Masculine Compensation and Masculine Balance: Notes on the Hawaiian Cockfight

Abstract

This article poses a framework for considering the social processes that drive masculinity's enaction, including men's presentation of gender, masculinity's intersituational flexibility, and the persistence of gender inequality. I draw on ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews conducted in a small cockfighting community in Hawaii. On the surface, my findings are surprisingly counter-Geertzian: within Hawaiian cockfighting's uncontestedly masculine and almost exclusively male context, fighters carry out behaviors they consider “feminine” in other areas of their lives, such as caretaking, nurturing, and overt emotional expression. I draw on existing theoretical frameworks, including hybrid masculinities, to use Hawaiian cockfighting as a vehicle for elaborating our understanding of the sociology of masculinity. I argue that rather than approximating an archetypal masculinity, “ideal” masculine performance incorporates a balance of masculinized and feminized traits. This tempered incarnation of masculinity is enacted in particular localized contexts to deliberately fall “short” of archetypal masculinity. I introduce the term “masculine undercompensation” to describe the mechanism through which subordinate masculinities are incorporated to create a tempered, locally contingent masculine performance. The processes I identify strengthen and contextualize the growing literature documenting how hybridization can contribute to the maintenance of unequal gender relations.

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