Due to social media’s inexorable authority over how we construct our sense of self or identity, the dimensions of augmented reality are always in flux. While many digitised narratives have contributed to forming numerous communities that would otherwise have had difficulty establishing an identity, some have ingratiated themselves into the male psyche over time, where they have developed their pernicious presence. One such narrative is the "Sigma Male" discourse. It goes beyond the nuances of the typical Alpha-to-Gamma range of hierarchy and is considered to locate itself outside the standard masculine socio- sexual paradigms. Due to the frequently flawed representation of this narrative on social media platforms since 2021, it conservative. This article aims is capable of catalysing anything that is fundamentally to study how different male archetypes, particularly the "Sigma archetype" rhetoric, increase the risk of in-group bias and out-group prejudice by encouraging the stigmatisation of already-existing nonconforming values and, as a consequence, normalise cyberbullying among men who do not confide in the mainstream masculine prototypes depicted by the visually or linguistically problematic memes and Tiktok videos, YouTube shorts, and Instagram Reels. Furthermore, this paper also investigates how this narrative takes a paradoxical form where one can uncover the cultural allusions hidden within these texts by deciphering the contents, captions, hashtags, and associated comments and delve into the fact that these apparent (or not so apparent) discursive approaches might either reinforce or undermine the dominant cultural norms, beliefs, or power systems.

The hegemonic hetero-sexual masculinity is represented in almost everywhere, and in this arenas, males are presumed to be straight and hold stereotypically masculine beliefs, attitudes, and values unless and until they present themselves as other. Queer masculinity while representing this otherness indicates as ways of being masculine outside hetero-normative constructions of masculinity that disrupt, or have the potential to disrupt, traditional images. ‘Queer masculinities of straight men’ do not have similar representation as it actively disrupts both hegemonic hetero-sexual masculinity and homosexuality at the same time. It suggests queering of hetero-masculinity in a way in which straight men disrupt the dominant paradigm of the straight-masculine. We do not have language that gives legitimacy to these lived experiences. The partners of the queer protagonist from the films Arekti Premer Golpo (2010) and Chitrangada (2012) provide a thought provoking site to discuss queer masculinities of straight men. They queer their identities by having queer partnership with the protagonists for a significant amount of time while projecting themselves as heterosexual and hetero-masculine men having hetero-normative companionship with female partners. Their presence in the narratives expands the conceptualization of straightness, masculinity, and homosexual desire. Thus, writing this article is an attempt to explore the very notion of what is legitimized as being hetero-masculine and being queer. Why do we need this? Hope it will allow us to ‘trouble” both gender and sexuality and “turn the volume up” by acknowledging the broadest possible range of what exist.

This paper will look at the fetishism of firearms/guns and hyper-masculinity in recent pan-Indian blockbuster films like KGF 2, Vikram, Pushpa and RRR. Indian films have had a long history of the production and consumption of ‘men with guns’, specifically rooted in the genre of action and gangster films. Gender-coded for a predominantly male audience, these gun-toting genres have been studied for the relation between spectated violence and the potentiality of real-life violence. My paper seeks to probe these films for their construction of hegemonic masculinities within the figuration of the gun/the firearm. How does owning, holding, firing and being fired upon by a gun dictate, inform or proscribe masculinist protagonism/agentiality? The fetishism of guns becomes important in the context of a perceived crisis in masculinity and male roles and the pushback from a heteromasculine normativity that has become synonymous with the rise of Hindu nationalism as noted by PK Vijayan who argues for a consideration of a two-way symbiosis between hegemonic masculinity and Hindutva (hyper-)nationalism. Using the framework of critical masculinity studies, the paper analyses the construction and circulation of masculine identities, questioning the (hetero)normativity of the masculine, in discourses of the body, gender, sexuality, nationalism, power and representation.

The intersection of gender and disability is that masculinity and disability are in conflict with each other because disability is associated with being dependent and helpless whereas masculinity is associated with being powerful and autonomous, thus creating a lived and embodied dilemma for disabled men (Shuttleworth, Wedgwood and Wilson 2012). But in both the cases, the determiners are the rigid conventional structures, which habitually associate images with personalities. A disabled person is typically expected to be fragile whereas a masculine figure is always imagined to be a saviour, a figure who is above all odds. In Thomas Hardy’s novel The Return of the Native, the central character Clym Yeobright, a successful diamond merchant, returns to Egdon Heath from Paris. He is the representative image of the masculine figure, respected by the all and wins the love of Eustacia Vye, a beautiful and passionate young woman who dreams of escaping the heath and its insular ways. She is infatuated with Clym and sees him as a means to escape her mundane life. But Clym aspires to be a schoolteacher and stays back at Egdon Heath. He reads night and day to fulfill his aspirations of becoming a teacher and nearly blinds himself. With the onset of his blindness he is stripped off his ‘masculine’, loses his love, respect and becomes a mere figure of sympathy for all. Eustacia soon falls out of love for him and he himself becomes disenchanted with his plans and decides to take up the occupation of a furze-cutter, which is considered a lowly job in the community. The disabled masculine figure, who fails to fit himself in the preconceived structure of hegemonic masculinity begins to isolate himself, questions his capabilities and even accepts himself as doomed even before exploring opportunities and thus becomes the recipient of Hardy’s tragic treatment. This article intends to map and critically evaluate the conceptual development of the dilemma of disabled masculinity, which is caused by the tussle between the ethical understanding and the moral reasoning, as explained by Kohlberg in his Heinz theory. This article would also attempt to trace how several developments in the fields of disability studies and the critical study of men and masculinities have shaped sociological understandings of disabled masculinity which in turn sets the tragic course of the novel.

