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Arnold Schwarzenegger's celebrity status allowed him to project a symbolic masculine persona that was effective in gaining political power as California governor. The well-known violent tough-guy persona that Schwarzenegger developed in the mid-1980s contributed to a post—Vietnam era cultural remasculinization of the American man. But this narrow hyper-masculinity was often caricatured in popular culture and delegitimized. In the 1990s and 2000s, Schwarzenegger forged a credible masculine imagery by introducing characters who were humorously self-mocking and focused on care and protection of children. Schwarzenegger's resultant hybrid masculinity, the "Kindergarten Commando," represents an ascendant hegemonic masculinity always foregrounding muscle, toughness, and the threat of violence and following with situationally appropriate symbolic displays of compassion. The equation of toughness plus compassion composing the Kindergarten Commando is asymmetrical, with toughness eclipsing compassion; this has implications for the kinds of policies that U.S. elected leaders advocate. Republicans utilize this masculine imagery in national politics to gain voters' trust in times of fear and insecurity and continue to employ a strategy that projects a devalued feminized stigma onto more liberal candidates.

Data obtained 1983-1985 via interviews with 30 retired male career athletes, ages 21-48, are drawn on to examine the development of masculine gender identity, focusing on the nature of friendships between males, the role of intimacy in such relationships, & how these contribute to males' conceptions of their sexual identity & roles. Ways that these men seek to avoid emotional intimacy are described, including their engagement in stereotypical masculine activities & encouragement of homophobia. It is shown how sexist attitudes toward women are also encouraged in this culture & reinforced by various discursive strategies & behaviors in the locker room, during training, & on the playing field. Implications for the development of true intimacy in opposite sex relationships are discussed. K. Hyatt Stewart

Recent research on children's worlds has revealed how gender varies in salience across social contexts. Building on this observation, the author examines a highly salient gendered moment of group life among four- and five-year-old children at a youth soccer opening ceremony, where gender boundaries were activated and enforced in ways that constructed an apparently "natural" categorical difference between the girls and the boys. The author employs a multilevel analytical framework to explore (1) how children "do gender" at the level of interaction or performance, (2) how the structured gender regime constrains and enables the actions of children and parents, and (3) how children's gendered immersion in popular culture provides symbolic resources with which children and parents actively create (or disrupt) categorical differences. The article ends with a discussion of how gendered interactions, structure, and cultural meanings are intertwined, in both mutually reinforcing and contradictory ways.

Some feminists have seen sex role theory as limited, even dangerous; others see it as useful mid-range theory. This article sheds light on this debate through an examination of the discourse of the men's liberation movement of the 1970s. Men's liberation leaders grappled with the paradox of simultaneously acknowledging men's institutional privileges and the costs of masculinity to men. The language of sex roles was the currency through which they negotiated this paradox. By the late 1970s, men's liberation had disappeared. The conservative and moderate wings of men's liberation became an anti-feminist men's rights movement, facilitated by the language of sex roles. The progressive wing of men's liberation abandoned sex role language and formed a profeminist movement premised on a language of gender relations and power. The article ends with a discussion of the implications of this case for debates about sex role theory, and urges the study of contemporary organizations whose discourse is based on the language of sex roles.

The use of violence against others in sports appears to be a learned behavior that conveys contradictory social meanings. Participants in violent sports view their aggression as a natural manifestation of their God-given talents & physiological make-up, but at the same time, acknowledge the hours & years of training spent in developing their talents & bodies. The virile, muscular male (M) body also conveys messages of force & power, including the "natural" power of men over women. Violence in sports, even that resulting in serious injury, is viewed from a contextual morality which suggests that participants, as long as they follow the rules, are free from making moral choices. In fact, their aggression is viewed as being worthy of respect. Participants in violent sports are viewed as tough guys, willing to play when hurt, modern day gladiators at the top of the pecking order of M dominance.

This paper utilizes a feminist theoretical framework to explore the contemporary social meanings of sports violence. Two levels of meaning are explored: first, the broad, socio-cultural and ideological meanings of sports violence as mediated spectacle; second, the meanings which male athletes themselves construct. On the social/ideological level, the analysis draws on an emergent critical/feminist literature which theoretically and historically situates sports violence as a practice which helps to construct hegemonic masculinity. And drawing on my own in-depth interviews with male former athletes, a feminist theory of gender identity is utilized to examine the meanings which athletes themselves construct around their own participation in violent sports. Finally, the links between these two levels of analysis are tentatively explored: how does the athlete's construction of meaning surrounding his participation in violent sports connect with the larger social construction of masculinities and men's power relations with women?

Men's studies' scholars have begun to critically examine and deconstruct the meaning of masculinity, but thus far, most of their studies have focused exclusively on the lives of white, middle-class men, ignoring the implications of racial and social class differences and inequalities among men. Sport sociologists, on the other hand, have examined the causes and consequences of class and recial inequalities in the sports world, but they rarely integrate gender into their analysis—except when discussing women and sports. This study, based upon in-depth interviews with male former athletes from different race and class backgrounds, examines how these men construct and define meaning and make choices within a socially structured context. Through a comparison of the lives of white, black, and chicano former athletes in the United States, I argue that given the psychological imperatives of a developing sense of masculine identity within a structured socioeconomic context, the choice to pursue, or not to pursue, an athletic career is explicable as an individual's rational assessment of the available means to construct a public masculine identity. Organized sports is thus an institution that serves to construct gender, class, and race inequities.