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Women in Culture and Society
Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917
When former heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries came out of retirement on the fourth of July, 1910 to fight current black heavywight champion Jack Johnson in Reno, Nevada, he boasted that he was doing it "for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a negro." Jeffries, though, was trounced. Whites everywhere rioted. The furor, Gail Bederman demonstrates, was part of two fundamental and volatile national manhood and racial dominance.
In turn-of-the-century America, cultural ideals of manhood changed profoundly, as Victorian notions of self-restrained, moral manliness were challenged by ideals of an aggressive, overtly sexualized masculinity. Bederman traces this shift in values and shows how it brought together two seemingly contradictory the unfettered virility of racially "primitive" men and the refined superiority of "civilized" white men. Focusing on the lives and works of four very different Americans—Theodore Roosevelt, educator G. Stanley Hall, Ida B. Wells, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman—she illuminates the ideological, cultural, and social interests these ideals came to serve.
In turn-of-the-century America, cultural ideals of manhood changed profoundly, as Victorian notions of self-restrained, moral manliness were challenged by ideals of an aggressive, overtly sexualized masculinity. Bederman traces this shift in values and shows how it brought together two seemingly contradictory the unfettered virility of racially "primitive" men and the refined superiority of "civilized" white men. Focusing on the lives and works of four very different Americans—Theodore Roosevelt, educator G. Stanley Hall, Ida B. Wells, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman—she illuminates the ideological, cultural, and social interests these ideals came to serve.
322 pages, Paperback
First published June 15, 1995
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About the author
Gail Bederman
1 book8 followersGail Bederman is a historian specializing in gender, sexuality, and cultural history in the United States. She earned her Ph.D. from Brown University and is the author of Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917. Her current research explores early public advocacy for contraception in Britain and the U.S., with two forthcoming volumes: The Worst Sort of Property and The Very First Reproductive Rights Movement. Her work examines key intellectual and activist figures shaping reproductive rights and gender discourse in the 19th century.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
January 19, 2021
Categories are produced by political choices and events. Power disappears the traces of this process, making categories like gender and sex appear fixed. Often it’s not that things are natural, it’s that they are naturalized. Currently people conflate anatomy with gender identity with authority. However, these actually have no inherent association. They became conflated as part of a historical process. In particular, gender norms (ideas of what men and women are and should do) are shaped by legacies of racism.
In the early 20th century, eugenic scientists and policy makers in the US used the rhetoric of “civilization” to naturalize patriarchy and white supremacy. They argued that the US was destined to become the ultimate, divine-ordained nation on Earth, the pinnacle of racial evolution. Where other empires had failed in the past, they felt the US was destined to succeed. Part of this pursuit of perfection required “the most perfect manliness and womanliness the world had ever seen” (26). This entailed distinguishing American masculinity from its European Victorian predecessor. Whereas Victorian manhood was considered restrained and polished, American masculinity was re-imagined as aggressive and rugged.
Policing sex became seen as necessary to advance the white race and stave off the threat of racial decay (“primitive” gender non-conformity). American masculinity became redefined as a form of racial genius that was only achievable by white people and inaccessible by “savages” who were not seen as advanced enough to display sex differences between men and women. Doctors like George Miller Beard invented a medical diagnosis called “neurasthenia” to pathologize the “cultural weakness” that came from being “over-civilized.”
There was a widespread anxiety that the development of society was actually making white men too delicate and effeminate, and that they needed to be revitalized in order to truly achieve greatness. Eugenicists resolved this crisis by redefining “civilized” and “savage” from dichotomy to continuum: instead of being defined against “primitivity” (associated with aggression), the new American masculinity re-casted “primitivity” as an essential component of white masculinity. Eugenicists believed that “primitivity” had to be exercised during youth in order for white men to eventually grow into their manhood.
They argued that white men had an inherent “genocidal urge” that needed and deserved to be expressed. In fact, Teddy Roosevelt believed that white men had to invade foreign lands in order to evolve to the greatest manhood. In this way: eugenicists redefined gender norms to facilitate racial violence and conquest. No longer were overt displays of violence incompatible with civilized masculinity, they were integral to it. Toxic masculinity became seen as a patriotic duty.
