#masculinities

only in the introduction of the book, Connell has brought up a rlly interesting topic of transnational business masculinity, which, how I understand it, is a type of masculinity focusing on the business more capitalistic side of masculinity. lowkey my old interest and current interest overlapping cuz I had an old hyperfixation on corporate culture. interesting! this is also brought up at a decent time since I'm learning about globalization in one of my minor classes.

Sylvia Saint in einem Bomis.com T-Shirt, Jimmy Wales mit Bomis Models

"Bomis war ein Internetunternehmen mit Sitz in Saint Petersburg, Florida, das 1996 zunächst ohne Geschäftsmodell gegründet wurde. Bis 2005 bezog das Unternehmen hauptsächlich Einkünfte über Google-Anzeigen auf dem eigenen Suchportal und das Anbieten erotischer bis pornographischer Inhalte. Gründer und Mehrheitseigner war Jimmy Wales, weitere Anteilseigner waren Tim Shell und ein stiller Teilhaber. Im März 2000 gründete Wales die freie Online-Enzyklopädie Nupedia, aus der später die Wikipedia hervorging. Beide Projekte wurden anfangs von Bomis unter anderem durch die Bereitstellung von Serverkapazitäten und Domainnamen unterstützt. Aufgrund der steigenden Popularität der Wikipedia und der damit verbundenen Kosten suchte man aber bald nach einer anderen Unternehmensform. Am 20. Juni 2003 gründete Wales die Wikimedia Foundation, der die Eigentumsrechte an den Servern und Domainnamen übertragen wurden." https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Enzyklop%C3%A4die/Bomis

Whereas we often easily recognize women's lives as gendered (in fact we have established entire classes, departments, and bodies of scholarship around women's studies), masculinity is less easy to recognize and often seems invisible. Men's lives, however, are just as organized by gender as are women's. We too often fail to appreciate this. Why? Because power renders certain identities and structures less visible than others. The mechanisms that afford privilege are often invisible to those on the receiving end of that privilege; meanwhile, what makes people marginalized is all too apparent to the marginalized. As Michael Kimmel writes, "Marginality is visible and painfully visceral. Privilege is invisible and painlessly pleasant" (1990:94). When privilege is "working," those most advantaged by systems of power and inequality are relatively unaware of their advantages (e.g., McIntosh 1988). So why is it so important to recognize men as gendered? Because gender is one of the major ways through which power structures, privilege, and inequality are reproduced—in addition to (and in combination with) race and class. Therefore, it is important to see men as gendered because masculinity replicates power and affords power to those with that identity. It is important to investigate masculinity to understand the ways in which politics, the state, institutions of school and work, religion, family, and nationality are infused with, and themselves shape, masculinity.

Bruce Lee after vandalization and before being removed, Mostar Urban Movement, 2005

"While the meaning of the sculptural monuments to the pan-Slav revolution has been seriously contested in the war of the 1990s, the repertoire of recent national heroes that could be monumentalized as statues is shrinking with each war crime trial in The Hague (Akšamija 2011). Yet, the search for new heroes that could fill the cultural gap produced by the Balkanization of Yugoslavia has, according to Akšamija, apparently been satisfied with icons from the entertainment industry—hence forcing an unlikely conjunction of Hollywood and the recent political crisis in the Balkans. The monuments play a role in the new signification of urban places, creating new meanings that produce a cleavage between the past and the present and facilitate the production of a symbolic system."

"The Bruce Lee statue suffered more swift and lethal blows in the Mostar community park. A black graffiti painting of a vagina on the crotch of his Kung Fu pants undermined the masculinity of his golden body. Promptly, such feminization of the freedom fighter was sufficient cause to remove the sculpture altogether"