Expanding Hegemonic Masculinity: The Use of Irony in Young Men’s Stories About Romantic Experiences

Abstract

This study examines the use of irony in young men’s stories about romantic and sexual experiences. Because romantic experiences are central in the constitution of a heterosexual self, and because they are increasingly formulated in relation to traditional masculine norms and the simultaneous avowal and disavowal of effeminacy, they reveal an oscillation between complicity and resistance to hegemonic masculine norms. This oscillation is explored in stories about promiscuity, seduction, and vulnerability. Critical discursive analyses reveal how young men discursively pivot between complicity and resistance to traditional masculine norms, how this oscillation functions in the accomplishment of their romantic identities, how a sense of conventional masculinity is reclaimed, and what these processes reveal about the shifting nature of hegemonic masculinity in contemporary culture.