DOI:
- 10.1080/09540253.2016.1171298
- Received: 3 Sep 2015
- Accepted: 7 Mar 2016
- Published online: 08 Apr 2016
ABSTRACT
In
the context of renewed debates and interest in this area, this paper
reframes the theoretical agenda around laddish masculinities in UK
higher education, and similar masculinities overseas. These can be
contextualised within consumerist neoliberal rationalities, the
neoconservative backlash against feminism and other social justice
movements, and the postfeminist belief that women are winning the
‘battle of the sexes’. Contemporary discussions of ‘lad culture’ have
rightly centred sexism and men's violence against women: however, we
need a more intersectional analysis. In the UK a key intersecting
category is social class, and there is evidence that while working-class
articulations of laddism proceed from being dominated within alienating education systems, middle-class and elite versions are a reaction to feeling dominated
due to a loss of gender, class and race privilege. These are important
differences, and we need to know more about the conditions which shape
and produce particular performances of laddism, in interaction with
masculinities articulated by other social groups. It is perhaps
unhelpful, therefore, to collapse these social positions and identities
under the banner of ‘lad culture’, as has been done in the past.
