely sexual being the notion does not
translate to her husband. The distinction between wife, mother,
sister and other extended family members is absent.15 As a result
Harvey situates men and women on the opposite sides of the
sexual-social debate. The end product of this distinction is the
examination of men in terms of normative social standards
independent of sexual norms. In a similar fashion to Shepard
Harvey identifies four phases of man to account for the impact
social dialogue had on masculinity: the household patriarch, the
libertine, the polite gentleman, and finally men who viewed
etiquette and domesticity as central. Harvey is seeking to move
the history of masculinity away from, “a cultural history of
masculinity to a social history of men.”16
What is striking about the nature of Sheppard’s’ and
Harvey’s’ formulation on dialogue is how close they come to
acknowledging the role of sexuality, before falling back on their
15 Ibid.,16 Harvey, “A History of Masculinity,” 305.
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initial propositions. While Shepard and Harvey both provide
similar, but ultimately differing, four point models on the
development of masculinity neither of them attempts to discern
the origins of their starting points. Sheppard’s Patriarchal
Manhood and the household Patriarch proposed by Harvey are
presented as fixed points in the historical spectrum rather than
concepts with their own distinct historical process. In both
cases the patriarch is presented as being defined by the nature
of his wife’s sexuality but never his own. Both Shepard and
Harvey both argue that a woman who was seen to be unstable
reflected poorly on her husband, as it would be interpreted that
he had no control over her person as is to be expected of a man.
What is not mentioned is the possibility that a man’s loss of
honour was associated because of his own performance as a sexual
being. The insatiability of a woman’s sexual desire is given in
both cases but is relegated to a matter of lesser importance,
giving way to a man’s presentation among his peers.
This becomes particularly problematic for Harvey as she
outlines her own timeline for the development of hegemonic
masculinities. In her article for the Journal of British Studies her
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stated aim, given quite bluntly in the opening pages, is to
highlight the disjunction between, “the man of 1650 and the man
of 1750.”17 The context for her discussion is the power relations
that men had to engage with on an everyday basis. She argues that
the patriarch has to be reformulated so as to lessen the
importance of female sexuality for the basis of male identity, a
sexuality which was notoriously precarious given their standing
as the lustier of the two sexes.18 As such the four eras of
masculinity postulated by Harvey are designed to remove men from
the sexual nature of the home and wife. The first two represent
the transition phase where the sexual basis of identity was more
evident in the historiography.19 The transition from these
earlier phases to the phases of the polite gentleman and the man
who is defined by domesticity are signalled by the transition
away from sexual based notions. This newer formulation of
masculinity is noted, above all else, by his determination to
demonstrate his self-government. This self-government was
exemplified by his restraint, or his lax of sex, as opposed to
17Harvey, “History of Masculinity,” 297.18Ibid., 299.19Harvey, “History of Masculinity,” 301.
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the emotional impulsiveness of the fop.20 The self-restraint
displayed by the new gentleman had important social consequences.
This is indicative first and foremost by his social interaction
with women. When it came to these setting men would adjust their
language so as to not offend women21, who mysteriously still
retain their status as the emotionally charged sex in Harvey’s
model.
While not arguing the validity of Harvey’s work on the
nature of social interaction I would instead suggest that this
new realm of politeness began first in the minds of men who
decided to break with sexual norms of previous generations. It is
hard to imagine this new realm taking shape if expectations of
men as sexual beings did not change during the eighteenth
century. A lack of sex is still an acknowledgement on sex itself,
is it not? As Harvey herself has stated, politeness emerged as a
result of men shifting the boundaries of what is sexually
permissible among them. What resulted is the forging of a new
social sphere by which they could easily insert themselves as the
20Ibid.21Ibid., 302.
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dominant force. This is a very easy conclusion to draw, and it
coalesces easily with Connell’s formulation of hegemonic
masculinities. Harvey draws on the formulation of the two sex
model of being as a development of the social importance of
masculinity. This is confusing since the two sex model is a
concept with rests first and foremost with characterizations on
sexuality or lack thereof. Harvey characterizes the two sex model
as one which placed women as sexual passive and refined beings.
