You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus!

Case of Iranian men in Diaspora

Going through Connell’s typology of masculinities one more time, I suggest that Iranian men in Diaspora fall under a complex category of masculinities. They are coming from a super-dominant masculinities culture, living and encountering with prevalent Complicit masculinities in West, and at the same time, being immigrant and minority group, entitles them to be among the Subordinate masculinities type! That possibly makes them to take the advantages of all!

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Azadeh

Thank you for the reply.

‘My emphasis’ on physical strength of men vs. women (hypothetically), by no means was for justification of unequal and patriarchal position of men in the society. I was just trying to understand under what conditions these social practices have been emerged in mass cultures and over the centuries? I just hypothesized that an evident difference between the physiology and anatomy  of men and women can be easily misunderstood and misused as a case for developing these exploitive social norms and gender roles. Obviously, power is not limited to physical strength and besides in modern societies physical strength has no values as in traditional societies. Another misunderstanding I believe comes from the word “masculinity” itself, which first hand resonates the word “muscle” and is a representation of physical attributes (vs. femininity which associates more with a series of psychosocial
characteristics). Now that the change of discourse is warranted, could feminists
come up with a better terminology to describe masculinity?  

The idea of ‘womb envy’ is fascinating to me, especially in
traditional cultures where reproduction was of huge value so that the
unconscious envy might have been more associated with male-dominated culture.

Cheers 

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Thank you Azadeh for this informative article!

If masculinity is a socially constructed concept, why is that
within the same social context, there are individual differences in masculinity (I mean in same social class, ethnicity,  religion and sex group context)? Could biologic  or personality factors also contribute with these differences (I can think of 2  brothers from the same family, one with a mucho and dominant attitude; the  other with a sensitive and poetic tendencies)?

I know that you already emphasized on social position of masculinity rather than personality attributes, but physical strength of male (vs. female) as a biologic attribute may also contribute with the development and gradual "construction" of this socially unequal concept.  

BTW, if masculinity supposed to imply domination and hegemony, the categories such as subordinate or marginalized masculinity look like oxymoron.