The Masculinity Almost No One Performs

That’s the point Raewyn Connell made in 1987, and it’s the part people miss. Hegemonic masculinity isn’t a personality type. It’s a cultural script — the version of manhood that sits at the top of the hierarchy in a given society, defining what gets rewarded and what gets punished. The strong, stoic, breadwinning, heterosexual ideal. The action hero. The corner-office archetype.

But Connell’s real insight wasn’t describing the script. It was noticing that almost nobody follows it. She identified complicit masculinity — men who don’t match the ideal but don’t challenge it either, because they still collect what she termed the “patriarchal dividend.” The quiet benefits: being taken seriously by default, having anger read as authority, not instability, moving through the world without your competence being questioned before you open your mouth.

This is what makes hegemonic masculinity a system rather than a stereotype. It doesn’t need most men to embody it. It just needs them not to object. The few who do match the ideal provide the aspirational image. Everyone else provides the consent.

Connell borrowed the word ”hegemony” from Gramsci deliberately. Cultural dominance maintained not through force, but through the appearance of common sense — the feeling that this is just how things naturally are. Which means the most powerful thing about hegemonic masculinity isn’t the men who perform it. It’s the millions who assume it’s the only game in town.