This article is about selected issues in women’s sports, and above all the modest participation of women in so-called leisure sports. Statistical data concerning Poland and other countries (particularlyWestern Europe) is presented. The fashion for jogging, which is currently being seen in Poland as well, is analyzed. The author’s own research, done in 2013 and involving 865 participants in the Łódź ‘I Care About My Health’ Marathon, documents the smallness of women’s interest in participating in marathon struggles.On the basis of the information collected in the study’s survey questionnaires, it was possible for the author to create a socio-demographic portrait of the female Polish long-distance runner. It was also possible to note the sociologically interesting and elucidating difference between men and women in the sphere of training and in their running careers/biographies.

To date, the literature on gender and migration continues a longstanding bias towards female over male experiences. Similarly, research on Polish post-EU accession emigration has not sufficiently addressed the male experiences of migration. Drawing on 20 interviews with migrant men, this paper contributes to the existing research on the variety of masculinity practices and gendered migration from the Central and East-ern Europe. In so doing, it focuses on the relationship between masculinity, religion and migration in the context of migration from Poland to the UK. While religion is also rarely addressed in discussions on the post-EU accession migration of Poles, it proves to be important in shaping world views and influencing migrants’ positionalities in the new social context. Indeed, in migrants’ narratives, gender, religion and the nation intertwine with one another. Analysis shows how certain aspects of men’s social identities that were originally assets turn into burdens and how the men reach to religion, while distance from the institutional Church, to renegotiate their new positionality in order to avoid denigration or to support social recognition – which is especially important in the social reality shaped by Brexit.

The paper is based on the assumption that the balance of positive and negative, aggression and nurturing, or plus and minus results in the ultimate annihilation of the existence of both. The duality balance results in opposite reaction. The plus becomes minus and the minus becomes a plus. This is presented by the feminine becoming masculine, understood through Hofstede’s (2001) division into masculine and feminine cultures, by taking on the traditional male role, ultimately killing the feminine, being no-one and thus becoming death impersonated contrasted with assigning attributes to concepts fully understood through themselves. This will be based on the female character Arya Stark in J.R.R. Martin’s popular series “A Song of Ice and Fire” and its adaptation in “Game of Thrones.”

This paper addresses issues of feminism, masculinity, and the emotional culture of middle-class men who self-declare as feminists. The author discusses feminist theories on masculinity and its relations with femininity, critical theories of masculinity, and the role of emotional culture in the expression of masculinity. Feminists have proposed a dimorphic definition of feminism as a political movement and personal attitude critical of masculine domination. The critique of patriarchal, hegemonic masculinity has led feminists either to identify with “positive” masculinity or to reject masculinity for a post-gender narrative or material-discursive fact of “being a man,” which suggests an inadequacy of the sex/gender distinction in the description of gender identity. The identification with feminism allows men to avoid the crisis of traditional masculinity and the perspective of gendered emotions, as well as to gain insight into gendered determinants of emotional expression.