Gender is the category created through copious socio-cultural processes and practices which ensures the embodiment of an individual’s identity. This achieved identity is enacted through the socially accepted gendered binary roles: “masculinity” associated with men or ways of performing maleness and “femininity” associated with women or ways of performing femaleness. Masculinity, therefore, signifies the gendered male being embedded in the congealed web of social institutions, beliefs, values, cultural behavioral patterns, language, learned interaction and other constructions. These social constructions of masculinity profoundly formulates and reformulates men’s roles, actions, societal expectations and related stereotypes; both in public as well as private domain guided by the principle of heteronormativity. The stereotyped masculine roles in family and marriage require investigation to make conspicuous the underlying hegemonic gendered norms of the society. Articulated from this heteronormative hegemonic construction, the paper is keen to understand married men’s participation in the unpaid work within the domestic domain. It also seeks to investigate the care giving role of married men within heteronormative families. A descriptive quantitative method have been applied wherein a survey have been conducted in South Kolkata in which fifty Bengali married men have been interviewed for data analysis. Interview schedule was applied to draw data from men residing in nuclear families.

At the end of Donald Trump’s presidentship, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) which was published almost 70 years back suddenly became one of the best-selling novels in the U.S. One could postulate that Trump’s various repressive racial policies, totalitarian mindset, shared cultural insecurity of the Americans and Orwell’s broad minacious dystopian vision were the reason behind this hasty popularity. This is the process, I think, by which a book becomes canon by rediscovering its significance in every new ‘turn’ of history. Dorothy M. Figueira’s Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority through Myths of Identity although was first published in 2002, the book is in similar fashion more relevant at present than ever before especially in the context of India. Why? I would provide an answer to this statement at the end of my discussion.

This book brings a continuous evolution and preservation of refugee community identities, transformation of cultural values and Politicization of linguistic nationalism in Assam and Tripura in postcolonial India. By using primary resources such as central and state government archives, official records, census data, extensive field survey, along with contemporary literature author aims to portray the resistance of refugees for collective community identity and official recognition as a citizen of India. Author tried to question the categorization of refugees' as a fragmented cultural and ethnic identities and present a biased and discriminatory politics of state towards Bengali refugees' in Assam and Tripura during refugee rehabilitation programme. She also highlighted interlinkage of refugee issue also with the identity politics, dispute on boundary demarcations, land resource management and allocation along with preservation of tribal ethnicity and collective community identity values.

The book for review is comprised of eight chapters. Each reverberates around the existence of the Rajbanshi community with their own history, socio-cultural behaviour, and moreover, folktales and folksongs – an oral literature associated with them. As the book is titled the “Rajbanshi Folk Tales and Folk Songs”, the focus is much on that subject matter only rather than on the history of the Rajbanshi community. But unless one gets acquainted with the history of the Rajbanshi community and its own separate socio-cultural identity, one cannot understand the essence of these folk tales and songs associated with this community. So, the author has wisely included a few chapters related to history, location, identity, and language of the Rajbanshi community at the end section of the book.

In Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Donna J. Haraway addresses deeply situated feminist explorations and varied epistemologies and ecologies. It contains figurative criticism of the current environmental crises that forms the emergency of the Anthropocene. Haraway traverses alternative ways of knowing how the subject’s experiences of the past, present, future, gender, culture, race all dissolve into each other and need continuous interrogations to arrive at the evolving notions of subjecthood and environment. The book investigates thematerial semiotics, political histories of different surfaces, mythologies, species, and stories and forces us to establish contact with other existents in search of harmonious ways of survival. In our age when global politics and global capital are operating by destruction and distortion of natural resources, the book emerges as an inevitable counter by product of staying with the trouble.

The novel, Prelude to a Riot by Annie Zaidi is a perfect reflection of today's India where tension between communities is brewing because of the growing divisive politics. The author through her unique style of narration brings to the fore various issues that has shaken the social fabric of contemporary India causing an atmosphere of fear and amongst different sections of people including minorities, the migrant workers, the tribals and the women. Set in an unnamed south Indian town, the novel revolves around two families of wealthy state owners; one Muslim and another Hindu, and shows that how because of the growing divisive politics things have turned scarily problematic for the Muslim family. The author by allowing each character a space to speak their mind in the form of soliloquies brings to the fore the varied forms of nuances and problems existing in today's India and hints at an impending violence.