At last we arrive at the second COVID-19 gender storyline previewed in Chapter 1, the one about men and masks. Call it “mask-ulinity,” if that rings a bell—the heightened tendency among certain men to resist covering their faces in the face of a pandemic.

Of all the virus mitigation tools, masks became the most fraught. More so in certain places. Especially at first, anti-masking was concentrated in the West. Resistance to masks and other measures flared in many countries, for sure, but mask-ulinity truly caught fire in places like the US and UK.

The question of interest here is, how might a sociophysical model help us shed old habits and new light on gender as an influential force in the world? This chapter uses the case of mask-ulinity to explore that question. Consider this our first exercise of the feeling ‘muscles’ we began to awaken in the latter part of Chapter 3. Now, it's time to use and develop them. My hope is that, like stretching, working with mask-ulinity will warm us up for what's to come.

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Mask-ulinity drew notice within weeks of the early spring 2020 lockdowns across much of the Western world, when face-covering was reaching recommended status, with controversial mandates on the horizon. From the beginning, accounts of mask-ulinity differed a bit from the narrative of gendered COVID-19 leadership discussed earlier.

For one thing, the mask-ulinity narrative led with men as men, a group whose outlook on life is influenced by gender and, specifically, twisted by regular experiences of power. Some observers took care to specify the kind of men who were most mask-averse. They noted, for instance, a link to conservative and libertarian politics. Many pointed to the populist strongmen of Chapter 2 as negative role models, aggressively shunning the mask guidance of their own administrations. Others noticed that white men were more likely to flout face coverings.

The mask-ulinity storyline thus showed some encouraging signs of the practices recommended in Chapter 3, especially: inquiring after men as gendered figures, asking how their perceptions are distorted by privilege, and rigorously qualifying which men we are talking about.