Amplified masculinity functions as compensative symbolism for subordinate groups

Evidence

An amplified and exaggerated masculinity has become a boastful centrepiece of a culture of compensation that self-consciously salves the misery of the disempowered and subordinated. This masculinity and its relational feminine counterpart become special symbols of the difference that race makes. They are lived and naturalised in the distinct patterns of family life on which the reproduction of their racial identities supposedly lies. These gender identities come to exemplify the immutable cultural differences that apparently arise from absolute ethnic difference. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3002

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Connects to ‘On Sacrifice’ — like ritualized masculinity, exaggerated gender display serves as a stabilizing symbolic currency for subordinated groups.
• XREF: Evokes Gilroy’s ‘There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’ and feminist/intersectionality literature; also the compensatory-masculinity frame familiar from work on Black and working-class men. — connects to: Boy’s penis pride is a compensatory invention protecting against weaning loss — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 682; Knox justified male dominance using microcosm-macrocosm correspondence theory — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 594