Poker is a centuries-old American game. Why has it become so popular in the twenty-first century? What does current interest in the game tell us about ourselves and some of our most pressing social issues? In this timely and thought-provoking book, Andrew Manno offers important insights into the intersection of gaming, gender, and capitalism that illuminate how the shift to a casino capitalist economy-combined with a culture of toxic masculinity-impacts workers and how it has led to the rise of populism in the United States that manifested in the 2016 election of Donald Trump.

This book provides an in-depth investigation of two Japanese men's magazines, ChokiChoki and Men's egg, analysed as representative examples of the genre of Japanese lifestyle magazines for young men. Employing both qualitative and quantitative content analysis, focusing on topics ranging from everyday life activities up to partnerships and sexuality, it examines how these magazines discursively renegotiate norms of Japanese masculinity. By scrutinizing the way these magazines convey ideas of gendered behavior within different contexts, the book demonstrates how Japanese lifestyle magazines discursively create new ideas of gender and masculinities in particular. It argues that hegemonic gender norms of Japan's society are both altered and reconstructed at the same time and that while altering parts of the gendered habitus in order to adjust to changing social circumstances and perceptions of gender, magazines (un)consciously reproduce core values of the hegemonic gender regime and thus revalidate them as legitimate. A key read for scholars and students of contemporary Japan, Japanese studies, gender studies, and anyone interested in Japanese popular culture and media, this book provides new insights into a segment of the Japanese media market that has received little scholarly attention.

At a time when traditional dating practices are being replaced with new ways to meet potential partners, this book provides fresh insights into how are men responding to new ways of dating. Drawing upon original research, this book examines a wide range of contemporary dating practices that includes speed dating, holiday romances, use of dating apps, online sex seeking and dogging. It reveals the ways in which men draw upon traditional models of masculinity to negotiate these changes; but also, the extent to which men are responding by elaborating new masculinities. Through an investigation of the dynamics of heterosexuality and masculinity, this book highlights the importance attached to authenticity, and the increasing marketization and commodification of dating. It argues that in a post-truth world, men must also come to terms with a post-trust dating landscape. Combining rich empirical material with keen theoretical analysis, this innovative work will have interdisciplinary appeal for students and scholars of sociology, media studies, cultural studies, and gender studies.

God does not intend for us to fight our battles alone. Our battles do not disqualify us from his grace-no matter what they are. The two CORE for Men studies-Redeemed and Transformed-each feature five raw and real video stories (DVD/video streaming sold separately) of men who have fought with feelings of isolation and disqualification. Through these personal stories of brokenness and redemption, you and your group will be encouraged to step out of shame and into your own God-shaped stories. Sessions and Contributors include: Called (Mariano Rivera, pitcher for New York Yankees) Redemption (Kyle Oxford, tattoo artist) Sons (Tommy Green, lead singer for the metal/hardcore band Sleeping Giant) Restoration (Robert Irving III, music director for Miles Davis) Purpose (Tom Paterson, master strategic thinker) Brought to you by the men behind the organization Promise Keepers, the passion behind the CORE for Men studies is to create spaces where men have permission to be real-where men discover they are not alone with the kind of doubts and fears they face everyday. CORE is a biblical expression of solidarity that will lead you back to a God who's in the business of turning brokenness into forgiveness and pain into a new and fulfilling purpose. Designed for use with the Redeemed: Turning Brokenness into Something Beautiful Video Study available on DVD or streaming video, sold separately.