Even though white men used the rhetoric of civilization to justify discrimination against white women (arguing that civilized races deepen the divide between men in the public sphere and women in the private sphere), white feminists nonetheless resourced the rhetoric of civilization for their own ends. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, one of the most prolific white feminist voices, argued that white society should end sexism in order to unify the white race to work together to advance civilization. She maintained that “lower races” were not “developed” enough to have equality between the sexes and therefore Black, Indigenous, and racialized women (BIPOC) were not yet “advanced” enough for women’s rights.
“Gender” and “race” don’t exist in isolation from one another: they were co-developed as categories and remain co-evolving. Racism is foundational to gender norms and gender norms are essential to racism. Gender is a racial construct; race is a gendered construct. The next time someone insists what a man or a woman” should be” ask what political histories led to this definition? Are these traditions we want to transmit or transform?
In the early 20th century, eugenic scientists and policy makers in the US used the rhetoric of “civilization” to naturalize patriarchy and white supremacy. They argued that the US was destined to become the ultimate, divine-ordained nation on Earth, the pinnacle of racial evolution. Where other empires had failed in the past, they felt the US was destined to succeed. Part of this pursuit of perfection required “the most perfect manliness and womanliness the world had ever seen” (26). This entailed distinguishing American masculinity from its European Victorian predecessor. Whereas Victorian manhood was considered restrained and polished, American masculinity was re-imagined as aggressive and rugged.
Policing sex became seen as necessary to advance the white race and stave off the threat of racial decay (“primitive” gender non-conformity). American masculinity became redefined as a form of racial genius that was only achievable by white people and inaccessible by “savages” who were not seen as advanced enough to display sex differences between men and women. Doctors like George Miller Beard invented a medical diagnosis called “neurasthenia” to pathologize the “cultural weakness” that came from being “over-civilized.”
There was a widespread anxiety that the development of society was actually making white men too delicate and effeminate, and that they needed to be revitalized in order to truly achieve greatness. Eugenicists resolved this crisis by redefining “civilized” and “savage” from dichotomy to continuum: instead of being defined against “primitivity” (associated with aggression), the new American masculinity re-casted “primitivity” as an essential component of white masculinity. Eugenicists believed that “primitivity” had to be exercised during youth in order for white men to eventually grow into their manhood.
They argued that white men had an inherent “genocidal urge” that needed and deserved to be expressed. In fact, Teddy Roosevelt believed that white men had to invade foreign lands in order to evolve to the greatest manhood. In this way: eugenicists redefined gender norms to facilitate racial violence and conquest. No longer were overt displays of violence incompatible with civilized masculinity, they were integral to it. Toxic masculinity became seen as a patriotic duty.
Even though white men used the rhetoric of civilization to justify discrimination against white women (arguing that civilized races deepen the divide between men in the public sphere and women in the private sphere), white feminists nonetheless resourced the rhetoric of civilization for their own ends. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, one of the most prolific white feminist voices, argued that white society should end sexism in order to unify the white race to work together to advance civilization. She maintained that “lower races” were not “developed” enough to have equality between the sexes and therefore Black, Indigenous, and racialized women (BIPOC) were not yet “advanced” enough for women’s rights.
“Gender” and “race” don’t exist in isolation from one another: they were co-developed as categories and remain co-evolving. Racism is foundational to gender norms and gender norms are essential to racism. Gender is a racial construct; race is a gendered construct. The next time someone insists what a man or a woman” should be” ask what political histories led to this definition? Are these traditions we want to transmit or transform?
November 24, 2021
Manliness and Civilization is a classic Foucauldian study of the Discourse (capital D intended) around gender and race in the Progressive period. Bederman tracks a shift from a Victorian conception of manliness as based around self-restraint of urges to a more modern one of active and powerful sexuality, using case studies of anti-lynching activist Ida Wells, psychologist and educator G. Stanley Hall, feminist author and activist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and president Theodore Roosevelt, rounding out the detailed case studies with Black boxer Jack Johnson and the fictional character Tarzan.
Bederman's analysis shows that these three major themes of civilization, race, and masculinity, are impossible to separate. Civilization, the way not just in which we live now, but the better ways in which we intend to live tomorrow, as exemplified by the Chicago World's Fair, was tied up with the idea the civilization is a product of a biologically distinct racial universe. In the thinking of the times, Americans are the preeminent White Race, at the head of humanity as a whole, with a mission to civilize and lead the lesser races of the world. Civilization is a product of men primarily.
