(SAGE Series On Men and Masculinity) Harry Brod, Michael Kaufman - Theorizing Masculinities-SAGE Publications, Inc (1994)

Theorizing Masculinities
R E S E A R C H ON M E N A N D MASCULINITIES SERIES
Series Editor:
M I C H A E L S. K I M M E L , SUNY Stony Brook
Contemporary research on men and masculinity, informed by recent feminist
thought and intellectual breakthroughs of women's studies and the women's
movement, treats masculinity not as a normative referent but as a problematic
gender construct. This series of interdisciplinary, edited volumes attempts to
understand men and masculinity through this lens, providing a comprehensive
understanding of gender and gender relationships in the contemporary world.
Published in cooperation with the Men's Studies Association, a Task Group of
the National Organization for Men Against Sexism.
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
Maxine Baca Zinn Robert Staples

Robert Brannon Bob Blauner
Cynthia Cockburn Harry Brod
Jeff Hearn R. W. Connell
Martin P. Levine Clyde Franklin II
William Marsiglio Gregory Herek
David Morgan Robert A. Lewis
Joseph H. Pleck Michael A. Messner
Volumes in this Series

1. Steve Craig (ed.)
MEN, MASCULINITY, AND THE MEDIA
2. Peter M. Nardi (ed.)
MEN'S FRIENDSHIPS
3. Christine L. Williams (ed.)
DOING WOMEN'S WORK: Men in Nontraditional Occupations
4. Jane C. Hood (ed.)
MEN, WORK, AND FAMILY
5. Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman (eds.)
THEORIZING MASCULINITIES
6. Edward H. Thompson, Jr. (ed.)
OLDER MEN'S LIVES
7. William Marsiglio (ed.)
FATHERHOOD
8. Donald Sabo and David Frederick Gordon (eds.)
MEN'S HEALTH AND ILLNESS
9. Cliff Cheng (ed.)
MASCULINITIES IN ORGANIZATIONS
10. Lee H. Bowker (ed.)
MASCULINITIES AND VIOLENCE
Edited by
Harry Brod
Michael Kaufman
Published in cooperation with the Men's Studies Association,

A Task Group of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism
SAGE Publications
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Copyright © 1994 by Sage Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Theorizing masculinities/edited by Harry Brod, Michael Kaufman.

p. cm.—(Research on men and masculinites series: 5)
"Published in cooperation with the Men's Studies Association, a
task group of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism."
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8039-4903-0.—ISBN 0-8039-4904-9 (pbk.)
1. Men's studies—Philosophy. 2. Masculinity (Psychology).
3. Men—Psychology. 4. Men—Attitudes. 5. Sexual orientation.
6. Feminist theory. I. Brod, Harry, 1951- . II. Kaufman,
Michael, 1951- . III. Men's Studies Association (U.S.). IV. Series.
HQ 1088.T55 1994
305.32—dc20 94-7490
98 99 00 01 02 10 9 8 7 6 5 4
Sage Production Editor: Diane S. Foster

Contents
Foreword vii
MICHAEL S. KIMMEL
1. Introduction 1
HARRY BROD and MICHAEL KAUFMAN
Part One: THEORIZING Masculinities
2. Psychoanalysis on Masculinity 11
R. W. CONNELL
3. Theorizing Masculinities in
Contemporary Social Science 39
SCOTT COLTRANE
4. Ethnographies and Masculinities 61
DON CONWAY-LONG
5. Some Thoughts on Some Histories
of Some Masculinities: Jews and Other Others 82
HARRY BROD
6. Theorizing Unities and Differences Between Men
and Between Masculinities 97
JEFF HEARN and DAVID L. COLLINSON
7. Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame,
and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity 119
MICHAELS. KIMMEL
8. Men, Feminism, and Men's Contradictory
Experiences of Power 142
MICHAEL KAUFMAN
Part Two: Theorizing MASCULINITIES
9. Theater of War: Combat, the Military,
and Masculinities 165
DAVID H. J. MORGAN
10. The Making of Black English Masculinities 183
MAIRTIN MAC AN GHAILL
11. Gender Displays and Men's Power:
The "New Man" and the Mexican Immigrant Man 200
PIERRETTE HONDAGNEU-SOTELO
and MICHAEL A. MESSNER
12. Postmodernism and the Interrogation
of Masculinity 219
DAVID S. GUTTERMAN
13. The Male Body and Literary Metaphors
for Masculinity 239
ARTHUR FLANNIGAN-SAINT-AUBIN
14. Weekend Warriors: The New Men's Movement 259
MICHAEL S. KIMMEL and MICHAEL KAUFMAN
Name Index 289
Subject Index 295
About the Contributors 300
Foreword
"Hate between men comes from cutting ourselves off from each other,"
wrote the great Viennese philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1980, p. 46).
"Because we don't want anyone else to look inside us, since it's not such
a pretty sight in there." This fifth volume in the Sage Series on Research
on Men and Masculinities invites us to look "in there," inside the defini-
tions of masculinity. The essays in this volume tell us less about what to
think about masculinity and more about how to think about it.
Ironically, virtually all the authors are, themselves, men. For decades,
it was feminist women who had been theorizing about the meanings of
masculinity—and with good reason: Men's efforts to live up to some
vaguely defined notions of masculinity had some disastrous consequences
for women. Institutionally, women lived in a world in which men held
virtually all the positions of power. Interpersonally, individual women felt
powerless to effect the kinds of changes in their lives they wanted.
Feminism thus proposed a syllogism: Women were not in power and
did not feel powerful; men were in power and therefore must feel power-
ful. But this symmetry between women's powerlessness at the aggregate,
social level and at the individual, interpersonal level, however, was not
matched by an equally symmetrical relationship for men to the idea of
power. Sure, it was empirically quite true that men occupied virtually all
positions of power, and thus it could be accurately said that men were in
vn
viii THEORIZING MASCULINITIES
power. But this power did not translate to a feeling of being powerful at
the individual level.
In fact, when the feminist analysis was presented to men, they often
would respond as if the speaker were from another planet. "What do you
mean men are in power?" they would ask incredulously. "I have no power
at all. My wife bosses me around, my kids boss me around, my boss bosses
me around. I'm completely powerless!"
This helps to explain why many men seem to be looking for power rather
than reveling in their experience of it—the enormous resonance among men
of those disingenuous antifeminist arguments for "men's rights"; the lure
of contemporary men's retreats that provide men an encounter with deep,
powerful masculinity through ritual, drumming, and chanting; or even
those Wall Street yuppies eating power breakfasts in their power ties.
This volume brings to interested readers a new generation of theorists
of masculinity, thinkers who theorize masculinities from the inside, as it
were, from that disjunction between the aggregate social power of men
and men's individual experiences of powerlessness. To be sure, they do
not legitimate those individual experiences as somehow empirically true
because they are truly felt. Individual experience must always be placed
within its appropriate social and historical context. But these theorists take
the disjunction as a starting point, and often a framing device, for theo-
rizing about men.
In so doing, they raise inevitable questions. Questions such as "which
men" are to be theorized? A wide variety of the essays deal with different
configurations of masculinity based on differing social locations. What
analytic perspectives shed the most revealing light on the construction of
masculinities? Some authors theorize masculinities from the center and
others theorize from the margins. Some theorize from the relations be-
tween or among men, some from the relationship between women and
men, and still others in the specific relationships between heterosexual
men and homosexual men. Some utilize Marxian or Freudian themes,
while others employ distinctly postmodern analytic principles to make
men sensible.
By creating these new lenses through which to view masculinities the
editors of this volume invite us to fashion a new angle of vision on the
construction and meanings of masculinities. They join in the wider femi-
nist project of making masculinities visible—even, at times, to men
themselves. In this way they contribute to the project outlined by James
Baldwin (1962, p. 21), himself no stranger to feeling marginalized by
traditional configurations of masculine power: "We, with love, shall force
Foreword ix
our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality
and begin to change it."
MICHAEL S. KIMMEL
Series Editor
References
Baldwin, J. (1962). The fire next time. New York: Dell.

Wittgenstein, L. (1980). Culture and value. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1
Introduction
HARRY B R O D
MICHAEL KAUFMAN
Each of us has previously written or edited two books on men and

masculinities: Harry Brod's edited volumes The Making of Masculinities:
The New Men's Studies (1987) and A Mensch Among Men: Explorations in
Jewish Masculinity (1988) and Michael Kaufman's edited volume Beyond
Patriarchy: Essays by Men on Pleasure, Power, and Change (1987) and his
book Cracking the Armour: Power, Pain, and the Lives of Men (1993). But
neither of us has coedited a book before. That we feel the need to do so now
is certainly testimony to the growth of the field and the growing difficulty of
one person being capable of encompassing within one's purview the wide
range of topics needing to be addressed. Perhaps it is also indicative of
the cooperative culture that is emerging in profeminist men's work, in
both intellectual and organizational efforts.
Though we have found through working together that our views of
politics and scholarship are at least compatible, if not in many areas
identical, we had each set somewhat different agendas for our earlier
books. The Making of Masculinities intended to delineate a scholarly field
of inquiry, interrogating different disciplines and approaches for new feminist
understandings of masculinities. Though primarily written by men, it had
some women contributors, too. Beyond Patriarchy aimed to be a more direct
political intervention by men, many of them academics to be sure, but
nonetheless men engaging in a more direct encounter with contemporary
culture to further a feminist agenda for change. Though both books were
committed to both scholarship and activism, they made different choices
about foreground and background.
1
2 THEORIZING MASCULINITIES
In this book we wanted to retain and further develop what we thought

best about our choices of focus in our earlier books. We wanted to keep a
simultaneous focus on both scholarship and activism and, indeed, to
explore their interconnections around the thorny issues involving feminist
work on men, performed mostly, but not exclusively, by men. Fortunately,
another one of our aims for this book dovetailed perfectly with this one.
We wanted the book to represent a sort of state-of-the-art look at theoriz-
ing masculinities in what seemed to us a new, second wave of work in this
area. Brod had ended his introduction to The Making of Masculinities with
the words "My greatest hope for this volume of essays in the new men's
studies is that it be a stepping stone for a newer men's studies." One of
the hallmarks of this "newer men's studies," we believe, is precisely a
greater awareness of the relationship between theory and practice in both
activism and scholarship. Many of the chapters in this volume explore
these issues.
One thing that should not be surprising is that most of the contributors
to this volume are men who have been active in the profeminist men's
movement. For some this has meant the organization of activist groups
working on issues of men's violence, supporting women's freedom of
choice on abortion, or challenging homophobia and developing a gay-
affirmative culture. For others it has meant such activities as taking
antisexist initiatives into the school system. It has meant working to
develop umbrella groups or coordinating organizations doing political
action in all the countries we come from, and it often means working in
men's support groups. In some cases it has meant encouraging the devel-
opment of a scholarship by men that is committed to research, writing,
and teaching that is profeminist, gay affirmative, and dedicated to the
enhancement of men's lives.
Perhaps this interest in the relation of theory and practice dates us,
accurately for the two editors and for most of the contributors as well, as
children of the 1960s. After all, the 1990s often seems an intellectual era
in which the world of theory all too often takes on a life completely
inaccessible to all but a handful of people and in which the love of clever
word play seems to have more attraction than using our knowledge to
analyze the problems that surround us in order to effect social change.
The real issue, though, is that the existence of the chapters in this
volume results not from the contemplation by men of feminist ideas in the
abstract, but rather, in the case of those of us who are male, from our
encounter with these ideas in the context of our own processes of change,
perhaps from our experiences in men's support groups, perhaps from
Introduction 3
looking at our own ideas and behavior, perhaps from being challenged in
relationships, friendships, and work, or perhaps from our experiences
doing public education work to reach other men. In all these things, we
have been confronted with the necessity of:
• Learning to listen to the voices of those groups whose presence and

knowledge have been suppressed, as a result of their color, sex, sexual
orientation, class, and so forth
• Looking at our lives and experiences as the lives and experiences of men,
rather than maintaining the patriarchal arrogance that our lives are the lives
of generic human beings
• Seeing how we and our brothers get hooked into the privileges and psy-
chological life of a patriarchal society
• Feeling the enormous weight of homophobia and heterosexism in our lives,
regardless of our own sexual orientation, and feeling similarly the dynam-
ics of other forms of oppression
• Identifying the sticking points that make change so difficult
• Sensing the diverse experiences and diverse articulations of sexism among
our brothers of varying classes, races, sexual orientations, ages, physical
appearances and abilities, ethnicities, religions, and nationalities
And so the notion of committed research is not research committed to

a single doctrine or the production of ideas that will get our women friends
nodding in appreciation. Rather it is a recognition of diversity: of the need
for diverse lines of inquiry and of diverse perspectives on a range of
experiences within the broad framework of feminist analyses. For the
male contributors, the sense of commitment within our research is also a
recognition that any theoretical challenge is a personal challenge for the
simple reason that the objects of analysis are our own lives as men and the
intricate relations of power into which we have entered with the men and
women around us. In practical terms this means drawing on examples from
our own lives—something we always do in terms of our own processes of
inquiry, something we sometimes do in terms of the presentation of our
ideas in these articles. It means grappling with our responsibility to
challenge an oppressive status quo—in the realm of ideas, in relation to
the structures and institutions in which we find ourselves, and in our
personal lives—while avoiding the pitfalls of a politics of guilt and blame.
All in all, we hope that the nature of our commitment to change does not
saddle us with a set of preconceived assumptions that must then be proved,
but rather that our intellectual inquiries will be freed from the dogmas,
the prejudices, and the common sense notions handed down to us from
the millennia of patriarchal life and culture.
Our title highlights other issues we wish to explore. This is a book about
the methods, frameworks, and approaches for the theorization of mascu-
linities. It is concerned not so much with documenting new empirical
findings but with raising questions about what it really means to theorize
masculinities through diverse modes and methods. How does one really
go about placing men and their institutions at the center of an analysis
without replicating the patriarchal biases of previous studies of men? A
number of the authors here, and many others, have for quite some time
now insisted that the difference lay in how one theorized men and mascu-
linities, that the new studies we were producing and looking for were
about men as men, rather than as generic human beings whose gender went
unnoticed and untheorized or at least undertheorized.
Such studies are further differentiated from earlier and nonfeminist
ones, and from much of the more popular contemporary genre of books
about men, because they incorporate the fundamental feminist insight that
gender is a system of power and not just a set of stereotypes or observable
differences between women and men. As soon as we enter into studies of
masculinities as studies of relations and manifestations of unequal power
and the internalization and reenactment of those relations, a wide range
of difficult questions emerges. Such questions are the object of the essays
in this volume.
Among these questions, although perhaps often more implicit than
explicit, is the question of how the fields of women's studies, gay studies,
and studies of people of color, as well as new and traditional approaches
to the studies of class, can enter into the study of men as men. What can
be the impact of the many new methodologies generated in these and other
fields that place at the center of analysis persons and practices previously
taken for granted?
One aspect, therefore, of an emerging second wave of critical studies
on men and masculinities is the clear recognition that theorization con-
cerns the elaboration and articulation of relations of power. The mention
of sexual orientation, color, class, and so forth points to the other term in
our title, highlighting that this volume is also about masculinities, not just
about theorizing. The second aspect of a new wave of critical men's
studies is the ever-growing recognition that we cannot study masculinity
in the singular, as if the stuff of man were a homogeneous and unchanging
thing. Rather, we wish to emphasize the plurality and diversity of men's
experiences, attitudes, beliefs, situations, practices, and institutions, along
Introduction 5
lines of race, class, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, region,

physical appearance, able-bodiedness, mental ability, and various other
categories with which we describe our lives and experiences.
Although we reject the establishment of any hierarchy of oppression or
insight among various subgroups, it is nonetheless the case that as the dis-
course about masculinities has emerged, gay studies has come to occupy a
very central place. It is important to understand the nature of the special
status of gay studies within men's studies and its attendant rationales both
because of the importance of gay studies itself and because examining this
issue will help to understand the more general problem of what is involved
in fully integrating the study of one category, such as gender, with others,
for example, race, class, and so forth. Although some argue that integrat-
ing diversity is a move toward political accommodation that takes one
away from scholarly standards, we believe it is a matter of making necessary
commitments that are both scholarly and political. Scholarship here re-
mains committed, but not doctrinaire.
One approach maintains that what is involved in seeing gay studies as
central to men's studies is a structural claim about the social construction
of masculinities, a claim that heterosexism is more fundamental to the
dynamics of sexism than is, for example, racism or classism. Another
approach, in contrast, holds that an epistemological rather than structural
claim is in evidence here, the idea being not that issues of sexual orienta-
tion are necessarily any more central to understanding gender than are
issues of, for example, race or class, but that gay men are socially situated
in such a way that they have particularly noteworthy insights into the
social construction of masculinities across the board, and therefore their
perspectives must be especially highlighted. Still another view of the
matter holds that the special role of gay studies in men's studies is neither
structural nor epistemological but rather historical. On this line of reason-
ing gay perspectives merit special consideration because various histori-
cal forces have put gay issues on the contemporary agendas for change as
well as for scholarship in a particularly crucial and pivotal way. This
approach yields a more explicitly political rationale.
In the work of any one individual one often, of course, finds these
three perspectives present in various variations and combinations.
From various perspectives and for various sorts of reasons, then, the
centrality of gay studies within men's studies emerges neither as a case
of granting most favored status to one group nor as a shunting aside of
other concerns, but rather as a necessary component of any inquiry into
men and masculinities.
Although we too set out to produce a book from a perspective that gave
extensive coverage to gay studies within its consideration of men's stud-
ies, we found that when we assembled the chapters in this volume we did
not have as substantial a representation of gay studies as we had hoped
for. We attribute this to the way academic publishing has become institu-
tionalized. Gay studies had established its own journals, conferences,
caucuses, homes in various scholarly presses, and the rest of the apparatus
of academic publishing significantly prior to what has come to be called
men's studies. These venues have by now established a prior claim and
loyalty among gay studies scholars. Thus, although we found an enthusi-
astic response to our solicitation of chapters from scholars who identify
their work as being in men's studies or gender studies or the critique of
masculinity or whatever other appellation finds favor in their eyes, we
found scholars who identified with the field of gay studies repeatedly
telling us that other journals or books already had claim to their current
work. We regret we were therefore not able to include more of their work
in this volume, despite our commitments to integrating gay and straight
men's studies.
We found the same phenomenon at work in other groups we wanted to
have well represented in this volume. For example, although a number of
the chapters concern other cultures, they are written by scholars from the
Anglophone cultures with which we are most familiar—the authors all
currently work in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, or
Australia. Although there is some representation of racial diversity, there
is not as much as we would have liked, nor is there the number of women
contributors we had hoped for, again often because scholars in these areas
had their respective communities making the same prior claims on their
efforts as we found among gay studies scholars. Our efforts have made us
aware how far we still are from realizing the type of inclusive scholarship
we would find ideal. Our hope is that this book becomes part of a dialogue
among all these communities in order to establish more inclusive and
integrated communities of theorists and activists.
It remains to provide the reader with a guide to the chapters that follow.
This book is divided into two parts. Though ail the chapters partake, to
one degree or another, of our dual project of engaging both in a sort of
metatheoretical discussion about how one theorizes masculinities and in an
actual examination of certain configurations of masculinities, the chapters
in the first part, which we call "THEORIZING Masculinities," emphasize
the former, while those in the second part, which we call 'Theorizing
MASCULINITIES" emphasize the latter. In the first part of this book, the
Introduction 7
reader will find critical examinations of the conceptualizations of mascu-

linities in various fields, primarily within psychoanalysis, social science,
anthropology, history, sociology, and Marxism, while in the second part
one will find critical considerations of, among other topics, feminism,
postmodernism, homophobia, the mythopoetic men's movement, black
English masculinities, Mexican immigrant men, steelworkers, profemin-
ist men, Superman, and the military.
R. W. Connell's "Psychoanalysis on Masculinity" traces the history of
thinking about masculinity in psychoanalysis, looking at the development
of Freud's own views, especially regarding the classical formulation of
the Oedipus complex, Adler's concept of masculine protest, Jung's arche-
typal theory, critical debates triggered by Klein and Horney, the Frankfurt
school, and more recent radical and feminist psychoanalytic theories.
Scott Coltrane's "Theorizing Masculinities in Contemporary Social
Science" attempts to synthesize micro- and macroapproaches to the study
of gender, reflects on recent debates about essentialism, looks at cross-
cultural studies of father-child relationships and women's status in non-
industrial societies, and considers current methodological debates about
feminism, postmodernism, and standpoint theories in the sciences as they
impinge on questions about profeminist men's studies.
Don Conway-Long's "Ethnographies and Masculinities" examines an-
thropological studies of men, focusing on concepts of honor and shame
in the Mediterranean, alternative sex-gender systems in the Pacific, the
role of ritual, and the practice of daily lives.
Harry Brod's "Some Thoughts on Some Histories of Some Masculinities:
Jews and Other Others" reexamines the concept of "masculinities" and uses
an examination of Jewish masculinity to consider the dynamics of analyzing
nonhegemonic groups of men.
Jeff Hearn and David L. Collinson's "Theorizing Unities and Differ-
ences Between Men and Between Masculinities" argues for an explicit
theorization of both "men" and "masculinities" as categories that are
produced by men and that describe certain men, their relations, discourses,
and practices. The chapter emphasizes the need to recognize both unities
and differences among men and masculinities, thereby providing a frame-
work for considering different types of men without diluting attention to
the power of men.
Michael S. Kimmel's "Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame, and
Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity" looks critically at the
treatment of men in classical social theory and conventional histories. He
argues for new conceptualizations of masculinity as power relations, as
the flight from the feminine, as a homosocial enactment, and as homopho-

bia, the latter itself then considered as a cause of sexism, heterosexism,
and racism.
Michael Kaufman's "Men, Feminism, and Men's Contradictory Expe-
riences of Power" develops his notion of men's contradictory experiences
of power and uses this as an analytical tool for understanding the possi-
bility of men's embrace of feminism.
In Part Two, David H. J. Morgan's "Theater of War: Combat, the
Military, and Masculinities" observes that war and the military tradition-
ally have had the strongest associations with masculinity and the wider
gender order. In these sites the male body is linked to the body politic.
Although modern societies have not eroded the links between masculinity,
the military, and violence, they have, however, rendered these linkages
more complex, multistranded, and contradictory. This chapter makes the
case for a more finely tuned comparative analysis, exploring the bound-
edness of military cultures and the pervasiveness of military values in
order to disentangle some of these complex strands of interconnection.
Mairtin Mac an Ghaill's "The Making of Black English Masculinities"
critically examines how a group of young Afro-Caribbean male students
negotiate their masculinity within the context of an English secondary
school. He focuses on interactions between white male teachers and the
subcultural responses of a highly marginalized and alienated group of
young black men, exploring how their different perspectives help to shape
black student masculinities.
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Michael A. Messner's "Gender Dis-
plays and Men's Power: The 'New Man' and the Mexican Immigrant
Man" argues that images in popular media and scholarly writings of
the lives of class-privileged white men, including the mythopoetic
men's movement and the "New Father," and of Mexican immigrant men
distort the realities of these men's lives through race and class biases.
The chapter argues that a critical/feminist sociology of men and mas-
culinity should decenter and problematize hegemonic masculinity by
proceeding from the standpoints of marginalized and subordinated
masculinities.
David S. Gutterman's "Postmodernism and the Interrogation of Mas-
culinity" examines the implications of postmodern conceptions of subjectiv-
ity on theoretical and political challenges to normative masculinity. It
discusses the ways that the question of gay male gender identity and the
Introduction 9
deconstructive efforts of profeminist men illustrate the contingency of

masculinity and address potential strategies for social change.
Arthur Flannigan-Saint-Aubin's "The Male Body and Literary Meta-
phors for Masculinity" interrogates some of the contradictions of the
phallic metaphor of masculinity by suggesting an alternative testicular or
testerical metaphor, an example of which can paradoxically be found in
the character of Superman/Clark Kent.
Michael S. Kimmel and Michael Kaufman's "Weekend Warriors: The
New Men's Movement" challenges the theoretical framework of the most
widely known book about men to appear in recent years. It takes issue
with the anthropological, psychological, historical, and political assump-
tions of Robert Bly and other writers and activists working within the
mythopoetic framework.
This volume, then, explores a number of the emerging themes, con-
cerns, and debates in the critical study of men and masculinities. Included
among these is first, as previously discussed, the relationship between
critical theorization and the practical activities of challenging patriarchal
structures, behaviors, and identities. Another is the conflict between using
versus critiquing traditional disciplines and structures of knowledge—
that is, the extent to which inherited academic discourses and disciplines
themselves perpetuate patriarchal theory and practice versus the extent to
which they can be used as analytical tools of subversion.
Third is a tension between those who stress the need to integrate
diversity to produce a more inclusive theory versus those who suggest that
a recognition of diversity requires abandoning the quest for a single grand
theory of masculinities. A related issue is which, if any, masculinities—
including subordinated masculinities—are more central to the theoriza-
tion of masculinities or, alternatively, does any privileging reproduce
structures of dominance and hierarchy?
A final concern to which we draw attention is the status of men's subjec-
tivities and the continuities and discontinuities between men's structural
positions in hierarchies of power and men's own felt experiences.
Theorizing Masculinities, as a whole, does not attempt to resolve any
of these conflicts and debates. Indeed, a number of its chapters only
implicitly explore these tensions. We hope, though, that in its totality
Theorizing Masculinities is a contribution to understanding not only how
we can understand the diverse identities and practices of half of humanity
but also how we can contribute toward ending domination by men.
Acknowledgments
Several of the brief summaries of the chapters are drawn from abstracts
provided by the authors themselves, for which we thank them. We would
particularly like to thank Michael S. Kimmel for first suggesting we edit
this volume and for his invaluable assistance in all stages of its production.
References
Brod, H. (Ed.). (1987). The making of masculinities: The new men's studies. Boston: Allen
& Unwin.
Brod, H. (Ed.). (1988). A mensch among men: Explorations in Jewish masculinity.
Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press.
Kaufman, M. (Ed.). (1987). Beyond patriarchy: Essays by men on pleasure, power, and
change. Toronto: Oxford University Press of Canada.
Kaufman, M. (1993). Cracking the armour: Power, pain, and the lives of men. Toronto:
Viking Canada.
PART ONE
THEORIZING Masculinities
2
Psychoanalysis on Masculinity
R. W. C O N N E L L
Psychoanalysis has a paradoxical position in discussions of masculinity.

The Freudian movement made the first serious attempt at scientific re-
search on masculinity and explanation of its major patterns. Yet its
findings have been largely neglected in the current revival of social-
scientific interest in masculinity. As all who have read Freud's texts know,
psychoanalysis was the product of an incisive intelligence and a profound
commitment to science. Yet psychoanalysis gave birth to the confused
irrationalism that now shoulders aside all claims of science in popular
discussions of the "deep masculine."
Psychoanalysis on the one hand has enriched almost every current of
radical thought in the 20th century, from Marxism, surrealism, and exis-
tentialism to anticolonialism, feminism, and gay liberation. On the other
hand, it has evolved into a medical technology of surveillance and con-
formity, acting as a gender police and a bulwark of conservative gender
ideology.
My intention is to explore these paradoxes by tracing the history of
psychoanalytic ideas about masculinity (with some attention to their
connections to psychoanalytic practice) from Freud's first formulations
up to the present. Given the diversity within psychoanalysis, this can only
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This chapter began in a project undertaken 10 years ago with Tim
Carrigan, whose help I gratefully acknowledge. Pam Benton and Mike Donaldson have
provided more recent criticism and help. The initial work was supported by a grant from
the Australian Research Grants Committee. There are, of course, many ways of approaching
psychoanalysis. I have described mine in an essay on Freud (Connell, 1983), arguing for
a social and dialectical view of psychoanalysis.
11
be an outline history. But I hope there is enough detail to establish that

despite bizarre twists in the story, psychoanalysis remains a vital resource
for the understanding of masculinity, and that some of the best leads it
provides are found well back in its history.
Classical Psychoanalysis: The Oedipus Complex
Freud did not set out to do research on gender. He was a doctor, with a
middle-class practice in Vienna, specializing in what were taken to be
disorders of the nerves. He sought a psychology able to account for "neuro-
ses" and a means of treating them. Within the cultural ferment of the turn-of-
the-century European intelligentsia, however, his medical reasoning led to
revolutionary conclusions: to a sweeping theory of sexuality, to the concepts
of repression and the dynamic unconscious, and to the method psycho-
analysis, hyphenated as it used to be spelled in English, that was both a
remarkable tool of research and a debatable method of therapy.
All of this brought him, step by step, to the issues of gender that in other
forms were being heatedly debated in advanced political and cultural
circles. By the application of the new method Freud, more than anyone
else, showed the artifice within the apparently natural characters of
women and men, and made an inquiry into the way they were composed
both possible and, in a sense, necessary.
Freud nowhere wrote a formal account of masculinity, though he wrote
two dubious papers on femininity. To an extent, then, I have to reconstruct
an inarticulate current of thought. Yet the materials are abundant, because
Freud never stopped wrestling with issues about gender. One can distin-
guish three moments in the evolution of his ideas on masculinity.
The first was contained in the initial statements of psychoanalytic
methods and concepts. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900/1953a) set out
Freud's basic principles: the continuity between normal and neurotic
mental life, the concepts of the unconscious and of repression, and the
language of interpretation that allowed unconscious mental processes to
be read through dreams and symptoms. The Oedipus complex, "the fateful
combination of love for the one parent and simultaneous hatred for the
other as a rival" (Freud, 1931, p. 229), was introduced only in a guarded
manner in this book. But in the next few years it was proclaimed the key
moment in psychosexual development. What precipitated the oedipal
crisis, for boys, was identified as rivalry with the father and terror of
castration. These ideas were crystallized in the Little Hans case history
Psychoanalysis on Masculinity 13
(1909/1955a). Freud now had a definite idea of a formative moment in

masculinity, and the dynamics of a formative relationship. The "Rat Man"
case history (Freud, 1909/1955b) confirmed these ideas and showed how
the father complex played out in an adult obsessional neurosis.
The Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905/1953b), an abstract
of early psychoanalytic thinking and the classic of modern sexology,
offered the idea that humans were constitutionally bisexual, as a way of
thinking about sexual inversion. Homosexuality, Freud argued, is not a
simple gender switch: "A large proportion of male inverts retain the
mental quality of masculinity." So there is an important distinction be-
tween the choice of a sexual object, that is, the structure of one's emotional
attachments, and one's own character traits. (This distinction is still not
always grasped in discussions of gender.)
In the second and third essays Freud offered a narrative of psychosexual
development from infancy to adulthood, suggesting among other things
that boys' and girls' sexuality diverges sharply only in adolescence. The
explicit comments on masculinity were few, but there was a strong
implicit argument. The general theme of the Three Essays was that adult
sexuality is constructed by a long and conflict-ridden process, in which
original elements are combined and transformed in extraordinary ways.
The process may take unexpected turnings (perversion), seize up (fixa-
tion), or fall apart (regression) at any step along the way.
It follows that adult masculinity, as an organization of character around
sexual desire, must be a complex, and in some ways precarious, develop-
mental construction. It is not given a priori in the nature of men, as
European culture generally assumed. It is not wholly defined by the
active/passive polarity that Freud initially saw as underlying sexual and
mental life, which in due course became the basis of Adlerian and Jungian
theories of masculinity.
What I might call the architectural approach to gender, a focus on the
process of construction, reached its peak in the longest and most polished
of Freud's case histories, the "Wolf Man" study. This recorded the analysis
of a Russian aristocrat that lasted from early 1910 to the eve of the First
World War, and its central themes concern masculinity. It marked a second
stage in Freud's thinking on the subject.
Freud introduced the issue of masculinity near the end of a long chapter
on his patient's famous dream about white wolves, while reflecting on the
early history of the little boy's sexual development. He toyed with an
equation between activity/passivity and masculinity/femininity, suggest-
ing that the latter was usually superimposed on the former at about the
oedipal stage. But he noted that in the crisis of the boy's emotional relation
to his father, the feminine aim in relation to the father was repressed
because of the fear of castration: "In short, a clear protest on the part of
his masculinity!" (Freud, 1918/1955c, p. 47).
Apre-oedipal narcissistic masculinity was thus revealed, strong enough to
force the repression of the strongest current in the boy's desires. Through
a long argument, far too complex to summarize here, Freud pursued the
psychological consequences of this archaic current of emotion, of the
homosexual desire repressed in the oedipal crisis itself, and of an identi-
fication with women and jealousy of the mother that coexisted with the
other currents.
In this case study Freud went a long way beyond the formulas of the
Three Essays. Here he produced the first really detailed map of the
contradictions andfissureswithin an adult man's personality. He showed an
adult heterosexual masculinity underpinned (and undermined) by several
contradictory layers of unconscious emotion. This case study stands as a
challenge to all later research on masculinity. No account of the subject
will do that has not absorbed the Wolf Man's lessons about the tensions
within masculine character and about its vicissitudes through a life history,
the turnings, strategies, and negotiations involved.
To recognize Freud's genius as a clinical observer is not to say he
grasped the theoretical consequences of everything he saw. The Wolf Man
study was accompanied by a frustrated worrying at the idea of masculin-
ity/femininity. Freud kept coming back to the active/passive polarity
although obviously dissatisfied with it. He remarked about this time that
the concepts of masculinity and femininity "are among the most confused
that occur in science" (1905/1953b, p. 219, n. 1, added to the text in 1915).
This comment was followed by a distinction between psychological, bio-
logical, and sociological concepts of masculinity/femininity. But he could not
get these definitions together.
The Wolf Man study itself reveals the underlying problem Freud could
not resolve. The narcissistic masculinity predating the oedipal crisis
implies a powerful cathexis of male genitals, but there is nothing in the
particular case that would account for this. Ultimately the boy failed to
acquire the consolidated masculinity to which he was, so to speak,
patriarchally entitled—the failure that brought the grown man to Freud's
door as a patient.
Both the failure and what it was a failure in are social. The particular
configuration of the Wolf Man's childhood milieu, a scene of elusive
desires and attenuated relationships, made it impossible for him to settle
on an acceptable object of desire. But the issues go far beyond one

household. Castration anxiety, indeed the whole oedipal constellation,
rests on a cultural exaltation of masculinity and overvaluing of the penis.
This was clear enough to Adler at the time and is basic in modern
feminist psychoanalysis. But Freud was engaged then in a polemic
against Adler's ideas, and indeed the point was made difficult to see
simply by the way he set up the analysis as a clinical case study. The
medical approach both gave him the materials of the problem and pre-
vented its resolution.
The Wolf Man study and the theoretical reflections it spurred, but did
not resolve, were the closest that Freud came to spelling out a theory of
masculinity. There was, however, something more to come, a moment in
the development of his ideas when another perspective on masculinity
became possible, even half-emerged.
This chance was provided by the structural theory of personality he
developed in the years around 1920, particularly by the concept of the
superego. This, in his mature theory, is the agency in personality that
judges, censors, and presents ideals. It is formed in the aftermath of the
Oedipus complex by internalized parental prohibitions (Laplanche &
Pontalis, 1973, pp. 435-438; Silverman, 1986).
Freud initially used this concept to fill out his narrative of individual
development and character formation. But he began to see it as having a
gendered character, being crucially a product of the child's relation with
the father. The mechanisms that produce it, he concluded, are clearer and
more decisive in the case of boys than of girls; this became a key idea in
his late writings on femininity. Most striking, in Civilization and Its
Discontents and other late writings about culture and religion, he began to
see a sociological dimension in the concept of the superego: "Civilization,
therefore, obtains mastery over the individual's dangerous desire for aggres-
sion by weakening and disarming it and by setting up an agency within
him to watch over it, like a garrison in a conquered city" (Freud, 1930/1961,
pp. 123-124).
This line of thought remained speculative; Freud never became ac-
quainted with the methods of social research. But its implications are
profound. For here is the germ of a theory of the patriarchal organization
of culture and the mechanism of its transmission between generations
through the psychodynamics that construct masculinity. To develop the
idea would be to tilt further toward social determinism than Freud ever
did. Later writers on masculinity have moved exactly in that direction but
have mostly abandoned Freud's theorizing about the superego.
So Freud opened more doors than he walked through. But the leads he
gave for the analysis of masculinity were remarkable enough. Beginning with
conventional, essentialist ideas about a masculine/feminine, active/passive
polarity in emotional life (a conception he could never quite shake off),
he moved on to provide a method for the investigation, a guiding concept
for it, a first map of the development of masculinity, and a warning about
the limits of the idea. I will finish this discussion with some notes on each
of these.
The method "psycho-analysis" itself means intensive study, one person
at a time. It involves the decoding of personal meanings in an extraordi-
narily fine-grained way. (Freud, unlike many Freudians, did not go in for
prepackaged symbolism.) It requires a strenuous balancing of concern for
the person and critique of what the person says—an affectionate and curious
skepticism balanced by a sense of the pain and poetry of life.
This has not proved an easy stance to sustain. In medical psychoanalysis
it has usually been converted into a formula of professional detachment, in
which the answers are in principle known in advance. Consequently, the method
has ceased to be a means of discovery. In psychoanalytic cultural and social
theory, the method has been dropped and only the interpretive formulas kept.
Theorists debate the Law of the Father or the significance of sublimation
without two cases to rub together.
The concept of the unconscious is still far from universally accepted;
Freud's formulations of the idea hardly represent the state of the art now.
What his formulations did, however, was signal the presence of powerful
motives and defenses that cannot be easily acknowledged. This is impor-
tant in getting past concepts of masculinity as simple rationality or simple
self-interest; psychoanalysis makes one aware of how complex personal
"interests" may be. Modern analyses of homophobia depend on this point.
With the idea of the unconscious, Freud introduced a concept of layers in
personality, which can be in contradiction with each other—indeed, usu-
ally are. Each personality is a shade-filled, complex structure, not a
transparent, homogeneous whole.
The map Freud offered was his account of psychosexual development,
centering on the Oedipus complex, a map he kept updating and redrawing
to the end of his life. This map was not the list of "stages" that later child
psychology took psychoanalysis to be (which I learned, as an undergradu-
ate, like a litany: oral, anal, genital, latency . . .). It was, rather, the script
of a drama, with characters (body parts, family members, parts of the
mind), a plot line (pre-oedipal attachments, the oedipal crisis, identifica-
tion), and a good deal of suspense about the denouement. Freud was
highly aware of the different paths the plot could take because people
arrived as his patients when their dramas had in some way gone awry. This
led him directly to the view that different adult personalities were the
outcomes of different paths of development, not different starting points.
For this reason he rejected the notion of qualitative difference between
homosexual and heterosexual people, such as the concepts of biological
difference and a "third sex" that were being produced in his day by
Magnus Hirschfeld and others in the early homosexual rights movement
(Wolff, 1986).
This sense of immense variety in adult outcomes being produced by the
complex combination and recombination of a few initial ingredients also
underpinned the point Freud most insistently made about masculinity: that
it never exists in a pure state, as the whole being of a man. Femininity,
too, is always part of a man's character, whether in the form of bisexual
object choices, a passive aim in sexuality, or identification with the
mother. It was a strong sense of the truth and importance of this insight,
I think, that kept Freud playing with the idea of constitutional bisexuality
long after it had ceased to perform a useful function. It was this critical
and disturbing insight that was thrown out with the bathwater when later,
more conservative, psychoanalysts explicitly abandoned the theory of
bisexuality.
The Road Not Taken: Masculine Protest
Freud's early psychoanalytic writings were received with a mixture of

enthusiasm and hatred that is hard to grasp today. He was both vilified as
a kind of pornographer and hailed as a medical genius. Within a few years
a movement had formed around him, whose core members were doctors
who had adopted his therapeutic methods. Associations were founded,
journals launched, congresses held. This movement became the medium of
theoretical debate over Freud's ideas. It also rapidly became (partly in
response to the vilification from outside) a means of social control,
insisting on orthodoxy as the price of membership. The intellectual history
of psychoanalysis therefore became a history of splits.
The first of these involved Alfred Adler, a socialist doctor who had
become convinced of the importance of social factors in disease before
meeting Freud and who became for a time his most active supporter. Adler
was president of the Psychoanalytic Society in Vienna at the time of his

clash with Freud in early 1911. Some minutes of the key meetings
survived, giving off a strong odor of unspoken anger, whether personal or
political is not clear (Jones, 1958, pp. 148-149). At all events the occasion
of the split was a series of papers read to the society by Adler, and it is a
remarkable fact that the centerpiece of these papers was a theory of
masculinity.
Adler's argument started from the opposition of masculinity and femi-
ninity that was found in the Three Essays. Adler, too, treated this as a basic
polarity in mental life. He differed immediately, however, in stressing that
the feminine side of the polarity is devalued by the culture. Children of
both sexes, being in a position of weakness vis-^-vis adults, are thus forced
to inhabit the feminine position; they necessarily develop a sense of
femininity and doubts about their ability to achieve masculinity. The
"childish value judgments" formed about this masculine/feminine polar-
ity persist as a central motive in later life.
Submission and striving for independence coexist in the child's life, setting
up an internal contradiction between masculinity and femininity. "This
usually initiates a compromise"; in normal development some kind of balance
is struck. The adult personality is thus a balance under tension.
But if there is weakness (and Adler had the idea that neurosis often was
triggered by some physical inferiority or other), there will be anxiety that
motivates an exaggerated emphasis on the masculine side of things. This
"masculine protest," in Adler's famous phrase, is central to neurosis. It is
basically a matter of overcompensation in the direction of aggression and
restless striving for triumphs.
In his vivid sketches of the masculine protest, Adler was not drawing a
sharp distinction between neurotic and normal. He saw the masculine
protest as active in normal mental life, neurosis breaking out only when
it failed to be gratified and turned sour.
It was not far from here to a critique of masculinity itself. Though the
masculine protest as such was a feature of women's life as well as men's,
in women's case it was overdetermined by their social subordination. In
men's case it could become a public menace. Adler took a highly critical
view of hegemonic masculinity and men's domination of women, cued by
the feminist and socialist critiques of women's subordination. For in-
stance, in discussing children's uncertainties about their sexual roles, he
remarked: "To this is added the arch evil of our culture, the excessive
pre-eminence of manliness. All children who have been in doubt as to their
sexual role exaggerate the traits which they consider masculine, above all
defiance" (Adler, 1956, p. 55).
As an account of the sources of neurosis, this had moved a long way
from Freud's libido theory. Adler rejected Freud's biologism. In an argu-
ment that anticipated Sartre, Adler criticized the theory of repression as
mechanistic, suggested that drives are constituted in personality in vari-
able ways, and saw the Oedipus complex as only one form that might be
taken by a larger dynamic—"a stage of the masculine protest."
Freud vehemently rejected this view as an unwarranted simplification
of neurosis, and on this point Freud was certainly right. Adler left the
Society, taking part of its membership with him. The break was a serious
loss for both sides. Orthodox psychoanalysis from that point on became
an increasingly closed system, resistant especially to the issues of social
power that Adler had emphasized.
Adler, for his part, lost touch with Freud's marvelous sense of the
intricacies and contradictions of mental life. He was still to do very
interesting writing about politics and psychology, including a sketch of a
psychology of power, important work on education, and an early and
perceptive socialist critique of Bolshevism (Adler, 1928,1956). His book
Understanding Human Nature (1927/1992) had a statement of a psycho-
analytic case for feminism that was clearer than any found elsewhere until
the 1970s.
But he never did theoretical work of such quality again. The idea of the
masculine protest was gradually domesticated as the abstract idea of
"striving for superiority," diluting the sexual politics. Adler himself be-
came, like other Freudian dissidents, the father-figure of a small cult and
the author of an increasingly woolly though warm-hearted system that
went under the name of "Individual Psychology." During the 1920s Adler
pushed left-wingers out of his movement in a search for respectability, as
orthodox psychoanalysis did on a grander scale. (The story can be traced
in Ellenberger, 1970; Sperber, 1974.) The critical theory of masculinity
sketched in his early papers was never developed.
Toward the Archetypes
Adler has been mostly forgotten; not so the next dissident to leave
Freud's camp. Carl Jung was even more prominent at the time: The
president of the International Psychoanalytic Association and a noted
clinician and experimental psychologist, he was widely regarded as

Freud's successor (Wehr, 1987). His alternative psychoanalysis has re-
mained the most influential.
The conceptual issues between Freud and Jung at the time of their break
had nothing to do with the theme of masculinity, but Jung had already
begun to explore that question in a long article on "The Significance of
the Father in the Destiny of the Individual" (1909/1961). Its main line was
an orthodox Freudian argument about the importance of the family con-
stellation around the child in shaping later emotional life. Jung offered,
in a short case history of an 8-year-old boy, a beautiful study in ambiva-
lence and the layering of motives in masculine development—the themes
that Freud was shortly to paint on the larger canvas of the Wolf Man study.
Years after the split with Freud, Jung came back to these themes, but
now in a very different mood. He was system building, and the mascu-
line/feminine polarity, as Freud and Adler had found, is seductive to
system builders. In The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious,
one of the key statements of his new system, Jung plunged in. He
distinguished between the self constructed in the exchanges between a
person and the social environment, which he called the persona (Greek
for mask), and the self constituted in the unconscious by the process of
repression, which he called the anima. These tend to be opposites; the
opposition is to a large extent a gender opposition. Public masculinity
means private femininity.
No man is so entirely masculine that he has nothing feminine in him. The fact
is, rather, that very masculine men have—carefully guarded and hidden—a
very soft emotional life, often incorrectly described as "feminine." A man counts
it a virtue to repress his feminine traits as much as possible, just as a woman, at
least until recently, considered it unbecoming to be "mannish." The repression of
feminine traits and inclinations naturally causes these contrasexual demands
to accumulate in the unconscious. (Jung, 1928/1953, p. 187)
Disregarding his own careful qualification, Jung swept on to explain

why masculine men have a feminine interior: because of this repression,
because of the influence of women in adult life, and—another piece of
Jung's system building—because of the influence of inherited, archetypal
images of women. The archetypes in the collective unconscious, origi-
nally introduced in arguments such as these to explain the paradoxes of
emotional life, in due course became the main theme of Jungian argument
about gender.
Jung applied these ideas in an interesting exploration of the emotional

dynamics of patriarchal marriage. He suggested that to the extent a man
identifies himself with a strong, authoritative masculine persona, "he
becomes inwardly a woman," compensating the outward show with
"feminine weakness," and this can result in moral subordination to his
wife. This was the most subtle part of Jung's analysis. His attempts to
extend the analysis to women—assigned an animus while men had an
anima, in a mirror-image argument—were crude in the extreme.
In this and other writings (e.g., Jung, 1982), Jung picked up the
Freudian theme that was troubling many psychoanalysts at the time, the
presence of femininity within masculinity, and gave it a popular face.
He gave it a label ("anima and animus") and an easily understood
explanatory formula (development of masculinity equals repression of
femininity and vice versa). He presented this familiar opposition as
rooted in timeless truths about the human psyche, through the theory of
archetypes.
If Freudian concepts without Freudian methods have been common in
recent cultural theory, Jungian concepts without any methods at all have
dominated recent speculation about masculinity. Archetypes are fatally
easy to find, in the absence of the discipline originally provided by clinical
case study. Jung's own later books ranged enthusiastically through esoteric
arts and world religions in search of archetypes. Followers have scoured
mythological systems in search of gods and goddesses who will do as
archetypes of modern psychological traits. I do not know whether to laugh
or cry when confronted with texts such as "The Mythic Male" (Bethal,
1985), an erratic hunt through Greco-Roman myths, taken completely out
of their contexts, for male gods who personify different "modes of
masculine consciousness." The phenomenally successful Iron John (Bly,
1990) is a Jungian work exactly in this vein, except that Robert Bly finds
his myth and most of his archetypal figures in a folktale retold by the
Grimms rather than more conventionally in the pages of Ovid. How-
ever, he, too, ignores the cultural origins of his tale and scrambles its
interpretation with ideas about "Zeus energy" and even wilder borrow-
ings from oral cultures.
Equally influential was Jung's treatment of the masculine/feminine
polarity as a universal structure of the psyche. Here Jung's influence,
initially progressive, has been increasingly reactionary. The polarity at
first provided a way of calling for a balance in mental and in social life
between masculine and feminine influences. Jung, indeed, was the first
person to propose what might be called masculinity therapy, which be-

came popular in the 1970s (Solomon & Levy, 1982). He argued that "a
certain type of modern man," accustomed to repress weakness, could no
longer afford to. To change, it was necessary to distinguish oneself from
both persona and anima. In a very interesting passage Jung suggested
techniques for talking to one's anima, as if to a separate personality, and
educating it (Jung, 1928/1953, pp. 199-208).
But if this launched the idea of men "getting in touch with their
femininity," repopularized 40 years later, it did so at a high price. With
both femininity and masculinity seen as archetypal structures of con-
sciousness, no historical change in their constitution is possible. All that
is possible is a change in the balance between them. In modern Jungian
writing this produces an interpretation of feminism, the political move-
ment, not as an attempt to contest the oppression of women but as a
reassertion of the feminine. It assumes that in recent history the feminine
has been dominated by the masculine, not that women have been domi-
nated by men.
This is why Jungian theory has become central to the current antifemin-
ist reaction among formerly progressive men. For this formula immedi-
ately yields the idea that modern feminism is tilting the balance too far
the other way and suppressing the masculine. This is exactly what a whole
series of Jungian writers have been arguing (Bly, 1990; Corneau, 1991;
Kaufman & Timmers, 1985-1986; Tacey, 1990). The idea is enthusias-
tically received in the North American "men's movement" as an expla-
nation for men's troubles with feminist women. Bly's very influential
criticism of "soft men" who have caved in to feminism and lost the
deep masculine is based precisely on this Jungian formula of arche-
typal balance.
Because Jung's original texts are now little studied, the roots of this
argument in the early history of psychoanalysis are forgotten. It is worth
recalling those roots to see what has been lost. Jung based his analysis on
a metapsychological opposition, which Freud was gradually working his
way past. Jung's formulations lost most of the subtlety and complexity
in Freud's maps of psychosexual development, a loss reflected in the
crudity of recent Jungian concepts of masculinity. By locating the basic
determination of gender in the racial unconscious, the supposed deposi-
tory of the archetypes, Jung turned completely away from the path toward
social and historical understanding that had been pointed out by Adler.
Clinical Psychoanalysis and Its Taming
In the 1920s an increasingly visible split developed between those to

whom psychoanalysis remained a method of individual therapy, and who
therefore stayed within a medical or at least clinical framework, and those
to whom psychoanalysis was a powerful general psychology able to
inform cultural analysis of all types. In this section I will sketch the
development of ideas about masculinity in the clinical tradition.
By the end of the 1920s gender issues had become a problem among
orthodox psychoanalysts as well as an issue between them and dissidents.
A small controversy about the issue of masculinity developed in technical
psychoanalytic journals. It would be an exaggeration to speak of a femi-
nist psychoanalysis, but women were more prominent in the second gen-
eration of analysts and there were some feminist strains in their thinking.
The cultural milieu of Weimar Germany, increasingly the center of gravity
for psychoanalysis until Hitler took power, had its differences from that
of Hapsburg Vienna.
Debate was launched by Melanie Klein (1928) in an article on the
"Early Stages of the Oedipus Conflict." What Klein uncovered was not
the pre-oedipal masculinity that had surfaced in the Wolf Man case, but
something even more unexpected: a pre-oedipal femininity in boys. She
went so far as to talk of the "femininity-phase" as a normal part of
development, characterized by both identification with the mother (wish
for a child, etc.) and jealous rivalry of her. The theme of femininity within
masculinity was taken up by Felix Boehm (1930), who stressed the
frequency with which boys and men identify with women and show
currents of envy and jealousy toward the mother. Like Klein, he postulated
an early feminine phase of development—"the male is first of all a little
girl"—heavily overlaid later but never without its effects in the psychol-
ogy of men.
There is a certain air of surprise about these articles, as if their authors
were somewhat disconcerted by what they had found. Freud himself was
plainly bothered at this time by the issue of gender; these years saw not
only his continuing efforts to unpack the active/passive dichotomy but
also his articles on female sexuality and femininity. The issue was soon
pushed further.
In an article crisply titled "The Dread of Women" Karen Horney (1932)
noted both the pervasiveness of this theme in mythology and psychology
and the insistence with which men deny it. She traced both facts to aspects
of boys' sexuality that were missed by Freud's focus on fear of the
castrating father. For Horney, fear of the mother is more deep-seated and
more energetically repressed. The vagina itself, she argued, is the symbolic
center of the process. The boy's typical reaction to feelings of inadequacy is
to withdraw libido from the mother and focus it on his own self and genital,
reactively strengthening his phallic narcissism—and preparing the ground
for castration anxiety. Later reactions among men are fueled by these
emotions, among them the tendency to choose socially inferior women as
love objects and the practice of actively undermining women's self-
respect to support "the ever precarious self-respect of the 'average man.' "
This article by Horney was the high point of the critique of masculinity
in classical psychoanalysis. It had obvious flaws. It postulated a biological
heterosexuality to prove the little boy's knowledge of the vagina, and gave
no reason (any more than Freud had done) why the boy's experience with
his mother should be generalized to the whole universe of women. Neverthe-
less the debate crystallized two key points: the extent to which masculinity
is a structure of overcompensation and the fundamental connection of the
making of masculinity with the subordination of women. The feminist
edge to Horney's argument is obvious.
In the following generation clinical psychoanalysts briskly retreated
from these positions. The retreat was not accidental; it was bound up with
the whole institutional and political history of psychoanalysis at this time.
Psychoanalysis in the German-speaking countries was virtually wiped out
by the Nazis in the 1930s, who considered it "Jewish science." Many
practitioners emigrated to the United States. There, for a variety of
reasons—including their precarious position as immigrants, the local
analysts' base in a conservative medical profession being increasingly in-
tegrated with the corporate world (Starr, 1982), and the impact of McCarthy-
ism—the movement shed its sexual and cultural radicalism. As Marcuse
(1955) noted, psychoanalysis moved far to the right in the generation be-
tween 1930 and 1960. It became for the most part a technique of normali-
zation, concerned with adjusting the unhappy individual to the demands
of social reality, rather than with questioning the terms on which that
reality was constructed.
To say that psychoanalysis is a technique of normalization is no meta-
phor: The practice has a social effect. One can see this in cases in which
psychoanalysts have reported the whole course of a treatment. I will give
a French example, the analysis of a psychotic 14-year-old boy by Fran^oise
Dolto (1974). Like the best of Freud's case studies, and those of Laing
(discussed below), this gives a vivid account of the strained emotional

interior of a whole family. The psychoanalyst intervenes by explaining
the law of the father to the boy and pushing him toward the oedipal
crisis, which he has never had. The analytic cure thus involves the
reinstatement of what orthodox psychoanalysis defines as the normal type
of masculinity.
This social practice gave more than symbolic meaning to the way
psychoanalysts' shift to the right affected their thinking about gender
issues and about masculinity specifically. The developmental path to adult
heterosexuality, which Freud had seen as a complex and in many ways
fragile construction, was increasingly seen as the unproblematic natural
path of development. All others were deviant and signs of pathology.
Marriage itself could be seen as a sign of mental health, and phallic
aggressiveness a desired outcome of therapy for men. Psychoanalysis thus
came to medicalize every type of gender dissent from the hegemonic
pattern in middle-class white American culture. Most conspicuously, it
medicalized homosexuality, which was declared inherently pathological
by conventional analysts in the 1950s and 1960s, clearly the product of
"disturbed parent-child relationships" (Bieber et al., 1962). The result was
a long series of efforts to "cure" men of their homosexuality, in which
psychoanalysts found themselves aligned with the purveyors of electric
shock treatment and other professionals who abused gay people.
The immensely detailed critical history of psychoanalytic ideas about
male homosexuality by Kenneth Lewes (1988) shows that this naturaliz-
ing of one "healthy" path of development and pathologizing of all others
required a basic shift in the conception of the Oedipus complex. To Freud
and the early analysts the Oedipus complex was necessarily traumatic,
with no exceptions, and its passing was necessarily disruptive. That was
basic to their sense of the fragility of adult masculinity. As Lewes ob-
serves, classical theory saw the Oedipus complex as having a range of
outcomes, all of them neurotic in some sense. Human sexuality involves
a traumatic encounter with culture, hence the sense of tragedy in Freud's
cultural criticism. The nontragic, normalizing medical psychoanalysis of
the 1940s and afterward lost the capacity for a critique of masculinity that
classical theory had provided.
As Marcuse noted, this loss of critical edge was widespread in psycho-
analysis at the time. A prime example of what he called Freudian "revi-
sionism" was the work of Erik Erikson, perhaps the most influential
psychoanalytic writer of the midcentury. Erikson (1950) departed from
Freud's libido theory not on logical but on historical grounds. At the end
of the 19th century the management of sexual impulses might have been
a formative issue in development; but in the circumstances of mid-20th-
century life, the crucial issues had to do with establishment of ego-identity.
Erikson's work had immense influence on child and adolescent psychol-
ogy and on popular psychology at the time. The concept of "identity"
became a catchword, and his model of stages in human development
became the basis of educational as well as therapeutic programs. In due
course the concept of identity as the focus of emotional development also
provided the basis for a new model of gender.
This was developed by Robert Stoller (1968), whose work centered on
a remarkable development in gender practice, the invention of the "trans-
sexual." The creation of this social category has been traced by Dave King
(1981), who shows the interplay of a medical technology of "sex reassign-
ment," journalistic fascination with "sex changes," and psychiatric cate-
gories for gender marginality. The invention of the surgical techniques
created a need for psychological assessment of who should be allowed to
go under the surgeon's knife, and this led to a research concern with
gender identity. Stoller's study of transsexuals and of little boys who
seemed to be on a path toward femininity led him not toward the classical
psychoanalytic view of gender as a contradictory structure, but to the
conviction that there was a noncontradictory, unitary core gender identity
laid down in the first years of life. This was established by the pattern of
emotional interaction between parents and children, and it was powerful
enough to override the physical facts about the body if they were discor-
dant. Transsexualism for men was thus psychologically defined not as the
desire to be a woman, but as the belief that one already was.
Though built on the lurid gender contradictions of transsexuals' lives,
this too was a normalizing theory. It located identification with women
not in the unconscious of all men, but in a specific aberrant group. Boys
affected by bad mothering—"the malicious male-hater" is one of Stoller's
categories for describing the women in their lives—may be "rescued" by
intervention to normalize family relationships. Given such views among the
psychiatrists, one can imagine what gender ideology is like among the
surgeons. It is not surprising to learn from nonmedical researchers such
as Anne Bolin (1988) that males wanting sex reassignment surgery take
great care to conform to the doctors' beliefs about appropriately feminine
dress and behavior. Not much contradiction will be left hanging out.
The concept of core gender identity has had wide influence since it was
propounded by Stoller, as a theory of normal gender development as well
as a theory of aberration. It has influenced recent psychoanalytic writing
about child development (Tyson, 1986) and about homosexuality (Fried-

man, 1988) and recent anthropological discussions of masculinity (Stoller
& Herdt, 1982).
This has come a long way from Freud. Robert May (1986), indeed,
seriously questions whether this is a psychoanalytic view at all. May
argues that Erikson's concept of identity is really a meliorist ego psychol-
ogy and goes on to show that the concept of gender identity in the work
of Stoller and others has lost essential insights about conflict, fantasy, and
the unconscious.
Clinical psychoanalysis in the United States, both with and without
libido theory, thus evolved a normalizing psychology of gender whose
main effect in practice was to reinforce social convention and whose main
effect in theory was to define departures from hegemonic masculinity as
actual or potential pathologies. Because this definition of healthy mascu-
linity is given from outside the science, that is, by the dominant gender
order, no theoretical consensus is required—and none exists. When the
American journal Pyschoanalytic Review put together a special issue
"Toward a New Psychology of Men" (Friedman & Lerner, 1986), it was
noticeable that there was no new psychology in it. Rather, several established
perspectives—gender identity, Jungian, classical Freudian, and object-
relations—sat beside each other without interacting. That seems to be the
state of ideas about gender in the clinical psychoanalytic tradition as a
whole. I think this incoherence has a lot to do with the historic failure to
develop the openings that Adler and Horney offered toward social analy-
sis. Let me turn, then, to the wilder shores of nonclinical, unofficial
psychoanalysis where the social has been a central theme.
Radical Psychoanalysis
Adler's attempt to merge Freudian theory and social radicalism perhaps

came too soon, but war and depression spurred new attempts. The most
spectacular was made by Wilhelm Reich, the only person, as far as I know,
to have been thrown out of both the international communist movement
and the international psychoanalytic movement. In the 1920s and early
1930s he was at the cutting edge of psychoanalysis and one of the leaders,
alongside radical Adlerians, of a move to turn it into a form of social
action. His attempt to develop a program of sex education and therapy in
working-class Vienna and Berlin (Reich, 1972) is one of the most fasci-
nating episodes in the history of psychoanalytic practice.
In the brilliant essay on "Ideology as a Material Force" that opened The

Mass Psychology of Fascism, Reich (1933/1970) took up Freud's question
of the social function of sexual repression and connected it with the
creation of a social order that was not only an exploitative class society
but also an "authoritarian patriarchy." Patriarchal marriage and family
provided its organizational frame. Psychoanalysis revealed that "the in-
terlacing of the socio-economic structure with the sexual structure of
society and the structural reproduction of society take place in the first
four or five years and in the authoritarian family" (Reich, 1933/1970, p.
30). The family is, in effect, the factory of the authoritarian state.
From this promising beginning Reich developed an analysis of fascist
movements as the culmination of repressive tendencies in capitalist soci-
ety. He offered a remarkable analysis of fascism's appeal to women
through a reactionary ideology of the family, which deserves to be better
known. But this and other lines of thought drew him away from the little
Hitlers ruling inside the "authoritarian family." The nearly simultaneous
rejection by his comrades both in psychoanalysis and in revolutionary
politics undermined the synthesis between them that he had sought. As
Reich's mind became more and more filled with thoughts of blue-tinged
cosmic orgone energy (Rycroft, 1971), gender became less and less of a
puzzle to him. His later writings have nothing of interest for the analysis
of masculinity.
The theme of the authoritarian family was, however, picked up by the
Institute for Social Research, the famous "Frankfurt school." In exile in
Paris after the Nazi takeover of Germany and trying desperately to explain
what had happened there, theorists of this group drew psychoanalytic and
Marxist ideas together in the volume Studies on Authority and Family
(Horkheimer, 1936). This was the point of departure for Erich Fromm's
famous book The Fear of Freedom (1942), which set out a historical
typology of personality structures centering on the "mechanisms of es-
cape" from the anxieties set up by the great historical changes producing
individuality and alienation. Fromm offered, in effect, a historical typo-
logy of masculinities. One of the escape mechanisms, "authoritarianism,"
combined masochistic and sadistic traits; Fromm saw this as being char-
acteristically produced in the German lower middle class and a reason for
their support for Nazism. The other mechanisms, "destructiveness" and
"automaton conformity," were nowhere near as vividly described; but the
latter had a continuing career in American social criticism, as Riesman's
(1950) "other-directed character," Mills' (1951) "cheerful robot," and
Marcuse's externalized superego (1964).
Even more influential was the research undertaken after the Institute's
second flight, to New York, published in The Authoritarian Personality
(Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950). The underlying
idea was that fascist movements managed to tap hidden psychological
predispositions with roots in the emotional dynamics of childhood. The
key pattern identified was a combination of conformity to authority from
above and aggression toward those below. These traits were traced back
to harsh and loveless parenting, dominance of the family by the father,
sexual and emotional repression, and highly conventional morality. The
threads were teased out in great detail through clinical case studies as well
as projective testing and attitude surveys. The book was notionally about
generalized types of personality and attitude, but it was in practice a
discussion of men. Indeed, The Authoritarian Personality marked an
important moment in research on masculinity, comparable to the Wolf
Man case study 30 years before. It provided the first detailed clinical
picture of a type of masculinity linked to the social and political setting
in which it was constructed.
If the hypotheses so patiently investigated by the Frankfurt school were
right, this was a masculinity particularly involved in the maintenance of
patriarchal ideology—marked by hatred for homosexuals and insistence
on the subordination of women. But it was not the only show in town. The
Authoritarian Personality analyzed this character type in contrast to a
"democratic character" that could resist the appeals of fascism. Inadver-
tently, therefore, the research documented different types of masculinity,
distinguished along lines other than the normal-versus-pathological cate-
gories of clinical psychoanalysis. In this light, the arguments of main-
stream psychoanalysis could be seen as accounts of the tensions in one
specific pattern of masculinity, rather than in masculinity in general.
This was a theoretical step of considerable importance. But it was not
followed up. The Frankfurt school dispersed, and its most famous inheri-
tor in the next generation, Juergen Habermas, had no interest in gender.
Discussion of The Authoritarian Personality sputtered out in technical
debates over personality measurement and Cold War attacks on its politics
(Christie & Jahoda, 1954).
Neither Reich nor the Frankfurt school questioned the classic concep-
tion of libido. But this was directly challenged in the "existential psycho-
analysis" proposed in France by Jean-Paul Sartre. In Being and Nothingness
(1943/1969) Sartre rejected the idea of libido as a necessary basis of
personality, suggesting rather that libidinal determination was a mode of
being that the person could take up. Sartre saw "empirical psychoanalysis,"
as he called the Freudian tradition, as too mechanical, insisting that what

was specifically human was the process of constituting oneself by choice
and commitment. He replaced the concept of the unconscious with an
argument about the different ways self-knowledge is organized. The
"mystery in broad daylight" could be understood by a method that Sartre
called existential psychoanalysis. The core of this was tracking down the
life history to establish the constitutive commitments that had ramifying
effects through the rest of the life. Sartre's emphasis on method was
remarkable, given that most reworkings of psychoanalysis marginalized
the issue.
It was Simone de Beauvoir who applied existential psychoanalysis
explicitly to questions of gender in The Second Sex (1949/1972). Hardly
a treatise on masculinity, the book was nevertheless instructive for mas-
culinity research. It showed how the method could be used to delineate a
range of ways of life within the broad gender categories. De Beauvoir's
brilliant essays on various types of femininity transcend the typologies of
more orthodox psychology, which persistently have a static, accomplished
character—as if setting up the typology had closed off the historical
process that produced it. Existential psychoanalysis in her hands showed
gender as a developing engagement with situations and structures, includ-
ing the consequences of previous choices.
What this could mean for studies of men is shown in the early work of
the Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing. In his famous study of schizophrenia,
The Divided Self, Laing discussed the striking case of "David," a student
whose studied eccentricity—swishing around with an opera cloak and
cane, for instance—seemed to be going a bit too far. Probing, Laing found
a whole life that had been composed of playing parts—the good child, for
his mother; the precocious schoolboy, for his teachers; after his mother's
death, the little housewife, for his father. A gender subtext came out. The
dramatic roles David rehearsed in front of his mirror were always women's
roles, the clothes he dressed up in were his mother's, and he found himself
unable to stop playing the part of a woman. His struggle against this
commitment was what led to his fantastic get-up and extravagant manner:
"This 'schizophrenic' role was the only refuge he knew from being
entirely engulfed by the woman who was inside him, and always seemed
to be coming out of him" (Laing, 1965, p. 73). The struggle to escape from
his female personae had led him to set up a whole series of other personae
that now formed, in Laing's terminology, an elaborate false-self system.
In this and other texts (Laing, 1969; Laing & Esterson, 1970) Laing
gave wonderful accounts of the internal politics of the family. However,
he never developed the clues his own work offered to the analysis of
gender. He came to believe conventional therapy did more harm than good
and soon became the central figure in the British antipsychiatry move-
ment, which criticized the very category of schizophrenia and tried to
create communal modes of personal healing. Nor did Sartre turn to gender
relations in his later theorizing (Sartre, 1976), which offered powerful
abstract models for connecting personal practice with large-scale social
dynamics, but worked out the details only for the dynamics of class.
Apart from these cases and Sartre's own vast study of the novelist
Flaubert, The Family Idiot (1981-1989), the methods of existential psy-
choanalysis have remained for the most part unused. I think this is
profoundly unfortunate, because they offer the best chance in the psycho-
analytic tradition to overcome mechanical and categorical ideas of gender.
In Laing's studies the contradictions of gender are not mechanical. They
are produced socially, but they become contradictions precisely by being
taken up as incompatible courses of action, with the person being com-
mitted to two (or more) at once. It was this dynamic that had the power
to tear apart David's control of his emotions; his defense, the false-self
system, has parallels in other masculinities recently studied (Connell,
1991).
Much better known in current research on gender is the work of Jacques
Lacan, a contemporary of Sartre, whose structuralist psychoanalysis has
had a powerful influence on cultural studies and on feminist theories of
gender in France and Britain (Roudinesco, 1990; Turkle, 1978). It has not
led explicitly to a theory of masculinity, but certainly has an implicit one.
Where object-relations and identity theories played down the Oedipus
complex, Lacanian theory not only reasserts it but takes it as the model of
cultural processes in general. Oedipal repression becomes the constitutive
moment of language or of the social. The phallus becomes the point of
reference of every semiotic system. Masculinity is, in effect, written
outward from the oedipal knot into the realm of communication and social
order as a whole. Femininity, by contrast, may become the principle of
disorder in the sense of being the negation of this phallocentric ordering of
meaning, as it seems to do in Luce Irigaray's (1985) writing and in literary
theory influenced by her. Men's homosexuality, too, can be read as the
refusal of the oedipal path of sexual development, as in the influential
work of Guy Hocquenghem (1978).
The articles by Klein, Boehm, and Horney discussed earlier not only
marked the peak of interest in masculinity in classical psychoanalysis but
also were part of a shift of interest among psychoanalysts toward the
earliest years of childhood. Klein herself, by the 1940s, was a recognized

leader of this movement. It was pursued in the following decades by the
object-relations school of psychoanalysis, which laid emphasis on the
direct social relations of child rearing. John Bowlby's (1951) famous
"maternal deprivation" thesis was an early product of this work, with the
ideological effect of pressuring mothers to stay in the home with their
infants—a prime example of the way psychoanalysis served to police the
gender order.
It is ironic, then, that object-relations theory should become the main
basis for the openly feminist psychoanalysis that developed in the United
States in the 1970s and 1980s—and specifically for its account of mascu-
linity. Here a major change in theorizing about masculine development
came to fruition. In classical theory the drama had centered on the oedipal
entry into masculinity, whether the key agent was the father (Freud) or the
mother (Horney). This emphasis was carried on by Lacan, for whom the
symbolic father was central. In the arguments of Nancy Chodorow (1978)
and Dorothy Dinnerstein (1976), the drama centers on pre-oedipal sepa-
ration from femininity, with the focus unquestionably on the mother.
Chodorow's book was called The Reproduction of Mothering, but it
contained an account of masculinity that has had a large impact on recent
thinking (McMahon, 1993). The division of labor in child care meant that
boys, like girls, had a woman as primary love object and object of
identification. The construction of masculinity proceeded through the
disruption of this identification, resulting in a character structure empha-
sizing boundaries between people and lacking that need to complete
oneself in relations between people that led women toward mothering.
Chodorow's argument developed an ideal-type of masculine and feminine
development. Dinnerstein's argument, based on clinical work, gave greater
emphasis (like Horney) to fear of the mother in the pre-oedipal period.
Dinnerstein saw the reaction against femininity as a powerful underlying
motive in men's hatred of women and men's violence in the public world
from which women were excluded.
These claims have been much debated. There is, I think, force in Ian
Craib's (1987) argument from within object-relations theory that ap-
proaches like Chodorow's tell us little about the internal organization of
masculine personality. This parallels the criticism of gender identity
theory made previously and recalls my earlier point about the fading of
Freud's concept of the superego. But there is no doubt about the political
significance of this work. Here the radical cultural potential of psycho-
analysis has come to the surface again.
Conclusion
Psychoanalysis offers to modern thought on masculinity a uniquely rich

method of investigation, some illuminating general principles, and an
immense variety of specific hypotheses and insights. These do not come
without cost and risk.
The method, based on the clinical case study and Freud's "talking cure,"
yields massive quantities of evidence for investigations of gender. Pop
psychologies of masculinity are based on a parody of this method, the
anecdote purporting to summarize a "case." I should therefore emphasize
that the genuine case study—whether classical, Jungian, or existential,
whether short or long—is a discipline of inquiry. The investigation pro-
duces evidence that has to be interrogated; interpretations are subject to
challenge by fresh evidence. It is difficult and time-consuming work.
Psychoanalytic interpretations reflect the complexity of the people being
studied; they do not seek to reduce personalities to simple formulas.
Long before social constructionism became influential in discussions
of gender, psychoanalysis had offered a picture of adult character as
constructed through a long, necessarily conflict-ridden, process. This
process produces a layered and contradictory structure. If social re-
searchers on masculinity learn any one thing from the Freudian tradition,
it should be this. Freud's concept of the unconscious, though immensely
influential, is only one way in which this layering and contradiction can
be represented. Sartre and Laing have provided another, in their analyses
of contradictory commitments and practices.
Recognizing a conflictual process of construction, psychoanalysis fur-
ther recognizes that the process can follow different paths. Indeed, this
was fundamental to Freud's understanding of the neuroses as constructed
from the same materials as "normal" mental life, put together in a different
way. Psychoanalytic research has provided rich documentation of the
diverse paths the construction of masculinity can take, both within the one
society (as in the psychoanalytic work of the Frankfurt school) and
between societies (as in the cross-cultural study of alternative nuclear
complexes by Anne Parsons [1964]). The idea of multiple masculinities
that is familiar in recent social research finds a precise meaning, and some
of its strongest evidence, in psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalysis is often read as a theory of the individual, and Freud
certainly dreamed of foundations in biology; but in truth it is a social
science. Psychoanalytic case studies are all about the relationships that
constitute the person, the prohibitions and possibilities that emerge in that
most extraordinary and complex of social processes, the raising of one

generation of humans by another. Psychoanalysis does not provide an
alternative or a supplement to social theories of masculinity; it is engaged
in social analysis from the start. Psychoanalysis forces one to recognize
that the social is present in the person—it does not end at the skin—and
that power invests desire in its very foundations.
Yet the understanding of the social in most psychoanalytic work is
severely limited (and in some instances, such as the Jungian tradition,
practically absent). Questions of social structure and large-scale dynamics
are often very remote. Those psychoanalytic formulations that are clearest
about questions of social dynamics, or even make use of social-structural
concepts—such as Adler's and Horney's work in the early decades, the
Frankfurt school, and more recently Laing's work on the family and
feminist object-relations theory—are the most fruitful sources for the
analysis of masculinity.
Given these principles, psychoanalysis provides a tremendous range of
hypotheses, suggestions, insights, and guesses about the making of gender
and the working of gender relations. Freud's idea about the importance of
castration anxiety, Adler's argument about overcompensation, Jung's sugges-
tions about the gender dynamics of marriages, Horney's and Dinnerstein's
arguments about the importance of boys' fears of the mother, the Frankfurt
school's ideas about the impact of family power structure and societal
alienation, Chodorow's ideas about emotional separation, Lacanian argu-
ments about the oedipal ordering of symbolization, are all useful lines of
thought. To treat one of them as the a priori framework for a theory of
masculinity would be to misuse psychoanalysis (in a way unfortunately
typical of its applications in the social sciences). But deployed in the detail
of cases (which need not be only individual life histories, for as Dollard's
[1937] classic study of race relations showed, psychoanalysis can also be
deployed in the study of collectivities and institutions), these ideas will
greatly enrich understanding of the social dynamics towards which we grope
with terms such as masculinity.
Freud did not succeed in founding a science, in his own sense of a
positivist science of the mind. He founded something more ambiguous,
and more interesting: an enterprise of scrutiny and theory that has the
capacity to be both an ideology and technology of social control and a
means of cultural critique and personal discovery. Both sides of psycho-
analysis show in its tangled encounters with issues of masculinity. I think
Freud's invention is an essential aid in understanding men's gender and
gender politics, but is never enough on its own. It is an instrument that

needs to be used with precision, on the right kind of material, in full
awareness of the social mysteries that create the mysteries of desire.
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3
in Contemporary Social Science
SCOTT C O L T R A N E
Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life .. .

circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances.
Karl Marx, 1846/1978a
Not, then, men and their moments. Rather moments and their men.
Erving Goffman, 1967
Living a century apart and working at different levels of analysis, Karl

Marx and Erving Goffman made unique contributions to the under-
standing of social life. Although their works are rarely mentioned to-
gether, these passages resonate with each other and raise two issues that
deserve the attention of scholars who study gender. The first is that both
men used what is now called "sexist" language. Both subsumed all of
humanity under the term men, effectively minimizing the experiences of
women and ignoring the importance of gender in men's lives. One might
excuse their linguistic transgressions because they were following social
customs, but one ought not lose sight of the fact that gender, though
considered elsewhere in their writings, was of secondary importance to
them. In that sense, these two theorists teach by negative example and
remind scholars that they are breaking new ground by explicitly focusing
on gender when studying men.
39
On a second issue, the models of society presented by Marx and

Goffman highlight the importance of social structure at the macro- and
microlevels. Social structure is the patterned repetition of the same types
of events happening over and over again, involving many different people
spread out across many different locations (Collins, 1988). Marx's and
Goffman's ideas about social structure have fallen out of fashion in the
recent postmodern turn toward discourse analysis and historical particu-
larity, but their insights into the dialectical nature of social processes and
their emphasis on systemic patterns of social relations have much to offer
contemporary gender scholars. The macrohistorical view from Marx reminds
one that individual choice is constrained by material circumstances, espe-
cially the unequal distribution of wealth and access to the means of produc-
tion. The microinteractionist viewfromGoffman is a reminder that routine
social experiences shape consciousness and define individual identities.
Both theorists conceived of complex reciprocal relationships between struc-
ture and agency, but both ultimately gave priority to patterned systems of
social relations. For Marx, "men" made history, but not under conditions
of their own choosing. Rather, historically variable social and economic
conditions shaped peoples' consciousness and constrained their actions
according to identifiable patterns (Marx, 1851/1978b). For Goffman, men
and women actively engaged in impression management, but they were
held hostage to routine ritual observances and the collaborative produc-
tion of selves (Goffman, 1967).
Few would argue that Marx privileged social structure over individual
choice, but Goffman, too, gave precedence to the structure of situations.
He conceived of "moments" as historically situated events that followed
a loosely patterned sequence, carried normative prescriptions, and, most
important, created an emergent sense of self. More than most social
scientists of his day, Goffman acknowledged the importance of individual
initiative in shaping society, but his fundamental assumption was that
moments created "men" rather than the reverse. Although he did not
attempt an explicit study of masculinity, Goffman began to write about
gender before he died in 1982, and his analytical scheme, coupled with
some of Marx's insights, provides the foundations for a promising micro-
structural approach to the study of gender (Goffman, 1977, 1979). In this
chapter, I emphasize the continuing heuristic value of the concept of social
structure and suggest that a microstructural approach to the study of
masculinities can help guide one through some difficult epistemoiogical
and political dilemmas.
Theorizing Masculinities in Contemporary Social Science 41
Marx and Goffman were criticized for departing from the accepted
research protocols of their times, but they both advocated empirical
research that seems rather scientific and conventional by today's stand-
ards. In contrast, many recent critical scholars advocate abandoning
conventional sociological approaches to the study of gender on the grounds
that these methods tend to favor a masculinist individualism, mask diver-
sity, and perpetuate inequality. Conventional social science has favored
the interests of dominant men and slighted the influence of gender, but
the call for its abandonment carries some dangers of its own. A more
reformist strategy would acknowledge the sexism of past research, but
continue to use a range of objectivist and subjectivist methods to docu-
ment patterned regularity in systems of inequality. Underlying this posi-
tion is the belief that the critical insights of Goffman and Marx can be
coupled with conventional social science methods to further the under-
standing of men and masculinities. Toward that end, I describe some of
the epistemological issues raised by recent gender scholarship and suggest
how a microstructural analysis of masculinities might be both politically
and intellectually satisfying. Rather than focusing on one specific issue
in detail, this chapter surveys potential and actual problems in the field
and closes with a few suggestions for ways to incorporate men's stand-
points into gender studies.
Past Research on Men and Masculinity
Research on men is as old as scholarship itself, but a focus on mascu-

linity, or men as explicitly gendered individuals, is relatively recent
(Morgan, 1981). As the women's movement was gaining momentum in
the 1970s, men began writing about how boys were socialized to be tough
and competitive and how men had trouble expressing their emotions
(Goldberg, 1976; Nichols, 1975). Often confessional, therapeutic, and
ignorant of the power dimension of gender relations, this style of research
on men continued through the 1980s and into the 1990s. Some writers
focused on their personal experiences caring for a child (Clary, 1982), or
on middle-aged men's longing for their fathers (Osherson, 1986), and
many emphasized how men suffered from confining masculine stereo-
types and were misunderstood by women (Farrell, 1986). These popular
books helped men develop their sensitivities, but paid little attention to
those who suffered at the hands of dominant men's privileged position.
Recent best-selling authors in this tradition include Robert Bly (1990)

who blends mythical storytelling with pop psychology in a celebration of
tribal male bonding. Books like this posit timeless natural differences
between men and women, and although these authors often portray them-
selves as part of a progressive men's movement, their writing often
resembles the antiwoman rhetoric of reactionary men's rights activists
(Coltrane & Hickman, 1992).
In response to, and in support of, the women's movement, a different
group of men scholars and activists adopted an explicitly feminist per-
spective in their early explorations of masculinity. The defining feature
of this approach to men's studies was its attention to men's power over
women (Pleck, 1977/1981; Sattel, 1976). During the 1980s, critical stud-
ies of men became more sophisticated and scholars developed concepts
such as "hegemonic masculinity" to highlight the multidimensional and
socially constructed aspects of male dominance (Connell, 1987). Re-
cent scholarship on men uses insights from feminist theories, high-
lights diversity in masculinities, includes a focus on gay men, and
promotes an understanding of what Kaufman (1993) calls "men's
contradictory experiences of power" (Brod, 1987; Hearn & Morgan, 1990;
Kaufman, 1987; Kimmel & Messner, 1989). Many current scholars use
postmodern critiques of value-free social science, apply critical Marxist
and feminist standpoint epistemologies, and attempt to move beyond
older structuralist theoretical frameworks (Jackson, 1990; Messner, 1990;
Seidler, 1989).
At the risk of oversimplification, there are thus two conflicting styles
of men writing about masculinity: One celebrates male bonding and tells
men they are OK, and the other focuses on issues of power using academic
feminist interpretive frameworks. The former approach sells many books
and receives much media attention. The latter approach, of which this
volume is an example, focuses on the contradictory meanings and expe-
riences of manhood and aligns itself with the women's movement. Of
concern in this chapter, however, is the observation that neither approach
makes extensive use of conventional social science methods to bolster its
arguments.
For most profeminist academics, the choice to forsake positivist social
science is intentional, for the traditions that spawned it are held account-
able for a ubiquitous style of masculinity that is detached, unemotional,
authoritarian, and prone to violence and destruction (Easlea, 1981). Never-
theless, critiques of "masculinist" social science leave unanswered some
difficult questions about how to study men. For example, how does one
determine what are masculinist research methods, and on what basis
should they be rejected? Similarly, what counts as "feminist" research,
and how is this determined? If men want to study masculinity using
feminist insights, can they avoid reproducing patriarchal consciousness
simply by adopting a style of discourse common among women's studies
scholars? These questions plague contemporary male scholars researching
men, even if the reasons for and the implications of their methodological
choices remain unarticulated. For those who celebrate masculinity and
tend to avoid issues of power and dominance, these epistemological
questions are typically of little concern. But for profeminist men studying
masculinities, these questions remain critical.
Goals of Feminist Men's Studies
Criticism of male scholars who focus on "men's studies" or call their

work "feminist" has come from different quarters. In the tradition of
patriarchal dominance, some colleagues (mostly men) find gender studies
superfluous and suggest that conventional academic subjects are more
worthy of scholarly attention. Feminist colleagues also question men's
intentions when they focus on gender, and some worry about the potential
patriarchal usurpation of women's studies' initiatives (Canaan & Griffin,
1990; Jardine & Smith, 1987; Reinharz, 1992). Given a discouraging and
sometimes hostile academic environment, why, then, would men want to
study masculinity from a feminist perspective? The short answer is that
gender is too important to ignore and that feminist theories explain more
about gender than other theories.
Although there are many different reasons for studying gender and a
variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to its study, one key
feminist assumption has inspired much research. In a very general sense,
gender carries undue importance in the social world, and its salience tends
to reinforce men's power over women. Most feminists agree that gender
is socially constructed and that its form and relative importance are
subject to change. Many, like Judith Lorber, the founding editor of Gender
& Society, promote the idea that women and men ought to be socially
interchangeable: "The long-term goal of feminism must be no less than
the eradication of gender as an organizing principle of postindustrial
society" (Lorber, 1986, p. 568). Paradoxically, one of the ways to work
toward this long-term political goal of reducing the importance of gender

is for scholars to call attention to it. Many feminists thus focus on gender
as an analytical category in the study of women's lives, but do so,
ultimately, to reduce its importance in everyday life.
For men to concur that gender should be unimportant in everyday life,
however, opens them to criticism because men have often blithely as-
sumed that gender could be ignored, or at least argued that competence,
rather than mere biology, provided them with special privileges. Histori-
cally, men's experiences have been universalized, allowing them to over-
look discrimination against women and legitimate male dominance
(Kimmel, 1990). Many profeminist men avoid this regressive potential by
highlighting gender and paying attention to men's overt and subtle exer-
cise of power. By placing gender at the center of their analyses, they
attempt to overcome past tendencies to view men as generically human.
By linking the ways that men create and sustain gendered selves with the
ways that gender influences power relations and perpetuates inequality,
feminist men's studies support and compliment the critical perspectives
of women's studies.
Because gender is one of the most important organizing principles of
societies throughout the world, and because male scholars have too often
ignored its influence on men, an explicit focus on masculinities is clearly
warranted. Nonetheless, highlighting gender in the study of men carries
some risks of its own. Sometimes academic claims about the importance
of gender are addressed by adding "sex" to a long list of competing
independent variables. When this is coupled with the pressure to publish
statistically significant differences (rather than similarities), one ends up
with widely reported sex differences that are relatively meaningless.
Other researchers use clinical reports, interpretive methods, and ethno-
graphic techniques to contrast the lives and perceptions of men with those
of women. The findings of difference that emerge from these studies tend
to legitimate taken-for-granted assumptions about dissimilarity and rein-
force the importance of gender in everyday life. Thus, the use of gender
as an analytic category can work against the political goal of reducing its
salience. I am not suggesting that one ignore gender because of this risk.
Gender carries so much weight in most social and institutional settings
that it needs to be studied explicitly, even at the risk of overemphasizing
its importance. Nevertheless, it is useful to consider the political implica-
tions of adopting research methods or embracing theories that stress
gender differences.
Essentialist Claims About Gender
Despite research and theories to the contrary, most people continue to

conceive of gender differences as innately given, reflecting some under-
lying essential dichotomy between men and women. Early feminist schol-
arship, whether it focused on women or men, assumed that biological sex
differences could not account for the social meaning of gender or the
relative distribution of power and prestige between and among men and
women. In the 1980s, academic discourse frequently moved "beyond"
debunking the false unity of sex and gender, as if popular essentialist
notions had already been transformed. It might seem "old" to continue to
argue against the innateness of masculinity or femininity, but the distinc-
tion between sex (biological) and gender (social) deserves frequent repe-
tition. The assumption of natural and God-given differences between men
and women is so firmly embedded in habits of thought and social institu-
tions that to focus on difference instead of similarity carries political risks.
The tendency to essentialize gender differences is not limited to the
political or religious right, or even to men. Some contemporary women
writers celebrate gender differences that are characterized as fundamental
and timeless. For example, some French feminists (Irigaray, 1981), cul-
tural and eco-feminists (Griffin, 1978), neoconservative feminists (Elshtain,
1981), and biosocial feminists (Rossi, 1985) conflate sex and gender by
positing universal sex differences based on females' reproductive func-
tions and putative closeness to nature (Stacey, 1983). A similar essentialist
argument about men can be found in Robert Bly's Iron John. Bly worries
that modern men have lost touch with their "Zeus energy" and recom-
mends all-male retreats and rituals to restore the natural order (Bly, 1990).
The form of community that Bly conjures up with visions of Zeus energy,
however, has misogynist overtones. Women in ancient Greece, for all its
democratic ideals, were relegated to the home and prohibited from par-
ticipating fully in public life. This points to one of the central flaws in
mythopoetic and other essentialist approaches to gender: They reduce
historically and culturally specific myths and practices to universal psy-
chological or biological truths, thereby ignoring the social structural
conditions that produced them. One should question the assumption that
reinstituting ancient male initiation rites will heal modern men and rescue
a declining culture. In fact, reenacting ancient chest-pounding rituals on a
grand scale would probably increase gender antagonism rather than promot-
ing some idyllic balance between fierce men and yielding women. Accepting
the notion of a natural masculine fierceness and an inborn "need" for

masculine validation reaffirms gender difference and carries the very real
danger of perpetuating violence against women and other men.
Robert Bly's account is only one among many that invoke images of
fundamental, timeless, and natural gender differences stemming from
biological sex. Many of these accounts rely on biblical passages or call
up primordial images of tribal societies to verify their version of natural
gender differences. Authoritative males and nurturing females from an-
cient times come to stand for some underlying masculinity or femininity
that supposedly resides deep within humans. Unfortunately, this imagery
resonates so closely with Western culture's gender ideology that most
people accept the tribal portrayals as evidence for the inevitability of
patriarchal power and feminine frailty. This is a fundamentally false
assumption based on an inaccurate reading of human history and a
profound misuse of biological and anthropological evidence. For in-
stance, feminist anthropologists, biologists, and historians of science have
demonstrated how an oversimplified "Man-the-Hunter" interpretation of
human evolution based on sociobiology (Tiger, 1969; Wilson, 1975)
ignores important evidence in its quest to rationalize women's domesticity
(Bleier, 1984; Haraway, 1978).
Using Comparative Research

to Refute Essentialist Claims
To evaluate essentialist claims about masculinity or male dominance,

it is helpful to rely on the concept of social structure and attend to
cross-cultural variation in the organization and expression of gender.
Early versions of comparative research on women sought to locate the
"origins" of gender inequality by looking at so-called primitive peoples
(Engels, 1891/1978). Like natural law theorists before them, these schol-
ars were prone to fabricate a past in order to justify their vision of the
future. Later researchers attempting to understand the position of women
in nonindustrial societies have generally concluded that male dominance
was widespread, but that women's subordination is not a unitary phe-
nomenon that appears the same at all times and in ail places. Rather, the
status of women appears to be multidimensional and subject to change
due to a variety of factors (e.g., Blumberg, 1984; Chafetz, 1984; Leacock,
1981; Ortner & Whitehead, 1981; Sanday, 1981). Although comparative
cross-cultural studies of gender are fraught with epistemological difficul-
ties, they are one of the few reliable and convincing ways to refute popular
essentialist theories of gender.
There are two basic ways to evaluate theories using comparative cross-
cultural research: extensive and intensive approaches (Ragin, 1987). Exten-
sive approaches tend to compare whole cultures, societies, or nations;
typically include a large number of cases; reduce social phenomena to
variables; seek patterns of association via statistical analyses; and are
good for testing universals (as well as generating some false universals of
their own). The emphasis in extensive comparative research is usually to
identify cross-cultural similarities between different instances of general
outcomes and to isolate structural correlates of social phenomena. Though
not necessarily required, extensive comparative research also tends to use
quantitative data and statistical analysis. Much extensive comparative
research is nomothetic, seeking causal explanations for why observed
phenomena occur. For some, the goal is to test competing theories and
determine "laws" of social organization. Others have less grandiose goals
and use extensive comparative research more inductively. In these cases,
researchers are attempting to isolate which social features might be idi-
osyncratic; which structures, ideologies, or associations might be histori-
cally or culturally specific; and which might be considered common
features of the general social phenomenon under study.
Intensive comparative studies, in contrast, contain just a few cases and
tend to be idiographic, relying on thick description of historically specific
occurrences. This small-scale case study approach seeks to interpret
specific instances of some phenomenon and is an excellent means of
identifying cross-cultural difference (though it is prone to overgeneraliz-
ing from atypical cases). Intensive comparative studies are attuned to
historically situated phenomena and because they are more detailed than
extensive comparisons, they pay more attention to the specific contexts
of social practices. In the late 1980s and early 1990s historians, anthro-
pologists, and increasing numbers of sociologists (including most femi-
nists) tended to favor the intensive approach to comparative studies (cf.
Kohn, 1989). Intensive and extensive comparative approaches can coexist,
and the distinction between them is sometimes blurred, as when intensive
researchers refer to similar "types" of cases (Kandiyoti, 1991) or when
extensive researchers use detailed illustrative examples (Coltrane, 1992).
There is no "right way" to do cross-cultural or comparative research,
and both of the approaches outlined help to explicate social structures.
Intensive studies are in some ways more fundamental, because secondary
analysis of the extensive sort depends on initial detailed ethnographies or
historical case studies. Intensive comparative studies are especially useful

for showing how some individuals or groups depart from a falsely univer-
salizing conception of gender, but they are open to the claim that the few
cases selected are atypical. Extensive comparisons can isolate cross-
cultural variation among many different societies and can link that
variation with specific sets of social structural conditions. The heuris-
tic value and political import of such linkages should not be underesti-
mated. When one documents cross-cultural and historical variation in
gender relations and can isolate the conditions under which various divi-
sions of labor and distributions of wealth and prestige occur, one is better
able to understand how gender systems operate and how gender shapes
peoples' everyday lives. Perhaps even more important, with large-scale
comparisons and causal explanations, one can argue convincingly that
gender is socially constructed and be in a better position to transform
gender relations to make them more equal. My own research provides an
example.
Father-Child Relationships and Women's Status
In two extensive comparative studies of nonindustrial societies, I iso-

lated some of the conditions under which men tend to dominate women.
Coded data on about a hundred societies were used in each study, includ-
ing cultures from all major geographic regions of the world and representing
societies ranging from small-scale hunter-gatherers to populous feudal
agrarian states. One study looked at men's ritualized displays of manli-
ness—boastful demonstrations of strength, aggressiveness, and sexual
potency of the type idealized by Robert Bly (Coltrane, 1992). This study
also looked at the conditions associated with other micropolitical aspects
of gender relations, such as women deferring to men by bowing, giving
up their seats, or following men's orders; husbands dominating their
wives; and belief systems considering women to be inferior to men.
Several explanations positing various causes for these behaviors were
tested, and strong support was found for two types of theories: materialist
and psychodynamic. Significantly fewer displays of manliness, less wifely
deference, less husband dominance, and less ideological female inferior-
ity were evident in societies where men participated in child rearing and
women controlled property. The associations with men's dominance were
statistically significant even when controlling for a host of other poten-
tially causal social, economic, and environmental factors.
The other extensive comparative study attempted to isolate the impact

of men's participation in child care on women's public status. The extent
to which women participated in public decision making and whether they
could hold leadership roles was evaluated with respect to a variety of
potential causal factors (Coltrane, 1988). Father-child relationships were
measured with reference to the frequency of father-child proximity, the
amount of routine child care performed by men, and the likelihood of men
expressing emotional warmth or support toward children. As in the other
study, the association between close father-child relationships and women's
public status was statistically robust, even when controlling for other
factors. The results are consistent with Nancy Chodorow's (1978) theory
that exclusive child rearing by mothers produces young men with psycho-
logical needs to differentiate from women and denigrate the feminine in
themselves. Other interesting findings from this study concerned the
importance of focusing on fraternal interest groups in analyzing women's
access to public power and, following Sanday (1981), an association
between men's child care and gender-balanced origin symbolism. So-
cieties with distant fathers told myths about distant, sky-dwelling, all-
powerful male gods like Zeus, whereas societies with nurturing fathers
tended to tell stories about both male and female gods.
Extensive cross-cultural studies like these counter the essentialist claims
of writers like Robert Bly. Although one cannot say much about specific
causal paths from this sort of correlational analyses (much less "prove"
causality or locate origins), one can at least rule out some improbable
explanations and focus attention on theories that seem most plausible.
These studies suggest that regardless of the ultimate reasons for fathers
being involved with their children, when they are, it has important conse-
quences for a social psychology of gender equality. In societies where men
develop and maintain close relationships with young children, hypermas-
culine displays, competitive posturing, and all-male enclaves are rare.
These societies allow both women and men to hold office and participate in
public decisions, rarely require women to publicly pay homage to men, and
tend to conceive of men and women as inherently equal.
Systematically comparing social structural patterns across diverse set-
tings or historical periods allows one to consider the implications of a cultural
emphasis on gender difference. By defining themselves as essentially differ-
ent from women, men in some societies have excluded women from positions
of power and dominated them in more intimate relationships. Belief in
essential gender difference helps men maintain microstructures of in-
equality. Seen from this perspective, mythopoetic calls for reinstituting
ancient male initiation rites carry regressive, not progressive, potential.

The practices that accompany all-male initiation rites and everyday af-
firmations of masculine strength and fortitude typically work to the
disadvantage of women and nondominant men. Although ritual gender
segregation and celebration of difference may not theoretically or inher-
ently imply male domination, in practice this is what tends to occur.
Cross-cultural analysis suggests that the key to minimal gender domi-
nance and deference is ongoing gender cooperation in child rearing and
property control, not carving out separate domains for men and women.
Can "Masculinist" Methods Serve Feminist Goals?
The conventional sociological practices used in the previously men-

tioned studies, including comparing disparate societies, using large data
sets, reducing social phenomena to numbers, and performing statistical
tests, are sometimes criticized as "masculinist" or "colonialist." I am not
alone in using such mainstream research methods to argue against sexist
notions (Chafetz, 1984; Jayaratne, 1983; Sanday, 1981), but many re-
searchers studying gender prefer qualitative, theoretical, oppositional,
and standpoint methodologies (Reinharz, 1992). For instance, Dorothy
Smith (1992) states that "when we employ standard sociological methods
of work, we inadvertently realign the issues that concern us with those of
the relations of ruling" (p. 96). At issue is whether one ought to use data
that were collected without attention to limiting ethnocentric and andro-
centric biases; whether one can compare societies that are so different
from one another; whether the use of variables and statistical associations
can reveal anything of value; whether such methods manufacture false
universals and promote evolutionary theorizing; whether such methods
objectify, exploit, and alienate their "subjects"; and whether findings from
such studies necessarily serve the dominant interests of men and colonial
powers. These are not new concerns to anthropologists—who generally
accept them—and they are concerns familiar to most feminist sociolo-
gists, though many conventional social scientists would reject these
criticisms as too political or subjective.
For those who agree that past cross-cultural scholarship, and social
science in general, has neglected women and perpetuated white Western
men's understandings of the world, these criticisms are indeed quite
serious. They have motivated numerous studies that place women's expe-
riences in the foreground and provide richly detailed descriptions of the
ways that women have exercised authority, struggled against patriarchy,

and been active agents of change. These complex, multidimensional
descriptive studies are theoretically rich and illuminating in their own
right, but one ought to be able to generalize from them as well. In addition
to conducting feminist ethnographies, case histories, and experiential
studies, one can pursue an integrative and systematic understanding of
social life that comes from explicitly comparative research designs with
an emphasis on social structure. Feminist anthropologists, sociologists,
and historians have illustrated that the meaning of womanhood or man-
hood is historically and culturally unique. This does not mean that one
should forsake attempts to compare across these unique viewpoints to
formulate synthetic theories in an effort to understand the consistent and
pervasive features of gender.
An emphasis on social structure is both illuminating and politically
expedient. Such an approach does not require the claim that abstracted
comparative knowledge is value free or inherently more objective than
more interpretive or idiographic ways of knowing. Extensive comparative
studies and other conventional social science techniques such as experi-
ments and mathematical modeling allow one to generalize to larger
populations, seek causal explanations, and formulate general principles
of social organization. New studies using these techniques could be used
against women and oppressed peoples, but this tendency is not inherent
to the method. The danger stems, instead, from political causes, from the
self-interested standpoints of those in power who use conventional meth-
ods to invoke pseudo-objectivity and ignore issues of inequality and
domination. This political threat is perhaps the most compelling reason
that gender scholars should not abandon conventional methodologies to
those who would maintain the status quo. Even if it should not be so,
results of quantitative studies carry more weight in policy arenas than
isolated personal accounts or even the best in-depth qualitative studies.
Another compelling reason to use conventional social science methods to
study gender is that when the right questions are asked, the knowledge
generated helps to identify those issues and projects with the greatest
potential for realizing social change.
Scientism and Postmodernism
Scientism is the prejudice that science objectively deals only with

observable facts and that any investigation that does not employ natural
science-like methods is "merely" subjective and therefore not explanatory

(Lloyd, 1989). In the post-Kuhnian academy, one might hope that scien-
tism would be dead, but it is still the dominant paradigm in many social
science disciplines (Kuhn, 1970). In the interests of brevity, I will not
restate why scientism, in its various forms, is intellectually false and
politically dangerous. Instead, I turn to one of its main challengers,
postmodernism.
Unifying a disparate number of feminist and nonfeminist scholars
under the label "postmodernism" is itself misleading, but I do so to
question some emergent idealist and particularist tendencies in gender
studies. Postmodern approaches are enlightening because they attempt to
deconstruct false dualisms of mind/body, culture/nature, man/woman, modern/
primitive, reason/emotion, subject/object, and so forth. Images of "fractured,"
"decentered," and "reflexive" selves that appear in postmodernist writing
help to critically evaluate overly simple concepts and categories. In its
more extreme forms, however, postmodernism's focus is solely on lan-
guage and its role in the perception of reality. Discourse and cognition are
important, but there is much more than this to social life. If one focuses
too much on language as constructing reality, solutions to injustice tend
to be clever word games, and the concrete bases of social inequality are
slighted. Describing the social world as floating fields of symbols manipu-
lated by reflexive agents probably captures a phenomenological "reality," but
one needs to ground such analyses in patterns of material conditions
(Coltrane & Hickman, 1992). By relying too heavily on deconstruction-
ism, one too easily overlooks persistence and oppression in favor of
historical, symbolic, and subjective particularity.
The postmodern tendency to ignore social structure undermines socio-
logical attempts to understand gender inequality. It is now increasingly
common to reject a sociology that seeks systematic regularities and
patterns of causality. For example, most feminist researchers caricature
role theory or set up structural-functionalism or structural-Marxism as
rhetorical "straw persons." Although many feminist sociologists retain a
revised concept of social structure, other gender scholars show disdain for
even middle-level theoretical abstraction as they attempt to honor diver-
sity and give voice to silenced women. My fear is that the heuristic value
of social structure could be lost by failing to generalize across situations,
even if those situations include diverse peoples living unique lives.
The postmodern emphasis on particularity and language also discour-
ages one from seeking causal explanations. Without some concept of
social causality, one can only describe a multitude of unique experiences
and talk endlessly about talk. Kuhn and his successors were right in
pointing out that science has no special claim to truth, but one still needs
to look for causal patterns in the social world and ask why things happen
as they do. Theories need to remain causal, even if most of the research
methods cannot adequately prove causality (Lieberson, 1985). Perhaps
one should reject both scientism and postmodernism while simultane-
ously relying on their contradictory root assumptions. In researching
masculinities, one might look for both regularized similarity and particu-
laristic difference. By using multiple methods and relying on diverse
ways of knowing, one might move closer to some tentative conclusions
about which theoretical explanations for gender inequality are most
plausible.
Rejecting conventional social science methods and liberal philosophic
traditions is provocative, but it carries some internal contradictions.
Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes, Rousseau, and the others were "sexist" and
"elitist," and their ideas are suspect because of it. Nevertheless, Western
liberalism can be seen as providing the impetus for the civil rights
movement as well as the women's movement. Similarly, science has
emancipatory as well as destructive potential (Jansen, 1990; Olson, 1990).
New false dichotomies are created by branding specific research tech-
niques (i.e., quantitative sociology) as inherently "male" or "masculinist"
(O'Brien, 1989; Seidler, 1989). Critiques of masculinist science as stem-
ming from Western men's proclivity to objectify and dominate others
(Easlea, 1981) provide insights into relationships between knowledge and
power, but attributing some essential gendered nature to these specific
research practices is misleading.
If one takes seriously recent calls to situate and historicize the socio-
logical analyses of gender, then one should avoid the false dichotomy
between "male" and "female" research. Quantitative/empirical/deductive/
explanatory research such as mathematical data analysis, random sample
surveys, extensive cross-cultural comparisons, and experiments are not
necessarily masculine. Qualitative/intuitive/inductive/exploratory research
such as ethnography, interviewing, participant observation, oral histories,
and intensive case studies are not necessarily feminine. Even if there are
proportionately more men doing the former and proportionately more
women doing the latter, one should remember that the association with
gender is historically specific and socially constructed. For example, in
the early part of the century, quantitative social science methods were first
advocated by women, and for a time they were considered "feminine"
(Deegan, 1988). It was only later that surveys and mathematical modeling
became associated with men and masculinity.
Research findings are also employed for political purposes. Study
methods that produce easily understood conclusions about the causes and
consequences of gender inequality become increasingly important as
fundamentalist and backlash movements call for reinstating patriarchal
privileges. Pseudoscientific studies carry especially high credibility with
policy makers. To abandon conventional social science to those who
would support existing patterns of gender stratification would be a grave
political mistake. Similarly, to ignore the knowledge created by system-
atic empirical inquiry because others have made a fetish of science would
be a profound intellectual error. How, then, might one retain some aspects
of conventional social science in studying masculinities, while at the same
time integrating recent feminist insights?
Standpoint Theories and Men's Studies
From what standpoint should men (or women) study masculinity?

Women studying gender can begin from a feminist standpoint, from the
"actualities of women's lives," the "concrete, relational, subjugated ac-
tivities" of women (Smith, 1987). Feminist standpoint theorists argue that
this perspective affords them a more encompassing and empowering grasp
of social life than conventional social science that represents the views of
dominant men (Harding, 1986; Hartsock, 1983; Smith, 1992). Standpoint
theories favor process over static categorizing and treat the personal as
both political and theoretically enlightening. What can standpoint theories
tell about how to study men and masculinities?
The most basic insight from standpoint theories is that everyday life—
the concrete activities people do—structure perception, attitudes, and
ways of knowing. Where one stands shapes what one can see and how one
can understand it. One way to use standpoint theories is to focus on how
activities conventionally performed by women (e.g., child care) might
structure the consciousness and behavior of mothers and fathers in similar
fashion (Coltrane, 1989; Risman, 1987) or how couple dynamics might
respond to similar power inequities regardless of gender or sexual prefer-
ence (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983). This type of analysis, by focusing on
how gender and its related standpoints are socially constructed under
specific microstructural conditions, can tell much about the creation and
maintenance of gender difference and gender inequality.
If one focuses on the lived reality of most men's lives, however, one
also runs the risk of reproducing patriarchal consciousness. Focusing on
men's standpoints will typically produce a picture of men's felt power-
lessness. One must be careful to acknowledge that these same men exercise
considerable power in their lives, particularly over women, but also over
other men. This contradictory coexistence of felt powerlessness and actual
(if latent) power is quite common for men. For instance, family violence
researchers are finding that men's subjective sense of lost or slipping
control is often a precursor to wife beating. The "partial and perverse
perspective" (Harding, 1986) that has come from men studying men in
the past may be recreated by contemporary scholars if they adopt an
uncritical stance that treats men as victims. In contrast, Messner (1990)
identifies an emergent genre in the sociology of sports that integrates the
personal experience of male victimization with the promise of masculine
privilege. He notes that concrete examination of men's lives can reveal
the social mechanisms through which men's power over women is con-
structed but also recognizes the political tension around emphasizing too
much the costs, rather than the benefits, of masculinity. The "tricky
balancing act" (Messner, 1990, p. 145) of profeminist men's studies is
open to attack because men scholars share institutional power and privi-
lege and because any emphasis on the victimization of men can be seen
as detracting from the business of exposing women's oppression (Harding,
1986; Jardine & Smith, 1987). Messner advocates an inclusive profemin-
ist approach that integrates analyses of masculinity with class, race, and
sexual inequalities and, above all, highlights gender oppression. This
follows Connell's (1987) call for a focus on history, process, and struggle
surrounding hegemonic and subordinated masculinities.
In order to illuminate how gendered interaction and power are socially
structured, I suggest that researchers attempt to integrate men's stand-
points into gender studies in at least three ways: (a) by focusing on men's
emotions, (b) by studying men in groups, and (c) by placing men's
experiences in a structural context. First, one needs to get men talking
about their emotional lives in some detail, even if, or perhaps especially
because, they may lack a vocabulary for doing so. Researchers cannot
afford to accept men's superficial characterizations of their internal states
and need to push them for self-reflection. Many men are motivated by
fears and insecurities that conventional sociological research strategies do
not easily capture. For example, a man who runs court-referral groups for
abusing men told me how he uses a "freeze-frame" technique to get men
to talk about, and thus become aware of, their emotions. He stops the men
while they are presenting accounts of battering instances and repeatedly

demands that they tell him details about what they were feeling at certain
key moments. The emotion he hears most, particularly the one men report
having just before they hit women, is fear (see also Lisak, 1991). Re-
searchers need to be able to specify the types of insecurities (and senses
of self-importance) men report in various circumstances and begin to
document their behavioral counterparts. By looking at how men experi-
ence, organize, and talk about their emotions, one might begin to build
bridges between interactionist, psychodynamic, and power-based theories
of gender.
I am not suggesting a simplistic acceptance of emotional or autobio-
graphical material as epistemologically privileged discourse. Much writ-
ing in men's studies is autobiographical or confessional, but rarely gets
past the insight that men are taught to be competitive and have trouble
expressing their emotions. One should guard against the tendency in some
scholarly writing to accept one's felt emotions or bodily sensations as
somehow superior or more authentic than other ways of knowing, because
emotions and bodily experiences are also socially constructed, often in
the service of power and domination. I think researchers should focus on
men's emotionality, not because it is epistemologically privileged, but
because it may be an illuminating fault line for men between what is and
what should be (Smith, 1987).
A second way to take men's unique standpoints into account is to focus
on how men create difference, exclude women, and use privileged infor-
mation. Feminist scholars have countered androcentric scholarship by
bringing the women back in, focusing on their experiences and giving
voice to their silenced concerns. One reason to focus on men's standpoints
is to find out how and why they exclude women. Men are in a unique
position to do research on groups of men and to identify processes through
which men create rituals, reaffirm symbolic difference, establish internal
hierarchy, and exclude, belittle, dominate, and stigmatize women and
nonconforming men. Locker rooms, playing fields, board rooms, shop
floors, the military, and fraternal organizations of all types provide access
to the relations of ruling (Goode, 1982; Smith, 1992). Investigating men's
standpoints allows the examination of privileged sources of information
that, although incomplete and falsely universalizing, can contribute to the
understanding of the exercise of men's power.
Men should not be the only ones to study masculinity, because women's
standpoints are also necessary for a full understanding of gender relations.
Thus, my third focus concerns the relational context of gender and brings
me back to the need to highlight power and identify structural patterns.

Individual actors and their experiences are obviously important, but
researchers also need a focus on patterns of relationships between men
and women, among men, and among women. One fruitful way to validate
both difference and similarity and highlight both agency and structure is
to identify the conditions under which gender becomes salient in everyday
life. What types of settings and interactions are likely to call for partici-
pants to use gender in understanding or expressing their thoughts, feel-
ings, and actions? Who brings up gender in social interaction and when
is it subtly inferred? One should attempt to determine when gender is
invoked as a prerogative-maintaining move by men, when and how gender
is used by men in group settings, and what relationship the use of gender
has to felt insecurity.
If one can identify the typical purposes and costs of men's and women's
use of gender as an interactional resource, one will better understand how
it facilitates or inhibits social interaction and at whose expense those
interactions occur. One might also focus on internal conversations about
gendered feelings or behaviors. This relatively "micro" approach follows
Goffman (1977) and West and Zimmerman (1987) by conceptualizing
gender as an actively constructed accomplishment of ongoing interaction,
but it also suggests a focus on contextual, structural, and psychodynamic
correlates of such activities. Such an approach might render the "doing"
of gender amenable to conventional sociological research practices be-
cause one could focus on identifying the common features of situations
that called for gender to become salient. Researchers need to document
and categorize the microstructures (Risman & Schwartz, 1989) under
which men and women use gender in particular ways. Systematic studies
are also needed of "gender strategies" (Hochschild, 1989) to assess the
extent to which they are uniquely crafted and to identify broad patterns
of regularity in their form and use across historical, cultural, geographic,
economic, and institutional contexts. By using comparative sociological
methods, focusing on the concept of social structure, and paying attention
to gender as an interactional resource, one can better understand how
gender is actively constructed by social actors. Documenting how power
and material conditions are associated with women's and men's stand-
points can counter essentialist claims, contribute to public debates about
gender, and ultimately transform society. By not forsaking traditional social
science practices, perhaps scholars can literally, not just figuratively, decon-
struct gender inequality.
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4
Ethnographies and Masculinities
DON C O N W A Y - L O N G
As analysis of the nature of difference has moved to center stage in current

theoretical approaches to gender, anthropology has also returned to its
earlier importance as a primary discipline in gender studies. The impor-
tance of anthropology in studying difference should be evident; explaining
differences was one of the original raisons d'etre for the emergence of the
discipline in the 19th century. What was examined between cultures then
has come to be just as important within cultures now, that is, an early and
simplistic approach to cross-cultural analysis that set up an "us-them"
framework for difference has blossomed into a recognition of the multi-
faceted realities within any social or cultural grouping. This does not mean
that seeking cross-cultural similarities is no longer useful; it certainly is.
Such a search for shared structures of masculinities throughout the world
made possible David Gilmore's recent work Manhood in the Making
(1990). However, one of the failings of this particular study is the lack of
recognition of the plurality of masculinities within any of the cultures he
analyzed.
Gilmore's work is an important addition, though, to the slowly growing
body of anthropological studies of men and masculinity. These studies,
although indebted to studies of women by women, remain a few steps
behind feminist anthropology in the application of theory. Feminism has
moved beyond the initial idea of the universal nature of woman's second-
class status to recognize diversities of types even within a particular
localized ethnic group, let alone within a larger, more complex national
group. But the realization that the same thing is true of masculinities has
managed to elude the grasp of many ethnographers, who seem to be still
utilizing the Parsonian view of normative standard case. In the only other
61
approach, when a man just doesn't fit, deviance becomes the stock
framework for analysis.
Gilmore, for example, approaches his subject with the apparent expec-
tation that each culture he studies (the Mediterranean rim, the Truk, the
Samburu, the Sambia, Tahitians) will have a single "masculinity" that
cannot be explained sufficiently by conflict theory, biology, or strict
Freudianism. He seeks his explanation in a social-environmental synthe-
sis. Violent testing of masculinity, trials of strength and endurance in
which men risk their lives, and dangerous rites of passage and initiations
seem to pervade all systems of masculinity he examines, including the
most gentle peoples such as the IKung or the Fox. Variations among
cultures seem concerned more with the extent to which the trials are taken
than whether or not they are present. Explaining the seeming ephemerality
of manhood is the basic puzzle. Why do so many forms of masculinity
seem to view their "maleness" as so fragile, so much of an attainment, so
often a goal sufficiently beyond an individual man's reach that it keeps
him struggling on for a lifetime? Gilmore's answer lies in the social need
to prevent men from "regressing" to the state of unity with mother, with
the feminine. Manhood imagery, he says, is "a defense against the eternal
child within, against puerility, against what is sometimes called the Peter
Pan complex" (1990, p. 29). The reason such a masculine complex is
socially acceptable is due, according to Gilmore, to the requirement that
men be capable in reproduction, provisioning, and protection, all of which
"demand assertiveness and resolve" as well as "a mobility of action, a
personal autonomy" (pp. 48-49). With this argument, he approaches
(though he fails to refer to) the psychoanalytic sociology argued by Nancy
Chodorow (1978) and further developed by Rubin (1983), Ehrensaft
(1987), Benjamin (1988), and Johnson (1988). Gilmore's book is a good
start, in my view, in the attempt to elicit a summary of gendered behaviors
that positions the male, instead of the female, as the primary enigma to be
explained.
But there are problems with Gilmore's book. First, nothing in his analy-
sis explains why women are not recognized for their contributions to
reproduction and provisioning, or why they are often forbidden to protect
the group at large. He never asks why it is that, whatever it is that a man
does, his act is more important, more valued than a woman's comparable,
even identical, activity. In other words, he does not demonstrate a theory of
patriarchy, that is, a system of power relations of men over women.
Second, he assumes in each case of exception to the manhood ideology
that he posits, whether these exceptions are a single individual in Anda-
Ethnographies and Masculinities 63
lusia or all men in Tahiti, that the deviants have no "manhood ideology"
of their own. This is a patently false assumption, because the men often
(though not always) successfully carry out at least some of the basic local
requirements in the performance of masculinity and seem to be far more
than mere failures at the game of masculine performance. This is a clear
reflection of the failure of sex role theory; if a man fails or a group of men
fail to live up completely to the hegemonic rules of global and Western-
defined masculinity, then and therefore he or they have no masculinity
worth studying of his or their own, nor is it interesting even to wonder
why and how he or they construct difference within the category male/
masculine. The recognition of difference within this gendered category
called masculinity and an identification of the plurality of masculinities
are the beginnings of the deconstruction of dominant masculine "doxa,"
because the struggle among men is equally important as the struggle for
dominance over women and children. The simple recognition of the
multiplicity of masculinities would have improved Gilmore's work im-
mensely.
Honor, Shame, and the Mediterranean
Gilmore's work is the first wide-ranging global view of masculinity of

which I am aware, but there have been numerous detailed studies of
particular masculinities throughout the history of ethnography. For exam-
ple, Peristiany's 1966 collection on honor and shame in the Mediterranean
provided an initial model for many subsequent works on the circum-
Mediterranean area. Honor and shame, to Peristiany, are the two poles of
an evaluative process. "Honour is at the apex of the pyramid of temporal
social values and it conditions their hierarchical order. Cutting across all
other social classifications it divides social beings into two fundamental
categories, those endowed with honour and those deprived of it" (p. 10).
As might be expected of works of 30 years ago, Peristiany's collection
is written in a generic masculine style that does not pursue the implica-
tions of gender as fundamental categories that could provide an additional
layer of meaning for the analysis. In asking what all the groups studied
have in common, Peristiany (1966) finds the answer in the structure of
small-scale society, in the personal relations of solidarity. Within such
systems in which the individual reflects the group, this individual "is
constantly forced to prove and assert himself' (p. 11, emphasis added).
The words do not mean what one can read in them today. He may be
"constantly 'on show,' " he may be "forever courting the public opinion
of his 'equals,' " but the maleness of the actor is never clearly perceived
as being central to the explanation. A superficial recognition that the honor
in question is based partially on the protection of the sexual purity of
women is certainly there, but the implications are not pursued. Nor does
the Don Juanism studied by Baroja in this collection reflect an awareness
that the seduction of women, given the protection of their "purity," is a
competitive arrangement among men in which women are part of patri-
mony. The writers here actually approach the possibilities of analytical
deconstruction of this gendered system of power relations as they detail
the inconsistencies of linking honor to the testicles, sexual purity to the
woman's maidenhead, tamed men to castration, and shamed women to a
female's sexual behavior outside of marriage. But they do not make it
explicit. When Pitt-Rivers notes that the "natural qualities of sexual
potency or purity and the moral qualities associated with them provide
the conceptual framework on which the system is constructed" (Peris-
tiany, 1966, p. 45, emphasis added), one knows a theoretical blind spot has
cloaked the very inconsistencies they had almost grasped. The "natural-
ness" of the sex/gender system is too often assumed in the work of this
period. The problem of the elusiveness of masculinity and the question of
exactly why it must be performed with such intense commitment is left for
future ethnographers.
Brandes (1980), in his study of folklore and ritual in Andalusia, begins
to ask this question. He places his understanding in men's memories of
powerlessness as children, their discomfort at the structures of class domina-
tion and difference, and their adult fear of femininity and of women's power
as it is expressed through sexuality. He perceives the object of his study,
folklore, as a masculine-defined realm that expresses the relations of
dominance and control so central to the psychology of masculinity. It is a
decided improvement on the earlier volume.
A more recent work follows the principles laid out in Peristiany's work.
Gilmore (1987) edits a collection that sets out to reexamine the basic
framework of honor and shame. From the perspective of 20 years later,
two criticisms are directed at the earlier model. First, Gilmore asks
whether it is fair to impose a totalized, somewhat reductionist model on
all these Mediterranean societies. (One might ask why he then imposed an
equally reductionist model on global masculinities in his 1990 work.) Is it
fair to portray the area as swirling in an "unrelenting masculine conten-
tiousness"? Are these "manhood ideals" merely an etic (that is, an
external observer's) interpretation that, although consistent with practice,
is "unlikely ever to be consciously thought or spoken by those who have

created" this social practice? (Thanks to Scott, 1985, pp. 138-139, for this
observation.) What about generosity, honesty, or hospitality as equally
important descriptive systems, especially in the actual discourse of emic
(that is, an insider, a "native") self-description? Is the recognition of
diversity lost in the generalized honor-shame dichotomy? (Gilmore, 1987,
pp. 5-6). This is a good beginning for the identification, celebration, and
explanation of diversity that any contemporary model must include.
Second, Brandes, in the collection's concluding article, challenges the
previously portrayed inextricability of honor with the male, shame with
the female. A dishonored male is shamed (feminized); a masculinized
female earns honor. It is an improvement on the analysis in the Peristiany
collection discussed earlier to identify the association as a gendered one,
not one based on a biological sex category so much as rooted in actual
(and malleable) daily behavior (Brandes, 1987, p. 122). It is also more
consistent with a practice-based approach that recognizes daily negotia-
tion over the somewhat variable boundaries that cultures construct be-
tween genders.
The sophistication of the model has also been improved by the addition of
insights from Chodorow's psychoanalytic sociology and Bourdieu's (1977)
practice-based approach, as well as general feminist challenges to male-
defined frameworks of analysis. Sexuality here "is perceived through a
competitive idiom by which men jockey for control over women as objects
to achieve narcissistic gratifications and dominance over other men.
Sexuality is a form of social power" (p. 4). The struggle among men is
identified as reflecting "shared male anxieties about feminization" (p. 11).
Men fear being made passive, vulnerable, female—whether by the actions
of men or women. But Gilmore (1987) does suggest the possibility,
because masculinity is seen as so ephemeral, so much at peril, that a secret
desire may underlie the bluster of masculine drama: "Androcentric sexual
ideologies, for which machismo may stand as a convenient label, represent
a reaction-formation or 'masculine protest' against unacceptable wishes
not to have a penis, to be like a woman, to be dependent, to restore the
early psychic merging with the mother" (p. 13).
It is in this context that Gilmore (1987) wonders about the absence of
male rites of passage to adult manhood in the region. Such rites as do exist
are "amorphous" or "tacit" at best. Because each boy must make a
"hazardous spatial and behavioral transition from the female world to the
homosocial world of men," thereby breaking the ties with mother and the
feminine, it becomes necessary to take the main indication of difference
and objectify it with great symbolic value (p. 15). The result is the
"hypervaluation of the male genital and the almost priapic obsession
with phallic assertion in the ethnomasculinities of Mediterranean socie-
ties" (p. 13).
This is a reasonable approach to take, one which is complemented by
other work on the Mediterranean area. Tillion (1966/1983) argues, in a
fascinating polemic on the "persistent debasement of the female condi-
tion" in this area, that the fears of loss of control to women contributed to
what she calls the "republic of cousins." Countering Levi-Strauss's "ele-
mentary" exchange of women in exogamy, Tillion views the Mediterra-
nean system as one of tribal endogamy among patrikin, keeping tribal
property in the tribe and daughters in the family. She associates these
aspects of tribal culture with pronatalist expansionism, with "virile bru-
tality" for men complemented by virtue and "occultation" (both veiling
and physical limitations in public space) for women. As a result of low
levels of accepted authority, women still end up with great though un-
authorized social power; fear of women's magic and witchcraft abounds.
Whether or not one accepts the validity of her claim that Mediterranean
endogamy approaches the "brink of incest (and sometimes beyond it),"
the perspective does add an interesting layer of interpretation to the
overall picture.
Alternative Sex-Gender Systems in the Pacific
Another world area that has produced numerous texts on gender is the
South Pacific. Beginning with Margaret Mead and Malinowski, studies
of the sexualities of native groups or the particular constructions of
masculine/feminine have been plentiful; it is perhaps their geographic
distinctiveness that has enabled Western ethnographers to make so much
of these differently constructed sex/gender systems. Studying Samoan or
Papuan peoples has permitted "other-making" in which the native is
sufficiently different as to leave the Western observer safely distant in her
or his "objective" interpretation. It was easier, for example, for Mead to
use the Samoans as an example of sexual freedom than it would have been
to wax poetic about similar behaviors in the United States; what was a
norm in Samoa would have been deviance in the Americas. Whether or
not Mead correctly interpreted her data is not the point; the use to which
it was put—challenging child-rearing practices regardless of the material
conditions that created them—is the issue. Brash importation of the
practices of a different sociocultural system into a postindustrial nation

will not produce the same results and should not be expected to do so.
This mentality is a result of separating the social constraints on the
individual (Durkheim) from the psychological, unconscious constraints
(Freud) and once again from the constraints of material conditions (Marx).
Culture may well be shreds and patches, yet each shred, each patch must
be understood as thickly, as widely, as deeply, and in as many conceptual
realms as possible.
This is part of the intellectual background for Herdt's work on the
construction of masculinity in Papua New Guinea (1981, 1984). Herdt
argues (1981) that the false antithesis between society and individual
harmed anthropological theory building in the past and was an issue he
wished to overcome in his work. It is an essential limitation to transcend
particularly because he intended to study the construction of gender,
which can easily be seen to involve symbolic (and ritual) constructions
that have roots in social, psychological, and material categories. This
necessitates, as Herdt notes (1981, pp. 8-9), overcoming the historical
tension between anthropology and psychoanalysis. This is what he sets
out to do.
The problem he wanted to explain was the existence of prescribed
male-male fellatio in the development of boys into men, in which a daily
consumption of semen is believed necessary to build a boy into a man.
Obviously an extreme variation from the homophobic constructions in the
circum-Mediterranean, this behavior has fascinated ethnographers, par-
ticularly because the behavior is smoothly incorporated into a masculine
ideological and behavioral system that otherwise reflects similar concerns
to those in Mediterranean societies.
Accompanying this prescribed fellatio is a ritual avoidance of women
and a belief in the polluting effects (and even lethality) of menstrual blood.
Curiously, this system of rearing boys into young men results in a report-
edly exclusive heterosexual relationship with the wife by the time the
young man becomes a father for the first time (though Herdt reports in
1981 an interim bisexual pattern for a period of time after marriage that
other works [Godelier, 1986; Herdt, 1984] do not identify). This develop-
mental process of early "homosexuality" transforming into a mature adult
heterosexuality contradicts most of the attempts to theorize how homo-
sexuality and heterosexuality are produced in Western culture. The clear
cultural construction of a male-male sexuality has little to do with Western
gay lifestyles or, for that matter, with currently popular Western theories of
the possible genetic roots of homosexual behavior. The possibility that
sexuality itself—homo, hetero, or bi—could be culturally constructed

phenomena is still quite difficult for many in the West to grasp. The
arbitrariness of the symbol becomes obfuscated by the powerful ideologi-
cal process of naturalizing that symbol.
In addition, the secretiveness of the homosexual cult among men leads
Herdt to accept the necessity of talking in terms of sexual subcultures of
masculine and feminine. What emerges are separate rituals for men and
for women that are central to the development of each as gendered
identities. The rituals incorporate symbols that are interpreted individu-
ally yet result in collective beliefs and behaviors. As found in the argu-
ments of Combs-Schilling (1989) concerning Morocco, public ritual
performance is an essential process in the creation of gendered meanings.
These gendered meanings, regardless of the culture involved, must be under-
stood at the level of both the psychodynamics of individual erotic cathexis
and the collective ritual behaviors that constitute tribal, ethnic, or national
unity. As Herdt (1981) puts it, "our most urgent and significant questions
about the anthropological phenomena of ritual symbolism involve the
mind (subjective processes) and behavioral development" (p. 12).
It is of great interest in understanding gender symbology that girls are
frequently thought to be born with all the necessary internal functions to
become a biologically full-grown woman naturally. No intervention is nec-
essary. Boys, on the other hand, require intervention to develop; it is such
an idea on which the daily ingesting of semen in New Guinea is based.
Among the Sambia, semen builds men; without it, boys remain feminized.
In other places, war builds men. So does sexual conquest or the acquiring
of riches. But something must be done to make a boy a man; some proof
of masculinity, some achievement, is necessary.
The extent to which the denial of women's power to give birth to men
is taken can be fascinating; it is from an act of male-male fellatio that the
first woman was parthenogenetically created, says Sambia myth. As well,
semen, when fed to premenarche Sambia girls, helps "sexualize" them,
causing the onset of menstruation and the eventual production of breast
milk. Men thereby believe they have some power over women's natural
development. The Sambia also claim that it takes 40 to 50 ejaculations
into the vagina to build a fetus; semen combines in some hazy fashion
with women's blood to produce a child. Semen is mighty stuff in this
symbolic system. (Data for this section is drawn from Herdt, 1981, 1984;
Godelier, 1986.)
Yet at the same time men's power is limited; "men fear masculine
atrophy" (Herdt, 1981, p. 250). Their semen is depletable and must be
built up (secretly) by the ingestion of tree sap. There is also fear of the
castrative power of the vagina, which can become so "hot" as to drain the
man of all his "water"—semen. Fear of women's power is the subtext of
much of belief system in this male subculture. In the early stages of male
initiation, many rituals are performed to bleed (literally) the young boy
of the poisons built up from his long association with the women's world.
Myths of sexual difference and danger pervade the symbolic atmosphere.
Each society becomes preoccupied with only a handful of myths. Men's and
women's capacities to project their myths into cultural idiom, to nurture them,
to deny their personal doubts about them or sanctify them imperiously in
ritual, at whatever price (while sustaining the consequences of so doing),
presage the quality of life and the eventual successes and failures of that
society. (Herdt, 1981, p. 16)
The male idiom is described by Herdt in his conclusion as a way of

utilizing the sexual divisions to gender the world, anthropomorphizing
natural phenomena, and performing a process of "perceptual splitting" that
polarizes the world into an antagonistic system (1981, pp. 299-300). As a
result, "[c]ertain affects (at manifold levels of subjectivity) are thus split off
from one's sense of self and become feared, denied, or adored as 'things'
holding a dangerous power beyond oneself. Perceptual splitting is thus a
symbolic mechanism having feedback effects in individual experience,
cultural ideology, and social relationships" (p. 300).
This becomes all the more useful when compared to Benjamin's (1988)
argument that gender splitting is the root of dominant-submissive rela-
tionships in the West. The resultant system of differential power in which,
regardless of male fears of the feminine, what men do is more culturally
valuable than what women do, all the way down to the biological basis of
reproduction, grants men a very real cultural validation that, at least
publicly, is denied to women. Although admittedly different in form, the
context of power relations between these sex/gender categories is similar
in content and subsequent effect to that in Western systems. As Foucault
(1979, 1980) conceives of power and knowledge in a unitary interrela-
tionship (power/knowledge), so can one conceive of gender and power;
identity is gender is level of validation is access to power in society.
[T]he differential access to the process of validation is a major determinant

of the ways that individuals experience gender relationships: much of the
significance of work and consumption in our society derives from their
importance as major contexts in which men and women can display, compare
and evaluate their subjectivities. (Errington & Gewertz, 1987, p. 132)
But there is still more to the relations of power here than mere sexual
antagonism (as Herdt & Poole, 1982, make clear). There remains the
possibility that some form of envy of reproductive powers of women is
involved, which produced ritual blood-letting among men (nose bleeding,
circumcision itself). The amount of male energy put into sexual hostility,
into constructing and performing masculine ritual, into endowing the male
genital and its fluid emission with near-deific power seems so much to be
built on basic insecurity, on perceived powerlessness rooted in the basic
sexual (reproductive) division of labor. It is, after all, women who
produce children from their bodies, who feed them from their breasts,
who bleed in tandem with the changes of the moon. Then it is also women
who are charged with the rearing and socializing of male children, thereby
requiring (as long as the masculine is conceived as totally different from
the feminine) the eventual reclamation of male children from the world of
the female. This combination of biological reality and social organization
may well turn out to constitute far more of cultural underpinnings than yet
imagined. Men need to "do" something to become or be masculine; women,
though, naturally embody their own femininities. What will it take to
escape such dualism? Anthropology's contribution to answering this ques-
tion is in the realm of ethnomethodological examination of the stuff of
culture: practical daily behaviors, symbols and meanings, and structures
of communication.
The Practice of Daily Lives
Practical taxonomies, which are a transformed, misrecognizable form of the

real divisions of the social order, contribute to the reproduction of that order
by producing objectively orchestrated practices adjusted to those divisions.
(Bourdieu, 1977, p. 163)
Bourdieu's theory of practice is offered in a context of analyzing Kabyle

