ABSTRACT
John Stoltenberg wrote a provocative book called Refusing to be a Man in which he adamantly challenges the cultural codes of masculinity but stops short of subverting those codes in favor of a new understanding of gender. Rather he dick-tates, in alleged feminist dogma, a vacuous and thoroughly phallocentric portrait of masculinity as something to be denounced and avoided by (pro)feminist men. The amorphous conception known as the “men’s movement” repeatedly reifies traditional masculinity under the guise of redefinition. At the same time, the “men’s movement” perceives feminism as “women’s work,” an ideological position, project, and movement that men can resent or admire, but in which we can never fully participate.
