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 Men, Masculinity &
Contemporary Dating
Chris Haywood
Men, Masculinity and Contemporary Dating
 Chris Haywood

Men, Masculinity and

Contemporary
Dating
Chris Haywood
Media, Culture and Heritage
Newcastle University
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK

ISBN 978-1-137-50682-5    ISBN 978-1-137-50683-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50683-2

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To Sandra Haywood, Jade Haywood, Elycia Haywood and Victoria
Haywood
 Acknowledgements

I have been so lucky to have a number of friends and colleagues who have
helped think through many of the areas when putting this book together.
This includes, Mairtin Mac an Ghaill, Thomas Johansson, Liviu Popoviciu,
Jeepers Andersson, Andreas Ottemo, Marcus Herz, Ylva Odenbring,
Anne Dorte; Niels Ulrik Sørensen, Michael Keheler, Ali Javaid, Jhitsayarat
Siripai, Chao Yang, Andrea Waling, Kelly Murphey, Lucas Gotzen,
Margareta Bohlin, Peter Hakansson, Per Norden, Jeniie Sivenberg, Nils
Hammaren, Annette Helman, Ardis Kristen and Xiaodong Lin. A very
special thank you to Jonathan Allan, Frank Karioris and Andrea Waling
for their intellectual warmth, kindness and hangover cures.
A number of conferences over the last years have proved invaluable to
the development of the book: the NYRIS conference with fantastic input
from my Nordic friends, the Men and Power conference in South Africa,
the Men Doing Sex conference at Newcastle University, and also my stay
with Todd Reeser and the staff and students of Pittsburgh University. A
special shout out to the American Men’s Studies Association conferences
over the past few years—one of the few places that is safe to share ideas
with critical friends and is not a forum for academic entrepreneurs.
Colleagues at Newcastle including Gareth Longstaff, Steve Walls,
David Baines, Florian Zollman, Karen Ross, Clifton Evers, Darren
Kelsey, Gerard Corsane, Peter Hopkins, Pauline Dixon, Steve Humble,

vii
viii Acknowledgements

Bill Roberts, Kerry Dodds, Sarah Greenhalgh, Jane Hughes and Christine
Foster deserve special praise.
This book would not have been at all possible without those who
helped carry out the interviews. Jessica Pass, Josephine Ayre, Megan Law
and Zoe Bright, your time, help and discussions have been invaluable.
Thank you to my family, who at different times have helped and sup-
ported me in different ways: John Haywood, Paul Denny, Lelah
McDermott, Tony McDermott, Poppy Haywood and David Hillaby. A
special shout out to James Matheson.
Finally, I have been privileged to teach the Sex, Sexuality and Desire
module at Newcastle University for a number of years, and I sincerely
thank all of the students over those years who taught me things that I
never knew was possible. Doing ‘Sex’ with you was such good fun and I
look forward to doing more of it in future years!
 Contents

1 First Encounters   1

2 (Post) Dating Masculinities: From Courtship to a Post-­

dating World  25

3 Speed Dating: The Making of ‘Three-­Minute Masculinities’  55

4 Holiday Romances: Liquid Lust and the ‘Package Holiday’  93

5 Mobile Romance: Tinder and the Navigation

of Masculinity 131

6 Online Sex Seeking: Beyond Digital Encounters 167

7 ‘Dogging Men’: Car Parks, Masculinity and Anonymous

Sex 199

ix
x Contents

8 Conclusion 231

Index 243
 1
First Encounters

Introduction
Dating is changing. Alongside the more established ways of meeting
people, such as introductions by family and friends, meetings in bars
and clubs and encounters in everyday work and social life, new forms
of dating are emerging. Speed dating, mobile romance, online dating,
holiday romances and hooking-up provide ways of meeting people
that move away from the taken-for-granted scripts and rituals, to a
moment of uncertainty where the ‘rules of the dating game’ have
become less clear and less predictable. We are developing a new emo-
tional literacy to make sense of the changes in dating, such as the
emergence of ‘thirtysomethings’, ‘placeholder relationships’, ‘stream-
ing infidelity’ and ‘Commitmentphobes’ (of which there are numerous
kinds). Some have suggested that we are now in an era of Post-dating
where the benchmarks of traditional dating cultures are irrelevant
(Massa 2012, p. 7). Within the shifting landscape of dating, there is no
clear guide to understand how such changes should be navigated. And
this book is not going to give you one. However, this book will provide
a reflection on how heterosexual men are navigating them. Although
research is beginning to identify the transformational potential of

© The Author(s) 2018 1

C. Haywood, Men, Masculinity and Contemporary Dating,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50683-2_1
2 C. Haywood

these emerging dating practices for women, the lesbian and gay com-
munities and young people (e.g. see Harcourt 2004; Gomez 2010;
Bauermeister et al. 2012), there is relatively less work examining how
straight men are negotiating such changes. Instead, we remain highly
dependent upon media narratives that offer contradictory accounts of
men’s responses to contemporary dating practices. On the one hand,
such narratives are claiming that new forms of dating are providing
men with the opportunity to be more caring and sensitive (Hilton
2011; Burke 2012). On the other hand, such accounts are suggesting
that there is a ‘menaissance’—a cultural moment where ‘post-sensitive’
men are responding to the change by drawing upon traditional mascu-
line tropes such as emotional stoicism and toughness (Haddow 2010;
Fitzgerald 2012). Thus, traditional ways of being a man, often charac-
terized by ‘anti-femininity, homophobia, emotional restrictiveness,
competitiveness, toughness, and aggressiveness’ (Coughlin and Wade
2012, p. 326), are being re-made in this new dating context.
Existing work on men and masculinity has indicated that social, cul-
tural and economic changes do not necessarily produce socially progres-
sive masculinities (Jamieson 1998). More specifically, Eaton and Rose
(2011, p. 862) suggest that despite the changes in dating, traditional pat-
terns of gendered behaviour persist: ‘Men were expected to initiate, plan,
and pay for dates and to initiate sexual contact, whereas women were
supposed to be alluring, facilitate the conversation, and limit sexual activ-
ity’ (see also Bartoli and Clark 2006). Furthermore, it is argued that this
symmetrical model of proactive and reactive dating behaviours continues
to be used by men in dating contexts. It is suggested that such traditional
gendered scripts of dating enable men to live up to and negotiate cultural
expectations. More specifically, as men’s dating success is often culturally
coded as being a ‘real man’, when men meet women they often aspire to
meet such expectations. However, according to Seal and Ehrhardt (2003),
the result of this stereotypical positioning of men and women is that it
continues to enable men to control women, and as Bouffard and Bouffard
(2011, p. 4) suggest: ‘These gendered expectations include male control
and female dependence, obedience, and sexual access.’ In effect, it is sug-
gested that contemporary dating mirrors a broader organization of social
relations that depends upon a dyadic ‘complementary’ and unequal gen-
der positioning in dating encounters (Tolman et al. 2003).
 First Encounters 3

Despite recent developments in Critical Masculinity Studies, Feminism

and Queer Theory, men continue to remain an invisible category in pop-
ular discourses. Discussions about gender are often conflated with discus-
sions about women; as a result, gender is usually understood as something
to do with women. As Johnson (1997, p. 12) pointed out, ‘it is precisely
men’s status as “ungendered representatives of humanity” that is the key
to patriarchy’. When gender and men are paired together, it is usually to
explain an issue, problem or ‘crisis’ of masculinity: where men are not
being able to meet their natural ubiquitous state or are having that state
distorted, as in the popular under-theorized phrase ‘Toxic Masculinity’.
In some cases, men don’t have genders; they simply have biologies, and
changes in the ways that we initiate relationships can be seen as impact-
ing on or impeding such men’s ‘true selves’. A recent study on men, mas-
culinity and attraction suggested that masculinity can be measured by
examining different parts of the body. For example, cheekbones are
known to be receptors of testosterone; the more prominent a man’s
cheekbones, the more testosterone has been absorbed. Thus different face
height/width ratios are indicative of facial dominance. For example,
Valentine et al. (2014, p. 807) suggest that:

