Male Identity, Sexuality, Masks and Veils

Ricky Varghese, the inaugural Tanis Doe Post-Doc Fellowship recipient is working on a book about masculinity, and recently hosted a seminar on Masks and Masculinity.   A quick google search of the topic brings up many news articles about, in particular, Men, not wearing masks during the current COVID_19 pandemic.  It certainly piqued my interest, and that of many others.  It was a well attended event, with all FCS schools represented. 

Varghese was the primary speaker at the event organized by CESAR (external link) .  “The event was organized around my current research wherein I explore the interplay between masculinity, suicidality, and the death drive, and how this interplay seems to be activated and heightened precisely in the context of the current pandemic, especially with respect to the question of wearing masks,” he said. 

“The audience was very participatory, and I appreciated their engagement with the trajectory of my work. Some of the questions had me attend to the recent debates regarding masking and how it is different from the debates regarding the veil. I was particularly encouraged to think through the racial and gendered dynamics that are at play in both.   

Varghese has been looking at “Care,” “Gender,” and “Ethic” throughout the COVID_19 pandemic. “Care is often gendered and I would like us to unpack what that means. This is not to say that there aren't women who refuse to wear the mask,” he says. “In my research, I have always been interested in exploring behaviours that are coded masculine. I am particularly intrigued in the masculine or male refusal to wear masks. What does this mean? How does masculinity become constituted through this refusal? How can this refusal be critiqued? And, what it means for us, as men or male-identified persons, to think about structures and forms of care and how we can participate in them.”

Varghese comes to his thinking on masculinity and caring as a student who first entered university as a chemical engineering student.  His father had hoped this would lead medical school.  Varghese had always been connected to grassroots political movements, and realized he wanted something different from his life. “My mother was a nurse and my maternal grandmother was a teacher, and my maternal grandfather was a farmer. I grew up watching these figures in my life caring for different things, be it patients, students, or livestock or the earth. I realized that what I really wanted to do was to become a therapist, another kind of caregiver, so I left engineering and got a degree in social work, which took me on this whole journey where, alongside my postdoctoral research position at Ryerson, I have a private practice as a psychotherapist and am in the final stages of training to become a psychoanalyst. I never believed that care work had to be gendered masculine or feminine. I look at it as a kind of ethical responsibility we have toward others and some sense of the social good.”

His earlier research was on the pratice of barebacking, sex without condoms, and how the choice to bareback can be a complicated one for gay and queer-identitied men or men who have sex with men, given the history of the AIDS crisis. “Personally, I don't think the choice to bareback is the same as the choice to not wear a mask. But, I am curious about what leads [men, or male identified people] to these choices on an individual, personal, or subjective level and the kinds of narratives men tell themselves in making these choices - what sorts of belief structures we become invested in to arrive at the decision to relinquish the mask.” 

Varghese is working on a new book informed by his earlier work and his thinking on the objections and acceptance of mask use during the pandemic and social reactions to veil wearing?   This is sure to be an interesting and informative read and we can expect to see more on this soon.