'Proper masculinities' and the fear of feminisation in modern Cyprus: university students talk about homosexuality and gendered subjectivities

The present article attempts to pay attention to the ways in which a group of young Cypriot students engage in the construction of conventional notions of masculinities through the negation and the fear of homosexual desire. Drawing on interviews with 12 male and female university students, I argue that many young men go through complicated processes of anxiety and fear in order to achieve a masculine heterosexual career and to prove that they are 'real men'. In that way the male participants I interviewed expressed the idea that in the cultural space of Cyprus masculine subject positions are the most powerful ones. The participants commented on the unthinkable sexual choice of loving someone from the same sex and concluded that choosing to stay in Cyprus and live a gay life would be very painful if not unthinkable. The article concludes that gender anxiety in Cyprus is expressed through the abjection of homosexuality.