Why start a blog about masculinity/performance?
In part because of the strong feeling that gender is being performed across a number of contexts with little critical thought. This is especially the case in male heavy social groups the best example of which I can think of would be sporting clubs. Whilst these contexts can be fun (most people seem to enjoy themselves) I often have the strong impression of a series of one-dimensional characters play acting their masculine roles. These roles are so artificial and appear so limiting that I wanted to talk about this with everyone's friend, the internet.
The first limitation that I wanted to talk about was the seeming limitation that is placed on male-male intimacy. So often these roles leave me questioning where is the intimacy? The vast majority of the time when I witness men trying to be intimate or even when I try to be intimate with another man I can feel a resistance. This resistance puts me in mind of old movies where the protagonist and crush desperately want to be together and they cannot touch or be seen together and so stop achingly short, like these two.
This is really just a teaser post, I am going to be doing a little research and talking to some people about intimacy. Once this is done I will return to discuss in more detail.
KD
