What do you think?
Rate this book
Men and Masculinity
Important changes in attitudes about the status and role of men are revealed in the personal statements of individuals from all walks of life
184 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1974
16 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 9, 2025
A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS (FROM MEN AND WOMEN) ON STEREOTYPES, ETC.
Editors Joseph Pleck and Jack Sawyer wrote in the Introduction to this 1974 book, “About three or four years ago, we began asking ourselves what it means to be ‘a man.’ Is it true that to be a man, we have to achieve something considered worthwhile? Neither of us accepted this intellectually, but we knew that we personally were highly anxious about doing well. We began to see our anxiety about performance as something we had started learning as small boys… we saw how we had come to believe that we were worthwhile BECAUSE we performed well. We also remembered learning that ‘big boys don’t cry.’ As adults, we have found it hard to recognize and express our feelings, especially feelings of tenderness or vulnerability…
“These were old problems. But it was new to think of them not as individual shortcomings but as ideas we had learned in growing up male… If we learned these ideas as males, it made sense to talk about them with other men. We each joined with a group of other men discussing their masculine role. In these groups, we learned that we were not the only ones with doubts…. This was a relief and a step toward understanding and change…
“Many men, including both of us, have been stimulated to question the masculine role through our relationship with a woman who was questioning her role… in our experience, women’s liberation also holds incidental benefits for men… it is up to us men to free ourselves of the restrictions the masculine role places upon us. This book deals mainly with the experience of males who are white, middle-class, heterosexual, and live in the United States… some of these advantaged men are finding … that the traditional masculine pursuit of power, prestige, and profit will not fulfill their lives.”
Ruth E. Hartley notes, “the simple fact [is] that fathers are not at home nearly as much as mothers are. This means that the major psychodynamic process by which sex roles are learned---the process of identification---is available only minimally to boys since their natural identification objects, their fathers, are simply not around much of the time to serve as models… The absence of fathers means… that much of male behavior has to be learned by trial and error and indirection. One outcome of this state of affairs is the fact that boys, as a group, tend to resemble their fathers in personality and attitudes much less than girls resemble their mothers.” (Pg. 8)
Marc Fasteau laments, “Each of us is still pretty much going it alone. There is nothing among men that resembles the personal communication that women have developed among themselves. We don’t know very much about ourselves, and we know even less about each other. Now, in particular, we feel ‘left out,’ because we see how the women around us are making contact with each other, but our sense of isolation is also an independent and critical element of sex role conditioning itself. We are taught not to communicate our personal feelings and concerns. Most of our friendships simply don’t run very deep.” (Pg. 20)
The editors note, “For many of us women’s questioning of their sex role has been a stimulus for us to question our own. Some of us have found that getting ahead and staying cool are less important to us than we thought, and experience more pleasure and less compulsion in both our work and our relationships than we used to. Perhaps, finally, we men will change the way we relate to women, not only because we consider it right, not only because they insist on it, but also because we find it enhances our own lives.” (Pg. 31)
Robert A. Fein states, “Society provides little support---either financial or emotional---for men who want to spend regular time caring for young children. Economic pressures and the press toward a successful career often force a man to choose between his work life and his family life, an anguishing choice that some men now are refusing to take. A growing number of men are changing their career plans to allow them greater control of the ways they spend their time… The concept of paternity leave is slowly gaining acceptance.” (Pg. 61)
The editors explain, “Some of us are searching for new ways to work that will more fully express ourselves rather than our learned desire for masculinity. We are reducing our material standards of what it takes for a good life while raising our nonmaterial standards. Needing less money gives us more choice with our time and effort. We CAN find ways to work with involvement, with cooperation, and in emotional contact with self and others.” (Pg. 95)
The editors outline, “The masculine role not only oppresses us individually as we strive to fulfill it, but also encourages us to lend support, through our work, to institutional goals that may oppress others. Many of society’s institutions actively promote the masculine role and at the same time use it toward their own ends… The masculine role motivates not only physical violence in battle, but also the decisions back home that direct it. Men at the top do not deal first hand in individual violence; instead they make decisions that involve life or death for thousands. These men often rationalize their actions with masculine imagery from sports, war, and hand-to-hand fighting.” (Pg. 124)
Barbara J. Katz says of the developing ‘men’s liberation movement’: “Generally… the men taking part in this new movement---mostly white, middle-class, and in their mid-20s to mid-50s---are more introspective than political. Most have become involved in response to the women’s movement: At first defensive under female questioning of accepted sex roles, they soon came to question these roles themselves. Unlike the members of the women’s movement, however, they have not produced a highly visible structure to fight for these goals… Eschewing rhetoric, they explore their concerns about the traditional male sex role on an intensely personal level, usually within groups of from 6 to 10 members.” (Pg. 153)
The editors say of their own men’s group experience, “One of the reasons we joined a men’s group was a feeling of dissatisfaction with ourselves, our jobs, our relationships with men and women, and what we saw as our alienating futures. The group gives us a way to share our feelings and experiences with others in an intimate and honest way. We also feel the need to understand our alienation from each and our selves; to see how our roles, problems, sexual fears, and personal frustration are shared by nearly everyone in the society. Being an all-men’s group gives us a common base of make experience to share and open up with one another.” (Pg. 159)
Jack Sawyer summarizes, “Male liberation calls for men to free themselves of the sex-role stereotypes that limit their ability to be human. Sex-role stereotypes say that men should be dominant… ‘Success,’ for a man, often involves influence over the lives of other persons. But success in achieving positions of dominance and influence is necessarily not open to every man, since dominance is relative and hence scarce by definition… Stereotypes tend to identify such men as greater or lesser failures, and in extreme cases, men who fail to be dominant are the object of jokes, scorn, and sympathy from wives, peers, and society generally.” (Pg. 170-171)
This book will be of interest to those seeking a diversity of opinions on such topics.