Berber gender relations in Algeria. Berber male honor, he argues, is
nothing but a "cultivated disposition," constituted through body practice
and mental constructions, which produces a series of ritual exchanges in
the daily practices of life. Such rituals are rules for manifesting identity,
but the performers of these rules are less than fully conscious of them as
jural behavior. The magic of these rules is that it is their nonconscious
nature that makes them so powerful and that produces and maintains their
dominance as doxa. This idea parallels Gramsci's (1971) views that the
hegemony of ideology reduces the necessity of direct political coercion;
what is accepted as natural behavior cannot be a realm of political
struggle. "The rule's last trick is to cause it to be forgotten that agents have
an interest in obeying the rule" (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 22).
Masculinity itself becomes a performance of dominance, following
certain directions from an unseen (and often unrecognized) ritual director
whose commands pervade language systems, physical kinesics and prox-
emics, psychoanalytic structures, and symbolic categories. The ways in
which men speak, move, express desire, and construct symbols become
dramatic performances that, due to the process of naturalization described
by Bourdieu and feminist analysts of gender, are often outside the realm
of social and political discourse. The struggles of sexual politics then
become a process of negotiation over the boundaries between the universe
of the undisputed and the public realms of sex/gender discourse. As Bourdieu
(1977) points out:
The dominated classes [which in my reading include women, lesbians, and

gay men] have an interest in pushing back the limits of doxa and exposing
the arbitrariness of the taken for granted; the dominant classes [read here men,
or heterosexuals] have an interest in defending the integrity of doxa or, short
of this, of establishing in its place the necessarily imperfect substitute,
orthodoxy, (p. 169)
Gender Doxa: A Few Examples
French structuralism argued the universality of systems of oppositions,

although the nature of the paired symbols remained arbitrary. In Bourdieu's
discussion of Kabyle systems of opposition (male/dry/light/out-
side/hot/spiced versus female/wet/dark/inside/cold/bland [p. 142]), one
finds some that do not correspond to European categories. Male/intel-
lect/rational/cold and female/emotion/irrational/hot correspond more to
the philosophies of European peoples. But in both European and African
systems, "female" is left, while "male" is right. European languages add
an additional layer of meaning that contributes to the disempowering of
women. Why is left-handedness perceived as a social danger, as sinister
(French sinistre = left)? Why does the right confer the meaning of
correctness, soundness, and genuineness, as well as just claims based in
morality (this is true in English, French (droii), and German (recht/re-

chte). How many educated European people would be able to conceptu-
alize, explain, and realize the impact on gender of these associations? I
suspect that very few could do so. In any case, on the occasions when a
linguistic issue is brought out of a doxa closet into the public realm (for
example, the generic masculine usage in English), men and a fair share of
women have typically responded by proclaiming its orthodoxy, its cor-
rectness, and, if you will, its tightness. The message is clear: Do not
dispute the natural, the comfortable, the known.
Similarly, how many are conscious of the male use of greater space,
whether in sitting or standing positions? How many women are quietly
irritated at the male prerogative to take both armrests in crowded theaters
and how many men are totally (and quite conveniently) unaware that they
do so? How many men would consider changing their physical position
so their head would be at a lower height than that of the women with whom
they are talking or arguing? (And how many would even understand the
point of it?) These are some of the physical embodiments of power that
remain nonconscious in the majority of people (see Henley, 1977, for a
feminist classic in nonverbal communication). But as Bourdieu noted,
probably a larger percentage of men remain unaware of this form of power
than women.
Systems of Reproduction
How are such systems reproduced? Recalling Rosaldo's (1980) com-

ment that "the individuals who create social relationships are themselves
social creations" (p. 416), it becomes necessary to conceive of a cyclical
system of (re)production that could be rooted in the psychodynamic and
cathectic processes of child development. Seeking just such an under-
standing led Nancy Chodorow (1978) to ask the question "Why do women
mother?" Recognizing that a child's attainment of identity as self and as
gendered being are closely connected, if not always coincident, and that
such attainment takes place in a gendered environment where women are
the primary caretakers in the earliest years, signifying to the child a basic
division of labor; recognizing also that the attainment of masculinity is a
different process from that of femininity because the male must break free
from the nurturing power of the mother through the violence of a second
birth into his masculinity, one finds a clear explication of the habitus of
gender—an embodiment of sex-based gender arrangements that remain
hidden from the social eye (and the social "I") due to their close associa-
tion with the biology of reproduction. Bourdieu (1977) argues, I think
correctly, that the child learns a sexual identity and a division of labor
simultaneously, "out of the same socially defined set of inseparably
biological and social indices" (p. 93). I can think of nothing that is more
naturalized than the gender arrangements (appropriate sexual behavior,
gender behavior, division of labor) that have been constructed on the
biological divisions of sex. These arrangements are considered to be
objective, natural, and above human choice. As Bourdieu (1977) argues:
[T]he habitus makes coherence and necessity out of accident and contingency:
for example, the equivalences it establishes between positions in the division
of labour and positions in the division between the sexes are doubtless not
peculiar to societies in which the division of labour and the division between
the sexes coincide perfectly, (p. 87)
Nor is perfect coincidence necessary for the perpetuation of the idea of

the naturalness of the divisions. The axiomatic "exception that proves the
rule" is a masterpiece of obfuscation. In such depoliticized systems of
explanation, norm and deviance cloak the nature of power to impose its
definition of the world. Practice-based theory, on the other hand, explicitly
incorporates the dynamics of power and history, permitting one to reach
the level of the doxa that underlies accepted discourse. Gramsci, for example,
perceiving the interconnectedness of the sex/gender system and the structure
of work processes, suggested that "the struggle of women to end their own
oppression within a patriarchal society will activate new patterns of
thought and behavior that could eventually penetrate bourgeois hegemony
within the workplace" (as quoted in Boggs, 1972, pp. 99-100). To para-
phrase Frederick Douglass, hegemonic power concedes nothing (neither
doxa nor orthodoxy) without a demand from those who are willing to
question the natural.
Ritual and the Ephemerality of Masculinity
But it is in the dialectical relationship between the body and a space structured
according to the mythico-ritual oppositions that one finds the form par
excellence of the structural apprenticeship which leads to the embodying of
the structures of the world, that is, the appropriating by the world of a body
thus enabled to appropriate the world. (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 89)
Bourdieu's argument corresponds to that of Chodorow, in its claim that

it is in the emotional-physical relationships between children and their
parents that one can find the embodiment of the reproduced structures of
gender inequality. In addition, it parallels the argument of Combs-Schilling
(1989) on the constitutive nature of ritual in Morocco. In the daily (and
life cycle) rituals of human experience are found the roots of the socially
constructed person, what Bourdieu calls the "socially informed body"
(1977, p. 124), which when properly scrutinized can yield the deconstruc-
tion of the relations of power that are hidden in "normal" behaviors. For
example, as noted earlier, the male sense of honor has been made much
of in the Mediterranean area (Bourdieu, 1979; Gilmore, 1987; Peristiany,
1966). Bourdieu argues that the interests of men are linked to the material
and symbolic interests of their family, a major representation of which is
the symbolism of honor maintained by the protection of women's chastity.
The fact that this becomes hegemonic, framing both men's and women's
sexual discourse (p. 92), should not disguise its roots in male insecurities
about their abilities to control women, who are, due to child-rearing
arrangements, totally in control of male children in their early years. A
man's socially constructed need to know who his children are (so as to
pass on patrimony and to know his virility is unquestioned) is deeply
incriminated in the uncertainty of "maleness" and the concomitant need
to prove masculinity repeatedly in daily ritual (see Brandes, 1980, for an
excellent view of the Andalusian form of this practice). As argued in
Gilmore's introduction to a 1987 collection on Mediterranean honor,
erotic and economic power become conflated in a competitive struggle
for "performance" among men (pp. 4-5). It takes constant male vigilance
to prevent the destruction of family honor by women; female power,
through sexual behavior, is a constant concern, a behavioral antifetish, a
fixation.
Such rituals are constructed with the building blocks of taxonomies and
beliefs that are nonconscious and unconscious. The relations of power
between men and women are rarely what they seem; in fact, the bluster of
male control, physical violence, and sexual dominance are often a reaction
to the underlying psychological reality of the child's experience of over-
whelming female power. Male dominance is real, with very real effect,
yet it is built on insecurity and fear of loss of masculinity through the
(subversive) action of women or other men. Women's (and men's) humor
often reflects a knowledge of this fact (see Dwyer, 1978, for folktales from
Morocco that give testimony to this). But the participants are rarely able
to theorize the nature of the underpinnings of their relationships. As Bourdieu
(1977) points out, "Every established order tends to produce . . . the

naturalization of its own arbitrariness" (p. 164). That is the barrier to
self-awareness. One naturalizes male dominance in social practice and
discourse, claiming orthodoxy for its known rules, and rarely if ever
reaches the underlying doxa of male insecurity and fear of returning to
the original embrace of the mother and the feminine.
Negotiation, Structures, and Psychodynamics
As an example of the naturalizing process by which gender is obfus-

cated in ethnography, I offer a critique of Lawrence Rosen's 1984 book
Bargaining for Reality. Rosen focuses on the idea of negotiating one's
daily reality, an idea which has its roots in the ethnomethodological
approaches of sociologists Garfinkel (1967/1984) and Goffman (1977).
Their focus on the microlevel of individuals in interaction yields the basic
idea that life is dramaturgy, performance, a daily construction and recon-
struction of role and identity. With different people in different circum-
stances each person presents different personalities; the way you are with
your mother is not the way you are with your employer, your best friend,
your child. Each circumstance, in this view, presents the opportunity for
self-construction. This sociology of the social actor sets the scene for
Rosen's (1984) approach: "Everywhere I looked I was struck by the extent
to which social life and ideas that informed it possessed an open, malle-
able quality that took shape only as these concepts and relationships
became attached to and identified with the lives of individual men and
women" (p. 1). He found it very difficult to approach Moroccan society
with the idea of a structure that constrained and shaped people's lives.
Instead, the malleability of meaning constructed in particular interac-
tions seemed to inform at a level higher than of any other single analytic
system.
[I]t began to seem mistaken, in the realm of Sefrou [Morocco] social life, to
try and capture from a single perspective the ongoing creation of social
relations [emphasis added] and the patterns that could be observed at any
given moment. What was needed, rather, was an orientation and a chosen set
of cultural attributes that would allow me to move back and forth between
form and process, concept and enactment, individual effort and collective
attachment in such a way as to capture the living quality of my subject.
(Rosen, 1984, p. 2)
Rosen writes of "form and process, concept and enactment, [and] individ-
ual effort and collective attachment" in the previous quote. Although these
are a good set of processual dualities, "form" here becomes primarily
conceived as a linguistic and conceptual structure, power and domination
are insufficiently explored, and history is put on a back burner, referred
to primarily in the context of the Islamic theoretical past. "The cultural
stress and repercussions of individual action—the free play of personal-
ity—determine, to an extraordinary degree, the shape and operation of
everyday social life" (Rosen, 1979, p. 20; emphasis added). Clearly, this
determinism has gone too far in one area and not far enough in others. The
structuring and shaping of individual consciousness and choice that takes
place in, for example, gender, is erased from the picture entirely. For it is
abundantly clear to the visitor that Moroccans have a powerful set of
gendered meanings that shape their lives.
Yet, in what is perhaps a too literal response to the poststructural creed,
Rosen stresses but one of the Gerson and Peiss (1985) trio of themes: By
focusing on negotiation, he leaves the bargaining process without material
context or an awareness of the structuring constraints of individual con-
sciousness (and unconsciousness, for that matter). But granting the limi-
tations of the analysis, he does have it right on one count; the idea of
negotiation of daily relationships is an extremely useful approach to the
real dynamism of people's (and not only Moroccans') lives. The problem
is in what the theory overlooks, not in what it offers. Although negotiation
or bargaining is a part of social interaction, Rosen forgets that one
negotiates from a position; the prior structuring he was so loath to identify
must be brought back into the picture. Individuals perform their (gen-
dered) identities with a combination of variable response and fixed foun-
dation. What Rosen overlooks is the naturalized symbol that one takes for
granted culturally.
It is evident, then, that Bourdieu's combination of the naturalizing of
the arbitrary symbol with the daily acting out of realities is a potent and
practical method for making sense of daily (gendered) life. The approach
is easily tied in with the psychodynamics of sex/gender systems and
family life, as well as with the structuring capacities of economic systems
and historical facts. In the end, gender can be clearly perceived in its
complexities only through the structuring of symbols, psychodynamics,
and political economy, and the agency of the individual acting to make
sense of daily events and struggles.
Conclusion
I set out in this paper to review some theoretical approaches to mascu-

linity in anthropology and their applications in ethnographic work. In
conclusion I wish to review some of the arguments I believe have been
most important in this review and make a few final points. First, the study
of men and masculinity is a long overdue attempt to take the focus off
women as the (one and only) problem to be explained. I believe that the
realm of men and masculinity encompasses some extremely serious social
problems that should militate against the (male) tradition of leaving the
realm of gender solely in the world of women—whether as gendered
actors or as ethnographers. None of this is intended to suggest that the
work done with women is less important, less necessary. In fact, as the
historical record makes clear, reasonably good work on men and mascu-
linities can be done only in a context in which women are arguing their
own realities, their own perspectives on the problems humans all face.
The point is more that researchers all need to overcome the ghettoization
of questions dealing with sex and gender to the realm of women. This
point is made by Dwyer (1982, p. 266) who notices the sexual division
of labor even within anthropology; the work men do has tended to differ
from the work women do, and be taken (per usual) as more important.
Women have been challenging that oversight by doing some of the types
of work men have traditionally done; it is men's turn now to listen to
women and begin asking the questions traditionally asked about women and
femininity about (the male) sex and (various masculine) gender con-
structions.
Second, it is essential to attempt to move beyond falsely conceived
theoretical dichotomies, whether they be objective/subjective, emic/etic,
or materialist/symbolic. Such dualisms are the doxa of academia, provid-
ing the means of lengthening careers and carving out places in disciplinary
histories. An interesting example of one ethnographer who admits the insuf-
ficient nature of his (seemingly) universalist theoretical framework is
Maurice Godelier, who, in his fieldwork among the Baruya, came to
recognize that he could no longer ignore questions of male domination.
As he confesses:
Like many others, I long believed that it was first necessary to fight for the
abolition of class relations, and that all the rest—oppression between the
sexes, races, nations—would unravel or be resolved once these class relations
had been abolished. It was a scientifically false vision of classes, races, and
the sexes, a politically conservative vision which, in the name of revolution,
justified us turning a blind eye to and doing nothing about all these other
forms of domination and oppression. . . . (1986, p. xii)
Needed is more self-examination of this nature about the limits of

theoretical perspectives. Perhaps I should note here that I often appear to
be arguing that sex/gender analysis can explain everything; that is incor-
rect. My point is that it may prove to be more enlightening than ever
suspected about problems that at first glance appear to have nothing to do
with sex or gender. As Gilmore (1987) notes, in his suggestion of the
power of gender in explaining dualist symbolic systems, the "study of
gender, of sexuality, and of other variable concepts of male and fe-
male . . . may be the lost key to a deeper understanding of culture" (p. 17).
But there is still plenty left to be done to fully explore his suggestion.
Third and last is a challenge that researchers have hardly begun to face
in the field of gender studies, let alone within the discipline of anthropol-
ogy. The assumption has been nearly universal that "the biological differ-
ence in the functions of females and males in human reproduction lies at
the core of the cultural organization of women's and men's relations"
(Yanagisako & Collier, 1990, p. 141). But how was the assumption made
that sex itself is more a biological than a social construction? "[H]ow has
our culture come to focus on coitus and parturition as the moments that
above all others constitute maleness, femaleness, and human reproduc-
tion?" (p. 141). Such assumptions about the naturalness of sex and
sexedness have been underpinnings of so much of the discourse about
gender; people have been blinded by the obvious biological connections
of sexedness in the same way that people of earlier generations were
blinded by what they considered to be the obvious associations of gen-
der—through sex—to that biological base. Can people move beyond this?
Our realization that the model of sexual reproduction and sexual difference
so widely used is a particular mode of thinking about relations between people
enables us to question the "biological facts" about sex. In dismantling the
notion that sex is to gender as biology is to culture, we enlarge the analytical
project to encompass the symbolic and social processes by which sex as a
system of difference is itself culturally constituted. (Yanagisako & Collier,
1990, p. 141)
This, in my reading, is what Gayle Rubin (1975) was referring to in her

article that was my introduction to the world of anthropology. Her argu-
ment for a unitary treatment of the interconnected sex/gender system is

still the theoretical approach that moves me the most. It is my view then
that it is still the work of anthropology to follow such a road.
Notes
1. See, for example, San day and Goodenough (1990) for a collection explicitly
designed to demonstrate how contemporary anthropology is moving beyond earlier
paradigms.
2. This is Bourdieu's (1977) term for the unstated yet fundamental and thereby
"naturalized" beliefs by which a culture maintains systems of dominance and order.
3. These two terms—etic and emic—are derived from linguistics. What is phone tic is
the range of possible sound in a language; what is phonemic is the range of sound that
has meaning to the speakers of a language. The shortened forms have come to be codes
in anthropological circles for the perspectives of an outsider and an insider relative to the
culture (or language) being studied. The implication that what is etic is somehow objective
and what is emic is subjective has been criticized as a false dualism.
4. Habitus is Bourdieu's term for the environmental structuring in a culture that
(reproduces certain understandings. Habitus could include, for example, spatial separa-
tions (outside and inside the home) that shape a particular people's gendered patterns of
behavior.
5. For example, in my own geographical specialization, Morocco, some very good
work has been written on—and by—women (see, for example, Davis, 1983; Dwyer, 1978;
Geertz, 1979; Mernissi, 1987; Rassam, 1980), but nothing really has examined men as
men, even when men were the explicit focus of the work. For example, Rabinow's classic
Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco (1977) is essentially a series of encounters between
(male) ethnographer and (male) others, examining the meaning of their encounters
through the eyeglass of the then current desire for reflexivity. Yet their masculinity never
enters the analysis as a factor, though it could have had, in my reading, strong significance
and great explanatory value.
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5
Some Thoughts on Some Histories
of Some Masculinities
Jews and Other Others1
HARRY B R O D
What is one studying when one studies men and masculinities? What are
the relationships between studies of men and studies of women? What
are the relationships between studies of some men and studies of others—in
particular, what are the relationships between studies of dominant or
hegemonic groups of men and studies of marginalized or nonhegemonic
groups of men? In this chapter, I sh&ll take up these questions. I shall do
so by first undertaking a critical analysis of the development of current
conceptualizations of these issues, taking as the guiding thread of my inves-
tigations the genesis of the concept "masculinities" in its present usage. I shall
then apply the results of these inquiries to outline a method of analysis of
nonhegemonic masculinities, using the situation of Jewish men as a case
in point.
The concept of masculinities has become very popular very quickly. As
far as I can determine, Jeffrey Weeks was the first to deploy it in anything
like its current historical/sociological usage in a 1984 article subsequently
incorporated into his 1985 book, Sexuality and Its Discontents (Weeks,
1985). I pass over an earlier psychological rather than historical or
sociological sense of the term in which it refers not to diverse social
structures, in the senses that I shall specify shortly, but rather simply to
the existence of multiple male archetypes in a sense derived from Jungian
psychology (Gerzon, 1982).
82
Some Histories of Some Masculinities 83
The term then follows the pattern of a number of important conceptual

innovations in that having first emerged in gay studies, it quickly migrates
into men's studies, appearing late in 1985 in an article published in Theory
and Society by Tim Carrigan, Bob Connell, and John Lee titled "Toward
a New Sociology of Masculinity" (Carrigan, Connell, & Lee, 1985,
reprinted in Brod, 1987, pp. 63-100, and Kaufman, 1987, pp. 139-192.
See also Connell, 1987). There, it is linked to the concept of "hegemonic
masculinity," about which I shall have more to say later on.
"Masculinities" was helped into the spotlight by my use of it in the title
of a collection I edited, published in 1987: The Making ofMasculinities: The
New Men's Studies (Brod, 1987). By early 1989, Jeff Hearn, now editor
of a book series published by Routledge, Chapman, and Hall on "Critical
Studies on Men and Masculinities," began an article by talking about
"these issues of men and masculinity, or masculinities, as has now become
the radical convention, if that is not a contradiction in terms" (Hearn,
1989, p. 1). From initial coinage to convention within 5 years seems to
me remarkably quick. This is clearly a word whose time has come, as its
frequent usage in this volume demonstrates.
In the spirit of this volume, I would like to reexamine the concept of
masculinities. I shall do so by contrasting it with an earlier formulation.
It seems to me that much of the discussion carried on today about
directions for the future of the study of masculinities would previously
have been carried out, and indeed was carried out, as a conversation about
directions for "men's studies."
Men's studies always assumed a certain relationship to women's stud-
ies. The dominant conception of both fields, and of their interrelationship,
was deeply embedded in the discourse of "sex roles." This discourse, in
turn, carried with it the heritage of the traditional "separate spheres"
model of separate gendered domains. Although both women's and men's
studies studied relations between the genders, each also took as its unique
province relations between members of the same gender. An early and
influential formulation of the proper object of the history of masculinity
made this explicit:
Women's and men's history take the same and different routes to the common
destination of a history of gender. Each studies same-sex and cross-sex
relationships; each identifies a relation unique unto itself, that among mem-
bers of one sex—all-male relationships in men's history, all-female relation-
ships in women's history. (Pleck & Pleck, 1980, p. 4)
If women's studies had its separate sphere of relations between women,

whether named as a "female world of love and ritual," as in Carroll
Smith-Rosenberg's pioneering lead article in the inaugural issue of Signs
(Smith-Rosenberg, 1975), or as "women's culture," or by some other
appellation, then so too did men's. Another important conceptual innova-
tion originating first in gay studies and then adopted by men's studies was
the use of the concept "homosociality" to designate aspects of this sphere,
following the argument of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Between Men:
Engiish Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (Sedgwick, 1985).
Men's and women's studies, then, would each tend to their own particu-
lar gardens and conjointly harvest the fruits of their intersection. Hence,
a crucial task of men's studies was to be an investigation of interactions
between men, with particular emphasis on how men experienced these
interactions as men, and not simply as generic human beings, the way in
which patriarchal scholarship had viewed men. The privileging in these
investigations of personal experience over social structure derived from
a particular conception of the role of men's subjectivity in men's studies.
As I put it in the introduction to The Making of Masculinities (Brod,
1987):
In inverse fashion to the struggle in women's studies to establish the objec-

tivity of women's experiences and thereby validate the legitimacy of women's
experiences as women, much of men's studies struggles to establish the
subjectivity of men's experiences and thereby validate the legitimacy of men's
experiences as men. (p. 6)
Because men's subjectivity had been construed as constituting objec-

tive knowledge, while women's activities had been privatized and written
out of history, emphasizing the subjectivity of masculinity was seen as a
way of unmasking and depowering men's pretensions to objectivity, one
of the important elements in anchoring patriarchal privilege. The idea was
to particularize men's knowledge claims and thereby discredit their pre-
tensions to universality (Hearn, 1989, pp. 39-43). Again, women's and
men's studies are here conceived of as having complementary tasks.
The appearance of complementarity between the spheres painted by this
picture was, however, deceiving. For the bringing to light of a previously
ignored "women's culture" was inherently tied to a thesis about the
politics of knowledge in a way that elucidating "men's culture" was not,
though it certainly could be, too, when done in the right way. That is, the
suppression of knowledge about women's world was part and parcel of the
oppression of women. Hence, producing knowledge about women was

part and parcel of antipatriarchal politics. Though analogous claims were
made about the new knowledge about men produced by men's studies,
and it was clear that this was where the sympathies and intentions of many
of its practitioners were, it was not at all clear to many that it actually did
or would play a similarly feminist role.
The difference has to do with the relations between knowledge and
power. Foregrounding female-female relationships poses an inherent
challenge to male power by breaking the male-imposed silencing of
women's voices in any situation in which those voices are not reading
male scripts. It was not as immediately obvious which power relations
were being challenged by foregrounding male-male relationships. Indeed,
in the concrete politics of academia it became necessary for proponents
of men's studies to stress that they were not trying to strengthen men's
power by diverting resources from women's studies, but rather that they
advocated that the priority of support for women's studies had to be
preserved (Brod, 1990, reprinted in Kimmel & Mosmiller, 1992, pp.
396-398).
Here, then, is the quandary. In focusing on relationships between men,
men's studies seemed to be playing the role assigned to it by women's
studies. Male scholars were hereby not trying to colonize or reterritorial-
ize women's space, or telling women how to study women or gender, but
were self-reflectively studying their own kind and tending their own
gardens, as they had been told to do. (One must of course note that not all
scholars working in men's studies are male. Yet the vast majority are, and
discussions about the field are generally carried on, at least in feminist
circles, as discussions about "What are the boys up to now?" [Bradshaw,
1982]). Or so they at least thought. Yet in doing so they seemed to be
ignoring male-female relations and hence ignoring the question of male
power over women, thereby reinforcing male privilege, precisely the
opposite of what they were trying to do.
In the beginnings of a conceptual shift to which I wish to draw attention,
the object of study of men's studies began to be conceptualized in a way
intended to break down the gendered dichotomy between objectivity and
subjectivity and between separate male and female domains, as well as to
destabilize other dichotomies that structure traditional theories. Although
early formulations, such as that of the Plecks cited previously, often
implicitly invoked a separate spheres sex role model for the study of
gender, by the mid-1980s this rhetoric stood side by side with more
interactive, dynamic formulations. The terrain being explored here began
to be situated, to adopt more sociological terminology, between structure

and agency, public and private, institutions and experiences, "patriarchy" and
individual "men" (Giddens, 1982). As I shall argue shortly, although men's
studies scholarship intended to overcome these dichotomies, slippage
occurred such that it became possible to sometimes speak of the experi-
ences of men without paying sufficient attention to the institutional
embodiments of patriarchy.
Into this breach stepped the concept of masculinities, or rather, into the
breach stepped the concept of masculinities in its intrinsic relation to the
concept of hegemonic masculinity, as both appeared in the Carrigan,
Connell, and Lee article cited earlier. Using gay masculinity as their prime
example, but also taking note of issues of class and race, they deployed
these terms to theorize gender relations in a way that emphasized the
intrinsic interconnections between hierarchies among men and hierar-
chies between women and men. By simultaneously taking up the ques-
tion of power as embedded in contested relationships between the
genders and within male gender relations, this theoretical constellation
would rectify the situation. Or so Carrigan, Connell, and Lee seemed
to intend.
But as it became popularized in the hands of others, masculinities
sometimes seemed to lose the dimension of power and simply signify
plurality or diversity. It lost some of the Gramscian Marxist emphasis on
cultural domination and the radical social constructionism embedded in
it in its initial formulation. Perhaps the simplest way to make the point is to
say that too much of what was written on masculinities did not sufficiently
emphasize, if it noted at all, that masculinities are also patriarchies.
It may be instructive to at this point call attention to two particular
points. First, it is interesting and ironic to note that Carrigan, Connell, and
Lee manage to keep women in the picture even when their primary
example of a nonhegemonic masculinity is gay masculinity, an arena in
which those unfamiliar with gay life and culture often assume women do
not play a significant role. Where women started to fade out of view was
in analyses of groups of men where the norm was heterosexual. This may
be taken as confirmation of (a) the argument the authors make in the article
that gay studies has to date developed a much more sophisticated under-
standing of gendered power than men's studies and (b) the radical feminist
thesis that heterosexual love and romance mask male dominance. Second,
because I once heard a historian defend the lack of attention to women in
particular analyses of masculinities on the grounds that this was simply
what the sources showed, I think it essential to note that the role of women
in the analysis is not entirely or even primarily an empirical question, but

is at least in part a theoretical, conceptual issue. That is to say, the salience
of any category in the analysis cannot be dictated solely by its salience in the
sources. The absence of any category as well as its presence in any source
can itself be problematized and made the subject of analysis (I shall return to
this point in my closing comments). Numerous analyses coming out of
women's studies have made the absence of any explicit mention of women
in various texts their primary focus, and men's studies could well do the same.
I would like to note here one particularly striking way in which this
issue of the presence of women in analyses produced in men's studies has
recently emerged in critical discussions. About a year after I had written
the first draft of this chapter, in which I had already made the points above,
I came across two reviews, both published in March 1991, each of which
reviewed two different recent books on men's history. I quote first from
Michael S. Kimmel's review of Making a Man of Him: Parents and the
Sons' Education at an English Public School, 1929-1950 by Christine
Heward (London: Routledge, 1988) and Manliness and Morality: Middle
Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800-1940, edited by J. A.
Morgan and James Walvin (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987), from
Gender & Society (5:1, 1991, pp. 118-121), and then I quote the conclud-
ing lines from J. William Gibson's review of Secret Ritual and Manhood
in Victorian America by Mark C. Carnes (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1990) and Manhood in the Making by David D. Gilmore (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990) from American Quarterly (43:1,
1991, pp. 128-133):
As histories, both volumes add to our understanding of the emergence in the

nineteenth century of middle-class masculinity as hegemonic in England and
the United States As social science, however, each is significantly limited
as an analytical tool by the systematic omission of one word: women Can
we imagine a history of masculinity that does not place the relations between
women and men as the central analytical process? To do so would write
women back into historical invisibility, and this time in the guise of exploring
gender. Certainly women and men, as gendered actors, deserve more than that.
(Kimmel, 1991, pp. 120-121)
To move the study of gender forward, the new masculinist scholars need to engage
in a more direct dialogue with their feminist predecessors and contemporaries.
Otherwise, the real danger of fragmentation and stagnation will hurt everyone's
work. (Gibson, 1991, p. 133)
To Kimmel's and Gibson's critiques of these four works, with which I

concur, I would add my own critique in the same vein of a fifth contempora-
neous volume dealing with similar subject matter, Meanings for Manhood:
Constructions ofMasculinity in Victorian America, edited by Mark C. Carnes
and Clyde Griffen (Carnes & Griffen, 1990). This volume is particularly
instructive because it contains as a concluding chapter an overview of the
chapters in the volume by Nancy Cott, in which she presents an analysis
of a problem she identifies analogous to that which I have presented here
and offers a useful solution:
The tendency of essays in this collection to describe the "man's sphere" and
the "woman's sphere" as though these were distinct physical sites—rather
than ideological constructions about propriety—can probably be pinned on
the earlier historiography in women's history. Women's historians are leaving
behind this peculiar reification. The understanding of "spheres" as geographi-
cal more than ideological—as though life was physically divided into two
arenas—was a reductive move, further exaggerated by equating the man's
sphere with the "public," the woman's sphere with the "private." . . . Histo-
rians of women have lately been trying to distinguish between "woman's
sphere" and women's culture—the latter something more portable or perva-
sive than geographical. Perhaps men's historians ought to do the same. (Cott,
1990, pp. 206-207)
I deem it very important that men's studies not come to denote a kind
of separatist scholarship, which focuses only on male-male relations and
leaves women out of the picture. Aside from the obvious sexism of such
a practice, and its falsification of the historical record, this would be
particularly troubling in the present period for at least the following two
additional reasons. One, it would be distressingly ironic if men's studies
scholarship went in such a regressive direction at precisely the moment
when scholarship in general is taking a strong interactionist, deconstruc-
tive turn aimed at breaking down dichotomies of gender, race, sexual
orientation, and other categories. I think it's been for some time now
becoming increasingly clear that researchers are studying the social
construction of gender and sexualities in a manner that makes it no
longer possible to neatly parse out the construction of gender into men's
versus women's studies, or lesbian and gay versus straight studies, for that
matter.
Second, thinking about men in the popular mind has now been captured
by the extravagances of what is called the "mythopoetic" men's movement
(see Bly, 1990; Harding, 1992). This movement contains a kind of sepa-
ratism that I and many others find deeply troubling, and I believe scholars
should do as much as possible to distance ourselves from and critique the
problematic aspects of this tendency (Brod, 1992).
Though the tendency to analyze masculinities as solely constructed
along axes of relationships and power vis-a-vis men can once again render
women invisible, as I have been arguing, I hasten to add that it need not
inevitably do so. That is, an analysis may well show how men construct
masculinities in their interactions with each other if this constructing is
itself problematized and the construction of masculinities on intramale
lines is itself shown to be an aspect of male privilege.
Having up to this point discussed the necessity for including women in
analyses of masculinities, I now turn my attention more directly to the
question of theorizing nonhegemonic masculinities. What I propose is
that nonhegemonic masculinities must always be simultaneously theo-
rized along two axes, the male-female axis of men's power over women
within the marginalized grouping, and the male-male axis of non-
hegemonic men's relative lack of power vis-a-vis hegemonic men. Fur-
ther, the analysis must show the interrelationships between these two
axes—the tensions, trade-offs, and contradictions experienced by non-
hegemonic men as they try to position themselves in this terrain (Alcoff,
1989). Men of nonhegemonic groups are torn between the different and
conflicting norms and standards of masculinity and patriarchy of their
own and the hegemonic culture. Finally, women must be portrayed in this
process as active participants who respond in various ways to men's
positioning themselves in and at various sites, in varying degrees of
resistance and accommodation, and as initiators of their own gender
strategies.
The relational nature of gender as site and result of interactive negotia-
tions amid structures of domination rather than as a set of static sex roles
must be preserved in such analyses (Gerson & Peiss, 1985; Kimmel, 1986;
Lopate & Thorne, 1978). The static, ahistorical overtones the sex roles
framework inherits from its separate spheres heritage must be overcome in
favor of a more radically dynamic and interactive social constructionist
conception of gender. An influential formulation of the criticism of the
concept of sex roles on which I am relying here was offered by Judith
Stacey and Barrie Thorne in their 1985 article "The Missing Feminist
Revolution in Sociology" (Stacey & Thorne, 1985):
Much of feminist sociology is cast in the language of roles ("sex roles," "the
male role/' "the female role") and emphasizes the process of "sex role
socialization." This approach to the analysis of gender retains its functionalist

roots, emphasizing consensus, stability, and continuity. . . . The notion of
"role" focuses attention more on individuals than on social structures, and
implies that "the female role" and "the male role" are complementary (i.e.,
separate or different but equal). The terms are depoliticizing; they strip
experience from its historical and political context and neglect questions of
power and conflict. It is significant that sociologists do not speak of "class
roles" or "race roles." (p. 307)
In the remainder of this paper I turn to the case of Jewish masculinity

to illustrate this theoretical frame as a case in point. Because I cannot
here attempt even the beginnings of any kind of systematic, comprehen-
sive analysis of Jewish masculinity, I shall begin by drawing on one
argument from a work that is an example of the kind of analysis of which
I am arguing there should be much more. In "Lifting Up the Shadow of
Anti-Semitism: Jewish Masculinity in a New Light," Barbara Breitman
(1988) analyzes what she, following Jacob Neusner, calls the "affective
program" of the rabbis. The rabbinic tradition being referred to is that
which emerges out of the tradition of medieval Jewish commentary and
scholarship. Here is the rabbinic tradition's construction of the properly
virtuous personality structure and set of emotional traits for Jewish men
(quoting Jacob Neusner, "Emotion in the Talmud," Tikkun, 1:1, 1986,
pp. 74-80):
A simple catalogue of permissible feelings comprises humility, generosity,

self-abnegation, love, a spirit of conciliation to the other, and eagerness to
please. A list of impermissible emotions is made up of envy, ambition,
jealousy, arrogance, sticking to one's opinion, self-centeredness, a grudging
spirit, vengefulness aiming at the cultivation of the humble and malleable
person, one who accepts everything and resents nothing . . . Temper marks
the ignorant person, restraint and serenity, the learned one. . . . A mark of
humility is the humble acceptance of suffering. . . . Submit, accept, concili-
ate, stay cool in emotion as much as in attitude, inside and outside. (Breitman,
1988, p. 106; elisions in original)
Breitman then uses psychoanalytic categories to argue that the self-

abnegation called for by a people suffering under oppression for gen-
erations requires some psychic compensation. She argues that the rabbis
found such compensation in two turns made in Jewish theology and
culture: the rabbis' elevation of their own wisdom to near-divine status
and a projection of their rage on to Jewish women. Thus Jewish sexism
emerges as a simultaneous deflection and internalization by Jewish men
of the dominant Gentile culture's anti-Semitism. This counterproduc-

tive strategy, counterproductive because it turns Jewish men and women
against each other and thereby disempowers them from facing their true
enemy, the hegemonic culture, appeals to Jewish men because it ad-
vances their own interests within Jewish culture if those interests are
considered apart from their interests vis-a-vis the hegemonic culture.
Hence, Jewish male sexism is imposed on Jewish culture by the hegemonic
culture and also arises from within Jewish culture. Although it gives men
more power from the standpoint of the internal dynamics of Jewish
culture, it ultimately disempowers them relative to the hegemonic
culture, because its sexism is a principal means by which Jewish culture
internalizes hegemonic anti-Semitism and turns it against itself.
The particular forms Jewish masculinities take vary in changing his-
torical circumstances as the community negotiates its identity within this
matrix. Both women and men are participants in the articulations of
gendered Jewishness. For example, the contemporary American stereo-
types of the "Jewish Mother" and "Jewish American Princess" mark
collisions between central European and United States norms and use
Jewish women as scapegoats for anti-Semitic criticisms of Jewish culture
for honoring strong independent women who took care of their families
and for striving for economic successs, just as the stereotype of the Jewish
man as a sexually impotent or incompetent bookworm (a la the early
Woody Allen) marks an American anti-intellectualism and xenophobia.
The latter also marks the connection between power and potency, as lack
of patriarchal power appears as sexual emasculation (Lefkovitz, 1988).
Forced to affirm the value of the life of the mind, which is indeed
traditionally valued in Jewish culture, against anti-Semitic attacks on it,
many Jewish men have been forced into an overly rigid identification with
this ideal to the extent that they perpetrate an overly zealous denial of the
complementary life of the body, to their own great loss. The ideal of the
intellectual Jewish male is held to so strongly because it emerges both
from within the intellectual traditions of Jewish culture and as a defense
mechanism against attacks on Jewish men for not conforming to domi-
nant, more brawny standards of masculinity. It functions within Jewish
culture as a mechanism of resistance by the culture as a whole against
foreign gender norms imposed by the hegemonic culture but at the same
time also as a means of perpetuating specifically Jewish patriarchal norms
within a culture that valorizes intellectual over physical prowess. This sort
of double bind is precisely characteristic of gender norms in non-
hegemonic cultures.
Pressures on Jewish men to be "one of the boys" on the terms of the

hegemonic culture lead them to deny their own cultural traditions and seek
power vis-a-vis other men and vis-a-vis "their" women by seeking to
conform to dominant norms. On the other hand, as a nonhegemonic
"culture of resistance" to hegemonic norms, Jewish culture has an interest
in fostering cross-gender alliances within the culture against the dominant
culture. There are indeed strong egalitarian strains in Jewish traditions, in
addition to its strong patriarchal strains. Thus Jewish men face conflict-
ing pressures for and against egalitarian relations with Jewish women and
for and against Jewish as opposed to dominant non-Jewish forms of
masculinity. Any account of Jewish masculinity must be sensitive to these
complex and conflicting tendencies and pressures and sensitively attribute
agency in the context of overarching structures all around.
Though I have used only the Jewish case as an example here, and even
that only through one set of examples in the barest outline, I venture to
hope that this has been sufficient to briefly demonstrate the type of ques-
tions to ask and the type of dynamics to account for in the many analyses
of nonhegemonic masculinities that I think scholars need to undertake.
Different particular issues will of course become salient in different
nonhegemonic cultures. For example, as against the sexual emasculation
of American Jewish men, many Third World men are "supersexualized,"
as were Jewish men in Nazi ideology (Dworkin, 1988; Staples, 1982). One
must also be sensitive to inappropriate expropriations of concepts from
nonhegemonic cultures by the hegemonic culture. For example, the use
of the term macho as a synonym for sexist ignores the positive connota-
tions of this term within Hispanic cultures, and its popularization in the
United States is a case of Anglo men using their white skin privilege to
deflect the critique of their male privilege, just as the use of working-class
male images to denote traditional sexism renders the sexism of middle-
and upper-class men less visible and therefore less challenged (Brod,
1989a, 1989b; Mirande). Though the answers will differ, I think the types
of questions one needs to ask will be very much the same.
I close with a comment on why I chose the Jewish case to illustrate my
broader thesis about masculinities. The first and foremost reason is simply
that this is who I am and what I know best. But there is another reason as
well. The current tendency to pluralize masculinities and deconstruct
gender is heavily influenced by the postmodern philosophical currents
that arose after World War II, as well as by critiques by women of color
of monolithic white Western feminism. Postmodernism was born, how-
ever, not just out of a particular time but out of a particular place as well.
That place was Auschwitz. It was there that modernity and humanism,
figuratively and literally, went up in smoke.
But the currently fashionable counterhegemonic trivium of "gen-
der, race, and class," sometimes expanded to a counterquadrivium of
"gender, race, class, and sexual orientation," does not accord anti-Semitism
entry into the pantheon of notable oppressions integrated into contempo-
rary analyses. This is despite anti-Semitism's absolute centrality in the
social forces determining the historical events to which postmodernism
responds. Just as one is prepared to castigate as sexist any analysis that
ignores sexism, so I am prepared to castigate as anti-Semitic any analysis
that ignores anti-Semitism. Most analyses of the social construction of
gender, indeed most of postmodernism, fall into this camp.
If the accusation of anti-Semitism hurled against so much of current
scholarship seems too harsh, let me then say just one more word about
contemporary sensitivity, or lack thereof, to anti-Semitism. A certain
sensitivity has by now been reached, at least in oppositional, counter-
hegemonic circles, to charges of sexism, racism, or heterosexism. That is
to say, many people, if faced with such charges, have learned not to react
defensively and are willing to reexamine what they have said or done to
probe the validity of the charges, to see if they have been subtly and
unintentionally oppressive or offensive. They do not react as if they are
being charged with being rapists, members of the Ku Klux Klan, or
queer-bashers. But people accused of anti-Semitism still tend to react as
if they were being called Nazis. This is one of the lingering effects of the
Holocaust. It has made rational discussion of subtle anti-Semitism virtu-
ally impossible. The Holocaust has scarred the political imagination of
the late 20th century. The flames of the Holocaust have singed us all—
flames do leave scars, and scar tissue is not flexible. The dark clouds
generated by the smokestacks of the Auschwitz crematoria have so over-
shadowed all other aspects of anti-Semitism short of genocide that anti-
Semitism still stands as a category apart, unintegrated into current
thinking on gender and masculinities, even where one would think its
relevance would be most obvious.
For example, the index to Klaus Theweleit's two-volume work on Male
Fantasies, an examination of "the emotional core of fascism as it was
revealed in the novels and memoirs of the Freikorps," German mercenary
bands that evolved after World War I and became the basis for the Nazi
militia and army, reveals mention of Jews on only 15 out of 1000 pages
(Theweleit, 1987 & 1989). What does it mean that the primary German
men's studies work to be translated into English, one that has received
high praise both in Germany and the United States, and indeed contains much
that warrants such praise, has such a glaring omission? If anti-Semitism can
be so ignored here of all places, in an analysis of the origins of fascism,
then it is no wonder that subtler issues of subordinated Jewishness and
hegemonic Christianity have not received the attention they deserve in
analyses of masculinities. To give but one other more distant example, do
we fully understand the extent to which Victorianism in the United States
in the latter 19th century was deployed to solidify "white" Anglo-Saxon
gender norms against waves of "darker" immigrants and how this im-
pacted on Jewish and other immigrant communities?
I hope that this chapter will help to engender, in both senses, further
discussions of Jewishness and gender and of masculinities and femininities.
Notes
1. Earlier versions of this chapter were originally presented under the title "Emascu-
lated Masculinities: Jews and Other Others" at the Canadian Political Science Association
Convention, Victoria, British Columbia, May 27-29, 1990; "Crossing the Disciplines:
Cultural Studies in the 1990s," a conference sponsored by the Oklahoma Project for
Discourse and Theory and held in conjunction with the 15th Annual Meeting of the
Semiotic Society of America, The University of Oklahoma, October 19-21, 1990; and at
the Third Interdisciplinary Men's Studies Conference in Tucson, Arizona, June 6, 1991,
sponsored by the National Organization for Men Against Sexism; and published in the
1993 Working Papers series of the Institute for the Study of Women and Men at the
University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
2. I am indebted to Michael Kimmel for this reference, as well as for the observation
that this follows a pattern of conceptual migration from gay to men's studies.
3. This critique has been raised by several reviews of men's studies books. See Lois
Banner's Review Essay in Signs, 14(3), Spring 1989, pp. 703-708, and Anthony McMahon's
review of Brod in Thesis Eleven #24, 1989, pp. 166-170. (I cannot resist noting here that
the most extensive review of this book in the literature of the profeminist men's movement
itself criticized it for harping too much on patriarchy and men's power. See the review by
David Leverenz in Changing Men, 19, Winter-Spring 1990, pp. 19-20.)
4. On Jewish feminism see, for example, Susannah Heschel, On Being a Jewish
Feminist: A Reader (New York: Schocken, 1983); Susan Weidman Schneider, Jewish and
Female: Choices and Changes in Our Lives Today (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984);
Melanie Kaye Kantrowitz and Irena Klepfisz, eds., The Tribe ofDina: A Jewish Women's
Anthology, rev. ed. (Boston: Beacon, 1989); Evelyn Torton Beck, ed., Nice Jewish Girls:
A Lesbian Anthology (Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1982); and the journals
Lilith and Bridges.
5. I am indebted to Barrie Thorne for emphasizing the latter to me.
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6
Theorizing Unities and Differences
Between Men and Between
Masculinities
JEFF H E A R N
D A V I D L. C O L L I N S O N
In sociology, as in most of the social sciences, "men" and "masculinity"

are usually implicit but central/centered: They are at the center of dis-
courses. Similarly, in much, though significantly not all, everyday social
life "men" and "masculinity" are the One to the (many) Other(s). In
contrast "women*" have often been the object of discourses and/or at the
margins of discourses objectified in relation to some supposedly neutral
center of men. "Men" and "masculinity" are constantly known, referred
to, implicated, assumed as the subject of discourse.
Indeed references to "masculinity" (singular) usually affirm this unitary
voice of discourse. "Men" are talked of and about by "men," as well as
by others, including "women," "girls," and "boys," and simultaneously
"men" are relatively rarely talked on. They are shown but not said, visible
but not questioned. Not talking of men is a major and structured way of
not beginning to talk of and question men's power in relation to women,
children, young people, and indeed other men, or perhaps more precisely
men's relations within power.
In talking of "men," "masculinity," and "masculinities," it is particularly
important to continually contextualize the discussion in power and power
relations. We shall from here onward generally not be placing quotation marks
around the words men and masculinities, but we will be using them only in that
sense, which denaturalizes and problematizes them. As several commenta-
97
tors have recently pointed out, there is a danger in focusing on men and
masculinities, even within critical work, in a way that reexcludes women
and "femininities" (Brod, 1990). One way of avoiding this possibility is
to consistently locate men and masculinities as power relations, including
power relations with women, children, young people, and other men.
Current critical studies on men and masculinity, whether theoretical or
empirical, face a particular and acute contradiction: to name men and
masculinity; to make those categories visible and to recognize their power;
and to deconstruct them, to undermine, subvert, and dismantle them. In
this chapter we will make men and masculinity explicit and thus simulta-
neously, and somewhat paradoxically, assist in the decentering of men and
masculinity in discourse. This involves making problematic the ways in
which men and masculinity may be conventionally and unproblematically
at the center of discourse, often as explicit or implicit, transcendent
subjects, explanations, or foundations. Thus in this chapter we attempt to
contribute to the more explicit, yet deconstructive, theorizing of men and
masculinities, in a way that avoids recentering men at the center of discourse.
This is an urgent and necessary task for understanding/changing men in
both the general and the particular, both historical and contemporary
analysis, and both theory and practice.
We shall attempt to do this in the following sections: first, the explora-
tion of some of the different uses of the terms both within and outside
sociology; second, a brief discussion of some of the major challenges to
implicit and often nongendered uses; third, a consideration of some
possible ways of relating men and masculinities; and fourth, spelling out
some of the many, diverse ways in which men and masculinities may be
both social unities and social differences (or subject to social differences),
and may both be social divisions and relate to other social divisions. This
is followed by a discussion of some specific examples of types of men
and masculinities and a critique of the types of approaches to men and
masculinities. In conclusion, we briefly consider the significance of this
analysis of categories in the context of historical change.
The Social and the Sociological
The categories of men and masculinity are taken for granted in the
social sciences, in sociology, and indeed in everyday social life. Within
most sociological inquiry, the categories usually remain implicit and
untheorized. This may even apply to some social scientific analyses that
Unities and Differences Between Men and Between Masculinities 99
are broadly sensitive to gender or to the theorizing of the category of

women. Yet sociology, like everyday social life, is continually involved
in the production and reproduction of categories of men and masculinity.
This is so in terms of the use of categories that are produced by men (and
masculinities), both as everyday social actors and as sociologists (with
their own everyday social life, of course), and the use of categories that
themselves refer to types of men and masculinity.
Although our major interest here is with the case of sociology, much of
what we are saying applies to the other social sciences. Indeed, the
implicitness of the categories of men and masculinity applies all the more
so in economics, political science, and management theory, at least in their
dominant malestream traditions (O'Brien, 1981). The cases of anthropol-
ogy, psychology, psychoanalysis, and social psychology are somewhat
distinct. These have their own strong malestream traditions in which
culturally specific gendered notions of males and females have figured.
However, in these cases, albeit for different reasons, the categories of
males and females have often been used in a naturalistic manner—in one
case, within a discourse of Nature/Culture and Race/Culture, and in the
other within a discourse of Body/Mind and Biology/Personality. Thus
within the broad context of the social sciences, sociology could be said to be
relatively more open to the deconstruction of gender than those social
sciences with rather stronger naturalistic or culturalistic traditions.
Implicit Men, Implicit Masculinity
Sociology is full of analyses that take men for granted as the dominant
gender. A classic example of this kind of recasting of men and masculinity
can be drawn from Max Weber's (1967) Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism (also see Bologh, 1990; Morgan, 1992). Weber appears to
draw his own examples of both the Protestant ethic and the spirit of
capitalism from social and historical accounts about men, both as indi-
viduals (Martin Luther, Benjamin Franklin) and as collectivities (Calvin-
ists, Baptists). The possible Protestant ethic of women or the "spirit of
women capitalists" is not explored—presumably they were at home or on
the shop floor of the chocolate factory, not in the counting house or the
board room. In the light of these complications, we may ask to what extent
Weber was bringing his own masculinity to bear on the construction of
the ethic and the spirit.
Somewhat similarly, neither Marx nor Durkheim presented a critical
appraisal of men or masculinity within economic class and exploitation
(see O'Brien, 1979; Hearn, 1987), and ritual and anomie, respectively.
Marx's analyses of exploitative class relations and Durkheim's analyses
of ritual and anomie are usually analyses of men and specific forms of
masculinity. In other sociological texts words specifically describing
collectivities have often been used to mean men. "Society," "working
class," and "organization" may all be used to mean men or particular types
of men, such as working-class men or men managers. These have often
been ways for men to talk about men without saying so.
The second and inverse case is when the term men is used to refer to
people, humans, or adults, that is, excluding young people in the last case.
Men may in this case become society, rather than vice versa.
A third and more complex case is for gender to be invoked, but only
(or overwhelmingly) in relation to women and femininity. In contrast,
apparently nongendered concepts and constructs may be invoked in
relation to men and masculinity. An interesting example of this is to be
found in recent debates on class and gender in sociology. The main terms
of the debate have been set between economic approaches to class and
stratification, based on employment, on the one hand, and women's
relationship to these approaches, and specifically husband's employment,
on the other. The former approaches are presumed to be nongendered, the
latter approaches gendered. However, these former approaches are, of
course, just as gendered (even though they are gendered implicitly) as the
latter. The difference is that the former are gendered around the implicit
assumption of men as simultaneous employees and heads of economic
household units. This problem is approached in rather different ways by,
among others, Sylvia Walby (1986), in terms of husbands as a class, and
Christine Delphy and Diana Leonard (1986), in terms of the hereditary
transmission of the constitution of classes. What is rare is an explicit
attempt to develop a gendered analysis of men and their economic class
position.
Explicit Men, Explicit Masculinities

Following these usages, there are a number of ways in which the
categories of men and masculinity are used explicitly. In some cases, the
term men may be used to mean males. In their sociological usage a contrast
is sometimes drawn between males as sex, and men as gender; even so,
the terms males and male are frequently used to refer to people who are
men and who are unlikely to be sexed as males. Men are not (necessarily)
males, and vice versa. There are a number of reasons for this, including
cultural specificities in men and males; distinctions between boys, men,

young males, and males; the 15 forms of intersexuality (that do not
conform to XX or XY chromosomal patterns); the various physiological
and cultural forms of gender change, whether temporary or permanent;
and the differential relation of men and males to history and trans-history
respectively. Men certainly exist in relation to the category of male(s).
Indeed we find it helpful to see men as "a gender that exists or is presumed
to exist in most direct relation to the generalized male sex, that being the
sex that is not female, or not the sex related to the gender of women"
(Hearn, 1989c, p. 11; emphases in original).
These (sociological) distinctions are, of course, not necessarily in
keeping with other societal usages of the terms men and males—as, for
example, in government and other official statistics. In the British case,
births, deaths, and much other demographic information are unambigu-
ously classified for males and females, although much, though not all,
information on economic activity is classified by men and women (OPCS,
1984a, 1984b).
Another form of explicit use of men and masculinity is when the terms
are invoked in an explicitly gendered form, but without consideration of
their social constitution and social problematization. Of particular interest
here are those texts focusing on organizational or managerial material that
use the term man or Man. For example, Walker and Guest's (1952) Man
on the Assembly Line actively deals with men, but does not explore either
the social construction of men or the specific implications of being on the
assembly line for the construction of masculinity. The initial focus on men
is soon displaced by analysis in terms of workers. The two categories soon
become interchangeable in the analysis. Having said that, there is a mass
of information in this and similar texts that can be reformulated in terms
of the construction of forms of masculinities. This issue is handled rather
differently in Whyte's (1956) Organization Man, where we do find a more
explicit discussion of masculinity—perhaps prompted by his considera-
tion of the relationship of home and work.
Finally, in this section, we need to note those usages of men and
masculinity that (a) are explicit, (b) refer to gender, and (c) base their use
in the acknowledgment of social constitution and social problematization.
It is rare in mainstream/malestream sociology for all three criteria to be
satisfied. An example of a recent study that goes some way in this direction
is that by Keith Grint (1988) on the historical development of equal (or
unequal) pay in the Post Office from 1870 to 1961. In this case men is used
to refer to aggregation of certain individual men and to the interactions of
those men. Men can also be used as a collective term over and above aggrega-
tion of particular men.
At this point it may be useful to note an important methodological
issue—namely, that the (explicit) invoking of formerly implicit social
categories brings a double challenge to the analyst: On one hand, there is
the possibility of objectifying and fixing those categories, so obscuring
the analysis of lived experiences; on the other, there is the possibility of
deconstructing those categories, thus transcending them, historically and
conceptually, and obscuring lived experiences in a different way. This
double challenge is a general methodological issue that may apply in the
analysis of most social categories, perhaps most social phenomena. It also
has a resonance with the political dilemmas around the historically tem-
porary adoption of categories by those who are so categorized by others,
as a paradoxical basis for their own political organization, action, and
change. This usually involves the redefinition of the meaning of particular
identities in a more valued and positive light. An example of this is the
use of the category of homosexual, initially given in medical and other
professional discourses, as a basis for subsequent political organization,
action, and change by people identifying with same-gender sexualities.
Such political action may in turn be constrained by those particular
identities.
Challenges to Nongendered Categories

of Men and Masculinity
Many perspectives and standpoints have challenged some of the prac-

tices described in the previous section. Most obvious, and probably most
influential, among these critiques are feminist theory and practice and the
feminist naming of men as men (Hanmer, 1990). Although feminist theory
and practice have addressed the problem of men throughout its develop-
ment, the major emphasis relevant to our discussion has been, perhaps not
surprisingly, on the analysis of women's experiences of the consequences
of men's domination rather than the focused theorization of men and
masculinity. However, in different ways other challenges have also named
men as gendered. For example, gay scholarship, by virtue of its reference
to same-gender sexuality, necessarily names people in terms of gender.
Having said that, gay (men's) scholarship does not necessarily address
wider issues of men and masculinity explicitly, nor indeed is it always
sympathetic to feminism (Stanley, 1984). A further challenge has come
from the variety of writing by men that explicitly focuses on men. Some
of this has been presented under the self-given title of "men's studies"; some
do are not adhere to that framing. Some are explicitly antisexist, antipatri-
archal; some are not so (Hearn 1989b, 1992; Hearn & Morgan, 1990).
Different kinds of challenge have come, though usually less directly,
from poststructuralism and the deconstruction of structures and from post-
modernism, both as the sociology of postmodernism and postmodern soci-
ology. Often these particular theoretical perspectives have been produced
with little reference to gender, another way for men to talk about men
without saying so. Poststructuralism and postmodernism can be seen as a
general criticism of fixed categories and categoricalism in theorizing
gender (Connell, 1985); they have also interacted with feminist (e.g.,
Morris, 1988), gay (e.g., Weeks, 1985), and men's antisexist scholarship
(e.g., Brittan, 1989).
The last few years have seen a shift toward a growing emphasis on
cultural theory, semiology, and poststructuralism in the critical study of
men and masculinities. This is to be found in different ways in texts such
as Male Order (Chapman & Rutherford, 1988) and Masculinity and Power
(Brittan, 1989). Another example is Middleton's (1989) arguing for the
philosophical superiority of difference over oppression as a basis for
theorizing men, and thus gender. To be more precise, each of these three
texts can be located in that tension between categoricalism and practice-
based politics (cf. Connell, 1985). Rather similar issues have been
highlighted in various empirical studies, such as those by Cockburn
(1983) on men in the newspaper industry and by Willis (1977) on
young working-class men. Both of these consider both the unities and
differences between men, and some of the interrelationships of these
unities and differences.
The above challenges, and indeed their relationships with each other,
seem to represent the most hopefiil possibilities for the explicit analysis of
men and masculinity. Before considering some of the unities and differences
between men and masculinity in the light of those challenges, it is necessary
to say a little about the relationship of men and masculinity.
The Relationship of Men and Masculinity
It will already be apparent that men and masculinity are not two fixed
concepts: They have different meanings and significances within different
discourses. Thus there is not one given relationship of men and masculin-
ity. It is probably fair to say that the dominant way of relating men and
masculinity within the social sciences has been the sex (gender) role
perspective. This has been extensively criticized in recent years, for
example in terms of the neglect of historical change and an adequate
theorization of the individual and society (Connell, 1985, 1987; Eichler,
1980). We broadly accept these critiques and thus we are concerned here
with formulations that explicitly recognize the importance of power
relations and practice. As noted, these critiques have also led to the
recognition of the importance of speaking of masculinities (plural) rather
than just masculinity (singular) (Carrigan, Connell, & Lee, 1985).
So how does one relate men to masculinities, and vice versa? One
powerful way is to see men as existing and persisting in the material bases
of society, in relation to particular social relations of production and
reproduction; in comparison, masculinities exist and persist as ideology,
often in their surface form in terms of elements of production and repro-
duction (Hearn, 1987, p. 98). Particular masculinities are not fixed for-
mulas but rather they are combinations of actions and signs, part powerful,
part arbitrary, performed in reaction and relation to complex material
relations and emotional demands; these signify that this is man. Mascu-
linities are thus ideological signs of particular men of the gender class of
men, particularly in relation to reproduction broadly defined. For exam-
ple, "being macho" (itself a racist turn of phrase) involves a variety of
ideological signs of particular men of the gender class of men. This
ideological and significatory emphasis may be supplemented by the
agency and strategy of what men do to reproduce ourselves/themselves as
men or our/their sense of self as men.
Masculinities thus provide sources of and resources for the develop-
ment and retention of gender identity. These emphases on ideology,
signification, and agency should not divert attention from also seeing
masculinities in terms of the ordering of institutional practices. A useful
example of seeing masculinity as the ordering of institutional practices is
Christine Heward's (1988) Making a Man of Him, In this text, she argues
that "(i)t was through their sons that parents sought to ensure the family's
future social position. Bringing up sons was about masculinity but it
was much more importantly about social class. . . . Becoming a man
was about having a suitable occupation, income and social position,
able to support a dependent wife and accompanying household" (p. 197).
Further approaches to masculinity include the institutional ordering of
personality, the development of life histories, and the relation between
the two of them.
These brief attempts to relate men and masculinities are all very well,
but they do not resolve the need for a relational or dialectical approach to
gender. Or to put this another way, they do not address the complexities
of the many ways in which men and masculinities, and their relationships,
are themselves located within socially variable forms of gender relations.
Thus in referring to gender classes, material bases, ideologies, signs,
practices, and so on, it is necessary to understand these in a relational and
therefore fluid way and not in any fixed sense.
Men, Masculinities, and Social Divisions
Having focused on some of the possible relations of men and masculinities,

we now turn more directly to the relationship of men and masculinities to
social divisions. We shall consider these relationships in terms of both the
unities that exist between men and between masculinities and the differ-
ences that exist between men and between masculinities. These unities
and differences are inextricably interrelated: They are a condition and
consequence of each other. Just as control and resistance reproduce each
other, so do unities and differences of men and masculinities. In several
senses social divisions, such as those of age, ethnicity, economic class,
and so on, may produce and be produced by men and masculinities as
categories. The social unities and the social differences between different
men and masculinities are themselves produced by men, and indeed by
masculinities. Social categories, such as men, and also women, as well as
other categories that may be socially defined as nongendered, for exam-
ple, the working classes, may themselves be dominantly produced and
reproduced by men. Thus the relationships of men and masculinities to
social divisions must take into account:
1. Men and masculinities being social divisions

2. Men and masculinities being formed in/by social divisions
3. Men and masculinities forming other social divisions
4. Men and masculinities also forming unities and differences that reflect and
reinforce other social divisions
All the above analysis and examples also have to acknowledge cultural
variability. What might be meant by men, masculinities, social divisions,
and their various relationships varies between and within societies and
cultures.
Unities and Commonalities

First, let us consider the unities, or commonalities between men, that
is, men as a class or a gender class. Here we are concerned with social
divisions of men, as distinct from those who are not men, most obviously
women, children, and boys, as well as others of different genders (and/or
sexes). This perspective is implicit and sometimes explicit in feminist,
especially radical feminist, analyses: Women may be seen as a class, with
the implication that men, too, are a class. So men are "not women" who
oppress women (see Braidotti, 1987). Then we are obliged to ask what is
the nature or basis of that gender class relationship and its comparability
or otherwise to economic class relations. There are a number of variants
on this gender class approach: Gender class as a general political state-
ment, gender as a given biological essence, and gender as sexuality
(MacKinnon, 1982) and those more specific feminist formulations—men
as the "main enemy," as that class that benefits from the family mode of
production—in the home (Delphy, 1977), and men as the class concerned
with appropriating the means of reproduction (O'Brien, 1981). A major
point about these latter two formulations is the notion that all men benefit
from the family mode of production and from the social institution of
paternity even though clearly not all are husbands or fathers. Similarly,
the father may persist as a figure of power even though some individuals,
women and men, do not know a father of their own, biological or
otherwise. An important point is that fatherhood is a social institution, a
hypothetical concretization. Men here refers to that gender class of people
who so benefit from particular material relations around reproduction,
housework, sexuality, violence, or emotional/care work beyond early child
work. Thus men may be seen as simply the class that benefits from particular
material relations over women. This is comparable to the bourgeois benefit-
ing from capitalist relations over the proletariat, even though individual
bourgeois may be in all sorts of material circumstances, including poverty
and bankruptcy. The notion of class highlights the question of structural
relations.
A modification of this gender class approach to men is to see men not
as a class as such but as a shorthand for the aggregation of subclasses that
exist semiautonomously in relative sexuality, fertility, child care, other
care, and violence. For example, Midi's (1980) analysis of the oppression
of gays by nongays/heterosexuals introduces the notion of differentiation
among men. Men are in effect "the sum of. . . particular class divisions,
and the cumulative result of these divisions heaped on one another"
(Hearn, 1987, p. 64). Other differentiations, by class, ethnicity, age, and

so on, complicate further any class relation of men with women.
Unities and Differences

According to this gender class view of men, we would expect to find
different masculinities existing in terms of men's differential location in
relation to these structured relations. For example, we might expect to find
distinctions between gay, nonhierarchic heterosexual, and hierarchic het-
erosexual; between white and black; between nonfathers and fathers;
unpaid careers, paid careers, and noncareers; and nonviolent, violent, and
military (state violent) masculinities. Such masculinities may in turn be
indicative or representative of men's relative stable locations with respect
to structural relations, for example, as in the case of military masculinities,
or of men's more temporary locations, for example, as temporary careers.
As such, masculinities are about power relations, including power rela-
tions to women.
The possible unities between men are thus themselves complex; in
addition there are the various debates on the problematic significance of
the biological penis and the cultural phallus. It is still much more difficult
to construct unities with respect to masculinities, diverse as they seem.
Middleton (1989) notes this diversity and suggests:
To speak legitimately of a discourse of masculinity [italics added] it would

be necessary to show that a particular set of usages was located structurally
within a clearly defined institution with its own methods, objects and prac-
tices. Otherwise the reference to discourses of masculinity is simply a refer-
ence to repeated patterns of linguistic usage, which may be significant, but
cannot be theorised in the way some legal and medical discourses can.
Masculinity is produced within some discourses in the stricter theoretical
sense but most examples of "masculine" utterance are not structured dis-
courses. They are not organised around specific knowledges, (p. 17)
Although we think that Middleton's assertions are substantively dubi-

ous, we do consider that he is indirectly making an important point on the
unlikeliness of unified masculinity. Even if one considers masculinity/
masculinities with respect to the possible gender class of men, the possi-
bility of unified masculinity seems remote. The traditions of supposedly
universalizable masculinity-femininity scales and continua (Bern, 1977)
seem in this context somewhat ridiculous.
Differences and Diversity

This moves us on, appropriately, to the consideration of diversity of and
differences between men and masculinities. Here we are concerned with
differences within the category of men, including different types of men
and/or different relational positionings of different men at different times
and places, and in different social sites. Thus in one sense these differences
refer to types of men and masculinities; in another they refer to the
interrelation of men/masculinities with other social divisions.
This section thus elaborates on Carrigan, Connell, and Lee's (1985)
pluralizing of masculinity to masculinities. Their argument rests partly on
a recognition of psychological differentiation and diversity among men
and partly on the analysis of the importance of the reciprocal interrela-
tionship of masculinities, albeit in the context of hegemonic masculinity.
In keeping with this approach, there is a need to consider cultural and
historical specificities; the integral interrelation of power, interpersonal
relations, and psychodynamics; and, moreover, the interrelations of mas-
culinities.
Kimmel and Messner's (1989) collection, Men's Lives, explicitly brings
together readings on variations among men. These include differences in
race and ethnicity, age, economic class, region, bodily state, sexuality,
social arrangements, and relationships (see also Astrachan, 1986). Simi-
larly, Middleton (1989) asserts: "There is no uniformity about men. The
heterogeneity must be recognised, across age, class, race, religion, and
world view. Yet these schisms are themselves reproduced through differ-
ential unities' between men" (p. 18; see, for example, Cockburn, 1983, on
the relationship of the British trade unions, NGA and NATSOPA).
The theme of diversity is also explored in a recent political document
that notes that it is an "illusion that masculinity is a single, uniform, and
innate form." It continues: "Instead we want to emphasise . . . the sheer
variety of masculine forms. These complex and often contradictory forms
and relations are there in the specific histories of black, gay, bisexual,
class-related, disabled, able-bodied, young and old, regional masculini-
ties" (Men, Masculinities and Socialism Group, 1990, p. 18).
There are a number of different ways in which such differences may be
conceptualized in relation to men and masculinities. A provisional explo-
ration of these differences of (both) men and masculinities suggests
attention to both the following types and their interrelations. Various men
and masculinities may be defined in relation to other men, other mascu-
linities, women, femininities, or some further difference(s). It is not
possible to produce a complete taxonomy. Those listed next are merely

examples of particular sources or references of identity that cut across
notions of unified masculinity:
1. Age, or more precisely age-ness (referring to the social construction of

age); thus there are young men, middle-aged men, old men, and many
more particular types
2. Appearance, e.g., smart, transvestite, rough
3. Bodily facility, e.g., men with disabilities, able-bodied men, strong, weak
4. Care, e.g., professional, soft man, real man
5. Economic class, e.g., unemployed, working class, proletarian, shop floor,
middle class, petit-bourgeois, manager, bourgeois
6. Ethnicity, e.g., black, white, Jewish, Chinese
7. Fatherhood and relations to biological reproduction, e.g., fathers, boys
8. Leisure, e.g., golfer, drinker
9. Marital and kinship status, e.g., husband, bachelor, divorcS, widower,
uncle
10. Mind, e.g., bright, dumb
11. Occupation, e.g., fitter, salesman, fireman
12. Place, e.g., British, West Coast
13. Religion, e.g., Moslem, atheist
14. Sexuality, including gay, bisexual, narcissist, heterosexual, celibate
15. Size, e.g., tall, short, small, big
16. Violence, e.g., violent, sissy, military
Other-defined masculinities (other—masculinities)

In each of these cases, the general category of other social division, for
example, economic class, may refer to different types of men in different
social relations, for example, bourgeois men, and to different types of
masculinities, for example, bourgeois masculinities. Differences between
men and between masculinities may thus be produced by other social
divisions, as when economic class is seen to produce different class-based
masculinities (Tolson, 1977). In this formulation we may speak of other-
defined masculinities. This other-definition may refer to a particular type
of masculinities or it may refer to the way in which masculinities may be
understood as a representation of being, say, working class or middle-
aged. Masculinities may thus be understood as representations of particu-
lar locations within one or more social divisions. Either way, such
other-defined masculinities may also be referred to or displayed by others

not so defined. For example, nonbourgeois men may adapt forms of
masculinity that refer to bourgeois masculinities—this may itself be
in parody, emulation, or adaptation.
Masculinities-defined others
(masculinities—other)
Conversely, masculinities may define other social divisions. For exam-

ple, middle-agedness or working classness may be a representation of
masculinities.
Interrelations of masculinities and others

(masculin ities/other)
In these and other ways, masculinities may reproduce other social
divisions while at the same time those other social divisions reproduce
masculinities. Thus as already noted, one needs not only consider diver-
sity but also interrelations and contradictions. The exploration of the
diversity of men and masculinities necessarily leads to considering the
interrelation of gender divisions and other social divisions, by age, bodily
facility, economic class, ethnicity, sexuality, and so on. Examples of such
interrelations include assertions and resistance, mediation, and coexis-
tence. First, masculinities may be simultaneously an assertion of a par-
ticular social location (sometimes of more than one such location
simultaneously) and a form of resistance of one social division to another.
An example of this is given by Sallie West wood (1990) with respect to
black masculinity as a form of resistance to the power of white people,
say, in the form of the police.
Second, masculinities may be mediations between two or more other
social divisions. For example, on the shop floor the humor of masculinity
may mediate between young and old, single and married, bosses and
workers, and moreover between those different forms of social divisions
(Collinson, 1988, 1992; Hearn, 1985).
Underpinning shop-floor ribaldry and aggressive banter is often a real
sense of and attempt at reinforcing self-differentiation from the group. So,
for example, in the study by Collinson (1988), workers engaged in a
variety of self-differentiating strategies. Boris highlighted his sexual
prowess and his aspirations to progress into the office grades. Lenny
insisted that owning a house rather than renting a council flat confirmed
his difference from many of his colleagues. Others such as a man nick-
named Dirty Bar critically evaluated and looked down on those who he
believed were "lazy bastards" and were not "pulling their weight." Others
still openly criticized colleagues who they felt "couldn't take a joke." Yet
the consequence of these strategies was to weaken further the power of
the shop floor as a group in their dealings with management.
Third, one may simply see masculinities and other social divisions as
coexisting, simultaneously and reciprocally referring to each other. For
example, in the notions of the breadwinner or the paternalist relations of
gender, among others shown are age and economic class.
Masculinities as Social Relations of Men

Those social forms, such as the breadwinner and the paternalist, that
simultaneously show masculinities and other social divisions, such as
father, husband, worker, and authoritarian, may also be looked at in
another way. Although the breadwinner draws on a number of social
divisions, most obviously around the family and waged work, it may also
be seen as a form of masculinities derived from specific social relation-
ships between men—that in this case are individualized and privatized.
The paternalist is in contrast individualized, remote from other men, yet
publicized (the father in public). By a similar argument what are referred
to as macho masculinities are derived from relations between men, char-
acterized by a combination of collectively shared and individually iso-
lated relations.
Composite Masculinities and Multiple Identities