This book is at its best when it digs at the contradictions of the era's idea of civilization. The digressions on the deprecated mental illness neurasthenia, and how both Hall and Gilman struggled with it as individuals are fascinating stuff (though to be fair, also closest to my own scholarly interests). Wells, using the discourse of civilization to shame Americans about lynchings via the British press, is a fascinating ploy.
Unfortunately, the core case studies of the book don't quite connect, or at least don't make it beyond the first level. Once you accept that both Roosevelt and Gilman saw their political reforms in thoroughly racist frames, the racism is unsurprising. Whiteness is hoary nonsense, but extremely powerful hoary nonsense, and Bederman isn't critical enough.
Bederman's analysis shows that these three major themes of civilization, race, and masculinity, are impossible to separate. Civilization, the way not just in which we live now, but the better ways in which we intend to live tomorrow, as exemplified by the Chicago World's Fair, was tied up with the idea the civilization is a product of a biologically distinct racial universe. In the thinking of the times, Americans are the preeminent White Race, at the head of humanity as a whole, with a mission to civilize and lead the lesser races of the world. Civilization is a product of men primarily.
This book is at its best when it digs at the contradictions of the era's idea of civilization. The digressions on the deprecated mental illness neurasthenia, and how both Hall and Gilman struggled with it as individuals are fascinating stuff (though to be fair, also closest to my own scholarly interests). Wells, using the discourse of civilization to shame Americans about lynchings via the British press, is a fascinating ploy.
Unfortunately, the core case studies of the book don't quite connect, or at least don't make it beyond the first level. Once you accept that both Roosevelt and Gilman saw their political reforms in thoroughly racist frames, the racism is unsurprising. Whiteness is hoary nonsense, but extremely powerful hoary nonsense, and Bederman isn't critical enough.
March 8, 2012
Fascinating historical study of the use of the discourses of manliness (think hegemonic masculinity), masculinity, and civilization (ie, whiteness) by four different historical figures: Ida B Wells (anti-lynching activist), G Stanley Hall (the psychologist who came up with the developmental concept of adolescence), Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Teddy Roosevelt. The more I read about this time period, the more I realize how everything that is happening now has happened before. Totally fascinating. And gave me a different vantage of Gilman--one I never learned in feminist theory.
February 12, 2021
I have a fascination with eras I would hate to live in (well some aspects I like but in general I would hate). This book is centered around ideas of masculinity in the late 19th century and early 20th. Most of the intellectual detritus at least the dominating bulk of the intellectual zeitgeist is terrible stuff. The racism, weird Social Darwinist ideas, prudery, violence, militarism, and sexism seemed to be at a local apogee. This book is about these ideas and the nexus around the idea of masculinity. My mind has been turning on this nub for most of my life since adolescence. I played along with masculine norms (mostly out of social cowardice) for my adult life but the resentment of playing this masquerade was building. Anyway, I read this a few years back on the social construction of ideals of masculinity on a very shaky biological foundation. Examining these values I had a sort of Nietzschean transvaluation of values and instead of becoming an ubermensch I decided to become a transwoman and this book was helpful in intellectualizing something I wanted to criticize and abandon for a long time. Excellent analysis and the material is funny because the nature and the form of the ideal of masculinity presented are so risible in the turn of the 20th century.
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May 1, 2021Bederman draws a connection between race and gender and argues that one must dissolve the racist/sexist discourse on both ideas in order to change either of them. At the end of the 18th century, middle-class Americans were explaining male supremacy in terms of white racial dominance and male power. These Progressive Era men used ideas about white supremacy to produce a racially based ideology of male power. Bederman argues that gender is a historical, ideological process. At this time, men were claiming certain kinds of authority through a particular type of body. Bederman describes "civiliation" as denoting atributes of race and gender. Ultimately, the discourse of civilization linked both male dominance and white supremacy to a Darwinist version of Protestant millennialism. This millennialist fight against evil was challenged by Darwinian understanding of random conflict (rather than conflict shaped from the hand of God). Protestants reconciled Darwin and Protestantism by assuming the goal of the conflict was to perfect the world (through the white race). Whiteness and civilization = manly.
August 9, 2016
I'm re-reading this for what must be at least my 10th time. I assigned in to one of my classes this semester: History of Sexuality in 20th c. US. I worried about assigning it because it is a 1990s book, but I still find it so compelling. I love the way she gets at sexual ideas and behavior via discussions of gender, civilization and race. Very clever. Jack Johnson, Ida B. Wells, G. Stanley Hall, Teddy Roosevelt and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, along with her study of Chicago's World Fair are all telling case studies.