Yet this did not give men free reign to resume the activities of
their forbears. Hegemonic masculinity was secured by way of this
two sex model as it dictated two things as universal constants:
the refined passivity of women and the rejection of men who
engaged in illicit sexual acts such as masturbation and sex with
other men.22 This two sex model was later anchored in a growing
corpus of medical and scientific literature which fixed gender as
a binary,23 as a social consequence this binary had no perceived
middle ground in the eyes of men who occupied the dominant
position.
22Harvey, “History of Masculinity,” 305.23Ibid., 306.
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This position raises the same question as before: namely how
can this social, and to a certain extent scientific, formulations
come to be without exhaustive attention to men and women as
sexual beings. If we are to pay closer attention to social
spheres and interactions between them, as Harvey demands,24 where
do we start if not the purely sexual? Harvey herself articulated
the need to understand males as sexual beings both in their
representation and in the actuality of their experience.25
Specifically Harvey has examined the way the penis was used
constantly as representation in erotic literature and art and
argued quite effectively that it is, “on to these body parts that
concerns about masculinity in wider cultural, social, economic,
and political contexts were projected.”26 Moreover, her
formulation of masculine history in the Journal of British Studies does
not hold with her later conceptualization, in the same piece, of
the duality of male experience. This is an experience whereby
manhood and masculinity are separate entities: masculinity being
the internalized, and highly personal, formulations of the self24Ibid., 307.25Karen Harvey, “‘The Majesty of the Male Form’: Multiplicity and Male Bodies in Eighteenth Century Erotica” in English Masculinities, eds. Tim Hitchcock and Michele Cohen, 193-214 (New York: Longman, 1999), 196.26Harvey, “The Majesty of the Male Form,” 197.
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within each man. Manhood by contrast is rooted in the sense of
honour each man held, or was supposed to hold, in the eyes of his
peers. The former could be lost in the eyes of a man’s peers,
while the later stayed with him.27 Manhood came to be defined in
later in the eighteenth century by sensibility. In its most basic
form sensibility appears as an evolved state of politeness. It
was a form of refinement, heightened so as to forge more concrete
links between inner virtue and outer manners.28
Harvey and Shepard have come to these formulations of
masculinity, but it is clear that they have very little interest
in masculinity, at least on an individual sense. The ideas
presented by both historians have a particular bend to them. What
they have presented as masculinity is not a narrative of how
masculinity came to be identified as a specific gender. Instead
it is a very well crafted insight into the real world
consequences or behaviours of men throughout the early modern
period. These characterizations are collective in nature, seeking
to tease out the finer points of how specialized groups lived and
27Harvey, “History of Masculinity,” 303.28 Ibid., 304.
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interacted with their wider worlds. The conclusions offered by
Shepard and Harvey are generalized and abstracted, leaving little
room for the experience of the individual and the even murkier
realm of one on one contact. More pressing is the matter of
unresolved sexual identity. Before a man is gentleman, a weaver,
or a husband he is a man and must make sense of himself
accordingly. That Harvey and Shepard miss this point is in one
sense deliberate. Harvey herself notes astutely that historians
have identified several different ‘men’ as a result of the places
in which these men are sought and the questions that are asked of
them.29 Shepard is herself a student of the social interactions
among men, her concern is not with the origins of defined
boundaries of masculinities. Instead she prefers to outline the
ways in which manhood and patriarchy are distinct concepts.
Shepard is concerned with the way patriarchy created a world in
which women as well as other men were disciplined according to
standards of the external manhood discussed above. Manhood was
dangerous to patriarchy as it represented a threat to the order
of things. The many external representations of manhood take
29 Ibid., 311.
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their cues from age, marital status, and context.30 Her aims in
previous publications have been to establish the differences
within each gender as a method of establishing the plurality of
experience within. From this starting point the extent to which
patriarchy granted power and privilege to each sex can be readily
determined. Ultimately the grand question is whether status or
identity eclipsed the notion of gender in the struggle for access
to networks of power. 31
Power relations identify a central theme in the
historiography of masculinity. Certainly it is an organizing
principle around which Tosh, Shepard, Harvey, and Cohen have
constructed their own histories.32 These are the histories that
have traces of Michel Foucault in them. Foucault famously stated
that sexual identity was not only a modern invention but one
which dictated the power relations between the individual and the
state.33 While some historians have avoided adhering to Foucault
30 Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 1.31 Ibid., 2-4.32 See special issue of the Journal of British Studies 44 (April 2005) in which are published the papers from a special colloquium on masculinity held at the university of Sussex.33 Michel Foucault, A History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 5-8.