So far we have considered masculinities mainly in relation to one main
other social division. However, masculinities are perhaps more accurately
understood in terms of complex associations of more than one other social
division. Thus we may recognize black middle-class masculinities, white
gay masculinities, and so on. Such multiple identities are particularly
important because tensions and schisms can arise between one identity
(or aspect of identity) and another, both psychologically within the indi-
vidual and socially between individuals and between collectivities. For
example, is the individual foremost black, middle-class, or a man? How
meaningful is such a question in different sites and situations? In a divided
society it is very difficult, and probably impossible, to hold onto numerous
composite identities equally at all times; some will be prioritized over others
and their meanings may change over time. For example, a black middle-
class man may prioritize being black in some situations, being middle-
class in others, and being a man in still others. Composite masculinities,

and their experiential form as multiple identities, reinforce the likelihood
of simultaneous unities and differences within masculinities.
Interrelations of Masculinities
All the above forms themselves need to be understood in terms of their

own interrelations with each other, in particular with respect to the con-
struction of hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculinities. These should not
be understood as fixed hierarchical relationships, but rather as existing in
structured yet changing relations of power. The interrelations of mascu-
linities and social divisions are not just a matter of different structural
locations of men; it is also a question of specific individual experiences.
These different references to forms of masculinities exist and interrelate at
the different levels of personal biography. As the Men, Masculinities and
Socialism Group (1990) puts it, "There is the daily antagonistic clashing
between diverse masculine identities—like child-carer, authoritarian fa-
ther, loving, supportive friend, single parent father, * macho' manager, depressed
unemployed worker, strong leader—struggling for overall supremacy" (p. 18).
What is interesting here is that political analysis and personal experi-
ence are confronting issues very similar to those of theoretical analysis.
We find that the complexities of our own personal and biographical stories
mirror these political and theoretical complexities. The interrogation of
biography and autobiography is an important and necessary aspect of the
interrogation of social divisions, in this case with respect to men and
masculinities. Examples of this approach are David Morgan's (1987) autobi-
ographically based analysis of life in the air force, drawing together divisions
by age, class, manhood, and so on; and David Jackson's (1990) critical
autobiography that retells stories of the interconnections of nation, boy-
hood, ethnicity, and sexuality.
Types of Men and Masculinities

and the Critique of Types
To illustrate some of the issues raised in the previous section, we will

briefly consider a few examples. Categories such as "white heterosexual
able-bodied men" (WHAM) (Shevills & Killingray, 1989), "white hetero-
sexual men" (WHEM), and "heterosexual able-bodied men" (HAM) are
sometimes used in derogatory ways; here we refer to them as descriptions
just as "working class" or "professional" might be. To seriously discuss
WHAMs or WHEMs or HAMs (and indeed there is very little sociology

of these social categories), one needs to consider them in their social contexts.
For example, the social category of WHAMs may exist in ideology, interper-
sonal relations, and in institutional forms, such as state policies. The young
WHAM is not spoken of, yet is a routine part of pop culture. In some
representations, say, in advertising, the young WHAM may appear to
transcend ethnicity and sexuality. The category of WHAMs can also be
seen in a more structural sense—say, in the maintenance of hierarchic
heterosexual patriarchy. They are produced in such a patriarchy and may
reproduce such a patriarchy.
Another example is the social category of men managers. This may
itself overlap and interrelate with WHAMs, WHEMs, and HAMs in
specific sites. The category of men managers combines gender and eco-
nomic class categorization. Like WHAMs, it is not a term in general
sociological use. Although women managers and women in management
are well-used terms, men managers is too much of a societal commonplace
to have been of much sociological interest. Managers and management
are usually presumed to be men, just as are writers and painters. The vast
majority of managers are indeed men, but the social facts of social
normality do not mean that men management is socially unproblematic.
There are also important structural questions around the place of men
managers within macrosocietal relations—of capitalism, public patriar-
chy, viriarchy (rule of adult males) (Waters, 1989), and fratriarchy. "Men
managers" is a necessary social grouping within the contemporary forms
of patriarchy. Then there are the many and various institutional and
interpersonal associations of masculinities and management. Being a
manager and a man may confirm facets of masculinity. Managers may adopt
a variety of styles—"macho," authoritarian, entrepreneurial, democratic—
and may even be against oppression. Some men managers may even be
beginning to develop ways of leading that seek to undermine dominant forms
of masculinities (Hearn, 1989a).
Having noted some examples of types of masculinities including some
composite masculinities, it may be useful to look briefly at some of the
limitations of an approach to masculinities in terms of types. This per-
spective on the relationship of men, masculinities, and social divisions
has the advantage of stressing specificities—both for particular men and
for particular social sites. On the other hand, an emphasis on specificities
can degenerate to a diversified pluralism with insufficient attention to
structures of power and oppression. The wheel can go full circle.
Another area of difficulty is the sheer complexity of the very large

number of possible permutations and interrelations of types. The numeri-
cal combinations are themselves complicated by the diversity of ways in
which interrelation can exist and develop. Linked to this point is the
methodological question of the meaning of types of men and masculini-
ties. They may refer to either structural or social relations or both and to
individual men or groups of men. There is no necessary reason why, for
example, white masculinities should operate in the same way structurally
and personally.
However, perhaps the most important area of difficulty is how types exist
in relation to men's lived experience. Men's experiences of masculinities may
invoke types of masculinities and may deconstruct those types. Any of the
categories that might be referred are deconstructable—for example, white
masculinities are deconstructable and may indeed be simultaneously Irish,
Jewish, and English; heterosexual masculinities may also be celibate,
narcissistic, gay, bisexual; middle-class masculinities may be waged, sala-
ried, unemployed. In short, types of men do not exist as separate categories
or as separate in themselves.
A final general area of critique is the implications of the poststructuralist
uses and critiques of difference, as applied in this case to men and mascu-
linities. The issues of difference are relevant here in a number of ways.
First, difference is one way of casting doubt on theories of gender class,
in this case of men, or of any unified masculinity. Men are thus as socially
variable as are women (see Moore, 1987). Second, there are the differ-
ences between the experiences of men compared with those of women, as in
sexual difference, and between different men and types/groups/examples of
men (see Barrett, 1987). Third, there is the use of difference in the work of
Derrida (1976,1978) to refer to that which is not present in any presence.
In this sense references to differences between men are at best partial
truths, at worst misleading falsehoods. They fail to address the sociality
of the lives of men/masculinities. Fourth, there is the more wholesale
(paradoxically foundationalist) antifoundationalist aspect of difference in
which reference is not just made to many subjects but rather to the
undermining of defining any bases for knowledge and epistemology (see
Halbert, 1989, p. 7). A fifth major problem with treating masculinities in
terms of types is the difficulty of adequately recognizing fluidity and
change in social life.
Concluding Without Closing
In this chapter we have explored the interrelations of unities and

differences between men and between masculinities. Accordingly, one of
the major themes throughout our analysis has been the tension between
the recognition of the gender class relations and experiences of men, and
the questions of differences and diversity. We see our analysis of this as
very provisional: The important point is to recognize that tension. Men
and masculinities may involve simultaneous relations and experiences of
both unities and differences, and moreover, those apparent differences
between unities and differences may reinforce them both. Having recognized
that, men and masculinities need to be deconstructed—both as a power bloc
(as part of the sociology of superordination) and as unified masculinities.
The gender class perspective is socially sustained in part by the mythology
of unified Man, rational, knowing, centered (Brittan, 1989). Recognizing
those unities is paradoxically part of their deconstruction. There is thus
above all a need to both make explicit and (then) decenter the categories
of men and masculinities. This paradoxical and contradictory way for-
ward applies in sociology, as in other social sciences, in macrohistorical
changes, and in microinteractionist sites.
These social processes, within and outside sociology, are of course
themselves historical. They are features of social change, and also they
present a means of understanding social change, both substantively and
methodologically. In brief, an obvious and important question is: Why
might the decentering of men (at last) be on agendas now? (Hearn 1989c).
As already noted, much is due to the impact of feminism, and much is also
due to the rate of change of globalization and the strange connections of the
global and the personal. Social change may now, as ever, be about change in
social divisions, but it may now be partly about the deconstruction or
decomposition of social divisions, not toward equality, but toward the
more complex recognition of differences, including differences of differ-
ent types of differences. Yet of course the powers and dominations of men
over women persist in many diverse ways, partly through these differ-
ences. We hope that this chapter will contribute to the opening of political
and intellectual spaces for removing, if not those differences, then at least
men's powers and dominations over and of differences.
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7
Masculinity as Homophobia
Fear, Shame, and Silence
in the Construction of Gender Identity
M I C H A E L S. KIMMEL
"Funny thing/' [Curley's wife] said. "If I catch any one man, and he's
alone, I get along fine with him. But just let two of the guys get together
an' you won't talk. Jus' nothin' but mad." She dropped her fingers and
put her hands on her hips. "You're all scared of each other, that's what.
Ever'one of you's scared the rest is goin' to get something on you."
John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (1937)
We think of manhood as eternal, a timeless essence that resides deep in

the heart of every man. We think of manhood as a thing, a quality that one
either has or doesn't have. We think of manhood as innate, residing in the
particular biological composition of the human male, the result of andro-
gens or the possession of a penis. We think of manhood as a transcendent
tangible property that each man must manifest in the world, the reward
presented with great ceremony to a young novice by his elders for having
successfully completed an arduous initiation ritual. In the words of poet
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This chapter represents a preliminary working out of a theoretical

chapter in my forthcoming book, Manhood: The American Quest (in press). I am grateful
to Tim Beneke, Harry Brod, Michael Kaufman, lona Mara-Drita, and Lillian Rubin for
comments on earlier versions of the chapter.
119
Robert Bly (1990), "the structure at the bottom of the male psyche is still
as firm as it was twenty thousand years ago" (p. 230).
In this chapter, I view masculinity as a constantly changing collection
of meanings that we construct through our relationships with ourselves,
with each other, and with our world. Manhood is neither static nor
timeless; it is historical. Manhood is not the manifestation of an inner
essence; it is socially constructed. Manhood does not bubble up to con-
sciousness from our biological makeup; it is created in culture. Manhood
means different things at different times to different people. We come to
know what it means to be a man in our culture by setting our definitions
in opposition to a set of "others"—racial minorities, sexual minorities,
and, above all, women.
Our definitions of manhood are constantly changing, being played out
on the political and social terrain on which the relationships between
women and men are played out. In fact, the search for a transcendent,
timeless definition of manhood is itself a sociological phenomenon— we tend
to search for the timeless and eternal during moments of crisis, those points
of transition when old definitions no longer work and new definitions are
yet to be firmly established.
This idea that manhood is socially constructed and historically shifting
should not be understood as a loss, that something is being taken away
from men. In fact, it gives us something extraordinarily valuable—agency,
the capacity to act. It gives us a sense of historical possibilities to replace
the despondent resignation that invariably attends timeless, ahistorical
essentialisms. Our behaviors are not simply "just human nature," because
"boys will be boys." From the materials we find around us in our culture—
other people, ideas, objects—we actively create our worlds, our identities.
Men, both individually and collectively, can change.
In this chapter, I explore this social and historical construction of both
hegemonic masculinity and alternate masculinities, with an eye toward
offering a new theoretical model of American manhood. To accomplish
this I first uncover some of the hidden gender meanings in classical
statements of social and political philosophy, so that I can anchor the
emergence of contemporary manhood in specific historical and social
contexts. I then spell out the ways in which this version of masculinity
emerged in the United States, by tracing both psychoanalytic developmen-
tal sequences and a historical trajectory in the development of marketplace
relationships.
Masculinity as Homophobia 121
Classical Social Theory

as a Hidden Meditation of Manhood
Begin this inquiry by looking at four passages from that set of texts
commonly called classical social and political theory. You will, no doubt,
recognize them, but I invite you to recall the way they were discussed in
your undergraduate or graduate courses in theory:
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instru-

ments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them
the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production
in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all
earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninter-
rupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation
distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen
relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions
are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can
ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is
at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his
relation with his kind. (Marx & Engels, 1848/1964)
An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before
the roof is on; he will plant a garden and rent it just as the trees are coming
into bearing; he will clear a field and leave others to reap the harvest; he will
take up a profession and leave it, settle in one place and soon go off elsewhere
with his changing desires. . . . At first sight there is something astonishing in
this spectacle of so many lucky men restless in the midst of abundance. But
it is a spectacle as old as the world; all that is new is to see a whole people
performing in it. (Tocqueville, 1835/1967)
Where the fulfillment of the calling cannot directly be related to the highest
spiritual and cultural values, or when, on the other hand, it need not be felt
simply as economic compulsion, the individual generally abandons the at-
tempt to justify it at all. In the field of its highest development, in the United
States, the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning,
tends to become associated with purely mundane passions, which often
actually give it the character of sport. (Weber, 1905/1966)
We are warned by a proverb against serving two masters at the same time.
The poor ego has things even worse: it serves three severe masters and does
what it can to bring their claims and demands into harmony with one another.
These claims are always divergent and often seem incompatible. No wonder
that the ego so often fails in its task. Its three tyrannical masters are the
external world, the super ego and the id. . . . It feels hemmed in on three sides,
threatened by three kinds of danger, to which, if it is hard pressed, it reacts by
generating anxiety.... Thus the ego, driven by the id, confined by the super ego,
repulsed by reality, struggles to master its economic task of bringing about
harmony among the forces and influences working in and upon it; and we can
understand how it is that so often we cannot suppress a cry: "Life is not easy!"
(Freud, "The Dissection of the Psychical Personality," 1933/1966)
If your social science training was anything like mine, these were offered
as descriptions of the bourgeoisie under capitalism, of individuals in demo-
cratic societies, of the fate of the Protestant work ethic under the ever
rationalizing spirit of capitalism, or of the arduous task of the autonomous
ego in psychological development. Did anyone ever mention that in all four
cases the theorists were describing men? Not just "man" as in generic
mankind, but a particular type of masculinity, a definition of manhood that
derives its identity from participation in the marketplace, from interaction
with other men in that marketplace—in short, a model of masculinity for
whom identity is based on homosocial competition? Three years before
Tocqueville found Americans "restless in the midst of abundance," Senator
Henry Clay had called the United States "a nation of self-made men."
What does it mean to be "self-made"? What are the consequences of
self-making for the individual man, for other men, for women? It is this notion
of manhood—rooted in the sphere of production, the public arena, a mascu-
linity grounded not in landownership or in artisanal republican virtue but in
successful participation in marketplace competition—this has been the de-
fining notion of American manhood. Masculinity must be proved, and no
sooner is it proved that it is again questioned and must be proved again—
constant, relentless, unachievable, and ultimately the quest for proof becomes
so meaningless than it takes on the characteristics, as Weber said, of a sport.
He who has the most toys when he dies wins.
Where does this version of masculinity come from? How does it work?
What are the consequences of this version of masculinity for women, for
other men, and for individual men themselves? These are the questions I
address in this chapter.
Masculinity as History
and the History of Masculinity
The idea of masculinity expressed in the previous extracts is the product

of historical shifts in the grounds on which men rooted their sense of
themselves as men. To argue that cultural definitions of gender identity

are historically specific goes only so far; we have to specify exactly what
those models were. In my historical inquiry into the development of these
models of manhood I chart the fate of two models for manhood at the
turn of the 19th century and the emergence of a third in the first few
decades of that century.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, two models of manhood prevailed.
The Genteel Patriarch derived his identity from landownership. Supervising
his estate, he was refined, elegant, and given to casual sensuousness. He was
a doting and devoted father, who spent much of his time supervising the
estate and with his family. Think of George Washington or Thomas
Jefferson as examples. By contrast, the Heroic Artisan embodied the
physical strength and republican virtue that Jefferson observed in the
yeoman farmer, independent urban craftsman, or shopkeeper. Also a
devoted father, the Heroic Artisan taught his son his craft, bringing him
through ritual apprenticeship to status as master craftsman. Economically
autonomous, the Heroic Artisan also cherished his democratic community,
delighting in the participatory democracy of the town meeting. Think of
Paul Revere at his pewter shop, shirtsleeves rolled up, a leather apron—a
man who took pride in his work.
Heroic Artisans and Genteel Patriarchs lived in casual accord, in part
because their gender ideals were complementary (both supported partici-
patory democracy and individual autonomy, although patriarchs tended to
support more powerful state machineries and also supported slavery) and
because they rarely saw one another: Artisans were decidedly urban and
the Genteel Patriarchs ruled their rural estates. By the 1830s, though, this
casual symbiosis was shattered by the emergence of a new vision of
masculinity, Marketplace Manhood.
Marketplace Man derived his identity entirely from his success in the
capitalist marketplace, as he accumulated wealth, power, status. He was
the urban entrepreneur, the businessman. Restless, agitated, and anxious,
Marketplace Man was an absentee landlord at home and an absent father
with his children, devoting himself to his work in an increasingly homoso-
cial environment—a male-only world in which he pits himself against
other men. His efforts at self-making transform the political and economic
spheres, casting aside the Genteel Patriarch as an anachronistic feminized
dandy—sweet, but ineffective and outmoded, and transforming the Heroic
Artisan into a dispossessed proletarian, a wage slave.
As Tocqueville would have seen it, the coexistence of the Genteel Patriarch
and the Heroic Artisan embodied the fusion of liberty and equality. Genteel
Patriarchy was the manhood of the traditional aristocracy, the class that
embodied the virtue of liberty. The Heroic Artisan embodied democratic
community, the solidarity of the urban shopkeeper or craftsman. Liberty
and democracy, the patriarch and the artisan, could, and did, coexist. But
Marketplace Man is capitalist man, and he makes both freedom and
equality problematic, eliminating the freedom of the aristocracy and
proletarianizing the equality of the artisan. In one sense, American history
has been an effort to restore, retrieve, or reconstitute the virtues of Genteel
Patriarchy and Heroic Artisanate as they were being transformed in the
capitalist marketplace.
Marketplace Manhood was a manhood that required proof, and that
required the acquisition of tangible goods as evidence of success. It
reconstituted itself by the exclusion of "others"—women, nonwhite men,
nonnative-born men, homosexual men—and by terrified flight into a
pristine mythic homosocial Eden where men could, at last, be real men
among other men. The story of the ways in which Marketplace Man
becomes American Everyman is a tragic tale, a tale of striving to live up
to impossible ideals of success leading to chronic terrors of emasculation,
emotional emptiness, and a gendered rage that leave a wide swath of
destruction in its wake.
Masculinities as Power Relations
Marketplace Masculinity describes the normative definition of Ameri-

can masculinity. It describes his characteristics—aggression, competition,
anxiety—and the arena in which those characteristics are deployed— the
public sphere, the marketplace. If the marketplace is the arena in which
manhood is tested and proved, it is a gendered arena, in which tensions
between women and men and tensions among different groups of men are
weighted with meaning. These tensions suggest that cultural definitions
of gender are played out in a contested terrain and are themselves power
relations.
All masculinities are not created equal; or rather, we are all created
equal, but any hypothetical equality evaporates quickly because our
definitions of masculinity are not equally valued in our society. One
definition of manhood continues to remain the standard against which
other forms of manhood are measured and evaluated. Within the dominant
culture, the masculinity that defines white, middle class, early middle-
aged, heterosexual men is the masculinity that sets the standards for other
men, against which other men are measured and, more often than not,
found wanting. Sociologist Erving Goffman (1963) wrote that in America,
there is only "one complete, unblushing male":
a young, married, white, urban, northern heterosexual, Protestant father of college

education, fully employed, of good complexion, weight and height, and a recent
record in sports. Every American male tends to look out upon the world from this
perspective Any male who fails to qualify in any one of these ways is likely
to view himself . . . as unworthy, incomplete, and inferior, (p. 128)
This is the definition that we will call "hegemonic" masculinity, the

image of masculinity of those men who hold power, which has become
the standard in psychological evaluations, sociological research, and
self-help and advice literature for teaching young men to become "real
men" (Connell, 1987). The hegemonic definition of manhood is a man in
power, a man with power, and a man of power. We equate manhood with being
strong, successful, capable, reliable, in control. The very definitions of
manhood we have developed in our culture maintain the power that some
men have over other men and that men have over women.
Our culture's definition of masculinity is thus several stories at once.
It is about the individual man's quest to accumulate those cultural symbols
that denote manhood, signs that he has in fact achieved it. It is about those
standards being used against women to prevent their inclusion in public
life and their consignment to a devalued private sphere. It is about the
differential access that different types of men have to those cultural
resources that confer manhood and about how each of these groups then
develop their own modifications to preserve and claim their manhood. It
is about the power of these definitions themselves to serve to maintain the
real-life power that men have over women and that some men have over
other men.
This definition of manhood has been summarized cleverly by psycholo-
gist Robert Brannon (1976) into four succinct phrases:
1. "No Sissy Stuff!" One may never do anything that even remotely suggests
femininity. Masculinity is the relentless repudiation of the feminine.
2. "Be a Big Wheel." Masculinity is measured by power, success, wealth, and
status. As the current saying goes, "He who has the most toys when he dies wins."
3. "Be a Sturdy Oak." Masculinity depends on remaining calm and reliable
in a crisis, holding emotions in check. In fact, proving you're a man
depends on never showing your emotions at all. Boys don't cry.
4. "Give 'em Hell." Exude an aura of manly daring and aggression. Go for
it. Take risks.
These rules contain the elements of the definition against which virtually
all American men are measured. Failure to embody these rules, to affirm
the power of the rules and one's achievement of them is a source of men's
confusion and pain. Such a model is, of course, unrealizable for any man.
But we keep trying, valiantly and vainly, to measure up. American mas-
culinity is a relentless test. The chief test is contained in the first rule.
Whatever the variations by race, class, age, ethnicity, or sexual orienta-
tion, being a man means "not being like women." This notion of anti-
femininity lies at the heart of contemporary and historical conceptions of
manhood, so that masculinity is defined more by what one is not rather
than who one is.
Masculinity as the Flight From the Feminine
Historically and developmentally, masculinity has been defined as the

flight from women, the repudiation of femininity. Since Freud, we have
come to understand that developmentally the central task that every little
boy must confront is to develop a secure identity for himself as a man. As
Freud had it, the oedipal project is a process of the boy's renouncing his
identification with and deep emotional attachment to his mother and then
replacing her with the father as the object of identification. Notice that he
reidentifies but never reattaches. This entire process, Freud argued, is set
in motion by the boy's sexual desire for his mother. But the father stands
in the son's path and will not yield his sexual property to his puny son.
The boy's first emotional experience, then, the one that inevitably follows
his experience of desire, is fear—fear of the bigger, stronger, more
sexually powerful father. It is this fear, experienced symbolically as the
fear of castration, Freud argues, that forces the young boy to renounce his
identification with mother and seek to identify with the being who is the
actual source of his fear, his father. In so doing, the boy is now symboli-
cally capable of sexual union with a motherlike substitute, that is, a
woman. The boy becomes gendered (masculine) and heterosexual at the
same time.
Masculinity, in this model, is irrevocably tied to sexuality. The boy's
sexuality will now come to resemble the sexuality of his father (or at least
the way he imagines his father)—menacing, predatory, possessive, and
possibly punitive. The boy has come to identify with his oppressor; now
he can become the oppressor himself. But a terror remains, the terror that the
young man will be unmasked as a fraud, as a man who has not completely
and irrevocably separated from mother. It will be other men who will do the
unmasking. Failure will de-sex the man, make him appear as not fully a man.
He will be seen as a wimp, a Mama's boy, a sissy.
After pulling away from his mother, the boy comes to see her not as a
source of nurturance and love, but as an insatiably infantalizing creature,
capable of humiliating him in front of his peers. She makes him dress up
in uncomfortable and itchy clothing, her kisses smear his cheeks with
lipstick, staining his boyish innocence with the mark of feminine depend-
ency. No wonder so many boys cringe from their mothers' embraces with
groans of "Aw, Mom! Quit it!" Mothers represent the humiliation of
infancy, helplessness, dependency. "Men act as though they were being
guided by (or rebelling against) rules and prohibitions enunciated by a
moral mother," writes psychohistorian Geoffrey Gorer (1964). As a result,
"all the niceties of masculine behavior—modesty, politeness, neatness,
cleanliness—come to be regarded as concessions to feminine demands,
and not good in themselves as part of the behavior of a proper man" (pp.
56, 57).
The flight from femininity is angry and frightened, because mother can
so easily emasculate the young boy by her power to render him dependent,
or at least to remind him of dependency. It is relentless; manhood becomes
a lifelong quest to demonstrate its achievement, as if to prove the unprov-
able to others, because we feel so unsure of it ourselves. Women don't
often feel compelled to "prove their womanhood"—the phrase itself
sounds ridiculous. Women have different kinds of gender identity crises;
their anger and frustration, and their own symptoms of depression, come
more from being excluded than from questioning whether they are femi-
nine enough.4
The drive to repudiate the mother as the indication of the acquisition
of masculine gender identity has three consequences for the young boy.
First, he pushes away his real mother, and with her the traits of nurtur-
ance, compassion, and tenderness she may have embodied. Second, he
suppresses those traits in himself, because they will reveal his incom-
plete separation from mother. His life becomes a lifelong project to
demonstrate that he possesses none of his mother's traits. Masculine
identity is born in the renunciation of the feminine, not in the direct
affirmation of the masculine, which leaves masculine gender identity
tenuous and fragile.
Third, as if to demonstrate the accomplishment of these first two tasks,

the boy also learns to devalue all women in his society, as the living
embodiments of those traits in himself he has learned to despise. Whether
or not he was aware of it, Freud also described the origins of sexism—the
systematic devaluation of women—in the desperate efforts of the boy to
separate from mother. We may want "a girl just like the girl that married
dear old Dad," as the popular song had it, but we certainly don't want to
be like her.
This chronic uncertainty about gender identity helps us understand
several obsessive behaviors. Take, for example, the continuing problem
of the school-yard bully. Parents remind us that the bully is the least secure
about his manhood, and so he is constantly trying to prove it. But he
"proves" it by choosing opponents he is absolutely certain he can defeat;
thus the standard taunt to a bully is to "pick on someone your own size."
He can't, though, and after defeating a smaller and weaker opponent,
which he was sure would prove his manhood, he is left with the empty
gnawing feeling that he has not proved it after all, and he must find another
opponent, again one smaller and weaker, that he can again defeat to prove
it to himself.
One of the more graphic illustrations of this lifelong quest to prove
one's manhood occurred at the Academy Awards presentation in 1992. As
aging, tough guy actor Jack Palance accepted the award for Best Support-
ing Actor for his role in the cowboy comedy City Slickers, he commented
that people, especially film producers, think that because he is 71 years
old, he's all washed up, that he's no longer competent. "Can we take a risk
on this guy?" he quoted them as saying, before he dropped to the floor to
do a set of one-armed push-ups. It was pathetic to see such an accom-
plished actor still having to prove that he is virile enough to work and, as
he also commented at the podium, to have sex.
When does it end? Never. To admit weakness, to admit frailty or fragility,
is to be seen as a wimp, a sissy, not a real man. But seen by whom?
Masculinity as a Homosocial Enactment
Other men: We are under the constant careful scrutiny of other men.
Other men watch us, rank us, grant our acceptance into the realm of
manhood. Manhood is demonstrated for other men's approval. It is other
men who evaluate the performance. Literary critic David Leverenz (1991)
argues that "ideologies of manhood have functioned primarily in relation

to the gaze of male peers and male authority" (p. 769). Think of how men
boast to one another of their accomplishments—from their latest sexual
conquest to the size of the fish they caught—and how we constantly
parade the markers of manhood—wealth, power, status, sexy women—in
front of other men, desperate for their approval.
That men prove their manhood in the eyes of other men is both a
consequence of sexism and one of its chief props. "Women have, in men's
minds, such a low place on the social ladder of this country that it's useless
to define yourself in terms of a woman," noted playwright David Mamet.
"What men need is men's approval." Women become a kind of currency
that men use to improve their ranking on the masculine social scale. (Even
those moments of heroic conquest of women carry, I believe, a current of
homosocial evaluation.) Masculinity is a homosocial enactment. We test
ourselves, perform heroic feats, take enormous risks, all because we want
other men to grant us our manhood.
Masculinity as a homosocial enactment is fraught with danger, with the
risk of failure, and with intense relentless competition. "Every man you
meet has a rating or an estimate of himself which he never loses or
forgets," wrote Kenneth Wayne (1912) in his popular turn-of-the-century
advice book. "A man has his own rating, and instantly he lays it alongside
of the other man" (p. 18). Almost a century later, another man remarked
to psychologist Sam Osherson (1992) that "[b]y the time you're an adult,
it's easy to think you're always in competition with men, for the attention
of women, in sports, at work" (p. 291).
Masculinity as Homophobia
If masculinity is a homosocial enactment, its overriding emotion is fear.

In the Freudian model, the fear of the father's power terrifies the young
boy to renounce his desire for his mother and identify with his father. This
model links gender identity with sexual orientation: The little boy's
identification with father (becoming masculine) allows him to now en-
gage in sexual relations with women (he becomes heterosexual). This is
the origin of how we can "read" one's sexual orientation through the
successful performance of gender identity. Second, the fear that the little
boy feels does not send him scurrying into the arms of his mother to
protect him from his father. Rather, he believes he will overcome his fear
by identifying with its source. We become masculine by identifying with

our oppressor.
But there is a piece of the puzzle missing, a piece that Freud, himself,
implied but did not follow up. If the pre-oedipal boy identifies with
mother, he sees the world through mother's eyes. Thus, when he confronts
father during his great oedipal crisis, he experiences a split vision: He sees
his father as his mother sees his father, with a combination of awe, wonder,
terror, and desire. He simultaneously sees the father as he, the boy, would
like to see him—as the object not of desire but of emulation. Repudiating
mother and identifying with father only partially answers his dilemma. What
is he to do with that homoerotic desire, the desire he felt because he saw
father the way that his mother saw father?
He must suppress it. Homoerotic desire is cast as feminine desire, desire
for other men. Homophobia is the effort to suppress that desire, to purify
all relationships with other men, with women, with children of its taint,
and to ensure that no one could possibly ever mistake one for a homosex-
ual. Homophobic flight from intimacy with other men is the repudiation
of the homosexual within—never completely successful and hence con-
stantly reenacted in every homosocial relationship. "The lives of most
American men are bounded, and their interests daily curtailed by the
constant necessity to prove to their fellows, and to themselves, that they
are not sissies, not homosexuals," writes psychoanalytic historian Geoffrey
Gorer (1964). "Any interest or pursuit which is identified as a feminine
interest or pursuit becomes deeply suspect for men" (p. 129).
Even if we do not subscribe to Freudian psychoanalytic ideas, we can
still observe how, in less sexualized terms, the father is the first man who
evaluates the boy's masculine performance, the first pair of male eyes
before whom he tries to prove himself. Those eyes will follow him for the
rest of his life. Other men's eyes will join them—the eyes of role models
such as teachers, coaches, bosses, or media heroes; the eyes of his peers,
his friends, his workmates; and the eyes of millions of other men, living
and dead, from whose constant scrutiny of his performance he will never
be free. "The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare
on the brain of the living," was how Karl Marx put it over a century ago
(1848/1964, p. 11). "The birthright of every American male is a chronic
sense of personal inadequacy," is how two psychologists describe it today
(Woolfolk & Richardson, 1978, p. 57).
That nightmare from which we never seem to awaken is that those other
men will see that sense of inadequacy, they will see that in our own eyes
we are not who we are pretending to be. What we call masculinity is often
a hedge against being revealed as a fraud, an exaggerated set of activities

that keep others from seeing through us, and a frenzied effort to keep at
bay those fears within ourselves. Our real fear "is not fear of women but
of being ashamed or humiliated in front of other men, or being dominated
by stronger men" (Leverenz, 1986, p. 451).
This, then, is the great secret of American manhood: We are afraid of
other men. Homophobia is a central organizing principle of our cultural
definition of manhood. Homophobia is more than the irrational fear of
gay men, more than the fear that we might be perceived as gay. "The word
'faggot' has nothing to do with homosexual experience or even with fears
of homosexuals," writes David Leverenz (1986). "It comes out of the
depths of manhood: a label of ultimate contempt for anyone who seems
sissy, untough, uncool" (p. 455). Homophobia is the fear that other men
will unmask us, emasculate us, reveal to us and the world that we do not
measure up, that we are not real men. We are afraid to let other men see
that fear. Fear makes us ashamed, because the recognition of fear in
ourselves is proof to ourselves that we are not as manly as we pretend,
that we are, like the young man in a poem by Yeats, "one that ruffles in a
manly pose for all his timid heart." Our fear is the fear of humiliation. We
are ashamed to be afraid.
Shame leads to silence—the silences that keep other people believing
that we actually approve of the things that are done to women, to minori-
ties, to gays and lesbians in our culture. The frightened silence as we
scurry past a woman being hassled by men on the street. That furtive
silence when men make sexist or racist jokes in a bar. That clammy-
handed silence when guys in the office make gay-bashing jokes. Our fears
are the sources of our silences, and men's silence is what keeps the system
running. This might help to explain why women often complain that their
male friends or partners are often so understanding when they are alone
and yet laugh at sexist jokes or even make those jokes themselves when
they are out with a group.
The fear of being seen as a sissy dominates the cultural definitions of
manhood. It starts so early. "Boys among boys are ashamed to be un-
manly," wrote one educator in 1871 (cited in Rotundo, 1993, p. 264). I
have a standing bet with a friend that I can walk onto any playground in
America where 6-year-old boys are happily playing and by asking one
question, I can provoke a fight. That question is simple: "Who's a sissy
around here?" Once posed, the challenge is made. One of two things is
likely to happen. One boy will accuse another of being a sissy, to which
that boy will respond that he is not a sissy, that the first boy is. They may
have to fight it out to see who's lying. Or a whole group of boys will
surround one boy and all shout "He is! He is!" That boy will either burst
into tears and run home crying, disgraced, or he will have to take on
several boys at once, to prove that he's not a sissy. (And what will his
father or older brothers tell him if he chooses to run home crying?) It will
be some time before he regains any sense of self-respect.
Violence is often the single most evident marker of manhood. Rather it is
the willingness to fight, the desire to fight. The origin of our expression that
one has a chip on one's shoulder lies in the practice of an adolescent boy in
the country or small town at the turn of the century, who would literally walk
around with a chip of wood balanced on his shoulder—a signal of his
readiness to fight with anyone who would take the initiative of knocking
the chip off (see Gorer, 1964, p. 38; Mead, 1965).
As adolescents, we learn that our peers are a kind of gender police,
constantly threatening to unmask us as feminine, as sissies. One of the
favorite tricks when I was an adolescent was to ask a boy to look at his
fingernails. If he held his palm toward his face and curled his fingers back
to see them, he passed the test. He'd looked at his nails "like a man." But
if he held the back of his hand away from his face, and looked at his
fingernails with arm outstretched, he was immediately ridiculed as a sissy.
As young men we are constantly riding those gender boundaries,
checking the fences we have constructed on the perimeter, making sure
that nothing even remotely feminine might show through. The possibili-
ties of being unmasked are everywhere. Even the most seemingly insig-
nificant thing can pose a threat or activate that haunting terror. On the day
the students in my course "Sociology of Men and Masculinities" were
scheduled to discuss homophobia and male-male friendships, one student
provided a touching illustration. Noting that it was a beautiful day, the
first day of spring after a brutal northeast winter, he decided to wear shorts
to class. "I had this really nice pair of new Madras shorts," he commented.
"But then I thought to myself, these shorts have lavender and pink in them.
Today's class topic is homophobia. Maybe today is not the best day to
wear these shorts."
Our efforts to maintain a manly front cover everything we do. What we
wear. How we talk. How we walk. What we eat. Every mannerism, every
movement contains a coded gender language. Think, for example, of how
you would answer the question: How do you "know" if a man is homosexual?
When I ask this question in classes or workshops, respondents invariably
provide a pretty standard list of stereotypically effeminate behaviors. He
walks a certain way, talks a certain way, acts a certain way. He's very
emotional; he shows his feelings. One woman commented that she "knows" a
man is gay if he really cares about her; another said she knows he's gay if he
shows no interest in her, if he leaves her alone.
Now alter the question and imagine what heterosexual men do to make
sure no one could possibly get the "wrong idea" about them. Responses
typically refer to the original stereotypes, this time as a set of negative rules
about behavior. Never dress that way. Never talk or walk that way. Never
show your feelings or get emotional. Always be prepared to demonstrate
sexual interest in women that you meet, so it is impossible for any woman to
get the wrong idea about you. In this sense, homophobia, the fear of being
perceived as gay, as not a real man, keeps men exaggerating all the traditional
rules of masculinity, including sexual predation with women. Homopho-
bia and sexism go hand in hand.
The stakes of perceived sissydom are enormous—sometimes matters
of life and death. We take enormous risks to prove our manhood, exposing
ourselves disproportionately to health risks, workplace hazards, and
stress-related illnesses. Men commit suicide three times as often as
women. Psychiatrist Willard Gaylin (1992) explains that it is "invariably
because of perceived social humiliation," most often tied to failure in
business:
Men become depressed because of loss of status and power in the world of
men. It is not the loss of money, or the material advantages that money could
buy, which produces the despair that leads to self-destruction. It is the
"shame," the "humiliation," the sense of personal "failure." . . . A man
despairs when he has ceased being a man among men. (p. 32)
In one survey, women and men were asked what they were most afraid
of. Women responded that they were most afraid of being raped and
murdered. Men responded that they were most afraid of being laughed at
(Noble, 1992, pp. 105-106).
Homophobia as a Cause of Sexism,

Heterosexism, and Racism
Homophobia is intimately interwoven with both sexism and racism.

The fear—sometimes conscious, sometimes not—that others might per-
ceive us as homosexual propels men to enact all manner of exaggerated
masculine behaviors and attitudes to make sure that no one could possibly
get the wrong idea about us. One of the centerpieces of that exaggerated
masculinity is putting women down, both by excluding them from the

public sphere and by the quotidian put-downs in speech and behaviors
that organize the daily life of the American man. Women and gay men
become the "other" against which heterosexual men project their identi-
ties, against whom they stack the decks so as to compete in a situation in
which they will always win, so that by suppressing them, men can stake
a claim for their own manhood. Women threaten emasculation by repre-
senting the home, workplace, and familial responsibility, the negation of
fun. Gay men have historically played the role of the consummate sissy
in the American popular mind because homosexuality is seen as an
inversion of normal gender development. There have been other
"others." Through American history, various groups have represented
the sissy, the non-men against whom American men played out their
definitions of manhood, often with vicious results. In fact, these
changing groups provide an interesting lesson in American historical
development.
At the turn of the 19th century, it was Europeans and children who
provided the contrast for American men. The "true American was vigor-
ous, manly, and direct, not effete and corrupt like the supposed Europe-
ans," writes Rupert Wilkinson (1986). "He was plain rather than ornamented,
rugged rather than luxury seeking, a liberty loving common man or natural
gentleman rather than an aristocratic oppressor or servile minion" (p. 96).
The "real man" of the early 19th century was neither noble nor serf. By
the middle of the century, black slaves had replaced the effete nobleman.
Slaves were seen as dependent, helpless men, incapable of defending their
women and children, and therefore less than manly. Native Americans
were cast as foolish and naive children, so they could be infantalized as
the "Red Children of the Great White Father" and therefore excluded from
full manhood.
By the end of the century, new European immigrants were also added to
the list of the unreal men, especially the Irish and Italians, who were seen as
too passionate and emotionally volatile to remain controlled sturdy oaks, and
Jews, who were seen as too bookishly effete and too physically puny to truly
measure up. In the mid-20th century, it was also Asians—first the Japanese
during the Second World War, and more recently, the Vietnamese during the
Vietnam War—who have served as unmanly templates against which
American men have hurled their gendered rage. Asian men were seen as
small, soft, and effeminate—hardly men at all.
Such a list of "hyphenated" Americans—Italian-, Jewish-, Irish-, African-,
Native-, Asian-, gay—composes the majority of American men. So man-
hood is only possible for a distinct minority, and the definition has been
constructed to prevent the others from achieving it. Interestingly, this
emasculation of one's enemies has a flip side—and one that is equally
gendered. These very groups that have historically been cast as less than
manly were also, often simultaneously, cast as hypermasculine, as sexu-
ally aggressive, violent rapacious beasts, against whom "civilized" men
must take a decisive stand and thereby rescue civilization. Thus black men
were depicted as rampaging sexual beasts, women as carnivorously car-
nal, gay men as sexually insatiable, southern European men as sexually
predatory and voracious, and Asian men as vicious and cruel torturers who
were immorally disinterested in life itself, willing to sacrifice their entire
people for their whims. But whether one saw these groups as effeminate
sissies or as brutal uncivilized savages, the terms with which they were
perceived were gendered. These groups become the "others," the screens
against which traditional conceptions of manhood were developed.
Being seen as unmanly is a fear that propels American men to deny
manhood to others, as a way of proving the unprovable—that one is fully
manly. Masculinity becomes a defense against the perceived threat of
humiliation in the eyes of other men, enacted through a "sequence of
postures"—things we might say, or do, or even think, that, if we thought
carefully about them, would make us ashamed of ourselves (Savran, 1992,
p. 16). After all, how many of us have made homophobic or sexist remarks,
or told racist jokes, or made lewd comments to women on the street? How
many of us have translated those ideas and those words into actions, by
physically attacking gay men, or forcing or cajoling a woman to have sex
even though she didn't really want to because it was important to score?
Power and Powerlessness in the Lives of Men
I have argued that homophobia, men's fear of other men, is the animat-
ing condition of the dominant definition of masculinity in America, that
the reigning definition of masculinity is a defensive effort to prevent being
emasculated. In our efforts to suppress or overcome those fears, the domi-
nant culture exacts a tremendous price from those deemed less than fully
manly: women, gay men, nonnative-born men, men of color. This perspec-
tive may help clarify a paradox in men's lives, a paradox in which men
have virtually all the power and yet do not feel powerful (see Kaufman,
1993).
Manhood is equated with power—over women, over other men. Every-

where we look, we see the institutional expression of that power—in state
and national legislatures, on the boards of directors of every major U.S.
corporation or law firm, and in every school and hospital administration.
Women have long understood this, and feminist women have spent the
past three decades challenging both the public and the private expressions
of men's power and acknowledging their fear of men. Feminism as a set
of theories both explains women's fear of men and empowers women to
confront it both publicly and privately. Feminist women have theorized
that masculinity is about the drive for domination, the drive for power, for
conquest.
This feminist definition of masculinity as the drive for power is theo-
rized from women's point of view. It is how women experience masculin-
ity. But it assumes a symmetry between the public and the private that
does not conform to men's experiences. Feminists observe that women,
as a group, do not hold power in our society. They also observe that
individually, they, as women, do not feel powerful. They feel afraid, vulner-
able. Their observation of the social reality and their individual experiences
are therefore symmetrical. Feminism also observes that men, as a group,
are in power. Thus, with the same symmetry, feminism has tended to
assume that individually men must feel powerful.
This is why the feminist critique of masculinity often falls on deaf ears
with men. When confronted with the analysis that men have all the power,
many men react incredulously. "What do you mean, men have all the
power?" they ask. "What are you talking about? My wife bosses me
around. My kids boss me around. My boss bosses me around. I have no
power at all! I'm completely powerless!"
Men's feelings are not the feelings of the powerful, but of those who
see themselves as powerless. These are the feelings that come inevitably
from the discontinuity between the social and the psychological, between the
aggregate analysis that reveals how men are in power as a group and the
pyschological fact that they do not feel powerful as individuals. They are the
feelings of men who were raised to believe themselves entitled to feel that
power, but do not feel it. No wonder many men are frustrated and angry.
This may explain the recent popularity of those workshops and retreats
designed to help men to claim their "inner" power, their "deep manhood,"
or their "warrior within." Authors such as Bly (1990), Moore and Gillette
(1991, 1992,1993a, 1993b), Farrell (1986, 1993), and Keen (1991) honor
and respect men's feelings of powerlessness and acknowledge those feelings
to be both true and real. "They gave white men the semblance of power,"
notes John Lee, one of the leaders of these retreats (quoted in Newsweek,
p. 41). "We'll let you run the country, but in the meantime, stop feeling,
stop talking, and continue swallowing your pain and your hurt." (We are
not told who "they" are.)
Often the purveyors of the mythopoetic men's movement, that broad
umbrella that encompasses all the groups helping men to retrieve this
mythic deep manhood, use the image of the chauffeur to describe modern
man's position. The chauffeur appears to have the power—he's wearing
the uniform, he's in the driver's seat, and he knows where he's going. So,
to the observer, the chauffeur looks as though he is in command. But to
the chauffeur himself, they note, he is merely taking orders. He is not at
all in charge.
Despite the reality that everyone knows chauffeurs do not have the
power, this image remains appealing to the men who hear it at these
weekend workshops. But there is a missing piece to the image, a piece
concealed by the framing of the image in terms of the individual man's
experience. That missing piece is that the person who is giving the orders
is also a man. Now we have a relationship between men—between men
giving orders and other men taking those orders. The man who identifies
with the chauffeur is entitled to be the man giving the orders, but he is
not. ("They," it turns out, are other men.)
The dimension of power is now reinserted into men's experience not
only as the product of individual experience but also as the product of
relations with other men. In this sense, men's experience of powerlessness
is real—the men actually feel it and certainly act on it—but it is not true,
that is, it does not accurately describe their condition. In contrast to
women's lives, men's lives are structured around relationships of power
and men's differential access to power, as well as the differential access
to that power of men as a group. Our imperfect analysis of our own
situation leads us to believe that we men need more power, rather than
leading us to support feminists' efforts to rearrange power relationships
along more equitable lines.
Philosopher Hannah Arendt (1970) fully understood this contradictory
experience of social and individual power:
Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert.
Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains
in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of
somebody that he is "in power" we actually refer to his being empowered by
a certain number of people to act in their name. The moment the group, from
which the power originated to begin with . . . disappears, "his power" also
vanishes, (p. 44)
Why, then, do American men feel so powerless? Part of the answer is

because we've constructed the rules of manhood so that only the tiniest
fraction of men come to believe that they are the biggest of wheels, the
sturdiest of oaks, the most virulent repudiators of femininity, the most
daring and aggressive. We've managed to disempower the overwhelming
majority of American men by other means—such as discriminating on the
basis of race, class, ethnicity, age, or sexual preference.
Masculinist retreats to retrieve deep, wounded, masculinity are but one
of the ways in which American men currently struggle with their fears and
their shame. Unfortunately, at the very moment that they work to break
down the isolation that governs men's lives, as they enable men to express
those fears and that shame, they ignore the social power that men continue
to exert over women and the privileges from which they (as the middle-aged,
middle-class white men who largely make up these retreats) continue to
benefit—regardless of their experiences as wounded victims of oppressive
male socialization.
Others still rehearse the politics of exclusion, as if by clearing away the
playing field of secure gender identity of any that we deem less than
manly—women, gay men, nonnative-born men, men of color—middle-
class, straight, white men can reground their sense of themselves without
those haunting fears and that deep shame that they are unmanly and will
be exposed by other men. This is the manhood of racism, of sexism, of
homophobia. It is the manhood that is so chronically insecure that it
trembles at the idea of lifting the ban on gays in the military, that is so
threatened by women in the workplace that women become the targets of
sexual harassment, that is so deeply frightened of equality that it must
ensure that the playing field of male competition remains stacked against
all newcomers to the game.
Exclusion and escape have been the dominant methods American men
have used to keep their fears of humiliation at bay. The fear of emascula-
tion by other men, of being humiliated, of being seen as a sissy, is the
leitmotif in my reading of the history of American manhood. Masculinity
has become a relentless test by which we prove to other men, to women,
and ultimately to ourselves, that we have successfully mastered the part.
The restlessness that men feel today is nothing new in American history;
we have been anxious and restless for almost two centuries. Neither
exclusion nor escape has ever brought us the relief we've sought, and there
is no reason to think that either will solve our problems now. Peace of
mind, relief from gender struggle, will come only from a politics of
inclusion, not exclusion, from standing up for equality and justice, and
not by running away.
Notes
1. Of course, the phrase "American manhood" contains several simultaneous fictions.

There is no single manhood that defines all American men; "America" is meant to refer
to the United States proper, and there are significant ways in which this "American
manhood" is the outcome of forces that transcend both gender and nation, that is, the
global economic development of industrial capitalism. I use it, therefore, to describe the
specific hegemonic version of masculinity in the United States, that normative constella-
tion of attitudes, traits, and behaviors that became the standard against which all other
masculinities are measured and against which individual men measure the success of their
gender accomplishments.
2. Much of this work is elaborated in Manhood: The American Quest (in press).
3. Although I am here discussing only American masculinity, I am aware that others
have located this chronic instability and efforts to prove manhood in the particular cultural
and economic arrangements of Western society. Calvin, after all, inveighed against the
disgrace "for men to become effeminate," and countless other theorists have described
the mechanics of manly proof. (See, for example, Seidler, 1994.)
4. I do not mean to argue that women do not have anxieties about whether they are
feminine enough. Ask any woman how she feels about being called aggressive; it sends
a chill into her heart because her femininity is suspect. (I believe that the reason for the
enormous recent popularity of sexy lingerie among women is that it enables women to
remember they are still feminine underneath their corporate business suit—a suit that apes
masculine styles.) But I think the stakes are not as great for women and that women have
greater latitude in defining their identities around these questions than men do. Such are
the ironies of sexism: The powerful have a narrower range of options than the powerless,
because the powerless can also imitate the powerful and get away with it. It may even
enhance status, if done with charm and grace—that is, is not threatening. For the powerful,
any hint of behaving like the powerless is a fall from grace.
5. Such observations also led journalist Hey wood Broun to argue that most of the
attacks against feminism came from men who were shorter than 5 ft. 7 in. "The man who,
whatever his physical size, feels secure in his own masculinity and in his own relation to
life is rarely resentful of the opposite sex" (cited in Symes, 1930, p. 139).
6. Some of Freud's followers, such as Anna Freud and Alfred Adler, did follow up on
these suggestions. (See especially, Adler, 1980.) I am grateful to Terry Kupers for his help
in thinking through Adler's ideas.
7. The image is from Warren Farrell, who spoke at a workshop I attended at the First
International Men's Conference, Austin, Texas, October 1991.
8. For a critique of these mythopoetic retreats, see Kimmel and Kaufman, Chapter 14,
this volume.
References
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8
Men, Feminism, and Men's
Contradictory Experiences of Power
MICHAEL KAUFMAN
In a world dominated by men, the world of men is, by definition, a world

of power. That power is a structured part of the economies and systems
of political and social organization; it forms part of the core of religion,
family, forms of play, and intellectual life. On an individual level, much
of what we associate with masculinity hinges on a man's capacity to
exercise power and control.
But men's lives speak of a different reality. Though men hold power
and reap the privileges that come with our sex, that power is tainted.
There is, in the lives of men, a strange combination of power and
powerlessness, privilege and pain. Men enjoy social power and many
forms of privilege by virtue of being male. But the way we have set up
that world of power causes immense pain, isolation, and alienation not
only for women but also for men. This is not to equate men's pain with
the systemic and systematic forms of women's oppression. Rather, it is to
say that men's worldly power—as we sit in our homes or walk the street,
apply ourselves at work or march through history—comes with a price for
us. This combination of power and pain is the hidden story in the lives of
men. This is men's contradictory experience of power.
The idea of men's contradictory experiences of power suggests not
simply that there is both power and pain in men's lives. Such a statement
would obscure the centrality of men's power and the roots of pain within
that power. The key, indeed, is the relationship between the two. As we
know, men's social power is the source of individual power and privilege,
but as we shall see, it is also the source of the individual experience of
142
Men's Contradictory Experiences of Power 143
pain and alienation. That pain can become an impetus for the individual
reproduction—the acceptance, affirmation, celebration, and propagation—
of men's individual and collective power. Alternatively, it can be an
impetus for change.
The existence of men's pain cannot be an excuse for acts of violence or
oppression at the hands of men. After all, the overarching framework for
this analysis is the basic point of feminism—and here I state the obvious—
that almost all humans currently live in systems of patriarchal power that
privilege men and stigmatize, penalize, and oppress women. Rather,
knowledge of this pain is a means to better understand men and the
complex character of the dominant forms of masculinity.
The realization of men's contradictory experiences of power allows us
to better understand the interactions of class, race, sexual orientation,
ethnicity, age, and other factors in the lives of men—which is why I speak
of contradictory experiences of power in the plural. It allows us to better
understand the process of gender acquisition for men. It allows us to better
grasp what we might think of as the gender work of a society.
An understanding of men's contradictory experiences of power enables
us, when possible, to reach out to men with compassion, even as we are
highly critical of particular actions and beliefs and challenge the dominant
forms of masculinity. It can be one vehicle to understand how good human
beings can do horrible things and how some beautiful baby boys can turn
into horrible adults. It can help us understand how the majority of men*
can be reached with a message of change. It is, in a nutshell, the basis for
men's embrace of feminism.
This chapter develops the concept of men's contradictory experiences
of power within an analysis of gender power, of the social-psychological
process of gender development, and of the relation of power, alienation,
and oppression. It looks at the emergence of profeminism among men,
seeking explanations for this within an analysis of men's contradictory
experiences of power. It concludes with some thoughts on the implications
of this analysis for the development of counterhegemonic practices by
profeminist men that can have a mass appeal and a mainstream social impact.
Men's Contradictory Experiences of Power
Gender and Power

Theorizing men's contradictory experiences of power begins with two
distinctions: The first is the well-known, but too-often overlooked,
distinction between biological sex and socially constructed gender. De-

rived from that is the second, that there is no single masculinity although
there are hegemonic and subordinate forms of masculinity. These forms
are based on men's social power but are embraced in complex ways by
individual men who also develop harmonious and nonharmonious rela-
tionships with other masculinities.
The importance of the sex-gender distinction in this context is that it is
a basic conceptual tool that suggests how integral parts of our individual
identity, behavior, activities, and beliefs can be a social product, varying
from one group to another and often at odds with other human needs and
possibilities. Our biological sex—that small set of absolute differences
between all males and all females—does not prescribe a set and static
natural personality. The sex-gender distinction suggests there are char-
acteristics, needs, and possibilities within the potential as females or
males that are consciously and unconsciously suppressed, repressed, and
channeled in the process of producing men and women. Such products,
the masculine and the feminine, the man and the woman, are what gender
is all about.
Gender is the central organizing category of our psyches. It is the axis
around which we organize our personalities, in which a distinct ego
develops. I can no more separate "Michael Kaufman—human" from
"Michael Kaufman—man" than I can talk about the activities of a whale
without referring to the fact that it spends its whole life in the water.
Discourses on gender have had a hard time shaking off the handy, but
limited, notion of sex roles. Certainly, roles, expectations, and ideas
about proper behavior do exist. But the central thing about gender is not
the prescription of certain roles and the proscription of others—after all,
the range of possible roles is wide and changing and, what is more, are
rarely adopted in a nonconflictual way. Rather, the key thing about gender
is that it is a description of actual social relations of power between males
and females and the internalization of these relations of power.
Men's contradictory experiences of power exist in the realm of gender.
This suggests there are ways that gender experience is a conflictual one.
Only part of the conflict is between the social definitions of manhood and
possibilities open to us within our biological sex. Conflict also exists
because of the cultural imposition of what Bob Connell calls hegemonic
forms of masculinity. Although most men cannot possibly measure up to
the dominant ideals of manhood, these maintain a powerful and often
unconscious presence in our lives. They have power because they describe
and embody real relations of power between men and women and among
men: Patriarchy exists as a system not simply of men's power over women
but also of hierarchies of power among different groups of men and
between different masculinities.
These dominant ideals vary sharply from society to society, from era to
era, and, these days, from decade to decade. Each subgroup, based on race,
class, sexual orientation, or whatever, defines manhood in ways that
conform to the economic and social possibilities of that group. For
example, part of the ideal of working-class manhood among white North
American men stresses physical skill and the ability to physically manipu-
late one's environment, while part of the ideal of their upper-middle class
counterparts stresses verbal skills and the ability to manipulate one's
environment through economic, social, and political means. Each domi-
nant image bears a relationship to the real-life possibilities of these men
and the tools at their disposal for the exercise of some form of power.
Power and Masculinity

Power, indeed, in the key term when referring to hegemonic masculinities.
As I argue at greater length elsewhere, the common feature of the dominant
forms of contemporary masculinity is that manhood is equated with having
some sort of power.
There are, of course, different ways to conceptualize and describe
power. Political philosopher C. B. Macpherson points to the liberal and
radical traditions of the last two centuries and tells us that one way we
have come to think of human power is as the potential for using and
developing our human capacities. Such a view is based on the idea that
we are doers and creators able to use rational understanding, moral
judgment, creativity, and emotional connection. We possess the power to
meet our needs, the power to fight injustice and oppression, the power of
muscles and brain, and the power of love. All men, to a greater or lesser
extent, experience these meanings of power.
Power, obviously, also has a more negative manifestation. Men have
come to see power as a capacity to impose control on others and on our
own unruly emotions. It means controlling material resources around us.
This understanding of power meshes with the one described by Macpher-
son because, in societies based on hierarchy and inequality, it appears that
all people cannot use and develop their capacities to an equal extent. You
have power if you can take advantage of differences between people. I
feel I can have power only if I have access to more resources than you do.
Power is seen as power over something or someone else.
Although we all experience power in diverse ways, some that celebrate

life and diversity and others that hinge on control and domination, the two
types of experiences are not equal in the eyes of men, for the latter is the
dominant conception of power in our world. The equation of power with
domination and control is a definition that has emerged over time in
societies in which various divisions are central to the way we have organized
our lives: One class has control over economic resources and politics,
adults have control over children, humans try to control nature, men
dominate women, and, in many countries, one ethnic, racial, or religious
group, or group based on sexual orientation, has control over others. There
is, though, a common factor to all these societies: All are societies of male
domination. The equation of masculinity with power is one that developed
over centuries. It conformed to, and in turn justified, the real-life domi-
nation of men over women and the valuation of males over females.
Individual men internalize all this into their developing personalities
because, born into such a life, we learn to experience our power as a capacity
to exercise control. Men learn to accept and exercise power this way because
it gives us privileges and advantages that women or children do not usually
enjoy. The source of this power is in the society around us, but we learn to
exercise it as our own. This is a discourse of social power, but the col-
lective power of men rests not simply on transgenerational and abstract
institutions and structures of power but on the ways we internalize, indi-
vidualize, and come to embody and reproduce these institutions, structures,
and conceptualizations of men's power.
Gender Work
The way in which power is internalized is the basis for a contradictory
relationship to that power. The most important body of work that looks
at this process is, paradoxically, that of one of the more famous of 20th-
century intellectual patriarchs, Sigmund Freud. Whatever his miserable,
sexist beliefs and confusions about women's sexualities, he identified the
psychological processes and structures through which gender is created. The
work of Nancy Chodorow, Dorothy Dinnerstein, and Jessica Benjamin and,
in a different sense, the psychoanalytic writings of Gad Horowitz make
an important contribution to our understanding of the processes by which
gender is individually acquired.
The development of individual personalities of "normal" manhood is a
social process within patriarchal family relationships. The possibility
for the creation of gender lies in two biological realities, the malleability
of human drives and the long period of dependency of children. On this

biological edifice a social process is able to go to work for the simple
reason that this period of dependency is lived out in society. Within
different family forms, each society provides a charged setting in which
love and longing, and support and disappointment become the vehicles
for developing a gendered psyche. The family gives a personalized stamp
to the categories, values, ideals, and beliefs of a society in which one's
sex is a fundamental aspect of self-definition and life. The family takes
abstract ideals and turns them into the stuff of love and hate. As femininity
gets represented by the mother (or mother figures) and masculinity by the
father (or father figures) in both nuclear and extended families, compli-
cated conceptions take on flesh and blood form: We are no longer talking
of patriarchy and sexism, and masculinity and femininity as abstract
categories. I am talking about your mother and father, your sisters and
brothers, your home, kin, and family.
By 5 or 6 years old, before we have much conscious knowledge of the
world, the building blocks of our gendered personalities are firmly an-
chored. Over this skeleton we build the adult as we learn to survive and,
with luck, thrive within an interlocked set of patriarchal realities that
includes schools, religious establishments, the media, and the world of
work.
The internalization of gender relations is a building block of our person-
alities—that is, it is the individual elaboration of gender and our own
subsequent contributions to replenishing and adapting institutions and social
structures in a way that wittingly or unwittingly preserves patriarchal
systems. This process, when taken in its totality, forms what I call the gender
work of a society. Because of the multiple identities of individuals and the
complex ways we all embody both power and powerlessness—as a result of
the interaction of our sex, race, class, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion,
intellectual and physical abilities, and sheer chance—gender work is not a
linear process. Although gender ideals exist in the form of hegemonic
masculinities and femininities and although gender power is a social reality,
when we live in heterogeneous societies, we each grapple with often con-
flicting pressures, demands, and possibilities.
The notion of gender work suggests there is an active process that
creates and recreates gender. It suggests that this process can be an
ongoing one, with particular tasks at particular times of our lives and that
allows us to respond to changing relations of gender power. It suggests
that gender is not a static thing that we become, but is a form of ongoing
interaction with the structures of the surrounding world.
My masculinity is a bond, a glue, to the patriarchal world. It is the thing

that makes that world mine, that makes it more or less comfortable to live
in. Through the incorporation of a dominant form of masculinity particu-
lar to my class, race, nationality, era, sexual orientation, and religion, I
gained real benefits and an individual sense of self-worth. From the
moment when I learned, unconsciously, there were not only two sexes but
a social significance to the sexes, my own self-worth became measured
against the yardstick of gender. As a young male, I was granted a fantasy
reprieve from the powerlessness of early childhood because I uncon-
sciously realized I was part of that half of humanity with social power.
My ability to incorporate not simply the roles, but to grasp onto this
power—even if, at first, it existed only in my imagination—was part of
the development of my individuality.
The Price
In more concrete terms the acquisition of hegemonic (and most subor-
dinate) masculinities is a process through which men come to suppress a
range of emotions, needs, and possibilities, such as nurturing, receptivity,
empathy, and compassion, which are experienced as inconsistent with the
power of manhood. These emotions and needs do not disappear; they are
simply held in check or not allowed to play as full a role in our lives as
would be healthy for ourselves and those around us. We dampen these
emotions because they might restrict our ability and desire to control
ourselves or dominate the human beings around us on whom we depend
for love and friendship. We suppress them because they come to be
associated with the femininity we have rejected as part of our quest for
masculinity.
These are many things men do to have the type of power we associate
with masculinity: We've got to perform and stay in control. We've got to
conquer, be on top of things, and call the shots. We've got to tough it out,
provide, and achieve. Meanwhile we learn to beat back our feelings, hide
our emotions, and suppress our needs.
Whatever power might be associated with dominant masculinities, they
also can be the source of enormous pain. Because the images are, ulti-
mately, childhood pictures of omnipotence, they are impossible to obtain.
Surface appearances aside, no man is completely able to live up to these
ideals and images. For one thing we all continue to experience a range of
needs and feelings that are deemed inconsistent with manhood. Such
experiences become the source of enormous fear. In our society, this fear
is experienced as homophobia or, to express it differently, homophobia is

the vehicle that simultaneously transmits and quells the fear.
Such fear and pain have visceral, emotional, intellectual dimensions—
although none of these dimensions is necessarily conscious—and the more
we are the prisoners of the fear, the more we need to exercise the power we
grant ourselves as men. In other words, men exercise patriarchal power not
only because we reap tangible benefits from it. The assertion of power is
also a response to fear and to the wounds we have experienced in the quest
for power. Paradoxically, men are wounded by the very way we have
learned to embody and exercise our power.
A man's pain may be deeply buried, barely a whisper in his heart, or it
may flood from every pore. The pain might be the lasting trace of things
that happened or attitudes and needs acquired 20, 30, or 60 years earlier.
Whatever it is, the pain inspires fear for it means not being a man, which
means, in a society that confuses gender and sex, not being a male. This
means losing power and ungluing basic building blocks of our personali-
ties. This fear must be suppressed for it itself is inconsistent with dominant
masculinities.
As every woman who knows men can tell us, the strange thing about
men's trying to suppress emotions is that it leads not to less but to more
emotional dependency. By losing track of a wide range of our human
needs and capacities and by blocking our need for care and nurturance,
men lose our emotional common sense and our ability to look after
ourselves. Unmet, unknown, and unexpected emotions and needs do not
disappear but rather spill into our lives at work, on the road, in a bar, or
at home. The very emotions and feelings we have tried to suppress gain a
strange hold over us. No matter how cool and in control, these emotions
dominate us. I think of the man who feels powerlessness who beats his
wife in uncontrolled rage. I walk into a bar and see two men hugging each
other in a drunken embrace, the two of them able to express their affection
for each other only when plastered. I read about the teenage boys who go
out gay-bashing and the men who turn their sense of impotence into a rage
against blacks, Jews, or any who are convenient scapegoats.
Alternatively, men might direct buried pain against themselves in the
form of self-hate, self-deprecation, physical illness, insecurity, or addic-
tions. Sometimes this is connected with the first. Interviews with rapists
and batterers often show not only contempt for women but also an even
deeper hatred and contempt for oneself. It is as if, not able to stand
themselves, they lash out at others, possibly to inflict similar feelings on
another who has been defined as a socially acceptable target, possibly to
experience a momentary sense of power and control. We can think of

men's pain as having a dynamic aspect. We might displace it or make it
invisible, but in doing so we give it even more urgency. This blanking out
of a sense of pain is another way of saying that men learn to wear a suit of
armor, that is, to maintain an emotional barrier from those around us in order
to keep fighting and winning. The impermeable ego barriers discussed in
feminist psychoanalysis simultaneously protects men and keeps us locked in
a prison of our own creation.
Power, Alienation, and Oppression
Men's pain and the way we exercise power are not just symptoms of
our current gender order. Together they shape our sense of manhood, for
masculinity has become a form of alienation. Men's alienation is our
ignorance of our own emotions, feelings, needs, and potential for human
connection and nurturance. Our alienation also results from our distance
from women and our distance and isolation from other men. In his book
The Gender of Oppression, Jeff Hearn suggests that what we think of as
masculinity is the result of the way our power and our alienation combine.
Our alienation increases the lonely pursuit of power and emphasizes our
belief that power requires an ability to be detached and distant.
Men's alienation and distance from women and other men takes on
strange and rather conflicting forms. Robert Bly and those in the mythopo-
etic men's movement have made a lot out of the loss of the father and the
distance of many men, in dominant North American cultures anyway,
from their own fathers. Part of their point is accurate and simply reaffirms
important work done over the past couple of decades on issues around
fathers and fathering. Their discussion of these points, however, lacks
the richness and depth of feminist psychoanalysis that holds, as a central
issue, that the absence of men from most parenting and nurturing tasks
means that the masculinity internalized by little boys is based on distance,
separation, and a fantasy image of what constitutes manhood, rather than
on the type of oneness and inseparability that typifies early mother-child
relationships.
The distance from other men is accentuated, in many contemporary
heterosexual men's cultures at least, by the emotional distance from other
males that begins to develop in adolescence. Men might have buddies,
pals, workmates, and friends, but they seldom have the level of complete
trust and intimacy enjoyed by many women. Our experience of friendship
is limited by the reduced empathy that becomes the masculine norm. As
a result we have the paradox that most heterosexual men (and even many
gay men) in the dominant North American culture are extremely isolated
from other men. In fact, as I have argued elsewhere, many of the institu-
tions of male bonding—the clubs, sporting events, card games, locker
rooms, workplaces, professional and religious hierarchies—are a means to
provide safety for isolated men who need to find ways to affirm them-
selves, find common ground with other men, and collectively exercise
their power. Such isolation means that each man can remain blind to his
dialogue of self-doubt about making the masculine grade—the self-doubts
that are consciously experienced by virtually all adolescent males and then
consciously or unconsciously by them as adults. In a strange sense, this
isolation is key in preserving patriarchy: To a greater or lesser extent it
increases the possibility that all men end up colluding with patriarchy—in
all its diverse myths and realities—because their own doubts and sense of
confusion remain buried.
It is not only other men from whom most men, and certainly most
straight men, remain distant. It is also from women. Here another impor-
tant insight of feminist psychoanalysis is key: Boys' separation from their
mother or mother figure means the erection of more or less impermeable
ego barriers and an affirmation of distinction, difference, and opposition
to those things identified with women and femininity. Boys repress
characteristics and possibilities associated with mother/women/the femi-
nine, unconsciously and consciously. Thus Bly and the mythopoetic
theorists have it all wrong when they suggest that the central problem with
contemporary men (and by this they seem to mean North American
middle-class, young to middle-aged, white, straight urban men) is that
they have become feminized. The problem as suggested above is the
wholesale repression and suppression of those traits and possibilities
associated with women.
These factors suggest the complexity of gender identity, gender forma-
tion, and gender relations. It appears that we need forms of analysis that
allow for contradictory relationships between individuals and the power
structures from which they benefit. It is a strange situation when men's
very real power and privilege in the world hinges not only on that
power but also on an experience of alienation and powerlessness—
rooted in childhood experiences but reinforced in different ways as
adolescents and then adults. These experiences, in turn, become the spur
at the individual level (in addition to the obvious and tangible benefits)
to recreate and celebrate the forms and structures through which men
exercise power.
But as we have seen, there is no single masculinity or one experience

of being a man. The experience of different men, their actual power and
privilege in the world, is based on a range of social positions and relations.
The social power of a poor white man is different from a rich one, a
working-class black man from a working-class white man, a gay man from
a bisexual man from a straight man, a Jewish man in Ethiopia from a
Jewish man in Israel, a teenage boy from an adult. Within each group, men
usually have privileges and power relative to the women in that group,
but in society as a whole, things are not always so straightforward.
The emergent discourses on the relation between oppression based on
gender, racial, class, and social orientation are but one reflection of the
complexity of the problem. These discussions are critical in the develop-
ment of a new generation of feminist analysis and practice. The tendency,
unfortunately, is often to add up categories of oppression as if they were
separate units. Sometimes, such tallies are even used to decide who,
supposedly, is the most oppressed. The problem can become absurd for
two simple reasons: One is the impossibility of quantifying experiences
of oppression; the other is that the sources of oppression do not come in
discreet units. After all, think of an unemployed black gay working-class
man. We might say this man is exploited as a working-class man, op-
pressed as a gay man, oppressed and the victim of racism because he is
black, suffering terribly because he is out of work, but we are not going
to say, oh, he's oppressed as a man. Of course he is not oppressed as a
man, but I worry that the distinction is rather academic because none of
the qualities used to describe him is completely separable from the others.
After all, his particular sense of manhood, that is, his masculinity, is in
part a product of those other factors. "Man" becomes as much an adjective
modifying "black," "working-class," "out of work," and "gay" as these
things modify the word "man." Our lives, our minds, our bodies simply
are not divided up in a way that allows us to separate the different
categories of our existence. This man's experiences, self-definition(s),
and location in the hierarchies of power are codetermined by a multitude
of factors. Furthermore, because masculinities denote relations of power
among men, and not just men against women, a man who has little social
power in the dominant society, whose masculinity is not of a hegemonic
variety, who is the victim of tremendous social oppression, might also
wield tremendous power in his own milieu and neighborhood vis-^-vis
women of his own class or social grouping or other males, as in the case
of a school-yard bully or a member of an urban gang who certainly does
not have structural power in the society as a whole.
Our whole language of oppression is in need of overhaul for it is based

on simplistic binary oppositions, reductionist equations between identity
and social location, and unifocal notions of the self. What is important for
us here is not to deny that men, as a group, have social power or even that
men, within their subgroups, tend to have considerable power, but rather
that there are different forms of structural power and powerlessness among
men. Similarly, it is important not to deny the structural and individual
oppression of women as a social group. Rather it is to recognize, as we have
seen earlier, that there is not a linear relationship between a structured
system of power inequalities, the real and supposed benefits of power, and
one's own experience of these relations of power.
Men and Feminism
An analysis of men's contradictory experiences of power gives us

useful insights into the potential relation of men to feminism. The power
side of the equation is not anything new and, indeed, men's power and
privileges form a very good reason for men to individually and collec-
tively oppose feminism.
But we do know that an increasing number of men have become
sympathetic to feminism (in content if not always in name) and have
embraced feminist theory and action (although, again, more often in
theory than in action). There are different reasons for a man's acceptance
of feminism. It might be outrage at inequality; it might result from the
influence of a partner, family member, or friend; it might be his own sense
of injustice at the hands of other men; it might be a sense of shared
oppression, say because of his sexual orientation; it might be his own guilt
about the privileges he enjoys as a man; it might be horror at men's
violence; it might be sheer decency.
Although the majority of men in North America would still not label
themselves profeminist, a strong majority of men in Canada and a reasonable
percentage of men in the United States would sympathize with many of the
issues as presented by feminists. As we know, this sympathy does not always
translate into changes of behavior, but, increasingly, ideas are changing and
in some cases, behavior is starting to catch up.
How do we explain the growing number of men who are supportive of
feminism and women's liberation (to use that term that was too hastily
abandoned by the end of the 1970s)? Except for the rare outcast or iconoclast,
there are few examples from history where significant numbers of a ruling
group supported the liberation of those over whom they ruled and from
whose subordination they benefited.
One answer is that the current feminist wave—whatever its weaknesses
and whatever backlash might exist against it—has had a massive impact
during the past two and a half decades. Large numbers of men, along with
many women who had supported the status quo, now realize that the tide
has turned and, like it or not, the world is changing. Women's rebellion
against patriarchy holds the promise of bringing patriarchy to an end.
Although patriarchy in its many different social and economic forms still
has considerable staying power, an increasing number of its social, political,
economic, and emotional structures are proving unworkable. Some men react
with rearguard actions while others step tentatively or strongly in the
direction of change.
This explanation of men's support for change catches only part of the
picture. The existence of contradictory experiences of power suggests
there is a basis for men's embrace of feminism that goes beyond swim-
ming with a change in the tide.
The rise of feminism has shifted the balance between men's power and
men's pain. In societies and eras in which men's social power went largely
unchallenged, men's power so outweighed men's pain that the existence
of this pain could remain buried, even nonexistent. When you rule the
roost, call the shots, and are closer to God, there is not a lot of room left
for pain, at least for pain that appears to be linked to the practices of
masculinity. But with the rise of modern feminism, the fulcrum between
men's power and men's pain has been undergoing a rapid shift. This is
particularly true in cultures where the definition of men's power had
already moved away from tight control over the home and tight monopo-
lies in the realm of work.
As men's power is challenged, those things that came as a compensa-
tion, a reward, or a lifelong distraction from any potential pain are
progressively reduced or, at least, called into question. As women's
oppression becomes problematized, many forms of this oppression be-
come problems for men. Individual gender-related experiences of pain
and disquietude among men have become increasingly manifest and have
started to gain a social hearing and social expression in widely diverse
forms, including different branches of the men's movement—from reac-
tionary antifeminists, to the Bly-type mythopoetic movement, to pro-
feminist men's organizing.
In other words, if gender is about power, then as actual relations of
power between men and women and between different groups of men
(such as straight and gay men) start to shift, then our experiences of gender
and our gender definitions must also begin to change. The process of
gender work is ongoing and includes this process of reformulation and
upheaval.
Rising Support and Looming Pitfalls

