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Deryck W. Holdsworth, "I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK': The Built Environments and Varied Masculinities in the Industrial Age," Elizabeth Collins Cromley and Carter L. Hudgins, eds., Gender, Class, and Shelter; Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, V, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995, 11-25.

The author believes the study of gender needs to encompass both femininities and masculinities to create an informed understanding of people and places. This duality has been explored for some time primarily by radical feminist of color and, to a degree, by queer theorist.  To accomplish this goal Holdsworth suggests we turn for a moment from the study of feminine spaces, which has been the focus of most gender studies, to look at the expression of male identities in a range of places and structures.  In this essay, named after a humorously homophobic episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Holdsworth brings us to a series of "masculine spaces" to look at the plurality of masculinities.  These include seventeenth- through nineteenth-century migratory fisheries in western Europe and the east coast of North America, West Coast logging camps, coal-mining environments, and settings of Chinese migrant labor in North America between the 1850s and 1920s -- all are blue collar sites, which are deemed masculine spaces because of the absence of women.  The author also points out the changes occurring in these spaces as women began to live in these locations, domesticating masculine space.  Here, it seems Holdsworth's underlying assumption is that men did not or, perhaps, were incapable of creating comfortable homes for themselves.  The masculinities of urban spaces are explored, including the transition of office buildings from male dominated realms to spaces where women did the lion's share of the deskilled clerical work.  Also, New York's Time Square is interpreted as a venue for the "sexual/power desires of men." Of course, what study of urban masculine spaces would be complete without a trip to the locker room and the intricacies of gay cruising.  More welcomed is Holdsworth's brief mention of the role of gay men in gentrification and revitalization of urban environments. [H. Nasstrom Evans]