Review of "The Relationship between Masculinity and Sexual Prejudice in Factors Associated with Violence Against Gay Men” by Rebecca Stotzer

Stotzer, Rebecca L., and Margaret Shih. "The Relationship between Masculinity and Sexual Prejudice in Factors Associated with Violence Against Gay Men." Psychology of Men & Masculinity 13.2 (2012): 136-42. ProQuest. Web. 7 Oct. 2014.

            In “The Relationship between Masculinity and Sexual Prejudice in Factors Associated with Violence Against Gay Men,” Rebecca Stotzer and Margaret Shih explore the relationship between expression of masculinity, sexuality, perceived sexuality, and prejudice. They do this with an experiment involving 60 heterosexual-identifying men pulled from a pool of around 1.5k undergraduates in a large Midwestern university. The ages of participants was 18-22, with a majority of the population being white. They made it so the men who participated were only heterosexual – as opposed to being men that identify as mostly heterosexual, mostly homosexual, or only homosexual. Their design was to place them in a high or low sexual prejudice score and then in a setting that’s threatening or not. For example, in order to create a threat, they told “[p]articipants in the threat condition… that their score on a test was more typical of a women’s score” (138).

            The authors identify that there is a “correlate[ion] with hostile sexism” and homophobia (136). Based on previous studies, the authors state that there is bias based on their population: college-aged men tended to be perpetrators of violence against homosexual men and that younger men tended to be more frequent perpetrators than older men. Because of this and those participating in the study, this sample doesn’t represent the entirety of men that commit violent acts against gay men. Keeping this in mind, what they did find was that it seemed that tolerant and intolerant men will have different ways of dealing with a threat to their masculinity. While those that are intolerant will appear to need anger or forcefulness to handle the threat, tolerant men will be able to have their own way to manage the threat in a way that denies or stops it. In other words, men that are tolerant to homosexuality had different reactions to threats against their masculinity than men who were homophobic. This applies when they are confronted with a threat from anyone: another man, a woman, or someone else. The homophobic reaction is for “their own fears of failing to be masculine” or to regulate others to their idea of what a man should be (141).

            An important relationship that was uncovered by this was that: when the threat is lower, sexual prejudice was lower; which threat is higher, sexual prejudice was higher. A stance that can be taken on this is public safety due to the produced aggression: if intolerant men become aggressive due to a threat presented, gender non-conforming people, women, and homosexual men can all be at risk of violence. Through the study, men that were placed in what they used as their threatening environment had higher ratings of their own masculinity, correlating with a lowering of tolerance towards less masculine men. In contrast, men that were in a threat-free atmosphere had a significant difference in self-report of masculinity. These go hand-in-hand.

            This article explores the relationship between men, masculinity, and sexual violence against men. This relates to the class not only as it explores the binary ideal that men are masculine and are not going to be feminine, but also the heteronormative agenda that rejects any queer expressions. This article, like Judith Butler, supports the notion that gender is performative and that the expression and perception of it can affect life. This study explored the notion of the performative portion of gender being affected by the environment, as they compensate for what may make them feel insecure in their surroundings and allowing them to alter how they feel about others. Unlike Butler’s notions, the authors of this article seem to allow sexuality and gender expression to overlap and become nearly synonymous as they consider homosexual men to be threats against masculinity as there in an assumption that gay men have a more feminine expression. This is a part of my blog topic of sexual violence against men as it has a focus on homosexual men, with causes of violence against them.

-Elijah Zagorski