Pandemic masculinity: urban low-income men and the Covid-19 pandemic in Nigeria

Abstract In studies of violence against women and children during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as in explanations of men’s increased vulnerability to the disease, the concept of ‘toxic masculinity’ regularly surfaces. However, direct research on men’s perspectives on the pandemic’s impact on them as men remains scarce. Drawing on interview data on urban Nigerian men’s lived experiences and narratives of the epidemic in relation to their identities and roles as men, I explore whether toxic masculinity was emblematic of men’s responses to the Covid-19 socio-economic crisis. While I found little evidence of the men’s reliance on toxic masculine practices to maintain their identities as men during the pandemic, their accounts revealed something quite significant: the reconstitution of masculine success in terms of the ability to adjust to the times by discontinuing practices that, while once essential to their identity as men, now threatened their image as capable providers. These adjustments, which frequently involved resorting to practices that would be considered unmanly, were constituted as part of the routine situational pivots that ‘real’ men must make, in keeping with their role as all-weather providers. I conclude with a reflection on how so-called non-heteronormative male performances might still mask gender inequalities and perpetuate certain aspects of patriarchal power.