God has redeemed you. Now he's transforming you. Unlike redemption, we have to participate in our own spiritual transformation...but God doesn't ask us to do it alone. The two CORE for Men studies-Redeemed and Transformed-each feature five raw and real video stories (DVD/video streaming sold separately) of men who have fought with feelings of isolation and disqualification. Through these personal stories of brokenness and transformation, you and your group will be encouraged to step out of stagnancy and into your own God-shaped stories. Sessions and Contributors include: Identity (Propaganda, poet and activist) Transformation (Willie Alfonso, chaplain for the New York Yankees) Brotherhood (Sam & Emmanuel Acho, NFL players) Choices (Jerry Quiroz, professional soccer player) Reload (Clint Bruce, US Navy SEAL) Brought to you by the men behind the organization Promise Keepers, the passion behind the CORE for Men studies is to create spaces where men have permission to be real-where men discover they are not alone with the kind of doubts and fears they face everyday. CORE is a biblical expression of solidarity that will lead you back to a God who's in the business of turning brokenness into forgiveness and pain into a new and fulfilling purpose. Designed for use with the Transformed: Embracing Our True Identity and Purpose Video Study available on DVD or streaming video, sold separately.

This book explores how contemporary men understand love in the realm of family life and how they integrate it into their identity. Drawing from Ian Burkitt's aesthetic theory of emotions, Macht presents rich data from qualitative interviews and observations with Scottish and Romanian involved fathers, to reveal how they maintain closeness to their children, their partners and their own family of origin. Reflecting on distances, separations, power, worry and intergenerational experiences of love Fatherhood and Love hypothesizes that fathers' identities and emotionality rely on a variety of social relationships in their intimate environment. A new concept, 'emotional bordering', is introduced, to portray the tensions inherent in fathers' identities and illuminate why gender progress happens slowly. Engaging with literature on love, masculinity, culture and father's involvement from a unique perspective, this book will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of social science disciplines.

Winner of the Leisure Studies Association's Outstanding Book Prize This book examines the tensions and ambivalences which men encounter as they negotiate contemporary expectations of fatherhood and fulfill their own expectations of what it means to be a 'good' father. There is little doubt that today's fathers are responding to new expectations about fatherhood and fathering practices. The remote, detached, breadwinning father of the past, once lauded as a masculine ideal, has faded, and men are now expected to be 'involved', 'intimate', 'caring' and 'domesticated' fathers. Using a family practices lens and a case study of sport, Fletcher elucidates the changes and continuities in family and fathering practices in different historical periods and contexts. Negotiating Fatherhood will be of interest to students and scholars with an interest in family and fathering practices, sport, leisure, and gender.

This book presents an international perspective on the involvement of men in the lives of young children across a range of differing contexts and from a number of disciplinary perspectives. It takes as a starting point the importance of positive male engagement with young children so as to ensure their optimal development. Past research has revealed however the complexity of studying these relationships and the barriers that exist in families & society which impede the implementation of positive relationships. This book is developed to use new research and educational thinking in order to explore the lived experiences of both fathers and men in edu-care and in addition to considers what it is to be a man in the 21st century. As such this work is pertinent, timely and responsive to issues of concern to all those professionals, policy makers and practitioners within education and family services and also to the public in general. The central purpose of the book is to contribute to the debate around key issues connected to the ways in which men can develop secure professional and familial attachments to young children for whom they have a responsibility. This book was published as a special issue of Early Child Development and Care.

Drawing on ethnographic encounters with self-identified gay men in Iran, this book explores the construction, enactment, and veiling and unveiling of gay identity and same-sex desire in the capital city of Tehran. The research draws on diverse interpretive, historical, online and empirical sources in order to present critical and nuanced insights into the politics of recognition and representation and the constitution of same-sex desire under the specific conditions of Iranian modernity. As it engages with accounts of the persecuted Iranian gay male subject as a victim of the barbarism of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the book addresses interpretive questions of sexuality governance in transnational contexts and attends to issues of human rights frameworks in weighing social justice and political claims made by and on behalf of sexual and gender minorities. The book thus combines empirical data with a critical consideration of the politics of same-sex desire for Iranian gay men.