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verbatim, his influence is easy to be seen. More apparent is the
influence of Joan Scott. Scott provides a majority of the
intellectual backing for the social construction of masculinity.
Scott’s definition of Gender is clear, but at the same time it is
ambivalent enough to be easily exchanged between male and female
constructions. For Scott Gender represents both a constitutive
element of social relations and is a primary way of signifying
power relations.34 In these formulations what appears to be
missing is extensive empirical evidence. Examination of social
forms of manhood tends to lead to a focus on the importance of
language and cultural representations of the social.35
While honour and the language it entailed are certainly
valuable insights into social reality the language available to
individuals and groups must be determined by their sexual
identity. In describing sexuality towards feminism Catherine
Mackinnon wrote, “Sexuality is to feminism what work is to
Marxism . . . Sexual objectification is the primary process of
34 Joan Scott, “Gender as a Useful Category of Analysis,” in Gender and the Politics of History ed. Joan Scott, 28-52 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 42.35 Michele Cohen, “‘Manners’ Make the Man: Politeness, Chivalry, and the Construction of Masculinity, 1750-1830,” Journal of British Studies 44 (April 2005), 312-329; Shepard, Meanings of Manhood, Introduction.
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the subjection of women. It unites act with word, construction
with expression, perception with enforcement, myth with reality.
Man fucks woman; subject verb object.”36 A modified version of
this approach for masculinity would read: ‘Man fucks X’. This
variable determines the nature of the man’s life, his discourse
and his own personal sense of masculinity.
Randolph Trumbach has outlined this process with remarkable
clarity through his examination of the nature of homosexuality
and how men identified, and came to be identified, as a result of
their same sex encounters. This field became inclusive as a whole
manner of sexual acts came to be identified as perverse and
unworthy of a proper man. These acts included, but were not
limited to: whore mongering, masturbation, and the viewing of
erotic literature.37 Where Trumbach succeeds is in his
recognition and demonstration of the fact that the social
standing of men was determined by the sexuality. The existence of
honour and codes of conduct are not denied but rather take a back
seat to how men navigated their world as sexual beings. Much like36 Catherine Mackinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory,” Signs 7, no.3 (1982):515-544.37 Randolph Trumbach, Sex and The Gender Revolution Volume One: Homosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 49.
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Shepard38 he examines the use of courts as a means for mean to
protect their reputation against allegations of sexual
impropriety. The stress here is on continuity, this is an aspect
that did not change much from the seventeenth century to the
eighteenth.39 The weapon of choice in socializing a man’s sexual
appetites was gossip. Trumbach writes, “Gossip about a man’s
actual sexual misbehaviour could circulate in a neighbourhood for
some time until some conflict made gossip a convenient weapon
against a neighbour.”40
The temptation is to see such communal dealings as bearing a
simplistic cause and effect nature. The reality presents a more
complex scenario. The acts of sexual impropriety in which men
engaged were not one off. That is too say they were not the
result of drunken courage or curiosity but carefully chosen so as
to ensure discretion. In dealing with whores or other men the
sexually perverse had to keep their own relations firmly in the
back of their minds. They still had to deal with those regarded
as ‘respectable’ on a daily basis. As such accusations of going
38 Shepard, Meanings of Manhood, Ch. 639 Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution, 49.40 Ibid., 51.
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to whores were sure to damage the social networks men counted on
for so much in their lives.41 Beginning in the eighteenth century
there was an abrupt change as to the priority of sexual
accusations. By the middle of the century more traditional
slander suits, in which men were accused of going to whores,
ceased to be as important as they were. By 1730 accusations of
whore mongering instead came to be seen as an impromptu badge of
honour among men. Trumbach identifies the shift as being the
product of a new obsession with heterosexuality. Trumbach
highlights the honour of a man became exclusive to his claims of
heterosexual life.42 What are especially interesting are the
instances in which homosexuality becomes a weapon of choice for
neighbourhood slander. In Trumbach’s examples of the social uses
of sexual knowledge a man blackmails one of his fellows
repeatedly over several months. The victim is unable to do
anything at first and vacillates while mulling his options.
