In this history of manhood and masculinity, the author argues that modern formulations of masculinity, despite any sense of naturalness and constancy, are in fact, idealized cultural products of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He examines the process of social construction whereby this traditionalized model of the heterosexual male was selected, delineated, and maintained. The author focuses attention on two domains essential to the legitimation of Western cultural constructs - medicine and the law. Through court reports and newspaper accounts, McLaren shows how everyday people, not just the juridical elite, helped to define through their testimony an ideal of manhood and proper masculine behaviour. He then considers the medical world: psychiatrists and sexologists emerged as arbiters of sexual and gender differences, devising new categories of deficient masculinity - homosexuals, sadists, exhibitionists, and transvestites. Forming such deviant types required the medical community, he argues, to further demarcate a particular form of preferred masculinity.
- ISBN10 0226500675
- ISBN13 9780226500676
- Publish Date 23 June 1997
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Out of Print 28 March 2016
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Chicago Press
- Edition 2nd ed.
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 316
- Language English