ABSTRACT
This was written in London in September 1979, and shows some local influences, ranging from the English books I was then reading to the esoteric lore about canals. But its origins go further back, to some years of wrestling—in practice and in theory—with the implications of feminism for men. I have discussed the more practical side of this in ‘Men and socialism’ (in Evans and Reeves, 1982). It was clear there were also theoretical tasks: obviously one of the things men had to do was make a critical analysis of masculinity. But in doing that, one constantly came across the belief that masculinity was unproblematic because it was all settled by the constitution of the male body. Hence the subject of this essay.
It wasn’t the first thing I had written about masculinity, just the first that has got to a shape where it could be given a public airing. The essay draws on two main sources of data. One is my own memories. The other is the life-histories of teenage boys I was writing at that time, with Dean Ashenden, Sandra Kessler, and Gary Dowsett, for the ‘School, Home and Work’ project, the results of which are now published in Making the Difference and Ockers and Disco-maniacs. To some extent the paper bounces off the 1970s literature about men, notably Tolson’s Limits of Masculinity, by far the best of its genre; but its main theoretical point of departure (and criticism) is psychoanalysis.
