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Black Masculinity Essay

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When you attend an all women’s college smack dab in the middle of Atlanta, masculinity is usually a concept you talk about extensively. You write papers, read scholarly articles, watch documentaries, and have deep conversations about the facets of masculinity. However, you never talk to people who actually perform unconventional masculinity. As an intellect, you know that masculinity is a performance, but no one can truly understand the entire idea until you examine the stories of people who perform and experience it. It was my second semester of college, when I started to look at the world and masculinity through a different lens. I was starting to dissect my life as not only a black person, but a black woman in a male centered and dominated society. I started to remember a hashtag that trended when I first entered school, #MasculinitySoFragile. It depicted men, especially black men, doing things that weren’t normally associated with traditional masculinity. I didn’t …show more content…
That is why my *hopeful* investigation will help stop this generalization in it’s tracks. My interest lies in telling the stories of black masculinity as performed through African Americans of all spectrums in Atlanta, Georgia. You don’t have to be a man to experience some type of masculinity. Transmen and transwomen experience a drastically different type of masculinity within themselves and from others. Children, especially young black men, from single mother homes experience a different type of masculinity shaped by their scarce interaction with other men. The stories of men or women who exert different types of masculinity have been ignored. My stories will focus on the workings of their lives and how they navigate the masculinity they perform personally, or the masculinity they are subject to, good or

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