ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses major shifts in thinking about masculinity and explores a category of crime where thinking about masculinity has made some impact, namely, sexual violence and ‘youth crime’, though obviously some crimes straddle categories. For Freud, this masculinity was built upon a constitutional bisexuality, and a complex mix of pre-oedipal desires and identifications. Hence, it was always multi-layered, consisting of masculine and feminine elements, conflict-ridden, and fragile. Ultimately the worth of psychoanalysis in understanding masculinity will depend on our ability to grasp the structuring of personality and the complexities of desire at the same time as the structuring of social relations, with their contradictions and dynamisms. The cluster of crimes in which sex is somewhere implicated is undoubtedly the area where thinking about masculinity has impacted most, not surprisingly perhaps, given the importance of sexuality to constructions of masculinity.