The embrace of feminism by men is not, surprisingly, entirely new. As
Michael Kimmel argues in his insightful introduction to Against the Tide:
Profeminist Men in the United States, 1796-1990. A Documentary History,
profeminist men have constituted a small but persistent feature of the U.S.
sociopolitical scene for two centuries.
What makes the current situation different is that profeminism among
men (or at least acceptance of aspects of feminist critiques and feminist
political action) is reaching such large-scale dimensions. Ideas that were
almost unanimously discounted by men (and indeed by most women) only
25 years ago now have widespread legitimacy. It does not help to overstate
the progress that has been made; many individuals remain staunchly
propatriarchal and most institutions remain male dominated. But changes
are visible. Affirmative action programs are widespread, many social
institutions controlled by men—in education, the arts, professions, poli-
tics, and religion—are undergoing a process of sexual integration even
though this usually requires not only ongoing pressure but often women's
adapting to masculinist work cultures. In various countries the percentage
of men favoring abortion rights for women equals or outstrips support by
women. Male-dominated governments have accepted the need to adopt
laws that have been part of the feminist agenda. (One of the most dramatic
instances was in Canada in 1992 when the Conservative Party government
completely recast the law on rape—following a process of consultation
with women's groups. The new law stated that all sexual relations must
be explicitly consensual, that "no means no" and that it takes a clearly
stated and freely given "yes" to mean yes. Again, in Canada, one thinks
of the way that feminist organizations insisted on their presence—and
were accepted as key players—at the bargaining table in the 1991 and
1992 round of constitutional talks.) All such changes were a result of the
hard work and impact of the women's movement; this impact on institu-
tions controlled by men shows the increased acceptance by men of at least
some of the terms of feminism, whether this acceptance is begrudging or
welcome.
For those men and women interested in social change and speeding up
the type of changes described above, some serious problems remain:
Although there are ever-increasing sympathies among men to the ideas of

women's equality, and although some institutions have been forced to
adopt measures promoting women's equality, there is still a lag between
the ideas accepted by men and their actual behavior. Although many men
might reluctantly or enthusiastically support efforts for change, pro-
feminism among men has not yet reached mass organizational forms in
most cases.
This brings us to the implications of the analysis of this chapter to the
issue of profeminist organizing by men. Stimulated by the ever-widening
impact of modern feminism, the past two decades have seen the emer-
gence of something that, for lack of a better phrase, has been called the
men's movement. There have been two major currents to the men's move-
ments. One is the mythopoetic men's movement. Coming to prominence
in the late 1980s (in particular, with the success of Robert Bly's Iron
John), it is actually the latest expression of an approach dating to the
1970s that focuses on the pain and costs of being men or of a masculinist
politic dating almost a hundred years that sought to create homosocial
spaces as an antidote to the supposed feminization of men. A second has
been the less prominent profeminist men's movement (within which I count
my own activities) that has focused on the social and individual expressions
of men's power and privileges, including issues of men's violence.
Unfortunately, the dominant expressions of these two wings of the
men's movement have developed with their own deformities, idiosyncra-
sies, and mistakes in analysis and action. In particular, each has tended to
grapple primarily with one aspect of men's lives—men's power, in the
case of the profeminist movement, and men's pain, in the case of the mytho-
poetic. In doing so, they not only miss the totality of men's experience
in a male-dominated society, but miss the crucial relationship between
men's power and men's pain.
The profeminist men's movement starts from the acknowledgment that
men have power and privilege in a male-dominated society. Although I
feel strongly that this must be our starting point, it is only a beginning,
for there are many challenging issues: How can we build mass and active
support for feminism among men? How can we encourage men to realize
that support for feminism means more than supporting institutional and
legal changes but also requires personal changes in their own lives? How
can we link the struggles against homophobia and sexism and to realize
in practice that homophobia is a major factor in promoting misogyny and
sexism among men?
Within these questions are a set of theoretical, strategic, and tactical

problems. If our goal is not simply to score academic or political debating
points or to feel good about our profeminist credentials, but, alongside
women, to actually affect the course of history, then, I would suggest, it
is critical to take these questions very seriously. For me, several points
emerge from this analysis.
Whether a man assumes that his most pressing concern is working in
support of women's equality and challenging patriarchy, in challenging
homophobia and encouraging a gay- and lesbian-positive culture, or in
enhancing the lives of all men, our starting point as men must be a
recognition of the centrality of men's power and privilege and a recogni-
tion of the need to challenge that power. This is not only in support of
feminism, but it is a recognition that the social and personal construction
of this power is the source of the malaise, confusion, and alienation felt
by men in our era as well as an important source of homophobia.
The more we realize that some form of homophobia is central to the
experience of men in most patriarchal societies, that homophobia and
heterosexism shape the daily experiences of all men, and that such
homophobia is central to the construction of sexism, the more we will be
able to develop the understanding and the practical tools to achieve
equality. The profeminist men's movement in North America, Europe, and
Australia has provided men with a unique opportunity for gay, straight,
and bisexual men to come together, to work together, to dance together.
Yet I do not think that most straight profeminist men see confronting
homophobia as a priority or, even if a part of a list of priorities, as
something that has a central bearing on their own lives.
The notion of contradictory experiences of power, in the plural, pro-
vides an analytical tool for integrating issues of race, class, and ethnicity
into the heart of profeminist men's organizing. It allows us to sympatheti-
cally relate to a range of men's experiences, to understand that men's
power is nonlinear and subject to a variety of social and psychological
forces. It suggests forms of analysis and action that understand that the
behavior of any group of men is the result of an often contradictory
insertion into various hierarchies of power. It belies any notion that our
identities and experiences as men can be separated from our identities and
experiences based on the color of our skin or our class background. It
therefore suggests that struggling against racism, anti-Semitism, and class
privilege, for example, is integral to a struggle to transform contemporary
gender relations.
We must follow the lead of the women's movement in asserting the

importance not only of both personal and social change but of the rela-
tionship of the two. As men we need to advocate and actively organize in
support of legal and social changes, from freedom of choice to child-care
programs, from new initiatives to challenge men's violence to affirmative
action programs at our workplaces. We must support and help build such
changes not only at the level of macropolitics but in our own workplaces,
trade unions, professional associations, places of worship, and communi-
ties. We must see these matters not simply as "women's issues" but issues
that confront and affect us all.
Such work not only involves providing verbal, financial, and organiza-
tional support to the campaigns organized by women; it also requires men
organizing campaigns of men aimed at men. Efforts such as Canada's
White Ribbon Campaign are critical to break men's silence on a range
of feminist issues, to encourage men to identify with these concerns, and
to productively use the resources to which men have disproportionate
access. Such efforts must be carried out in dialogue and consultation with
women's groups—and with respect for the leadership that women provide
in this work—so that men will not come to dominate this work. At the
same time we should not shrink from the importance of men taking up
profeminist issues as our own: As perpetrators of violence against women,
for example, men must be reached if we are to stop the problem—and
because of sexism men can better reach other men.
At the same time as we engage in social activism, we need to learn to
scrutinize and challenge our own behavior. This does not mean sinking
into guilt or joining those men within the profeminist community who like
the feel of a good hairshirt. After all, guilt is a profoundly conservative,
demobilizing, and disempowering emotion. Rather it means understanding
that our contribution to social change will be limited if we continue to
interact with women on the basis of dominance; it will be limited if we do
not actively challenge homophobia and sexism among our friends and
workmates and in our ourselves. Change will be limited if we do not begin
to create the immediate conditions for the transformation of social life,
especially striving for equality in housework and child care.
Struggling for personal change can be done only if we are able to break
our isolation with other men, something experienced most acutely by
straight men but also by gay men. After all, uncontested assumptions
about what it means to be a man combined with deep-set insecurities about
making the masculine grade are essential props of the current patriarchal
system and a basic reason why we construct and reconstruct personalities
shaped by patriarchy. So developing a social action approach is entirely

consistent with—and perhaps ultimately requires—men developing sup-
port groups. Such groups allow us to look at our individual process of
gender work, how we have all been shaped by our patriarchal system. It
allows us to examine our own contradictory relationships to men's power.
It allows us to overcome the fear that prevents most men from speaking
out and challenging sexism and homophobia. It can give us a new and
different sense of strength.
In all this, in our public work, in our challenges to sexism and homo-
phobia, to racism and bigotry in our daily lives, we must not shrink from
a politics of compassion. This means never losing sight of the negative
impact of contemporary patriarchy on men ourselves even if our framework
sees the oppression of women as the central problem. It means looking at the
negative impact of homophobia on all men. It means avoiding the lan-
guage of guilt and blame and substituting for it the language of taking
responsibility for change.
Such a politics of compassion is only possible if we begin from the
sex-gender distinction. If patriarchy and its symptoms were a biological
fiat then not only would the problems be virtually intractable, but punish-
ment, repression, blame, and guilt would seem to be the necessary corol-
laries. But if we start with the assumption that the problems are ones of
gender—and that gender refers to particular relations of power that are
socially structured and individually embodied—then we are able to be
simultaneously critical of men's collective power and the behavior and
attitudes of individual men and to be male affirmative, to say that femi-
nism will enhance the lives of men, that change is a win-win situation but
that it requires men giving up forms of privilege, power, and control.
On the psychodynamic level—the realm in which we can witness the
interplay between social movements and the individual psyche—the chal-
lenge of feminism to men is one of dislodging the hegemonic masculine
psyche. This is not a psychological interpretation of change because it is
the social challenge to men's power and the actual reduction of men's
social power that is the source of change. What was once a secure
relationship between power over others, control over oneself, and the
suppression of a range of needs and emotions is under attack. What had
felt stable, natural, and right is being revealed as both a source of
oppression for others and the prime source of pain, anguish, and disquie-
tude for men themselves.
The implication of all this is that the feminist challenge to men's power
has the potential of liberating men and helping more men discover new
masculinities that will be part of demolishing gender altogether. Whatever

privileges and forms of power we will certainly lose will be increasingly
compensated by the end to the pain, fear, dysfunctional forms of behavior,
violence experienced at the hands of other men, violence we inflict on
ourselves, endless pressure to perform and succeed, and the sheer impos-
sibility of living up to our masculine ideals.
Our awareness of men's contradictory experiences of power gives us
the tools to simultaneously challenge men's power and speak to men's
pain. It is the basis for a politics of compassion and for enlisting men's
support for a revolution that is challenging the most basic and long-lasting
structures of human civilization.
Notes
1. Although it may be somewhat awkward for women readers, I often refer to men
in the first person plural—we, us, our—to acknowledge my position within the object of
my analysis.
2. My thanks to Harry Brod who several years ago cautioned me against talking about
men's power and men's pain as two sides of the same coin, a comment that led me to focus
on the relationship between the two. Thanks also to Harry and to Bob Connell for their
comments on a draft of this article. I'd particularly like to express my appreciation to
Michael Kimmel both for his comments on the draft and for our ongoing intellectual
partnership and friendship.
3. Although there has been controversy over the applicability of the term patriarchy—
see, for example, Michele Barrett and Mary Macintosh's reservations in The Anti-Social
Family (London: Verso, 1982)-—I follow others who use it as a broad descriptive term for
male-dominated social systems.
4. Even the apparently fixed biological line between males and females—fixed in
terms of genital and reproductive differences—is subject to variation, as seen in the
relatively significant number of males and females with so-called genital, hormonal, and
chromosomal abnormalities that bend the sharp distinction between the sexes—rendering
men or women infertile, women or men with secondary sex characteristics usually
associated with the other sex, and women or men with different genital combinations.
Nonetheless, the notion of biological sex is useful as shorthand and to distinguish sex
from socially constructed gender. For an accessible discussion, particularly on the endo-
crinology of sex differentiation, see John Money and Anke A. Ehrhardt's, Man & Woman,
Boy & Girl (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972).
5. The sex-gender distinction is ignored or blurred not only by reactionary ide-
ologues or sociobiologists (of both liberal and conservative persuasion) who want to
assert that the current lives, roles, and relations between the sexes are timeless, biological
givens. At least one stream of feminist thought—dubbed cultural feminism or difference
feminism by its critics—celebrates to varying degrees a range of supposedly timeless and
natural female qualities. Similarly, those influenced by Jungian thought, such as Robert
Bly and the mythopoetic thinkers, also posit essential qualities of manhood and woman-
hood. Even those feminists who accept the sex-gender distinction often use the term
gender when what is meant is sex—as in "the two genders" and "the other gender" when
in fact there are a multiplicity of genders, as suggested in the concepts of femininities and
masculinities. Similarly, many feminist women and profeminist men refer erroneously to
"male violence"—rather than "men's violence"—even though the biological category
"male" (as opposed to the gender category "men") implies that a propensity to commit
violence is part of the genetic mandate of half the species, a supposition that neither
anthropology nor contemporary observation warrants.
6. For a critique of the limits of sex role theory, see, for example, Tim Carrigan, Bob
Connell, and John Lee, "Hard and Heavy: Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity," in
Beyond Patriarchy: Essays by Men on Pleasure, Power and Change, edited by Michael
Kaufman (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1987).
7. R. W. Connell, Gender and Power (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987).
8. Cracking the Armour: Power, Pain, and the Lives of Men (Toronto: Viking Canada,
1993).
9. C. B. Macpherson, Democratic Theory (London: Oxford University Press, 1973).
10. Although I am referring here to men's contradictory relationships to masculine
power, a parallel, although very different, discussion could also be conducted concerning
women's relationship to men's power and to their own positions of individual, familial,
and social power and powerlessness.
11. See Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of
California, 1978); Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur (New York:
Harper Colophon, 1977); Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love (New York: Random
House, 1988); and Gad Horowitz, Repression: Basic and Surplus Repression in Psycho-
analytic Theory (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977).
12. This paragraph is based on text in Kaufman, Cracking the Armour, op. cit.; and
Kaufman, "The Construction of Masculinity and the Triad of Men's Violence," in Beyond
Patriarchy, op. cit.
13. I am not implying that the nature of the relations or the conflicts are the same from
one family form to another or, even that "the family" as such exists in all societies. See
M. Barrett and M. Mclntosh, The Anti-Social Family, op. cit.
14. See, for example, the accounts in Sylvia Levine and Joseph Koenig, eds., Why Men
Rape (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1980) and Timothy Beneke, Men on Rape (New
York: St. Martin's, 1982).
15. Jeff Hearn, The Gender of Oppression (Brighton, UK: Wheatsheaf, 1987).
16. For numerous sources on fatherhood, see Michael E. Lamb, ed„ The Role of the
Father in Child Development (New York: John Wiley, 1981); Stanley H. Cath, Alan R.
Gurwitt, and John Munder Ross, Father and Child (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982). Also
see Michael W. Yogman, James Cooley, & Daniel Kindlon, "Fathers, Infants, Toddlers:
Developing Relationship" and others in Phyllis Bronstein and Carolyn Pape Cowan,
Fatherhood Today (New York: John Wiley, 1988); and Kyle D. Pruett, "Infants of Primary
Nurturing Fathers," in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, vol. 38, 1983; and for a
different approach, see Samuel Osherson, Finding our Fathers (New York: Free Press,
1986).
17. Lillian Rubin, Intimate Strangers (New York: Harper Colophon, 1984). See also
Peter M. Nardi, ed., Men's Friendships (Newbury Park: Sage, 1992).
18. Kaufman, Cracking the Armour, op. cit.
19. The mythopoetic framework is discussed at length by Michael Kimmel and

Michael Kaufman in chapter 14 of this volume.
20. One fascinating account of total patriarchal control of the home is Naguib
Mahfouz's 1956 book Palace Walk (New York: Anchor Books, 1990).
21. Michael Kimmel and Tom Mosmiller, eds., Against the Tide: Profeminist Men in
the United States, 1776-1990. A Documentary History (Boston: Beacon, 1992).
22. A third is the antifeminist and, at times, unashamedly misogynist, men's rights
movement, which does not concern us in this chapter.
23. In the 1970s and early 1980s, books and articles by men such as Herb Goldberg
and Warren Farrell spoke of the lethal characteristics of manhood—in particular in the
ways it was lethal against men. By the time Robert Bly's Iron John made it to the top of
the best-seller lists at the end of 1990, vague analyses had crystalized into a broad North
American movement with a newspaper, Wingspan, men's retreats, groups, drumming
circles, regional newsletters, and a string of books that has yet to abate.
There are some positive and potentially progressive aspects to this approach and the
work of the thousands of men who participate in some sort of men's group within this
framework. One is the simple, but significant, acknowledgment of men's pain; another is
the participation of men in men's groups and the decision by men (usually, but not always,
straight men) to break their isolation from other men and seek collective paths of change.
On the other hand, as Michael Kimmel and I argue at length elsewhere in this volume,
the theoretical framework of this movement virtually ignores men's social and individual
power (and its relation to pain), ignores what we have called the mother wound (following
the insights of feminist psychoanalysis), crudely attempts to appropriate a hodgepodge
of indigenous cultures, and pulls men away from the social (and possibly the individual)
practices that will challenge patriarchy. My thanks to Michael for the formulation of
masculinist politics creating new homosocial space.
24. Although categorizing these two wings of the men's movement makes a useful
tool for discussion, there are no hard and fast boundaries between the two. A number of
the men (more so in Canada than in the United States) attracted to Robert Bly and the
mythopoetic movement are sympathetic to feminism and the contemporary struggles of
women. Meanwhile, most men pulled toward the profeminist framework are also con-
cerned about enhancing the lives of men. Men, particularly in the latter category, are
concerned with the impact of homophobia on all men.
25. My favorite story about the reluctance of many straights to identify with the need
to publicly challenge homophobia is told by a colleague who, in Toronto in the early
1980s, was teaching a course on social change. At the student pub after class one night,
one of the students was lamenting that he didn't live in another era. It would have been
great to live in the late 1930s, he said, so he could have gone off and fought in the Spanish
revolution. My colleague said, "Well you know, dozens of gay bathhouses were raided by
the police this week and there have been big demonstrations almost every night. You could
join those." The student looked at him and said, "But I'm not gay," to which my colleague
responded, "I didn't know you were Spanish."
On the relationship of homophobia to the construction of "normal" masculinity see
Michael Kimmel, Chapter 7, this volume, and Kaufman, Cracking the Armour, op. cit.
Also see Suzanne Pharr, Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism (Little Rock: Chardon Press,
1988).
26. The White Ribbon Campaign focuses on men's violence against women. A small
group of us began the campaign in late 1991 and within a week tens of thousands of men
across Canada (hundreds of thousands a year later) wore a white ribbon for a week as a
pledge they would not "commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women."
The campaign, aimed to break men's silence and to mobilize the energy and resources of
men, enjoys support across the social and political spectrum and has begun to spread to
other countries. To receive an information packet on the campaign ($2) please write: The
White Ribbon Campaign, 220 Yonge Street, Suite 104, Toronto, Canada MSB 2H1 or
telephone (416) 596-1513 or fax (416) 596-2359.
PART TWO
Theorizing MASCULINITIES
9
Theater of War
Combat, the Military, and Masculinities
DAVID H. J. M O R G A N
I found it very difficult to speak to my wife about my experiences. The

only way that I could ever let her know how I felt was actually to tell
the story to other people but to make sure that she was within earshot,
and I consciously did this on several occasions. This conflict has been
working on inside me for some time, but I'm glad to say I've managed
to get it out and tell her exactly how I felt, and I feel better for it.
I was left with the feeling of the absurdity of war. It's a message that has
been said many times before. War is hell, believe me.
Lt. Cdr. Patrick Kettle (Bilton & Kosminsky, 1990, pp. 94-95)
Of all the sites where masculinities are constructed, reproduced, and

deployed, those associated with war and the military are some of the most
direct. Despite far-reaching political, social, and technological changes,
the warrior still seems to be a key symbol of masculinity. In statues, heroic
AUTHOR'S NOTE: My initial thinking on this topic was very much aided by a British
Economic and Social Research Council award, G00242047, which enabled me to explore
some of the complexities linking masculinities and violence. I should also like to thank
the editors of this volume, Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman, for their detailed and most
helpful comments on the original draft of this chapter.
165
paintings, comic books, and popular films the gendered connotations are
inescapable. The stance, the facial expressions, and the weapons clearly
connote aggression, courage, a capacity for violence, and, sometimes, a
willingness for sacrifice. The uniform absorbs individualities into a gener-
alized and timeless masculinity while also connoting a control of emotion
and a subordination to a larger rationality.
Such links are very widespread and deeply embedded. The gendered
associations of war and soldiering have been, at least until very recently,
one of the most abiding features of the sexual division of labor. In all types
of society, state or stateless, simple or complex, men are expected to fight
or to be prepared to fight, to enlist for military service, and to undergo
some form of military training. Conversely, women are often formally
barred from such activities. As in other aspects of gendered divisions of
labor, such expectations and prohibitions define not only who does what
but who is what; the very nature of gender itself seems to be forged and
reproduced in such socially constructed but very widespread and deeply
pervasive divisions.
This is, of course, seen in its most heightened form at times of war,
especially the mass wars of the 20th century. As war became "democra-
tized" and involved greater numbers of its citizens more normally accus-
tomed to the routines of civilian life, so grew one of the most central and
poignant images associated with combat: the ordinary soldier saying
goodbye to family and loved ones. Such images multiplied during the 19th
century (Hichberger, 1988) and continue effortlessly into wars of more
recent times—the Falklands/Malvinas struggle and the Gulf War. In the
farewell at the airstrip or the dockside there is the convergence of the
protector and the protected, of the public and the private, and of mascu-
linity and femininity—each strong in its own, but very different, way.
Traditionally, then, combat and military experience separate men from
women while binding men to men. It is a separation that reaches deep into
a man's sense of identity and self, as the quotation at the beginning of this
chapter illustrates. However, these dual processes of separation and unity
have another face. If war and the military often highlight key and fre-
quently sacred themes within society and appear effortlessly to weave
these themes around constructions of masculinity and femininity, it is also
important to note the darker, less publicly celebrated associations of such
institutions and events. As has often been noted, rape and war are almost
inevitably linked (Brownmiller, 1976), and sexual aggression is often an
integral part of the training and the bonding of soldiers (Theweleit, 1987).
Military authorities, with varying degrees of covertness, will seek to
Theater of War: Combat, the Military, and Masculinities 167
provide outlets for the sexual needs of their men, again highlighting other
well-established gendered contrasts between active masculine animality
and female passivity.
A Body of Men and Men's Bodies
One way of understanding military life and its relationships with gender
is in terms of the construction of the masculine body. Training involves
the disciplining, controlling, and occasional mortification of the body. The
individual body and the self that is identified with that body are shaped
into the collective body of men. Drill instructors during my period of basic
training in the late 1950s often claimed that they would "make you or
break you," an unambiguously physical description of a social process.
The shaping may often be almost literal in the sculpting of the close
haircut and the enclosure into uniforms. At times of combat, the body is
placed at risk, threatened with danger or damage, and subjected to unme-
diated physicality in confined quarters, deprivation of food or sleep, and
exposure to fire or the elements. Physicality may become finality in the
remains enclosed in a body bag.
The informal cultures that elaborate in the course of military training
and beyond similarly revolve, to a very large extent, around socially
constructed bodily needs and functions that are linked to strong and
hegemonic definitions of masculinity. Chiefly, of course, these revolve
around the construction of heterosexuality. The ubiquitous pin-ups estab-
lish direct links between the bodies of women and the bodily needs of
men. British National Servicemen were quickly introduced to the rumor
that "they" put bromide into the tea in order to reduce sexual desires and
learned that their beds were known as "wanking chariots." Conversely,
this heterosexist culture also, at least at the more overt level, generated
homophobia with references to queers and "arse bandits" and warnings
about not bending over in the presence of those whose heterosexual
masculinity might be in question.
Such emphases on aggressive heterosexism and homophobia seem to
lend support to the argument that masculine group solidarities organized
around violence (legitimized or otherwise) serve as a defense against
homosexuality. It cannot be denied that this is part of the story, especially
where young men are coming to terms with or to an understanding of their
own sexuality away from home and in the company of other men, some-
times under conditions of extreme discomfort. Much of the debate about
the legalization and recognition of homosexual relations within the armed

services bears witness to these fears and uncertainties. But it is not the
whole story. The less official accounts of military life suggest the opera-
tion of a double standard, the toleration of homosexual relationships so
long as they did not threaten the wider patterns of good order and
discipline (see, for example, Royle, 1986, pp. 120-121). If in the armed
services one finds an ideological emphasis on homosociability and het-
erosexuality, it is, as is so often the case in a complex society, a complex
ideological unity compounded of several, sometimes contradictory, strands.
It could be argued that war and the military represent one of the major
sites where direct links between hegemonic masculinities and men's
bodies are forged. Indeed, it is the disciplining and control of the body
and exposure to risk and sheer physicality that distinguishes many features
of military life from everyday civilian life. Insofar as masculinity contin-
ues to be identified with physicality, then there are strong reasons for
continuing to view military life as an important site in the shaping and
making of masculinities. However, this should not be overstated. For one
thing, there are several other areas of life where the links between
physicality and masculinity may be stressed: Other occupations, such as
the police, deep-sea fishing, or mining—or in a modern, more leisure-
oriented society, sport—may come to replace the military as a major site
linking embodiment with masculinities. Further, there are factors serving
to weaken the links between military life, embodiment, and masculinities.
Boundedness and Pervasiveness
Modern societies are characterized as possessing a multitude of more

or less distinct and identifiable cultures, senses of collective identity, and
"we-ness." These bases for identity may be examined along two dimen-
sions, one to do with a sense of boundedness, the other to do with the
wider pervasiveness or influence of that culture. In the first case one is
concerned with the extent to which clear distinctions between "us" and
"them" are created, while in the second case one is concerned with the
extent to which the central features of a given culture become prized or
dominant within the wider society. These two dimensions may be seen as
varying independently and could be the basis for comparative analysis.
The strength and clarity of the boundaries are consequential for the
identities of those subsumed within the boundaries. The extent to which
the values or practices of a given culture pervade the wider social order
is of consequence for those outside that culture. Thus, under certain

conditions, military values may come to dominate civilians as well as
soldiers.
Military institutions appear to be, in a multiplicity of ways, highly and
strongly bounded, certainly in the context of modern societies. This
boundedness has a very direct and spatial representation in the guarded
military camps, clearly controlling access from the outside world. In a
modern society, themes of secrecy are similarly bound up with the activi-
ties associated with defense and the military. Further, the very activities
associated with the military life, ultimately to do with the taking of life
and the exposure to extreme physical danger, serve to establish an almost
unbridgeable gulf between the world of the soldier and the world of the
civilian (Bilton & Kosminsky, 1990). No civilian, it is argued repeatedly,
can ever really know what it is like. Military personnel, returning from
the field of combat, often feel a sense of estrangement from the civilian
society to which they are returning. Thus, formally and experientially, the
military life appears as a highly bounded one, and this sense of bounded-
ness might seem to make it a particularly appropriate site for the genera-
tion of masculinities. However, there are processes at work undermining
this sense of boundedness.
The pervasiveness of military culture and values within the wider
society is more obviously variable. Although military leaders are often
given public heroic status, and although military victories form pivotal
points for the construction of national histories, these alone do not mean
that a particular society can be labeled as "militaristic" or "warlike."
Clearly, whether or not a particular society is currently in a state of war
or war preparedness will be influential, but it is not the only factor. One
needs also to consider the extent to which military training is seen as a
necessary feature of the training of all male citizens, the extent to which
political leaders have military backgrounds and continue to enjoy military
rank, and the extent to which military uniforms are a persistent and
widespread feature of public spaces. There are also economic variables to
be considered, such as the proportion of national resources devoted to all
forms of military expenditure, including research, weapons and vehicle
production, salaries, pensions, toxic waste disposal, and so on.
Other things being equal, the military will be the more closely associ-
ated with the construction of masculinities in societies where it is both
highly bounded and highly pervasive. In the former dimension, military
life will function as a "total institution" (Goffman, 1968), shaping and
molding masculinities of those internal to the system. In the latter dimension,
these militaristic forms of masculinity will become hegemonic, shaping

not only the construction of desired masculinities but the whole order of
gender relations. In terms of the earlier discussion of embodiment, there
will be links made between the construction of the masculine body in the
military career and the understanding of the wider "body politic." The
image of the warrior will come to personify the society, and individual
soldiers will be called on to identify their occupation with the core values
of the nation. However, such a high degree of fit or overlap between
military values and practices and societal values and practices may not
always exist. Discussions of the varying degrees and kinds of bounded-
ness and pervasiveness may be a point of entry into the complexities of
the connections between masculinities and the military in modern society.
The Limits of Militarism
Although there are good reasons to see war and military experience as
important, perhaps central, sites for the creations of masculinities, there
are also some clear and growing limitations to this understanding. A major
consideration today is the increasing formal participation of women in
military activities. Throughout history the apparent absolute masculine
monopoly of war and soldiering has in fact been breached, often covertly
and sometimes openly (Wheelwright, 1989). However, in the 20th cen-
tury, especially since the Second World War, the participation of women
in all branches of the armed services has increased and has, to some
degree, been normalized. Although the actual extent and range of activi-
ties varies considerably between countries and services, the increases,
although marked, have not generally extended to the higher echelons of
military power and have tended to avoid those areas where the taking of
human life might seem to be a probability. However, one of the features
of modern warfare is the blurring of the boundaries between combat and
noncombat, and the absence of a direct fighting role for women does not
necessarily mean an avoidance of actual physical danger. This was par-
ticularly apparent, on the anti-Iraq side, in the recent Gulf War (Shaw,
1991, p. 212).
It is clear that such moves in the direction of the deployment of women
in the armed services have provided a variety of contradictory responses.
It is perhaps no accident that some of the most passionate debates about
the roles of men and women in modern society have focused on religion,
the military, and sport, each site dealing in some measure with aspects of
the sacred, the body, and gendered identity. In the cases of the military,
the kinds of issues that are at stake here include the extent to which
women, especially in a combat situation, might be defined as weakening
or polluting; the extent to which feminine skills or aptitudes for caring
and nurturing will be diminished through such participations; as well as
the more openly expressed questions as to whether women would be able
to cope with the rigors and deprivations of war and training. Other major
concerns have been whether men will obey women officers and whether
men will endanger themselves by protecting women in combat situations.
But running through all these concerns and coloring them at every point
is a concern with the overall symbolic order, the apparent loosening of
boundaries between women and men, and the weakening of the links
between nation, the military, and gendered identities. To put it graphically:
What difference does it make if the person parting at the dockside or the
airstrip is a woman and the person left behind is a man? Such themes began
to emerge in public and publicized forms during the Gulf War.
The increasing, if uneven, participation of women in the military is one
much heralded trend that potentially problematizes the traditional link-
ages between masculinity and legitimized violence. However, a less
heralded but equally important trend is the growth of peace and pacifist
movements (e.g., Sager, 1980) and, possibly, a wider, more diffused, and
ambiguous distaste for war and things military. Where these movements
have been noted and discussed, the emphasis (at least in recent years) has
been on the role of women in such movements in, for example, the First
World War or the peace camps outside the U.S. military base at Greenham
Common, England. Although many of the feminist discussions of such
movements have understood these connections in gendered terms (some-
times to an extent that has given rise to concerns about a possible
essentialism, that is, the notion that women are naturally more peaceful
than men), the participation of men in peace movements has rarely been
interpreted in gendered terms.
One possible counterexample is provided by one of the U.S. 1960s
antiwar slogans: "Women say yes to men who say no." In terms of the
prevailing gender order, such participations constitute an anomaly. During
the 20th century, for example, potential conscientious objectors were
often presented with the hypothetical dilemma, "What would you do if
you saw a German (etc.) about to rape your sister/wife/daughter?" It might
be noted also that the deprivations ranging from ostracism to imprison-
ment experienced by many pacifists in time of war often equaled and
sometimes exceeded those experienced by enlisted men.
Thus the links between masculinity and war may be seen as being called
into question by the increasing participation of women and the somewhat
less heralded role of men in peace movements. A more abiding way in
which the links might be questioned is the fact that, for those in Western
Europe, North America, and parts of Asia, wars are not all that frequent
and that actual battles form only a small part of any given war (Shaw,
1991, p. 44). A journalist reflecting on some aspects of the Gulf War
writes:
Sometimes, late at night, Dad would tell his war stories. . . . His war, he said,
comprised six years of boredom interspersed with one or two moments of
sheer terror. I gathered the impression of war as one vast lottery, with the
merest fluke distinguishing between the heroic and the dead. (Engel, 1991)
It might be argued that the moments of combat or action, infrequent

though they might be, are of such an intensity and at such variance with
everyday routine that they are enough to underline the role of the military
in the making of masculinities. However, it is clear that combat itself
remains a somewhat slim basis for such gendered constructions and that
one has to examine the whole military experience, with all its possible
contradictions, to pursue the links between it and gender.
One also has to consider the argument that long-term trends have
contributed to the erosion of the warrior image and its association with
heroic masculinity (Morgan, 1990). These trends include the complex
process of technological and organizational rationalization, establishing
a greater distance between the soldier and the means of destruction.
Further, whether or not it is possible to talk of a general civilizing process
in relation to the military and the conduct of war, it is certainly the case
that military establishments become more and more affected by civilian
values. This is reflected in the domestication of many aspects of service
life, the reduction of the distance between service personnel and their
families, and the attempts to present many military roles as being just like
any other civilian job. Other indications such as the relatively muted
nature of the celebrations at the end of the Falklands and the Gulf conflicts
and the continuing problem facing injured war veterans in the context of
an overwhelming civilian society point in the same direction: toward a
weakening of connections between nation-state, the military, and heroic
masculinities. Two major factors in the United States in the past two
decades have been the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and the counter-
hegemonic role of the counterculture and the antiwar movement.
In an important recent study Martin Shaw has written of the develop-

ment of a "post-military society" (Shaw, 1991). He establishes a model of
"classical militarism" as a feature of the 19th century, "which reached its
peak in the two world wars of the first half of the twentieth century" (p.
64). Such a form of militarism was associated with the rise of the
nation-state, industrialization, state bureaucracy, and "new means of mass
ideological diffusion" (p. 64). In a variety of complex ways and for a
variety of reasons, this period of classical militarism is on the wane at
least in those countries conventionally defined as the West. In Western
terms, this has meant a decline in the overall pervasiveness of the military
and some more ambiguous trends in terms of its boundedness. On the one
hand, it becomes more open to civilian practices, influences, and careers.
On the other hand, as it declines in size, it becomes more closed and more
professional. Although Shaw does not fully develop the gender implica-
tions of his argument, it is clear that the advent of something like a
postmilitary society would entail the weakening of some of the strong
linkages between gender constructions and war and the military that could
be seen more properly as a feature of the period of classical militarism.
One way of viewing this transition in gender terms is perhaps not so
much in terms of a straightforward weakening of the links between
masculinity and the military, but more in terms of an increasingly diverse
range of masculinities converging on the sites of war and military action.
For example, during the Gulf War there was the familiar masculine
rhetoric of "kicking ass." But there was also the fascination with technol-
ogy, the apparent sense of mastery over nature conveyed in missiles and
precision bombing, the near orgasmic excitement of nighttime explosions
presented on television screens across the world. Such excitement in the
power of technology and the control over massively destructive forces
was very much part of the culture in which atomic weapons were devel-
oped and tested (Easlea, 1983).
Contradictions Within Military Life
Apart from these long-term trends that have, at least in some parts of
the world, had the effect of weakening the links between hegemonic
masculinities and the military, there have often been contradictions within
military life that certainly point to a more complex model. Most of these
contradictions are recognized in sociological and personal accounts of war
and the military and certainly need to be taken into consideration in more
detailed analyses. Indeed, it is possible that such analyses will have a

wider applicability, pointing to potential complexities in all sites involved
in the making of masculinities. I shall simply provide some brief indica-
tions of these contradictions.
The group and the individual. Traditionally, there have been two
contrasting models of heroism, one focusing on the warrior, the heroic
individual, and the other focusing on "brothers in arms." It has also
often been noted that one of the long-term trends has been in favor of
the latter at the expense of the former. Whether or not warfare ever
allowed scope for the deployment of heroic individualism is a matter
for some debate, but it is clear that the rationalizations of modern
combat allow much less scope for this. Further, the group solidarities
developed in the course of training and combat may inhibit or stigmatize
any displays of individual heroism. Heroism may become identified
with particular units or sections of the military—the marines, the para-
troops, the SAS—rather than with any one individual. War memorials
celebrate abstracted unknown soldiers rather than the heroic deeds of
identifiable persons.
Modern day armies, therefore, seem to be ideal sites for the construction
of abstracted masculinities. However, such trends seem to come up against
other trends in modern societies, namely, that modernization involves
identification with growing individualism and a stress on the self. In this
context at least, military values do not seem to be all pervasive and might,
indeed, serve to heighten the boundaries between military and civilian
life. However, techniques exist of resolving this apparent contradiction.
Public accounts of war may focus on human interest stories (e.g., Bilton
& Kosminsky, 1990) or on the individual eccentricities or even heroisms
of military leaders (Sandy Woodward and Norman Schwarzkopf, for
example).
Thus in the context of modern war and the role of the military in liberal
democracies there seems to be the possibility and indeed the requirement
for the elaboration of a range of masculinities rather than a single hegemonic
masculinity. Such a range is obviously not without bounds and some
masculinities are more hegemonic than others. However, the military
cannot be seen straightforwardly as a site for the construction of a single
embodied masculinity.
Hierarchies and organizations. I have already referred to the themes
of bureaucratization and rationalization that form central strands in
accounts of the changing patterns of the military and warfare. Clearly,
such changes stand in sharp contrast to heroic models of masculinity,
especially those of the more individualistic type. However, perhaps this

should not be seen as a weakening of the military/masculinity linkage,
but more as a source of increasing complexity. Insofar as organizations
generally tend to be dominated and run by men and insofar as bureau-
cratic rationalities themselves may be seen as incorporating certain his-
torically constructed masculine values (Bologh, 1990; Seidler, 1989),
these long-term trends may be seen as the reshaping and pluralization
of these linkages rather than their simple erosion. Military organizations
become complex, overdetermined, and sometimes contradictory mixes
of the warrior and the bureaucratic ethos, combining to produce a com-
plex range of masculinities.
By definition, bureaucracies are also hierarchies, and where you get
hierarchies you also get the creation of group solidarities at all levels. At
the lower levels, as sociologists of work and organizations have demon-
strated, such solidarities may run counter to the official ethos of the
organization as a whole. In the case of the military, the group loyalties
among lower participants may, indeed, lead to mutinies or to firing on
one's own officers. More routinely there may be a diffuse sense of "them"
and "us" with at least an overt code of rejecting formal military values
and of sanctioning those soldiers who show excessive enthusiasm for
smartness, patriotism, or military values in general. It is not masculine
values that are rejected here but certain officially sponsored models of
masculinity.
Matters become further complicated when it is recognized that military
hierarchies very often reflect values and divisions within the wider soci-
ety. Thus different masculinities in terms of social class or ethnicity may
be superimposed on or interact with the hierarchies of military organiza-
tions, especially the differences between officers and "men." The tradi-
tional bracketing of the terms officer and a gentleman neatly encapsulates
the interplay between class and military masculinities.
Regulars and conscripts. Clearly the nature of military experience
will in some measure be shaped by the mode of recruitment and the
distinctions between those for whom the military life is part of a
long-term career with all the associated involvements and commitments
and those for whom the involvement is a temporary, possibly unwel-
come, interruption of an otherwise civilian life course. Certainly the
European experience shows an uneven but clear shift away from any
form of conscription (Mather, 1991). One likely consequence of these
trends, so long as they are not reversed, would be the waning influence
of military values, as fewer and fewer generations become touched by
the experience or memories of military service. Again, this may be seen

as a weakening of the links between military life and the making of
masculinities.
These remarks need to be modified in a couple of ways. In the first place
the connections between conscription and militarism are by no means
straightforward. It is not immediately obvious, for example, that Sweden,
which retains conscription (albeit with ample opportunities for alternative
service), is more militaristic than Britain, which has abandoned national
service. Also, in societies with high rates of unemployment and with
marked class or ethnic divisions, the degree to which a man may be said
to have chosen military service may be open to question. Further, there
are differences within the ranks of the regulars between those who have
opted for a more or less life-long military career and those for whom a
minimum period of enlistment may be seen as a short-term economic
strategy. Again, it is the interplay between military cultures and factors in
the wider society as a whole that shape masculinities, rather than simply
the military culture in isolation.
Combat and noncombat. This is a dynamic and fluid distinction, and
individuals may move between these military positions according to
circumstances. More important, it can be maintained that the distinction
becomes harder and harder to draw in the context of modern war just as
the distinction between soldier and civilian becomes more blurred.
People may be able to inflict considerable destruction without being in
any immediate physical danger themselves, or, alternatively, they may be
exposed to considerable risk without directly encountering the enemy.
Although technology plays a major role in this blurring of distinction
between combat and noncombat, other sociopolitical developments will
also be of significance. This is particularly the case where troops may be
engaged in what are at times, and sometimes controversially, described as
peace-keeping roles or in counterterrorism. There are, one might reason-
ably suppose, considerable differences between the relatively short-lived, if
often intense, battles of the Falklands War and the continued uncertainties
and tensions involved in maintaining a military presence in Northern
Ireland.
Contradictions within battle. If soldiering is supposed to be the
central site in the construction of masculinity and if the experience
of battle is supposed to lie at the heart of the military life in this
connection, then one should also be aware of the multiple contradictions
that are found at this supposed core of masculine experience. At the very
least one should remember that dominant models of masculinity are
subject to considerable historical and cultural variation. "Big boys don't

cry" has been repeatedly cited as signifying the masculine inability to
deal with feelings, yet tears are found at the heart of the military
experience:
After Goose Green I insisted that we bury our dead and give the soldiers time
to grieve. It's important. A hole was dug by a bulldozer on the side of a hill and
we literally carried each of our friends and put them down side by side and we
said our prayers and cried. It was a pretty bad moment. Then we left and got
on with the war. (Bilton & Kosminsky, 1990, p. 220)
In a different context and with different nuances of meaning, a genre

known as "shooting and crying" literature has been noted as emerging
from the experiences of Israeli soldiers (Margalit, 1988).
War provides the opportunity for the display of other characteristics
more conventionally associated with the feminine than with the mascu-
line. These include open and physical displays of mutual concern and care,
a willingness to show fear and pain, and a contempt for the abstractions
to do with patriotism and fighting for democracy or the cause that may be
promulgated far from the actual field of battle. The good padre, for
example, is the one who shows a willingness to share in the trials of the
frontline troops rather than someone apparently interested only in more
abstract notions of morality or morale. Some of the strongest antiwar
sentiments have come from full-time soldiers. The previous account came
from a Major Chris Keble writing of his Falklands experience. The
account concludes with these words: "I don't think there were any best
moments. The whole affair is one of tragedy. War is a messy dirty business.
We should never allow ourselves to go to war" (Bilton & Kosminsky, 1990,
p. 220).
One has only, therefore, to listen to some actual accounts of war and
battle to be aware of a model of masculinity more complex and contradic-
tory than the one that generally emerges from much of the recent literature
on men and their identities. It is likely, indeed, that there has always been
a distinction between a straightforward capacity for violence on the one
hand and the construction of a masculine identity in which controlled
violence may well be a feature but not the central feature.
Rhetoric and reality. There is no doubt that masculinities form a
major element in the construction of military identities and that much
of this will appear as aggressive, threatening, and deeply misogynist.
Although there are occasions for tears and tenderness in the military life
as elsewhere, it can hardly be maintained that these are central features

of any military culture. Further, there is no doubt that military life
provides not only many of the resources out of which misogynies are
constructed (group solidarities, all-male bondings, a relatively limited
age range, a cult of hardness and actual physical deprivations) but also,
from time to time, the opportunity for such misogynies to be given open,
physical expression without sanction or retribution. However, much of
the misogynist rhetoric is not peculiar to military cultures and may be
a feature of many all-male work situations or, indeed, leisure activities
in which danger and group solidarities are involved.
Even where military cultures may continue to be relatively bounded
and where their values continue to have a degree of pervasiveness, it may
be argued that it is possible to overstate the links between army life and
the constructions of masculinities. One feature of modern life is, as many
theorists have acknowledged, the ability and the need to move between a
range of different worlds and to provide performances that are appropriate
for these different contexts. It is certainly the case that there are often
strong pressures for men in military life to develop a particularly hard
style, to be able to swear, to hold one's drink, and to display a sexual
knowingness. This is as true in the officers' mess as it is in the barracks.
In such contexts it is difficult for individuals to avoid participating in these
presentations without appearing to express some kind of moral supe-
riority, something that goes against the egalitarianism of men sharing a
common fate.
But it is also the case that the individual who overplays the masculine
culture may be an object of mild contempt. It is one thing to use sexual
swear words at times of annoyance or frustration. It is another thing to use
them three or four times within a single sentence. It is one thing to claim
sexual experience; it is another to give graphic details of each and every
sexual encounter, real or imagined. There is some degree of awareness
that a masculine culture is being created, some possibility for ironic
role-distance, some room for maneuver and negotiation. More important
is the fact that there is some recognition that this masculine culture is in
some respects confined to military life and is not to be extended to the
wider society. Cautionary tales are told of servicemen who forget them-
selves in civilian company and who use expressions that are not usually
expected outside the barracks. More serious, there is the often noted fates
of veterans in a dominantly civilian society, their deeds forgotten and their
wounds and their medals a source of embarrassment or boredom.
Conclusion
This chapter has suggested that the nexus linking masculinity, violence,
and the military, although providing some of the most dominant gendered
images in many cultures, is far from being a straightforward one. Indeed,
the apparently simple linkages represent a major cultural achievement
rather than a natural ordering of things. These dominant cultural under-
standings have influenced not only the powerful, in whose interests it might
be to maintain such a dominant model, but also those who seek to challenge
conventional models of masculinity or the institutions of war. In particular,
men, seeking the best of reasons to distance themselves from dominant and
harmful models of masculinity, may have unwittingly perpetuated a
one-dimensional and quasi-naturalistic model of "man the warrior."
In contrast, I have argued that the linkages between masculinity, vio-
lence, and the military are rarely, if ever, as straightforward as the
dominant model suggests or that they come together in straightforward
and direct ways only under certain specific circumstances. There are also
good reasons to suppose that the linkages have become even weaker and
more complex in many modern societies. The linkages have been eroded
by two interrelated movements. One is a widespread, if uneven and
certainly incomplete, set of challenges to the gender order. The second,
the focus of this chapter, is a widespread challenge to and restructuring of
the military and its overall position within society.
Whether one talks of a civilizing process or of the advent of a postmili-
tary society is still a matter for considerable debate. Certainly, Martin
Shaw's construction of the latter has much to tell us about the weakening
of this gendered and embodied nexus in societies where militarism takes
on more ideological and cultural forms (Shaw, 1991, p. 126). In the
terminology developed earlier, military values become less pervasive
while military institutions become more or less clearly bounded. Insofar
as they become more open to civilian values and practices, the boundaries
become weakened. But insofar as they become more specialized, more
limited in scope and recruitment, and apparently more marginal to the
day-to-day world, so they become more closely bounded. There are
clearly dangers in the developing isolation of relatively closed military
groups from the rest of society, dangers that become apparent at the time
of military atrocities.
However one characterizes the movements, the changes in the military
and the changes in the gender order are mutually dependent. Changes in
the military and the conduct of war have an effect on dominant images of
embodied masculinities. Changes in the gender order, for example, in the
widespread employment of women, in their turn have an effect on how
the military is conceived and constructed. These interacting changes have
underlined the need to see the military as a site for the development of a
plurality of masculinities rather than a single, dominant, and highly
embodied masculinity.
In referring to such a need I also indicate the need for a more wide-rang-
ing comparative perspective. In a very crude way, this need is highlighted
by contrasting the rhetorics engaged during the Gulf War: on one side talk
of "Americans swimming in their own blood," on the other talk of
"kicking ass." In the former, one has a frank recognition that war entails
the taking and the loss of life linked elsewhere to a wider political/relig-
ious rhetoric that is also highly gendered. In the latter, one has a rhetoric
that masks or obscures the real nature of violence. Yet it, too, with its
strong echoes of the locker room, is highly gendered, if drawing on
different traditions and images of masculinity.
Shaw's account lays the ground for the development of such a compara-
tive perspective. He proposes a "three-tier model of states." In the first
place there are the richer and more technologically advanced states that
"can afford to rely more on sophisticated weaponry than manpower"
(Shaw, 1991, p. 100). Here one finds a considerable weakening of many
of the main strands of militarism. In the second place, he distinguishes
some of the poorest and most populous states of south Asia or Africa that
can afford little in the way of systematic or large-scale military defense,
although retaining some elements of traditional militarism. Third, there
are a large number of states in many parts of the world that cannot rely
largely on technology but import a wide range of weapons and maintain
conscription in some degree or another. "These are the countries in which
traditional militarism flourishes" (p. 100).
Although Shaw does not develop the gender theme in making this
classification, there is little doubt that these differing relationships be-
tween militarism, military institutions, and nation-states also entail dif-
ferent ways in which masculinities are drawn on and shaped around
themes that involve war and the military. Roughly speaking, I hypothesize
that in the first group of states one finds a weakening of the straightfor-
ward linkages between gender and militarism, probably in the direction
of the development of a plurality of masculinities evolving in military
contexts. In the case of the third group of states I suggest that the links
may be relatively straightforward although probably still subject to some
variation and contradiction. In the middle group of states one shall

probably find the greatest range of variation in terms of the links between
gender orders, military institutions, and values. I stress that these are only
suggestions concerning the links between masculinities and military or-
ders and that a fuller, more comparative analysis is very much needed.
Finally, although there is a clear need to depart from simple equations
of masculinity and violence around the site of the military, this should not
lead to the idea of a straightforward evolutionary progression. For one
thing, as previously suggested, the military can become the site for other,
less directly embodied models of masculinity. More important, global
trends are by no means uniform. For example, the developments of
nationalisms in many parts of Europe may have the effect of reinforcing
or elaborating existing linkages between gender and legitimized violence,
the mass rapes reported in Bosnia being only one of the more blatant recent
examples. Similarly, in the same area of the world, the issues of racism and
xenophobia may lead to the further elaboration of quasi-military institu-
tions within societies where such linkages have been more generally and
more formally weakened. One should welcome the weakening of such
linkages where this takes place without ignoring the fact that other
masculinities are being forged or that such weakenings may not be
inevitable. There is a need for a much more detailed, finely nuanced, and
systematic comparative analysis of the constructions of masculinities
around the sites of war, combat, and military life.
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London: Michael Joseph.
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pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. London: Pandora.
10
The Making of
Black English Masculinities
M A I R T I N MAC AN G H A I L L
The white man hates the black man. In Africa they tried to destroy us,
you know. The white Christians had a problem. All men were supposed
to be equal. But they were enslaving the black man. So the white man
thought, well blacks are not real men. And this is still going on in
Africa, here and everywhere today. So the black man is always under
pressure, has to make sure they don't wipe our race out. And now the
younger ones have to defend our families, defend our people. The
whites know we are strong because we have always fought back and
they are afraid of us.
Leonard—a black student
White English researchers have tended to see Afro-Caribbean young men

as constituting a threatening racial underclass and have explained this in
terms of various theories of cultural deprivation. Missing from such
theories has been an understanding of the inner cultural meanings that
inform these young people's social behavior and understanding of the
social world. In an earlier study (Mac an Ghaill, 1988) I examined the
social relations between white male adults and English-born black young
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks to Clyde Chitty, Lynne Davies, Mairead Dunne, Chris
Griffin, and Bev Skeggs for reading earlier drafts. Also thanks to Michael Kaufman and
Harry Brod.
183
men within an inner-city secondary boys school. In this chapter I develop

this work by focusing on the young men's social practices, beliefs, and
self-representations in their masculine formation. I illustrate this more
specifically by a case study of the gender relations between authoritarian
white male adults and a group of Afro-Caribbean young men, called the
Rasta Heads, who were seen as projecting an antiauthority form of
masculinity. I shall explore a number of interrelated issues: the effects of
differentiated curriculum tracks, the social functions of the Rasta Heads'
subculture, the relationship to their parents, changing local labor market
opportunities, interpeer male group relations, and white male teachers'
ambivalent responses to young black masculinities.
Differentiated Curriculum Tracks

and Differentiated Masculinities
A number of writers have talked about the processes of stereotyping

involved in the essentialization of black men (hooks, 1991; Segal, 1990).
Westwood (1990) has described how for black men of African descent:
. . . stereotypes have been fixed on the body, on physicality, physical strength,

and as a site for European fantasies about black male sexuality. . . . The fixity
of these stereotypes places 'races', genders, motivations and behaviours in
such a way that they become naturalized and a substitute for the complex
realities they seek to describe, (p. 57)
These processes of naturalization and objectification were most imme-

diately experienced by the Kilby School students through the dominant
systems by which teachers maintained and projected their own racial and
gender beliefs. Such attitudes and practices formed the basis of creating
an ethnic and racial hierarchy of students that was of central significance in
shaping black students' masculinities. This was most visibly expressed in
terms of the development of negative Afro-Caribbean and positive Asian
caricatured racial images. It is important to stress that there were diverse
responses from different subject teachers. However, the Afro-Caribbeans
were evaluated solely in behavioral terms and were not placed in cognitive
categories, because as a group they were assumed to be of low ability.
In contrast, the Rasta Heads recalled that they were among some of the
brightest students in the school, who had been demoted from the top track
during their secondary school career. English state schools traditionally
have provided social mobility for working-class young men to develop a
The Making of Black English Masculinities 185
middle-class mode of masculinity, based on values of competitive indi-

vidualism and careerism. However, the Rasta Heads refused to allow a
black masculine elite to be created from among them.
M. M.: Why have you gone from the top stream to a lower one?
Neville: Teachers always saying we expect this from you, you are
different, you work hard. I don't think we're different. We're all
the same. I mean we should all be treated the same, shouldn't we?
Kevin: Like Leonard him got brains, like Leslie him got brains and all
of them, but teachers they try to divide, separate friends.
Recently Connell (1989, p. 291) has argued that the institutionalized

structure of schooling creates the strongest effects on the construction of
masculinity. At Kilby School the highly stratified curriculum was of
primary importance in structuring differentiated individual and collective
ethnic masculine identities. The link between the construction of differ-
entiated ethnic masculinities and the stratification of black student school
careers was seen most clearly in the Rasta Heads' overrepresentation in
practical-based, vocational subject areas (Gillborn, 1990). These low-
status nonacademic curriculum tracks had a specific male ethos that
helped to shape specific black working-class masculine identities. This
included teachers' adopting more authoritarian modes of interaction with
these students. There was vigilant policing of the antischool students'
clothes, footwear, and hairstyles, resulting in their being more frequently
suspended for not wearing the school uniform. Most of their teachers were
nonacademic subject specialists and a high number of those responsible
for their pastoral care were former physical education teachers. The
cumulative effect of these differentiated curriculum practices was to
create a pedagogical culture that reflected the masculine world of manual
work, with its "distinctive complex of chauvinism, toughness and ma-
chismo" (Willis, 1977, p. 53). In short, "tough white teachers" were
producing "tough young black men."
Gilroy: The teachers say we're aggressive but they're much worse
than us. They have all the power. They try and scare you and
threaten you and cause trouble all the time.
Andrew: We get the really bad teachers to try and control us. Some of
the teachers are scared of us. You see they think they can't teach
us anything, so they'll jiist control us. They must be fucking joking.
Once you learn to read and write in the primary school, what else
do you learn? It's like a prison, just keeping you in. We do our own
business.
Connell (1989) has persuasively argued in relation to the institutionali-

zation of academic failure via competitive grading and streaming: "The
reaction of the 'failed' is likely to be a claim to other sources of power,
even other definitions of masculinity. Sporting prowess, physical aggres-
sion or sexual conquest may do" (p. 295). For the Rasta Heads, "doing
their own business" involved an active construction of a black masculinity
within the interrelated nexus of state institutions "that do nothing but boss
them about" (Corrigan, 1979). It involved their survivalist peer-group
culture, an adolescent psychosexual development, and the anticipation of
their future location in low-skilled labor markets. Their inversion of
models of dominant white adult masculinities was developed from within
the security of their own subculture.
The Rasta Heads:

A Black Masculine Subculture
Brake (1980) suggests that subcultures emerge as "attempts to resolve

collectively experienced problems arising from the contradictions in the
social structure, and that they generate a form of collective identity from
which an individual identity can be achieved" (p. 36). A major condition
of the emergence of the Rasta Heads was their alienating experience of
English society, from which they were excluded. Black youth systemati-
cally encounter among white sectors of the population situations of
degradation and violence that serve to deny their black identity. For the
Rasta Heads this ranged from local fascists who verbally and physically
assaulted them; state officials, including teachers and social workers,
operating with reified conceptions of "race" that constructed them as
problems and victims; and an occupying police force that was seen as
using power in an arbitrary and racially discriminatory manner that was
causal of the Kilby urban "riots" (Cohen & Bains, 1986). It was against
the background of this pervasive racial exclusion and the contrasting
security of their peer group that a black masculine apprenticeship was
developed. The Rasta Heads' collective masculinity was most crucially
shaped against state systems of white authoritarianism and the resulting
dominant cultural misrecognitions of black history and culture.
M. M.: Say black people were accepted as English, would you want to
be classed as English?
Andrew: No, you can never change just like that. Long time, it cannot
be the same. I don't feel English because everything that goes in
Britain it's not really for black people. It's against black people, so
how can you join it, become part of that?
Leslie: How can you call it your country when you've got racialists
against you. You can't even get a job in their country. So how can
you call it your country?
For large sectors of working-class young men, their experience of

English society can be read in terms of the building of a defensive culture
of masculine survival against social marginalization. It is within this
culture that they construct and live out images of what it means to be a
man. A central component of the Rasta Heads survival was their projection
and amplification of a specific form of masculinity that overemphasized
"toughness." In this process, they can be seen as active gender makers.
Dodd (1978) cogently captures this social development:
The culture of these "black marginals" is based like any "culture of poverty"
upon survival; but its emphasis is upon style, movement and talk. This may
be confusing to the visitor until he realises that, in this culture, this is precisely
how you survive. Roles and career follow accordingly. The black street
perspective, a profound contemporary influence on Afro-Caribbean youth in
England and the Caribbean look to its history in the highly symbolic histories
of Marcus Garvey, Haile Selassie and nameless rebel slaves. Rebellion in fact
is a primary concept in building a visible street identity. . . . It is a taken for
granted assumption about their manhood and place in society, (p. 599)
The Rasta Heads' vocabulary of masculinity stressed the physical,

solidarity, and territorial control. Their projected machismo image to
those in authority and to overt white racists on the streets was justified as
a necessary strategic tactic. They were aware that it had won them space
within the school. Equally important, they knew that their collective
toughness had protected them from the recent increase in racist attacks
that many Asian youths were suffering with the reemergence of the
perniciously labeled "Paki-bashing" as a cultural form of white racial violence.
However, their toughness was not merely based on physical criteria.
M. M.: Is it important to act tough?

Christopher: In this country, yeah. You gotta survive don't you? You
can't let the white man use you all the time.
M. M.: Do you think you sometimes act tough when you don't neces-
sarily feel that way?
Christopher: Yeah, yeah that's true. You see it's the image. You've got
to act tough to survive here, to survive in this country. If you are
being picked on, do you understand? I mean you've got to act
tough. Like say two white kids right call you a black bastard, what
are you gonna say? Are you gonna walk on? Truth and rights I
wouldn't. I'd give them the same. I'd give them, you white this,
you white bastard, back the same way. It's the same with teachers
and especially the beesman [policeman]. He tries to make you feel
low. You gotta stand up for your rights.
M. M.: Does a black guy have to be tough?
Kevin: It depends. You gotta act kind of tough. I mean there's two kinds
of toughness. You can talk right and you can be physical. If you're just
physical, I wouldn't mix with that somebody. I want somebody who
can talk and is physical right. I don't want to mix with a stupid
head-case. He will cause you unnecessary trouble. Most of my friends
they have sense. You got to talk to the man [someone in authority].
In their cultural dissociation from mainstream society the Rasta Heads

developed a positive subcultural association, central to which was a
process of Africanization, which underpinned their resistance to state
authoritarianism. Of particular significance was the ideological influence
of Rastafari in building a black cultural nationalism. They were aware of
the historical contradictions of black masculinity as a subordinated mas-
culinity, with the denial of the patriarchal privileges of power, control,
and authority that are ascribed to the white male role (Mercer & Julien,
1988, p. 112). Their adoption of hypermasculine codes of contestation and
resistance may be read as attempts to challenge current white institutional
practices that they see as attempting to "emasculate them."
Andrew: White men have always tried to keep us down. African men
have had their balls cut off from slavery onwards. They are doing
it now in different ways. So, we have to fight them. We have to,
just to let the white man know they can't keep cutting our balls off.
We have to work this out for ourselves.
Kevin: You see a man he's supposed to have respect, right. Well the
black man can't get respect in this society. So what are we supposed
to do? We have to let them know that we exist, that we exist as a
people.
The Rasta Heads' generation of style helped to make visible their

hypermasculinity to those in authority. This included their dress, hairstyle,
body posture, language, and the wearing of Rastafari colors. In response
the school authorities made vocal their opposition to Rastafari, a philoso-
phy that for black students made popular their concern with "roots
history." The school created a moral panic concerning the imagined threat
of the Rasta Heads to the school's social order that was linked to the
coercive policing policy introduced in the local area following the inner-
city Kilby "riots." As the teachers increased coercive disciplinary meas-
ures against the Rasta Heads, they became a direct target of the students'
subcultural opposition. It was within this warlike arena of mutual distrust,
increased tension, and overt conflict that the Rasta Heads developed
specific masculine practices that were expressed in their language in terms
of "standing up for your rights" and "refusing to be shamed up by the
white man." Furthermore, with so few women teachers on the staff, this
took place within the contextual atmosphere of a men-only military club.
There was much talk among the authoritarian male teachers of "frontline
troops," "law and order," "territorial imperatives," "winning ground," and
"taking out the student leaders."
Leonard: I'll tell Mr. Keegan [headteacher] right, how can you run a
school on fear alone? Most of them, like first years are frightened
to go to Keegan. . . . In my mind I say, if Keegan laid a hand on me
I swear to god I'd thump him down.
M. M.: But you wouldn't?
Leonard: I would, truth and rights. I'd thump him back, don't care he's
just a normal man.
Relationship to Parents
As Hollands (1990) has indicated, "The power position within the

working-class household is crucial in forming masculine identities" (p.
10). Of equal importance to the formation of the Rasta Heads was their
relationship to the parent culture. Black local community workers dis-

missed the explanations common among white officials that pathologized
the Afro-Caribbean family structure. For example, white officials spoke
of Afro-Caribbean young men's "deviant behavior" in terms of a genera-
tional conflict with their parents, who objected to their involvement in
oppositional youth subcultures. More specific, they claimed that the
assumed high rate of lone-parent, mother-headed families created diffi-
culties for gender identity among the young black men, who had no
masculine role models. Hence, it was argued that these youths, who lacked
appropriate male discipline in their home lives, developed aggressive
masculine attitudes with white male authority figures. A local black youth
worker explained the limitations of these views and the social functions
that they served:
Mr. Wallace: It's like I said to you before, it's the old rulers' principle
of divide and rule. It's got a long colonial history of dividing up
different sections of the community. With slavery one of the main
divisions was that between men and women. We weren't allowed
to look after our families in a normal way and then they used this
to say we weren't real men because we were irresponsible. Today
young black men are selectively abused by white authorities and if
they defend themselves, they are accused of being aggressive. And
then invidiously, the whites blame black families for not disciplin-
ing the kids, and particularly mothers are blamed. There are in-
creased tensions in some black families, but as you know black
parents support their kids, knowing how vulnerable they are, espe-
cially the boys.
The Rasta Heads also rejected the concept of being "caught between
two cultures" that white race relations experts predicted would lead to the
need to choose between their parents' culture or that of their country of
birth. The young black men offered a more sophisticated analysis. On one
hand they responded positively to their parents in terms of intergenera-
tional ethnic identity. On the other, they spoke of the intergenerational
gender conflicts and strains in relation to the domestic division of labor
and their parents', particularly their mothers', authority in making de-
mands on their independence. Nava (1992, p. 45) writes of the different
placement of girls and boys to their adulthood and the generational
specificity for young masculinities with their ambiguous relation to social
power. She suggests that the implications of young men's identification

of the temporary nature of their subordination as youth may inform their
contentious transition into adulthood. I may add that for young black
men's racially subordinated masculinity there are potential increased
intergenerational tensions. For some of the Rasta Heads, like white
working-class subordinated masculinities, one way of attempting to re-
solve these tensions was to displace onto their mothers and sisters their
experiences of social inferiority as men in the wider society (Mac an
Ghaill, in press).
Local Labor Market Opportunities:

"Black Men Need Not Apply"
A third aspect that was of importance in the formulation of the Rasta

Heads' masculine identity was the changing material conditions of the
local political economy (Hollands, 1990). At a time of structural unem-
ployment black male adults within Kilby were disproportionately affected
by the destruction of the regional manufacturing base because they were
concentrated in the declining metal industries. For black youth the situ-
ation was even worse. During the research period there was a 50%
reduction in the total numbers entering employment within the region. In
Kilby one of every two white male youths who left school found work
compared to less than one in three black male youths. There was much
talk by local politicians of the development of a hi-tech service sector. As
one of the Rasta Heads stated: "The only area of service growth was the
opening of government unemployment offices." Tolson (1977) and Willis
(1977) have shown how work is central to white working-class boys'
masculine self-representation in their preparation for adulthood. As a
result of a long history of mass unemployment, the Rasta Heads' mascu-
line identity did not have the same cultural investment in manual waged
labor. As they indicate below, the logic of their subculture was not one of
failure, inability to do examinations, or cultural deficiency, but one of
questioning the validity of academic qualifications in relation to job
prospects. At the same time, teachers were dismissed as being unable to
advise them on "real" masculine jobs because of the association of
teaching with "feminized" mental work.
M. A/.: Do you think qualifications are important?

