Multiple studies have already been done and ideas of ‘alternative’ constructions of masculinity, based on the premise that masculinity is fluid, multiple and flexible, continue to be explored and examined, both in South Africa and abroad. In contemporary research masculinities are plural constructs and should be considered as belonging in fixed ways to all men. Some of the British and Australian researchers who have led the way in focusing on young masculinities are Stephen Frosh, Ann Phoenix and Rob Pattman, as well as Raewyn Connell, Wayne Martino, Jon Swain, Emma Renold, Christian Haywood and Máirtín Mac an Ghaill. It was these views and voices, as well as those of other South African researchers, that stimulated my exploration of the theme with adolescent boys in Alexandra township. I wanted to see whether the same positive elements and signs of masculinity, or masculinities, which do not subscribe to the stereotype, as findings were showing, were as evident when it came to the typical ‘township boy’.

Critical masculinity studies have gained momentum in South Africa in recent years. After 1994, added impetus came in part from an attempt to understand how the politics of gender intersected with issues of transition and constitutional democracy, which enshrines basic human rights principles, including gender equality. Leading figures in this field of enquiry in South Africa include Robert Morrell, Clive Glaser, Mark Hunter, Jacklyn Cock, Gill Eagle, Garth Stevens, Graham Lindegger, Linda Richter, Lisa Vetten, Rachel Jewkes, Kopano Ratele, Tamara Shefer, Deevia Bhana and Mzi Nduna.

Researchers and scholars now broadly agree that masculinity is not static and stagnant, but can and does change. Significantly, these changes reveal that not all boys are the same. Theorists like Connell, Morrell, Frosh and colleagues have moved away from masculinity as a single construct: ‘an area of agreement emerged among North America, British and Australian writers in recent years that we no longer talk about masculinity but about masculinities’. Many researchers now use the plural form ‘masculinities’ to acknowledge the variety of interpretive forms that masculinity can take. Within the refocus there are different kinds of masculine identities, which are ranked hierarchically, with some forms being subordinated, complicit and/or marginalised. In terms of South Africa, Morrell confirms: ‘there is no one, typical South African masculinity’, but rather different masculinities.