There are parts of every chapter I would excise, but her intention in this book is different from mine as a reader and teacher. So - not really a fair criticism.
Students like it. I think. I remember reading it for the first time as a graduate student and being appalled and fascinated by G. Stanley Hall's struggle to fit into social conventions re. sex and gender.
There are parts of every chapter I would excise, but her intention in this book is different from mine as a reader and teacher. So - not really a fair criticism.
Students like it. I think. I remember reading it for the first time as a graduate student and being appalled and fascinated by G. Stanley Hall's struggle to fit into social conventions re. sex and gender.
May 17, 2022
This is a good work of history that makes good points, but like some other recent(ish) historical works — thinking Herf’s “Reactionary Modernism” here — suffers somewhat from its own success, read twenty-five years after its release. It has somewhat an inversion of Herf’s problem: his book’s title became almost a cliche, but the arguments within it are varied enough to reach beyond the cliche. Bederman’s work constitutes a substantial pick-blow in the excavation of the sheer weirdness of the white world between 1870 and the outbreak of WWI. None of her phrases or ideas became cliches, and “Manliness and Civilization” still represents vital work, but the text itself tends towards a repetitive thesis-heavy show-and-tell. It probably doesn’t help that Bederman was publishing a decade or so after Herf, which is to say, a decade further into academia’s slide into caution and irrelevance. This was probably Bederman’s dissertation and those are generally cautious and schematic.
Wow! I’m making “Manliness and Civilization” sound bad, and also not saying what it’s about. It’s not bad! It’s good. And it’s about the extended freakout around race and gender that overtook the white bourgeoisie throughout the world in the last third of the nineteenth century, and running into the early twentieth. White men were in decline, people started thinking. They were under siege, supposedly, from the “lower races,” the lower classes, women, and most of all, their own comfort and prosperity. No more could manliness be understood as the sort of relatively sober-sided dispensation of responsibility. No, it had to get aggressive. It had to get primal! It had to rebuke femininity and softness and be outwardly aggressive. In many ways, we live with the masculinity we inherited from this period- it probably helps that mass culture as we know it came about during its high tide. The specifics fade in and out, or soft pedaled and hard-sold depending on circumstances, but the core is still there.
The great thought-worlds of the bourgeoisie draw strength from interactivity and choice-opportunities. I wouldn’t call the big bourgeois freakout “great” as in “good” but it was “great” as in “important and generative.” There was no one set way to participate in the freakout, to combine and recombine the elements. With education and platform, you could do what you wanted with them. Bederman discusses how four important cultural figures played with the central lineaments of the freakout.
Black journalist Ida B. Wells used racialized ideas of civilization to combat lynching. How can white men claim to have a monopoly on civilization (as they now did- earlier variants of civilization-thought were usually also racist but more involved) when they did such notably uncivilized things to black people? Psychologist Stanley Hall got in trouble for telling Chicago schoolteachers they had to let their boy children act like “savages,” on the basis of some needlessly complicated bullshit about how boys act out the racial past of their various races, and if they don’t, they get “neurasthenia” i.e. sad, soft, and potentially gay? Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of high school classic “The Yellow Wallpaper,” was apparently a racist psycho who thought that she had to stay unmarried so she could focus on uplifting the race, and that the problem with sexism is that it didn’t let women like her advance the white race? And of course, there’s Teddy Roosevelt, who LARPed his idea of white manhood all the way from a sickly boyhood to a belligerent presidency.
