Male and masculinization in folk tales of Anatolian Turkish

Gender-based studies in Turkey have increased acceleration in the last decade. This increase has led gender researchers to focus on women and femininity, and male studies remain in the background. Today, masculinity studies have become a necessary research area for both gender studies and examining the problems of hegemonic masculinities and other masculinities. Gender studies are applied to provide perspective within the discipline of folklore because it considers gender as a cultural construction process. The tale provides the opportunity to evaluate gender studies on an effective basis because it carries the execution of the context in an oral culture. Masculinity builds the dominant understanding of masculinity in patriarchal cultures and looks at the masculinities that are outside of it as the "other", destroys them, causes their visibility to weaken, and removes them from the context related to "masculinity". In the study, tales were examined in terms of masculinity and masculinity in the sample of "ElazigTales". As a result, it has been determined that the dominant masculinity understanding in the tales is built, especially in the area outside the home, male bodies are characterized according to this construction, the male body is drawn with a healthy and strong image due to this construction, and social acceptances do not approve the masculinity of the men left outside. In addition, it has been observed that women outside the home have begun to dress "like a man" and transform and become "masculinized" to create a space for themselves. At the beginning of the tale, the "other" men, who were outside the dominant masculinity perception, transformed in line with the dominant masculinity understanding in the flow of the tale.