The culturally relative ideal gender identity for men. Studies of masculinity, a now quite considerable body of work, show that the specific nature of masculinity varies across time and geography---men in nineteenth-century Britain were expected to act and behave quite differently from the way they are expected to act and behave today; similarly, in the twenty-first-century men in Britain are expected to act and behave quite differently from men in Iraq. Thus, it is more usual in critical discourse to speak of masculinity in the plural rather than the singular. The study of masculinity is an offshoot of the study of gender pioneered in feminism and Cultural Studies, and as such its research has at its core the problem of identity formation. In particular it has overturned the idea of biological determinism which holds that gendered behaviour is a function of physiology---e.g. men are stronger and more aggressive than women and are therefore naturally supposed to be hunter-warriors---and shown very clearly that masculinity is culturally defined. Research in the field has been greatly influenced by Butler, Judithâs concept of performativity (which she derives from Austin, John Langshawâs linguistic concept of the performative), which claims that all gender roles are performances requiring constant self-management. Along the same lines, some researchers have wanted to argue that men are under just as much stress to conform to cultural expectations of the ideal body as women, though many in feminism see this as overstating things since in most parts of the world the patriarchy is still firmly in place. Further Reading: R. W. Connell Masculinities (2005). S. Whitehead Men and Masculinities: Key Themes and New Directions (2002).