Eventually he seeks the help of friends and a lawyer, when asked
why he had not come forward sooner he replies, “My fear was of my
41 Ibid., 5342 Ibid., 55.
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character.”43 The social networks and inner mechanisms of
masculine power have taken a back seat. Before these networks can
be accessed or even approached each individual man must take the
first step in situating himself as a sexual entity. He may choose
one mode of sexuality or choose from a variety of sexualities
available to him simultaneously. If he chooses the latter a man
takes a very calculated risk of exposure and the loss of status
among his peers.
The gender roles doled out to men and women in the early
modern period accepted at face value the link between these roles
and sexual desire. Beginning in England in the eighteenth century
the new roles for men assumed that, above all else, men desired
women exclusively and that masculine behaviour must emerge from
this desire alone.44 This new trend emerged against the grain of
traditional sexual assumptions for men in the early modern
period. In earlier periods men were more likely to have relations
with women as well as other men.45 Previous wisdom had dictated
43 Ibid., 55-56.44 Randolph Trumbach, “Sex, Gender, and Sexual Identity in Modern Culture: Male Sodomy and Female Prostitution in Enlightenment London,” Journal of the Historyof Sexuality 2, no. 2 (1991), 186-203.45 Ibid., 188.
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this was socially, if not wholly legally, permissible as it
presented no readily apparent threat to gender identities.
Persons engaging in sexual activity within their own gender were
naturally assumed to be attracted to the opposite gender at the
same time. There was no fear that they might reject the opposite
sex in favour of their own. As such sexual acts within gender
were not thought of as detracting from a person’s standing as
masculine or feminine.46 Male on male encounters were not
exclusive to England nor were they as freewheeling as encounters
with prostitutes might be. There was a structure to the ways in
which men would engage sexually with other men. This structure
was primarily concerned with relations between older men and
younger, adolescent, boys. In Italy it was common custom for
younger men to enter into sexual relations with much older men as
part of a coming of age process. This was a part of their life
which was known as the gioventu.47 During this time, typically from
the ages of 13 – 19 or whenever a young man was deemed too old to
partake, young boys would allow themselves to be courted by older
46 Ibid., 192.47 Guido Ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love: Sex, Self, and Society in the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2007), 25-28.
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men who had not married. Though this process seems relatively
accepting of sexual relations between males it was in fact quite
dangerous for both parties. Charges of sodomy could still be
implemented if it was felt by the wider community that the older
man was too enthusiastic in his search for young boys or if the
boy himself was not progressing along the proscribed path. The
idea was for the gioventu to serve as a process of self discovery
whereby the young boys would learn that their true calling was in
fact to find a wife and start a family.48
Sexual encounters between grown men and young boys seem to
be the dividing line between what is characterized as proper male
behaviour and what is perverse. Traditional practices dictated
that, while a young boy was permitted to engage in these sexual
activities with older men, by the age of seventeen the sexuality
of a man was to be firmly in place and beyond the shadow of a
doubt.49 In London a man engaging in such behaviour after 1750
was almost certainly to be cast out of all social groups with
access to power by the new aristocratic men who desired only
48 Ibid.49 Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution, 61.
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women, that is should they be discovered.50 In England the
Restoration appeared to herald the end of acceptance for this
practice. The aristocratic men who lived between the years 1660-
1700 seem to be the last to enjoy the privilege of sexual contact
with young males unimpeded.51 Just how far back this tradition
extends in the English context is uncertain. In Italy this
tradition is one with roots at least as far back as the early
Renaissance period, as Guido Ruggiero has demonstrated.52 What is
uncertain at this point is the extent to which men led double
lives; if and how often men who characterized themselves as
purely heterosexual engaged in illicit homosexual behaviour while
simultaneously castigating those who had done the same and been
caught. There may well never be any accurate way of investigating
such a proposition but it would certainly cast doubt onto the
perceived divide between the new polite society and the perverse
underworld of illicit sex.
The new consciousness towards homosexual behaviour appeared
to be frightened by the ambiguity homosexuals represented in
50 Trumbach, “Sex, Gender, and Sexual Identity,” 188.51 Ibid., 189.52 Ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love, Ch.1.
