ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out a framework based on contemporary analyses of gender relations. “Masculinity” is not a coherent object about which a generalizing science can be produced. All societies have cultural accounts of gender, but not all have the concept “masculinity.” In its modern usage the term assumes that one’s behaviour results from the type of person one is. Gender is a way in which social practice is ordered. In gender processes, the everyday conduct of life is organized in relation to a reproductive arena, defined by the bodily structures and processes of human reproduction. This arena includes sexual arousal and intercourse, childbirth and infant care, bodily sex difference and similarity. With growing recognition of the interplay between gender, race and class it has become common to recognize multiple masculinities: black as well as white, working-class as well as middle-class.