Men’s facial dominance may be an honest signal not only of good health,
but also of formidability as an intrasexual competitor, which could be help-
ful in gaining access to mates (intrasexual selection) and attracting women.
(intersexual selection; Puts et al. 2012)

Such approaches carry an evolutionary residue, where men’s dating

behaviour is reducible to how men are deemed to have behaved prehis-
torically. For example, Puts (2010, p. 158) argues that human mating is
not determined by sexual selection, but rather is a consequence of men
excluding other men:

But has mate choice been the primary mechanism of human sexual selec-
tion, as the literature might suggest? I argue here that it has not. Rather,
contest competition—in which force or threats of force are used to exclude
same-sex rivals from mating opportunities—has been the main form of
mating competition in men, whereas male mate choice has predominated
as a mechanism of sexual selection operating on women.
4 C. Haywood

Thus much of the literature on men and dating is concerned with men
adapting to change, resulting in a ‘crisis of masculinity’ as men struggle to
maintain what is perceived to be the correct (read ‘natural’) way of being
a man.
However, a different approach can be seen in the world of relationship
guidance. Men have to learn how to be a better lover, a better husband or
father, with the implicit assumption that men being men is not enough.
An example of this is the problem of sexual ‘eagerness’. Castleman (2017)
captures this with his discussion in Attention Men: Three Keys to Becoming
a Better Lover:

According to the conventional wisdom, women are very emotionally com-

plicated, and therefore, sex with them is too. But with all due respect to
women’s complexities, men can become much better lovers by implement-
ing just three simple guidelines: …

These guidelines include spending ‘at least’ 30 minutes before moving

between a woman’s legs, doing the opposite of what happens in porn, and
to ‘every time provide her with gentle, extended oral sex (cunnilingus)’.
Castleman goes on to argue that men ‘rush into intercourse before women
feel ready for genital play’. All men, it appears, are too eager: either wor-
rying that women will change their minds or that they will lose their
erections. There are two aspects of this approach that stand out. First, and
by default, men are not compatible with women and thus have to re-learn
their approach to women in order to ensure relationship success in the
contemporary world. Women’s independence from the pressure of repro-
duction, alongside a cultural emphasis on gender equality, is argued to be
leaving men behind. As such, men, it is suggested, have to adapt. Second,
men and women now have to reflexively navigate how to be particular
kinds of men and women, who correspond with predominant cultural
ideals of femininity and masculinity. Thus, men have to reflect on their
identities and their practices in order to approximate a culturally valued
kind of man. Although these two aspects are anchored in popular
­psychology, they do help capture a shift in the way that men are negotiat-
ing their masculinities where the cultural scripts of dating are changing.
This is especially the case since masculinity has traditionally been achieved
 First Encounters 5

through what men did with their bodies, such as their occupations.
However, more recently, men have been increasingly reflexive about what
they do on their bodies (Mac an Ghaill and Haywood 2011). It is argued
here that masculine status is increasingly judged by men’s reflexive quali-
ties. More specifically, as reflexivity becomes central to the making of
men’s identities, the quality of men’s reflexiveness becomes an increas-
ingly salient element in the performance of masculinity. Rather than this
being a consequence of an individual psychology, it is suggested in this
book that the increasing need for men to demonstrate a ‘quality reflexiv-
ity’ is a consequence of broader changes in the social, cultural and eco-
nomic configuration of men’s and women’s lives.
One of the few empirically grounded studies that examine older men’s
experiences of intimacy in Late Modernity is Duncan and Dowsett’s
(2010) set of interviews with heterosexual and gay men. They suggest
that men were demonstrating ‘greater levels of reflexivity on the part of
individuals with regard to questions of intimacy and sex’ (ibid., p. 58)
though they do not claim that traditional forms of masculinity have dis-
appeared. Instead, they argue that traditional masculinities are being
negotiated, as men attempt to develop meaningful intimate relationships
with their partners. However, it is also argued that the material, cultural
and symbolic structures that have been the basis for men to assert author-
ity, legitimacy, control and dominance in relationships have broken
down. More specifically, in Late Modern society, traditional manufactur-
ing labour or patriarchal family formations appear to be no longer sus-
tainable. Thus, men no longer draw upon traditional masculinities when
searching, initiating and going on dates. Furthermore, Siibak’s (2010)
research on men’s profiles on dating sites indicates that young men are
presenting a range of ways of being a man. Further, recent work on inclu-
sive masculinity has suggested that men are no longer dependant on
homophobia to demonstrate their masculinities (Anderson 2014). Whilst
recent work by Doull et al. (2013) suggests that young men are now
changing identities when they date, there is little information on what is
happening in relation to new dating contexts. Cocks’s (2009) discussion
of the history of dating in newspapers has suggested that one of the main
differences between personal columns in the past, and more recent
changes in dating, has been the shift from elaborate coding of identity to
6 C. Haywood

self-revelation. Cocks argues that changes such as the internet impel us to

reveal ourselves (or particular edited aspects of us) more explicitly. It is
suggested that the rise of the internet has simply reinforced the existing
social transformations that relied on the dispersal of social communities
and has intensified individually centred interactions. Rather than the
internet enabling its users to move away from themselves, the trend
according to Cocks has been to valorize the self, to make it more explicit
and accessible.

What Is Dating?
This book makes two distinctions about dating. First, dating is often used
as a shorthand for a range of ways to initiate relationships. From ‘hook-­
ups’ to long-term relationships, dating is often used flexibly to capture a
range of interpersonal encounters. This suggests a more flexible set of
practices associated with dating. More recently, Chorney and Morris
(2008) draw upon Pirog-Good and Stet’s (1989) definition of dating as ‘a
dyadic interaction that focuses on participation in mutually rewarding
activities that may increase the likelihood of future interaction, emotional
commitment and/or sexual intimacy’ (p. 226). As we will see later in the
context of Online Sex Seeking, although dating is predominantly under-
stood as being between two people, dating practices can often involve
more than two people. Poitrois and Lavoie (1995, p. 300) capture such
range, suggesting that ‘dating relationships cover the spectrum of experi-
ences ranging from one-night stands and short-term encounters to rela-
tionships that are long-lasting and stable over time, excluding cohabitation’.
Alongside this, researchers have noted the range of individual definitions
of dating that people employ (e.g. see Watson 2001; Howard et al. 2015).
It is important, however, to see dating as part of a broader way of
thinking about relationship initiation. Therefore, this book suggests that
we also need a second approach to dating that positions it as part of an
episteme.

