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Masculinity

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Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion
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Masculinity is a culturally and theoretically complicated concept and phenomenon. Culturally it is often assumed as natural, biological, and stable. Being understood as the opposite of femininity, masculinity tends to be noticed only in the case of its absence or extremity (Reeser 2000). Such a relative invisibility and the lack of articulation reveal the nature of masculinity and the role of power and privilege in deciding what should be considered normal and natural. Theoretically, there is a less clear consensus about the meaning of masculinity. Researchers do not necessarily agree on what they actually mean by masculinity. Masculinity, as a hypothetical construct, has been conceptualized in a variety of different ways: as a set of practices, an ideology, a gender role, psychological/personality traits, and/or power and dominance. First, masculinity is defined as a set of practices or performance. This way of understanding is drawn widely by scholars in humanities (Butler 1990)....

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Correspondence to Myounghun Yun .

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Yun, M. (2016). Masculinity. In: Leeming, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27771-9_9099-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27771-9_9099-1

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