Masculinities and Crime: Messerschmidt and Collier

Last Updated on September 19, 2026 by Karl Thompson

Messerschmidt (1993) notes that males commit most crimes and therefore any study of crime must include a study of masculine values. Men accounted for 78% of prosecutions in England and Wales in 2023, and 98% of prosecutions for sexual offences (Ministry of Justice, 2025). See gender and crime statistics.

He criticises sex-role theory for assuming socialisation is passive. This theory assumes boys are simply taught to ‘act male’ in childhood and this then defines their behaviour into adulthood.

He also rejects biological explanations for higher rates of male offending.

Messerschmidt points out that cross cultural comparisons show that masculinity varies across cultures. Both men and women are active agents in the construction of their identities. They do not just act on the basis of their biology or sex-roles they have been taught in childhood. They make active decisions as they go through their lives.

Messerschmidt thus argues that any theory which explains why men commit crime must take account of different masculinities. Different conceptions of masculinity tend to lead to different social actions and different types of criminality.

This material is mainly relevant to the Crime and Deviance module, part of A-level sociology.

Applying structuration theory

Messerschmidt applies Giddens’ structuration theory to better understand gender and crime. Like Giddens he believes social structures exist, but they only exist through structured social action. In other words, people’s actions are needed to maintain social structures.

Accomplishing masculinity

Gender is something people do, something they accomplish. In everyday life they try to present themselves in their interactions as adequate or successful men or women. This idea builds on West and Zimmerman’s (1987) concept of ‘doing gender’.

Masculinity is never a finished product, men construct masculinities in specific social situations and in doing so reproduce social structures.

From this point of view a man chatting with his mates at a bar, or playing football, or watching an Andrew Tate video, are all attempts to accomplish masculinity.

Men construct a variety of masculinities, at least in part because they find themselves in a variety of social situations which they have little control over.

Some men are not in a position to accomplish certain desired forms of masculinity such as being good at sport or being a higher income earner. One’s ability to accomplish these desired forms of masculinity are shaped by one’s class and ethnic background.

Hegemonic and subordinate masculinities

Messerschmidt divides masculinity into hegemonic and subordinate.

• Hegemonic masculinities are the most highly valued. These include economic and sporting prowess within mainstream society.
• Subordinate masculinities are less powerful and carry lower status. These include violent, street-based activities.

The nature of hegemonic masculinity varies from place to place and time to time, but is generally based on the subordination of women. Hegemonic men benefit from their power over women. Men with less dominant forms of masculinity may also try to gain power over women but it is less easy for them to do so.

Criminal behaviour can be used as a resource for asserting masculinity. As Messerschmidt puts it:

“Crime by men is a form of social practice invoked as a resource, when other resources are unavailable, for accomplishing masculinity.”

Different groups of males turn to different types of crime in attempts to be masculine in different ways.

Connell’s four types of masculinity

Messerschmidt draws on the work of R. W. (Raewyn) Connell, who developed the concept of hegemonic masculinity. In Masculinities (1995), Connell distinguishes four positions:

• Hegemonic masculinity: the dominant, most valued way of being a man in a society.
• Complicit masculinity: men who don’t fully live up to the hegemonic ideal but still benefit from men’s power over women.
• Subordinated masculinity: masculinities that are looked down on, most obviously gay masculinities.
• Marginalised masculinity: men whose class or ethnicity limits their access to the hegemonic ideal.

On Connell’s terms, the lower working-class and minority ethnic men in Messerschmidt’s examples below are marginalised rather than subordinated. In exam answers it’s worth being clear which author’s terms you are using.

Masculinities and crime in youth groups

White middle-class boys tend to enjoy educational success and frequently also display some sporting prowess. In these ways they are able to demonstrate the possession of hegemonic masculinity.

However, these are achieved at a price. Independence, dominance and control largely have to be given up in school. In order to achieve success they have to act in subservient ways in school. Their masculinity is undermined, they are emasculated.

Outside school some white middle class boys try to demonstrate some of the masculine characteristics which are repressed within school. This involves pranks, excessive drinking, vandalism and minor thefts. Because of their backgrounds these boys tend to be able to avoid the criminal label.

Such young men adopt ‘accommodating masculinity’ within school. This is a controlled, cooperative rational gender strategy to achieve institutional success. Outside they adopt a more ‘oppositional masculinity’ which goes against some middle class norms but asserts some of the hegemonic masculine traits they are denied in school.

White working-class boys also experience school as emasculating. However they are much less likely to achieve academic success within school. They therefore tend to construct masculinity around physical aggression. It is important to be tough, or hard, and to oppose the imposition of authority by teachers. They construct an oppositional masculinity both inside and outside of school. The Lads Paul Willis researched in Learning to Labour are an example of this.