By episteme we mean … the total set of relations that unite, at a given

period, the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures,
 First Encounters 7

sciences, and possibly formalised systems … the episteme is not a form of

knowledge or type of rationality which, crossing the boundaries of the
most varied sciences, manifests the sovereign unity of a subject, a spirit, or
a period; it is the totality of relations which can be discovered, for a given
period, between the sciences when one analyses them at the level of discur-
sive regularities. (Foucault 1969/2002, p. 211)

The episteme is the temporally located ordering of things where under-

standings comply with particular knowledges. Beth Bailey (1989) talks
about dating as a specific historically located set of relationships practices.
This book does the same, suggesting a range of historically located prac-
tices, where dating can be understood alongside instrumentalism, court-
ship and calling. Building upon this, the book argues that at present we
are part of an episteme that has witnessed the fragmentation of dating or
‘Post-dating’. This historical reading of the constitution of thinking pos-
its that the rules of knowing are historically situated and thus impact
upon the possibilities of social and cultural thinking and practices. Thus,
relationship initiation is constituted by specific regulations that are
informed by epistemes. In this way, the episteme provides the template
that informs the possibilities of relationship initiation. As a result, the
episteme designates and deploys the possible semiologies and possible
semantic relationships between men, women and relationship initiation.
At the same time, the dominant regularities of thinking are subject to
epistemic transformations, as Foucault has suggested in The Order of
Things. However, these transformations do not take shape in a logical
progression following what Habermas (2003) names as an ‘inner logic’.
Rather, epistemic change is non-linear, accidental and fortuitous. This is
especially the case as epistemes work across different geospatial locations.
At the same time, the focus in this chapter is not to explain epistemic
change, but rather to identify how we might begin to make sense of the
contemporary way of dating.
With a wide range of social, cultural, economic and technological
changes, the process of meeting and having relationships is becoming
increasingly diversified, and we are still in the process of documenting the
impact on gender relations. It is evident that we are entering a socio-­
cultural moment where the rules and rituals surrounding traditional
8 C. Haywood

stereotypes that project ideal male and female behaviours are becoming
much looser and less defined by tradition. As the parameters of what
dating looks like become increasingly blurred, we begin to reconfigure
what we mean by ‘dating’ and the function of dating. We are witnessing
the unravelling of themes of commitment and exclusivity, and meanings
of being in a relationship are undergoing constant revision. This book
responds to this lack of knowledge and provides empirically driven
insights into how men are navigating a Post-dating world. It is a collec-
tion of snapshots designed to unpack how men are responding to such
changes.

Men, Masculinity and Heterosexuality

This book specifically focuses on those men who publicly identify as het-
erosexual and, in doing so, responds to Monaghan and Robertson’s
(2012, p. 147) call for more research on heterosexual men ‘on issues rang-
ing from transformations of intimacy, gendered identity constructions,
the social aspects of the body, the emotions, rationalisation and the
impact of abstract knowledge systems in an age of new (postfeminist)
media’. This is important because, as Richardson (1996) identified in
earlier work, heterosexuality is a naturalized category; meaning that it is
a silent category. The naturalization of heterosexuality means that it
requires no justification or explanation and that masculinity becomes
part of its (in)visibility. One way of explaining this is to position sexual
identities as ‘live’ and ‘dead’. Live sexual identities ‘situate themselves in
the materiality of both histories and bodies, and hence are open not just
to the contingencies of past and present … but also to the radical possi-
bility of the future’ (Storr 2001, p. 115). The public nature of the live sex
identities is counterposed by the dead sexual identities that occupy the
private zone. As Berlant (1997, pp. 59–60) suggests, ‘in the fantasy world
of national culture, citizens aspire to dead identities—constitutional per-
sonhood in its public-sphere abstraction and suprahistoricity, reproduc-
tive heterosexuality in the zone of privacy. Identities not live, or in play,
but dead, frozen, fixed and at rest’. For example, in sex education, gov-
ernment policy has attempted to erase the sexuality of the family by
 First Encounters 9

removing its sexual semantics and replacing it with an emphasis on rela-

tionships and love, interspersed with a (warm) eroticism of (rational)
intimacy. This means that the family becomes repositioned as private
married lifestyle. In contrast, (cold) sexual practice and sexualities are
contested, negotiable and plastic. They carry social threat and risk and in
turn reinstate the non-risk, safe, and thus non-sexual province of the
family. By refocusing on heterosexual men, the aim is to expose them to
critical scrutiny, make them visible and understand the dynamics of men’s
subjectivities in a Post-dating world.
Masculinity scholars have outlined how heterosexuality is an impor-
tant resource that men use to consolidate and reinforce their masculine
status in relation to other men and women. One of the most pervasive
approaches to understanding men and sex has been Raewyn Connell’s
(1987, 1995) framework of hegemonic masculinity. For Connell, hege-
monic masculinities become cohered and reinforced through their rela-
tionship to other masculinities; ‘the dependence of hegemonic forms of
masculinity on the derogated other for self-definition’ (Gough 2002,
p. 234). Michael Kimmel’s work on men and masculinity suggests that
masculine subjectivities are constituted through the rejection of that
which is culturally deemed as feminine. As a result, masculine identities
are structured through a heterosexuality that creates its stability through
the rejection of that which is feminine (read as homosexual), so ‘that the
reigning definition of masculinity is a defensive effort to prevent being
emasculated’ (2007, p. 80). In the context of dating, the navigation of
new forms of dating will then be in relation to those practices that are
ascribed as ‘feminine’. In contrast, Anderson (2009) has usefully argued
that we can now begin to understand masculinities that are not dependant
on homophobia to claim masculine status. Instead, current heterosexual
masculinities are not dependent upon homosexuality as a resource through
which to make men’s identities. Thus, because of decreasing levels of
homohysteria, men feel much more comfortable with practices that are
seen as feminine. Yet, Ward (2015) suggests that this is not the adoption
of newer forms of masculinity; rather it is the re-articulation of a tradi-
tional masculinity. For example, Ward suggests that hetero-­masculinity
can also reinforce itself through men’s participation in homosexual acts,
and explores the idea of straight men having same-sex relations. She
10 C. Haywood

introduces a concept of the ‘heteroflexible’ in the way that homosexual

practices are accommodated and reinforced through heterosexual identi-
ties. Her main claim is that ‘homosexual encounters are not in fact discor-
dant with heterosexual masculinity when they are approached through the
most recognizable circuits of hetero-masculinity’ (ibid., p. 189). However,
central to this work is the underlying assumption of the symbiotic nature
of masculinity with sexuality. In other words, men’s sexual experiences and
behaviours can only be understood through the intelligibility provided by
the concept of heterosexual masculinity (see also Haywood et al. 2017).
In both the accounts, it appears that men’s subjectivities are only
understood through a template of masculinity; men’s diverse identifica-
tions have to be through a concept of masculinity. What appears to be a
loosening of the masculinity is really a reconfiguration of how that mas-
culinity is being made. Frank’s discussion of swinging couples highlights
how men make their masculinities through conventional heterosexual
identifications and practices. However, Frank also noticed that the con-
text of swinging loosens the implicit imbrication of masculinity and
heterosexuality:

Even short of double penetration, in swinging encounters men are still

naked in the presence of other men, watching those men engaging in sex-
ual activity with women, perhaps watching them ejaculate or comment on
penis sizes or sexual skills … spectatorship and sexual fantasy is complex in
terms of identifications (e.g. Clover 1993; Williams 1989) and this is no
less true in terms of live spectator/participant situations. (Frank 2008,
p. 446)

The suggestion here is that the parameters of heterosexual masculinity

have become widened to include practices that would trouble a conven-
tional heterosexuality. Also relevant is Cover’s (2015) research on the
­website Chaturbate, which involves straight-identified men garnering
gay men’s attention and involves such men engaging in acts that are asso-
ciated with gay men, such as self-penetration. Cover suggests that
although we are unable to disconnect heterosexuality from practices,
there is scope for heterosexual masculinity to be unhinged from the nor-
mative discourses that surround the identification. The practice of anal
self-­penetration, for example, removes the association of self-penetration
 First Encounters 11

as a gay identity activity and re-situates it within a variation of hetero-

sexual masculinity. Cover argues that rather than reinforce hetero-mascu-
linities and the notions of dominance and power through patriarchy, the
site deconstructs ‘innate heterosexualities and homosexualities as distinct
sexual orientations, allowing identity to remain but in non-monolithic,
heterodoxical forms’ (2015, pp. 14–15). Thus, rather than reinforce
hetero-­masculinities, Cover argues that new forms of sexual practice
enable hetero–homo binaries to be ‘challengeable’. It is not, Cover
argues, the emergence of newer forms of heterosexual masculinity, but
rather the reduction of a normativity of masculinity. Therefore, online
acts of self-­penetration have the potential to produce different struc-
tures of masculinity that are not dependent on strict hetero–homo
binaries.
The implication of this work is that masculinity and its relationship to
heterosexuality are undergoing renewal, and that as masculinity becomes
reconfigured, then how heterosexuality becomes a resource is also trans-
formed. At the same time, this book recognizes that not all male experi-
ences, feelings and affects may be cohered through masculinity. Whilst
we need to review models of masculinity and modify them accordingly,
the approach in this book takes up a more queer-theory approach to
masculinity. What this means is that masculinity is a useful model to
understand men’s meanings, practices and behaviours. However, it is
important to recognize that the model of masculinity may not be able to
cohere and contain the diversity of men’s subjectivities. This gender bina-
rism presupposes the nature of male and female through an appeal to
‘biology as ideology’. As Floyd (2011, p. 45) remarks:

Is gender a ‘destination’? Is this a useful way of putting it? Is gender a loca-

tion? A place? A space? Is the line separating masculinity from femininity a
border one can cross like a wall or a fence? What about the region between
these two territories, which transgender and intersex studies have begun to
map for us? The metaphors brought to bear in the effort to identify differ-
ently gendered bodies, in the struggle to find language that can push the
limits of available vocabularies, can themselves be revealing.

