Open AccessResistance or Complicity? Chinese Canadian Men Negotiating Whiteness and Masculinity in the Canadian Prairies
Author(s) -
Qingyan Sun
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
cultural and pedagogical inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1916-3460
DOI - 10.18733/cpi29530
Subject(s) - masculinity , complicity , negotiation , gender studies , subordination (linguistics) , hegemonic masculinity , resistance (ecology) , sociology , hegemony , political science , politics , ecology , social science , linguistics , philosophy , law , biology
In this essay, I critically analyze the practice of masculinity negotiation based on data collected through a qualitative study of hegemonic masculinity. Reflecting some dynamics of the historical subordination of Chinese masculinity in Canada, the Chinese Albertan males who participated in the research framed a somatic white masculinity, via which they discursively displaced themselves from the domain of the masculine. Some of them employed sport-participation to negotiate their masculine statuses. Underscoring whiteness as a material aspect of masculinity that cannot be performatively constructed by Chinese men, I argue that masculinity negotiation does not constitute an equitable means of resistance, as the very practice entrenches an archetypal masculine subject with whiteness at its centre. Through this discussion, I wish to incite conceptualizations of resistance in more critical terms.