ABSTRACT
REASON, MORALITY AND MASCULINITY To understand the sources of masculine self-denial we have to explore the implicit connections that have been made between reason, morality and masculinity since the Enlightenment. This established a particular identification between modernity and masculinity. This world was to be a world of men and if women were to play any part, it was to be supportive. Feminism has challenged the patriarchal organisation of knowledge and power in the ‘modern’ world that was brought into being with the Enlightenment. It was this world that the ‘masculinist philosophy’—as Bacon saw it-that became known as science was set to legitimate. It confirmed the impersonal and objective knowledge of science while invalidating and marginalising the subjective, emotional and personal.
