Andrew P. Smiler

Anything from making out to having sex: men's negotiations of hooking up and friends with benefits scripts.

Popular media and academic literature often portray men as happy beneficiaries of nonrelational or casual sex—a view that is consistent with traditional notions of masculinity. This study examined the validity of this notion, using semistructured interviews to explore ways that 19 college-age men defined and enacted “hooking up” and “friends with benefits” scripts. Mens definitions reflected both standard and alternate conceptions of these scripts, and their experiences indicated variability in intentions and outcomes. Whereas a few men embraced the no-strings-attached nonrelational scripts, most rejected the script or enacted an amended version that allowed for greater relational connection. Further, their experiences were not all positive and were not all devoid of emotional connection. These alternative enactments challenge the pro-masculine, universally positive conceptualization of nonrelational sex portrayed in the media and in some empirical research.

Measuring Gender: Options and Issues

In 1979, Carole Beere published an index of 235 gender-related measures. In her effort to update the volume a decade later, she reviewed over 1,400 measures (Beere, 1990a, 1990b). Although less than 10% of the newly published measures had been cited more than five times, the sheer volume of measures suggests that there is (or was) great interest in assessing gender-related phenomena, that there were many options for doing so, and that gender is a complex, multidimensional phenomenon. The plethora of measures also suggests that there were substantial disagreements about measurement and that there were (likely) fractures in the field. This chapter emerges from a perspective that holds gender to be socially constructed, consistent with literature that has demonstrated changes in femininity and masculinity across times and places (Best & Williams, 1998; Gilmore, 1990; Kimmel, 1996; Smiler, Kay, & Harris, 2008; Twenge, 1997a, 1997b). Before we go further, we must clarify some terms. In this chapter, we use “sex” to refer to an individual’s biological status as female, male, or intersexual. We use the term “gender” to refer to a broad collection of personality characteristics, beliefs, and behaviors that are understood to be more “appropriate” for one sex than for the other (Unger, 1990). Gendered expectations are also applied to different “gender roles,” which specify what is normative and culturally “appropriate” behavior for men and women. Because the definitions of “masculinity” and “femininity” vary across scales, we do not offer a definition here. Moreover, we acknowledge that constructions of gender are necessarily culture-specific and cohort-specific, and illustrate dominant values that do not necessarily reflect individual differences. As most of the gender measures reviewed here have emerged from the Western world, this chapter largely reflects Western notions of masculinity and femininity, including the notion that there are only two genders (but see Herdt, 1994, for an alternate view). In this chapter, we review three different classes of measures that assess gender-related constructs, and we discuss measurement and conceptual issues that we believe the field must address. Within each class, we identify major foci, and provide a brief description of commonly used measures. We highlight measures that have had a substantial impact on gender studies or, among newer scales that we believe have the potential to have a substantial impact. We give preference to measures that have been used within the past 10 years and for which at least one psychometric analysis has been published (beyond the initial publication of the scale). In our review, we focus on the internal consistency (i.e., Cronbach’s alpha), reliability (i.e., the scale’s ability to produce replicable results)

Tightening and Loosening Masculinity's (k)Nots: Masculinity in the Hearst Press during the Interwar Period

Histories of masculinity have documented changes in the definition of American masculinity across centuries, but not decades. This article examines prescriptive and proscriptive statements about mens behavior as they appeared in William Randolph Hearsts American Weekly during the interwar period (1918–1940). Written by professionals and providing summaries of current research, the American Weekly provided authoritative accounts of masculinity to a mass audience. In the early 1920s, reason was explicitly masculine and central to the construction of masculinity, and gender differences were routinely attributed to mens superior evolution. By the late 1930s, reason was implicitly masculine, the breadwinner role was central, and gender differences relied on the known, but unstated, superiority of men.