Abstract
The main thesis of this book can be expressed as a simple paradox: patriarchal masculinity cripples men. Manhood as we know it in our society requires such a self-destructive identity, a deeply masochistic self-denial, a shrinkage of the self, a turning away from whole areas of life, that the man who obeys the demands of masculinity has become only half-human. Jeff Hearn states this poignantly in his book The Gender of Oppression: ‘We men are formed and broken by our own power.’1
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Notes
D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962) p. 62.
Alix Pirani, The Absent Father: Crisis and Creativity (London: Penguin Arkana, 1989).
Mary Ingham, Men: The Male Myth Exposed (London: Century, 1985) p. 2.
See, for example, the essays in S. B. Ortner and H. Whitehead, (eds), Sexual Meanings; D. K. Feil, The Evolution of Highland Papua New Guinea Societies (Cambridge University Press, 1987); D. Gilmore, Manhood in the Making;
T. Buckley and A. Gottlieb, Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
D. Morgan, Discovering Men, Chapter 4; Jeff Hearn, Men in the Public Eye: The Construction and Deconstruction of Public Men and Public Patriarchies (London and New York: Routledge, 1992).
See D. W. Winnicott, Deprivation and Delinquency (London: Tavistock, 1984);
S. Hall and T. Jefferson (eds), Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain (London: Hutchinson, 1976).
B. A. Te Paske, Rape and Ritual: A Psychological Study (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1982) Chapters 4 and 5; R. E. Dobash and R. P. Dobash, Women, Violence and Social Change, p. 245; L. Segal, Slow Motion, pp. 246–7 and 252.
D. Gilmore, Manhood in the Making, pp. 26–9; D. K. Feil, The Evolution of Highland Papua New Guinea Societies, p. 189; Karen Horney, ‘The Dread of Women’, Feminine Psychology (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973).
Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, Approach to Zen (San Francisco: Japan Publications, 1973) p. 101.
Nadine Miller, ‘Letter to Her Psychiatrist’, in The Radical Therapist, ed. Radical Therapist Rough Times Collective (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974) pp. 125–6.
Jane Flax, ‘The Conflict Between Nurturance and Autonomy in Mother-Daughter Relationships and within Feminism’, in E. Howell and M. Bayes (eds), Women and Mental Health (New York: Basic Books, 1981).
Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (London: Women’s Press, 1990).
C. G. Jung, ‘The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious’, in The Collected Works, volume 7, (ed.) Herbert Read, Michael Fordham and Gerhard Adler (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977) pp. 187–9.
See the comments in Edward Buscombe, The BFI Companion to the Western (London: André Deutsch, 1988) pp. 50–2;
Kim Newman, Wild West Movies (London: Bloomsbury, 1990) Chapter 10.
See Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (London: Picador, 1985).
Karen Horney, ‘The Distrust Between the Sexes’, Feminine Psychology, p. 113; see also T. Buckley and A. Gottlieb, Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation; Chris Knight, Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origin of Culture; P. Shuttle and P. Redgrove, The Wise Wound: Menstruation and Everywoman (London: Gollancz, 1978).
Jacqueline Rose, ‘Femininity and its Discontents’, in Sexuality: A Reader, ed. Feminist Review (London: Virago, 1987) p. 184.
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© 1994 Roger Horrocks
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Horrocks, R. (1994). Power and Powerlessness. In: Campling, J. (eds) Masculinity in Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230372801_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230372801_3
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