Leslie: Put it this way, I know friends who have qualifications and
some of them have left school for two or three years and they
haven't got nowhere. The teachers don't know what it's like out
here. How can they? They may build up your hopes and you go
looking for jobs and they just look at you and you know, go away
nigger. When our parents came to England, they had notices up that
they didn't want blacks living in their areas. Now when there is
little work left in England, they are saying the same to us about
work. They don't want us.
Kevin: Like the careers teacher will give you advice on how to get a
job. But what the fuck do teachers know? Their job's a piece of
piss. They've never had to work out here on the street. You know,
the real thing. They wouldn't know how to survive. They're more
like a woman staying at home looking after the kids. It's just soft,
soft work.
The relationship between the Rasta Heads' world view and their own
preparation for work was further highlighted by the question of their
rejection of contemporary forms of employment. Black men's subordinate
position in the labor market was explicitly linked to British imperialism.
At the same time they were aware of the need to build alternative ways of
developing a masculine identity.
Leonard: I don't see why I should work for England because England
hasn't done anything for me. You can't say we're supposed to do
good and work for England. And you did this for us and this. You
came to my descendent country, right, of your own free will. We
couldn't stop it because you have the guns and all that. It's because
of the white man, slavery, Africa. Because of slavery and that's the
mostest thing about it. Teachers make you think it slavery was in
the past, well in this country there's a new slavery of bad
work. . . . I wouldn't work for no white man. It's going to be
difficult without money from a proper job to be independent from
your parents and to look after your girlfriend and all that business.
But you aren't going to get your rightful respect as a black man in
a job. So you have to look at other things, you know what I mean?
Like some of us have a thing going in the music scene. You are
among your own people and you can grow up better and build a
good future.
Male Student and Male Teacher Relations
A final aspect of the Rasta Heads' masculine formation concerns their

relationship with other male students and white male teachers' ambivalent
responses to the Rasta Heads. A range of masculinities are developed
within institutional contexts in relation to and against each other. Among
other antischool male students, the Rasta Heads and an Asian peer group
called the Warriors were seen as the best organized and toughest gangs
and so were respected or feared by different students. Among antischool
students both gangs had high status and were particularly admired for
challenging white teachers' and police authoritarianism. The Warriors
strongly identified with the Rasta Heads, overtly associating with the
Afro-Caribbean rude boy subculture. Hebdige (1979) describes the rude
boy as an archetypal rebel. He writes: "The rude boys formed a deviant
sub-culture in Jamaica in the mid to late 60s. Flashy, urban, 'rough and
tough,' they were glamourised in a string of reggae and rocky steady hits"
(pp. 16-17). As is indicated by their choice of name, the Warriors wished
to project a tough image that challenged the dominant stereotype of the
feminized passive Asian male. They claimed that the Rasta Heads were
important male role models for younger Asians and Afro-Caribbeans in
opposing white racist practices.
Parminder: The Rasta Heads are hated by the teachers and the police
because they are stronger than them. It's like Amerjit said they're
like a strong organization like the IRA. They stick together and
look after each other. It's good for the kids in the lower classes to
learn from the Rastas. To learn that authority is not a good thing. It's
to keep the Asian and black man down. That's important for us
[Asians] because we are seen as soft by whites but things are
changing. If racialism gets worse in the future it's us, young
Asian and black men that have to look after our own communi-
ties, isn't it?
Earlier ethnographic studies of white antischool males have failed to

acknowledge how the latter's resistance also acted as a form of oppression
for other students, most notably for young women and conformist male
students (see McRobbie, 1991). For the more conformist male students at
Kilby School, both the Rasta Heads and the Warriors were seen as
troublemakers, either in directly bullying them or in their constant disrup-
tion of lessons. As Mayes (1986) makes clear in writing of the culture of
school masculinities, "A masculine ideal which allows competition and

aggressive individualism may take its toil. The alternative status sought
by the boys who fail in the system may result in an aggressively 'macho'
stance, dangerous to themselves and others" (p. 29).
In a previous study (Mac an Ghaill, 1991, p. 301) of young black and
white gay students, one of them recalled the masculine codes through
which male teachers and students colluded in constructing dominant
forms of straight masculinity that operated to devalue and threaten femi-
ninities and subordinated masculinities.
Sean: I always loved football but there was something about it that I
didn't like. I really enjoyed playing the game but it was all the rest
of it. You see it wasn't just a game. I came to see that it was about
proving yourself as a man. All the boys together, acting tough,
bragging about sexual conquests, putting down women and all the
macho fooling around in the showers. They had to keep telling each
other that they were the real men. We had the fit bodies, we had the
strength, we had the power. The male teachers and pupils measured
everyone against us, though this was usually hidden.
Similarly at Kilby School, in order to enhance and amplify their own

masculinity, the Rasta Heads were overtly sexist to young women and
female staff and aggressive to male students who did not live up to their
prescribed masculine norms. They adopted a number of collective social
practices in their attempt to regulate and normalize gender/sexual bounda-
ries. They were particularly vindictive to a small group of Afro-Caribbean
academic students who overtly distanced themselves from the Rasta
Heads' antischool strategies. For the Rasta Heads, the academic group's
"overconcern" with literature and drama resulted in their being labeled
"botty men" (a homophobic comment). As Mercer and Julien (1988) point
out, a further contradiction in subordinated black masculinities occurs
"when black men subjectively internalise and incorporate aspects of the
dominant definitions of masculinity in order to contest the conditions of
dependency and powerlessness which racism and racial oppression en-
force" (p. 112). Ironically, the Rasta Heads, in distancing themselves from
the racist school structures, adopted survival strategies of hypermasculine
heterosexuality that threatened other Afro-Caribbean students, adding
further barriers to their gaining academic success. Consequently, this
made it more difficult for academic black students to gain social mobility
via a professional job and the accompanying middle-class mode of mas-

culinity. The Rasta Heads made clear their own assessment of the pro-
school black students' career aspirations.
Gilroy: You see you have soft boys here and they don't know about
life. Black men must stick together. The white man tries to divide
us up. Like they'll say, you're good blacks, you can have little jobs.
You're bad blacks, so you can't have any. And then they can blame
us for having no work. You see it's clever. We have to teach the soft
boys, if you go their way, you'll become white but you'll never be
accepted as white. So you will end up as choc-ices, black on the
outside and white on the inside.
In developing these oppressive gender and sexual practices the Rasta

Heads assumed that they had the support of most male teachers and
exploited the latter's ambiguous gendered responses to themselves. At one
level, the macho male teacher confronted the macho male student in the
attempt to maintain social control. This was a school for the making of
real men (Beynon, 1989). In the process the male teachers acted out their
responses within an arena where they took for granted the legitimacy of
dominant masculine authority forms.
At another level, the male authoritarian teachers colluded with the
antischool Afro-Caribbean Rasta Heads' contestation of schooling, which
functioned to confirm and celebrate a normative macho mode of mascu-
linity with which the teachers intuitively identified. The Rasta Heads
projected working-class masculine forms consisting of such themes as
independence, toughness, and aggression (Tolson, 1977). These cultural
forms found a resonance with such teachers, many of whom had working-
class origins. In contrast, these teachers privately were critical and suspi-
cious of the more conformist middle-class Asian students for the assumed
deceitfulness and unmanliness that the teachers attributed to them. Fur-
thermore, the authoritarian teachers conflated these imputed negative
traits with femininity in order to ridicule these students. For the male
teachers, derogative references to the boys' gender, with such comments
as "you're acting like little girls," were a common disciplinary technique
of social control that operated to maintain and regulate gender boundaries.
At the same time, one could see the intersection of gender and sexual
school codes that were shared by the teachers and the Rasta Heads. Within
the "rampant heterosexual" atmosphere of the school's macho culture, the
"conformist" Asian students' behavior acquired a connotation of feminin-

ity in that they were not acting like "normal men" (Arnot, 1984; Cockburn,
1987). The misogyny and homophobia that were pervasive throughout the
school circumscribed the teachers' and antischool students' masculine
bonding (Mac an Ghaill, 1991). It served to maintain the dominant belief that
"boys will be and must be boys" all of their lives. The Rasta Heads spoke of
the white teachers' contradictory racial and gender responses involved in
their masculine identification with themselves.
Michael: When it comes to all the school work, what you call aca-
demic, the teachers prefer the Asians. But when it comes to other
things, like sport and all that, they prefer us [Afro-Caribbeans].
M. M.: How do you know this?
Michael: Well they wouldn't tell you this, you just know in the way
they act. It's like this a boys' school, right. But it's like in every
situation you have people to act as girls and some acting as men.
Well, the teachers, the men teachers prefer us because we're the men
here. . . . And you hear them saying things to the Asian kids like,
stop acting like a group of little girls, stop acting like nancies [a
homophobic comment]. Really putting them down.
At Kilby School the male teacher-student collusion was most visibly

mediated through the culturally exalted forms of masculine sport (Walker,
1988). Carrington and Wood (1983) reported in their research that 'teachers
sponsored the involvement of the allegedly 'motor-minded' (Afro-Caribbean)
pupils in sport, and utilised, particularly in the case of nonacademic males,
extra curricular sports involvement as a mechanism of social control" (p.
37). Similar forms of official sponsorship of Afro-Caribbean males into
sport were evident at Kilby School with a disproportionately high number
of Afro-Caribbean students in the high-status sporting areas of football
and athletics. For example, all of the Rasta Heads, at some time in their
school career, had represented the school at football. The male teachers'
rationalization of the Afro-Caribbeans' overrepresentation in sporting
activities illustrates their ambivalent and contradictory responses to these
students. On the one hand, their racist and gender beliefs juxtaposed the
Afro-Caribbean males' assumed innate physical superiority with their
assumed low academic capacity and achievement. On the other hand, this
social subordination was accompanied by contradictory elements of the
male teachers' emotional investment in masculine sport (Segal, 1990).
Clive: I think that the teachers, especially the ones that take us for
sport would think we are more together, them and us, than the soft
kids, who don't like football and that. . . . I mean the teachers are
a lot different when you're doing sport together, they really change.
It's probably what they really enjoy more than all the books and
learning that the other kids are into.
For the white male teachers there was admiration, pride, and desire as
well as jealousy of the Afro-Caribbeans' sporting display and celebration
of a version of working-class masculinity, which the teachers valued
highly but with which they felt unable to compete. Similar contradictory
white working-class male cultural responses were acted out at the local
football ground. White supporters combined racist chants toward the
opposition's black players with a standing ovation for the highly skilled
young black player who had just joined their club (see Fanon, 1970;
Henriques, 1984). It was within this complex arena of social-cultural
structures and processes that the Rasta Heads negotiated a collective black
masculine identity.
Kevin: The white man doesn't know who he is. It is true that he hates
the black man and he's got the power but also he wishes he could
do the things that black men do. It's like here, we are free and the
whites are trapped. Do you know what I mean? They need to sort
themselves out badly.
Conclusion
This chapter has illustrated the multiple determination of power in the

interplay between a state institution, racism, and the cultural formation of
a black masculine identity. As Walkerdine (1990) has stated in her study
of boys' resistance in a nursery school:
The gender and the ages of the particular participants clearly have major
effects that serve to displace other variables. . . . Since the boys are both
children and male, and the teacher is both teacher and female, they can enter
as subjects in a variety of discourses, some of which render them powerful
and some of which render them powerless, (pp. 4-5)
A main theme of this narrative concerns a group of black working-class

male youths' response to and negotiation with the official institutional
ambivalence to their subordinated masculinity. They provide a case study

illustrative of a broader question of how contemporary institutions are
active, constituent social forces in the cultural production of a hierarchi-
cally ordered range of masculinities and femininities. For progressive
social activists located within this arena, there are political and pedagogi-
cal spaces within which collectively to identify and challenge current
dominant social practices (Mac an Ghaill, 1993, in press). In so doing,
one may build on the feminist project of reconstructing new forms of
masculinity and femininity.
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11
Gender Displays and Men's Power
The "New Man" and the Mexican Immigrant Man
PIERRETTE HONDAGNEU-SOTELO
M I C H A E L A. M E S S N E R
In our discussions about masculinity with our students (most of whom are
white and upper-middle class), talk invariably turns to critical descrip-
tions of the "macho" behavior of "traditional men." Consistently, these
men are portrayed as "out there," not in the classroom with us. Although
it usually remains an unspoken subtext, at times a student will actually
speak it: Those men who are still stuck in "traditional, sexist, and macho"
styles of masculinity are black men, Latino men, immigrant men, and
working-class men. They are not us; we are the New Men, the Modern,
Educated, and Enlightened Men. The belief that poor, working-class, and
ethnic minority men are stuck in an atavistic, sexist "traditional male
role," while white, educated middle-class men are forging a more sensi-
tive egalitarian "New," or "Modern male role," is not uncommon. Social
scientific theory and research on men and masculinity, as well as the
"men's movement," too often collude with this belief by defining mascu-
linity almost entirely in terms of gender display (i.e., styles of talk, dress,
and bodily comportment), while ignoring men's structural positions of
power and privilege over women and the subordination of certain groups
of men to other men (Brod, 1983-1984). Our task in this chapter is to
explore and explicate some links between contemporary men's gender
The authors thank Harry Brod, Scott Coltrane, and Michael Kaufman for helpful
comments on earlier versions of this chapter.
200
Gender Displays and Men's Power 201
displays and men's various positions in a social structure of power. Scott

Coltrane's (1992) comparative analysis of gender display and power in 93
nonindustrial societies provides us with an important starting point. Coltrane
found that men's "fierce public displays and denigration of women . . . com-
petitive physical contests, vociferous oratory, ceremonies related to war-
fare, exclusive men's houses and rituals, and sexual violence against
women" are common features in societies where men control property and
have distant relations with young children (Coltrane, 1992, p. 87). By
contrast, "in societies in which women exercise significant control over
property and men have close relationships with children, men infrequently
affirm their manliness through boastful demonstrations of strength, ag-
gressiveness, and sexual potency" (p. 86). This research suggests that
men's public gender displays are not grounded in some essential "need"
for men to dominate others but, instead, tend to vary according to the
extent of power and privilege that men hold vis-a-vis women. Put another
way, the micropolitics of men's and women's daily gender displays and
interactions both reflect and reconstruct the macropolitical relations be-
tween the sexes (Henley, 1977).
But in modern industrial societies, the politics of gender are far more
complex than in nonindustrial societies. Some men publicly display
verbal and physical aggression, misogyny, and violence. There are public
institutions such as sport, the military, fraternities, and the street where
these forms of gender display are valorized (Connell, 1991a, 1992b; Lyman,
1987; Martin & Hummer, 1989; Messner, 1992; Sabo, 1985). Other men,
though, display more "softness" and "sensitivity," and this form of gender
display has been recently lauded as an emergent "New Masculinity."
In this chapter, we will contrast the gender display and structural
positions of power (in both public and domestic spheres of life) of two
groups of men: class-privileged white men and Mexican immigrant men.
We will argue that utilizing the concepts of Modern (or New) and Tradi-
tional men to describe these two groups oversimplifies a complex reality,
smuggles in racist and classist biases about Mexican immigrant men, and
obscures the real class, race, and gender privileges that New Men still
enjoy. We will argue that the theoretical concepts of hegemonic, margi-
nalized, and subordinated masculinities best capture the dynamic and
shifting constellation of contemporary men's gender displays and power
(Brod, 1987; Connell, 1987; Kaufman, 1987; Segal, 1990). We will conclude
by arguing that a critical/feminist sociology of men and masculinity should
decenter and problematize hegemonic masculinity by proceeding from the
standpoint of marginalized and subordinated masculinities.
The "New Man" as Ideological Class Icon
Today there is a shared cultural image of what the New Man looks like:
He is a white, college-educated professional who is a highly involved and
nurturant father, "in touch with" and expressive of his feelings, and
egalitarian in his dealings with women. We will briefly examine two
fragments of the emergent cultural image of the contemporary New Man:
the participant in the mythopoetic men's movement and the New Father.
We will discuss these contemporary images of men both in terms of their
larger cultural meanings and in terms of the extent to which they represent
any real shift in the ways men live their lives vis-&-vis women and other
men. Most important, we will ask if apparent shifts in the gender displays
of some white, middle-class men represent any real transformations in
their structural positions of power and privilege.
Zeus Power and the Mythopoetic Men's Movement

A recently emergent fragment of the cultural image of the New Man is
the man who attends the weekend "gatherings of men" that are at the heart
of Robert Bly's mythopoetic men's movement. Bly's curious interpreta-
tions of mythology and his highly selective use of history, psychology,
and anthropology have been soundly criticized as "bad social science"
(e.g., Connell, 1992a; Kimmel, 1992; Pelka, 1991). But perhaps more
important than a critique of Bly's ideas is a sociological interpretation of
why the mythopoetic men's movement has been so attractive to so many
predominantly white, college-educated, middle-class, middle-aged men
in the United States over the past decade. (Thousands of men have
attended Bly's gatherings, and his book was a national best-seller.) We
speculate that Bly's movement attracts these men not because it represents
any sort of radical break from "traditional masculinity" but precisely
because it is so congruent with shifts that are already taking place within
current constructions of hegemonic masculinity. Many of the men who
attend Bly's gatherings are already aware of some of the problems and
limits of narrow conceptions of masculinity. A major preoccupation of the
gatherings is the poverty of these men's relationships with their fathers
and with other men in workplaces. These concerns are based on very real
and often very painful experiences. Indeed, industrial capitalism under-
mined much of the structural basis of middle-class men's emotional bonds
with each other as wage labor, market competition, and instrumental
rationality largely supplanted primogeniture, craft brotherhood, and inter-

generational mentorhood (Clawson, 1989; Tolson, 1977). Bly's "male
initiation" rituals are intended to heal and reconstruct these masculine
bonds, and they are thus, at least on the surface, probably experienced as
largely irrelevant to men's relationships with women.
But in focusing on how myth and ritual can reconnect men with each
other and ultimately with their own "deep masculine" essences, Bly
manages to sidestep the central point of the feminist critique—that men,
as a group, benefit from a structure of power that oppresses women as a
group. In ignoring the social structure of power, Bly manages to convey
a false symmetry between the feminist women's movement and his men's
movement. He assumes a natural dichotomization of "male values" and
"female values" and states that feminism has been good for women in
allowing them to reassert "the feminine voice" that had been suppressed.
But Bly states (and he carefully avoids directly blaming feminism for
this), "the masculine voice" has now been muted—men have become
"passive . . . tamed . . . domesticated." Men thus need a movement to
reconnect with the "Zeus energy" that they have lost. "Zeus energy is male
authority accepted for the good of the community" (Bly, 1990, p. 61).
The notion that men need to be empowered as men echoes the naivet6
of some 1970s men's liberation activists who saw men and women as
"equally oppressed" by sexism (e.g., Farrell, 1975). The view that every-
one is oppressed by sexism strips the concept of oppression of its political
meaning and thus obscures the social relations of domination and subor-
dination. Oppression is a concept that describes a relationship between
social groups; for one group to be oppressed, there must be an oppressor
group (Freire, 1970). This is not to imply that an oppressive relationship
between groups is absolute or static. To the contrary, oppression is char-
acterized by a constant and complex state of play: Oppressed groups both
actively participate in their own domination and actively resist that
domination. The state of play of the contemporary gender order is char-
acterized by men's individual and collective oppression of women (Connell,
1987). Men continue to benefit from this oppression of women, but, signifi-
cantly, in the past 20 years, women's compliance with masculine hegem-
ony has been counterbalanced by active feminist resistance.
Men do tend to pay a price for their power: They are often emotionally
limited and commonly suffer poor health and a life expectancy lower than
that of women. But these problems are best viewed not as "gender
oppression," but rather as the "costs of being on top" (Kann, 1986). In fact,
the shifts in masculine styles that we see among some relatively privileged
men may be interpreted as a sign that these men would like to stop paying
these costs, but it does not necessarily signal a desire to cease being "on
top." For example, it has become commonplace to see powerful and
successful men weeping in public—Ronald Reagan shedding a tear at the
funeral of slain U.S. soldiers, basketball player Michael Jordan openly
crying after winning the NBA championship. Most recent, the easy
manner in which the media lauded U.S. General Schwartzkopf as a
New Man for shedding a public tear for the U.S. casualties in the Gulf
War is indicative of the importance placed on styles of masculine gender
display rather than the institutional position of power that men such as
Schwartzkopf still enjoy.
This emphasis on the significance of public displays of crying indicates,
in part, a naive belief that if boys and men can learn to "express their
feelings," they will no longer feel a need to dominate others. In fact, there
is no necessary link between men's "emotional inexpressivity" and their
tendency to dominate others (Sattel, 1976). The idea that men's "need" to
dominate others is the result of an emotional deficit overly psychologizes
a reality that is largely structural. It does seem that the specific type of
masculinity that was ascendent (hegemonic) during the rise of en-
trepreneurial capitalism was extremely instrumental, stoic, and emotion-
ally inexpressive (Winter & Robert, 1980). But there is growing evidence
(e.g., Schwartzkopf) that today there is no longer a neat link between
class-privileged men's emotional inexpressivity and their willingness and
ability to dominate others (Connell, 1991b). We speculate that a situation-
ally appropriate public display of sensitivity such as crying, rather than
signaling weakness, has instead become a legitimizing sign of the New
Man's power.
Thus relatively privileged men may be attracted to the mythopoetic
men's movement because, on the one hand, it acknowledges and validates
their painful "wounds," while guiding them to connect with other men in
ways that are both nurturing and mutually empowering. On the other
hand, and unlike feminism, it does not confront men with the reality of
how their own privileges are based on the continued subordination of
women and other men. In short, the mythopoetic men's movement may
be seen as facilitating the reconstruction of a new form of hegemonic
masculinity—a masculinity that is less self-destructive, that has revalued
and reconstructed men's emotional bonds with each other, and that has
learned to feel good about its own Zeus power.
The New Father

In recent years Western culture has been bombarded with another
fragment of the popular image of the New Man: the involved, nurturant
father. Research has indicated that many young heterosexual men do
appear to be more inclined than were their fathers to "help out" with
housework and child care, but most of them still see these tasks as
belonging to their wives or their future wives (Machung, 1989; Sidel,
1990). Despite the cultural image of the "new fatherhood" and some
modest increases in participation by men, the vast majority of child care,
especially of infants, is still performed by women (Hochschild, 1989; La
Rossa, 1988; Lewis, 1986; Russell, 1983).
Why does men's stated desire to participate in parenting so rarely
translate into substantially increased involvement? Lynn Segal (1990)
argues that the fact that men's apparent attitudinal changes have not
translated into widespread behavioral changes may be largely due to the
fact men that may (correctly) fear that increased parental involvement will
translate into a loss of their power over women. But she also argues that
increased paternal involvement in child care will not become a widespread
reality unless and until the structural preconditions—especially economic
equality for women—exist. Indeed, Rosanna Hertz (1986) found in her
study of upper-middle class "dual career families" that a more egalitarian
division of family labor sometimes developed as a rational (and constantly
negotiated) response to a need to maintain his career, her career, and the
family. In other words, career and pay equality for women was a structural
precondition for the development of equality between husbands and wives
in the family.
However, Hertz notes two reasons why this is a very limited and flawed
equality. First, Hertz's sample of dual-career families in which the women
and the men made roughly the same amount of money is still extremely
atypical. In two-income families, the husband is far more likely to have
the higher income. Women are far more likely than men to work part-time
jobs, and among full-time workers, women still earn about 65 cents to the
male dollar and are commonly segregated in lower paid, lower status,
dead-end jobs (Blum, 1991; Reskin & Roos, 1990). As a result, most
women are not in the structural position to be able to bargain with their
husbands for more egalitarian divisions of labor in the home. As
Hochschild's (1989) research demonstrates, middle-class women's strug-
gles for equity in the home are often met by their husbands' "quiet
resistance," which sometimes lasts for years. Women are left with the
choice of either leaving the relationship (and suffering not only the
emotional upheaval, but also the downward mobility, often into poverty,
that commonly follows divorce) or capitulating to the man and quietly
working her "second shift" of family labor.
Second, Hertz observes that the roughly egalitarian family division of
labor among some upper-middle class dual-career couples is severely
shaken when a child is born into the family. Initially, new mothers are
more likely than fathers to put their careers on hold. But eventually many
resume their careers, as the child care and much of the home labor is
performed by low-paid employees, almost always women, and often
immigrant women and/or women of color. The construction of the dual-
career couple's "gender equality" is thus premised on the family's privi-
leged position within a larger structure of social inequality. In other words,
some of the upper-middle class woman's gender oppression is, in effect,
bought off with her class privilege, while the man is let off the hook from
his obligation to fully participate in child care and housework. The
upper-middle class father is likely to be more involved with his children
today than his father was with him, and this will likely enrich his life. But
given the fact that the day-to-day and moment-to-moment care and nur-
turance of his children is still likely to be performed by women (either his
wife and/or a hired, lower-class woman), "the contemporary revalorisa-
tion of fatherhood has enabled many men to have the best of both worlds"
(Segal, 1990, p. 58). The cultural image of the New Father has given the
middle-class father license to choose to enjoy the emotional fruits of
parenting, but his position of class and gender privilege allow him the
resources with which he can buy or negotiate his way out of the majority
of second shift labor.
In sum, as a widespread empirical reality, the emotionally expressive,
nurturant, egalitarian New Man does not actually exist; he is an ideologi-
cal construct, made up of disparate popular images that are saturated with
meanings that express the anxieties, fears, and interests of relatively
privileged men. But this is not to say that some changes are not occurring
among certain groups of privileged men (Segal, 1990). Some men are
expressing certain feelings that were, in the past, considered outside the
definition of hegemonic masculinity. Some men are reexamining and
changing their relationships with other men. Some men are participating
more—very equitably in some cases, but marginally in many others—in
the care and nurturance of children. But the key point is that when
examined within the context of these men's positions in the overall
structure of power in society, these changes do not appear to challenge or

undermine this power. To the contrary, the cultural image of the New Man
and the partial and fragmentary empirical changes that this image repre-
sents serve to file off some of the rough edges of hegemonic masculinity
in such a way that the possibility of a happier and healthier life for men
is created, while deflecting or resisting feminist challenges to men's
institutional power and privilege. But because at least verbal acceptance
of the "New Woman" is an important aspect of this reconstructed hegemonic
masculinity, the ideological image of the New Man requires a coun-
terimage against which to stand in opposition. Those aspects of traditional
hegemonic masculinity that the New Man has rejected—overt physical
and verbal displays of domination, stoicism and emotional inexpressivity,
overt misogyny in the workplace and at home—are now increasingly
projected onto less privileged groups of men: working-class men, gay
body-builders, black athletes, Latinos, and immigrant men.
Mexican Immigrant Men
According to the dominant cultural stereotype, Latino men's "ma-

chismo" is supposedly characterized by extreme verbal and bodily expres-
sions of aggression toward other men, frequent drunkenness, and sexual
aggression and dominance expressed toward normally "submissive"
Latinas. Manuel Pena's (1991) research on the workplace culture of
male undocumented Mexican immigrant agricultural workers suggests
that there is a great deal of truth to this stereotype. Pena examined the
Mexican immigrant male's participation in charritas coloradas (red
jokes) that characterize the basis of the workplace culture. The most
common basis of humor in the charritas is sexualized "sadism toward
women and symbolic threats of sodomy toward other males" (Paredes,
1966, p. 121).
On the surface, Pena argues, the constant "half-serious, half playful
duels" among the men, as well as the images of sexually debased "per-
verted wenches" and "treacherous women" in the charritas, appear to
support the stereotype of the Mexican immigrant male group as being
characterized by a high level of aggressive masculine posturing and
shared antagonisms and hatred directed toward women. But rather than
signifying a fundamental hatred of women, Pena argues that these men's
public displays of machismo should be viewed as a defensive reaction to
their oppressed class status:
As an expression of working-class culture, the folklore of machismo can be

considered a realized signifying system [that] points to, but simultaneously
displaces, a class relationship and its attendant conflict. At the same time, it
introduces a third element, the gender relationship, which acts as a mediator
between the signifier (the folklore) and the signified (the class relationship).
(Pefia, 1991, p. 40)
Undocumented Mexican immigrant men are unable to directly confront

their class oppressors, so instead, Pefia argues, they symbolically displace
their class antagonism into the arena of gender relations. Similar argu-
ments have been made about other groups of men. For instance, David
Collinson (1988) argues that Australian male blue-collar workers com-
monly engage in sexually aggressive and misogynist humor, as an (ultimately
flawed) means of bonding together to resist the control of management
males (who are viewed, disparagingly, as feminized). Majors and Billson
(1992) argue that young black males tend to embody and publicly display
a "cool pose," an expressive and often sexually aggressive style of
masculinity that acts as a form of resistance to racism. These studies make
important strides toward building an understanding of how subordinated
and marginalized groups of men tend to embody and publicly display
styles of masculinity that at least symbolically resist the various forms of
oppression that they face within hierarchies of intermale dominance.
These studies all share the insight that the public faces of subordinated
groups of men are personally and collectively constructed performances
of masculine gender display. By contrast, the public face of the New Man
(his "sensitivity," etc.) is often assumed to be one-and-the-same with who
he "is," rather than being seen as a situationally constructed public gender
display.
Yet in foregrounding the oppression of men by men, these studies risk
portraying aggressive, even misogynist, gender displays primarily as
liberatory forms of resistance against class and racial oppression (e.g.,
Mirande, 1982). Though these studies view microlevel gender display as
constructed within a context of structured power relations, macrolevel
gender relations are rarely viewed as a constituting dynamic within this
structure. Rather gender is commonly viewed as an epiphenomenon, an
effect of the dominant class and/or race relations. What is obscured, or
even drops out of sight, is the feminist observation that masculinity itself
is a form of domination over women. As a result, women's actual experi-
ences of oppression and victimization by men's violence are conspicu-
ously absent from these analyses, thus leaving the impression that misogyny
is merely a symbolic displacement of class (or race) antagonism. What is
needed, then, is an examination of masculine gender display and power

within the context of intersecting systems of class, race, and gender
relations (Baca Zinn, Cannon, Higgenbotham, & Dill, 1986; Collins,
1990). In the following section we will consider recent ethnographic
research on Mexican immigrant communities that suggests that gender
dynamics help to constitute the immigration process and, in turn, are
reconstituted during and following the immigrant settlement process.
The Rhetoric of Return Migration as Gender Display

Mexican immigrant men who have lived in the United States for long
periods of time frequently engage in the rhetoric of return migration.
These stated preferences are not necessarily indicative of what they will
do r but they provide some telling clues to these men's feelings and
perceptions about their lives as marginalized men in the United States.
Consider the following statements:
I've passed more of my life here than in Mexico. I've been here for thirty-one
years. I'm not putting down or rejecting this country, but my intentions have
always been to return to Mexico . . . I'd like to retire there, perhaps open a
little business. Maybe I could buy and sell animals, or open a restaurant. Here
I work for a big company, like a slave, always watching the clock. Well I'm
bored with that.
I don't want to stay in the U.S. anymore. [Why not?] Because here I can no
longer find a good job. Here, even if one is sick, you must report for work.
They don't care. I'm fed up with it. I'm tired of working here too. Here one
must work daily, and over there with my mother, I'll work for four, maybe
five months, and then I'll have a four or five month break without working.
My mother is old and I want to be with the family. I need to take care of the
rancho. Here I have nothing, I don't have my own house, I even share the
rent! What am I doing here?
I would like to return, but as my sons are born here, well that is what detains
me here. Otherwise, I would go back to Mexico . . . Mexico is now in a very
inflationary situation. People come here not because they like it, but because
the situation causes them to do so, and it makes them stay here for years and
years. As the song says, this is a cage made of gold, but it is still a cage.
These statements point to disappointments with migration. In recent

years, U.S.-bound migration has become institutionalized in many areas
of Mexico, representing a rite of passage for many young, single men
(Davis, 1990; Escobar, Gonzalez de la Rocha, & Roberts, 1987). But once
in the United States the accomplishment of masculinity and maturity
hinges on living up to the image of a financially successful migrant. If a
man returns homes penniless, he risks being seen as a failure or a fool. As
one man explained: "One cannot go back without anything, because
people will talk. They' 11 say *oh look at this guy, he sacrificed and suffered
to go north and he has nothing to show for it.' "
Although most of these men enjoyed a higher standard of living in the
United States than in Mexico, working and settling in the United States
significantly diminished their patriarchal privileges. Although the men
compensated by verbally demonstrating their lack of commitment to
staying in the United States, most of these men realized that their lives
remained firmly anchored in the United States and that they lacked the
ability to return. They could not acquire sufficient savings in the public
sphere to fund return migration, and in the domestic sphere, they did not
command enough authority over their wives or children, who generally
wished to remain in the United States, to coerce the return migration of
their families. Although Mexican immigrant men blamed the terms of U.S.
production as their reason for wanting to return to Mexico, we believe that
their diminished patriarchal privileges significantly fueled this desire to
return. Here, we examine the diminution of patriarchy in three arenas:
spatial mobility, authority in family decision-making processes, and
household labor.
Mexican immigrant men, especially those who were undocumented and
lacked legal status privileges, experienced limited spatial mobility in their
daily lives and this compromised their sense of masculinity (Rouse,
1990). As undocumented immigrants, these men remained fearful of
apprehension by the Immigration Naturalization Service and by the po-
lice. In informal conversations, the men often shared experiences with
police harassment and racial discrimination. Merely "looking Mexican,"
the men agreed, was often cause for suspicion. The jobs Mexican immi-
grant men commonly took also restricted their spatial mobility. As poor
men who worked long hours at jobs as gardeners, dishwashers, or day
laborers, they had very little discretionary income to afford leisure activi-
ties. As one man offered, "Here my life is just from work to the home,
from work to the home."
Although the men, together with their families, visited parks, shops,
and church, the public spaces open to the men alone were typically limited
to street corners and to a few neighborhood bars, pool halls, and doughnut
shops. As Rouse (1990) has argued, Mexican immigrant men, especially
those from rural areas, resent these constrictions on their public space and
mobility and attempt to reproduce public spaces that they knew in Mexico
in the context of U.S. bars and pool halls. In a California immigrant
community Rouse observed that "men do not come to drink alone or to
meet with a couple of friends . . . they move from table to table, broaden-
ing the circuits of information in which they participate and modulating
social relationships across the widest possible range." Although these men
tried to create new spaces where they might recapture a public sense of
self, the goal was not so readily achieved. For many men, the loss of free
and easy mobility signified their loss of publicly accorded status and
recognition. One man, a junkyard assembler who had worked in Mexico
as a rural campesino (peasant), recalled that in his Mexican village he
enjoyed a modicum of public recognition: "I would enter the bars, the
dances, and when I entered everyone would stand to shake my hand as
though I were somebody—not a rich man, true, but I was famous. Wher-
ever you like, I was always mentioned. Wherever you like, everyone knew
me back there." In metropolitan areas of California, anonymity replaced
public status and recognition.
In Mexico many of these men had acted as the undisputed patriarchs in
major family decision-making processes, but in the United States they no
longer retained their monopoly on these processes. When families were
faced with major decisions—such as whom to seek for legal help, whether
or not to move to another town, or the decision to lend money or make a
major purchase—spousal negotiation replaced patriarchal exertions of
authority. These processes did not go uncontested, and some of the
decision-making discussions were more conflictual than harmonious, but
collaboration, not domination, characterized them.
This trend toward more egalitarian patterns of shared authority often
began with migration. In some families, men initially migrated north
alone, and during their absences, the women acted decisively and autono-
mously as they performed a range of tasks necessary to secure family
sustenance. Commentators have referred to this situation as one in which
"thousands of wives in the absence of their husbands must 'take the
reigns' " (Mummert, 1988, p. 283) and as one in which the wives of
veteran migrants experience "a freedom where woman command" (una
libertad donde mujeres mandan) (Baca & Bryan, 1985). This trend toward
more shared decision making continued after the women's migration and
was also promoted by migration experiences as well as the relative
increase in women's and the decrease in men's economic contributions to
the family (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1992). As the balance of relative resources
and contributions shifted, the women assumed more active roles in key
decision-making processes. Similar shifts occurred with the older chil-
dren, who were now often reluctant to subordinate their earnings and their
autonomy to a patriarchal family hierarchy. As one man somewhat reluc-
tantly, but resignedly, acknowledged: "Well, each person orders one's self
here, something like that. . . Back there [Mexico], no. It was still what-
ever I said. I decided matters."
The household division of labor is another arena that in some cases
reflected the renegotiation of patriarchal relations. Although most fami-
lies continued to organize their daily household chores along fairly ortho-
dox, patriarchal norms, in some families—notably those where the men
had lived for many years in "bachelor communities" where they learned
to cook, iron, and make tortillas—men took responsibility for some of the
housework. In these cases, men did part of the cooking and housework,
they unself-consciously assumed the role of host in offering guests food
and beverages, and in some instances, the men continued to make tortillas
on weekends and special occasions. These changes, of course, are modest
if judged by ideal standards of feminist egalitarianism, but they are
significant when compared to patriarchal family organization that was
normative before immigration.
This movement toward more egalitarian divisions of labor in some
Mexican immigrant households cannot be fully explained by the men's
acquisition of household skills in bachelor communities. (We are re-
minded, for instance, of several middle-class male friends of ours who
lived in "bachelor" apartments during college, and after later marrying,
conveniently "forgot" how to cook, wash clothes, and do other household
chores.) The acquisition of skills appears to be a necessary, but not a
sufficient, condition for men's greater household labor participation in
reunited families.
A key to the movement toward greater equality within immigrant
families was the change in the women's and men's relative positions of
power and status in the larger social structure of power. Mexican immi-
grant men's public status in the United States is very low, due to racism,
insecure and low-paying jobs, and (often) illegal status. For those families
that underwent long periods of spousal separation, women often engaged
in formal- or informal-sector paid labor for the first time, developed more
economic skills and autonomy, and assumed control over household
affairs. In the United States nearly all of the women sought employment,
so women made significant economic contributions to the family. All of
these factors tend to erode men's patriarchal authority in the family and
empower women to either directly challenge that authority or at least
renegotiate "patriarchal bargains" (Kandiyoti, 1988) that are more palat-
able to themselves and their children.
Although it is too hasty to proclaim that gender egalitarianism prevails
in interpersonal relations among undocumented Mexican immigrants,
there is a significant trend in that direction. This is indicated by the
emergence of a more egalitarian household division of labor, by shared
decision-making processes, and by the constraints on men's and expan-
sion of women's spatial mobility. Women still have less power than men,
but they generally enjoy more than they previously did in Mexico. The
stereotypical image of dominant macho males and submissive females in
Mexican immigrant families is thus contradicted by actual research with
these families.
Masculine Displays and Relative Power
We have suggested that men's overt public displays of masculine

bravado, interpersonal dominance, misogyny, embodied strength, and so
forth are often a sign of a lack of institutional power and privilege,
vis-^-vis other men. Though it would be a mistake to conclude that
Mexican immigrant men are not misogynist (or, following Pena, that their
misogyny is merely a response to class oppression), there is considerable
evidence that their actual relations with women in families—at least when
measured by family divisions of labor and decision-making processes—
are becoming more egalitarian than they were in Mexico. We have also
argued that for more privileged men, public displays of sensitivity might
be read as signs of class/race/gender privilege and power over women and
(especially) over other men (see Table 11.1 for a summary comparison of
these two groups).
Coltrane (1992) argues that in nonindustrial societies, "men's displays
of dominance confirm and reinforce existing property relations rather than
compensate for a lack of control over valued resources" (pp. 102-103).
His claim that men's control (rather than lack of control) of resources is
correlated with more extreme microdisplays of masculinity seems, at first,
to contradict findings by Pena, Collinson, and Billson and Majors, who
claim that in industrial societies, lack of access to property and other
material resources by Mexican immigrant, working-class, and black males
Table 11.1 Comparison of Public and Domestic Gender Displays of

White, Class-Privileged Men and Mexican Immigrant Men
Public Domestic
Power/Status Gender Display Power/Status Gender Display
White, class- High, built "Sensitive," High, based "Quiet

privileged into position little overt on public status/ control"
men misogyny high income
Mexican Low (job "Hombre": Contested, Exaggerated

immigrant status, pay, verbal misogyny, becoming more symbols of
men control of work, embodied egalitarian power and
legal rights, toughness authority in
public status) in work/ family
peer culture
are correlated with more overt outward displays of aggressive, misogynist

masculinity. The key to understanding this apparent contradiction is that
Coltrane is discussing societies where women enjoy high social status,
where men are highly involved in child care, and where women have a
great deal of control over property and other material resources. In these
types of societies, men do not "need" to display dominance and masculine
bravado. But in complex, stratified societies where the standards of
hegemonic masculinity are that a man should control resources (and other
people), men who do not have access to these standards of masculinity
thus tend to react with displays of toughness, bravado, "cool pose," or
"hombre" (Baca Zinn, 1982).
Marginalized and subordinated men, then, tend to overtly display
exaggerated embodiments and verbalizations of masculinity that can be
read as a desire to express power over others within a context of relative
powerlessness. By contrast, many of the contemporary New Man's highly
celebrated public displays of sensitivity can be read as a desire to project
an image of egalitarianism within a context where he actually enjoys
considerable power and privilege over women and other men. Both
groups of men are "displaying gender," but the specific forms that their
masculine displays take tend to vary according to their relative positions
in (a) the social structure of men's overall power relationship to women
and (b) the social structure of some men's power relationships with other
men.
Conclusion
We have argued for the importance of viewing microlevel gender

displays of different groups of men within the context of their positions
in a larger social structure of power. Too often critical discussions of
masculinity tend to project atavistic hypermasculine, aggressive, misogy-
nist masculinity onto relatively powerless men. By comparison, the mas-
culine gender displays of educated, privileged New Men are too often
uncritically applauded, rather than skeptically and critically examined.
We have suggested that when analyzed within a structure of power, the
gender displays of the New Man might best be seen as strategies to
reconstruct hegemonic masculinity by projecting aggression, domination,
and misogyny onto subordinate groups of men. Does this mean that all of
men's changes today are merely symbolic and ultimately do not contribute
to the types of changes in gender relations that feminists have called for?
It may appear so, especially if social scientists continue to collude with
this reality by theoretically framing shifts in styles of hegemonic mascu-
linity as indicative of the arrival of a New Man, while framing marginalized
men as Other—as atavistic, traditional men. Instead, a critical/feminist
analysis of changing masculinities in the United States might begin with
a focus on the ways that marginalized and subordinated masculinities are
changing.
This shift in focus would likely accomplish three things: First, it would
remove hegemonic masculinity from center stage, thus taking the stand-
points of oppressed groups of men as central points of departure. Second,
it would require the deployment of theoretical frameworks that examine
the ways that the politics of social class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality
interact with those of gender (Baca Zinn, Cannon, Higgenbotham, & Dill,
1986; Collins, 1990; Harding, 1986; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1992; Messner,
1990). Third, a sociology of masculinities that starts from the experience
of marginalized and subordinated men would be far more likely to have
power and politics—rather than personal styles or lifestyles—at its center.
This is because men of color, poor and working-class men, immigrant
men, and gay men are often in very contradictory positions at the nexus
of intersecting systems of domination and subordination. In short, al-
though they are oppressed by class, race, and/or sexual systems of power,
they also commonly construct and display forms of masculinity as ways
of resisting other men's power over them, as well as asserting power and
privilege over women. Thus, to avoid reverting to the tendency to view
masculinity simply as a defensive reaction to other forms of oppression,
it is crucial in such studies to keep women's experience of gender oppres-

sion as close to the center of analysis as possible. This sort of analysis
might inform the type of progressive coalition building that is necessary
if today's changing masculinities are to contribute to the building of a
more egalitarian and democratic world.
Notes
1. This section of the chapter is adapted from Messner (1993).

2. It is significant, we suspect, that the examples cited of Reagan, Jordan, and
Schwartzkopf publicly weeping occurred at moments of victory over other men in war
and sport.
3. Our speculation on the class and racial bias of the mythopoetic men's movement
and on the appeal of the movement to participants is supported, in part, by ongoing (but
as yet unpublished) research by sociologist Michael Schwalbe. Schwalbe observes that
the "wounds" of these men are very real, because a very high proportion of them are
children of alcoholic parents and/or were victims of childhood sexual abuse or other forms
of violence. Many are involved in recovery programs.
4. Material in this section is drawn from Hondagneu-Sotelo's study of long-term
undocumented immigrant settlers, based on 18 months of field research in a Mexican
undocumented immigrant community. See Hondagneu-Sotelo, (1994). Gendered Transi-
tions: Mexican Experiences of Immigrants. Berkelely: University of California Press.
5. For a similar finding and analysis in the context of Dominican immigrants in New
York City, see Pessar (1986).
6. This constraint was exacerbated by passage of the Immigration Reform and Control
Act of 1986, which imposed employer sanctions and doubly criminalized undocumented
immigrants' presence at the workplace.
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12
Postmodernism and
the Interrogation of Masculinity
D A V I D S. G U T T E R M A N
The form is fluid, but the meaning even more so.

Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals,
Second Essay, Section 12
Shifting Subjects, Indeterminate Identities,

Ascribing Agency
Over the last hundred years, the Enlightenment concept of the transcen-
dent subject (existing before and beyond the social realm) has been
critiqued by theorists who maintain that subjects are culturally consti-
tuted. This shift has roots in Nietzsche's (1967) pronouncement in On the
Genealogy of Morals that "there is no 'being' behind doing, effecting,
becoming; 'the doer' is merely a fiction added to the deed—the deed is
everything" (p. 45). This "deed" that constitutes individuals is often seen
as social forces—from one's relation to the mode of production (in the
Marxist tradition) to the public discourses that produce social systems of
value (a perspective most often associated with postmodernism). Michel
Foucault, a leading proponent of this latter direction of analysis, instructs
that systems of power in a given society produce social subjects discur-
sively.1 "The individual," Foucault (1980b) writes, "is an effect of power"
(p. 98).
219
If the social subject is discursively "produced" by "relations of power"

(Foucault, 1988, p. 118), then a subsequent question is whether the subject
represents the productive work of any one discourse or a plenitude of
discourses. As Teresa de Lauretis argues, feminism and feminist theory
have been, and must continue to be, must continue to be critical sites of
argument and discussion with regard to this issue of singularly or multiply
constructed subjects. For example, conflicts within feminism between
African American and white women concerning representativeness and
goals have illustrated that individuals are produced by a variety of dis-
courses. Therefore the category of "women" will reflect differences be-
tween and among women of, for example, varying races, ages, classes,
and sexualities. Indeed, rather than perceiving an individual in relation to
a singular subject position, an individual ought to be recognized as being
produced by a multitude of discourses. As Chantal Mouffe (1992) has
asserted:
We can then conceive the social agent as constituted by an ensemble of

'subject positions' that can never be totally fixed in a closed system of
differences, constructed by a diversity of discourses among which there is no
necessary relation but a constant movement of overdetermination and dis-
placement. The identity of such a multiple and contradictory subject is
therefore always contingent and precarious, temporarily fixed at the intersec-
tion of those subject positions and dependent on specific forms of identifica-
tion. (p. 372)
Mouffe's conception of a "multiple and contradictory subject. . . con-

tingent and precarious" has critical social and political implications that
I will discuss in greater detail later. For now, suffice it to say that
understandings of subjects produced by a multiplicity of discourses will
necessarily lead to internal conflict and contradiction. These conflicts in
turn create an arena where the governing conceptions of a particular
discourse suffer a sort of slippage wherein predominant roles and values
lose their claims to absolute authority and subsequently can be altered.
Barbara Herrnstein Smith (1988) refers to the resulting personal hetero-
geneity as "our irreducible scrappiness" (p. 148).
Furthermore, one can think of this multiply constituted subject as
having a multiplicity of identities. Accordingly, it is critical to examine
the process of identification or identity formation by which individuals
come to identify themselves and be identified by others. A framework of
oppositional binarisms has historically provided the governing logic of
identity formation in the West. This framework has grounded identity in
Postmodernism and the Interrogation of Masculinity 221
a series of either/or categories within which individuals are expected to exist.

Within these governing categories, Iris Marion Young (1990) asserts, "Any
move to define an identity, a closed totality, always depends on excluding
some elements, separating the pure from the impure" (p. 303). In this
manner, individual identity says as much about who one is not, as it does
about who one is.
The hazards of perceiving identity within such a framework of closed
boxes of purity are manifold, particularly around the perception of differ-
ence. William Connolly (1991) asserts, "An identity is established in
relation to a series of differences that have become socially recognized.
These differences are essential to its being. . . . Identity requires differ-
ence in order to be, and converts difference into otherness in order to
secure its own self-certainty" (p. 64). For example, the axis that serves as the
fundamental basis of gender identity in the West clearly functions along this
organization of the same/different. The perception that men and women
are "opposite sexes" (with accompanying "genders"—masculine/feminine)
creates the expectation that one is either a man or a woman and that these
two categories are essentially disparate. This sense of difference then
becomes the demarcation of otherness when gradations of value are placed
on the two distinct domains.
In Western culture, of course, that which is usually associated with men
(activity, culture, reason) is usually held in higher esteem than that which
is associated with women (passivity, nature, emotion). I say "usually"
here for I want to assert that within broad cultural paradigms there are
often localized situations where gendered attributes can be reversed. This
inversion transpires in terms both of identity (i.e., women who drag men
to the opera are sometimes seen as the bearers of culture) and of value
(i.e., when male aggressiveness intersects with African-Americans in
society, the assertive, forceful qualities of those men are demonized rather
than valorized by portions of the white American population). In negoti-
ating the obstacles to opening closed binary systems (grounded on differ-
ence as otherness), it is crucial to remember that not only are cultural
norms socially constructed but so too are the values attached to those
norms.
I accept that identity formation is relational (i.e., what I am or claim to
be is rooted in making distinctions from what I am not). However, I also
believe that this recognition of difference does not need to be perceived
as indicative of otherness, or, in Connolly's words, "evil." Indeed, the goal
I am advocating is an intervention in the process where difference is
transformed into otherness or evil. Connolly suggests that the crucial step
is moving away from the teleological project of trying to master the world
and our "selves." That is, the effort to position oneself as a transcendent
subject necessitates investment in difference. This difference implicitly
challenges the claim to transcendency for it entails an eternal oppositional
entity or identity. The transcendency is falsely maintained by inscribing
difference with a negative cultural valuation in order to limit the capacity
of "different" beings to become subjects. The critical step in the process
of acknowledging and celebrating difference is a recognition of contin-
gency—of the instability of our "selves" and the world. Connolly (1991)
defines contingency as follows:
By contrast to the necessary and the universal, it means that which is change-
able and particular; by contrast to the certain and constant, it means that which
is uncertain and variable; by contrast to the self-subsistent and causal, it
means that which is dependent and effect; by contrast to the expected and
regular, it means that which is unexpected and irregular; and by contrast to
the safe and reassuring, it means that which is dangerous, unruly, and obdurate
in its danger, (p. 28)
This definition of contingency provides a foundation from which one

can understand both "individual scrappiness" and the complex identity of
social groups. An appreciation of contingency enables an appreciation of
difference. As Connolly (1991) explains, "The one who construes her
identity to be laced with contingencies, including branded contingencies,
is in a better position to question and resist the drive to convert difference
into otherness to be defeated, converted or marginalized" (p. 180).
The notion of "branded contingencies" is an important one. I believe
Connolly is suggesting here that specific facets of personal identity can
be discursively inscribed on individuals so forcefully that an individual
may have very little power or space in which to discursively challenge or
reshape that particular aspect of his or her social persona. In a fascinating
discussion of the socialization of her son, Kathy Ferguson (1993) ad-
dresses the process by which contingent identities are branded on to social
subjects. Determined to raise her son in a nonstereotypical fashion,
Ferguson paid careful attention to the adjectives she appended to the word
boy: "I told him often that he is a sweet boy, a gentle boy, a beautiful boy,
as well as a smart and strong boy" (p. 128). She could not, however, escape
the gendered implications of the word boy. Indeed, when examining the
cultural construction of identity, I believe it is useful to conceive words
like boy not as nouns but rather as adjectives that describe a subject. By
doing so one can more easily and deeply appreciate the contingency of
the meanings attached to the word boy. Being a boy is different in different
cultures/families/contexts and will mean different things to individuals as
they grow older.
In the United States, where gender, racial, and sexual identities are so
emphatically marked on individuals, there is often little discursive space
to challenge these aspects of one's identity. I am reminded here of a line
from Marlon Riggs' (1989) film Tongues Untied in which Riggs states,
"Cornered by identities I never wanted to claim, I ran—fast—hard—
deep—inside myself." In this case, Riggs was categorized and defined as
the "governing culture" recognized his (racial) difference, branded the
cultural meanings attached to race (gender and sexuality) onto him, and
turned them into otherness. However, as Riggs recognizes the contingent,
unstable state of the identities branded onto him, he is able to resist the
limits placed on him by others while reveling in difference.
The metaphor of performance provides an explanatory framework for
understanding the contingency of identity. Performance here should by no
means be construed to signify falseness or unrealness. Rather, I am
suggesting that "identity is something one does, an active corralling of
practices, events, desires, contingencies, a regulatory semiotic and mate-
rial operation" (Ferguson, 1993, p. 159). As members of any particular
culture, community, or group, individuals are given a vast array of scripts
that together constitute them as social subjects. Some scripts are branded
onto individuals more emphatically than others. However, as we see in
Tongues Untied, recognizing that identity is contingent, is a performance,
provides the potential for rewriting the scripts of individual (and group)
identity. The notion of rewriting leads to the critical question of agency.
A common critique of the postmodern subject is that by sacrificing
stability and unity one also sacrifices agency. The transcendent subject
was traditionally perceived as a fundamental precursor to agency. So, for
example, the feminist movement initially focused on establishing a notion
of woman that could serve as a prediscursive subject and thus enable
women to attain political agency. Indeed, many feminist theorists respond
skeptically to postmodern reconceptions of the social subject, asking, in
the words of Nancy Hartsock (1990), "Why is it that just at the moment
when so many of us who have been silenced begin to demand the right to
name ourselves, to act as subjects rather than objects of history, that just
then the concept of subjecthood becomes problematic?" (p. 163). As
Hartsock's question indicates, this question of agency must be answered
if postmodernism is to be able to support and sustain (no matter how

ungrounded the ground) a politics of social change—a need obviously
central to social movements seeking to reframe the implications of differ-
ences of sex, race, sexuality, and so forth.
Judith Butler (1992) answers this question of agency in a world of
postmodern subjects by stating:
We may be tempted to think that to assume the subject in advance is necessary

in order to safeguard the agency of the subject. But to claim that the subject
is constituted is not to claim that the subject is determined. On the contrary,
the constituted character of the subject is the very precondition of its agency.
(p. 12)
That is, although subjects are constituted, the process and content of their
constitution provide the foundation for reformulating the terms of dis-
course which produce subjects. As Joan Scott (1993) has stated:
Treating the emergence of a new identity as a discursive event is not to

introduce a new form of linguistic determinism, nor to deprive subjects of
agency. It is to refuse a separation between "experience" and language and to
insist instead on the productive quality of discourse. Subjects are constituted
discursively, but there are conflicts among discursive systems, contradictions
within any one of them, multiple meanings possible for the subjects they
deploy. And subjects do have agency. They are not unified autonomous
individuals exercising free will, but rather subjects whose agency is created
through situations and statuses conferred upon them. (p. 409)
Postmodern theories of subjectivity, identity, and agency, then, can be

useful not only for rethinking governing cultural values but also as a
framework for actively seeking social change. Indeed, postmodernism's
focus on instability, multiplicity, and contingency, as well as its sub-
sequent celebration of difference, provides an extraordinary basis for
interrogating the cultural scripts of normative masculinity. For the remain-
der of this essay, I will first focus on two places of resistance to governing
scripts of masculinity—the question of gay male gender identity and the
efforts of profeminist men. I will then discuss two different strategies
that can be employed in efforts for social change (including struggles to
reimagine masculinity)—identity politics and coalition politics.
Resistance to the Heterosexual Matrix

and Normative Masculinity
The social construction of masculinity in Western culture provides a

fascinating (and disturbing) example of the ways the "drive to convert
difference to otherness" has functioned. Masculinity (and femininity) has
long served as crucial social marker of individual identity. Masculinity
has largely been produced and sustained by interwoven discourses of
sexuality and gender—discourses themselves rooted in dualistic configu-
rations. As Jeffrey Weeks (1985) has written, "masculinity or the male
identity is achieved by the constant process of warding off threats to it. It
is precariously achieved by the rejection of femininity and homosexual-
ity" (p. 190). This definition of masculinity as a category maintained by
making strict polar distinctions of gender and sexuality is consistent
with the concept of the "heterosexual matrix" that Judith Butler maintains
governs Western culture today. Drawing from the works of Monique Wittig
and Adrienne Rich, Butler (1990) defines the heterosexual matrix as:
[A] hegemonic discursive/epistemic model of gender intelligibility that as-

sumes that for bodies to cohere and make sense there must be a stable sex
expressed through a stable gender (masculine expresses male, feminine ex-
presses female) that is oppositionally and hierarchically defined through the
compulsory practice of heterosexuality. (p. 151, n. 6)
In other words, the cultural demand for heterosexuality creates the need
for clear markers of gender so that sexual partners can be "correctly"
chosen. In this way discourses of (hetero)sexuality establish the categories
of gender, and these categories enable the perpetuation of that system of
sexuality. Because this system is "oppositionally and hierarchically de-
fined" any aberration from either the category of gender or that of
normative heterosexuality is met with efforts to silence, change, or destroy
the differences. This process epitomizes how gender is used to maintain
heterosexuality, which is itself a "contingency branded into" men and
women in our culture (Connolly, 1991, p. 176).
The concept of the heterosexual matrix (as well as Weeks' formulation
of normative masculinity) illustrates how the discourses of gender and
sexuality are entangled and mutually sustaining/informing. However, I
agree with Eve Sedgwick (1990) that "gender and sexuality represent two
analytic axes that may productively be imagined as being as distinct from
one another as, say, gender and class, or class and race. Distinct, that is to
say, no more than minimally, but nonetheless usefully" (p. 30). I believe
that the importance of this separation lies in the consequent freedom to
reimagine sexuality apartfromgender. This freedom is "useful" for it can
lead to a cultural valuation of sexual practices and perspectives that are
only indirectly informed by gender. For example, as Samira Kawash
(1993) points out, if the gender of a person's sexual object choice is given
priority, cultural notions of sexuality will revolve around the axis of the
same (homo)/different (hetero) binary (p. 28). One example of the rami-
fications in Western culture of this configuration of sexuality is the way
"[i]t delegitimates non-gender-exclusive desires. Current struggles over
the 'authenticity' of bisexuality illustrate this effect: if the world is divided
into 'same' and 'different,' 'homo' and 'hetero,' then bisexuality is some-
thing which cannot exist, and individuals claiming a bisexual identity are
confused or in a state of transition" (p. 28).
In Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Sedgwick (1990) presents a brief
list of alternate ways of thinking about sexuality that offers clues into
the possible openings provided by distinguishing between sexuality and
gender.
To some people, the nimbus of "the sexual" seems scarcely to extend beyond
the boundaries of discrete genital acts; to others, it enfolds them loosely or
floats virtually free of them; many people have theirrichestmental/emotional
involvement with sexual acts that they don't do, or even don't want to do. (p.
25-26)
Among other potential openings is the denaturalizing of the relationship

between sexuality, reproduction, and motherhood. The political implica-
tions of the fracturing of that triad are manifold—not the least of which
is the proliferation of nonnormative heterosexual parental and familial
structures. Ultimately rethinking the relationship and the distinctions
between sexuality, gender, and the heterosexual matrix enables a reimagi-
nation of masculinity that is open to a cornucopia of contingent, shifting
identities.
Gay Male Gender Identity

Gay male gender identity is an area where the scripts of the heterosexual
matrix and normative masculinity are being interrogated and rewritten.
This issue invites conflicting forces of cultural discourses and personal
identity. The cultural discourse on gender in the United States today still
revolves around fairly clear notions of what it means to be male, and

sexuality is a central facet of male gender identity. Sexual acts and
desires—a sense of the "erotic" as D'Emilio and Freedman put it—have been
a crucial element of the identity of many gay men (D'Emilio & Freedman,
1988, p. 323). The conflicts between individual nonnormative sexuality
and cultural conceptions of normative maleness create interesting places
of slippage where the standards of gender are undermined or contested.
For instance, some facets of gay male culture in the United States are
rooted in a "self-conscious 'effeminacy* " whereby gay men adopt man-
nerisms most often associated in our culture with women (Weeks, 1985,
p. 190). The disposition has "played with gender definitions as they
existed, accepting the limits of the apparently natural dichotomies, but in
doing so sought to subvert them, treat them as inevitable but ridiculous"
(Weeks, 1985, p. 191). This effeminacy achieves its clearest manifestation
in drag and "genderfuck."
Clothes and other accompanying accoutrements are commonly used to
signify gender (and, at times, sexual) identity. How a person dresses says
much about self-definition and identity formation. One self-identified
"drag queen," Christopher Lone (1991), explained his dress as follows:
It is my choice not to be a man, and it is my choice to be beautiful. I am not

a female impersonator; I don't want to mock women. I want to criticize and
to poke fun at the roles of women and of men too. I want to show how
not-normal I can be. (p. 225)
This self-expression thus also serves as a political force of destabilization.

As Judith Butler (1990) states, "In imitating gender, drag implicitly
reveals the imitative structure of gender itself—as well as its contingency"
(p. 137). Furthermore, the entanglements of the relationship between
sexuality and gender in the culture can also be seen in drag. For instance,
Lone (1991) discusses how he initially adopted the "passive" role of a
"woman" in sex in an effort to "mimic straight society" but eventually
was able to adopt an active role in sex. He explains:
Looking back I can see that I did it because I too was trapped into thinking
that the appearance of a person completely defined their sexual prefer-
ence . . . [but after taking an active role in sex] I felt the fallacy of the
traditional men's role . . . versus the traditional female role. I think it also
made me understand drag and genderfuck more because it made visible and
experiential the nonsense of clear-cut opposites. It made me see that what I
had assumed were mutually exclusive roles were the same thing, (p. 226)
Both the entrenchment and the fragility of the binaristic logic that frames
the predominant cultural notions of sexual and gender identity categories
are evident in this testimony. The acknowledgment of this fragility is
critical for the recognition of the overriding fluidity of sexual and gender
identity.
The fluidity and instability of the discourses of sexuality and gender
(as well as the relationship between these discourses) can also be seen in
what Weeks (1985) calls, "the macho-style amongst gay men" (p. 191).
The emphasis on physical strength, blue jeans, muscle shirts, tank tops,
motorcycles, and other conventional characteristics of normative male
gender identity is frequent in gay culture. For example, the commonalities
in gay male pornography and heterosexual male pornography with
regard to the focus on sexual performance, size of the penis, and perpetual
male sexual desire reflect similarities in male gender roles and behavior.
Moreover, a weight room, spa, or other physically-oriented environment
often serves as a place for men to meet in gay male pornography. The
adoption of such characteristics can be read as an effort at destabilizing
predominant cultural constructions of masculinity. As Richard Dyer
explains:
By taking the signs of masculinity and eroticising them in a blatantly homo-

sexual context, much mischief is done to the security with which "men" are
defined in society, and by which their power is secured. If that bearded,
muscular beer drinker turns out to be a pansy, how ever are they going to
know the "real" men any more? (Dyer, as quoted in Weeks, 1985, p. 191)
Given this emphasis on conventional male gender characteristics,

Weeks maintains that gay people have increasingly "defined themselves
less as gender deviants and more as variants in terms of [sexual] object
choice." As a result, "sexual identity, at least in the lesbian or gay
subcultures of the west, has broken free from gender identity" (Weeks,
1985, p. 191). I do not agree with Weeks' conclusion that sexual identity
for gay people is now independent of considerations of gender. Rather, as
I have been arguing, sexual and gender identities are fluid, unstable,
contingent, distinct, but also entangled. If there is a "break" as Weeks puts
it concerning the identity of "macho" gay men, I would suggest that in
this case male gender identity has broken free from the imperative of
heterosexuality. This break is a space where the performative character of
gender identity can clearly be seen—witness "genderfuck" and the "trou-
blesome" (to the dominant culture) tangle of normative masculine gender
identity and nonnormative sexuality. This break is a space where the

scripts of normative masculinity can give way to a proliferation of mas-
culinities.
The Subversive Potential of Profeminist Men

Another example of the way cultural scripts can be rewritten can be
seen in the efforts of profeminist men. As Weeks explains, to be a "man"
in our culture one is supposed to stalwartly reject homosexuality and what
is considered feminine. Profeminist men not only resist these scripts but
also move beyond the acceptance of that which is constructed as feminine
to engage and involve themselves in feminist principles and actions.
Indeed, rather than creating new categories of masculinity and femininity,
or heterosexuality and homosexuality, at their best profeminist men chal-
lenge the "naturalness" of these divisions. Profeminists are often most
effective when they use their culturally privileged status as men as a
platform from which to disrupt categories of sexual and gender identity.
(The privileges of race, class, education, etc., of course, also provide some
profeminist men with access to other platforms.) This is often a delicate
balancing act, but by contextualizing and critiquing the closed category
of male, heterosexual identity, profeminist men pose a unique predica-
ment for cultural discourses of power. Much as heterosexual transvestites
(see note 8) and macho gay men are especially disturbing to normative
standards of masculinity, the slipperiness of profeminist men provides
them with opportunities to be extraordinarily subversive. Thus, whereas
women and gay men often are forced to seek to dismantle the categories
of gender and sexuality from culturally ordained positions of the "other,"
profeminist men can work to dismantle the system from positions of
power by challenging the very standards of identity that afford them
normative status in the culture.
One illustration of this subversiveness is the ability of profeminist men
to gain access to audiences of men who otherwise would be hostile to
feminist women or gay and lesbian individuals. I believe that engaging
heterosexual men in the ongoing discussion concerning the instability of
categories of sexuality and gender, as well as various issues such as rape,
sexual harassment, and homophobia, is critical for the continuing success
of feminist and gay and lesbian movements. Diverse yet complementary
strategies need to be employed to meet this end. This process of gaining
access to male audiences is, however, quite complex. If profeminist men
openly and confrontationally display their political allegiance when speak-
ing about sexuality and gender issues to nonfeminist men, they often face
the same hostility as feminist women (if not more hostility because of
violating an unspoken, assumed "brotherhood"). One strategy for gaining
access to nonfeminist men is for profeminist men to "pass" as "normal"
(nonfeminist) men. Such behavior is similar to selectively being clos-
eted. Eve Sedgwick's comments about the destabilizing potential of
"relations of the closet" are particularly poignant here. She states, "rela-
tions of the closet—the relations of the known and the unknown, the
explicit and the inexplicit around homo/heterosexual definition—have the
potential for being peculiarly revealing. . . . 'Closeted-ness' is itself a per-
formance . .." (Sedgwick, 1990, p. 3). Viewing "closeted-ness as perform-
ance" enables one to recognize the instability of closeted positions.
The metaphor of cross-dressing provides another way of conceiving
this sort of ambiguity that profeminist men can create and utilize. In
Western culture two basic presumptions about men are that they are
straight and that they are not feminist. Men who seek to destabilize notions
of sexual and gender identity (including these two presumptions) will
often position themselves against these two normative markers of mascu-
linity (i.e., as queer and/or feminist). But by "cross-dressing as normal
men" (and here I mean cross-dressing both in physical appearance and in
overt attitude), these profeminist men can "pass" as "normal men" and
can then move among other men, strategically subverting social demar-
cations of sexuality and gender. In one typical scenario a profeminist man
can pass long enough to be heard by nonfeminist men and then frame the
discourse in such a way that questions designed to destabilize cultural
constructions of sexuality and gender are prominently entertained. Un-
doubtedly raising these questions will reveal the profeminist man's politi-
cal beliefs, but by this time the crucial first step of gaining access to
nonfeminist men will have been achieved. Moreover, this public expres-
sion of feminist beliefs by profeminist men will also be disruptive of
governing attitudes to sexuality and gender in much the same way as
macho gay men. To paraphrase Richard Dyer: If that man in the corner is
drinking beer and talking about basketball and then starts espousing
feminist ideas, how can one tell who the "real men" are anymore?
Indeed, I believe that given cultural presumptions of normative behav-
ior, individuals are all often moving in and out of closets, are all often
"cross-dressing" based on cultural norms and expectations. This conse-
quence of cultural presumptions of normalcy ought to be utilized in efforts
to destabilize categories of sexuality and gender. As Judith Butler (1990)
says:
Inasmuch as "identity" is assured through the stabilizing concepts of sex,

gender and sexuality, the very notion of "the person" is called into question
by the cultural emergence of those "incoherent" or "discontinuous" gendered
beings who appear to be persons but who fail to conform to the gendered
norms of cultural intelligibility by which persons are defined, (p. 17)
Profeminist men can actively become such "incoherent and discontinuous

gendered beings" by adopting a strategy I will call the "politics of
ambiguity." By utilizing the fluidity of identity and the shield provided
by cultural presumptions of normalcy, profeminist men can thereby gain
access to other men and then reveal the "rewrites" they have made in the
cultural scripts of masculinity, as well as encourage, challenge, and
nurture other men to rewrite the scripts of their own identity.
Strategies for Change:

Identity Politics and Coalition Politics
I am not content to discuss theoretical aspects of identity without

addressing the political and activist implications of postmodern subjec-
tivity. Accordingly, I want to conclude this chapter by examining two
different strategies often employed in efforts for social change: identity
politics and coalition politics. Identity politics is generally organized
around subject positions or identity markers that are prominent demarca-
tions of difference in a given culture. These demarcations of difference
are so central to the organization and value systems of a culture that they
become naturalized and thus perceived as stable categories (or "forms" in
the words of Nietzsche) with stable meanings. For instance, although
sexuality has long played a central role in the constitution of identity in
the West,14 Eve Sedgwick (1990) argues that:
What was new from the turn of the century was the world-mapping by which
every given person, just as he or she was necessarily assignable to a male or
a female gender, was now considered necessarily assignable as well to a
homo- or hetero-sexuality, a binarized identity that was full of implications,
however confusing . . . [and] that left no space in the culture exempt from the
potent incoherences of homo/heterosexual definition, (p. 2)15
That is, the binary of heterosexual/homosexual has in the past hundred

years become an ossified marker of identity and difference. With this
broad change in mind, it is important to recognize that the more central
an element is to a system in power (in this case sexuality as a component

of individual identity) and the more fundamental that system is in the
grander scheme of structures of cultural order (categories of "sexed" people
in the United States), the more the "deviant" identification or behavior will be
contested and ostracized. Thus as sexuality became a more central element
of individual identification, the boundaries between normative sexuality
and aberrant sexuality became more precisely demarcated. In this case,
the vast multiplicity of sexuality became reduced to heterosexual (norma-
tive, extremely highly valued) and homosexual (deviant, negative cultural
valuation)—categories that are presumed to be stable in U.S. culture.
Given the increasing centrality of sexuality as a defining element of
individual identity and the constitution of the social subject, it is no
surprise that identity politics has been central in feminist and gay move-
ments. For example, Jeffrey Escoffier (1985) asserts, "The fundamental
ambivalence of homosexuals originating in their being raised to be het-
erosexuals made the discursive process of identity formation central to
gay and lesbian politics" (pp. 119-120). The centrality of identity politics
in gay activism in the United States today is illustrated by the emphasis
placed on "coming out" (and to some extent "outing") as a critical political
strategy. Beyond the political ramifications, "Coming out of the closet
was incorporated into the basic assumptions of what it meant to be gay.
As such, it came to represent not simply a single act, but the adoption of an
identity in which the erotic played a central role" (D'Emilio & Freedman,
1988, p. 323). In Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Sedgwick (1990) men-
tions a "T-shirt that ACT-UP sells in New York bearing the text, *I am out,
therefore I am' " (p. 4). This play on Descartes's dictum concerning the
essential constitutive facet of the human subject illustrates the manner in
which coming out is perceived as central to individual identity. The
centrality of coming out is reinforced by the political statement made by
the wearer of the T-shirt, demonstrating the importance of identity politics
in the strategies employed by many gay activists.
However, a danger lies in the assumptions often made in politics
grounded on identity. Just as it is important to question whether "thinking"
is a fixed state on which to ground human subjectivity, in this case one
must address the stability of "being out." Indeed, being out has highly
contingent implications—meaning different things to different people and
different things to the same person in different contexts. Moreover, just
as " 'closeted-ness' is a performance" (Sedgwick, 1990, p. 3), so too is
being out—and as such, there are a multiplicity of scripts available to be
performed and even more to be written.
Examining the problems of grounding social movements on identity

politics, feminist theorist Christina Crosby (1992) asserts that such for-
mulations run the risk of not interrogating the stability of identity itself.
Crosby cautions against assuming "that ontology is the ground of episte-
mology, that who I am determines what and how I know" (p. 137,
emphasis added). Remember Judith Butler's earlier assertion that the
social subject is constituted but not determined by cultural forces. This
distinction is critical and cannot be overstated. As a result, identity politics
is never innocent or complete. For as Donna Haraway (1991) makes clear,
"We are never [even] immediately present to ourselves," and thus any
politics grounded predominantly on a presumed stable aspect of individ-
ual identity will be limited in its ability to create fundamental changes in
social discourse and thus the systems and institutions of social power (p.
192). So the acknowledgment that identities are partial and unstable
must be continually foregrounded to avoid an identity politics that re-
mains rooted in value-laden demarcations of self and other. By maintain-
ing an awareness that the self is unstable and partial, one can escape from
closing categories of identity and subjectivity definition; rather, a fluidity
is maintained that ideally will allow for a pleasurable disunity, a prolif-
eration of difference.
This fluidity is crucial for a political strategy that is also central to
struggles for social change: coalition politics. Coalition politics is rooted
in the capacity of individuals and groups to come together in order to
achieve a common goal. However, the members of the coalition, as well
as the goal itself, are neither unified or stable. Much as individual subjec-
tivity is contingent and multiple, so too is the subjectivity of a coalition.
Much as a stable subject is not needed for personal agency, so too is
coalitions' capacity for action drawn from the multiple discourses and
identities that constitute its subjectivity. Coalitions "are not utterly
groundless, but their grounds are shifting, provisional, passionately felt
yet unreliable. Coalition politics makes sense for mobile subjectivities,
which can feel empathy with many different perspectives but find them-
selves fully at home in none" (Ferguson, 1993, p. 178). Acceptance of
such a formulation enables a group to come together across differences to
struggle for a common goal.
The recognition that mobile subjectivities do not provide a place where
one can be "home" is vital for postmodern concepts of the subject and
coalition politics. Describing postmodern "eccentric subjects," Teresa de
Lauretis (1990) asserts that such subjectivities entail "leaving or giving
up a place that is safe, that is 'home'—physically, emotionally, linguistically,
epistemologically—for another place that is unknown and risky . . . a

place of discourse from which speaking and thinking are at best tentative,
uncertain, unguaranteed" (p. 138). Similarly, Bernice Johnson Reagon
(1983), in her classic speech on coalition politics, states:
Coalition work is not work done in your home. Coalition work has to be done
in the streets. And it is some of the most dangerous work you can do. And you
shouldn't look for comfort. . . . In a coalition you have to give, and it is
different from your home. (p. 359)
So, one is faced with the question of who is prepared and able to take
such risks. These risks are ameliorated if the contingency and fluidity of
identity are recognized. As I have argued, gay/bisexual and profeminist
men who interrogate and rewrite the cultural scripts of masculinity are
often aware of the fluidity of identity. By perceiving themselves as
"mobile subjectivities . . . [which] are ambiguous: messy, multiple, unsta-
ble but persevering" (Ferguson, 1993, p. 154), such individuals are able
to honor and profit from the differences they will be sure to encounter in
a coalition (as well as in themselves). Moreover, the appreciation of
difference enables a coalition, for example, not to try to figure out what
a new cultural script for masculinity ought to be. Instead, the coalition
could focus on destabilizing and denaturalizing the scripts in place and create
the space for a variety of different masculinities to be performed. Focusing
on the creation of such space is consistent with the recognition that "in
coalition politics acceptance of incompleteness is crucial" (Ferguson,
1993, p. 35). If individuals embrace such ambiguity, they can perform
fluidly—and work in coalitions with others—in a contingent world.
Notes
1. See, for example, Foucault (1980b, pp. 93, 97-98).

