Why Men Use Women As The Butt of the Joke | Homosocial Bonding with Dr Kate Balestrieri

Описание: Why do men use misogyny as a way to bond with other men?

When we look at male bonding, we may often see patterns of women being used as the “butt of a joke”, whether it is done in a workplace among colleagues or at a sports game among friends.

This can be described as “homosocial bonding” – a theory coined by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick that describes and defines social interactions and bonds between persons of the same sex.

Homosocial bonding can occur for both men and women, but when we look at male homosocial desire in particular, we can often find a through line of misogyny as a tool of social bonding between men.

It’s important to note that the idea of homosocial bonding isn’t inherently rooted in sexual desire between the same sex.

Rather, it looks at the tools that people may use to feel “included” within their social group – in this instance, men wanting to feel accepted by other men.

We see this in the idea of a “boys club”, “locker room talk”, and many other areas of live that act as ways for men to uphold rigid (and precarious) ideas of masculinity.

In this video, Dr. Kate Balestrieri unpacks the ways that both vertical (hierarchical) and horizontal (peer-related) homosocial bonding between men often comes at the detriment of women, and strategies that can be done to unpack and dismantle this.

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