ABSTRACT
The last selection explained how the construction of masculinity in sports such as rugby implies notions about femininity. Women perform various supporting functions of both practical and emotional type, but also serve as an excluded group, a category against which men define and measure themselves. This selection analyzes an analogous system of gender constructions in the traditionally male field of surgery (see also Cassell 1998). Cassell argues that the exclusion of women in surgery and medicine in general, as in firefighting and the military, is linked to myths about males giving or taking life at will. Consequently, the presence of women in these fields is seen as highly threatening and destabilizing. As in the case of rugby analyzed in the last selection, participants in the sphere of surgery, including nurses, actively en force what they consider to be gender-appropriate behaviors, policing the boundaries between masculin ity and femininity.
