Emotions and Redefining Black Masculinity

Abstract

Using an intersectional analysis of Black masculinities, we explored how 2 African American men’s personal emotions regarding violence against women and their perceptions of masculinity became politicized by experiences that led to their participation in the founding of 2 separate profeminist men’s organizations. Through the public use of their personal narratives, the men used organizational activities to foster new raced-gendered feeling rules regarding emotion that challenge hegemonic masculinity generally and Black hegemonic masculinities, in particular. Narrative themes indicating reconceptualization of Black masculinity and feeling rules for men included (a) ‘‘becoming aware’’ of an injustice to a woman that generated negative emotions, and (b) ‘‘becoming active’’ in the profeminist men’s movement that allowed the transformation of negative emotions into positive ones. We make recommendations for future research that pays particular attention to how depictions of Black masculinity stigmatize Black men’s emotionality in ways that exacerbate differences in emotion norms between men and women and among different racially constructed groups of men.