Bound but determined : reproduction and subversion in Folsom's, IML's, and Seattle's gay leather communities

Through a more place-based conceptualization, this dissertation critiques the concept of hyper-masculinity within the social sciences generally, and the discipline of geography particularly. Hyper-masculinity is often a taken-for-granted term and while social scientists typically understand gender as socially constructed, the ways that social scientists and geographers use hyper-masculinity is monolithic and ironically, essentializing. Through my examination of hyper-masculinity within the gay, male, leather subculture, I offer a conceptualization of hyper-masculinity that is more closely related to the places where folks (mostly men) perform it. These performances are more than just claiming a gender type--they are also about territorializing space. Through these territorial displays, the men in this community authenticate space as theirs and they also bring other concepts under the purview of hyper-masculinity; concepts like: sexuality, care, race, ands class. Finally, from my own auto-ethnographic experience with the community, I conclude with a frank discussion concerning how hyper-masculinity informs the behavior of the members of this community, and consequently, my own understanding and exhibition of this behavior and the subsequent knowledge I have produced. This emotional take on hyper-masculinity is both one that relates to my experience with the community, but also one that relates to my experience with academic knowledge production--as masculinism is still present within the academy. I conclude that future directions of scholarship for geographies of masculinities would find fruitful avenues if we take up the concept of abuse between men more ardently. There is a lacuna of scholarship concerning this topic and this lack speaks both to the uneasiness of the topic that men generally feel, and the uneasiness of the topic as a viable object of inquiry within the geography.