A third group, lower working-class boys from minority ethnic groups struggle to find reasonably paid, secure employment. They are unable to construct masculinity through economic success and the breadwinner role. They are also too poor to do so through conspicuous consumption.

They thus turn to expressing their masculinity on the street. They use violence both inside and outside the school and are most likely to get involved in serious property crime.

Messerschmidt quotes a number of American studies showing how robbery is used to make offenders feel more masculine than their victims. Gang and turf wars are also attempts to assert masculine control. Rape is sometimes used to express control over women.

Horrific crimes such as gang rape can help to maintain and reinforce an alliance among boys by humiliating and devaluing women, strengthening the fiction of male power.

Recourse to these more violent forms of masculinity happen when social conditions of poverty, racism and lack of opportunity limit options.

Different types of masculinity and crime

Different types of masculinity can be expressed by different adult males in different contexts leading to crime.

Pimping

On the street, pimping is one way to express masculinity. Pimps usually exert strong control over the prostitutes they pimp out. They get them to turn over their earnings and can thus enjoy material success. Their attitude is one of the cool badass, displaying features such as control, toughness and detachment.

Pimps tend to be loud and flamboyant and display their success through luxury consumer goods. For black pimps this is a way to transcend race and class domination.

White-collar crime

To achieve success within large-scale institutions crime may be necessary. In Corporate contexts crime may be tolerated, even encouraged if it can lead to more profit.

Messerschmidt quotes an engineer at Ford explaining why no one questioned the continued production of the Pinto model in the USA. This car was prone to bursting into flames if it was in a rear-end collision, and a number of people died as a result, but Ford still continued to produce it. The engineer explained that ‘safety didn’t sell’ and anyone questioning this would be sacked.

Domestic violence

Messerschmidt argues that relatively powerless men use domestic violence to assert control when women threaten their masculinity.

Much violence occurs when a man believes his wife or children have not carried out their duties, obeyed his orders or shown him adequate respect.

Evaluations of Messerschmidt

Messerschmidt’s theory allows for the existence of different types of masculinity and for the way these masculinities can change.

It also makes plausible attempts to link different types of crime to different types of masculinity and helps explain why men are more criminal than women.

However his theory fails to explain why particular individuals turn to crime when others do not.

Messerschmidt also seems to stereotype men, and he has very negative views of working-class and ethnic minority men. There is no room in his theory for the many men who reject hegemonic masculinities.

He might also be accused of exaggerating the importance of masculinity in explaining crime. Not all male crimes are about asserting masculinity!

Other theorists, such as Bob Connell (1995) do not portray men as negatively.

Richard Collier: a postmodern critique of Messerschmidt

Richard Collier (1998), in Masculinities, Crime and Criminology, is critical of Messerschmidt’s work on masculinity and crime.

Collier argues the concept of hegemonic masculinity is limited.

For Collier this is simply a list of traits which are not common to men. Women can also express the traits of what Messerschmidt calls ‘hegemonic masculinity’.

Messerschmidt uses the concept of hegemonic masculinity to explain too many types of crime. He uses it to explain everything from sexual abuse to traffic offences, from burglary to corporate crime.

Messerschmidt’s concept of hegemonic masculinity isn’t really sociological. It is based on stereotypical ideas about what a typical traditional man should be, drawn from popular ideologies.

Collier’s Postmodernist Approach

Collier argues a postmodernist approach is needed to understand the relationship between masculinity and crime. Such an approach would address the complexity of the multi-layered nature of the social subject. Stereotypes and images of masculinity are important, because they do affect people’s understanding of what it means to be masculine.

However, they are always interpreted in particular contexts. For Collier, men do not simply try to ‘accomplish masculinity’, because masculinity is multifaceted and where crimes are perceived as related to masculinity emerges in the discourses that surround crime.

There is uncertainty around what it means to be masculine because of the changing configurations of childhood, family and fatherhood, and of heterosexual social practices and sexed subjects.

Collier believes it is preferable to examine the subjective expression of masculinity by individuals or groups of men through crime rather than generalise about hegemonic masculinity.

Generalisations are dangerous because male identities are precarious and never fixed.

The Dunblane Massacre

Collier’s approach can be demonstrated by his case study of Thomas Hamilton, the man who carried out the Dunblane Massacre.

On 13 March 1996 Thomas Hamilton shot and killed 16 primary school children and their teacher in Dunblane, Scotland. He then shot himself.

Hamilton was a local man who was 43 and single. He lived alone but kept in frequent contact with his mother, who was local.

