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identity construct #3: gender 127
terms, on logical examination, waver like the Danube mist. They prove
remarkably elusive and difficult to defi ne.
Why should this be? In the course of this book I will suggest that the
underlying reason is the character of gender itself, historically changing and
politically fraught. Everyday life is an arena of gender politics, not an escape
from it.
Gender terms are contested because the right to account for gender is
claimed by confl icting discourses and systems of knowledge. We can see
this in everyday situations as well as in high theory [. . .].
So the confl icting forms of knowledge about gender betray the presence
of different practices addressing gender. To understand both everyday and
scientifi c accounts of masculinity we cannot remain at the level of pure
ideas, but must look at their practical bases.
For instance, common-sense knowledge of gender is by no means fi xed.
It is, rather, the rationale of the changing practices through which gender
is “done” or “accomplished” in everyday life-practices revealed in elegant
research by ethnomethodologists [. . .].
The different forms of knowledge do not stand on an equal footing. In
most contexts, scientifi c claims have an undeniable edge [. . .].
This has shaped the development of ideas about masculinity through
the twentieth century. All the leading discourses make some claim to be
scientifi c, or to use scientifi c “fi ndings,” however grotesque the claim
may be [. . .].
But the appeal to science plunges us into circularity. For it has been
shown, in convincing historical detail, that natural science itself has a gendered
character. Western science and technology are culturally masculinized.
This is not just a question of personnel, though it is a fact that the
great majority of scientists and technologists are men. The guiding metaphors
of scientifi c research, the impersonality of its discourse, the structures
of power and communication in science, the reproduction of its internal
culture, all stem from the social position of dominant men in a gendered
world. The dominance of science in discussions of masculinity thus refl ects
the position of masculinity (or specifi c masculinities) in the social relations
of gender [. . .].
The Male Role
The fi rst important attempt to create a social science of masculinity centered
on the idea of a male sex role. Its origins go back to late nineteenth-century
debates about sex difference, when resistance to women’s emancipation