One of the ways in which we might begin to understand men’s subjec-

tivities is to think about them in post-masculinity terms (Mac an Ghaill
12 C. Haywood

and Haywood 2013). The post-masculinity position aligns itself with

queer or trans theory by thinking about models of gender that are not
dependent upon models of masculinity and femininity. For example,
Butler (2004) explains how gender can be understood as a regulatory con-
cept that works to create links between ascribed masculine and feminine
attributes to those of culturally designated bodies. For Butler, masculinity
and femininity do not necessarily have to be reducible to gender, and gen-
der does not have to be reducible to masculinity or femininity. The implica-
tion of this is that we begin to understand men’s behaviours in a conceptual
space where the notion of gender is separated from masculinity and femi-
ninity. In other words, ‘to keep the term gender apart from both masculin-
ity and femininity is to safeguard a theoretical perspective by which one
might offer an account of how the binary of masculine and feminine comes
to exhaust the semantic field of gender’ (ibid., p. 42). According to Butler,
we need to think through how gender is proliferated and how gender iden-
tities might operate beyond the binaries embedded in culturally ascribed
notions of feminine and masculine. In short, it is important to consider the
simplistic nature of considering all male subjectivities through masculinity;
rather they can be understood outside of contemporary models of gender.

Men, Masculinity and the Research Process

The research for this book involved interviewing a wide range of different
men; each of the chapters provides a short summary of the participant
demographics. However, there were a number of key themes that emerged
from the research. In many ways the different dating practices tended to
align with different age groups, and the chapters of the book could have
been organized to reflect the dating practices of different ages. It also
became evident that reducing dating practices to specific generations was
perhaps too simplistic, as men across different generations increasingly
drew upon a range of dating practices. In many ways this echoes the way
in which dating has become fragmented, with different generations hav-
ing access to multiple ways of initiating relationships. Therefore, the dif-
ferent kinds of dating practices have become the epistemological entry
point for understanding men and masculinity. Analysis of each dating
 First Encounters 13

practice drew upon particular means of sampling; these are discussed in

each of the chapters. Often men were accessed through online forums; at
other times snowball sampling was used; at other times there was an
opportunistic conversation that became reconfigured as an interview.
Importantly, the book does not seek inductive validity by suggesting that
the participants represent the experiences of the broader male popula-
tion. Instead, as Crouch and McKenzie (2006, p. 493) argue:

Rather than being systematically selected instances of specific categories of

attitudes and responses, here respondents embody and represent meaning-
ful experience-structure links. Put differently, our respondents are ‘cases’,
or instances of states, rather than (just) individuals who are bearers of cer-
tain designated properties (or ‘variables’).

The men therefore in this research provided insights into the different
kinds of dating practices. It should be added that the sample was over-
whelmingly White English with ages ranging from 18 to 54. All of the
men were provided with information about the project, informed con-
sent being a prerequisite of ethical clearance by Newcastle University.
Participants were given the opportunity to determine how and where
they wanted to be interviewed but also if they were happy to sign consent
forms. Unsurprisingly, given the nature of the subject area, many of the
participants were reluctant to sign forms. In order to avoid embarrass-
ment for the participants, a verbal informed consent protocol was used
similar to those used in telephone interviews. On a number of occasions
such as interviews in online chat platforms, written consent was provided
as part of the online correspondence. In other scenarios, such as face-to-­
face interviews, consent was recorded via a Dictaphone. In some cases
where participants felt uneasy with being recorded, notes were taken of
the interviews and subsequently typed up. All of the participants’ names
are pseudonyms, and some details such as locations have been substituted
to further ensure anonymity.
There is something highly contextual about researching men. Like all
research processes, they are embedded in circuits of power. As such, the
interview situation does not stand outside of identity politics; rather it is
imbricated within the research process (Haywood 2008). The very pro-
14 C. Haywood

cess of asking or enquiring about men’s gender in itself can be seen as a

questioning of masculinity. Importantly, as Noble (2006, pp. 32–33)
suggests: ‘It means for a man to speak about his gender in a critical self-­
conscious manner already means that somehow he has failed to live up to
the patriarchal ideal and imperative that he not think and know masculin-
ity but that he be the man, which means to be the universal subject.’
Furthermore, given that masculinities are often premised on competence
and control, an agreement to an interview can be read as a gendered deci-
sion, sometimes indicative of a ‘problem’ masculinity. In previous work,
I experienced difficulty recruiting men because the desire to talk to them
was read as a desire for men (Haywood and Mac an Ghaill 1997), rein-
forcing what Oliffe and Mro’z (2005, p. 257) suggested: ‘Men don’t vol-
unteer—they are recruited.’
Most of the interviews were undertaken by the author; however, at
times these interviews were supplemented by other male and female
researchers. It became evident that when the researchers were female, par-
ticipants appeared to draw upon the protocols of the dating scene and
built them into the interview context (see also Bright et al. 2013). It was
found that with the participants in this book, the dating protocols
enabled men to talk about their thoughts, feelings and practices. In other
words, in most cases, displays of heterosexual masculinity facilitated the
navigation of the interview encounter by the participants. Sometimes,
the interview became a space of transference where men’s interpretations
of dating protocols became a mechanism to manage the interview situa-
tion. In contrast, when the research was undertaken by men, there was a
sense of men trying to make connections with the male interviewer by
objectifying women or drawing upon themes of homophobia. Thurnell-­
Read (2016) has recently discussed the difficulties of researching bachelor
parties and beer drinking, and talks about the difficulty of fitting in.
There is at times the suggestion that there is a need to replicate traditional
masculinities and reinforce traditional gender identities in order to be
accepted. As such, there is the potential for the interview to be a homo-
social space that reinforces traditional inequalities. However, in order to
avoid this, it was important for interviewers to question, to critique and
to challenge assumptions. This was never done in an aggressive manner,
but often would involve expressions of incredulity, disbelief or just stat-
 First Encounters 15

ing ‘I don’t believe you’. Such a position would provide men with a space
to explain, justify or re-question their position.
Gubrium and Holstein (2003) also remind us that the interview is a
relatively modern phenomenon. They argue that although question-and-­
answer scenarios have previously existed (police, family, courts, employ-
ment), the idea of consulting strangers is relatively new. Although they
argue that individuals have become ‘modern tempers’ (ibid., p. 22), it is
important to recognize that it is not self-evident what the roles of inter-
viewer/interviewee mean. This means that the interview is often a space
of learning how to be interviewed (Haywood et al. 2006); something that
had to be continually reflected upon. During the interviews, subtle ten-
sions and convergences between and within identifications took place
between the interviewer and the interviewee. One of the strategies of the
interviews was to explore, question and problematize participants’
responses; as a result, the questioning of men’s assumptions invited much
analytical dissonance. The troubling and destabilizing therefore often
involved (con) fusing of men’s seemingly distinct and incompatible view-
points. In light of the ‘troubling’ nature of the research approach, impor-
tant ethical issues need to be considered, raising questions about whether
it is appropriate or acceptable to be undertaking this potentially uncom-
fortable style of interviewing. In response, all interviews were conducted
with respect and dignity and with a constant recognition that the partici-
pants were valued. It was also recognized that challenging men’s view-
points in research can only go so far; participants control what can or
cannot be known.