He had been a scoutmaster but had been forced to leave because of ‘inappropriate behaviour’. He had failed, despite a number of attempts, to be reinstated.

Collier argued the media portrayed Hamilton as a monster. It was implied he was a repressed homosexual, because he was single, had never married and had an interest in male children.

The media saw him as an inadequate nobody, a man who had failed to express any kind of masculine success: not financially, socially, sexually, academically in sport or at work. Hence why he went on to express his masculinity in a violent way.

However Collier argues that failed masculinity doesn’t offer a full explanation of Hamilton’s extreme violence.

He argues we need to take account of the multifaceted nature of his masculinity and the interface between the contexts in which Hamilton lived at the level of social structure and the specifics of his own life history.

Based on the evidence Collier argues there was no evidence that Hamilton was a predatory paedophile, it is more likely he felt a need to control and direct young boys in order to direct their development.

Hamilton was regarded as a paedophile because he went against the norm: it is mainly women who care for children and men who take on the role are automatically regarded with more suspicion.

Thwarted in his attempts to express his masculinity as a Scout Leader, Hamilton sought to express it through an interest in guns. This allowed him to draw on images of hypermasculine toughness. By attacking the school he was asserting male authority and turning it on the feminised world of primary education.

His act of violence wasn’t one of losing control, it was one of him taking control.

Evaluation of Collier

Collier’s account is nuanced and explains the specific violence of men based on both structure and their specific life histories.

However it is just down to his interpretation. We can never be certain about what led Hamilton to commit such a gross act of violence.

Exam practice: analyse two reasons why men might commit more crime than women (10 marks)

This is a possible ’10 mark with item’ question which might come up on AQA’s A-level sociology Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods paper (7192/3). Below is a question, with item and a suggested model answer.

10 Mark ‘with item’ Question

Read Item A, then answer the question below.

Item A

‘Normative masculinity’ is the socially approved ideal of what a ‘real man’ is. This involves being successful in terms of money and sexual conquests, being in control/exercising power. Messerschmidt argues that high levels of male crime are simply down to men trying to prove they are ‘real men’.

This goes some way to explaining white collar crime (mainly male) – it’s about status and competition. It might also explain domestic violence and working class street violence – these are the means men with low status use to act out their masculinity when they lack power in mainstream society.

Using material from Item A, analyse two reasons why men might commit more crime than women (10)

Hints and Tips

• Being successful: money, sex, in control, exercising power
• normative (traditional) masculinity
• Elite (white collar) crime
• Low status crimes (WC street violence)
• Also DV!

Suggested Model Answer

Firstly

• Men might commit more crime than women because they believe that they need to be financially successful to prove they are a ‘real man’. The most obvious way a man can ‘act out’ this ‘traditional breadwinner’ aspect of his masculinity is to get a well-paid job.
• However, according to Merton’s Strain Theory, not all men can achieve this goal through the legitimate means of getting a high paid job, as there are relatively few of these available, and as a result some will turn to crime in order to ‘show they are successful’.
• For some men this may ‘simply’ mean earning money by criminal means – by dealing drugs or doing ‘moped thefts’ for example – all of which seem to be mainly male pursuits.
• Other men who lack the opportunity or ‘smartness’ to do utilitarian crime may just get frustrated and seek to prove their status and toughness through violence, as Winlow found with mainly working class men in Newcastle.
• However, it isn’t just working class men who turn to crime to prove status: within companies some highly paid men turn to fraud to make even more money than their male peers.

Secondly…

• Men might commit more crime than women to ‘prove they are in control of women’.
• From a radical feminist perspective this is largely what explains domestic violence which happens across all class groups.
• Heidensohn suggests DV is just one criminal way men express control in private – it also happens in public through ‘harassment’ on the streets.
• This is further perpetuated by ‘the male gaze’ and the objectification of women in the media, especially porn, all of which are interwoven in a network of patriarchal control over women.

Signposting

This material is part of the gender and crime topic within the Crime and Deviance module.

Other explanations of gender and crime include sex-role theory, biological theories, Adler’s liberation thesis, the chivalry thesis and feminist perspectives on crime.

Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.

For a more in-depth resource you might like Messerschmidt, J. (2018) Masculinities and Crime: A Quarter-Century of Theory and Research. Rowman & Littlefield.

Sources

Collier, R. (1998) Masculinities, Crime and Criminology. London: Sage.

Connell, R. W. (1995) Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity.

Messerschmidt, J. (1993) Masculinities and Crime: Critique and Reconceptualization of Theory. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Ministry of Justice (2025) Women and the Criminal Justice System 2023.