Michael Messner

Selected Articles & Books

Research

In the broadest sense, my research asks how social relations of gender have changed over the past half century, and probes the ways in which the strains and tensions of the current historical moment both prevent and make possible future progressive change. There are many potential sites where one might study these big questions. This page gives access to much of my published research, organized into four general categories.

Men, Feminism & Politics

When the women’s movement resurfaced in the late 1960s and 1970s men faced a fork in the road, and a set of options: stop dead in your tracks, befuddled; attempt a U-turn and retreat toward an idealized past of male entitlement; turn right and fight against feminism; bend left and actively support feminism. Since the late 1970s I have devoted a strand of my research to studying this spectrum of men’s personal, organizational and political responses to feminism.

I am especially interested in understanding how different historical moments shape men’s anti- and pro-feminist activism in the United States. In Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements, I mapped the context that gave rise to opposing men’s movements from the 1970s through the 1990s. More recently, I conducted research with Max Greenberg and Tal Peretz on different generations of men who work with boys and men to prevent rape and domestic violence.

Selected Books

  • Michael A. Messner, Max A. Greenberg & Tal Peretz (2015). Some Men: Feminist Allies and the Movement to End Violence Against Women. Oxford University Press.View
  • Michael A. Messner (1997). Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements. Alta Mira Press.View

Selected Articles

  • Michael A. Messner (2021). “Breaking up the stag party: Jessie Bernard’s pioneering work on men.” Sociological Forum.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner (2016). “Forks in the road of men’s gender politics: Men’s rights vs. feminist allies.” International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 5: 6–20.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner (2016). “Bad men, good men, bystanders: Who is the rapist?” Gender & Society.PDF
  • Max A. Greenberg & Michael A. Messner (2014). “Before prevention: The trajectory and tensions of feminist anti-violence,” in Gendered Perspectives on Conflict and Violence (Part B). Emerald.
  • Michael A. Messner (2007). “The Masculinity of the Governator: Muscle and Compassion in American Politics.” Gender & Society 21: 461–481.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner (2004). “On Patriarchs and Losers: Rethinking Men’s Interests.” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 48: 76–88.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner (1998). “The Limits of ‘The Male Sex Role’: The Discourse of the Men’s Liberation and Men’s Rights Movements.” Gender & Society 12: 255–276.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner (1998). “Radical Feminist and Socialist Feminist Men’s Movements in the U.S.” in Feminism and Men: Toward a Relational Feminism. New York University Press.
  • Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo & Michael A. Messner (1994). “Gender Displays and Men’s Power: The ‘New Man’ and the Mexican Immigrant Man,” in Theorizing Masculinities. Sage Publications.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner (1993). “‘Changing Men’ and Feminist Politics in the United States.” Theory & Society 22: 723–737.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner (1993). “White Men Misbehaving: Feminism, Afrocentrism, and the Promise of a Critical Standpoint.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 16: 136–144.

Sports Media

Mass media coverage of sports may seem ubiquitous, given the 24-7 availability of talk and images on television, the Internet and print media. But I learned long ago from the great writer Tillie Olsen that if we want to understand the workings of power, it is crucial to attend as much to silences as it is to noise.

I have conducted a longitudinal content and textual analysis of gender in televised news and highlights programs — started in 1989–90 with Margaret Carlisle Duncan and continuing with Cheryl Cooky — replicating the study every five years. I am also interested in how the sports media handles a particular story, especially a “scandal,” and in the dominant gendered messages pitched to boys and men as consumers.

Selected Articles

  • Cheryl Cooky, LaToya D. Council, Ashley Mears & Michael A. Messner (2021). “One and done: The long eclipse of women’s televised sports, 1989–2019.” Communication and Sport.View
  • Michela Musto, Cheryl Cooky & Michael A. Messner (2017). “‘From fizzle to sizzle!’: Televised sports news and the production of gender-bland sexism.” Gender & Society 31: 573–596.PDF
  • Cheryl Cooky, Michael A. Messner & Michela Musto (2015). “‘It’s dude time!’: A quarter century of excluding women’s sports in televised news and highlights shows.” Communication & Sport.PDF
  • Cheryl Cooky, Michael A. Messner & Robin Hextrum (2013). “Women play sports, but not on TV: A longitudinal study of televised news media.” Communication & Sport 1: 203–230.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner (2013). “Reflections on Communication and Sport: On Men and Masculinities.” Communication & Sport 1: 113–124.PDF
  • Faye Linda Wachs, Cheryl Cooky, Michael A. Messner & Shari Lee Dworkin (2012). “Media frames and displacement of blame in the Don Imus/Rutgers University basketball team incident.” Critical Studies in Media Communication.PDF
  • Cheryl Cooky, Faye Linda Wachs, Michael A. Messner & Shari Lee Dworkin (2010). “It’s not about the game: Don Imus, racism and sexism in contemporary media.” Sociology of Sport Journal 27: 139–159.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner, Margaret Carlisle Duncan & Nicole Willms (2006). “This Revolution is Not Being Televised.” Contexts 5: 34–38.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner & Jeffrey Montez de Oca (2005). “The Male Consumer as Loser: Beer and Liquor Ads in Mega Sports Media Events.” Signs 30: 1879–1909.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner, Margaret Carlisle Duncan & Cheryl Cooky (2003). “Silence, Sports Bras, and Wrestling Porn: The Treatment of Women in Televised Sports News and Highlights.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 27: 38–51.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner, Michele Dunbar & Darnell Hunt (2000). “The Televised Sports Manhood Formula.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 24: 380–394.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner & William S. Solomon (1993). “Outside the Frame: Newspaper Coverage of the Sugar Ray Leonard Wife Abuse Story.” Sociology of Sport Journal 10: 119–134.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner, Margaret Carlisle Duncan & Kerry Jensen (1993). “Separating the Men from the Girls: The Gendered Language of Televised Sports.” Gender & Society 7: 121–137.PDF

