Lebanese Masculinities

Abstract

Dominant discourses surrounding gender tend to promote the view that the human race is naturally divided into male and female, where masculinity is fixed, stable and timeless, and where the natural difference between men and women is sharply emphasized. Nevertheless, gender studies are shifting from exclusive focus on women to a new interest in men, not as a monolithic group with fixed boundaries but rather as men whose masculinity is moulded in particular times and settings. There are no significant studies that treat Arab males as gendered subjects, or products of “social conditioning.”1 Indeed, masculinity in the Arab world is generally treated as timeless and universal.