The next speaker in this session at the ZeMKI 20th anniversary conference in Bremen is Scott Ellis, whose focus is on online expressions of heteronormativity. The US has a problem with young male suicide, for instance, and this is often a problem related to evolving masculine identities and sexualities; men are forming new types of bonds with each other, but this also leads to slurs from others.
Can straight men be gatekeepers of inclusive environments, then: this may redefine sex and aggravate (mediatised) heteronormativity, and results in many confused questions and positions about American masculinity. In turn, this is affecting the mental health of young men who are genuinely confused about questions of male identity, sexual identity, consent, and other topics.
Scott has explored this through a process of ‘accidental ethnography’: casual conversations with people while travelling the US, recording them retrospectively, and using them to create a picture of current views and attitudes amongst men in the United States. This can result in unusual situations, but enables insights which may note be able to be obtained in any other way.
But this is no free-for-all: it amplifies the experiences of men in ordinary settings, and thereby rejects the destructive noise calling for a singular, toxic masculinity; men Scott talked to felt that speaking out about their own experiences would take away from attention to the #metoo movement, and would be ignored for going against the grain of conventional media representations of toxic masculinity.
