Gender and Sexuality Studies

Biography

There is very little research on single men in India. “Who is a cool dude in school?” I asked my undergraduate students in a class on gender studies. Apart from the usual replies of strong, successful, macho, I was also told the cool dude is someone who has a girlfriend and hence is seen as superior to the rest of his classmates. “Uski bandi hai (he has a girl)” chimed in another student. This points to the heterosexual imaginary (Ingraham), but more importantly to the ‘romantic imaginary’ and ‘compulsory coupledom’ (Wilkinson) that govern the lives of boys and men in India and around the world in late modernity (Wilkinson). If having a girlfriend/wife/partner makes a man a cool dude, what does being single make him? Stereotypes abound about the single man globally, ranging from the stud, the ‘free man’ to the criminal, the creepy uncle, the loner, the mamma’s boy, the one who had a ‘love failure’ and never recovered from it. Some of these stereotypes might be true, but they don’t necessarily apply to all men who are single, especially not to the ones who are single by choice and single by heart. What kind of masculinity do these kinds of single men demonstrate, and what does that then tell us about gender relations and gender equality?

Drawing from 30 interviews with single by choice men in India, I rethink the category of the 'friend zone' and what single men's relationship is with women and other men. This will point to how single men are not only redoing masculinity, but contributing to the debate on gender equality.