Sex, Gender, Becoming - PULP

28 Rory du Plessis
Sedgwick 36 further describes homophobia as being deployed by hegemonic
masculinity to check the slippage between male homosociability
and homosexuality to override any latent homosexual
content. Hoch 37 comments that within homosocial culture ‘the more
one retreats to an all-male environment, presumably the greater the
homosexual temptation and hence the continued need to ‘up the
ante’ in the way of violence to prove one’s manhood’.
Additionally, describing rugby as a homosocial event the
hypermasculine context of the men within this event is highlighted.
Pleck 38 describes hypermasculinity as pseudo-masculinity, as men
who display extreme, exaggerated masculine behaviours at the
conscious level in order to compensate for or defend against an
insecure male identity due to a feminine identity at the unconscious
level. The behaviours closely associated with hypermasculinity
include violence and repressive social attitudes and is described as
one source of men’s negative attitudes and conduct towards women.
Thus, the term hypermasculinity establishes the link of exaggerated,
negative behaviours stemming from the insecurity of a male sex role
identity. 39 As males become more firmly identified with the
masculine role, they exceedingly shun the feminine one. Masculinity
in these terms is erected at the cost of violence towards women. 40
Links between the prevalence of violence in the hypermasculine
society and male attempts to affirm masculinity are reinforced, as the
perception of male dominance over women (part of the traditional
definition of masculinity) continues to crumble. Thus, some men,
increasingly less sure of such dominance, may resort to violence in
their attempt to establish a masculine identity. 41 The violence that
Cohen invokes from the viewer is as a result of the danger that he is
to the hypermasculine context. This is expressed in that most of the
male viewers to his performance reacted aggressively, instructing
Cohen to leave, calling him derogatory labels and threatening to
attack him. 42 Pleck 43 describes that violence as invoked by Cohen’s
performance is due to the need for other men to punish a man for
embodying any display of feminine behaviour.
36 In RF Reid-Pharr ‘Tearing the goat’s flesh: homosexuality, abjection and the
production of a late twentieth-century black masculinity’ (1996) 28 Studies in the
novel 372.
37 L Segal Slow motion. Changing masculinities, changing men (1990) 159.
38 JH Pleck The myth of masculinity (1981) 23-24.
39
Pleck (n 38 above) 23-24.
40 Pleck (n 38 above) 113.
41 Segal (n 37 above) 269.
42
L van der Watt in Van Eeden & du Preez (n 19 above) 126.
43 Pleck (n 38 above) 110.