AIBU to ask you if you think there is a link between Brexit and Masculinity?

[DissertationDilemma]

I am in the planning stages of my MSc dissertation. I want to explore the links (if any) between white Masculinity and Brexit by interviewing white men who voted Brexit about their reasons and motivations for doing so.

I think the link between the two is quite culturally and socially apparent in certain forms of nationalism, the rise of UKIP, the development of a 'they're taking our' jobs type of anxious Masculinity. My supervisor hasn't said I can't do it, but when I raised the idea they weren't exactly encouraging. So AIBU to ask you if you think Masculinity played a role in why some white men voted for Brexit?

I like your idea of interviewing both men and women. It will be easier for you to identify distinct themes, and there is already literature showing demographic gender differences in voting behaviour with regards to Brexit.

www.statista.com/statistics/567922/distribution-of-eu-referendum-votes-by-age-and-gender-uk/

I guess, but the only large difference seems to be in the 18-24 group, and I’m not sure you’d get enough information from a limited number of interviews to fully explore the themes behind the difference. It’d be interesting to understand though. The popular narrative is that all young people want to Remain, so why did 20% more young men than women vote to Leave?

I think this would be a worthless piece of research and your mthodology is poor. If your supervisor is any good they won’t allow you to do it - it has fail written all over it. When I did my masters and PhD the research had to be rogourous - this looks like bank of fag packet idea. Please think again.

I think the link between the two is quite culturally and socially apparent in certain forms of nationalism, the rise of UKIP, the development of a 'they're taking our' jobs type of anxious Masculinity.

But how are you going to demonstrate there is an actual cultural link and not media narrative that packages up the two as though there were a natural and uncomplicated cultural link?

SeniorCitizen

What would be a worthwhile piece of research on roughly this topic? Or how can I make the ideas I've got better.

Elementtree
By asking men who voted for Brexit why they did so

I think the important distinction is age - the media would have us believe that there’s thousands of angry bitter middle aged white van men cursing the EU, but in reality, the major gender difference is amongst the young. Is that an act of rebellion against government by disenfranchised young men? Are those men left or right wing? Extremists? Looking for a new type of masculinity a la Reddit/Peterson?

That’d be interesting, but it’d be speculative unless you get a large sample size.

How would any particular, individual man go about revealing thier own (assumed) fractured masculinity and then relate to you how that informs their politics.

If they could do that they could write your thesis for you and if you are going to infer it from their answers then you will be (rude) just working with broad stereotypes to prove your own point.

You'll have to be very careful with your sampling strategy as well. Realistically for qualitative research you'll be doing less than 30 interviews (although that depends on your methodology).

The fewer individuals you have, the more in-depth you can go in analysis. However, it will be difficult to apply your findings to a broader population. As such, you'll really need to consider what sampling techniques you can use and the viable scope of your project.

In order to simplify your sampling strategy, perhaps you could do a case study. I'm unaware of the actual geographical patterns of Brexit votes but, for example, you could interview working class men from [insert place name here] with the rationale that [chosen place] had the highest ratio of male voters to female voters.

'Is gender a factor in Brexit?' is a huge, wooly and possibly unanswerable question. Why not look at whether Brexit voters draw on narratives of traditional masculinity to explain their stance?

Confused I like your attempt at being open minded.

I had pigeonholed the op which is very wrong of me I know!

Op it's as likely just correlation in my opinion influenced by prominent local industrial sectors. For example international bankers and translators have a different take on the old Common Market / EU to fisherfolk and steelworkers.

You don't have any such data, it is all extrapolation from tiny exit polls. So the whole concept is flawed from the start.

SpecialSubject

I wouldn't be using exit polls. I would be conducting interviews

Everyone already knows that Brexit voters are geriatric racist thickos (sarcasm alert). Do they really need to be identified as stand ins for Guy the Gorilla as well?

Are remainers more likely to be metropolitian, liberal elitist latte drinking academics with a good line in virtue signaling? (more sarcasm alert). Perhaps that would be a good line for your follow up PhD OP?

I hope you understand statistics very well OP if you are going down this line and always remember the old maxim about the mean play of chance...

I would steer clear of this subject. Intuitively the link is tenuous if any exists. Do another subject

whoputhecatout

Wow. Really.

Wow to you too Dissertation.