These are all interesting and compelling stories. This would probably get a higher rating if Bederman allowed their stories to breathe a little more away from the schemas she cautiously laid out in the introduction (which is mainly about boxer Jack Johnson, who became an obsessive focus for many of these questions- could have used more on him, his case is fascinating). Race, gender, and ideas of “civilization,” the three frames and by god each section will laboriously bring in all three, cite the relevant authorities, tie in with earlier examples, and then say that all that was said, no matter what it does to the flow of the book. Class gets wedged in there with the slightly panicked air of someone who forgot to add the bay leaf to the roast (can you tell this a feeling I have experienced, because I have?). And I’m like… just let loose, Professor Bederman! I believe in you! Hell, I’m probably a victim of having thought too much (and I bet too loosely- I am no expert on the period) about this freakout. If I had read it back during comps when I was supposed to… still. A good and important book! ****
Wow! I’m making “Manliness and Civilization” sound bad, and also not saying what it’s about. It’s not bad! It’s good. And it’s about the extended freakout around race and gender that overtook the white bourgeoisie throughout the world in the last third of the nineteenth century, and running into the early twentieth. White men were in decline, people started thinking. They were under siege, supposedly, from the “lower races,” the lower classes, women, and most of all, their own comfort and prosperity. No more could manliness be understood as the sort of relatively sober-sided dispensation of responsibility. No, it had to get aggressive. It had to get primal! It had to rebuke femininity and softness and be outwardly aggressive. In many ways, we live with the masculinity we inherited from this period- it probably helps that mass culture as we know it came about during its high tide. The specifics fade in and out, or soft pedaled and hard-sold depending on circumstances, but the core is still there.
The great thought-worlds of the bourgeoisie draw strength from interactivity and choice-opportunities. I wouldn’t call the big bourgeois freakout “great” as in “good” but it was “great” as in “important and generative.” There was no one set way to participate in the freakout, to combine and recombine the elements. With education and platform, you could do what you wanted with them. Bederman discusses how four important cultural figures played with the central lineaments of the freakout.
Black journalist Ida B. Wells used racialized ideas of civilization to combat lynching. How can white men claim to have a monopoly on civilization (as they now did- earlier variants of civilization-thought were usually also racist but more involved) when they did such notably uncivilized things to black people? Psychologist Stanley Hall got in trouble for telling Chicago schoolteachers they had to let their boy children act like “savages,” on the basis of some needlessly complicated bullshit about how boys act out the racial past of their various races, and if they don’t, they get “neurasthenia” i.e. sad, soft, and potentially gay? Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of high school classic “The Yellow Wallpaper,” was apparently a racist psycho who thought that she had to stay unmarried so she could focus on uplifting the race, and that the problem with sexism is that it didn’t let women like her advance the white race? And of course, there’s Teddy Roosevelt, who LARPed his idea of white manhood all the way from a sickly boyhood to a belligerent presidency.
These are all interesting and compelling stories. This would probably get a higher rating if Bederman allowed their stories to breathe a little more away from the schemas she cautiously laid out in the introduction (which is mainly about boxer Jack Johnson, who became an obsessive focus for many of these questions- could have used more on him, his case is fascinating). Race, gender, and ideas of “civilization,” the three frames and by god each section will laboriously bring in all three, cite the relevant authorities, tie in with earlier examples, and then say that all that was said, no matter what it does to the flow of the book. Class gets wedged in there with the slightly panicked air of someone who forgot to add the bay leaf to the roast (can you tell this a feeling I have experienced, because I have?). And I’m like… just let loose, Professor Bederman! I believe in you! Hell, I’m probably a victim of having thought too much (and I bet too loosely- I am no expert on the period) about this freakout. If I had read it back during comps when I was supposed to… still. A good and important book! ****
December 8, 2011
A fine set of case studies, this book elucidates Foucault's often opaque method of discourse analysis. Some of the analysis got repetitive, but for the most part the histories were fascinating, especially those of Jack Johnson, Ida B. Wells, the Columbian expo in Chicago, and G. Stanley Hall. The author demonstrates convincingly how the discourse of "civilization" interacts with the discourses of gender (i.e., manliness/masculinity) and of race, as well as how that interaction evolves over time.
October 15, 2013
Milenialism (not the generation, it's a religious idea) and social Darwinism collide in an explosion of shifting ideas of what it means to be masculine and manly. As the times change, so do meanings. I am entirely too exhausted to elaborate more than that. Loved the book, Bederson is a great storyteller. Her conclusion wraps up amazingly well with a synthesis of all areas mentioned in previous chapters and Burroughs' "Tarzan."
July 28, 2008
Feminism, racism, clash of civilizations. A history book that feels frighteningly relevant today. (And for the academic types: it's a really brilliant set of illustrations of the way sexual or gender claims in the U.S. context are raced from their inception.)
October 30, 2013
Perfection.