This book uses empirical research to introduce the relationship between nationalism, militarism and masculinity. The co-constitution between these three factors is susceptible to change and hinders reconciliation, according to the author. Drawing on the case of Cyprus, a country in conflict with Turkey, Efthymiou reveals how nationalism, militarism and masculinity were constructed after the war, and re-adapted following the opening of internal borders and European Union accession. Nationalism, Militarism and Masculinity in Post-Conflict Cyprus draws on rich field-research, with soldiers and officers in army barracks, politicians such as former President of Republic of Cyprus Glafkos Clerides, leaders of radical far-right movements and the Greek Cypriot public. The book offers invaluable insight into the application of nationalism, militarism and masculinity in governmental policy including by the Cyprus Defence Ministry, and will be of interest to students and scholars in sociology, gender studies, peace studies, security studies, politics and international relations, as well as governments and NGOs.

This book is about how Chinese men make sense of and practise fatherhood within the context of changing gender conventions and socio-cultural conditions. Liong analyses data from participant observations at a men's centre, focus groups, and in-depth interviews, to assess the subjective experience and identities of Chinese fathers in Hong Kong, from a gender perspective. His findings show that economic provision, education, and marriage are the three "natural" and "normal" domains of paternity. Not being able to fulfil these requirements is a threat to fathers' masculinity, yet is also an opportunity for fathers to reflect upon these accepted conventions. In order to compensate, these men typically develop a closer and more caring relationship with their children, however these fathers still struggle with feelings of inferiority.

Over the past two decades there has been a rapid transformation of masculinities in the West, largely facilitated by a decline in cultural homophobia. The significant changes in the expression of masculinity, particularly among younger generations of men, have been particularly evident in men's team sports, which have become an increasingly diverse and inclusive culture. Drawing upon work from a wide range of established and emerging international scholars, this handbook provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary analysis of the contemporary relationship between masculinity and sport. It covers a range of areas including history, media, gender, sexuality, race, violence, and fandom, considering how they impact a range of different sports across the world. Students and scholars across many disciplines will find the unparalleled overview provided by these specially commissioned chapters an invaluable resource.

A New York City ethnography that explores men's unique approaches to Catholic devotion Every Saturday, and sometimes on weekday evenings, a group of men in old clothes can be found in the basement of the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Each year the parish hosts the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and San Paolino di Nola. Its crowning event is the Dance of the Giglio, where the men lift a seventy-foot tall, four-ton tower through the streets, bearing its weight on their shoulders. Drawing on six years of research, Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada reveals the making of this Italian American tower, as the men work year-round to prepare for the Feast. She argues that by paying attention to this behind-the-scenes activity, largely overlooked devotional practices shed new light on how men embody and enact their religiosity in sometimes unexpected ways. Lifeblood of the Parish evocatively and accessibly presents the sensory and material world of Catholicism in Brooklyn, where religion is raucous and playful. Maldonado-Estrada here offers a new lens through which to understand men's religious practice, showing how men and boys become socialized into their tradition and express devotion through unexpected acts like painting, woodworking, fundraising, and sporting tattoos. These practices, though not usually considered religious, are central to the ways the men she studied embodied their Catholic identity and formed bonds to the church.

Most of us assume that sexuality is fixed: either you're straight, gay, or bisexual. Yet an increasing number of young men today say that those categories are too rigid. They are, they insist, "mostly straight." They're straight, but they feel a slight but enduring romantic or sexual desire for men. To the uninitiated, this may not make sense. How can a man be "mostly" straight? Ritch Savin-Williams introduces us to this new world by bringing us the stories of young men who consider themselves to be mostly straight or sexually fluid. By hearing about their lives, we discover a radically new way of understanding sexual and romantic development that upends what we thought we knew about men. Today there are more mostly straight young men than there are gay and bisexual young men combined. Based on cutting-edge research, Savin-Williams explores the personal stories of forty young men to help us understand the biological and psychological factors that led them to become mostly straight and the cultural forces that are loosening the sexual bind that many boys and young men experience. These young men tell us how their lives have been influenced by their "drop of gayness," from their earliest sexual memories and crushes to their sexual behavior as teenagers and their relationships as young adults. Mostly Straight shows us how these young men are forging a new personal identity that confounds both traditional ideas and conventional scientific opinion.