Aims
A key element of the book is that it aims to contribute to existing debates
on men and masculinity, gender and sexuality. It does this by using origi-
nal empirical research to explore men’s experiences across a range of con-
temporary dating contexts. Using primarily interviews as a tool to get at
‘what is going on’, this book has a number of aims.
First, the book contributes to existing knowledge about men, mascu-
linity and dating, and in some instances provides new empirical data on
16 C. Haywood

men and their negotiation of contemporary dating practices, including

the interplay between social expectations about what men should be
doing and how men are responding to these expectations. The book pro-
vides information in a number of areas where men and masculinity
remain underexplored, including the history of speed dating, mobile
technologies and dogging. Alongside this, the book provides new and
controversial findings, for instance on debates around the nature of mas-
culinity and tourism. Alongside this, the book is committed to connect-
ing men’s individual experiences of dating with broader social, cultural
and economic contexts. For example, it is suggested that men’s social and
economic status is changing and that the traditional reference points to
make masculinities are becoming increasingly unavailable. In other
words, the material, cultural and symbolic structures through which men
assert authority, legitimacy, control and dominance within traditional
dating contexts located around family and friendship networks are
becoming less self-evident. Each chapter in the book examines this in
more detail to explore how new dating practices are connected to and
inform broader configurations of masculinity, sexuality and intimacy.
Second, the book asks the question of whether changing dating prac-
tices are producing new ways of being a man heuristically. Is masculinity
changing? Are there new masculinities emerging? The book does this by
examining the different ways that men’s identities and identifications are
constituted within different dating contexts. It seeks to discuss how men
constitute their own sense of selves through an assemblage of similarities
and differences. It is the nature of that assemblage—of how masculinities
are configured—that is of key interest. This book will highlight and
explore the meanings that underpin masculinity, especially in relation to
the vocabularies that currently underpin approaches to the study of mas-
culinity. By exploring different approaches to theorizing masculinity, it
holds in critical focus Raewyn Connell’s (1995) influential concept of
hegemonic masculinity. Whilst recognizing the importance of the con-
cept to explain the nature of social relations, it will also reflect upon the
range of criticisms that have been made about the approach (Sielder
2007; Moller 2007; Bartholomaeus 2012, Johansen and Ottemo 2015;
Christensen and Jensen 2014). Through its engagement with contempo-
rary dating practices, the book suggests a synthesis of the main approaches
to men and masculinity.
 First Encounters 17

 ow Does This Book Explore Men, Masculinity

H
and Contemporary Dating?
Building upon the flexible ways in which dating has been interpreted, this
book draws upon a range of practices that involve relationship initiation.
These are certainly not exhaustive, and they certainly aren’t the only prac-
tices that men and women are drawing upon. One noticeable absence, for
example, is online dating. However, given that mobile romance and online
sex seeking cover some of the key themes of online dating, that topic has
not been covered due to the potential for repetition. Therefore, the choice
of areas almost represents a continuum: from those seeking more intimate
and longer-lasting relationships through speed dating, through to the
anonymous encounters that can be found in the dogging scenario.
Given the relatively limited scope of each chapter, it has been frustrat-
ing not to go into greater detail or a more expansive analysis of the differ-
ent dating practices. In many ways it is hoped that the empirical data and
the tentative analysis of the data might enable others to focus and con-
centrate on the different areas in a more sustained manner.
Chapter 2 builds upon the earlier discussion about the range of mean-
ings that surround how we understand dating. It introduces the idea that
‘dating’ is one of a number of epistemes that configure how we make
sense of relationship initiation. The chapter is different from the others in
that it primarily relies on historical accounts to explore how gender and
relationship initiation has taken place historically. The tension embedded
in this stage of dating concerns power and control between men, women,
their families and their communities. On the one hand, relationship ini-
tiation is understood as part of a patriarchal control of women’s bodies,
whilst on the other hand, there is a claim that women had far more con-
trol and independence. From an episteme of Instrumentalism, the chapter
moves onto those of Courtship, Calling and Dating before exploring the
notion of Post-dating. It is suggested that in this episteme of Post-dating,
themes of neoliberalism, authenticity and marketization are shaping
men’s dating practices.
Chapter 3 explores men’s experiences of speed dating. The chapter
begins by examining existing theories of partner choices and critiques
these by exploring how the speed dating context is socially and culturally
18 C. Haywood

constructed. More specifically, the chapter engages with the ways that
men navigate speed dating events by focusing on their anxiety and vul-
nerability. This provides a pretext for the articulation and demonstration
of particular speed dating masculinities. On the one hand, there are men
who take up a predatory heterosexual script. On the other hand, there are
men who use speed dating events as a means to find a long-term partner.
Interestingly, men looking for partners make up the majority of those
who attend speed dating. However, the men in the sample had a number
of strategies that they would draw upon to choose a potential partner; or
in their words, ‘the right kind of woman’. These strategies involved
reviewing and evaluating the appearance and manner of the women they
were meeting, and establishing whether these women were ‘telling the
truth’. Thus, men would use such strategies to evaluate the quality of the
date. The chapter concludes by suggesting that although these men
tended to hold on to traditional gendered attitudes, it was clear that the
speed dating event exacerbated men’s insecurities and anxieties.
Since the 1950s and the emergence of mass tourism, holidaying has
been a leisure activity that has increasingly been associated with dating
and romance. Among the characteristics of mass tourism are its associa-
tion with pleasure, and the view that a holiday is a time when the formal
and informal rules that regulate behaviour at ‘home’ have little purchase
in ‘foreign’ contexts. Chapter 4 explores the nature of young men on
holiday. It begins with a discussion of holidays and masculinities, high-
lighting how most literature in the field tends to posit masculinities as
patriarchal, especially in the field of sex tourism. This chapter suggests
that men, masculinities and holidays are more complex. More specifi-
cally, the liminal experience of the holiday creates a tension between dis-
inhibition and relationship acceleration. This tension creates both
traditional ‘laddish’ behaviours, but also has the potential to produce
more progressive forms of masculinity. It concludes by suggesting that we
need to move away from simplistically equating men, masculinity, and
the holiday as a space for sexual conquest, and instead see the holiday also
as a space for men to experience shame and vulnerability.
Whilst online dating has witnessed a dramatic rise in popularity, the
incredibly fast rise of mobile applications points to a new method of rela-
tionship initiation. Chapter 5 explores the accounts of 15 heterosexual
 First Encounters 19