Gender & Sports

When I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, sports was defined by and for boys and men. The few girls and women who played sports were either ignored or stigmatized. That began to change dramatically in the early 1970s, as the women’s movement stimulated a continuing burst of participation by girls and women. This historic shift — and the idea that sport is a “contested terrain” of gender, sexual, and racial meanings — has animated much of my work.

I have explored sport as a site where the social meanings of “masculinity” are played out, and have sought to study sport not as a separate “sportsworld” but in the ways it connects and resonates with other aspects of social life, including off-field gender-based violence, the gender socialization of children, and the divisions of labor in youth sports.

Selected Books

  • Michael A. Messner (2025). The High School: Sports, Spirit, and Citizens, 1903–2024. Rutgers University Press.View
  • Cheryl Cooky & Michael A. Messner (2018). No Slam Dunk: Gender, Sport, and the Unevenness of Social Change. Rutgers University Press.View
  • Michael A. Messner & Michela Musto, Eds. (2016). Child’s Play: Sport in Kids’ Worlds. Rutgers University Press.View
  • Michael A. Messner (2009). It’s All for the Kids: Gender, Families and Youth Sports. University of California Press.View
  • Michael A. Messner (2007). Out of Play: Critical Essays on Gender and Sport. State University of New York Press.View
  • Michael A. Messner (2002). Taking the Field: Women, Men, and Sports. University of Minnesota Press.View
  • Michael A. Messner (1992). Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity. Beacon Press.View

Selected Articles

  • Michael A. Messner & Michela Musto (2014). “Where are the kids?” Sociology of Sport Journal 31: 102–122.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner (2014). “Gender relations and sport: Local, national, transnational,” in Playfields: Power, Practice, and Passion in Sport. Center for Basque Studies Press.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner (2011). “Gender ideologies, youth sports, and the production of soft essentialism.” Sociology of Sport Journal 28: 151–170.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner & Suzel Bozada-Deas (2009). “Separating the men from the moms: The making of adult sex segregation in youth sports.” Gender & Society 23: 49–71.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner & Nancy M. Solomon (2007). “Social justice and men’s interests: The case of Title IX.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 31: 162–178.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner (2005). “The triad of violence in men’s sports,” in Transforming a Rape Culture. Milkweed Editions.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner (2000). “Barbie Girls vs. Sea Monsters: Children Constructing Gender.” Gender & Society 14: 765–784.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner (1996). “Studying Up On Sex.” Sociology of Sport Journal 13: 221–237.PDF
  • Michael Messner (1990). “When bodies are weapons: Masculinity and violence in sport.” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 25: 203–218.PDF
  • Michael Messner (1989). “Masculinities and Athletic Careers.” Gender & Society 3: 71–88.PDF
  • Michael Messner (1988). “Sports and Male Domination: The Female Athlete as Contested Ideological Terrain.” Sociology of Sport Journal 5: 197–211.PDF

War & Peace

I grew up idealizing my grandfather’s service in World War I and my father’s in World War II. But as I came of age during the tail end of the American war in Vietnam, I considered myself lucky to have drawn a high draft lottery number — 284 — in a year when the number of draftees was dropping, but young men were still returning home in coffins.

I never fought in a war, nor did I serve in the military, but I have retained a simultaneous fascination and abhorrence with men’s experiences with guns, the military and war. I plumbed these ambivalences in a 2011 memoir, King of the Wild Suburb, and in Guys Like Me (2019) and Unconventional Combat (2021) I illuminate the lives of veterans who became advocates for peace.

Selected Books

  • Michael A. Messner (2021). Unconventional Combat: Intersectional Action in the Veterans’ Peace Movement. Oxford University Press.View
  • Michael A. Messner (2019). Guys Like Me: Five Wars, Five Veterans for Peace. Rutgers University Press.View
  • Michael A. Messner (2011). King of the Wild Suburb: A Memoir of Fathers, Sons and Guns. Plain View Press.View

Selected Articles

  • Michael A. Messner (2019). “Guns, intimacy, and the limits of militarized masculinity,” in Handbook on Gun Studies. Routledge.PDF
  • Michael A. Messner (2007). “The Masculinity of the Governator: Muscle and Compassion in American Politics.” Gender & Society 21: 461–481.PDF