A sociological exploration of men’s experiences of hegemonic masculinity and its role in the 2016 #RUReferenceList at Rhodes University

Abstract

The intention of this thesis is to explore how 12 men students at Rhodes University experienced spaces and discourse of hegemonic masculinity on the university campus in their time as students prior to the #RUReferenceList, a movement that took place at Rhodes University as a call to end the scourge of sexual violence on campus. The #RUReferenceList raised certain issues and phenomena around hegemonic masculinist discourse and practices, from historical traditions of the university to the interference of sexist norms and values in relations of casual sex that negates the consent of women and contributes to patriarchal understandings of gender and power. This thesis foregrounds these issues as not necessarily causal to the #RUReferenceList but pivotal factors nonetheless in the culmination of the anti-rape protests on campus in 2016. The research goes on to address the #RUReferenceList itself, and how the movement tackled the hegemonic institutional culture of Rhodes University at the time. The research is qualitative in nature and employs Connell’s theory of masculinities as its primary theoretical framework. Data generated in 2022 was collected through semi-structured interviews that were conducted mainly through social media. The #RUReferenceList was perceived by some as persecution against the men of Rhodes University, and the research was undertaken to heed and examine the voices of a demographic that, while certainly not silenced by the movement, was in an unusual position of having been ideologically defenestrated, however temporarily. This thesis is an attempt to contribute to scholarship that centres this interesting and complex perspective.