young men aged 18–24. Using Tinder as a case study, this chapter argues
that the affordances of the app create the possibilities of how mobile
romance is experienced. The chapter begins by documenting these affor-
dances, which include Spatial Blurring, the Democratization of dating,
Multimodal dating and Accelerated Elongated dating. The chapter then
explores the interplay between these affordances and masculinity: first, by
highlighting how patriarchal norms become articulated through the mar-
ketization and gamification of dating; second, by exploring young men’s
management of dating failure through self-sabotage and effortless achieve-
ment, personal branding and Facebook stalking. The chapter concludes
by arguing that Tinder and mobile dating apps more broadly are rela-
tively new practices and that young men and women will continue to
learn how to use them and to develop their impact on gender relations.
Chapter 6 explores the world of online sex seekers. The chapter focuses
on men who use the internet specifically to have sexual encounters. The
semi-structured telephone interviews with 11 publicly identified hetero-
sexual men highlight the difficulty of simplistically describing online
encounters as lacking emotional depth. The chapter begins by discussing
the difficulties of researching online sex seekers and then discusses the
ways in which men understand sex seeking through risk and risk avoid-
ance. It then highlights the issues of emotional investment and the
­intensity of sexual encounters experienced by these men. Finally, one of
the surprising results to emerge from the data collection was the fact that
men who sought sex online tended not to want penetrative vaginal sex. In
other words, this group of men, who should embody classic masculine
penile-centred sexual subjectivity, found satisfaction beyond this widely
attributed characteristic of men. In conclusion, the chapter suggests that
there is scope in future research to identify men’s experiences that stand
outside of monogamous focused relationships.
Chapter 7 provides an insight into the sexual world of ‘dogging’: anon-
ymous sex between men and women usually carried out in car parks.
Drawing upon interviews with 12 men who engage in dogging practices,
this chapter provides insights into the micro-negotiations of the dogging
encounter and men’s masculine subjectivities. The chapter begins by
exploring the reasons for dogging and then details how dogging takes
place. By understanding the sexual etiquette of dogging, we are able to
20 C. Haywood

capture the different kinds of masculinities that may be involved in nego-

tiating the sex. However, as men in dogging encounters reject both gen-
der and sexual identity categories, the chapter explores the notion of
de-subjectification. Furthermore, with men explaining their sexual expe-
riences through bodies and pleasure, the chapter ends by examining how
men position women in control of the sexual encounter.
Chapter 8, which concludes the book, draws together the key interre-
lated themes—how men are experiencing contemporary dating practices
and the impact that these practices are having on their masculinities. It
also picks up some of the other principal themes of the book; those of
neoliberalism, the pursuit of authenticity, and markets and consumption.
The book ends by considering the next steps in the exploration of men
and masculinity in a Post-dating world.

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 2
(Post) Dating Masculinities:
From Courtship to a Post-dating World

Introduction
It is fascinating how the approaches to masculinity, which can have intri-
cate and nuanced conceptual and empirical insights, continue to hold on
to the concept, ‘masculinity’. We see this in its use and application across
different cultural contexts. From Africa to Australasia, from Europe to
East Asia, masculinity almost operates as a colonial concept that has its
intellectual heritage in Western academia, primarily trying to frame bod-
ies and experiences through dyadic genders. A similar process can be seen
in historical studies of men where masculinity is deployed across various
historical eras. Therefore, it is imperative, when exploring the history of
men, masculinity and relationships, that we don’t extrapolate ideas, con-
cepts and theories of the present onto the past. More specifically, it is
important that we avoid applying contemporary notions of masculinity,
such as those configured through homophobia (or lack of ), misogyny
and heterosexuality, onto different historical periods. The norms and val-
ues that have underpinned expectations of boys and men at different
historical moments may have produced not only different manhood
practices but also different notions or ideas of ‘a man’. Thus, this chapter

© The Author(s) 2018 25

C. Haywood, Men, Masculinity and Contemporary Dating,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50683-2_2
26 C. Haywood

aligns itself with Seifert (2001, p. 131), who, in his discussion of gender
and the Salon in seventeenth-century France, argues that ‘masculinity is
neither immutable nor transhistorical’. The claim in this chapter is that
masculinity is not a universal gender trait, but one intricately connected
to social, cultural and economic contexts (Haywood and Mac an Ghaill
2003). Furthermore, as relationship initiation practices change, the nor-
mative expectations that govern and shape men’s attitudes and behav-
iours also change. Relationship initiation is a dynamic process, both
shaping and being shaped by particular forms of gendered identities with
different systems of rituals and etiquette, which will have social, cultural
and economic expectations of men and masculinity embedded within
them. This chapter therefore prises open what we mean by ‘Dating’,
locating it as a particular historical moment with specific gendered and
sexual expectations. As such, it is important to recognize that different
forms of relationship initiation practices have existed globally, and that
these have led to numerous reconfigurations of gender protocol, expecta-
tions and normalization.
In this chapter, it is loosely and (very) broadly suggested that relation-
ship initiation can be characterized by five epistemic moments:
Instrumentalism, Courtship, Calling, Dating and Post-dating. Although
these epistemic moments are aligned to historical periods, they are not
causative and operate through a fluid historicity. Raymond Williams’
approach to historical fluidity involves drawing upon a notion of the
‘residual’ to understand contemporary social and cultural practices.
Williams (1977, p. 122) argues:

The residual, by definition, has been effectively formed in the past, but it is
still active in the cultural process, not only and often not at all as an ele-
ment of the past, but as an effective element of the present. Thus certain
experiences, meanings, and values which cannot be expressed or substan-
tially verified in terms of the dominant culture are nevertheless lived and
practiced on the basis of the residue—cultural as well as social—of some
previous social and cultural institution or formation.

The residual is intricately connected to the dominant culture, but

stands apart from it: ‘It is in the incorporation of the actively residual—
 (Post) Dating Masculinities: From Courtship to a Post-dating… 27

by reinterpretation, dilution, projection, discriminating inclusion and

exclusion—that the work of the selective tradition is especially evident’
(ibid., p. 123). Alongside this, Williams also uses a concept of the emer-
gent, where ‘new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships
and kinds of relationship are continually being created’ (ibid., p. 125).
Williams suggests that it is difficult to differentiate between the domi-
nant values and the emergent values. Such values, Williams argues, can
be alternative or in opposition to the dominant culture. The emergent is
always at risk of being incorporated into the dominant culture, resulting
in uneven practices across society. Thus, dominant values (the reigning
episteme) are characterized by inherited values: those that are more stable
and those newly created.
This chapter does not concentrate on how different periods of thought
changed from one to the next. Instead, the function of the chapter is to
outline how regularities of thinking are part of these broader social and
cultural epistemic moments and highlight how elements may remain
residual and emergent at other historical moments. As the chapter pro-
gresses, it is argued that contemporary structures of thought are marked
by historically located ways of thinking with their own internal rational-
ity, emotional logic and system of representation (Williams 1977). The
roles of men and women are intricately tied up in the discursive regulari-
ties that guide and facilitate the making of new relationships. Therefore,
embedded in the discussion are a number of gendered themes, including
relationships and instrumentality, men’s vulnerability and reputation, the
sexualization of bodies and the development of the marketization of rela-
tionships. Finally, this chapter is different from the other chapters in that
it operates as a point of departure for the empirically led chapters that
follow it. The chapter ends by suggesting that the dating conventions of
the twenty-first century not only have become fractured, but have seen
the emergence of new forms of relationship initiation running alongside
traditional ones. Typically, framed as a moment of Post-dating, some-
where within this fracturing men are making sense of such change. It is
men’s sense making, and how masculinity is being configured as part of
the navigation of such changes, that form the central elements of this
book.
28 C. Haywood

Instrumentality, Relationships and Marriage

Without Love?
In Northern Europe during the late Middle Ages, relationship initiation
was often closely connected to the practice of the families and communi-
ties choosing marriage partners. O’Hara (2002) argues that this was a
highly structured, yet complex process that involved decision making
that was informed by community, parental and individual choices. Key
aspects of partner choice were parents’ economic power and how the
community viewed relationships. Family life, it is argued, was practised
through a traditional patriarchy reflecting an older patriarchal order,
where:

authority over the family is vested in the elder males, or male. He, the
father, makes the decisions which control the family’s work, purchases,
marriages. Under the rule of the father, women have no complex choices to
make, no questions as to their nature or destiny: the rule is simply obedi-
ence. (Ehrenreich and English 1979, p. 9)