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terms of gender relations. During the early decades of the
eighteenth century there was a campaign initiated under the
auspices of the Societies for the Reformation of Manners to
combat sodomy among the London poor. Not just any sodomy, their
target was a new kind of ‘effeminate’ sodomy which they saw as an
emergent threat to social well being. This campaign was in a way
terrified of this kind of behaviour precisely because it did not
conform to normative gender roles of the time. Sodomites did not
fit because they were neither male nor female in the traditional
sense. Instead they occupied a middle ground, or a third gender
category, that selected and harmonized characteristics of both
groups.53 The charge of effeminacy came from the perceived sexual
passivity associated with sodomites. Sodomites were strictly
viewed as the receivers of sexual acts whereas the
(traditionally) older males were ‘givers’.54 As such sodomites
are the unnatural imitators of women in the act of sex. Due to
this perception of active and passive sodomites were seen to
embody the hallmarks of effeminacy that set them apart from true53 Trumbach, “Sex, Gender, and Sexual Identity,” 189.54 Randolph Trumbach, “The Birth of the Queen: Sodomy and the Emergence of Gender Equality in Modern Culture, 1660-1750,” in Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, eds. Martin Bauml Duberman, Martha Vicinus, George Chauncey Jr, 129-140 (New York: New American Library, 1989), 129.
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masculine behaviour. Once this concept of effeminacy took root in
popular culture sexual passivity was no longer accepted as a
representation of any time period in a man’s life. This
passiveness would rob a man of his masculine status and mark him
as an outcast. Men engaging in sodomy thus had to be cautious to
not display any perceived signs of effeminacy overtly. Some men,
however, were unable to do so and ended up displaying
‘effeminate’ characteristics in public, marking them as sodomites
and damaging their reputation.55
Fear of effeminacy permeated all aspects of thought
concerning masculine behaviour during the eighteenth century. As
Michele Cohen as argued, politeness gave way to chivalry in part
because aspects of proper ‘polite’ conduct took away from
masculinity.56 One troubling aspect of politeness was the
function of women within this code of conduct. In order to
properly fashion themselves as polite men had to learn to
converse with and around women. This meant toning down harsh
language into refined speech fit for the ears of a woman.55 Trumbach, “Sex, Gender, and Sexual Identity,” 189-190.56 Michele Cohen, “‘Manners’ make the Man: Politeness, Chivalry, and the Construction of Masculinity, 1750-1830,” Journal of British Studies 44 (2005): 312-329.
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However, the danger, which soon became apparent, was that by
spending too much time with women men would quickly lose their
intrinsic masculinity and adopt the qualities of a woman.57 Cohen
writes that such fears led to a revaluation of the ways in which
young men were educated during the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. The traditional grand tour, an exclusive
privilege of the wealthy, was seen as a danger. The grand tour
typically took young boys to France, in order to learn from the
most refined society in all of Europe, and Italy so that young
men could take in the classics. A complete rejection of this
educational model came to be presented on the grounds that it
produced individuals who were robbed of their “manly English
character.”58 This rhetoric was implicitly nationalistic,
designed to cast non English as being less masculine. Customs
from abroad were associated with effeminacy and quickly
abandoned. An example would be the custom of men kissing each
other on the cheek which became suspect around the middle of the
eighteenth century. It became suspicious as it was the product of
Italian culture, serving as a first indication of a path leading
57 Cohen, 322.58 Ibid.
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towards sodomy, Italy being perceived as, “the mother and nurse
of sodomy.”59
Despite the place accorded to men derided as effeminate and
the circumscribed nature of sexual activity the sodomite had a
very important role to play. Karen Harvey has noted the
development of the two sex model and its importance in
establishing codes of conduct for the new hegemonic masculinity.
