Masculinity studies has for a long time been interested in emotions. Two models that predominate in the literature are the ‘unemotional man’ and the ‘angry man’. Considerations of the unemotional man center on the importance of the control of emotion and its centrality to masculinity. In this gendered morphology, men treat emotion as signs of weakness, which renders it difficult to display feelings as the act threatens their sense of masculinity. This behavior may make men emotionally incompetent and can pose substantial problems for individual men, while it also upholds the gender order since stoicism and rationality are culturally idealized. Ironically, this emotional regime has also been said to cause men’s anger and violence. From this perspective, men’s emotional incompetence may make them too emotional since they are unable to deal with difficult emotions.

The contributions to this special issue problematize this binarized discourse and its often essentialist understanding of men and their emotional lives.