2. de Lauretis (1990, pp. 115-116, 131-135).
3. See, for example, bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black
(1989) and But Some of Us Are Brave. (1982). Hull, Scott, and Smith, eds.
4. My understanding of the relationship between sex, gender, and sexuality is rooted
in the work of Judith Butler and Michel Foucault. See Butler (1990, chap. 1)., and
Foucault (1980a, pp. 24-25, 155).
5. See Butler (1990, p. 143) for a discussion of the "embarrassed, etc." that ends lists
of identity categories such as this one. Butler sees in this "etc." an inability to find closure
that reaffirms the multiplicity and variability of identities and subject positions.
6. It is perhaps curious that the antifoundationalist Butler uses the term precondition
in this formulation of agency. It seems appropriate to me, nonetheless, for Butler's
commitment to the cultural construction of subjectivity necessitates that individual
agency cannot be otherwise but derived from the constituted identities of the subject. A
person employs the capacities for agency that are a function of identity.
7. I am not trying to generalize here what "gender" is for all gay men. Indeed, "the idea
that there are homosexualities rather than homosexuality is now a familiar one" (Weeks,
1985, pp. 196-207) and thus demands that male gender be conceived of as plural as well.
8. I want to make clear that I am here talking about only gay men who dress in drag.
I am not at all suggesting that all men who cross-dress identify as gay. On the subject of
cross-dressing, I recommend Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and
Cultural Anxiety. For instance, on the pervasive cultural association between cross-
dressing and gay men she states:
In mainstream culture it thus appears just as unlikely that a gay man will be pictured
in nontransvestite terms as it is that a transvestite man will be pictured in non-gay terms.
It is as though the hegemonic cultural imaginary is saying to itself: if there is a difference
(between gay and straight), we want to be able to see it, and if we see a difference (a man
in women's clothes), we want to be able to interpret it. In both cases, the conflation is
fueled by a desire to tell the difference, to guard against a difference that might
otherwise put the identity of one's own position in question. (If people who dress like
me might be gay, then someone might think I'm gay, or I might get too close to someone
I don't recognize as gay; if someone who is heterosexual like me dresses in women's
clothes, what is heterosexuality? etc.) Both the energies of conflation and the energies of
clarification and differentiation between transvestitism and homosexuality thus mobilize
and problematize, under the twin anxieties of visibility and difference, all of the culture's
assumptions about normative sex and gender roles. (Garber, 1993, p. 130)
9. Judith Butler describes drag as an effort in parody that she sees as a fundamental
political strategy in the struggle to deconstruct conventional categories of sexuality and
gender. Discussing drag, she states, "This perpetual displacement constitutes a fluidity of
identities that suggests an openness to resignification and recontextualization; parodic
proliferation deprives hegemonic culture and its critics of the claim to naturalized or
essential gender identities" (Butler, 1990, p. 138).
10. I do not want to categorize genres of pornography as gay or heterosexual too
exclusively. Individuals of any sexual or gender identity may find stimulation in various
pornographic materials that are not necessarily created with them in mind.
11. The normative status is, of course, more available for heterosexually identified
men in U.S. culture than for queer men, but queer pro feminists still have access to some
elements of normative gender identity.
12. This is a very delicate issue, which was addressed in feminist circles in Elaine
Showalter's 1983 essay, "Critical Cross-Dressing: Male Feminists and the Woman of the
Year." In this important, but problematic piece, Showalter analyzes the film Tootsie and
concludes that it is not a feminist film in part because it contains an affirmation of the
message "feminist ideas are much less threatening when they come from a man" (Showalter,
1987, p. 123). For critiques of Showalter's essay see Craig Owens (1987), "Outlaws: Gay
Men in Feminism," and Marjorie Garber (1993, pp. 6-7). Though it is troubling, I believe
that this message still requires consideration in U.S. culture today, particularly for men.
The fault lies not with feminist women, but with the acculturation of men who are taught
not to take women's voices seriously and that feminists are social deviants. As a result
profeminist men have an important role to play in speaking to other men.
13. The historical roots of passing in the West primarily concern issues of race, gender,
and sexuality. For a compelling examination of the politics of passing and the nature of
passing as performance, see the film Paris Is Burning (Livingston, 1991) as well as bell
hooks' critique of the film, "Is Paris Burning?" (hooks, 1992, p. 147). hooks critiques
director Jennie Livingston for her silencing of the racial elements of African-American
gay male ball culture, especially the unaddressed assumption that the highly valued and
highly sought femininity is a femininity "totally personified by whiteness."
14. As Foucault asserts, "Since Christianity, the Western world has never ceased
saying, 'To know who you are, know what your sexuality is' " (Foucault, 1988, p. 111).
15. On the issue of why heterosexual/homosexual became the central axis of sexual
identity amid all other possible options, see Sedgwick (1990, pp. 8-9).
16. Recall Foucault's much cited assertion about the turn-of-the-century shift in
Western understandings of homosexuality, "The sodomite had been a temporary aberra-
tion; the homosexual was now a species" (Foucault, 1980a, p. 43).
17. As I discussed earlier, given the governing dualistic framework of identity, bisexual-
ity was all but obliterated.
18. On the role of coming out as a political strategy see D'Emilio and Freedman (1988,
pp. 322-323).
19. Nietzsche also recognizes both the opaqueness and instability of individual iden-
tity. In The Gay Science he states, "Now something that you formerly loved as a truth or
probability strikes you as an error; you shed it and fancy that this represents a victory for
your reason; but perhaps this error was as necessary for you then, when you were still a
different person—you are always a different person—as are all your present 'truths' "
(Nietzsche, 1974, p. 307; emphasis added).
20. Nevertheless, identity markers can be helpful in locating one's positions in a
cultural framework (Haraway, 1991, pp. 192-195). These positions are not necessarily
locked boxes (unless one allows them to be). I offer here the advice of William Connolly
(1991) on the process of self-identification:
To come to terms with one's implication in these strategies [the consolidation of

identity through the constitution of difference], one needs to examine established
tactics of self-identity, not so much by engaging in self-inquiry into one's deep interior
as by exploring the means by which one has become constituted as what one is, by
probing the structures that maintain the plausibility of those configurations, and by
analyzing from a perspective that problematizes the certainty of one's self-identity the
effects these structures and tactics have on others, (pp. 9-10)
Rather than denying my own implication in the discourses of sexuality and gender that
predominate in U.S. culture, I want to acknowledge my own struggles to understand the
breadth and depth of the limits imposed on my identity. Thus although I am hesitant but
willing to label myself as a profeminist, heterosexual male for purposes of providing
markers for readers to analyze and deconstruct my own work, I want to emphasize that
as I write, play, and live, I am trying to open up these categories of identification rather
than close them around me like a protective shield.
References
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Routledge.
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New York: Routledge.
Connolly, W. E. (1991). Identity\difference: Democratic negotiations of political para-
dox. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Crosby, C. (1992). Dealing with difference. In J. Butler & J. W. Scott (Eds.), Feminists
theorize the political (pp. 130-143). New York: Routledge.
de Lauretis, T. (1990). Eccentric subjects: Feminist theory and historical consciousness.
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D'Emilio, J., & Freedman, E. B. (1988). Intimate matters: A history of sexuality in
America. New York: Harper & Row.
Escoffier, J. (1985, July-October). Sexual revolution and the politics of gay identity.
Socialist Review, Numbers 81 & 82, 75(4 & 5), 119-153.
Ferguson, K. E. (1993). The man question: Visions of subjectivity in feminist theory.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
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interviews and other writings (pp. 78-100). New York: Pantheon.
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culture: Interviews and other writings, 1977-1984 (pp. 110-124). New York: Rout-
ledge.
Garber, M. (1993). Vested interests: Cross-dressing and cultural anxiety. New York:
HarperPerennial.
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Routledge.
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Press.
hooks, b. (1992). Black looks: Race and representation. Boston: South End Press.
Hull, G. T., Scott, P. B., & Smith, B. (Eds.). (1982). But some of us are brave: Black
women's studies. New York: The Feminist Press.
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(Ed.), Proceedings from "Engendering Knowledge/Engendering Power: Feminism as
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years of gay sunshine: An anthology of gay history, sex, politics, and culture (pp.
224-227). San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press.
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Hollingdale, Trans.). New York: Vintage.
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Owens, C. (1987). Outlaws: Gay men in feminism. In A. Jardine & P. Smith (Eds.), Men
in feminism (pp. 219-232). New York: Methuen.
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Halperin (Eds.), The lesbian and gay studies reader (pp. 397-415). New York: Rout-
ledge.
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13
The Male Body and
Literary Metaphors for Masculinity
ARTHUR FLANNIGAN-SAINT-AUBIN
[T]he male issue is to accept our genitals the way they are most of the
time rather than . . . holding onto exaggerations of what the penis is like
at erection as the proper image of masculine self-definition [. ..] we
males need to honor and celebrate our personal experience with our
genitals. We men have often reduced women to their biological sexuality
[while avoiding or denying] the truth of our own biological sexuality.
We have fabricated a steel fig leaf (Haddon, 1988, p. 23)l
Masculinity, in its psychologic and cultural manifestations and implica-

tions, is assumed to be the homologue of the phallic genitality of the male
with, at the very least, metaphoric connections to it—in part, aggressive,
violent, penetrating, goal-directed, linear. Lacking in this perspective in
particular is what I shall call the testicular and testerical aspect of male
sexual anatomy and physiology. If the testicles are entered into the
equation, therefore, an entirely different metaphoricity emerges, stem-
ming from testicular/testerical characteristics: passive, receptive, enclos-
ing, stable, cyclic, among others—qualities that are lost when male equals
penis. Men need to rehabilitate the testicular/testerical mode and thereby
the fullness of the experience of the male body and male biologic sex. Of
course, everything that is not phallic and in line with traditional mascu-
linity is automatically considered other, that is, feminine; as a result, as I
239
shall argue, these other components of and metaphors for masculinity,

although they are authentically and intrinsically male, are not viewed or
perhaps even experienced consciously as male. A fuller appreciation of
the form and function of the male body can be the starting point for a fuller
knowledge of the complexity of masculinity, thus challenging the mascu-
line stereotype at the very level of the body where in fact it appears to
originate (Haddon, 1988, p. 8). In this chapter I shall begin by (re)turning
to the locus of the male body as a metaphoric springboard to offer some
reflections on the construction and experience of masculinity; I shall
conclude by suggesting that the phallic ideal (in the guise of Superman,
for example) occludes the complexity and perhaps the contradiction
inherent in any representation of masculinity within patriarchy.
Given the intriguing parallels that exist between biologic maleness at
the chromosomal, embryological, and postnatal levels and masculinity as
psychologic and cultural constructs, it would seem logical to (re)turn to
the body, and in particular to the adult male body, for a more comprehen-
sive and consciously constructed frame of reference. Sexual anatomy and
physiology can provide a rich frame indeed and has provided a starting
point for many women writers and theorists to explore femininity. Men
too can, must, and, I contend, do use their bodies to read and to write, to
construct and deconstruct the world. Because a sense of maleness and an
experience of the body as male are so pervasive in the evolution of
consciousness (and Western civilization in particular) (Ong, 1981), it
seems important to pursue the issue. Yet this very pervasiveness renders
it impossible to give a full account of its significance to the individual
male psyche and to the culture as a whole.
Patriarchal ideology takes the male body, or rather a fantasied version
of the male body, as its metaphoric basis, as the metaphor for its generating
and structuring principle. In other words, patriarchy homologizes human
existence with man's corporeality and man's experience of his bodily
nature as male. The organization of social and cultural life within patriar-
chy mirrors this fantasied collective male experience and the individual
man's experience of himself and his relationship to his surroundings. The
individual male who poses the most basic question of his identity, of who
he is, concludes that he is different from his (female) birther/nurturer. Just
as male identity (and subsequently masculinity) is predicated on separa-
tion from an original, feminine source, within patriarchy, knowledge in
general is achieved through differentiation, through separation, and through
a polarization of opposites that can be experienced only as conflictual
and hierarchical: other/self, feminine/masculine, human/divine, Evil/
The Male Body and Literary Metaphors for Masculinity 241
Good, among others. Any difference is necessarily comparative: inferior/

superior.
Because masculinity, within this perspective, is other than or different
from femininity (the source), it develops oppositionally to nature. Mas-
culinity is a "becoming," a process as opposed to a perceived feminine
"being" or state. Like "progress" within patriarchy, it is something to be
achieved and to be experienced as triumph over nature, and therefore it
seeks to penetrate and appropriate virgin frontiers. It is linear in orienta-
tion and directed toward goals. Competition and power are the watch-
words. That this is metaphorically connected to the male body, to the
individual man's experience of his body, is evident: Masculinity is (like)
progress, the patriarchal ideal; so to be masculine is to be like the penis or
phallus: "potent, penetrating, outward thrusting, initiating, forging ahead into
virgin territory, opening the way, swordlike, able to cut through, able to clear
or differentiate, goal-oriented, to the point, focused, directive, effective,
aimed, hitting the mark, strong, erect" (Haddon, 1988, p. 10).
Because a man's most basic sense of self necessarily stems from or at
least must necessarily include a conception and image of the body as male,
it would be surprising if biologic maleness did not entrain a particular
self-identity and therefore an entire psychoculture distinct from those that
would be engendered by biologic femaleness. Yet as I have suggested,
patriarchy's primal metaphor is anchored by a particular version of the
male body. For when examined carefully, that is, by teasing out the
internal contradictions and blindspots within patriarchy, it is clear that
masculinity and therefore patriarchy—or rather masculinity as it ex-
presses itself within patriarchy—derives from a very selective and partial
conception and experience of the male body. Patriarchal polarization of
opposites skews the male's experience of his bodily nature and it makes
masculinity monolithic, seemingly without internal contradiction. But
masculinity must not be confused with masculinity within patriarchy, and
the experience of the male body must not be reduced to or confused with
patriarchy's conscious account of the experience of the male body. Though
this masculinity may indeed be partially correct, it is, at the very least,
incomplete.
Like Haddon, I maintain that biologic gender can be explored as
symbolic or emblematic of the ontology of masculinity. The symbolic
meaning that men attach to the form and function of male organs suggests
the metaphoric connections between the experiences of the male body and
psychologic masculinity: In other words, the experiences of the male body
constitute indices, albeit lacunary ones, of masculinity. This symbolic
meaning and metaphoric connection can be discerned, I contend, in male

fantasies including myths, dreams, daydreams, and male readings and
writings of history and fiction. I too shall suggest a complex masculinity
for which there is only symbolic as opposed to direct knowledge: Trapped
within patriarchal logos, masculinity ultimately may be unknowable, but
it can be broached or inferred from the symbolic secret code of the male
body. In this chapter the question that I shall pose periodically and in
different guises is the following: How might a more conscious experience
and comprehensive account of the experience of the male body serve as
a metaphor for understanding masculine psychology and culture in gen-
eral and for understanding male/masculine discursive practices or inter-
pretive strategies in particular?
This is not to be confused with biodeterminism. This is not to suggest,
nor do I believe, that anatomy is destiny or that biologic structures and
functions produce psychologic or cultural manifestations. I am suggesting
rather that biology on the one hand and psychic and psychologic processes
(psychology/culture) on the other are connected and are reinforced in a
complex, symbiotic relationship: Consciously, men internalize and theo-
rize masculinity filtered, on the one hand, through the experiences of the
male body and, on the other hand, through the "psyche's evolving repre-
sentation of aspects of itself as male" (Haddon, 1988, p. 9) or as somehow
part and partial to male anatomy. In other words, masculinity, like femi-
ninity, has a biologic component; although neither is dependent on bio-
logic forces, they are not purely social constructs with no physiologic
component.
In moving beyond patriarchal thinking, a new construction and a
different experience of masculinity seem to emerge and, therein, the possi-
bilities of a new psychoculture. Of course, the crucial questions remain to
be posed and explored: Is and how is a nonpatriarchal conception of
masculinity possible? Is it possible to predict how masculinity would
construct itself nonpatriarchally? How are patriarchal ideology and dis-
course inflected by displacing the concept of the phallus from its central
position? Can one conceive of masculinity as if one were no longer
constrained by the contingencies of socialization and cultural biases?
These are challenging questions with far-reaching implications; I cannot
attempt, of course, to address any of them in a comprehensive manner
within the scope of this chapter. At the very least, however, the locus of
the male body and biologic maleness are promising places to begin to
address these issues because the physiologic differences between men and
women mirror how people differentiate between masculinity and feminin-
ity as inherent divisions within the human psyche and thus how people
differentiate and understand all "genderized" polarities, whether real or
imagined and whether in the body, mind, or culture. I maintain that sexual
physiology and therefore male and female bodily differences provide the
most apt, albeit imperfect, basis from which to construct metaphors that
will allow the envisioning of femininity and masculinity in a way that
would effectively counter, as Haddon (1988) writes, "both Freud's reduc-
tive and patriarchally determined view of anatomy and destiny and the
abstract notion of 'unisex' as an ideal"(pp. 6-7).
Minding and Mining the Male Body
Because at every stage of ontogenetic development biologic maleness

consists of a rerouting, so to speak, of the encoded female and because it
consists of imposing a male pattern that interrupts an original process, it
might indeed be said that the Y chromosome and the male gonad that it
engenders are homologues of the structuring forces within patriarchy.
They create the male/masculine specificity by establishing an all-important
differentiation between an unmatched pair and by posing themselves and
developing counter to the original (and, from a masculinist position,
deemed "inferior") female/feminine source. If, however, metaphors are
constructed based on chromosomal patterns and hormonal metabolism
and, in particular, if the Y chromosome is taken as a metaphor for the
masculine impulse and principle as they are manifested at the intrapsy-
chic, interpersonal, and sociocultural levels, what becomes of the male X
chromosome? How might it enter into the generation of metaphors or the
metaphoricity? While concentrating on the XX pair and the Y in the XY
pair, researchers have virtually ignored the disposition and function of the
male X chromosome, Although in the XY pair it is genetically male, the
X chromosome is referred to as "female." As will become clearer in the
discussion to follow, the privileging of the Y chromosome and the ten-
dency to dismiss the male X chromosome as "female" correspond to the
tendency to privilege phallic masculinity at the expense of testicular/
testerical masculinity and to dismiss everything else as nonmasculine and
therein feminine. Therefore, in addition to constructing metaphors for
masculinity—metaphors with which and through which one might expe-
rience, contemplate, and theorize masculinity—that would reinsert the X
into the XY pair, I shall also suggest ones that would attribute to this gene
locus, in addition to its differentiating compulsion, its binding/bonding
impulsion, that is, its impulse to seek a pairing, a twin, a bond—its

compensatory reaction to the condition of being uniquely, in all of mam-
malian life, without a double.
Moreover, it is evident that what the experts, beginning with Freud,
label "postnatal masculinity" is indeed a process, a "becoming"; it is
equally evident that masculinity, like maleness, is a high-risk process as
there is so much that can go awry. Therefore, psychologically as well as
biologically, and contrary to Freud's contention, femininity is the natural
condition of which masculinity is a modification. Masculinity, like male-
ness, has to be developed in a way and to an extent that femininity does
not. All infants are necessarily "feminine"; the male has to "grow out of"
or "away from" his first encounter with mother's female body and femi-
nine qualities. The infant has to become masculine by proving that he is
not feminine and by erecting "intrapsychic barriers that ward off the
desire to maintain the blissful sense of being one with mother" (Stoller,
1979, p. 33); and, indeed, clinical studies demonstrate that unless this
merging is interrupted, males develop "femininity." Because nature itself
is envisioned to be female—it is, after all, Mother Nature—to become
masculine is to become different from nature, to oppose nature, to become
unnatural.
Indeed, contest/opposition appears to be the masculine modality par
excellence and the obvious masculine route to self-identity: I come to
know myself only by knowing that something else is not me and is to some
extent opposed to or set against me. Etymologically, contest derives its
root from the Latin testis (witness) and, as I indicate below, so does
testesltesticle, it derives from trei (three) and sta (stand); it relates to
tri-st-i, a third person standing by to bear witness in a dispute. "Thus a
testis or witness, a * third stander,' implies an agonistic situation between
two persons which the testis or third person reports from the outside"
(Ong, 1981, pp. 15,45).
In many species in the animal world, including humans, opposition,
agon, and adversativeness seem to play a significantly more determining
role in the existence of males than females (Newmann, 1954). But as any
male in this culture can confirm, masculinity has constantly to be proved
and can at any time be taken away because genitals provide no assurance.
In fact, in most cultures in which the issue has been investigated, men are
more concerned about threats—real or imagined—to their masculinity
than are women about threats to their femininity. This insecurity and sense
of inferiority can be seen, for example, in the precariousness of the male
claim to paternity—whereas maternity is never an uncertainty for women—
which results in male demands for female chastity and fidelity (Ong, 1981,
p. 4). This insecurity seems also to be the initial impetus to male bonding
in all-male groups and seems to be associated with the tendency toward
gynophobia, femiphobia, misogyny, and homophobia, a tendency that is
found in both males and females and that, some theorists conclude, results
from a defensive reaction against uterine and postuterine maternal control
(Money, 1974).
For the little boy, masculinity is experienced as constant insecurity in
face of the threat of feminine absorption; the ubiquitous fear that one's
sense of maleness and masculinity are in danger, what theorists label
"symbiosis anxiety," is a major factor in the creation and experience of
masculinity. When compared to girls, boys, therefore, appear to experi-
ence more stress as they develop and mature. This stress can be witnessed
in the higher rates of learning disabilities (such as dyslexia), speech
disorders (such as stuttering), and personality disorders in males. Boys
and men seem frequently driven to create and to re-create this stress: Are
daredevils like Evel Knievei, for example, paragons of masculinity as
some would claim (Haddon, 1988)?
Masculinity within patriarchy is a temporal, linear "program" (left to
the caprice of Father Time), and a male must find it outside of the self;
masculinity is not easily interiorized. One sees homologues again with
biologic maleness, for when the male matures sexually, the testicles
descend outside the body cavity proper. Why this evolved remained
unclear for a long time because the physiological reasons are not espe-
cially apparent—the testicles play no role in intromission; how this
evolved is still not understood. Finally, though, the accepted symbol for
man, Mars's spear (GO, is especially appropriate: it is the symbol of
exteriority, conflict, stress, partition, and change.
The individual male who successfully completes the perilous process
that patriarchy programs for him reaps his rewards: phallic masculinity
and, as suggested later, heterosexuality. But rather than considering his
"unsuccessful" brother as mired in perversions and neuroses, one might
question implicitly, first, the explicit claims of the desirability of phalli-
cism and, second, the explicit claims of the naturalness of heterosexuality.
In a word, one might reclaim and acclaim the testicular and homosexual
options as male/masculine postures or articulations. I shall turn my
attention presently to the issue of a testicular/testerical masculinity while
considering implicitly two related questions: Is it impossible to imagine
a construction of masculinity that is nonphallic? Is it equally impossible
to imagine an experience of masculinity that is not homophobic?
Another Bio-logic:
Displacing the Penis/Phallus6
and Toward the (Re)inscription of the Testicles
There is indeed another bio-logic, another logic of and to the male body;
one might well ask if studies of the Y chromosome and male hormones
reflect the biology of masculinity or the masculinity of biology. I am
suggesting, of course, that biology, all knowledge, all civilization is
"engendered"; that is, reading, writing, thinking cannot be exercised
neutrally, without passing through the sieve of gender. The very manner
of exploring the biological and psychological sciences bears the mark of
patriarchal ideology because, as Evelyn Fox Keller (1985) indicates, a
masculine conception of scientific investigation has shaped the concep-
tion of nature, including human nature.
However, to re-pose the basic question that interests me presently: How
does living in a physical body that is male contribute to self-identity and
a conception of the world? In exploring the male body, one must attempt
to transcend certain patriarchal or rather masculinist patterns, the first of
which is a mode of thinking that associates the very notion of body with
woman and with the feminine. The second is that "male" equals penis/
phallus, that is, the visible, simple, straightforward as contrasted to
"female," that is, the hidden, complicated, cyclic. When the male body, in
and of itself at the mature adult sexual level, is considered as metaphoric
locus, one must indeed begin to relinquish many of the stereotypes about
gender. Particular attention to male anatomy and physiology in all its
complexity leads, as I have already suggested, to the generation of new
metaphors and a conception of masculinity that goes counter to many of
the traditional generalizations and stereotypes. When all of the complex
and seemingly contrariant aspects of the male body are considered, what
emerges, in particular, is a metaphor for masculinity that seems illusory
and self-contradicting; what emerges is a metaphor that suggests that
masculinity is de rigueur multifaceted and plastic; and what emerges
ultimately is a metaphor that confirms that phallic masculinity is indeed
factitious.
Psychoanalysts are rather convincing in revealing how the genitals play
a role in gender identity and how an awareness of the organs' dimensions,
the spontaneous sensations and the sensations produced from self-explo-
ration, and the visualization of one's own genitals and those of others
contribute to the developing body ego and "help to define the psychic
dimensions of one's sex to oneself (Stoller, 1979, p. 41; Stoller, 1974-
1976, p. 39). As far as the male is concerned, psychoanalytic theory, for

the most part, explains the development of male sexuality and accounts
for the developing male body ego in terms of how the little boy manages
the fantasied pleasures and dangers of having a penis. The penis, the
theory goes, endows the boy with a sense of pride and power and sub-
sequently with the anxiety from knowing that not all beings are so
endowed. In other words, the little boy's sense of himself is coextensive
with the physicality of the penis and thus with the meaning that he gives
it. The exclusive (and some would contend obsessive) emphasis on the
penis in psychoanalytic theory—at the expense of the testes for the man
and the clitoris and vagina for the woman—and what indeed seems to be
ubiquitous phallocentrism and phallogocentrism are scripted into patriar-
chy and are seen in the purest form in the masculinist myth as Freud
himself inflected it.
Freud concluded that the little boy, when compared to the little girl, is
privileged and superior: He is born with genitals that are visible, easily
accessible, and easily manipulated to produce pleasure. Although his
prized possession can be threatened, he is still ahead of the little girl
because threat of loss is not as traumatic or ultimately debilitating as the
girl's original deprivation. The little boy's other crucial advantage is that
his first relationship is (appropriately or "naturally") heterosexual as his
initial love object (Mother) is of the opposite sex. Yet despite his advan-
tages—or rather because of them—the little boy's very maleness (penis)
and heterosexuality (desire) eventually will be the cause of his trauma:
His natural desire (for Mother) will provoke the threats (of castration)
from a formidable rival (Father); moreover, his anxiety augments when
he sees that others (penisless girls) are lacking or have lost the prized
object. If he does not successfully negotiate these threats to his masculin-
ity and heterosexuality, the little boy finds refuge in perversions and
neuroses.
But one must ask, where are the testicles (not to mention the sphincter)
in this familiar scenario? Although recognized as a locus of erotic
pleasure and thus, I would contend, subject to the same kind of symbolic
investment as the penis, the testicles are rarely considered in explanations
of the genesis of the male body ego, in the explications of male sexuality,
or in the development of masculinity. Although some psychoanalysts have
long acknowledged that the physical possession of the penis does not
appear to account for all of the dimensions of male identity and a sense
of maleness, they do not look elsewhere for clues to these other dimen-
sions or even attempt, in some cases, to specify them.
In all of the case histories of boys born without a penis, these boys do
possess testes in a normal scrotum—a fact that analysts remark without
according it much importance. They proceed as though the penis alone
constitutes male genitalia and therefore as though this organ alone, in
conjunction with mysterious uterine and postuterine hormonal forces,
contributes to a sense of maleness and masculinity. Even when it is allowed
that the scrotum and testes might play a role in the development of a sense
of maleness and masculinity, it is thought to be a secondary, indirect role;
they are dismissed simply as substitutes for the absent penis. Most ana-
lysts do not think that they contribute directly to a sense of maleness and
perhaps only indirectly through the attitudes of parents and others. It is
significant, I believe, that in all of the clinical cases reported in the
literature on testicular abnormality—for example, Klinefelter's syndrome
or other male hypogonadism in which males who appear physically
normal at birth are discovered in adolescence to possess testes that do not
produce sufficient levels of androgen—the subjects were considered
pathological in gender identity or gender role behavior or as perverted in
sexual practice, whether or not they possessed a functioning penis. The
point I wish to make is that one man's pathology or perversion might very
well be another's nonphallic masculinity. Finally, it is remarkable that,
given the privileged position that the complex occupies in psychoanalytic
theory, neither Freud nor his disciples have ever commented on the
paradox that castration literally means the removal of the testicles.
The privileging of the penis results, of course, in phallocentrism and
the phallic metaphor for masculinity, which, though an incomplete symbol
or index, has both negative and positive articulations. To be phallic in the
positive sense is, for example, to be penetrating: inquisitive, persistent,
steady, objective, courageous, discriminating, dominant. To be phallic in
the negative sense is, for example, to be intrusive: violent, unyielding,
discriminatory, exploitive, domineering. Traditionally, as I have already
noted, everything not within these categories is taken to be nonmasculine
and feminine. In particular, what are thought to be vagina- or womblike
qualities— enclosing, protective, gestating, stable—are considered to be
foreign, unnatural, and undesirable in the male. But if a man's experience
of his body predisposes him to view the world through the filter of a
phallic archetype, what metaphors and what masculinity emerge when he
reclaims his testicular/testerical nature? How do possession of the testes
and the production of sperm, for example, affect the developing body ego?
What metaphoricity might be attached to what is now recognized to be
male biologic rhythms and cycles? What are the intraphysic and interper-
sonal implications?
These are difficult questions to answer. As indicated above, very little
study has been conducted by psychologists or psychoanalysts on the
symbolic or metaphoric meaning that men attach to the testes and scrotum;
but neither has there been extensive study by biologists, physiologists,
neurologists, or psychoendocrinologists on the form and function of the
testes, such as spermatogenesis—especially when compared to the num-
ber of studies focused on female anatomy and sexuality and on phallic
male sexuality. One can only speculate as to how the individual man, no
longer dispossessed of the testicular, will experience and verbalize his
bodily experience as male and as a male.
But one might begin with a return to etymology. Because the Latin
testes is the plural of testis, a witness, the testes were thought perhaps to
bear witness to the truth—which is the meaning of testify and attest; and
the truth of patriarchy is manhood, virility. Testicle derives from testiculiy
little witness. Testicle is also related to testa, which designates both an
earthen pot for seed storage and the skull that protects the brain. In botany,
the testa is the protective outer encasing of a seed. On the other hand, and
as I have already suggested, testes/testicles are also related to contest,
testiness, and thus to opposition and agon in general. This gives a first
indication of the two directions into which a metaphoricity based on the
testes will lead.
First, and obviously:
The testicular component of a man's sexuality has very different qualities than
the penis or phallus. Physiologically, the testicle is a reservoir, a holding
place, where seed is nurtured to maturation. Unlike the penis, whose power
manifests itself through intermittent erection and ejaculation, the testicle is
stable and abiding. It quietly and steadily undergirds the man's sexuality. It
"hangs in there." The testicle is the germinal source, the vessel from which
is poured forth the sap or water of life. (Haddon, 1988, p. 11)
On the basis of these qualities, if one were to imagine the masculine prototype
as uniquely or predominantly testicular, it would indeed fall within the
realm of the traditional feminine. I realize, as others have pointed out, that
to call this masculine nature "testicular" is a bit misleading because it
seems to suggest that that part of male anatomy commonly referred to as
the "balls" is one, simple organ. Anatomically, it refers in fact to a number
of structures that include more than just the testicles proper.
However, if taken together, the phallic and what I am calling the

testicular offer a rather intriguing emblem for masculinity. Just as the
phallic masculine can be both positive and negative, so too can the
testicular masculine. Whereas Haddon postulates three testicular possi-
bilities—wholesome, exaggerated, and atrophied—I maintain that there
are two. The positive encompasses what she labels wholesome and the
negative what she labels as exaggerated and atrophied. In fact, it is only
this positive aspect—"characterized by sourcefulness, resourcefulness"
and relating to "staying power, patience, steadiness, steadfastness, abiding
presence, and providing of an undergirding, supportive base" (Haddon,
1988, p. 15)—that I designate as testicular. I too maintain then that a man
is experiencing the testicular mode when he is nurturing, incubating,
containing, and protecting. The testicular masculine is characterized by
patience, stability, and endurance.
I postulate and label as testerical the negative potential deriving from
the testicle, evident already in the contest/opposition associations of
testes. For just as one might exaggerate the positive phallic traits, one
might do the same with the nonphallic: Staying power and steadfastness
might become stubbornness or intractability and might lead to holding on
when letting go would be preferable; incubation might become, in an
exaggerated state, stagnation. The testerical masculine then is charac-
terized by testiness and all that being testy implies: petulant, fretful,
insolent, temperamental, morose, and so forth. It is characterized also by
lack of direction and by inertia. Evidently, most of the testerical, like the
testicular, is considered effeminate and is therefore usually considered
undesirable in man. It is important, however, to resist conceiving or
theorizing the testicular/testerical as nonmasculine by subsuming it under
the feminine.
The patriarchal ideal is unequivocally phallic; there are few nonphallic
role models. I maintain that in fact within patriarchy, the construction of
a masculine identity and the experience of masculinity are indeed contin-
gent upon a denial of the testicular/testerical; they are contingent on a
man's projecting this aspect of the self onto woman. Yet the phallic need
not be normative. Men need to return to the body to attest (to) their
testicular/testerical nature, which for too long now has been protested,
contested, detested, and projected onto women. As stated in the epi-
graph to this chapter, the male issue is to abandon the long-cherished
notion that the erect penis is the proper and unique image and index of
masculine identity; the male issue is to accept and to experience fully the
biosexual, the body, the genitals the way that they are most of the time:
nonerect but "hanging in there." Men, who have often reduced women to
their biologic sexuality, must indeed acknowledge the truth of their
own bodies, of their own sexuality. Men must indeed dare to remove the
steel fig leaf.
When men reclaim this testicular and testerical nature, a new concep-
tion of the body and of the world as filtered through the body becomes
accessible. If, as I have suggested, men have tended to reduce women to
biology while denying their own corporeality and corporeal reality, it is
to a large extent because of the regularity and what has been considered
(in folklore and myth) the magical quality of the female menstrual cycle,
a biologic rhythm that men lack. Although there are other biologic rhythms—
both male and female—the female menstrual cycle is the one that has
received the most intensive scientific inquiry: One has only to point out,
for example, the myriad of studies devoted to the biologic origins of the
cycle, "the physiologic actions occurring during the cycle, the mor-
phologic changes associated with these changes, and the psychologic
concomitants of the cycle" (Persky, 1987, p. 115). As is the case with
the female menstrual cycle, through science and folklore one has exten-
sive knowledge of as well as many misconceptions about the female
menopause, but relatively little knowledge about the corresponding male
climacteric. Nevertheless, there is clinical evidence of the male climac-
teric with both physiologic and psychologic manifestations including
decreased memory, irritability, and depression. Moreover, male hormonal
profile is connected to psychologic stress and disturbances and is there-
fore implicated in mental processes and in the etiology of mental disease
(Persky, 1987, pp. 17, 80; Werner, 1979, p. 1141).
Despite the scientific evidence, men have thought of and continue to
think of themselves as somehow less connected to or dependent on the
body; that is, men, when compared to women, are thought of as having
fewer if any psychologic processes related to bodily functions and meta-
bolism. Why else, to cite one obvious example of this, is there a clinical
and a colloquial hysteria but no testerial However, the more important
question to pose is the following: What metaphors for masculinity impose
themselves when one reconsiders and reexperiences the male body con-
sciously through its cycles and rhythms? To repeat, however, the impor-
tance for me is not to be found in the biologic origins of male rhythms
and cycles or even in their psychologic concomitants per se. It is to be
found rather in how a fuller awareness of male bodily function might serve
as metaphors for understanding and experiencing masculinity in general and
therefore for deconstructing or decoding masculine discursive practices in
particular. How, for example, might this help to diagram male language?
How might this masculinity be implicated in literary structures, in both
the reading and writing of texts? Moreover, might there be literary or
textual homologues to male stuttering, male dyslexia, and other male
disorders, as there are surely discursive homologues to male masochism,
for example?
Although the predominately (or occasionally the uniquely) testicu-
lar/testerical male role models are invariably depicted as nonphallic—Pee
Wee Herman, Uncle Remus, Santa Claus, and Mr. Rogers, for example—
to experience the testerical or to be predominantly testicular is not to be
penisless. The masculine modes are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps one
can best sense the distinction and yet the interarticulation between the
phallic and the testicular/testerical in male fantasies, as seen, for example,
in pornography and erotica; this interarticulation can be seen in male
discursive practices and interpretive strategies, such as in male humor and
in rap music. The modes are occasionally depicted as interarticular in
the homosexual thematic and are at least suggested as potentially inter-
fluent in the myth of the androgynous male.
This interarticulation of the masculine modes in male discursive prac-
tices and interpretative strategies—which might be viewed as homologous
to the biologic interconnection between penile and testicular tissue—has still
to be specified and analyzed in detail, of course. The modes have been
historically depicted as complementary in varying degrees in male "cou-
ples" in fiction and myth, from Gilgamesh and Enkidu in this early literary
epic and from Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad to Jonathan and David
in the Judaic and Christian tradition and to Roland and Oliver in the medieval
chivalric tradition (Woods, 1987). In popular culture they are seen more often
as successfully combined in the "odd couple": the "buddy" cops, attor-
neys, and doctors of television and cinema such as Starsky and Hutch and
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This is, of course, within the same
narrative tradition that is also found in contemporary fictional friendships,
twinships, and male rivals in the works of such diverse writers as Jean Genet,
Michel Tournier, Manuel Puig, and James Baldwin.
One of the more interesting, if not particularly seamless, interfacing of
the masculine modes is found in the Superman/Clark Kent couple. Whereas
Superman is the phallic "Man of Steel," it is Clark Kent who has "balls."
He is testicular and potentially testerical; he is mild-mannered, enduring,
ever present. Superman is episodic; he "rises" to the occasion "like a
speeding bullet" and then disappears with only a trace of his former self.
Clark Kent "hangs in there" until the Man of Steel, driven by crises,
springs into action. Although it is Superman who possesses X-ray (or is

it Y-ray?) vision and who is all powerful, it is Clark who is actually
sensitive to and therefore responds to the slightest change in his environ-
ment; moreover, Clark alone is sensitive to and responds to the charm and
beauty of Lois Lane because Superman, true to his Man of Steel nature,
cannot allow himself to be distracted from his duty to protect Truth,
Justice, and the American Way. Women, including Lois, therefore, leave
him cold (as steel).
The Reemergence of the Prototypical

Testicular/Testerical Hero
At the time of this writing, Superman is dead. After having previously

announced that the hero (Clark) would marry Lois Lane, the editors and
writers of the Superman comics created quite a stir among their (over-
whelmingly male) readers and within the popular press with the publication
of 'The Death of Superman" in January 1993. Of course this constitutes
merely a narrative device to spark interest in the hero in order to sell
comics; nevertheless, this turn of events is hardly surprising. Superman
must be read as emblematic of an inevitable and periodic shift from a
phallic to a testicular/testerical posture. The particular manner in which
this masculine prototype has evolved suggests the possibilities of a non-
or postpatriarchally toned male/masculine posture. In other words, within
a very paragon of (phallic) masculinity, one can discern already the schemata
of a nonphallic, perhaps homoerotic, testicular/testerical masculinity.
First, although his world, like ours, is unmistakably and arrantly het-
erosexual, Superman himself is not unequivocally heterosexual. Frequently
the hero has to react against or camouflage his unwanted homosexual
desire. Second, although he is trenchantly phallic, Superman's creators,
Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster, were never able to imagine the Man of Steel
with a penis (Greenberger, Byrne, & Gold, 1987); the notion that he could
have an erection would be ludicrous and undoubtedly offensive to most
readers. This is true in part because his powers are his penis; his very body,
his muscles, his height, and even his attire are phallic, so the organ would
be superfluous. But more important, this is true because as the legend and
the hero have evolved since 1938, it is not the phallic Man of Steel who
is the hero and who comes to occupy the center of the stories. It is rather
the testicular and testerical Clark Kent who emerges finally in 1986 as the
real hero in the Superman legend.
In the more than 50 years since his inception, Superman's double

subjectivity has become problematic and untenable and therefore he has
undergone numerous modifications, as the writers explain, to "improve"
him and to make him more interesting. However, after stripping the hero
of one third of his powers in 1971, the writers and editors finally took
away his godlike capabilities in 1986 and debuted a new superman. In
fact, he was not new at all but was thematically closer to the original 1938
Superman than he had ever been. As a consequence of or in conjunction
with this change, there was a revolutionary and, I believe, irreversible
change: "In a major philosophical reversal, Clark Kent had become the
'real' character, who posed as Superman, instead of the reverse" (Green-
berger, Byrne, & Gold, 1987, p. 12). Superman reemerged as Clark Kent,
that is, in the post-1986 episodes, Clark no longer depends on the exist-
ence of Superman; he stands on his own. The narrative no longer antici-
pates the emergence of Superman with the same preambular insistence;
therefore the reader does not await this emergence with the same single-
mindedness as with the previous episodes. Were he not to appear at all,
the events would be, with few exceptions, just as compelling. The recog-
nition of the testicular/testerical Clark as the center of the narrated events
is significant indeed. This supporting and dependent character has become
the main, independent character; the emphasis and implicitly the valuation
has shifted from the dynamic, extraordinary, and episodic actions of the
super man to the undergirding, supporting, and ordinary qualities of the
man. Clark might very well come to represent the prototypical testicu-
lar/testerical hero.
"Why should Superman, this paragon of every masculine attribute (all
those muscles, brains, X-ray vision and the power of flight), have room
for improvement? Is it because this ideal of masculinity falls short even
on its own terms?" (Middleton, 1992, p. 5). The Superman fantasy
suggests in fact the plasticity of masculinity, and it exposes, moreover, the
factitious phallus and its hard-(w)on masculinity, that precarious and
ephemeral power that has to put itself constantly on the line to prove itself
and to merit its status. Although the patriarchal ideal is a phallic one and
even though there are few testicular/testerical role models, the phallic, as
I have suggested, need not be normative. Men have only to remove the
steel fig leaf, not to expose the penis, but to touch the testicles, to get in
touch with their testicular/testerical masculinity. To paraphrase E. Ann
Kaplan (1983), to raise questions about the testicular/testerical—and
implicitly therefore to raise questions about the desirability and natural-
ness of phallicism (and heterosexuality)—is a first step toward moving
beyond patriarchal imagination and in establishing a male posture and

masculine discourse that transcend the phallic without denying its reality.
At this particular juncture in knowledge, it may very well be that formu-
lating questions, the simple interrogative mode, constitutes the only
discourse available to men as a resistance to patriarchal hegemony.
Notes
1. Haddon is citing an unnamed "male colleague." In the first sections of this essay,
I have been enormously influenced by her observations concerning the experiences of
gender and the human body. A version of this essay was first presented in 1991 at the 16th
Annual Conference on Men and Masculinity in Tucson. I am indebted to David Eckman,
Judy White, and Harry Brod, who have read and commented on different versions of the
essay.
2. This is especially true for certain French theorists and writers (see, e.g., Cixous,
1981; Irigaray, 1985) who equate gender and reading and writing specificity. From a
psychoanalytic perspective, for example, they postulate that women's desire differs from
men's desire and that the manifestation/transformation of this desire—whether in phan-
tasms, texts, or speech—is different. It is a difference, they contend, grounded in a
particular relationship to the body. Women, it is maintained, speak and write differently
than men; in particular, it is theorized, they write and speak from and through the body
(Flannigan-Saint-Aubin, 1992).
3. I am, of course, drawing a distinction between a sense of maleness ("I am male")
and masculinity or masculine identity ("I am manly"). A sense of maleness is thought to
be in part the result of certain hormonal and chromosomal forces. A boy's sense that he
is masculine or manly is the result of a complicated, social process that depends on the
attitudes and actions of parents and of the culture at large.
4. The human embryo is protofeminine, that is, it has a genetic biologic tendency
toward femaleness and a countermand toward maleness. Accordingly, all fetal organs,
including the fetal brain and sexual organs, are feminine and will develop as female unless
there is a deviation from the naturally occurring process/state. As far as scientists
understand the process of sex differentiation, in the genetic male (XY), the Y chromosome
prompts the cell in which it is found to produce a protein that then makes it impossible
to be combined with cells that do not contain the Y chromosome (i.e., genetically XX or
female cells). Because this same protein is what prompts the fetal gonad to develop into
the male testicle (as opposed to the female ovary), this single gene locus is responsible
for the two most fundamental ways in which individuals are differentiated and identified:
as male or female; as self or other—which replicate in effect the two most fundamental
differentiations within patriarchal culture (Haddon, 1988).
5. For maleness to occur, for example, the necessary androgens have to be present at
the right time and in the right amounts, and they must be of the right chemical structure.
Moreover, the human male embryo, like that of all mammalians, begins existence in an
environment that is both supportive and nurturing and yet, to a certain extent, hostile. The
male embryo's own gonad has to produce the appropriate quantity of testosterone to
continue progress toward maleness and to counter the effects of its mother's hormones.
(These same maternal hormones pose no danger to the female embryo.) Almost from the
beginning of conception then the potentially male organism must react against its envi-
ronment on which it nevertheless completely depends; furthermore, as psychoanalysis
confirms, this uterine pattern continues psychically as well in postuterine life in such a
way that the male (in order to achieve masculinity) has to oppose the maternal and
distinguish himself from the maternal differently and to a different degree and with
different consequences than the female.
6. I employ penis essentially to designate the male organ itself and phallus to specify
the erect penis and, more significantly, to designate the symbolic meaning with which it
is invested.
7. I have explored elsewhere the significance of the anus and the dimensions of
"sphincteral" masculinity: "The Mark of Sexual Preference in the Interpretation of Texts,"
delivered at the University of Delaware, 1987. See also Hocquenghem (1978).
8. Some psychoanalysts, without negating the importance of the phallic stage in male
ontogeny, theorize nevertheless that the actual physical possession of the penis is not
essential to a sense of maleness and masculinity in boys; that is, boys born without a penis
can and do develop "normally" (Stoller, 1974-1976).
9. One very suggestive study (Bell, 1961) that seems to constitute an exception to
the traditional view on the relative importance of the testes and scrotum was published
over 30 years ago; but to my knowledge, there has been no significant follow-up.
10. The male body quite obviously produces hormones—such as testosterone in the
gonad or testes, to cite one example—that affect bodily functions and metabolism, which
in turn can and do affect psychologic processes. Male testosterone level is subject to
pulsatile or episodic secretions, circadian or daily variation, and cirannual or seasonal
fluctuations.
11. Some of the recent efforts to identify or theorize male masochism are unsuccessful,
I believe, because most theorists seem to conclude a priori that men do not and cannot speak
from the body, or through the body. See, for example, Silverman (1988) and Deleuze (1967).
This appears to be an implicit assumption in much of Jardine and Smith (1987) as well.
12. This interarticulation is implicit in some feminist-informed analyses of pornogra-
phy (see, e.g., Kappeler, 1986); in the modalities of male humor as seen in the persistence
of transvestism and cross-dressing jokes in male comics and comedians from Milton Berle
and Flip Wilson to Martin Lawrence and the "Men On" characters in Fox television's "In
Living Color," and in what I call the "male swagger" in contemporary urban music, especially
rap, considered the male music genre par excellence. See, for example, George (1992).
13. Consider, for example, the following couplings: Molina and Valentin in Kiss of
the Spider Woman (Puig, 1979); David and Giovanni in Giovanni s Room (Baldwin, 1956);
John and Paul in Gemini (Tournier, 1975); Robert and Querelle in Querelle (Genet, 1974).
In each case there are phallic traits in one partner and testicular/testerical traits in the other
that together would form a more nearly complete whole in terms of efficiency and beauty.
14. I should specify that I am referring to Superman as he appeared originally and as
he appears currently in comic book form. I realize, of course, that the Superman myth has
extended well beyond his comic book version into newspaper comic strips, novels, radio,
television, and movies. But as the editors at D. C. Comics have pointed out, "before all
of this, during all of this, and after all of this, there was Superman—the Comic Book"
(Greenberger, Byrne, & Gold, 1987, p. 16).
15. See, for example, the suggestion and the implication of Superman's homophobia
and homosexual desire in Middleton (1992); within this perspective his homosocial
relationships, on the one hand, with his nemesis Lex Luthor and, on the other hand, with
his superhero friend Batman take on a particular significance. It is Sedgwick (1985) who
explains the distinction between homosocial and homosexual in a way that reveals the
social, political, and sexual implications of the two terms as well as the paradox implicit
in this distinction.
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14
Weekend Warriors
The New Men's Movement
MICHAEL S. KIMMEL
MICHAEL KAUFMAN
Held up as the end-all of organization leadership, the skills of human

relations easily tempt the new administrator into the practice of a
tyranny more subtle and more pervasive than that which he means to
supplant. No one wants to see the old authoritarian return, but at least it
could be said of him that what he wanted primarily from you was your
sweat. The new man wants your soul.
William H. Whyte, The Organization Man, 1956
Across the United States and Canada men have been gathering in search
of their manhood. Inspired and led by poet Robert Bly, the Eminence grise
of this new men's movement—and whose book Iron John topped the
best-seller lists for more than 35 weeks in 1991—dozens of therapists and
"mythopoetic" journeymen currently offer workshops, retreats, and semi-
nars to facilitate their "gender journey," to "heal their father wounds" so
AUTHORS* NOTE: An earlier version of this essay appeared in Feminist Issues Volume
13:2 (Fall 1993) as 'The New Men*s Movement: Retreat and Regression with America's
Weekend Warriors" by Michael S. Kimmel and Michael Kaufman. We are grateful to Tim
Beneke, Bob Blauner, Terry Boyd, Harry Brod, Joseph Dunlop-Addley, Kay Leigh
Hagan, Gil Herdt, Arlie Hochschild, and Iona Mara-Drita for comments and criticism.
259
that they may retrieve the "inner king," the "warrior within," or the
"wildman." Hundreds of thousands of men have heeded the call of the
wildman, embraced this new masculinity, and become weekend warriors.
The movement has certainly come in for its share of ridicule and
derision. Countless magazine articles, newspaper stories, and even sev-
eral TV sitcoms have portrayed the movement as nothing more than a
bunch of white, upper-middle class professionals chanting and dancing
around bonfires, imitating Native American rituals, and bonding. Re-
cently, feminist women have indicated their suspicions that this men's
movement is patriarchy with a New Age face, a critique that is explicitly
political. To date, the new men's movement has received virtually no
serious analytic scrutiny from men. This chapter is an attempt to make
sense of that movement, to subject the new men's movement to serious
analysis.
Like any other social movement, the new men's movement can best be
examined through a set of analytic frames, each designed to illuminate a
specific part of the movement. Through an analysis of the major texts of
the movement, as well as through participant observation at several men's
retreats, we will attempt to make sense of this phenomenon. Specifically,
we want to pose four sets of questions:
1. Historical and political context: What specific historical conditions have

givenriseto this new men's movement? What does the movement have to
do with the women's movement? Why now?
2. Social composition: To what specific groups of men does this new men's
movement appeal? Why these men? What is the class, racial, and ethnic
composition of these weekend retreats?
3. Ideology of masculinity: What is the vision of social change that the new
men's movement embraces? From what sources do they derive their
vision? What is their diagnosis of the causes of malaise among contempo-
rary men?
4. Organizational dynamics: What are the organizational vehicles by which
the men's movement will accomplish its aims? What does the evocation
ofritual,chanting, drumming, and initiation mean in the context of the
movement?
By exploring these four aspects of the mythopoetic men's movement,

we will be able to assess the consequences of the movement, both for men
and women individually and for the larger framework of other movements
for social change. In talking about this men's movement, we see it as
distinct from the profeminist men's movement, even though at least some
Weekend Warriors: The New Men's Movement 261
of the men attracted to Robert Bly also consider themselves profeminist.

It is also distinct from the self-consciously antifeminist and misogynist
men's rights movement, although, again, some other mythopoetic men
wander into this camp.
The Men's Movement and the Real World
Contexts and Composition

The first two dimensions of the new men's movement can be fairly
briefly summarized. In the past two decades, masculinity has been seen
increasingly as in "crisis," a widespread confusion over the meaning of
manhood. (Much of this discussion applies specifically to the United
States and Canada, although there are some points of contact with Aus-
tralia and Western Europe.) From the earliest whines of "men's liberation"
in the mid-1970s, to the current "Great American Wimp Hunt," and the
preoccupation with the diets and fashion tastes of "Real Men," questions
of the definitions of masculinity have been contested. That men are
confused over the meaning of masculinity has become a media cliche, and
hundreds of advice books and magazine columns today advise men on
gender issues.
The contemporary crisis of masculinity has structural origins in chang-
ing global geopolitical and economic relations and in the changing dy-
namics and complexion of the workplace. Traditional definitions of
masculinity had rested on economic autonomy: control over one's labor,
control over the product of that labor, and manly self-reliance in the
workplace. The public arena, the space in which men habitually had
demonstrated and proved their manhood, was racially and sexually homo-
geneous, a homosocial world in which straight, white men could be
themselves, without fear of the "other." Economic autonomy, coupled
with public patriarchy, gave men a secure sense of themselves as men. If
they should fail, they could always head out for the frontier, to the
boundaries of civilization, where they could stake a new claim for man-
hood against the forces of nature.
That world is now gone. The transformation of the workplace—increased
factory mechanization, increased bureaucratization of office work—means
that fewer and fewer men experience anything resembling autonomy in
their work. This century has witnessed a steady erosion of economic
autonomy: from 90% of U.S. men who owned their own shop or farm at
the time of the Civil War to less than 1 out of 10 today. The continental
frontier was declared closed at the turn of the century, and since that time
a succession of frontiers has been invented to take its place—from the
Third World, to outer space (the "final frontier"), to the corporate "jun-
gle." The current global restructuring finds many former outposts on that
frontier demanding inclusion into the economy; decolonization and move-
ments for regional or ethnic autonomy destabilize American hegemony.
Perhaps nothing has had a larger cultural impact in this crisis of
masculinity than the recent rise of the women's movements and also the
gay and lesbian movements. By the late 1960s, the civil rights movement
had already challenged the dominant view that the public arena and the
workplace were virtual preserves for whites. With the rise of the women's
movement, there was a challenge to older and even more fundamental
beliefs about men's place in society. Old certainties and gender divisions
were questioned, a process augmented by the gay and lesbian move-
ment, which challenged the heterosexual assumptions of those old
gender arrangements.
Although these economic, political, and social changes have affected
all different groups of men in radically different ways, perhaps the hardest
hit psychologically were middle-class, straight, white men from their late
20s through their 40s. For these were not only the men who inherited a
prescription for manhood that included economic autonomy, public patri-
archy, and the frontier safety valve but also the men who believed them-
selves entitled to the power that attended on the successful demonstration
of masculinity. These men experienced workplace transformation as a
threat to their manhood and the entry of the formerly excluded "others"
as a virtual invasion of their privileged space.
As a result, many middle-class, white, middle-aged heterosexual men—
among the most privileged groups in the history of the world—do not
experience themselves as powerful. Ironically, although these men are
everywhere in power, that aggregate power of that group does not translate
into an individual sense of feeling empowered. In fact, this group feels
quite powerless. Entitled to partake in the traditional power of masculin-
ity, these men feel besieged by new forces outside of their control and
somewhat at a loss as they observe the women in their lives changing
dramatically while they feel increasingly helpless.
It should come as no surprise, then, to observe that the overwhelming
majority of the men who are currently involved in the new men's move-
ment are precisely middle-class, middle-aged, white, and heterosexual.
The men who feel most besieged, and who have the resources with which
to combat that siege, are the most frequent weekend warriors. Attendance
of men of color ranged, over a variety of retreats and conferences in
various parts of the United States that we attended, from zero to less than
2%, while never greater than 5% of the attendees were homosexual men.
The majority of the men were between 40 and 55, with about 10% over
60 and about 5% younger than 30. Professional, white-collar, and mana-
gerial levels were present in far greater proportion than blue-collar and
working-class men, in part because the expense of the weekend retreats
(usually $200 to $500 for a weekend) and the day-long seminars ($50 to
$200) makes the retrieval of deep manhood a journey open only to the
economically privileged.
The men's movement is the cry of anguish of privileged American men,
men who feel lost in a world in which the ideologies of individualism and
manly virtue are out of sync with the realities of urban, industrialized,
secular society. It retells the tales of overdominant mothers and absent
fathers who have betrayed the young boy and deprived him of his inheri-
tance of a sense of personal power. The men's movement taps a longing
for the lost innocence of childhood and a cry for certainty about the
meaning of manhood in a society where both men's power and rigid
gender definitions are being challenged by feminism. These themes,
trumpeted by Bly and his followers, link up with the experiences of
predominately white, heterosexual, middle-class, and middle-aged read-
ers who have made his book and the movement that surrounds it such a
success. Movement leaders speak directly and with compassion to men's
uneasiness and discomfort; eloquently to their grief about their relation-
ships with their fathers, to their despair over their relationships with
women, their pain, and sense of powerlessness and isolation. What exactly
does the men's movement say? What is its diagnosis of the masculine
dilemma?
The Search for the Deep Masculine
The men's movement has many different voices, drawing on many

different traditions. Some rely entirely on Greek and Roman mythologies
for images of heroic manhood; others use Jungian archetypes or Eastern
religions as the foundation for new visions of masculinity. But certain
themes are constantly sounded, especially essentialist assumptions about
gender distinctions, a contemporary diagnosis of feminization of Ameri-
can manhood, the search for lost fathers (and father figures), and a vision
of retrieval of heroic archetypes as models for men. Bly's argument rests

on the fusion of (a) a psychological analysis of Jungian archetypes, in
which fairy tales and myths serve as illustrations; (b) a historical interpre-
tation of the progress of industrialization and modernization on men's
lives; and (c) an anthropological survey of nonindustrial cultures and their
rituals of initiating men into society and providing secure identities for
adult men. These are sandwiched between a political critique of contem-
porary men and a vision for the future of manhood that reclaims lost rituals
and grounds men's identities more securely. Because Iron John, based on
a explication of a Grimm fairy tale, is the touchstone of the men's
movement, we can explicate its ideology by deconstructing its seminal
text. The fable goes as follows:
Once upon a time, a hunter volunteers to go into the woods and find out why the
King had lost several of his men. The hunter returns with a Wild Man, who
has lived at the bottom of a lake and has apparently been devouring the others.
The King puts the Wild Man in an cage in the courtyard. One day, the King's
8-year-old son is playing near the cage with a ball. The ball rolls into the cage.
To get it back, the Wild Man makes the boy promise to get the key to his cage
and free him. The key is under the boy's mother's pillow. The boy steals the
key from under his mother's pillow and opens the cage. The Wild Man walks
off into the woods with the boy. (They have set each other free.)
In the woods with Iron John, the boy fails to follow Iron John's instructions,
so he is sent off to work, first as a cook's apprentice, later as a gardener. Here,
he meets the daughter of the king. He goes off to war, proving himself in
battle, although he doesn't take credit for it. At a post-bellum festival, he
catches three golden apples tossed by the king's daughter in a competition,
but the boy rides off in a different suit of armor, after catching each one.
Eventually, he is brought before the king and asks for the girl's hand in
marriage. The big wedding celebration is suddenly interrupted by the entrance
of a great King, who walks up to young man and embraces him. "I am Iron
John, who through an enchantment became turned into a Wild Man. You have
freed me from that enchantment. All the treasure that I won will from now on
belong to you."
Bly uses the Iron John fable to several ends—to suggest manhood as a
quest, to heal the split between the dutiful son and the Wild Man, to imply
that the son's healing of his own wound will simultaneously heal the
father's own wounds, to suggest the possibilities of manly nurture and
initiation of men by other men, and, most central, to launch his critique
of contemporary men.
The New Man as Wimp
The mythopoetic men's movement agrees that something is dramati-

cally wrong with American manhood; "the male of the past twenty years
has become more thoughtful, more gentle. But by this process he has not
become more free. He's a nice boy who pleases not only his mother but
also the young woman he is living with," Bly writes (1990, p. 2). The
evidence of feminization is abundant, as Bly points to:
the percentage of adult sons still living at home has increased; and we can see
much other evidence of the difficulty the male feels in breaking with the
mother: the guilt often felt toward the mother; the constant attempt, usually
unconscious, to be a nice boy; lack of male friends; absorption in boyish
flirtation with women; attempts to carry women's pain, and be their com-
forters; efforts to change a wife into a mother; abandonment of discipline
for "softness" and "gentleness"; a general confusion about maleness. (1990,
p. 43)
The new man is incapable of standing up to women, so eager is he to

please. "If his wife or girlfriend, furious, shouts that he is 'chauvinist,' a
'sexist,' a 'man,' he doesn't fight back, but just takes it" (p. 63). In short,
the new man turns out to be a wimp; he is the problem, not the solution,
and manhood needs to be rescued from such sensitive Mama's boys.
The men's movement assumes a deep, essential manhood, and its
retrieval is the solution. Manhood is seen as a deeply seated essence, an
ingrained quality awaiting activation in the social world. Intrinsic to every
man, manhood is transhistorical and culturally universal. "The structure
at the bottom of the male psyche is still as firm as it was twenty thousand
years ago," observes Bly (p. 230), while Moore and Gillette (1992) claim
that the deep elements of manhood have "remained largely unchanged for
millions of years" (p. 49). It is the exact opposite of the essence of woman:
Male and female make up one pair. . . . One can feel the resonance between
opposites in flamenco dancing. Defender and attacker watch each other,
attractor and refuser, woman and man, red and red. Each is a pole with its
separate magnetic charge, each is a nation defending its borders, each is a
warrior enjoying the heat of extravagant passion, a distinguished passion
which is fierce, eaglelike, mysterious. (Bly, 1990, pp. 174-175)
Though masculinity is seen as an inner essence diametrically op-

posed to femininity, individual men do not inherit manhood through their
biological composition. Manhood must be achieved. It must be validated

by other men; women cannot validate manhood. "It takes work to become a
man," write Moore and Gillette (1992). "Achieving adult male status requires
personal courage and the support and nurturing of older men" (p. 234). It
is the task of the larger society to facilitate this achievement, because
when the actualization of manhood is thwarted, dire consequences result.
"If a culture does not deal with the warrior energy . . . it will turn up
outside in the form of street gangs, wife beating, drug violence, brutality
to children, and aimless murder" (p. 179)—all of which sounds remark-
ably similar to the words of right-wing ideologue George Gilder (1974).
The route to manhood is perilous, but the consequences of failure are far
worse.
What then are the appropriate stages of manhood, the stages that each
man should follow if he is to activate his deep, essential masculinity? In
sum, there are four stages of manhood, each with an accompanying
scholarly and mythical apparatus to facilitate its passage: (a) bonding with
the mother and breaking away from her (psychological level); (b) bonding
with the father and breaking away from him (historical critique of mod-
ernity); (c) finding the male mother (anthropological reclamation of
initiation ritual); and (d) the reentry into adult heterosexual union (repro-
duction of heterosexuality, gender roles). Each of these is central to the
mythopoetic vision.
Bad Deals From Moms and Dads

The men's movement embraces a traditional, and rather conservative,
rendering of psychoanalytic theory. The task of becoming men requires a
break from the initial identification with the mother. In today's world this
is not simple; men's repudiation of the feminine is thwarted. More than
one man "today needs a sword to cut his adult soul away from his
mother-bound soul" (Bly, 1990, p. 165). There are two reasons why men
have not broken the bond with mother. First, mothers won't let them,
remaining locked in somewhat incestuous flirtations with their sons. (This
is why the young boy must steal the key from under his mother's pillow—
she will not voluntarily give it, and thus him, up.) Second, fathers are not
there to facilitate the transfer of identity. Separation from mother is
traditionally facilitated by father who provides a role model for his son
and presents to him an alternative to femininity. But sadly, men are not
doing their job as fathers. It is not entirely men's fault but rather a
consequence of modern society. Here, the men's movement adopts a
somewhat mythic history of the Industrial Revolution and its conse-

quences for male development.
If we state it as another fairy tale, this myth goes something like this:
Once upon a time, the division of labor was fully gendered, but both father
and mother remained closely bound to the home and children. Fathers
were intimately involved with the development of their sons. As artisans,
they brought their sons to their workplaces as apprentices; the sons had
an intimate appreciation for the work of the father. But the Industrial
Revolution changed all that; the separation of spheres imprisoned women
in the home, as feminists have long argued, and it exiled men from the
home (a fact curiously absent from feminist analysis, Bly seems to think).
Now fathers are nowhere to be found in the lives of their sons. The "love
unit most damaged by the Industrial Revolution has been the father-son
bond," writes Bly (1990, p. 19). Mythopoets label this the "father wound."
The consequences of the father wound are significant, including ado-
lescent male rebellion:
The son does not bond with the father, then, but on the contrary a magnetic
repulsion takes place, for by secret processes the father becomes associated
in the son's mind with demonic energy, cold evil, Nazis, concentration camp
guards, evil capitalists, agents of the CIA, powers of world conspiracy. Some
of the fear felt in the 1960s by young leftist men ("never trust anyone over
30") came from that well of demons (Bly, 1990, p. 45);
feminism, because father absence:
may severely damage the daughter's ability to participate good-heartedly in

later relationships with men. Much of the rage that some women direct to the
patriarchy stems from a vast disappointment over this lack of teaching from
their own fathers (p. 97);
and feminist-inspired male bashing:
The emphasis placed in recent decades on the inadequacy of men, and the evil
of the patriarchal system, encourages mothers to discount grown men Be-
tween twenty and thirty percent of American boys now live in a house with
no father present, and the demons have full permission to rage. (pp. 186, 96)
(The reader is left to figure out exactly which demons those might be.)
The absence of the father leaves a void in the center of every adult man,
a psychic wound that yearns for closure. Without healing the father
wound, men are left only with mother, left literally with women teaching
them how to become men. But Bly and his followers argue that only men
can really teach men to be authentic men, validate masculinity, and
provide a male with a secure sense that he has arrived at manhood.
Masculinity as Praxis
Fortunately, the men's movement has discovered such a mechanism,
developed in nonindustrial cultures over thousands of years, that can
substitute for the absent father and provide the young male with a secure
grounding in gender identity. It is the male initiation ritual, symbolically
reproduced by thousands of weekend warriors across the nation, men who
flock to male-only retreats to tell stories, beat drums, and recreate initia-
tion rituals from other cultures. These nonindustrial cultures are seen as
providing a mechanism for young boys to successfully pass through an
arduous rite, at the end of which they are secure in their manhood. It is
never again a question. There is no "man problem."
In each case, initiation centers around separation from the world of
women and rebirth into the world of adult men. This is achieved in
spatially separate men's huts or retreats and during specific temporally
demarcated periods. As with baptism, there is symbolic death of the boy
(the profane self, the self born of woman) and rebirth. Bly (1990) recalls
one Australian culture in which the adult men construct a 20- to 30-foot-
long tunnel of sticks and bushes and push the young boys through, only
to receive them with much ceremony at the other end, having now been
reborn ("born out of the male body") (p. 47). He also describes the Kikuyu,
who take young boys who are hungry after a day-long fast and sit them
down by a fire in the evening. Each adult male cuts his arm and lets the
blood flow into a gourd that is passed to the young boys to drink "so that
they can see and taste the depth of the older males' love for them." This
represents a shift from "female milk to male blood" (p. 47).
The purpose of the initiation has a long theoretical legacy. Mircea
Eliade argued that initiation "is equivalent to a revelation of the sacred,
of death, of sexuality, and of the struggle for food. Only after having
acquired these dimensions of human experience does one become truly a
man" (Eliade, 1962). Sociologist Max Weber commented on the consis-
tency of these ritual structures in his epic Economy and Society. "He who
does not pass the heroic trials of the warrior's training remains a 'woman'
just as he who cannot be awakened to the supernatural remains a 'lay-
man,'" (1978, vol. 2, p. 1144).
At the conclusion of the initiation ritual, the young male is socially a

man. He has been prepared psychically by separation from mother and
identification with father and sociologically by leaving the individual
father and becoming one of the band of brothers. Now he is ready to
reconnect with woman in spiritual and sexual union, seeking joyous
connection, not neurotic demonstration of manhood or narcissistic self-
pleasuring. He is ready for marriage.
Thus the spiritual quest for authentic and deep manhood reproduces
traditional norms of masculinity and femininity, of heterosexuality, and,
in Western culture, monogamous marriage; in short, the men's movement
retrieval of mythic manhood reproduces the entire political package that
Gayle Rubin (1975) called the "sex-gender system." In the present, as in
the mythical past, the demonstration of manhood becomes associated with
a relentless repudiation of the feminine. Because, in today's era, the
father's absence makes this separation difficult, weekend retreats offer an
emotional substitute for real fathers. At these retreats, men can heal their
father wound—the grief men feel that their fathers were not emotionally
or physically present in their lives. They can feel a sense of intimacy and
connectedness to other wounded and searching men. They can discover
the depths of their manhood. This is the men's movement's promise for
masculine renewal.
False Promises
It is a false promise. In this section of the chapter we will develop a

broad-based critique of the mythopoetic men's movement, bringing to
bear a variety of social scientific literature to understand the limitations
of each phase of the men's movement's promise. We will discuss (a) the
limitations of essentialism, (b) the psychoanalytic misdiagnosis, (c) the
anthropological context of male bonding, (d) the historical search for
masculinist solutions, and (e) the sociology of regression. We conclude
with an analysis of the value of the feminist critique of masculinity as a
blueprint for men's transformation.
The Construction of Essentialism