The Hero's Body is a memoir of what it means to be a man in modern America. At just forty-seven years old, William Giraldi's father was killed in a horrific motorcycle accident. Writing here with searing honesty about grief, obsession, shame and identity, he looks back on three generations of men from the blue-collar town of Manville, New Jersey, and tells their stories in tandem: the speed-crazed cult of his father's 'superbikes', each Sunday spent racing fate along the winding back roads of Pennsylvania; the trauma of a son's ultimate loss, and William's attempts to rebuild a self in the manliest costume he knew. For a teen consumed by hardcore bodybuilding, pumping iron was so much more than a sport-it was a hallowed lifeline for a bookish tenth-grader, a way to forge himself a spot amongst his family's imperious patriarchs. A work of lasting literary beauty, lauded by the New Yorker for its 'unrelenting, perfectly paced prose', The Hero's Body is a tale of the working-class male, the codes of machismo and the unspoken bond between father and son.

This book is an antidote to the forms of American nationalism, masculinity, exceptionalism, and self-anointed prowess that are currently being flexed on the global stage. Through a fascinating combination of ethnographic research across seven US states and the application of postcolonial, anti-racist, feminist and poststructuralist theories, Land, God, and Guns reveals how time-honoured rites of passage associated with taken-for-granted notions of manhood in the American Heartland are constitutive of a constellation of colonial worldviews, capitalist logics, gender essentialisms, ethnocentric religious beliefs, jingoistic populism, racial animus, and embodied violence. A constellation that, within the US, upholds a heteropatriarchal and racist ordering of life that both privileges and ultimately damages its main proliferators - white settler men. This is a detailed work that at once unravels rural white settler masculinity and the US state at their roots, whilst demonstrating why any analysis of the cultural production and social practice of masculinity in the United States must take into account the country's historical trajectories of imperialism, land dispossession, nation-state building, enslavement, extractive accumulation and valorisation of masculinist assertions of dominance.

Across the globe, violence prevention initiatives focused on men and boys are proliferating rapidly. Engaging Men and Boys in Violence Prevention highlights effective and innovative strategies for the primary prevention of domestic violence, sexual violence, and other forms of harassment and abuse. It combines research on gender, masculinities, and violence with case studies from a wide variety of countries and settings. Through the cross-disciplinary examination of these varied efforts, this work will enable advocates, educators, and policy-makers to understand, assess, and implement programs and strategies which involve men and boys in initiatives to prevent violence against women.

'A breeze of a read, makes you see our male-manufactured world a little differently' Matt Haig 'GRAYSON PERRY FOR KING AND QUEEN OF ENGLAND. Imagine how BRILLIANT our country would look if he was' Caitlin Moran Grayson Perry has been thinking about masculinity - what it is, how it operates, why little boys are thought to be made of slugs and snails - since he was a boy. Now, in this funny and necessary book, he turns round to look at men with a clear eye and ask, what sort of men would make the world a better place, for everyone? What would happen if we rethought the old, macho, outdated version of manhood, and embraced a different idea of what makes a man? Apart from giving up the coronary-inducing stress of always being 'right' and the vast new wardrobe options, the real benefit might be that a newly fitted masculinity will allow men to have better relationships - and that's happiness, right? Grayson Perry admits he's not immune from the stereotypes himself - as the psychoanalysts say, 'if you spot it, you've got it' - and his thoughts on everything from power to physical appearance, from emotions to a brand new Manifesto for Men, are shot through with honesty, tenderness and the belief that, for everyone to benefit, upgrading masculinity has to be something men decide to do themselves. They have nothing to lose but their hang-ups.