At this time, and carrying on into premodern Europe and colonial

America, it is argued that relationship initiation and the resulting mar-
riage was primarily concerned with the economic stability of a tightly
knit insular community. Furthermore, it is suggested that relationships
between men and women, especially marriage, were viewed with some
religious suspicion. As Bulcroft et al. (2000) suggest, family life was val-
ued less because it was believed that the primary commitment that men
and women should make was to submit to God. Therefore, in the late
Middle Ages, celibacy was a much more valued state, being seen as exem-
plifying religious commitment. It is also suggested that relationship ini-
tiation and certainly marriage, for the lower classes, was a later-life
phenomenon, since relationship initiation was embedded within norma-
tive assumptions about household, property and inheritance: people gen-
erally required land to marry. Therefore, people often had to wait until
the death or retirement of their parents for land to be, as Gillis (1985)
points out, a ‘gift or inheritance’. Among the peasant class, it appears that
marriage was much more of a drawn-out formalized process that led to
 (Post) Dating Masculinities: From Courtship to a Post-dating… 29

the emergence of a new household. In urban centres, a similarly lengthy

process was involved, with marriage only being considered for a man on
completion of an apprenticeship and becoming a master of a guild.
It has been argued that marriage at this time, was primarily instrumen-
tal: there was not, it is argued, at this time, a preoccupation with romance
and individual fulfilment. For example, Flandarin (1977) argues that
relationships were initiated with the main aim of producing heirs or
bringing different families together; the love between two young people
was a secondary consideration. Thus, it is argued that material require-
ments and social status were the key drivers in partner choice. It is also
suggested that in the lower classes such an instrumentality often resulted
in men using women as their slaves. At the same time, Flandarin argues
that young people from the lower classes had a greater say in their rela-
tionships than those of a higher class, albeit parental authority was still a
major determinant of marriage choice. The main argument is that
throughout European history, the initiation of relationships witnessed a
change from an instrumental mode of behaviour to an expressive mode
(Shorter 1975). Shorter characterizes this change as one where young
people exchanged one system of values—that of a commitment and
adherence to the norms of previous generations and the community—for
a personal set of values that prioritized personal pleasure and develop-
ment of the self. The theme underpinning this approach is that the emo-
tional engagement and investment that young people had in relationships
was very different from other historical moments. The argument being
that due to the role of surveillance and policing by family, friends, mas-
ters and the community, an expression of ‘passionate love’ was restricted
to a minority of people.
According to Stone (1977, p. 189), ‘It seems likely, therefore, that love
before marriage, however rare it may have been in the sixteenth century
may have been on the increase in the early seventeenth century and
after’. He further suggests that romantic love may have existed prior to
this period but that it was heavily determined by parents and communi-
ties. Stone goes on to argue that after 1780, romantic love increasingly
became a motivation for marriage. The shift in this arrangement, accord-
ing to Stone, is the emergence of affective individualism. Individualism,
30 C. Haywood

he argues, is constituted in terms of first, a growing reflection of the

­individual personality; and second, a growing sense of individual rights
such as autonomy, freedom of expression and choice of action. This sense
of introspection was, according to Stone, driven by Puritanism and the
self-­regulation and control of sin and individual morality. In contrast to
the ‘Puritan ascetic’, and apparently in competition with it, was a differ-
ent personality type, that of the ‘secularly sensual’. Stone provides a
number of examples of how the centrality of the individual became
important in society: from the shift from headstones of families to
memorials of the individual, to new styles of writing such as the ‘inti-
mately self-revelatory diary, the autobiography and the love letter’ (ibid.,
p. 154). It is thus argued that it was only in the eighteenth century that
love and marriage become enjoined. The idea of economic rationalism as
determining unions is echoed by Giddens (1992), who argues that the
fundamental dynamic of premodern sexual practices for lower-class soci-
ety was an economic rationalism. He argues (ibid., p. 26): ‘During the
nineteenth century, the formation of marriage ties, for most groups in
the populations, became based on considerations other than judgements
of economic value.’
In this moment of instrumentalism, manhood operated in a state that
was bereft of feeling, and relationships were simply formed on the basis
of parent and community-led economic decision making. However, this
position is complicated by the work of Macfarlane (1986). Macfarlane
suggests that various European countries treated marriage differently,
with parents having differing degrees of control over partner choice.
Unlike France, where the law in the eighteenth century meant that
daughters could not marry without the consent of the father, women in
English society were able to have a legal marriage without the consent of
their parents. Therefore, in this context, marriage was also a private deci-
sion that did not need parental approval or state authorization. Macfarlane
suggests that romantic love was thus present in Medieval English society.
Furthermore, it was the Marriage Act of 1753, which stipulated that up
until the age of 21 parents could veto a marriage decision by their chil-
dren, that brought English law closer to French law. This was later
repealed in 1823 but reinstated in 1929; whereas marriages before the
age of 16 were void. Outside of this period, although a ward within a
 (Post) Dating Masculinities: From Courtship to a Post-dating… 31

manor could be fined for marrying without the lord’s consent, a marriage
based on individual choice would remain legal and binding.

We thus have a situation where marriages needed no consent or witnesses

in order to be valid. Parents, employer, lord, friends, could all advise, could
put enormous physical, moral and economic pressure on the individuals,
but ultimately the simple words of the pair—if the man was over 14 and
the woman 12—would constitute an unbreakable marriage from the
twelfth to the twentieth century in England (with a lapse between 1754
and 1832). It is difficult to envisage a more subversively individualistic and
contractual foundation for a marriage system. (ibid., pp. 128–129)

The reality around marriage may have been different where the burden
of proof for coercion may have been much less than that of force. Also,
according to Macfarlane there was a moral and economic imperative to
gain parental consent. However, it is argued by Macfarlane that relation-
ships based on individual choice could be traced back to the twelfth
century.
The above section provides a brief reflection on how earlier forms of rela-
tionship initiation have been understood. The implication is that men were
part of an organized social and economic structure where partner choice
was closely tied to family and community. Gender in this sense becomes
closely aligned to existing class-based homological designations. Debate sur-
rounds the question of whether relationships within this episteme were
driven by instrumentalism or were shaped by individual choice and desire.
The next section suggests that the traditional structures that designated how
and why a relationship evolved began to develop more flexibility as a range
of relationship initiation rituals appeared to become more evident.

 ourtship, Public Surveillance

C
and Accountability
It is argued that an episteme of Courtship emerged in relationship
­initiation practices across early modern Europe and the USA, reflecting
a loosening of the structures that had previously bounded relationship
32 C. Haywood

formations. The importance of MacFarlane’s work suggests that younger

people had an active role in partner choice, and this seems to be reflected
in the growing diversification of different courtship rituals. Love was not
something that was developed and experienced later, rather as Gillis
(1985) suggests, men and women did fall in love both heterosexually and
homosexually, but more generally expression of desires were restricted
and articulated through structured rituals. Gillis (ibid., p. 12) argues that:

by our standards the people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were
awkward lovers, but not because they lacked the capacity for love, but
because their personal relationships had always to be accommodated to
other emotional attachments and social obligations to kin, peers, and the
larger community.

In this episteme of Courtship, the number of available partners was

limited by locality. O’Hara’s (2002) work suggested that marriages in the
sixteenth century usually took place between two people who lived rela-
tively short distances from each other. Using records from medieval Act
books, O’Hara was able to document the domiciles of matrimonial liti-
gants recorded between 1475 and 1599. It was found that the majority of
litigants (70 per cent) lived in the same parish. It was also found that over
93 per cent of those who formed a relationship lived within a 15-mile
radius of their partner. Importantly, the pool of potential mates was lim-
ited as most young people were working; this resulted in young people
marrying those close by in their communities. Thus, young people had
knowledge of each other through either sharing work or coming from the
same community and this formed the basis of relationship opportunities
(Bulcroft et al. 2000).
Given the nature of close-knit communities, courtship rituals were
often connected to community events or festivals that were held across
the religious and cultural calendars. The gendered nature of courtship
provided a range of opportunities for men and women to meet up, with
men appearing to take a more active role. For example, Shorter (1975)
discusses relationship initiating practice in relation to courtship ‘evening
bees’ or Veillee, in which the community would gather in someone’s
building, such as a barn. At these gatherings, which mainly involved
 (Post) Dating Masculinities: From Courtship to a Post-dating… 33

women and girls in the community, there would be spinning or sewing.

