This chapter explores Sanhe gods’ hybridized masculinity across rural–urban and class boundaries. It also discusses their online and offline sexual discourses, desires, and involvement in paid sex.

Chapter 1 offers a radical reinterpretation of the gender of Michael Psellos, one of Romanía’s most well-known scholars as well as one of few figures from the Middle Byzantine period to have received extensive gender analysis. The chapter starts with biographical information about his education and personal life. It continues with the role that learning played in his self-definition and his depiction of others, especially in his many encomia. It argues that, in his writings, education and learning could act as ‘masculine capital’, which, when accumulated, could be used to allow for less masculine behaviours in other areas of life, both propping up and subverting hegemonic ideals of physical strength. Finally, it considers the implications of this for Psellos’ work, from his descriptions of hunting and warfare to his emotional life.

This chapter charts historical developments and central themes in the anthropological study of men and masculinities. As the chapter shows, this body of knowledge is not free of frictions and contestations. Early anthropological studies were often motivated by finding globally generalizable patterns of masculinity. Other research has broadened the focus by questioning coherent gender-identities, analyzing how masculinity constructs are shaped by ambivalences, transgressive practices, and intersectional complexities. To chart this rich body of knowledge, the first part of the chapter critically discusses early anthropological research on men and masculinities as well as concepts that dominated the field for a considerable time. The remainder of the chapter focuses on three prominent topics of anthropological masculinity studies: economic crisis and its effect on masculinities, sexualities and nonnormative masculinities, and the role of masculinities in the negotiation of boundaries between others and selves. The chapter argues that anthropological engagements with masculinity can productively trouble our understanding of what it means to be a man.

Within and across cultures, sexism derives from cultural beliefs about the superiority of one sex and predicts gender inequity. Given the persistent and striking gender inequalities across nations, the goal of this chapter is to elaborate the relation among blatant and subtle sexism, ideology, sexual violence, men’s dominance over women, and patriarchal inequities. Toward that end, we review social psychological theory and research on gender and sexism; within this context, we discuss forms of sexism and gendered ideologies at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intergroup level. We also focus on the important aspects of construing gender as a social identity. We then compare and contrast psychological perspectives to feminist theories, which emphasize how the gender binary defines hegemonic masculinity in contrast to women; we focus particularly attention to how women negotiate gendered roles and relations given awareness of the frequency, prevalence, and possibility of gendered and/or sexual violence. After integrating social psychological and enduring principles of radical feminist perspectives, we conclude by discussing the implications of cross-cultural perspectives and potential interventions that may combat sexism that reinforces gender inequities.

Chapter 4 focuses on the challenges Puritanism posed to masculinity by examining the case of war hero Captain John Underhill. Famous for his triumphant massacre of the Pequot Indians, Underhill was the definition of military manhood, or hypermasculinity. Trained by his father to be a soldier, Underhill embraced a masculinity of power, sexual prowess, pride, and heroism that was not a good fit in Puritan New England. The new Puritan man needed to moderate some of the excesses of traditional masculine norms. Shortly after his wartime heroism, Underhill found himself excommunicated and banished from Massachusetts Bay, and he clumsily navigated this gender terrain, ultimately gaining readmission to the church and colony by offering a thoroughly over-the-top, feminized, weeping confession. While Underhill fought for the status and power he thought he deserved, other men faced similar problems of competing masculinities. Some conformed, and others realized that they could not survive the New England way. Laymen in charge of church discipline created a middle ground of masculinity that blended versions, providing men a language and a sense of public duty that preserved their manhood.