Editors Joseph Pleck and Jack Sawyer wrote in the Introduction to this 1974 book, “About three or four years ago, we began asking ourselves what it means to be ‘a man.’ Is it true that to be a man, we have to achieve something considered worthwhile? Neither of us accepted this intellectually, but we knew that we personally were highly anxious about doing well. We began to see our anxiety about performance as something we had started learning as small boys… we saw how we had come to believe that we were worthwhile BECAUSE we performed well. We also remembered learning that ‘big boys don’t cry.’ As adults, we have found it hard to recognize and express our feelings, especially feelings of tenderness or vulnerability…
“These were old problems. But it was new to think of them not as individual shortcomings but as ideas we had learned in growing up male… If we learned these ideas as males, it made sense to talk about them with other men. We each joined with a group of other men discussing their masculine role. In these groups, we learned that we were not the only ones with doubts…. This was a relief and a step toward understanding and change…
“Many men, including both of us, have been stimulated to question the masculine role through our relationship with a woman who was questioning her role… in our experience, women’s liberation also holds incidental benefits for men… it is up to us men to free ourselves of the restrictions the masculine role places upon us. This book deals mainly with the experience of males who are white, middle-class, heterosexual, and live in the United States… some of these advantaged men are finding … that the traditional masculine pursuit of power, prestige, and profit will not fulfill their lives.”
Ruth E. Hartley notes, “the simple fact [is] that fathers are not at home nearly as much as mothers are. This means that the major psychodynamic process by which sex roles are learned---the process of identification---is available only minimally to boys since their natural identification objects, their fathers, are simply not around much of the time to serve as models… The absence of fathers means… that much of male behavior has to be learned by trial and error and indirection. One outcome of this state of affairs is the fact that boys, as a group, tend to resemble their fathers in personality and attitudes much less than girls resemble their mothers.” (Pg. 8)
Marc Fasteau laments, “Each of us is still pretty much going it alone. There is nothing among men that resembles the personal communication that women have developed among themselves. We don’t know very much about ourselves, and we know even less about each other. Now, in particular, we feel ‘left out,’ because we see how the women around us are making contact with each other, but our sense of isolation is also an independent and critical element of sex role conditioning itself. We are taught not to communicate our personal feelings and concerns. Most of our friendships simply don’t run very deep.” (Pg. 20)
The editors note, “For many of us women’s questioning of their sex role has been a stimulus for us to question our own. Some of us have found that getting ahead and staying cool are less important to us than we thought, and experience more pleasure and less compulsion in both our work and our relationships than we used to. Perhaps, finally, we men will change the way we relate to women, not only because we consider it right, not only because they insist on it, but also because we find it enhances our own lives.” (Pg. 31)
Robert A. Fein states, “Society provides little support---either financial or emotional---for men who want to spend regular time caring for young children. Economic pressures and the press toward a successful career often force a man to choose between his work life and his family life, an anguishing choice that some men now are refusing to take. A growing number of men are changing their career plans to allow them greater control of the ways they spend their time… The concept of paternity leave is slowly gaining acceptance.” (Pg. 61)
The editors explain, “Some of us are searching for new ways to work that will more fully express ourselves rather than our learned desire for masculinity. We are reducing our material standards of what it takes for a good life while raising our nonmaterial standards. Needing less money gives us more choice with our time and effort. We CAN find ways to work with involvement, with cooperation, and in emotional contact with self and others.” (Pg. 95)
The editors outline, “The masculine role not only oppresses us individually as we strive to fulfill it, but also encourages us to lend support, through our work, to institutional goals that may oppress others. Many of society’s institutions actively promote the masculine role and at the same time use it toward their own ends… The masculine role motivates not only physical violence in battle, but also the decisions back home that direct it. Men at the top do not deal first hand in individual violence; instead they make decisions that involve life or death for thousands. These men often rationalize their actions with masculine imagery from sports, war, and hand-to-hand fighting.” (Pg. 124)
Barbara J. Katz says of the developing ‘men’s liberation movement’: “Generally… the men taking part in this new movement---mostly white, middle-class, and in their mid-20s to mid-50s---are more introspective than political. Most have become involved in response to the women’s movement: At first defensive under female questioning of accepted sex roles, they soon came to question these roles themselves. Unlike the members of the women’s movement, however, they have not produced a highly visible structure to fight for these goals… Eschewing rhetoric, they explore their concerns about the traditional male sex role on an intensely personal level, usually within groups of from 6 to 10 members.” (Pg. 153)
The editors say of their own men’s group experience, “One of the reasons we joined a men’s group was a feeling of dissatisfaction with ourselves, our jobs, our relationships with men and women, and what we saw as our alienating futures. The group gives us a way to share our feelings and experiences with others in an intimate and honest way. We also feel the need to understand our alienation from each and our selves; to see how our roles, problems, sexual fears, and personal frustration are shared by nearly everyone in the society. Being an all-men’s group gives us a common base of make experience to share and open up with one another.” (Pg. 159)
Jack Sawyer summarizes, “Male liberation calls for men to free themselves of the sex-role stereotypes that limit their ability to be human. Sex-role stereotypes say that men should be dominant… ‘Success,’ for a man, often involves influence over the lives of other persons. But success in achieving positions of dominance and influence is necessarily not open to every man, since dominance is relative and hence scarce by definition… Stereotypes tend to identify such men as greater or lesser failures, and in extreme cases, men who fail to be dominant are the object of jokes, scorn, and sympathy from wives, peers, and society generally.” (Pg. 170-171)
This book will be of interest to those seeking a diversity of opinions on such topics.
Displaying 1 of 1 review