ABSTRACT
Individuals and cultural practices produce normative masculinity in Internet settings. They associate traditional masculinity with men, men’s enactments of technological expertise, and men’s assertions of genital power even though the material body cannot be verified in these settings. They also differentiate men’s normative masculinity from women, femininity, and other less privileged identities. Masculinity is thus a gendered term that is correlated with the masculine/feminine binary and associated with valued qualities, including rationality, bravery, and hardness. This chapter considers the ways a variety of people claim masculinity online, and how the demarcation of white heterosexual men from women and femininity renders normative masculinity. It outlines masculinity and gender studies concepts, including hegemonic, normative, and hybrid masculinity. Also addressed are popular claims about masculinity-in-crisis and the containment practices that control women. While online interrogations of the nice guy intervene in normative men’s narratives about crisis and demands for more rights, such practices threaten to make women and men into de facto heterosexual couples and render femininity as less desirable. These forms of masculinity have remained understudied. However, cultural understandings of masculinity shape the ways individuals can experience the world and the rights and power that they can claim.
