“Men never cry”: Teaching Mormon Manhood in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (original) (raw)

We examine the ways Mormon leaders establish "what it means to be a man" for their followers. Based on content analysis of over 40 years of archival material, we analyze how Mormon leaders represent manhood as the ability to signify control over self and others as well as an inability to be controlled. Specifically, we demonstrate how these representations stress controlling the self, emotional and sexual expression, and others while emphasizing the development of self-reliance and independence from others' control. We draw out implications for understanding (1) how religious leaders create ideal notions of manhood, (2) what the religious interpretations of secular constructions of manhood are, and (3) how these relate to the reproduction of gender inequalities. In recent years, scholars have begun to direct more attention to the interrelation of gender and religion as well as to the ways religious males establish and signify masculine selves (see, e.g., Aune 2010; Gerber 2015; Heath 2003). These studies imply that religious males draw upon the symbolic resources provided by religious representations of what it means to be a man in a wide variety of ways to signify "Godly" manhood 1 (McQueeney 2009; Sumerau 2012). Further, these studies reveal that religious males often construct manhood in ways that symbolically and structurally subordinate women (Bush 2010; Sumerau, Padavic, and Schrock 2015) and transgender people (Sumerau, Cragun, and Mathers 2016). While these studies have invigorated sociological understandings of the interrelation between religion and gender, as well as the ways religious men individually and collectively fashion masculine selves, they have, thus far, left unexplored the religious representations males respond to in their daily lives (however, one exception is Sumerau, Barringer, and Cragun 2015). How do religious leaders construct manhood in their official representations of what it means to be a man in God's eyes? What consequences might these constructions have for the reproduction of gender inequalities? Understanding official or dominant constructions of manhood by religious leaders, however, requires shifting our focus away from the ways individual males interpret religious doctrine to the ways religious leaders and their chosen representatives (intentionally or otherwise) embed notions of manhood into the institutional structure of a given faith (see Sumerau, Barringer, and Cragun 2015;