Black Masculinities in Canada: Reframing Black Men and Gender Advocacy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This dissertation examines how Black men in Canada experience and resist gendered racism, the intersection of racial and gender-based marginalization that shapes systemic and interpersonal barriers across the sexuality spectrum. Using a grounded theory design, this study draws on symbolic interactionism, Black feminism, and critical/decolonial masculinity studies to develop a humanizing account of Black male identity and community leadership. Black masculinity is often represented from an American context and through a problem-centred framework within Western theory, particularly through uncritical applications of Hegemonic Masculinity Theory (HMT). These frameworks portray Black men as engaging in hypermasculine behaviours to compensate for societal constraints and oppression, reinforcing deficit-based and racialized narratives. In the Canadian context, where Black men face disproportionately high rates of incarceration, school dropout and streamlining, underemployment, and premature mortality, such framings obscure their lived realities and potential for social transformation. Through semi-structured interviews with (n=21) Black male community organizers in Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto, this research addressed three questions: (1) How do race and gender intersect to shape the lived experiences of Black men in Canada? (2) How do Black men construct and define their masculinities, and in what ways do their definitions challenge or reinforce dominant gender discourses? (3) How do Black male community organizers mobilize against gendered racism, and how do they contribute to community advancement in Canada? Findings reveal that Black men encounter gendered racism through media stereotypes, educational marginalization, and workplace discrimination. However, they resist through two forms of intersectional gender advocacy: constructing counternarratives of masculinity and leading community-based efforts that address both gender and racial inequality. From these findings, the ivstudy concludes by proposing Intimate Masculinities Theory (IMT), a grounded gender theory that centers emotions, vulnerability, and inner life as vital to Black male identity, expanding beyond the limits of power- and dominance-based models. The study reframes Black men as a gender-equality deserving group in Canada, calling for greater recognition of their gendered experiences and advocacy work. It highlights their alignment with Black feminist approaches and underscores the need for gender theory to engage more deeply with participant narratives. Advancing gender justice for Black men enhances well-being, supports cross-gender coalition-building, and offers a transformative framework for equity in education, employment, and media. Dissemination will include academic publications, a public event on Black men and gender justice, and a policy brief addressing gendered racism in Canadian schools, workplaces, and media, informed directly by participant recommendations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.061 | 0.021 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".