If OP consults today"s Guardian there's an even more intriguing possibility for her research - the Dunkirk stand alone spirit according to the German Ambassador.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jan/29/german-ambassador-peter-ammon-second-world-war-image-of-britain-has-fed-euroscepticism

Obviously I made it clear I was being sarcastic but I honestly believe we are now starting to tear the guts out of who voted what at Brexit and why.

It's over. Doubt any findings will inform the future except perhaps for politicians looking to see what group to appeal to at the next election.

It sounds rather like your definition of a masculine self-identifier is someone who voted for Brexit. A bit of a self fulfilling conclusion perhaps? A worthwhile bit of research could be to see if a commonly held perception of masculinity is that it is by nature anti expert and anti authority. Do we view brexiteers as more masculine irrespective of whether they are?

I think smell has a good point re- existing literature and what you can achieve within a Masters dissertation. Qualitative analysis is a vast area - and certain 'Rules/Ethics/Codes' and good practice apply - unless it is a Research Paper - using the very time-consuming Interview technique with a small sample might prove problematic. Find a gendered political topic that has a lot of existing literature to critically analyze - and maybe do a bit of original research as a bonus maybe.

University educated men overwhelmingly voted remain - is your thesis that they are less masculine than working class men?

Old men voted for Brexit In Much bigger numbers than young men - but older men have less testerone and are generally less masculine than young ones.

To be honest I think it probably lacks subtlety and originality for an entire MSc. It’s more the sort of thing you’d get from a Sunday paper columnist.

You need something more original, specific and measureable.

DissertationDilemma

If you are not using the data collected to prove a link between ... Then any title linking brexit to masculinity is incorrect.

You can't use a subjective narrative to stereotype an entire group of people.

Yes, why when the Brexit results came out did every media outlet go running to the local working man's club to canvas opinions on areas that returned a high number of brexit votes and not say, the local library, park or business centre? How does that work to nudge our ideas that Brexit is an expression of broken masculinity? How many times since Brexit was the working man's club considered a worthwhile nexus of opinion within the media on any other matter?

I doubt this is a valid thesis to explore. Others have put many questions that suggest it may be down to other factors, such as age, education or indeed income. Given the statistical bias referred to as the silent Tory may also be true at least pre 23rd June 2016 of the silent Brexit supporter, I would treat any opinion poll research with a pinch of salt.

and how pray, can you explain the many non white men and women who voted for Brexit?

I spoke with a friends husband a few days before the vote, or rather he spoke with me LOL , he wanted to know how I was voting. He said everyone at his mosque, which is one of the biggest in the north, was voting to leave the EU. He also informed me that other mosques were discussing voting to leave. one of the reasons for this being even though many of them were originally from Commonwealth countries, they could not help family come here. He had family who were engineers and doctors, men and women, but because of EU rules they could not come freely unlike other Europeans and they found this unfair. They voted for us to be free of the EU and to re-strengthen our Commonwealth connections.

So I (NC) am a Man, by all accounts I am White, and I voted Brexit.

Why did I vote Brexit?

Well, first because of the EU's democratic deficit manifested variously in:
The Council meeting in Private
The inability of the Parliament to propose legislation
The Acquis Communautaire doctrine as implemented by the ECJ
CJEU and the institutions
The teleological approach practised by the CJEU
The failure to implement the Subsidiarity promised in the Maastricht Treaty in any meaningful way
The striking down of the British and Polish Protocol by the CJEU
The failure by successive UK governments to put successive treaties to referenda
The almost unwavering (excluding Labour 1983) favouring of the EU by the three principal UK political parties

Second, the Franco-German axis operated directly or indirectly against this country in terms of
The adoption of the Common Agricultural Policy followed by the failure to make meaningful reforms
The relinquishing by Blair of part of the rebate in return for CAP reforms which mysteriously vanished
The UK status as a net contributor for 42 out of 43 years
The failure to establish a proper Single Market in Services which would have benefited the UK when the Single Market in Goods, primarily benefiting Germany, has been in place for many years
Free Movement of People resulting in significant net inflows into the UK and especially the overcrowded SE
The Common Fisheries Policy

Third, the solution to any problem being 'more Europe'

Fourth, the inexorable move to a model of 'ever closer union' predicated on the transfer of ever more powers to Brussels.

So yes, YABVU, and probably a bit -ist and -ist as well.