Affective Health and Masculinities in South Africa explores how different masculinities modulate substance use, interpersonal violence, suicidality, and AIDS as well as recovery cross-culturally. With a focus on three male protagonists living in very distinct urban areas of Cape Town, this comparative ethnography shows that men's struggles to become invulnerable increase vulnerability. Through an analysis of masculinities as social assemblages, the study shows how affective health problems are tied to modern individualism rather than African 'tradition' that has become a cliche in Eurocentric gender studies. Affective health is conceptualized as a balancing act between autonomy and connectivity that after colonialism and apartheid has become compromised through the imperative of self-reliance. This book provides a rare perspective on young men's vulnerability in everyday life that may affect the reader and spark discussion about how masculinities in relationships shape physical and psychological health. Moreover, it shows how men change in the face of distress in ways that may look different than global health and gender-transformative approaches envision. Thick descriptions of actual events over the life course make the study accessible to both graduate and undergraduate students in the social sciences. Contributing to current debates on mental health and masculinity, this volume will be of interest to scholars from various disciplines including anthropology, gender studies, African studies, psychology, and global health.

When Judy Y. Chu first encountered the four-year-old boys we meet in this book, they were experiencing a social initiation into boyhood. They were initially astute in picking up on other people's emotions, emotionally present in their relationships, and competent in their navigation of the human social world. However, the boys gradually appeared less perceptive, articulate, and responsive, and became more guarded and subdued in their relationships as they learned to prove that they are boys primarily by showing that they are not girls. Based on a two-year study of boys aged four to six, When Boys Become Boys offers a new way of thinking about boys' development. Chu finds that behaviors typically viewed as "natural" for boys reflect an adaptation to cultures that require boys to be emotionally stoic, competitive, and aggressive if they are to be accepted as "real boys." Yet even as boys begin to reap the social benefits of aligning with norms of masculine behavior, they pay a psychological and relational price for hiding parts of their authentic selves. Through documenting boys' perceptions of the obstacles they face and the pressures they feel to conform, and showing that their compliance with norms of masculine behavior is neither automatic nor inevitable, this accessible and engaging book provides insight into ways in which adults can foster boys' healthy resistance and help them to access a broader range of options for expressing themselves.

From the Father Stunter Culture that says fathers are less than to masculinity narratives telling men theres only one way to be a father -- lets face it -- fathers are dealt a short shaft. The truth? We need fathers more than ever. We've an urgent task to set things right with, and for, fathers. And its one that must be done. If you don't agree; this book is not for you. SPUNK: A Manifesto Modernising Fatherhood elevates the conversation about modern fatherhood beyond the nuts and bolts of daddy daycare as it goes deep inside how men view their fathering as they attempt (day in, day out) to be a dad to their kids. Inside SPUNK you will discover more than a thousand men revealing what it means to be a father in this fast-changing world. Through a combination of brand-new research married alongside portraits from acclaimed podcast, School for Fathers, men uncover how much being a father is a whole new, often confusing, ballgame. Fathers are simultaneously stunted by outdated structures while held tight to fixed notions of manhood leaving them (and us) in something of a hot mess. SPUNK is a pragmatic tell-all of why fathers behave in the ways they do and a problem-solving roadmap for the kind of fatherhood men are already shooting for but struggling to grasp. The kind of fatherhood our children yearn for and deserve. Using data from fathers globally, SPUNK provides answers to: What kind of SPUNK do modern fathers need? How do fathers with this SPUNK raise their children? Why SPUNK will lead the way to a more authentic and fulfilled fatherhood identity. This straight-shooting book offers practical alternatives to sucking up the same old BS from the world we live in -- the media, policies, laws and workplace structures -- that attempts, relentlessly, to control what fathers are (not) capable of. Compassion, candour and radical father-allyship form the foundation of change as we collectively must ask, whats needed now for a better future for fathers and our children? The answer is SPUNK.