Chicago Series on Sexuality, History & Society
2 total works
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.
Between 1877 and 1892, Dr Thomas Neill Cream murdered seven women, all prostitutes or patients seeking abortions, in England and North America. Using press reports and police dossiers, this account of the killings investigates the links between crime and respectability to reveal a remarkable range of Victorian sexual tensions and fears. The author explores how the roles of murderer and victim were created, and how similar tensions might contribute to the increase in serial killing in modern society.