However Harvey, unlike Trumbach, neglects the differences between
subaltern forms of sexuality. Trumbach writes that the sodomite,
under this system, had to accept a Third gender role that was
neither wholly man nor wholly female. The female prostitute could
regain entry into the general population of women. The sodomite
was afforded no such route to social redemption. The sodomite,
through his desire for men, ensured a permanent divide between
the sexes.60 In an age concerned with growing femininity the
sodomite acted as a permanent antithesis to proper masculinity
that ensured the survival of the two sex model.61 That is to say
the sodomite made the line between sexes clearer, rather than
59 Trumbach, “The Birth of the Queen,” 134.60 Trumbach, “Sex, Gender, and Sexual Identity,” 19361 Ibid., 203.
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blurring them. A man could fall from social status and climb the
ladder a second time provided that he did not engage in sodomy or
was accused of such behaviour, which would be his permanent
undoing. This social ostracism was not one way; Trumbach
suggests that it may even have been initiated by these men, who
came to view themselves as a kind of outcast group of women.62
In dealing with the reactions of the broader society what is
clear is that masculinity derives in large part from sexual
nature both real and imagined. The differences between competing
forms of masculinity are not as apparent as the continuities in
masculine behaviour across the early modern period. Shepard noted
that that a great deal of the components that made up masculinity
remained constant. What had changed was the way these components
became configured to provide a broad spectrum of male
identities.63 Some of these continuities in behaviour would later
be characterized as effeminate and used to shun men who had taken
part. Case in point is the distinction between male friendship
and sodomy. As Alan Bray has written, many of the qualities that
62 Trumbach, “The Birth of the Queen,” 137.63 Shepard, “From Anxious Patriarchs,” 292.
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defined aspects of male friendship in Elizabethan England were
simultaneously used as markers to identify sodomy.64 What
separated the two characterizations was no more than a simple
matter of context. Bray noted sodomy was not only a matter of
sexuality but a matter or religion and politics as well. As such
a carefully worded text could suggest sodomy where there was only
friendship.65
Effeminacy came to encompass many activities and gestures
that had been readily acceptable forms of male behaviour. In the
early 1660’s and 1670’s the male libertine was held up in awe for
his ability to triumph over characterizations of male and female.
Throughout this period, however, there is no trace of the purely
effeminate sodomite. The man who encapsulated the qualities of
the third gender is nowhere to be found amongst this classical
age of libertinism. Even the famous ‘fop’, who came to be
associated with effeminacy, and by extension sodomy, appears much
earlier than the eighteenth century. What must be remembered is
that the fop was not associated with sodomy before the 1690’s.
64 Alan Bray, “Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship in Elizabethan England,” History Workshop Journal, 29 (1990): 1-19.65 Ibid., 13.
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That association occurred only with the introduction of the
‘Beau’ as a sexualized character, which allowed sodomy to become
the exclusive purview of the fop.66 The behaviour need not only
be sexual, during the course of the seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries the practice of young men cross dressing for
theatre performances was phased out due to this fear of
effeminacy.67 The cultural discourse surrounding familiar styles
of behaviour, not necessarily sexual in nature, becomes crucial
in this sense for determining which way perceptions about what is
and is not masculine might turn.
A central feature of this cultural discourse concerns not so
much the men so much as the spaces in which they operate. Where a
man operated or where he was seen to be operating was an
important feature in how opinions were formed regarding his
sexual activity. That is to say men had to be careful of not only
who they were with but where they were. Concerning Renaissance
Italy Guido Ruggiero writes how the behaviour of a man was likely
to change relative to his physical space. In describing the
66 Trumbach, “The Birth of the Queen,” 133-135.67 Ibid., 139-140.
Marques 31
events concerning one of Machiavelli’s letters Ruggiero guides us
through the process of how one of his friends engaged in the act
of courting a young male prostitute. What is interesting is that
that the man in question was very careful to distance himself
from such behaviour in Rome yet was eager to go ‘hunting for
birds’, using the distinct sexualized language of male whore
hunting, once returned to Florence. Even more striking is that
the man in question adopted the name of his close friend, a man
known to engage with young boys, in order to be more easily
accepted while walking that street of ill repute.68 This example
is highly illustrative of the social and cultural mapping of
early modern cities. It is assumed that men would know where to
find sex of both kinds through word of mouth or simple
association with surrounding areas. The highlight of Ruggiero’s
example is the adoption of a pseudonym in order to enter into
this world of intimate male encounters. What this suggests is
that process of identification of sodomites was internal as well
as external. Sodomites may well have been a small enough
community that knowledge of their fellows may have been common
68 Ruggiero, Machiavelli In Love, 98-104.
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enough so as to make sure they would not engage with a man
hostile to their behaviour.
