Men's friendships as social justice: negotiating masculinities and certainty

Abstract

Empirical studies have demonstrated that leisure activities and friendships impact men’s identity formation, as well as mental and physical health. While women’s leisure and interpersonal relationships have been examined as negotiation sites for gendered expectations, there have been few recent empirical studies exploring how men’s friendships may play a role in negotiating them. A symbolic interaction conceptual framework was partnered with constructivist grounded theory to interrogate ways that personal and social understandings of masculinity acted as regulatory practices mediating informants’ leisure activities and friendship practices. What emerged from this process of inquiry was an understanding that lifelong sex and gender-based segregation in leisure activities moderated the formation and maintenance of men's friendships. Leisure activities were spaces where shared knowledge was created that increased the informants’ perceived levels of certainty in interactions that allowed them to negotiate masculinity expectations through a wider range of inclusive behaviors. Inclusive masculinity and relational uncertainty emerged as useful frames for exploring men’s friendships as sites of social justice where uncertainties resulting from hegemonic understandings of masculinity were better challenged.