The Veillee season took place in the autumn and concluded at the end of
January. Shorter argues that in this period, during the evening, groups of
boys would visit these gatherings and look for potential marriageable
women. Once there,

all kinds of ritual procedures existed for these preliminary negotiations.

The girl might drop her distaff to see who would scramble to pick it up.
Finnish girls who wanted to be courted would wear empty knife sheaths,
and boys who wanted to get those going were supposed to stick in their
knives. (ibid., p. 125)

It is suggested that in an era of Courtship, relationship initiation

became a far more public practice and shared experience. Another exam-
ple of the public nature of courtship can be found in practices of collec-
tive matchmaking or ‘donages’ that took place on the first Sunday of
Lent. According to Shorter, this tended to involve young people who
were unbetrothed standing in front of their peers. One of the peers would
be the announcer, and the group nominated a person and shouted to the
announcer who they were to be matched with. The announcer would
then pair the nomination with another young person. This could involve
those who might be romantically interested in each other; or, as Shorter
points out, it might be a deliberate mismatch that would be potentially
humorous but also defaming. In the process, this form of matching was
not binding; it could involve simply taking a drink together, or could be
the foundations for something more serious. Other rituals around May’s
Eve, for example, would involve young men running through their vil-
lage placing tree branches or flowers attached to ribbons on the doors of
the young women that they were interested in. Each kind of tree would
have a significant meaning. In response, if the girl woke on May Day and
found that the meaning was not derogatory or one of hate, then she
might wear the ribbon and the man who had left it might approach her.
If the woman was not interested she would not wear the ribbon.
Whilst these rituals appear innocuous, there is a form of public surveil-
lance taking place and this could be understood as ensuring a public form
of accountability. One of the most striking forms of relationship policing
34 C. Haywood

was the practice of ‘night courting’ or ‘bundling’. Shorter describes this as

where a group of young men would set off, walk around town and then
arrive at the house of a local girl. As the girl opened the door, one of the
young men would be chosen to spend the night with the girl. Once the
boy had left the group, they would move on to another girl’s house where
another boy would be paired off. Thus, the group would lose boys as they
proceeded around the village. Shorter (1975) suggests that once in the
house, the boy, with the parents’ permission, would then share the bed
with the girl. There were, however, a number of protocols that were put
in place, such as no undressing from the waist downwards. In some
instances, a wooden board would be set up between the couple in the
bed. If the couple were betrothed, then sexual contact might take place;
if not then Shorter suggests that there would be no physical intimacy,
although the rubbing of bodies and kissing of necks would be allowed.
Shorter suggests that the main purpose of the visit was to talk and ‘assess’
the viability of the potential partner. The result was that the girls in the
community would spend nights with a whole range of boys. Although
there was some erotic contact, this was highly controlled.
Godbeer (2004) suggests that bundling had a key reputational control
function that was also highly connected to premarital sex. It wasn’t that
premarital sex in itself was seen as inappropriate; it was premarital sex
without the intention to marry or take responsibility for children that
was deemed problematic:

If a courting couple had sex in secret and the young woman became preg-
nant, there would be no witness to sexual relations having taken place. But
if a couple spent the night together in the home of one or the other of their
families, there would be abundant witnesses to verify that intimacy had
occurred, should the young man prove reluctant to take responsibility for
his actions. (Godbeer 2004, p. 10)

According to Hardwick (2015, p. 648), young people’s licit intimacy

was part of their lives, with disagreements centred on ‘rank and marriage
in the event of pregnancy, rather than on youthful intimacy per se’. In
this context, sexual intercourse was illicit if the relationship transgressed
class lines: men having sexual intercourse with women who were of
 (Post) Dating Masculinities: From Courtship to a Post-dating… 35

higher rank was considered to be normatively wrong. This means, accord-

ing to Hardwick, that public courtship and the display of sexual intimacy
in front of friends, family and community was not problematic, with a
range of intimate behaviours remaining unsanctioned. She argues: ‘Licit
desire and expression of that desire was marked as publicly observed,
stable relationships between young people of similar rank spread over
months and with the knowledge of kin and friends’ (ibid., p. 653).
However, ‘intercourse that led to out-of-wedlock pregnancy’ was deemed
illicit (ibid., p. 646).
The discussion of gender across history is not equal. Hardwick (2015)
makes it clear that historians have often relied on archival sources that
have prioritized the experiences of those of higher classes, and have thus
represented gender as a binary of the male provider in the workforce and
the woman as the homemaker. Hardwick argues that this is an oversim-
plification, and that if we use other archival records such as civil litiga-
tion, the gendered society takes on a more complex picture compared to
representations of the world through criminal, elite or ecclesiastical
records. Hardwick does this by considering the documentation not sim-
ply of pregnancy declarations, which women were legally required to
make from the sixteenth century onwards, but of a raft of complaints
made by women about the conduct of young men. The ability of men to
regulate and control their sexuality was deemed a potential problem, and
there is the suggestion that cultural policing was not simply premised on
regulating female sexuality. Rather, the main framework that appeared to
govern men’s and women’s courtship was avoiding unwanted extramarital
pregnancies and protecting women’s reputations. This was not simply
about the regulation of female sexuality, but also involved women mak-
ing claims to courts about the unacceptable behaviour of men.
It is interesting that in an assumed era of strong conservative Christian
morality night courting would take place. However, Bull (2005) moves
beyond a reputational focus towards a more economic explanation. He
explains how that during the proletarianization of rural Norway between
1750 and 1900, night courting was a means of controlling young people
and maintaining the economic integrity of the community. In Norway,
families managed the practice by facilitating young people to be secret,
and disapproval of the practice by parents was never explicit. It appears,
36 C. Haywood

according to Bull, that young people had relative freedom to decide with
whom they could become intimate. However, Bull argues that more
affluent farmers began to challenge the system, introducing parties where
the children of other farmers of similar status could meet each other; thus
effectively creating forms of homology where those of a lower status could
be policed out of encounters. The interesting aspect here is that rather
than romantic love being the dynamic for partnerships, it was, according
to Bull, economic necessity and survival that had much influence until
the nineteenth century. At that point, it is assumed that themes of eco-
nomic necessity and courtship were replaced by decisions based upon
romantic love.
As society began to change from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centu-
ries, courting itself began to change. For example, the choice of partner
from the same parish began to decline, suggesting a shift from a more
tightly knit pool of potential partners to a broader range of partners.
Alongside this, local rituals and structures that held relationships in place
began to be reconfigured. Gillis (1985, p. 13) suggests that in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries, peasant and artisan cultures were being
eroded, and the unlanded class began to emerge: ‘migrant wage workers,
squatters, expropriated peasants and failed trades people’ who were no
longer bound to the structures and rituals of the family or of communi-
ties. Furthermore, they suggest that there was a growing ideal advocated
by an emerging middle class who were no longer tied to the land or the
guild, and operated in other forms of economy and commerce. Alongside
this, the age dynamics of courtship began to change. Shoemaker (2014)
points out that in the seventeenth century men were slightly older than
the women they married, average ages at marriage being 26.6 for women
compared to 27.6 for men. However, across the century the age of
­marriage began to fall, and women were getting married at an increas-
ingly younger age than men. Shoemaker suggests that for the middle
classes the gap was around five years, but in the aristocracy this could
have been ten years. This shift towards an increasing age differential leads
Shoemaker to suggest a changing nature of the gendered norms and the
development of a more conjugal, individualistic private form of marriage
that began to shift relationships from the episteme of Courtship to one of
Calling.
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