This kind of sexualized urban planning was not unique to
Italy nor was it unique to sodomites. In London sodomite
communities constructed their own physical spaces around brothels
and taverns and dubbed themselves ‘mollies’,69 though sexualized
spaces did not have to be as obvious as a tavern or other blatant
physical structures. Moreover the sodomy itself did not have to
real. The connection between certain places and acts of sodomy
were enough at times to bring charges of Sodomy against a man.
Trumbach demonstrated how men could be victimized by accusations
of sodomy simply by walking through places such as St. James’s
Park or Ludgate Hill.70 In the eighteenth century heterosexual,
mostly aristocratic men, forged for themselves new places of
masculinity such as the coffeehouse.71 As John Tosh has noted the
development of separate spheres was crucial to implementation of
the two sex model. It was crucial as one of the differences it
69 Trumbach, “The Birth of the Queen,” 137.70 Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution, 55-57.71 Harvey, “The History of Masculinity,” 309
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stressed was in rationality versus emotionality.72 Moreover older
places were refashioned so as to serve as protectors of older
masculinity. The concept of household authority continued to be
an enduring force in the formation of masculine identities at the
expense of other forms such as arms bearing.73
This paper has sought to identify the importance of
approaching masculinity first and foremost as a sexual identity.
Approaching masculinity this seeks to bring sexuality to the
forefront of the discussion. It has been nearly twenty years
since John Tosh asked what should be done with Masculinity. Tosh
approached masculinity primarily as a social identity.74 In doing
so he highlighted, indirectly it must be said, the difficulties
with such an approach. Seeking to pin down what it means to be a
man by way of the social interactions between men is nearly
impossible. As Tosh himself notes, in one of the first
adaptations of Connell’s theory, the problem with any form of
hegemony is that it is inherently unstable.75 Connell and Shepard
72 John Tosh, “The Old Adam and the New Man: Emerging Themes in the History ofEnglish Masculinities, 1750-1850,” in English Masculinities, eds. Tim Hitchcock andMichele Cohen, 217-238(New York: Longman, 1999), 221-22673 Tosh, “The Old Adam,” 222.74 Tosh, “What should Historians do With Masculinity?” 19875 Ibid., 193
Marques 34
have recognized this over the years. In order to account for this
instability a variety of terms and formulations have come forth
in order to make some sense of it all, thus we receive words such
as manliness, patriarchy, domination, authority and the ever
popular internal – external juxtaposition of male identities.
Stepping back from the realm of social interactions allows an
unfiltered view of masculinity yet it must be done without the
restraints of any particular period. The proscriptions of the
social and the reality of male experience often undermine ideas
of masculinity as a social identity. Looking at contemporary
discourses on masculinity it becomes apparent that sexuality is
nowhere to be found.76 The lack of sex or the call to master
sexual impulses in proscriptive literature indicates that there
was a universal acknowledgment that sex is a fundamental element
to masculine identities. This is also an acknowledgement that
eliminating sexuality is not an option, rather is must be
controlled or circumscribed. This is where the social comes into
the forefront of masculine identity. The tendency throughout most
76 Ibid., 182-183.
Marques 35
of the historiography is to approach masculinity as something to
be earned.
John Tosh and others have followed the formulations of
Michelle Rosaldo in articulating masculinity as something to be
achieved, something that the boy is born without and can only
achieve with the acceptance of his peers.77 This starting point
has led to emphasis on the home, the workplace, and other
institutions within the public sphere (coffeehouses, all male
associations, pubs, etc) as places where men go to earn their
masculinity. Such an approach undermines the reality of male
experience. Masculinity is defined by its sexual nature as much
as femininity, that is too say men are born with a sense of
themselves as sexual beings. The amount of ways men and women can
interact socially is virtually infinite, the same cannot be said
of them sexually. Men can engage sexually either with other men
or with other women. They internalize this aspect of their
sexuality and carry it forward throughout their lives. Men enter
into the public sphere not to earn their masculinity but to earn
acceptance of the masculinity they bring with them. The work of
77 Ibid., 184.
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Randolph Trumbach and Aland Bray on homosexual behaviour has
demonstrated that what changes is not the sexuality of a man but
rather how his sexuality will be perceived in the public sphere.
This is admittedly a longue durée approach but it is easily
adaptable. To understand the rise and fall of various
incarnations of masculinity requires an understanding of
contemporary attitudes towards sexuality, both mainstream and
subaltern.
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