Making, Unmaking and Remaking Masculinity Through Leisure

Abstract

This introduction reframes the so-called “crisis of masculinity” as a discursive technology that recenters male authority by attaching fear and injury to gender nonconformity, rather than as an evidence-based diagnosis of social decline. Against this gender hysteria, we shift attention to the actual crisis men face—shorter lifespans, mental-health strain, educational under-attainment, and economic dislocation—exacerbated by norms that stigmatize vulnerability and care. We propose leisure as a consequential site where masculinities are staged, disciplined, and reworked: a paradoxical terrain whose freedoms can both mask domination and enable experimentation—“gender play”—toward more pro-social repertoires. The special issue maps this field across terrains (outdoors, cities, feeds), publics (platforms, fandoms), and practices (allyship, care, refusal), showing masculinity as situated and therefore malleable. We conclude with a research and design agenda for leisure studies that: (1) traces infrastructures that privilege particular masculine scripts; (2) examines how policy, algorithms, and place distribute risk, care, and belonging; (3) centers intersectional and decolonial analyses; and (4) cultivates care-forward interventions—programmatic, pedagogical, and technological—that make other masculinities livable. Leisure is where crisis talk sticks, but it is also where liberatory masculinities can be un and remade.