The central assumption in the mythopoetic vision is an ontological
essential difference between women and men. For all theorists of the
movement, the male-female difference is not socially constructed and
does not vary cross-culturally. Whether based on Jungian archetypes,

bowdlerized readings of Eastern religions, or the selection of myths and
fairy tales, the men's movement claims that men and women are virtually
different species. The mythopoetic search for the "deep masculine" and
the psychically "hairy man" is a search for something that exists as a
natural, biological reality. Moore and Gillette (1992) claim that the central
elements of manhood are the "hard wired components of our genetically
transmitted psychic machine"—without a hint of awareness of how gen-
dered and mechanistic is their language (p. 33).
The men's movement, therefore, misses one of the central insights of
social science—that gender is a product of human action and interaction,
that definitions of masculinity and femininity are the products of social
discourse and social struggle. Being a man is distinct from being biologi-
cally male. Essentialism leads the men's movement to adopt a version of
manhood that corresponds rather neatly with this society's dominant
conception of masculinity—man as warrior and conqueror—and to sug-
gest that this represents the quintessence of manhood. Thus Moore and
Gillette venerate Ronald Reagan's courage during the hostage crisis and
vilify Jimmy Carter as a wimp: "Emblematic of his weak thinking was his
absurd attempt to dramatize energy conservation by not lighting the
national Christmas tree, an ancient symbol of eternal life and ongoing
vigor. Of more consequence was his impotent reaction to the Iran hostage
crisis . . ." (p. 166). That this definition of masculinity rests on men's
gender power does not have to enter into the equation—rather, the my-
thopoetic warrior's quest is to rediscover his masculine core and experi-
ence a bond with his psychic ancestors.
Healing the Mother Wound

These essentialist assumptions lead Bly and others to an inversion of
feminist psychoanalytic insights of the past three decades. Following
Chodorow (1978), Dinnerstein (1976), Rubin (1975), Benjamin (1985),
and others, we think that the core psychological problem of gender
formation for men is, in a sense, not too little separation from mother but
too much. In societies where men do little parenting, both young boys and
girls have a primary identification with mother. However, the estab-
lishment of a boy's identity and his individuality is a psychic process in
which the boy struggles to renounce identification with mother, and the
nurturing she represents, and embrace identification with father. It is a
process with enormous costs. "Boys come to define themselves," writes
Chodorow (1978), "as more separate and distinct, with a greater sense of
rigid ego boundaries and differentiation. The basic feminine sense of self
is connected to the world, the basic masculine sense of self is separate"
(pp. 174, 169). Such a process has political ramifications:
Dependency on his mother, attachment to her, and identification with her

represent that which is not masculine; a boy must reject dependence and deny
attachment and identification. Masculine gender role training becomes much
more rigid than feminine. A boy represses those qualities he takes to be
feminine inside himself, and rejects and devalues women and whatever he
considers to be feminine in the social world. (Chodorow, 1978, p. 181)
Manhood is defined as a flight from femininity and its attendant

emotional elements, particularly compassion, nurturance, affection, and
dependence. This does not mean that men completely lose these capaci-
ties. Rather it means that these things become more or less muted and
often experienced as inimical to male power. Though the definition of
manhood varies by class and culture, by era and orientation, hegemonic
definitions of masculinity (Connell, 1988) are based on independence,
aggression, competition, and the capacity to control and dominate. This
helps to explain men's rage at women, men's rage at their own dependency
and weaknesses, and the rage of so many straight men at gay men (whom
they misperceive as failed men).
As a result, most men are afraid of behavior or attitudes that even hint
at the feminine. So many men are willing, even eager, to engage in all
manner of high-risk behavior, lest they be branded wimps or tainted with
the innuendo that they might be homosexual. The whole quest for mascu-
linity is a lifelong set of high-risk behaviors. The costs to men may be on
a different level than the costs to women, but men's lived experience
involves considerable alienation and pain. Men remain emotionally dis-
tant, aggressively risk-taking, preoccupied with power, status, money,
accumulating sexual partners, because these are all badges of manhood.
We call this obsessive flight from the feminine the "mother wound."
Through the mother wound the boy internalizes the categories of gender
power of a patriarchal society. The social project of suppressing women
and their social power is internalized and unconsciously recreated in the
psychic life of the young boy.
The men's movement claims that the root psychological problem for
men is that men have not yet cut the psychic umbilical cord. By contrast,
we see the problem as the opposite: the relentlessness by which men
consciously and unconsciously demonstrate that the cord is cut. From this
difference comes the men's movement's prescription for retrieving man-
hood: to wrench men away from the home, off to the woods with other
men, into a homosocial space where men can validate one another's
masculinity. It is a feel-good response, but it does little to address the roots
of the problem of either a father or a mother wound. Men breaking down
their isolation and fears of one another is important, but to get to the core
of the problem requires men to play a role in domestic life through equal
and shared parenting. Boys would experience men as equally capable of
nurture, so that they would not associate nurturing with only one gender,
leaving "people of both genders with the positive capacities each has, but
without the destructive extremes these currently tend toward" (Chodorow,
1978, p. 218). Men would find their defensive shells pierced by affection
and interdependence, thus transforming the definition of masculinity
itself, no longer "tied to denial of dependence and devaluation of women."
Politically, shared parenting would "reduce men's needs to guard their
masculinity and their control of social and cultural spheres which treat
and define women as secondary and powerless" (p. 218).
Perhaps more than anything else, it is through the social practices of
parenting that men may connect with the emotional qualities that they
have rejected in real life—nurturing, compassion, emotional responsive-
ness, caring. These emotional resources will not be adequately discovered
reading a book or stomping through the woods hugging other men who
have taken totemic animal names. They are to be found in the simple
drudgery of everyday life in the home. Cleaning the toilet, ironing, or
washing dishes is not romantic—you don't have to be a "golden eagle" to
keep your nest clean. But they are the everyday stuff of nurture and care.
They are skills that are learned, not received by divine revelation after
howling at the moon in the forest. We need more Ironing Johns, not more
Iron Johns.
Although men's entry as equal parents becomes a key part of intergen-
erational solutions, it is not only biological fathers who can rediscover
their capacity to nurture. Gay men, largely in response to the AIDS crisis,
have developed inspiring formal and informal social networks of caregiv-
ing, nurturance, and support.
The route to manly nurture is through doing it in the everyday way that
women nurture in current society, the ways mothers—and not usually
fathers—nurtured them. If mothers embody responsibility, care, and nur-
ture, why would Bly suggest that men's project is to reject mother and run
away from her? Men need to heal the mother wound, to close the gap
between the mother who cared for them and the mother men have tried to
leave behind as they struggled to get free of her grasp. What men have
lost in that process is precisely what men are currently searching for.
Healing the mother wound would allow men to feel that their manhood
was not inextricably linked to repudiating mother and all she stands for,
but rather in reclaiming, as men, a positive connection to the pre-oedipal
mother, the mother who represented to them all those emotions men
currently seek: connectedness, interdependence, nurture, and love.
In a distorted way, this is what is at the core of all the pseudorituals in
the men's movement. Isn't this what getting in touch with the earth is all
about? When workshop leaders encourage men to smear dirt on them-
selves or take off their shoes and feel the earth under their feet (even when
they happen to be in a carpeted meeting room), they hook into a fierce
longing for reconnection with the earth and with their mothers who
physically embodied their most visceral connection with life and its
origins.
Anthropological Androcentrism
The desire to heal men's wounds leads the men's movement to a survey
of initiation rituals and rites of passage, as the mechanisms by which
traditional cultures established manhood as praxis. But here is one of the
chief failings of the movement. Even the most cursory glance at the same
myths, archetypes, and anthropological borrowings reveals that all the
cultures so celebrated by the men's movement as facilitating deep man-
hood have been precisely those cultures in which women's status was
lowest. Because male domination is not a category of thought to the
movement, it need not be a category of history. But its absence creates a
major analytic and strategic problem.
Biy and the others wander through anthropological literature like post-
modern tourists, as if the world's cultures were an enormous shopping
mall filled with ritual boutiques. After trying them on, they take several
home to make an interesting outfit—part Asian, part African, part Native
American. Moore and Gillette snatch theories from Native American
cosmology, Jungian archetypes, and images from ancient Egypt, seventh-
century Tibet, Aztecs, Incas, and Sumerians. All are totally decontextual-
ized. But can these rituals be ripped from their larger cultural contexts, or
are they not deeply embedded in the cultures of which they are a part,
expressing important unstated psychological and metaphysical assump-
tions about both the males and females of the culture as well as reflecting
the social and economic realities of life, including structures of hierarchy

and domination?
Bly argues that these men's rituals helped men achieve stable and secure
senses of themselves as men, and that these rituals had nothing to do with
the hierarchical relations between women and men. In fact, he hints that
where men are secure in their gender identity, life is actually better for
women. But what we actually learn from nonindustrial cultures—as
opposed to what we might wish we had learned—is that these initiation
ceremonies, rituals, and separate spheres have everything to do with
women's inequality. One survey of over 100 nonindustrial cultures found
that societies with separate men's huts are those in which women have the
least power. Those cultures in which men sleep separately from women
are those in which women's status is lowest. "Societies with men's huts
are those in which women have the least power," writes geographer
Daphne Spain (1992). In short, "institutionalized spatial segregation
reinforces prevailing male advantages" (p. 76). Anthropologist Thomas
Gregor agrees; men's clubs of all kinds are "associated with strongly patriar-
chal societies" (Gregor, 1982, p. 27).
Gregor's work on the Mehinaku of central Brazil illustrates the selec-
tivity in the men's movement's mythic anthropology. The Mehinaku have
well-institutionalized men's houses where tribal secrets are kept and ritual
instruments played and stored. Spatial segregation is strictly enforced. As one
man told Gregor: "This house is only for men. Women may not see anything
in here. If a woman comes in, then all the men take her into the woods and
she is raped. It has always been that way" (in Gregor, 1982, p. 27).
The men's movement is quite selective about which societies and which
of their customs they should appropriate. The initiation rituals were ones
through which men symbolically appropriated women's power of repro-
duction and childbirth. Such rituals had a central place in early patriarchal
cultures. After all, how could men possibly claim to be all-powerful when
it was women who had the ultimate power of bringing life into the world?
Men thus devalued women's power of reproduction and asserted that only
men could give birth to men, symbolized in elaborate rebirthing rituals to
bring men into the world.
If the goal is not to reassert male power but to ensure gender equality,
then the best approach is not to champion the initiation of men into
separate mythic spheres:
When fathers help take care of children and women control property, boys
are apt to grow up with fewer needs to define themselves in opposition to
women, and men are less inclined toward antagonistic displays of superiority.
When wives are not required to defer to husbands, and men are not encouraged
to display bravado and fierce hostility, then cultural ideologies are unlikely
to portray men as superior and women as inferior. (Coltrane, 1992, p. 105)
Interestingly, the interpretations of the myths themselves are asserted

to be unambiguous, always leading men away from the home and from
women, off into the company of other men. But to take but one example
of the dozens of ambiguous readings that might emerge from a confron-
tation with the original texts, one is reminded that throughout the Odyssey,
Odysseus spends his time yearning to be home with his wife and child,
looking longingly out at the sea and weeping every night he is away. In
Book 11, he returns home, following his prophesy to stop wandering. He
takes his oar to a place where men do not salt their food (inland) and where
they do not recognize the oar (mistaking it for a thresher), and there he
plants the oar in the ground and offers a sacrifice. Then his wanderings
will be at an end, and he will be at peace. To us, the quest is, as E.T. said,
to go home.
What is more, the evocation of some mythic figures as unambiguous
heroes is also problematic. Although some mythopoetic leaders advocate
the retrieval of Zeus energy, they willfully forget that Zeus was "an
incessant rapist, molesting both mortal women and ancient goddesses,"
whose reign ushered in a terrible era for women, according to Robert
Graves—"the hitherto intellectually dominant Greek woman degenerated
into the unpaid worker and breeder of children wherever Zeus and Apollo
were the ruling gods" (cited in Caputi & MacKenzie, 1992, p. 72; see also
Brod, 1985). Loading up on "Zeus juice" may make compelling myth, but
it makes for bad gender politics.
These rituals also have consequences for race relations that their pur-
veyors either ignore or disguise as "respect for traditional cultures." To
see a group of middle-class white men appropriating "Indian" rituals,
wearing "war paint," drumming and chanting, and taking on totemic
animal names is more than silly play, more even than "a bunch of boys
playing games with the cultures of people they don't know how to live
next door to" (Gossett, 1992, p. 21). It is politically objectionable, similar
to the "tomahawk chop" of Atlanta Braves baseball fans. But then again,
how wise is the storyteller who asserts, as Bly does, that golden hair is a
universal sign of beauty? Perhaps, as Braves fans asserted, participants
believe that their behavior honors these Native American traditions. In the
postmodern, New Age supermarket of the mythopoetic men's movement,
though, it feels more like boys playing cowboys and Indians, and letting
the Indians win for a change.
There is another, deeper level at which the racism of the new men's
movement is even more deeply troubling. Here we will make a brief
historical analogy. During the late 19th century, minstrel shows were
enormously popular among white working-class men. These shows were
particularly popular with young Irish men, and later, in the first decades
of the 20th century, among young Jewish men. Performers in "blackface"
would imitate black men, singing and dancing in racial send-ups. But what
did these blackface performers sing about? They sang of their nostalgia,
their longing for home, for the comforts of family, especially Mammy. In
a sense, as historians understand it now, these young Irish and Jewish
performers and audiences projected their own anxieties and longings—the
ones that they could not express for fear of feminization—and projected
them onto newly freed black migrants to the cities. Blackface was more
about the longings of white immigrants than about the real lives of black
people.
Of course, today, blackface would be immediately transparent as racist.
So men's movement leaders encourage what we might call "redface"—the
appropriation of Native American rituals and symbols—the drum, chants
of "ho," war paint, animal names, and so on. They imagine that these
Native cultures expressed a deep spirituality, an abiding love and respect
for nature, and a palpable sense of brotherhood. What they are really
doing, we believe, is projecting onto these cultures their own longings
and their own needs. Such a project relies upon racial, and racist, stereo-
types.
Some of the faux-religious iconography of the mythopoetic men's
movement gets pretty silly. Moore and Gillette (1992) suggest a small
crystal pyramid be carried around as "a useful portable icon," and that the
soundtrack albums for Spartacus or Ben Hur provide good background
music to access the inner King, because they are "particularly evocative of
King energy" (pp. 215, 217). As Joseph Conwell (1896) wrote in Man-
hood's Morning, a turn-of-the-century advice manual for how to grow up
and be a real man, "[r]ot is rot, and it is never more rotten than when it is
sandwiched between religious quotations and antiquated poetry" (p. 155).
Historical Hokum
This brief historical analogy of racist tropes in ritual appropriation leads
to a larger historical contextualization of the mythopoetic quest. Bly and
his followers claim that the current male malaise is the result of the
confluence of several factors that have produced the overdominance of
women and absence of fathers in a young man's life. The mythic search
is initiated in a historically unique situation in which routine forms of
male bonding have been delegitimated or disappeared. Only men can
validate other men's manhood, but the possibilities for this are limited.
Thus, they claim, the search for the authentic male represents a step
forward, into historically uncharted waters, where men will come face to
face with their grief and their pain. On the contrary, we believe that the
mythopoetic men's movement is a step backward in two distinct tempo-
ral senses—historical and developmental. It augurs a social return to turn-
of-the-century masculinist efforts to retrieve manhood and a personal
effort to recreate a mythic boyhood. These two temporal retreats, we
believe, require a spatial retreat from women's equality, to which we shall
turn in the next section.
The concern that modern culture feminizes men, turning the heroic
warrior into a desk-bound nerd, is not a very new idea at all. The late 19th
century witnessed an equally potent critique of the enervation of modern
manhood and the sources of feminization. Then, as now, the causal
sequence of this enervation was seen as a consequence of the Industrial
Revolution, which demanded more and more of men's time away from
home. This father absence left a void in a young boy's life, which mothers
rushed to fill. Thus mothers, and later women in general, as public school
and Sunday school teachers, became the validators of manhood. When
fathers did return to the home in the evening, they found an utterly
feminized domestic sphere, against which they chafed as they squirmed
to find some deep bonding with other men.
Such diagnoses echoed across the country in a variety of settings.
Here's the dashing Basil Ransome's indictment of the age in Henry
James's The Bostonians (1885/1966), a sentiment that could have been
written by Robert Bly today:
The whole generation is womanized; the masculine tone is passing out of the
world; it's a feminine, a nervous, hysterical, chattering, canting age, an age
of hollow phrases and false delicacy and exaggerated solicitudes and coddled
sensibilities, which, if we don't soon look out, will usher in the reign of
mediocrity, of the feeblest and flattest and the most pretentious that has ever
been. The masculine character, the ability to dare and endure, to know and
yet not fear reality, to look the world in the face and take it for what it
is . . . that is what I want to preserve, or rather, as I may say, to recover; and
I must tell you that I don't in the least care what becomes of you ladies while
I make the attempt! (p. 293)
From pulpits to editorial pages, from gymnasiums to classrooms, men

appeared concerned about the feminization of American culture and sought
remedies that would cure men of their culturally induced enervation.
Structurally, the traditional definitions of masculinity were rapidly
eroding at the turn of the century. The closing of the frontier meant that
no longer would men have that literal-geographic space to test their mettle
against nature and other men. The rapid industrialization of American
manufacturing meant that individual men were no longer the owners or
proprietors of their own labor. As noted earlier, at the time of the Civil
War, 90% of men in the United States were independent farmers or
self-employed businessmen or artisans. By 1870 that number had dropped
to two of three, and by 1910 less than one third of U.S. men were
economically autonomous. At the same time, the northward migration of
newly freed slaves, the dramatic immigration of Southern Europeans, and
the emergence of visible homosexual enclaves in major cities all signaled
new competitors for white, middle-class men's power in the public do-
main. What is more, women were demanding equality in the public sphere
in unprecedented ways—not only in the ballot box or the classroom, but
in the workplace and in the bedroom, as social "feminists" argued for the
right to birth control and "sex rights."
Suddenly men felt themselves to be on the defensive and launched a
multifaceted critique of turn-of-the-century culture. A health and fitness
craze swept over the country, as more and more men sought the tonic
freshness of the outdoors to offset the daily routine of "brain work."
Bernarr Macfadden and other promoters of "physical culture" rode a wave
of interest that saw dramatic increases in sports such as boxing, football,
and weight lifting as methods to develop real manhood.
Child-rearing manuals promoted a dichotomous separation of little
boys and little girls. Parents were instructed to dress boys and girls
differently from birth and to follow that separation through to youth,
where boys were to be encouraged to do certain activities (sports, rough
play) and prevented from doing others (reading, sleeping on feather beds,
going to parties) for fear of possible contamination by feminizing influ-
ences. Separate child rearing continued into the schoolroom. Coeducation
was feared because women would sap the virility of male students. By
adolescence, "boy culture" was to be organized and disciplined under
male supervision, but strict separation of the sexes was to be maintained
to ensure that boys would grow up to be real men. The reorganization of

the Young Men's Christian Association in the 1880s and the organization
of the Boy's Brigades and Knights of King Arthur in the 1880s and 1890s
indicated an effort to provide young boys with adult male role models,
simultaneously disciplining and controlling boy culture and demarcating
male space from female space in a highly ritualized and mythopoetic
setting. The founding of Boy Scouts of America in 1910 by Ernest
Thompson Seton provides a graphic indictment of contemporary man-
hood. Women, he argued, were turning "robust, manly, self-reliant boy-
hood into a lot of flat chested cigarette smokers with shaky nerves and
doubtful vitality" (cited in Macleod, 1983, p. 49).
Cultural feminization was challenged by religious leaders, who sought
to reinvest the cultural images of Jesus with virile manhood. The Muscular
Christianity movement sought to transform religious iconography, which
often portrayed Jesus as soft and gentle. Jesus was "no dough-faced, lick
spittle proposition," proclaimed evangelist Billy Sunday, but "the greatest
scrapper who ever lived." "Lord save us from off-handed, flabby cheeked,
brittle boned, weak-kneed, thin-skinned, pliable, plastic, spineless, ef-
feminate, ossified, three carat Christianity" Sunday pleaded (cited in
McLaughlin, 1955, pp. 179, 175).
Adult men could retreat to their fraternal lodges. Fraternal orders were
enormously popular at the turn of the century; slightly less than one of
four American men belonged to an order (Harwood, 1897). The lodge was
a homosocial preserve, celebrating a purified, nurturant masculinity. James
Laird of the Nebraska Grand Lodge endorsed a Masonic war against
"destructive effeminacy" in 1876. "What Masons want, what the world
wants, is not sympathy, not cooperation, not reform, not redemption, but
strength" (cited in Carnes, 1989, p. 141).
These fraternal orders are the turn-of-the-century precursor to contem-
porary mythopoetic retreats. Here men's initiation rituals took on a sys-
tematic, routinized character: With up to 50 different levels of status, one
could be reasonably certain that an initiation was going to take place at
each meeting. Such rituals followed a similar appropriation of tradition.
The profane man, the man born of woman, is symbolically killed and
reborn into the band of equal brothers, imitating what these men knew of
initiation in non-Western cultures. (Like baptismal priests, the fraternal
elders often wore long robes and aprons—literally appropriating women's
dresses as they symbolically appropriated women's reproductive power.)
There is one interesting difference in the images of these turn-of-the-
century men from their 1990s progeny. The earlier movement reflected
the 19th-century fascination with the classical era. Mythical views of

ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome provided the icons. Bly and the my-
thopoetic men's movement fall very much within the New Age iconogra-
phy: The classical past is no longer in vogue. Rather there is a retreat to
an even more distant mythical past, that of repackaged images of native
societies.
The masculinist efforts to retrieve authentic manly adventure resonated
in American literature as well. Following the Freudian axiom that the
objects that give meaning to life that people lose in reality are recreated
in fantasy, writers sought to recreate what had already been lost. The first
"western," Owen Wister's The Virginian (1902), Jack London's The Call
of the Wild (1903), and Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan series returned
men to thefrontierand the jungle, even as they receded from men's grasp.
Wrenched from effete civilized life, Tarzan and Buck hear the call of their
primitive instincts and return to become, respectively, apes and wolves.
Mythic heroes who stood for untamed manhood, capable of beating back
rapid industrialization and feminization, abounded in artisanal heroes like
Paul Bunyan (collected 1914-1916), John Henry (ca. 1873), and Casey
Jones (1900).
Most troubling of all these masculinist efforts to revive a recharged
manhood is the turn-of-the-century cult of the warrior, embedded within
the new militarism that contributed to the Spanish American War in 1898.
The soldier was seen as a moral exemplar, none more than Theodore
Roosevelt, whose triumph over youthful frailty and illness and subsequent
robust aggression served as a template for a revitalized social character.
Roosevelt fused compulsive masculinity (the strenuous life) with military
adventurism (imperialist intervention) into a powerful synthesis. Evoca-
tions of the warrior in the era of Operation Desert Storm clearly made
Robert Bly uneasy; he attempted, unsuccessfully, to organize a group of
writers against the war in the Gulf, just as he earlier had worked to
organize writers against the Vietnam War. But many of his followers
uncritically embrace warrior images, without any trace of discomfort.
The weekend warriors join a host of contemporary masculinists who
search for the masculine primitive among the shards of advanced indus-
trial culture. How different are they from the wealthy members of the
Bohemian Club in San Francisco who go off to Bohemian Grove retreats
every summer—retreats that are drenched with ritualized male bonding,
dancing partially naked in front of campfires, "full of schmaltz and
nostalgia"—with corporate CEOs, legislators (and presidents), and other
members of the American ruling class (cf. Domhoff, 1974)? or who take
part in the occasional Wild Man retreat if they felt the creeping enervation
of having to deal with adult women on an equal basis? But in case the
impact on women is lost to our dreaming senior, let him hear the voice of
one of his brothers, another member of Yale's Skull and Bones club. "I
would predict an increase in date rape," he prophesied, should the club be
forced to admit women (cited in Newsweek, 23 September 1991, p. 41).
Boys' Town
The image of the eternal fraternity reveals a partially hidden longing
that lies just beneath the surface of Bly's appeal. The search for the deep
masculine is actually a search for lost boyhood, that homosocial inno-
cence of preadolescence, at once rough and tumble and sweetly naive. It
is an effort to turn back the clock to that time before work and family
responsibilities yanked men away from their buddies, from a world of fun.
Leslie Fiedler noticed this nostalgic yearning for lost boyhood, a world
of homosocial intimacy, as the dominant theme in American literature.
Unlike the European novel, in which the action revolved around adult men
and women in domestic entanglements, the American novel allows the
young man to escape domesticity by being kidnapped, running away,
enlisting in the army, or being shipwrecked. The American romantic
couple is Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook, Ishmael and Queequeg, Huck
Finn and Jim, the Lone Ranger and Tonto. These couples "proffer a chaste
male love as the ultimate emotional experience" revealing an "implacable
nostalgia for the infantile, at once wrong headed and somehow admira-
ble/' he writes. The authors' "self congratulatory buddy-buddiness" also
reveals an "astonishing naivete" (Fiedler, 1966, p. 144). "I reckon I gotta
light out for the country," says Huck, "cuz Aunt Sally, she's gonna civilise
me, and I can't stand that."
The mythopoetic men's retreats recall the clubhouse with the sign
reading "No Gurls Allowed" or the movie Stand By Me, which captures
that last summer before junior high school, before having to posture to
impress girls will forever distort the relationships among the boys. What
Kenneth Keniston calls the "fallacy of romantic regression" appeals not
to men who want to be men, but rather to men who want to rebecome boys;
thus their antipathy toward women and work is so easily displaced onto
mothers who have not been part of their lives for decades. "No one is
going to catch me lady and make me a man. I want always to be a little
boy and to have fun." So said Peter Pan. So say the men at wild man
retreats.
This search for lost boyhood as the search for the authentic masculine
helps explain several of the paradoxes that emerge at the men's retreats.
Men's movement leaders speak to men not as fathers but as sons searching
for their fathers. But curiously, the attendees at the workshops are mid-
dle-aged men, many of whom are, themselves, fathers. They rarely speak
of their own children (and when they do, it is almost exclusively their
sons; it is as if daughters do not exist in this world). They speak as sons,
of their pain as sons estranged from fathers. That is, they would rather
complain about something they can barely change than work toward
transforming something that they can: their relationships with their own
children and the structured inequalities of power between men and women,
adults and children, and one man and another.
However, at the retreats, they are also asked to honor the elders, the
older men at the weekend retreats, who are seen to embody a certain
deeply male wisdom. Leaders invite participants to admire the wisdom of
older men, to listen to their stories, to learn from the wisdom they have
gained through the years. But wait, are these not the same elder men
(fathers) who abandoned their sons? Thus when Bly or his followers speak
as fathers, they criticize contemporary men as having followed mother,
having been dutiful little boys (having been feminized). But when they
speak as sons, they are angry and hurt by fathers who behaved exactly as
they have.
How do we explain this shift in focus? "I'm not sure why they want to
be back in the good old days," observed a woman therapist in 1967. "Do
they want to be back there as the father, or do they want to be back there
as the child?" (cited in Brenton, 1967, p. 107). When men speak as sons,
men are angry and wounded by their fathers. When men speak as fathers,
men expect veneration and admiration from sons. Men are thus going to
have it both ways, particularly whichever way allows them to feel like the
innocent victim of other people's disempowering behavior, the victim of
what others (fathers or sons) have done to them. This is again the lost
(false) innocence of mythic boyhood.
But it is also more than that—it is staking a claim for victimhood and
entitlement at the same time. This is what explains the emphasis on the
role of the little prince in the Iron John story and explains the way that
these men, feeling like boys, want to claim their inner King. The prince
is actually not the central figure in Iron John's story; it is Iron John
himself, who is liberated by the young boy's quest. As the title indicates,
he is the star. But male readers see themselves as the king's son, the prince,
and not as Iron John.
But who is the prince? The prince is the rightful heir to power; he will
be the King. He is literally entitled to power, but he is not yet ready for
it. So too for manhood. Men's movement participants believe themselves
entitled to that power, the power that comes from being a man, the power
one might call patriarchy, or male privilege. They do not feel that power
yet—but they want to, and they feel themselves entitled to it. This is
why the men at the mythopoetic retreats find it so much easier to
imagine themselves as sons, to call themselves "adult children"—as if the
word adult was an adjective, modifying the word child—rather than as
fully adult, responsible to others, and refusing to claim their privileged
inheritance.
Whispers of the Heart
We believe that the mythopoetic quest is misguided because it repro-

duces masculinity as a power relation—the power of men over women
and the power of some men over other men. But there is no reason to doubt
Bly or his followers' sincerity or their desire to recreate a world of gender
certainty. The appeal of this message is in response to feminism, but not
only in the negative sense we have been describing. It is also an indication
that millions of men have been forced to grapple with what it means to be
a man. Men are searching, looking for a new sense of meaning. That they
have been looking under every possible stone and crystal is no surprise,
nor is it a surprise that the most popular solution so far is one that offers
a quick and comfortable fix. Although the mythopoetic solution may not
bring real change, the enthusiasm with which it has been greeted repre-
sents, at least in part, part of a process of change.
A key aspect of that process, a progressive whisper within a reactive
structure, is that mythopoetic groups and gatherings can be means for men
to break their isolation from other men. Part of patriarchy's interpersonal
cement is an isolation that keeps each man fearful of his own masculinity
and forces him to go to lengths to prove to the other guys that he is a real
man. By breaking the isolation, by setting up opportunities for men to
express a range of feelings among themselves and to talk about their fears
and loves and challenges, men can take steps toward disassociating
manhood and domination and reestablishing it on the basis of connection
and harmony with those around them.
This activity of redefinition is seen in the nostalgia for boyhood. We
have talked about the regressive side of this nostalgia, but we also must
ask why this nostalgia is so powerful. Perhaps it is part of what Barbara
Ehrenreich (1983) described as men's flight from commitment symbol-

ized by the magazine that extolled a male inhabiting an adult body but
acting like a boy at play, literally a Play-boy. But there is more: It is a
longing for what men have given up in order to fit into the tight pants of
masculinity. Becoming a man required a suppression of a range of human
capacities, capabilities, and emotions. But these capacities maintain a
nagging presence in men's own lives. Few completely or effortlessly fit
into the dictates of male gender power, particularly in a society where
women have demanded equality and have challenged men to examine
their own lives. As men attempt to expand their emotional repertoire, as
they learn to reach out to brothers, sisters, and children, it reawakens a
childhood voice that has long been buried. Playing in the woods recalls
the days when men were less preoccupied with maintaining gender barri-
ers, when men felt more at home with the bodies and the tears of other
males, and when men felt more at home with themselves. It is not that any
moment of their lives men were completely free of the rigors of gender
acquisition, but rather that gender demands did not yet so completely
overwhelm a range of other human characteristics and possibilities. Of
course, part of the yearning for the past is a nostalgia for a past that did
not completely exist.
The alternative is not to reject personal change and personal growth. It
is not for men to start a political movement in the image of other political
movements: "Alright men, let's get out there and get this job done no
matter what the cost." It is to hear what women have been telling men for
the past two and a half decades—that personal change is an indispensable
element of, and tool for, social change, and that structural social change
is an indispensable element for personal change. It is a personal vision of
political change and a political vision of personal change that we propose
as an alternative to the men's movement that will allow men's wild and
progressive impulses to blossom.
The Flight From Feminism

What keeps Bly and his followers from taking this radical course of
personal and social change are his protests that his work has nothing to
do with women or feminism. Bly (1990) writes that his book "does not
constitute a challenge to the women's movement," that he "does not seek
to turn men against women, nor to return men to their domineering mode
that has led to repression of women and their values for centuries" (p. x).
But such claims are disingenuous.
Though Bly is careful to hedge his comments, the book is full of

inferences that reveal how he embraces traditional gender roles:
A mother's job is, after all, to civilize the boy (p. 11);
or
A man who cannot defend his own space cannot defend women and children
(p. 156);
or
As more and more mothers work out of the house, and cannot show their
daughters what they produce, similar emotions may develop in the daughter's
psyche, with a consequent suspicion of grown women (p. 96).
Alone with other men, Bly gives this antifeminist tendency fuller play.
Journalists Steve Chappie and David Talbot describe an encounter be-
tween Bly and his campers at a retreat: " 'Robert, when we tell women
our desires, they tell us we're wrong,' shouts out one camper. 'So,' says
Bly, 'then you bust them in the mouth because no one has the right to tell
another person what their true desires are'" (cited in Chappie & Talbot,
1990, p. 196).
If Bly sidesteps the issue, his followers do not. One leader of retreats
to heal the father wound argues:
A lot of men feel hung out to dry by the women's movement. A lot of men
feel that they, personally, are being held responsible for everything that's
macho and wrong in the world today: rape, wife-beating, war. They've been
feeling very bad about themselves, and so they're overjoyed to recover their
maleness and feel proud about themselves as men. (cited in Chappie & Talbot,
1990, p. 195)
Ray Raphael (1988) celebrates men's ability to do anything women can:
At a time when an enlightened feminism has taken away many of our

traditional props, at a time when many of our manly roles have become
virtually obsolete, at a time when we have been placed on the defensive in
what we perceive as a never-ending competition between the sexes, we
have countered by aggressively usurping the roles once played by women.
(p. 172)
Journalist Trip Gabriel reports from the gender front that "more than the
men's movement cares to admit, it is a reaction to the decades of feminism,
a reclaiming of prerogatives that men have long been made to feel
defensive about" (Gabriel, 1991, p. 31).
Note how each of these men couch the reaction against feminism in
terms of men's defensiveness. Men have been made to feel bad about
traditional masculinity, about men's violence, rape, pornography, battery,
and a litany of other feminist accusations. Their response is not to enlist
in the feminist struggle against these excesses of manly behavior but to
declare themselves tired of listening.
The retreat to find a revitalized and recharged manhood, embodied in
the new men's movement, is most definitely a retreat. It is a retreat from
the mother, who embodies, in the practices of mothering, precisely the
positive qualities of caring and nurturing that men are running away from
her to find. It is a retreat from the historical specificity of the present era,
a retreatfrompolitical responsibilities to confront male excesses that daily
manifest themselves on the streets, in the schools, in the workplaces, in
the bedrooms—excesses such as rape, violence, spouse abuse, gay bash-
ing, high-risk sexual behavior, drunk driving. It is a retreat to a highly
selective anthropological world of rituals that reproduce men's cultural
power over women and that are now used to facilitate a deeper nostalgic
retreat to the lost world of innocent boyhood. It is thus a retreat from
women, from adult men's responsibilities to embrace women's equality
and struggle against those obstacles that continue to lie in the path of
gender equality. Male bonding, hailed as the positive outcome of these
weekend retreats, is double sided. Bonding implies connection with others
and also implies constraints, responsibilities. The deep masculine will
never be retrieved by running away from women. Only by fighting for
equality, side by side, as equals, can men realize the best of what it means
to be a man.
Notes
1. The material in this section is drawn primarily from Kimmel's Manhood: The
American Quest (in press).
2. Masculinists, as distinct from either profeminist men or self-conscious antifemin-
ists, are more concerned with what they see as the feminization of men than the feminism
of women. In response to this fear of feminization, they attempt to carve out homosocial
environments in both the public and private spheres in order to celebrate male bonding
and fantasies of escape from women. See Michael Kimmel, "Men's Responses to Femi-
nism at the Turn of the Century," Gender & Society, vol. 1, no. 3 (1987).
3. It has also been suggested that movement participants are princes because there can
be only one King, Bly himself, the symbolic "good" father who facilitates, through
traditional analytic transference, the healing of the father wound. But we believe that the
mythopoetic men's movement is more than Freudian psychoanalysis on a mass scale; it
is also political and ideological.
4. An alternative approach to breaking this isolation but within a profeminist perspec-
tive is addressed in Kaufman's Cracking the Armour: Power, Pain, and the Lives of Men
(1993).
5. Our thanks to Harry Brod for suggesting this final point, the sense of nostalgia for
something that did not fully exist.
References
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Name Index
Adler, A., 15, 17, 19. 22. 27, 34, 139 Blumberg, R. L., 46
Adorno, T., 29 Blumstein, P., 54
Alcoff, L.. 89 Bly, R., 21, 22, 42, 45, 46, 48, 49, 88, 120,
Arendt,H., 137 136, 203, 259, 261, 263, 264, 265,
Arnot, M, 196 266, 267, 268, 270, 272, 273, 274,
Astrachan, A.. 108 276, 277, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284,
285
Boehm,F.,23, 31
Baca, R., 211 Boggs, C , 73
BacaZinn.M., 209, 214,215 Bolin, A., 26
Bacon, R, 53 Bologh, R., 175
Bains, H., 186 Bologh, R. W., 99
Baldwin, J., viii, 252, 256 Bourdieu, P., 65, 70, 71, 73, 74, 79
Baroja, 64 Bowlby, J., 32
Barrett, M., 114,143,147 Bradshaw, J., 85
Beauvoir, S. de, 30 Braidotti, R., 106
Bell, A. I., 256 Brake, M., 186
Bern, S., 107 Brandes, S., 64, 65, 74
Beneke,T., 150 Brannon, R., 125
Benjamin, J., 62, 69, 146, 270 Breitman, B., 90
Bethal, M., 21 Brenton, M., 282
Beynon, J., 195 Brittan,A., 103, 115
Bieber, I., 25 Brod, H., 1, 2, 42, 83, 84, 85, 89, 92, 98,
Billson, J. M., 208,213 200, 201, 275
Bilton, M., 165, 169, 174, 177 Bronstein, R., 150
Bleier, R., 46 Brownmiller. S., 166
Blum, L. M., 205 Bmnswik. E. R, 29
289
Bryan, D., 211 Crosby, C , 233

Burroughs, E. R., 280
Butler, J., 224, 225, 227, 230, 233, 234,
235 Davis, M., 210
Byrne, J., 253, 254, 256 Davis, S. S., 79
Deegan, M. J., 54
de Lauretis, T, 220, 233, 234
Canaan, J., 43 Deleuze, J., 256
Cannon, L. W., 209, 215 Delphy, C , 100, 106
Caputi, J., 275 D'Emilio, J., 227, 232, 236
Carnes, M. C , 88, 279 Derrida, J., 114
Carrigan, T, 83, 86,104, 108,144 Descartes, R., 53, 232
Carrington, B., 196 Dill, B.T, 209, 215
Carter, J., 270 Dinnerstein, D., 32, 34, 146, 270
Cath, S. H., 150 Dodd,AM 187
Chafetz, J. S., 46, 50 Dollard, J., 34
Chapman, R., 103 Dolto, F., 24
Chappie, S., 285 Domhoff, G. W., 280
Chodorow, N., 32, 34,49, 62, 72,74,146, Durkheim, E., 67,99,100
270,271,272 Dworkin, A., 92
Christie, R., 29 Dwyer, D., 74, 79
Cixous, H., 255 Dwyer, K., 77
Clary, M., 41 Dyer, R., 228, 230
Clawson, M. A., 203
Clay, H., 122
Cockburn, C , 196 Easlea, B., 42, 53,173
Cockburn, C. K., 103,108 Ehrenreich, B., 284
Cohen, R, 186 Ehrensaft, D., 62
Collier, J., 78 Ehrhardt, A. A., 144
Collins, P.H., 209, 215 Eichler, M., 104
Collins, R., 40 Eliade, M., 268
Collinson, D. L., 110,208,213 EUenberger, H. P., 19
Coltrane, S., 42,47, 48, 49, 52, 54, 201, Elshtain, J. B., 45
213,214,275 Engel, M, 172
Combs-Schilling, M. E., 68, 74 Engels, F., 46, 121, 130
Connell, B., 144 Erikson, E. H., 25-26, 27
Connell, R. W., 11, 31,42, 55, 83,86, 103, Errington, F, 70
104, 108, 125, 144, 185, 186, 201, Escobar, A. L., 210
202, 203, 204, 271 Escoffier, J., 232
Connolly, W. E., 221, 222, 225, 236 Esterson, A., 30
Conwell, J. A., 276
Cooley, J., 150
Corneau, G., 22 Fanon, F, 197
Corrigan, R, 186 Farrell.W., 41, 136,203
Cott, N., 88 Ferguson, K. E., 222, 223, 233, 234
Cowan, C. R, 150 Fiedler, L., 281
Cracking the Armour, 145 Flannigan-Saint-Aubin, A., 255
Craib, I., 32 Foucault, M., 69, 219, 220, 234, 236
Name Index 291
Franklin, B., 99 Habermas, J., 29

Freedman, E. B., 227, 232. 236 Haddon, G. P., 239, 240, 241, 242, 243,
Freire, P., 203 245, 249, 250, 255
Freud, S., 11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18, Halbert,M, 114
19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 32, 33, 34, Hanmer, J., 102
67, 122, 126, 128, 130, 146, 244, Haraway, D., 46, 233, 236
247, 248 Harding, C , 88
Friedman, R. C , 27 Harding, S., 54, 55, 215
Friedman, R. M., 27 Hartsock, N., 54, 223
Fromm, E., 28 Harwood, W. S., 279
Hearn, J., 42, 83, 84, 100, 101, 103, 104,
107,110,113, 115, 150
Gabriel, T, 286 Hebdige, D., 193
Garber, M, 235 Henley, N., 72
Garfinkel, H., 75 Henley, N. M, 201
Gaylin,W., 133 Henriques, J., 197
Geertz, H., 79 Herdt, G., 67, 68, 69, 70
Genet, J., 252, 256 Herdt, G. H., 27
George, N., 256 Hertz, R., 205, 206
Gerson, J. M., 76, 89 Heward, C , 104
Gerzon, M., 82 Hichberger, J. W. M., 166
Gewertz, D., 70 Hickman, N., 42, 52
Gibson, W. J., 87, 88 Higgenbotham, E., 209, 215
Giddens, A., 86 Hirschfeld, M., 17
Gilder, G., 266 Hobbes, T., 53
Gillborn, D., 185 Hochschild, A., 57, 205
Gillette, D., 136. 265, 266, 270, 273, 276 Hocquenghem, G., 31, 256
Gilmore, D., 61, 62, 63, 64,65, 74. 78 Hollands, R., 189,191
Godelier. M, 67, 68, 77 Hondagneu-Sotelo, P., 211, 215
Goffman, E., 39, 40,41, 57, 75, 125, 169 hooks, b., 184,234,236
Gold, M, 253, 254, 256 Horkheimer, M„ 28
Goldberg, H., 41 Homey, K., 23-24, 27, 31, 32, 34
Gonzalez de la Rocha, M., 210 Horowitz, G., 146
Goode, W. J., 56 Hull, G. T, 234
Goodenough, R. G., 79 Hummer, R. A., 201
Gorer,G., 127, 130, 132
Gossett, H., 275
Gramsci, A., 71,73 Irigaray, L.,31,45,255
Graves, R., 275
Greenberger, R., 253, 254, 256
Gregor, T, 274 Jackson, D., 42, 112
Griffen, C , 88 Jahoda, M, 29
Griffin, C , 43 James, H., 277
Griffin, S., 45 Jansen, S. C , 53
Grint, K., 101 Jardine, A., 43, 55, 256
Guest, R. H., 101 Jayaratne, T. E., 50
Gurwitt, A. R., 150 Jefferson, T, 123
Johnson, M. M., 62 Lieberson, S., 53

Jones, E., 18 Lisak, D., 56
Jordan, M., 204 Livingston, J., 236
Julien,L, 188, 194 Lloyd, C , 52
Jung,C.G., 19,20,21,22,34 Lone, C , 227
London, J., 280
Lopate, H., 89
Kandiyoti,D.,47,213 Lorber, J., 43
Kann, M. EM 203 Luther, M., 99
Kaplan, E. A., 254 Lyman, P., 201
Kappeler, S., 256
Kaufman, J., 22, 146, 151, 157
Kaufman, M., 1, 42, 83, 135, 201, 287 Mac an Ghaill, M., 183, 191, 194, 196, 198
Kawash, S., 226 Macfadden, B., 278
Keble, C , 177 Machung, A., 205
Keen, S., 136 Macintosh, M., 143
Keller, E. F., 246 MacKenzie, G. O., 275
Keniston, K., 281 MacKinnon, C. A., 106
Killingray, J., 112 Macleod, D., 279
Kimmel, M., 42, 44, 108, 155, 286, 287 Macpherson, C. B., 145
Kimmel, M. S., 85, 87, 88, 89, 119, 202 Mahfouz,N., 154
Kindlon, D., 150 Majors, R., 208, 213
King, D., 26 Malinowski, B., 66
Klein, M., 23, 31, 32 Mamet, D., 129
Knievel, E., 245 Marcuse, H., 24, 25, 28
Koenig, J., 150 Margalit, A., 177
Kohn, M., 47 Martin, P. Y., 201
Kosminsky, P., 165,169, 174, 177 Marx, K., 39, 40, 41, 67, 99, 100, 121, 130
Kuhn, T, 52, 53 Mather, I., 175
May, R., 27
Mayes, P., 193
Lacan, J., 31 Mclntosh, M., 147
Laing,R.D., 24, 30-31 McLaughlin, W., 279
Laird, J., 279 McMahon, A., 32
Lamb, M. E., 150 McRobbie, A., 193
Laplanche, J., 15 Mead, M., 66, 132
La Rossa, R., 205 Men, Masculinities and Socialism Group,
Leacock, E., 46 108, 112
Lee, J., 83, 86, 104, 108, 137, 144 Mercer, K., 188, 194
Lefkovitz, L., 91 Mernissi, K, 79
Leonard, D., 100 Messner, M., 42, 55, 108
Lerner, L., 27 Messner, M. A., 201, 215, 216
Leverenz, D., 128, 131 Middleton, P., 103, 107, 108, 254, 256
Levine, S., 150 Mieli, M., 106
Levinson, D. J., 29 Mills, C. W., 28
Levy, N. B., 22 Mirande\ A., 92, 208
Lewes, K., 25 Money, J., 144, 245
Lewis, C , 205 Moore, H., 114
Name Index 293
Moore, R., 136, 265, 266, 270, 273, Raphael, R., 285
Morgan, D., 41, 42, 172 Rassam, A., 79
Morgan, D. H. J., 99, 103, 112 Reagan, R., 204, 270
Morris, M., 103 Reagon, B. J., 234
Mosmiller, T., 155 Reich, W., 27, 28, 29
Mosmiller, T. E., 85 Reinharz, S., 43, 50
Mouffe, C , 220 Reskin, B. R, 205
Mummert, G., 211 Revere, P., 123
Richardson, R, 130
Riesman, D., 28
Nardi, P. M., 150 Riggs, M., 223
Nava, M., 190 Risman, B., 57
Neusner, J., 90 Risman, B. J., 54
Newmann, E., 244 Robert, E. R., 204
Nichols, J., 41 Roberts, B., 210
Nietzsche, R, 219, 231, 236 Roos, P. A., 205
Noble, V., 133 Roosevelt, T., 280
Rosaldo, M. Z., 72
Rosen, L., 75, 76
O'Brien, M., 53, 99, 100, 106 Ross,J. M., 150
Olson, R., 53 Rossi, A., 45
Ong, W. J., 240, 244, 245 Rotundo, E. A., 131
OPCS, 101 Roudinesco, E., 31
Ortner, S., 46 Rouse, R., 210, 211
Osherson, S., 41, 129, 150 Rousseau, J.-J., 53
Owens, C , 235 Royle, T, 168
Rubin, G., 78, 269, 270
Rubin, L., 62, 150
Paredes, A., 207 Russell, G., 205
Parsons, A., 33 Rutherford, J., 103
Peiss, K., 76, 89 Rycroft, C., 28
Pelka, R, 202
Pena,M., 207,208, 213
Peristiany, J. G., 63, 64, 74 Sabo, D. R, 201
Persky, H., 251 Sager, W., 171
Pessar, P., 216 Sanday, P. R., 46, 49, 50, 79
Pharr, S., 157 Sanford, R. N., 29
Pleck, E. H., 83, 85 Sartre, J.-P, 29-30, 31,33
Pleck, J., 42 Sattel, J., 42
Pleck, J. H., 83, 85 Sattel, J. W., 204
Pontalis, J.-B., 15 Savran, D., 135
Poole, R P., 70 Schwartz, P., 54, 57
Pruett, K. D., 150 Schwarzkopf, N., 174, 204
Puig, M., 252, 256 Scott, J., 65
Scott, J. W., 224
Scott, P. B., 234
Rabinow, P., 79 Sedgwick, E. K., 84, 225, 226, 230, 231,
Ragin, C , 47 232, 236, 257
Segal, L., 184, 196, 201, 205, 206 TVson, P., 27

Seidler, V., 42, 53
Seidler, V. J., 139, 175
Seton, E. T., 279 Walby, S., 100
Shaw, M., 170, 172, 173, 179, 180 Walker, C. R., 101
Shevills,J., 112 Walker, J., 196
Showalter, E., 235 Walkerdine, V., 197
Shuster, J., 253 Washington, G., 123
Sidel, R., 205 Waters, M., 113
Siegal, J., 253 Wayne, K., 129
Silverman, K., 256 Weber, M., 99, 121,122,268
Silverman, M., 15 Weeks, J., 82, 103, 225, 227, 228, 229,
Smith, B., 234 235
Smith, B. H., 220 Wehr, G., 20
Smith, D. E., 50, 54, 56 Werner, H., 251
Smith, P., 43, 55, 256 West, C , 57
Smith-Rosenberg, C , 84 Westwood,S., 110,184
Solomon, K., 22 What men need is men's approval, 129
Spain, D., 274 Wheelwright, J., 170
Sperber, M., 19 Whitehead, H., 46
Stacey, J., 45, 89 Whyte, W, 259
Stanley, L., 102 Whyte, W. H., 101
Staples, R., 92 Wilkinson, R., 134
Starr, P., 24 Willis, P., 103, 185, 191
Stoller, R., 244, 246, 256 Wilson, E. O., 46
Stoller, R. J., 26, 27 Winter, M. R, 204
Sunday, B., 279 Wister, O., 280
Symes, L., 139 Wittgenstein, L., vii
Wolff, C , 17
Wood, E., 196
Tacey, D. J., 22 Woods, G., 252
Talbot, D., 285 Woodward, S., 174
Theweleit, K., 93,166 Woolfolk, R. L., 130
Thome, B., 89
Tiger, L., 46
Tillion, G., 66 Yanagisako, S. J., 78
Tlmmers, R. L., 22 Yogman, M. W, 150
Tocqueville, A. de, 121,122,123 Young, I. M., 221
Tolson,A., 109, 191,195,203
Tournier, M., 252, 256
Turkle, S., 31 Zimmerman, D. H., 57
Subject Index
Algeria: Cross-dressing, metaphor of, 230

gender relations in, 70-71
masculinity as performance of domi-
nance in, 71 Don Juanism, 64
American culture, feminization of, 278, Drag queen, 227
279 as political force of destabilization, 227
Archetypes, Jungian, 19-22
anima, 20, 22
animus, 21 Ethnographies:
persona, 20, 22 and masculinities, 61-79
Bisexuality, 17 Falklands/Malvinas war, 166, 172, 176,

Black English masculinities, making of, 177
183-198 Fallacy of romantic regression, 281
Black men, essentialization of, 184 Family:
Bohemian Club (San Francisco), 280 as factory of authoritarian state, 28
Boy culture, 278 Father wound, 267, 285
Boy's Brigades, 279 Feminism, 286
Boy Scouts of America, 279 challenge of, to men, 159
Branded contingencies, 222 conflicts within, 220
enlightened, 285
men and, 153-160
Castration anxiety, 15, 34 power of men and, 136
Civil War, 278 Feminist goals, masculine methods and,
Classical militarism, 173 50-51
Core gender identity, 26 Feminist men's studies, goals of, 43-44
295
Feminists, 45, 260, 278 as cause of sexism, heterosexism, and

Frankfurt school, 28, 29, 33, 34 racism, 133-135
Fraternal lodges, 279 as organizing principle of cultural defi-
Fraternal orders, 279 nition of manhood, 131,135
masculinity as, 119-139
sexism and, 133
Gay male gender identity, 226-229 source of, 157
Gay masculinities, 86 Homosexuality, 13, 27, 31, 245
Gay men, 158 medicalization of, 25
coming out of, 232 Homosexual rights movement, 17
in role of sissy, 134
outing of, 232
social networks of, 272 Individual psychology, 19
Gay scholarship, 102 Institute for Social Research, 28, 29. See
Gay studies, 5, 6, 42, 83, 84, 86 also Frankfurt school
Gender: International Psychoanalytic Association,
as central organizing category of our 19
psyches, 144 Iron John fable, 264, 282
Gender, essentialist claims about, 45-46
using comparative research to refute,
46-48 Jewish American Princess, 91
Gender class view of men, variants of, 106 Jewish masculinity, 90-94
Gender displays: Jewish Mother, 91
and men's power, 200-216 Jewish sexism, 90
styles of masculine, 204 Jewish women:
Gender doxa, examples of, 71-72 as scapegoats for anti-Semitic criti-
Gender experience: cisms of Jewish culture, 91
as conflictual, 144 Jungian psychology, 82
Genderfuck, 227, 228
Gender identity, construction of:
fear, shame, and silence in, 119-139 Klinefelter's syndrome, 248
Gender order, changes in, 179-181 Knights of King Arthur, 279
Gender splitting, 69
Gender work, 146-148, 155
Gulf War, 166, 170, 171,172, 204 Macho behavior, 200
Male body, the:
and literary metaphors for masculinity,
HAM, 112, 113 239-257
Hegemonic groups of men, 82 Male bonding, 245, 286. See also Men's
Hegemonic masculinity, 42, 83, 120, 125, movement and Mythopoetic men's
144, 148, 159,204,207,271 movement
alienation and oppression and, 150-153 Male retreats, 45
military and, 168, 170 Male sexual anatomy/physiology:
price of power and, 148-150 testerical aspect of, 239. 250
Heterosexual matrix and normative mascu- testicular aspect of, 239, 245, 250
linity, resistance to, 225-231 Manhood:
Homophobia, 16, 149, 167 badges of, 271
Subject Index 297
changing definitions of, 120 power and, 145-146

defining notion of American, 122 psychoanalysis on, 11-35
definition of, 271 ritual and ephemerality of, 73-75
demonstration of for other men's ap- sexuality and, 126
proval, 128 warrior as symbol of, 165
hegemonic definition of, 125-126 Mediterranean, honor and shame in the, 63-
power and, 136 66
stages of, 266 Men:
violence as marker of, 132 and feminism, 153-160
Manhood, models of: explicit, 100-102
Genteel Patriarch, 123, 124 gender class view of, 106-107
Heroic Artisan, 123, 124 implicit, 99-100
Marketplace Man, 123, 124 isolation of, 151, 158
Masculine body, military life and the, 167- profeminist, 155
168 seen as dominant gender in sociology,
Masculine protest, 18, 19 99-100
Masculinities: unities and commonalities between,
as power relations, 107, 124-126 106-107
as social relations of men, 111-112 unities and differences between, 107
combat, military, and, 165-181 Men and masculinities:
defined others, 110 and social divisions, 105-112
ethnographies and, 61-79 critique of types of, 113-114
Fromm's historical typology of, 28 differences and diversity between, 108-
interrelations of, 112 111
interrelations of and others, 110-111 social and sociological and, 98-102
multiple, 33 taxonomy of, 109
multiple identities and composite, 111- theorizing unities and differences be-
112 tween, 97-115
multiplicity of, 63 types of, 112-113
other-defined, 109-110 Men and masculinity:
systems of reproduction and, 72-73 challenges to nongendered categories
theorizing of in contemporary social sci- of, 102-103
ence, 39-57 conflicting styles of research on, 42
Masculinity: past research on, 41-43
Adlerian theory of, 13 relationship of, 103-105
as alienation, 150 Men managers, social category of, 113
as flight from the feminine, 126-128 Men's culture, 84
as homophobia, 119-139 Men's lives, power and powerlessness in,
as homosocial enactment, 128-129 135-139
as praxis, 268-269 Men's movement, new, 22, 156, 200, 259-
femininity within, 23 286
history of, 122-124 and the real world, 261-269
Jungian theory of, 13 major currents of, 156
male body and literary metaphors for, progressive, 42
239-257 psychoanalytic theory and, 266
patriarchy and, 240-241, 245 search for the deep masculine in, 263-
postmodernism and interrogation of, 264
219-236 See also Mythopoetic men's movement
Men's retreats, viii, 136,138, 202,259, as wimp, 265-266

281-283 NGA, 108
Men's rights, antifeminist arguments for, Nonhegemonic groups of men, 82
viii Nonhegemonic masculinities, 89
Men's studies, 84, 85, 88,103
and women's studies, 83
standpoint theories and, 54-57 Operation Desert Storm, 280
Mexican immigrant men, 207-213
machismo of, 207
masculine displays and relative power Pacific, the:
of, 213-214 alternative sex-gender systems in, 66-70
red jokes of, 207 Patriarchy, 159
rhetoric of return migration as gender and power, 145, 283
display of, 209-213 institutional embodiments of, 86
Militarism, limits of, 170-173 isolation and preserving, 151
Military: masculinity and, 241, 245
and masculinities, 165-181 Peace movements, role of men in, 172
pervasiveness of in modern societies, Penis/phallus displacement and testicle re-
169 inscription, 246-253
women in, 171 Performance, metaphor of, 223
Military life, contradictions within, 173- Peter Pan complex, 62
178 Pornography, commonalities in gay male
Mother wound, healing the, 270-273 and heterosexual male, 228
Muscular Christianity movement, 279 Post-military society, 173
Mythic heroes, 280 Postmodernism, 92-93,103
Mythopoetic men's movement, 88-89, and interrogation of masculinity, 219-
150, 156, 202, 204, 259-286 236
anthropological androcentrism of, 273- and scientism, 51-54
276 Power:
as flight from feminism, 284-286 and masculinity, 145-146
critique of, 269-287 gender and, 143-145
historical contextualization of, 276-281 price of for men, 203-204
racism of, 276 Power, men's
versus profeminist men's movement, gender displays and, 200-216
260 Power, men's contradictory experiences
Zeus power and, 202-204 of, 142-160
See also Men's movement and men's embrace of feminism, 143
Mythopoetic theorists, 151 Profeminist men:
Mythopoets, 267 "passing" as nonfeminist, 230
politics of ambiguity of, 231
subversive potential of, 229-231
NATSOPA, 108 Profeminist men's movement, 156
"New Father," 205-207 Psychoanalysis:
New Guinea, Papua: as social science, 33-34
construction of masculinity in, 67 clinical, 23-27
male-male fellatio in, 67,68 existential, 30, 31
"New Man," the, 214, 215 feminist, 32, 151
as ideological class icon, 202-207 intellectual history of, 17-19
Subject Index 299
object-relations school of, 32, 34 coalition politics, 231, 233, 234

radical, 27-32 identity politics, 231, 232, 233
Psychoanalysis, clinical, 23-27 Social constructionism, 33
social effect of, 24-25 Social structure, importance of, 40
Psychoanalysis on masculinity, 11-35 Social theory, classical:
Law of the Father, 16 as hidden meditation of manhood, 121-122
libido theory, 19, 25 Spanish American War, 280
Little Hans case history, 12-13 Superman, 240, 252-253, 254
Oedipus complex, 12-17, 19, 25, 31 Symbiosis anxiety, 245
paradox of, 11
Rat Man case history, 13
sublimation, 16 Testicular/testerical hero, reemergence of
superego concept, 15, 32 prototypical, 253-255
talking cure, 33 Transsexual, 26
unconscious concept, 16, 33
Wolf Man study, 13-15, 20, 23, 29
Psychoanalytic Society (Vienna), 18, 19 Vietnam War, 280
Rasta Heads, 184, 185, 191, 193, 194, 195, War:

196, 197 and masculinities, 165-181
as black masculine subculture, 186-189 and rape, 166
local labor market opportunities for, sexual aggression as training for, 166
191-192 Warrior, cult of, 280
male student/male teacher relations WHAM, 112, 113
and, 193-197 WHEM, 112,113
relationship of to parents, 189-191 White Ribbon Campaign (Canada), 158
vocabulary of masculinity of, 187 Wife beating, 55
Women's culture, 84
Women's liberation, 153
Scientism: Women's movement, 41,42, 158, 285
and postmodernism, 51-54 Women's status, father-child relationships
definition of, 51-52 and, 48-50
Sex rights, 278 Women's studies, 44
Sex roles, 83 and men's studies, 83
Sexual identity:
versus gender identity, 228
Sexual repression, 28 Yale's Skull and Bones club, 281
Social change strategies, 231-234 Young Men's Christian Association, 279
About the Contributors
Harry Brod is a part-time teacher of gender-related courses at the

University of Southern California, the University of California at Los
Angeles, and Antioch University at Los Angeles and of Philosophy for
Children through the Los Angeles Unified School District. He is the
editor of The Making of Masculinities: The New Men 's Studies, A
Mensch Among Men: Explorations in Jewish Masculinity, and the forth-
coming Can(n)ons of Masculinity: The Hidden History of Masculinities
in Western Political Theory. He is the author of Hegel's Philosophy of
Politics: Idealism, Identity, and Modernity.
David L. Collinson is Lecturer in Industrial Relations and Organiza-

tional Behavior, University of Warwick, U.K. He is the author of
Managing to Discriminate (with David Knights and Margaret Collin-
son) and Managing the Shopfloor and coeditor of Job Redesign.
Scott Coltrane is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of

California, Riverside. His research on gender, families, and social
change has appeared in Sociological Perspectives, American Journal of
Sociology, Social Problems, Gender & Society, Journal ofMarriage and
the Family, Journal of Family Issues, and Men's Studies Review. He is
coauthor (with Randall Collins) of Sociology of Marriage and the
Family: Gender, Love, and Property (3rd edition). His forthcoming
300
About the Contributors 301
book Family Man focuses on the changing role of fathers and the
implications of domestic labor sharing for gender equity.
R. W. Connell is Professor of Sociology at the University of California,

Santa Cruz. His books include Gender & Power, Schools and Social
Justice, and Class Structure in Australian History. His recent research
focuses on poverty and education, AIDS prevention and gay sexuality,
changes in masculinity, and historicity and politics in social theory.
Don Conway-Long has taught courses on men and masculinity in the

Women's Studies Program at Washington State University since the
early 1980s. He is now pursuing a doctorate in anthropology. He spent
the 1992-1993 year in Morocco on a Fulbright grant studying mascu-
linity patterns and beliefs among men in Rabat.
Arthur Flannigan-Saint-Aubin teaches French at Occidental College.

His articles on race, gender, and sexuality have appeared in The Journal
of the History of Sexuality, Callaloo, The French Review, and L'Esprit
Createur. He is author of Mme de Villedieu s Les Desordres de L'Amour:
History, Literature, and the Nouvelle Historique.
David S. Gutterman is a graduate student in Political Science at

Rutgers University. His current research interests include investigating
concepts of courage in the work of Nietzsche and analyzing social
change and the "politics of ambiguity."
Jeff Hearn is a Reader in Sociology and Critical Studies on Men and

Co-Convenor of the Research Unit on Violence, Abuse, and Gender
Relations, University of Bradford, U.K. He is the coauthor of "Sex" at
"Work" (with Wendy Parkin), The Gender of Oppression, and Men in the
Public Eye, and he is coeditor of The Sexuality of Organizations, Taking
Child Abuse Seriously, and Men, Masculinities, and Social Theory (with
David H. J. Morgan).
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo is Assistant Professor in the Department

of Sociology at the University of Southern California. Her forthcoming
book is Gendered Transitions: The Lives of Mexican Undocumented
Immigrants in a California Community.
Michael Kaufman lives in Toronto, Canada, and since the early 1980s
has been active working with men to challenge sexism and to redefine
masculinity. His books include Jamaica Under Manley: Dilemmas of

Socialism and Democracy (1985), Beyond Patriarchy: Essays by Men on
Pleasure, Power, and Change (1987), Cracking the Armour: Power, Pain,
and the Lives of Men (1993), and Community Power and Grass-Roots
Democracy (coedited with Haroldo Dilla, in press). Previously he held the
position of deputy director of the Centre for Research on Latin America
and the Caribbean at York University in Toronto. He is a founder of the
White Ribbon Campaign, which works to end men's violence against
women. He taught from 1979 to 1992 at York University and now works
full-time writing and doing educational and training work on gender issues.
Michael S. Kimmel is Associate Professor of Sociology at SUNY at

Stony Brook and the editor of the Sage Series on Research on Men and
Masculinities. His books include Men Confront Pornography (1990),
Men's Lives (coedited with Michael A. Messner, 1990, 3rd edition in
press), Against the Tide: Pro-feminist Men in the United States, 1776-
1990, with Tom Mosmiller (1992), and the forthcoming Manhood: The
American Quest, a history of the idea of manhood in America. As a
Visiting Professor, Kimmel was voted "Best Professor" by the students
at University of California at Berkeley.
Mairtin Mac an Ghaill teaches in the Department of Education at the

University of Birmingham, U.K. He is author of Young, Gifted, and
Black: Student-Teacher Relations in the Schooling of Black Youth. He
is presently preparing a book for publication titled Acting Like Men:
Masculinities, Sexualities, and Schooling.
Michael A. Messner is Associate Professor in the Department of Soci-

ology and the Program for the Study of Women and Men in Society at
the University of Southern California. He is coeditor (with Michael S.
Kimmel) of Men's Lives and (with Donald F. Sabo) Sport, Men, and the
Gender Order: Critical Feminist Perspectives. He is author of Power
at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity.
David H. J. Morgan is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociol-

ogy at the University of Manchester, U.K., where he has been more or
less continuously since 1962. He is the author of Discovering Men and
is the coeditor (with Jeff Hearn) of Men, Masculinities and Social
Theory and (with Sue Scott) of Body Matters. He has been an active
member of the British Sociological Association and is currently joint
editor of its journal Sociology.
CPSIA information can be obtained at www ICGtesting com
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Theorizing Masculinities

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

Maxine Baca Zinn Robert Staples

Volumes in this Series

Published in cooperation with the Men's Studies Association,

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in

For information address:

Printed in the United States of America

Theorizing masculinities/edited by Harry Brod, Michael Kaufman.

Sage Production Editor: Diane S. Foster

Baldwin, J. (1962). The fire next time. New York: Dell.

Each of us has previously written or edited two books on men and

In this book we wanted to retain and further develop what we thought

• Learning to listen to the voices of those groups whose presence and

And so the notion of committed research is not research committed to

lines of race, class, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, region,

reader will find critical examinations of the conceptualizations of mascu-

the flight from the feminine, as a homosocial enactment, and as homopho-

deconstructive efforts of profeminist men illustrate the contingency of

Psychoanalysis has a paradoxical position in discussions of masculinity.

be an outline history. But I hope there is enough detail to establish that

Classical Psychoanalysis: The Oedipus Complex

(1909/1955a). Freud now had a definite idea of a formative moment in

on an acceptable object of desire. But the issues go far beyond one

The Road Not Taken: Masculine Protest

Freud's early psychoanalytic writings were received with a mixture of

was president of the Psychoanalytic Society in Vienna at the time of his

Toward the Archetypes

clinician and experimental psychologist, he was widely regarded as

Disregarding his own careful qualification, Jung swept on to explain

Jung applied these ideas in an interesting exploration of the emotional

person to propose what might be called masculinity therapy, which be-

Clinical Psychoanalysis and Its Taming

In the 1920s an increasingly visible split developed between those to

(discussed below), this gives a vivid account of the strained emotional

about child development (Tyson, 1986) and about homosexuality (Fried-

Adler's attempt to merge Freudian theory and social radicalism perhaps

In the brilliant essay on "Ideology as a Material Force" that opened The

as he called the Freudian tradition, as too mechanical, insisting that what

earliest years of childhood. Klein herself, by the 1940s, was a recognized

Psychoanalysis offers to modern thought on masculinity a uniquely rich

most extraordinary and complex of social processes, the raising of one

gender politics, but is never enough on its own. It is an instrument that

Adler, A. (1928). Psychologie der Macht [Psychology of power]. In F. Kobler (Ed.),

Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and society. London: Imago.

Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life .. .

Living a century apart and working at different levels of analysis, Karl

On a second issue, the models of society presented by Marx and

Past Research on Men and Masculinity

Research on men is as old as scholarship itself, but a focus on mascu-

Recent best-selling authors in this tradition include Robert Bly (1990)

Goals of Feminist Men's Studies

Criticism of male scholars who focus on "men's studies" or call their

toward this long-term political goal of reducing the importance of gender

Essentialist Claims About Gender

Despite research and theories to the contrary, most people continue to

the notion of a natural masculine fierceness and an inborn "need" for

Using Comparative Research

To evaluate essentialist claims about masculinity or male dominance,

historical case studies. Intensive comparative studies are especially useful

Father-Child Relationships and Women's Status

In two extensive comparative studies of nonindustrial societies, I iso-