ABSTRACT
Concerns about a breakdown in school discipline are accentuated because of the community's fears of crime. In similar fashion, debates about the schooling of boys are related to concerns about the social position of men. Psychic essentialism sees masculinity as a psychological force which governs the state of the male psyche, and which specifies the content of the masculine personality. One of the most publicised of recent attempts to attribute sex differences and hence masculinity to biological causes has been based on studies of the structure and functioning of the brain. Another aspect of this debate is the role of testosterone in producing sex differences of various kinds. One area of behaviour frequently referred to as having a biological base is human aggression. Becoming a man is a matter of constructing oneself in and being constructed by the available ways of being male in a particular society.