October 8, 2025
The subtitle here is key to what to expect from the content of this excellent study: "A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United". From Analysis: Gail Bederman’s Manliness and Civilization:
There are a lot of profiles of key figures in this fight to promote or reduce the period's racist "toxic masculinity" (thought the phrase did not exist then, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Also profiled is Ida B. Wells - who as with Gilman traces roots of modern feminism. Wells-Barnett was an American investigative journalist, sociologist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the NAACP and dedicated her career to combating prejudice and violence, and advocating for African-American equality—especially for women.
It is interesting to me how the era wrung hands over imagined illnesses to like neurasthenia to support the views. Also interesting to me is something I think of as a feature of The Progressive Era (1890s–1920s), a period in the United States characterized by multiple social and political reform efforts, where people got together in associations, held conventions and put forward resolutions. Who does that?
All this sort of leads to Teddy Roosevelt who recast himself from effete and urbane modern man to a rough adventurer. Here is an available extract.
...
The race suicide controversy, then, was (like neurasthenia) one of many ways middle-class men addressed their fears about overcivilized effeminacy and racial decadence. Throughout the 1890s, elite American commentators bemoaned the falling birthrate, often blaming women's colleges or the new immigration. 129 Historians, following these sorts of articles, sometimes suggest increased immigration and new demands for women's rights explain these panicked fears. 130 Yet it would probably be more accurate to suggest that TR and his contemporaries saw both immigration and women's advancement, as well as the falling birthrate, as part of a wider threat to their race, manhood, and "civilization."
The author's Conclusion:
Thesis: “this book will investigate this turn of the century connection between manhood and race. It will argue that, between 1890-1917, as while middle-class men actively worked to reinforce male power, their race became a factor which was crucial to their gender…whiteness was both a palpable fact and a manly ideal for these men.”—pg. 4-5
Argument: She argues that race, gender, and power were the defining attributes of the discourse of civilization. This is important because each person whom Bederman discusses uses race, gender, and power in their own unique way to show how their people group was more civilized than others. She further argues that race and gender cannot be studied as separate categories, because they work in tandem throughout American history.
There are a lot of profiles of key figures in this fight to promote or reduce the period's racist "toxic masculinity" (thought the phrase did not exist then, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Gilman's attack on male dominance had depended on the argument that the shared racial bonds between civilized men and civilized women far out-weighed primitive, animalistic, sexual difference. She was therefore both lost and defeated when, in the 1920s, white men began to believe that nature intended men to dominate women...
Also profiled is Ida B. Wells - who as with Gilman traces roots of modern feminism. Wells-Barnett was an American investigative journalist, sociologist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the NAACP and dedicated her career to combating prejudice and violence, and advocating for African-American equality—especially for women.
It is interesting to me how the era wrung hands over imagined illnesses to like neurasthenia to support the views. Also interesting to me is something I think of as a feature of The Progressive Era (1890s–1920s), a period in the United States characterized by multiple social and political reform efforts, where people got together in associations, held conventions and put forward resolutions. Who does that?
All this sort of leads to Teddy Roosevelt who recast himself from effete and urbane modern man to a rough adventurer. Here is an available extract.
By depicting imperialism as a prophylactic means of avoiding effeminacy and racial decadence, Roosevelt constructed it as part of the status quo and hid the fact that this sort of militaristic overseas involvement was actually a new departure in American foreign policy. American men must struggle to retain their racially innate masculine strength, which had originally been forged in battle with the savage Indians on the frontier; otherwise the race would backslide into overcivilized decadence. With no Indians left to fight at home, then, American men must press on and confront new races, abroad.
...
The race suicide controversy, then, was (like neurasthenia) one of many ways middle-class men addressed their fears about overcivilized effeminacy and racial decadence. Throughout the 1890s, elite American commentators bemoaned the falling birthrate, often blaming women's colleges or the new immigration. 129 Historians, following these sorts of articles, sometimes suggest increased immigration and new demands for women's rights explain these panicked fears. 130 Yet it would probably be more accurate to suggest that TR and his contemporaries saw both immigration and women's advancement, as well as the falling birthrate, as part of a wider threat to their race, manhood, and "civilization."
The author's Conclusion:
My major point is simpler, less tentative, and should by now be self-evident. This study suggests that neither sexism nor racism will be rooted out unless both sexism and racism are rooted out together. Male dominance and white supremacy have a strong historical connection. Here, surely, is a lesson that we all can learn from history.
February 13, 2022
Wow, this is an incredible book, a truly revelatory piece of scholarship about the formation of "manliness" and "masculinity" at the turn of the 20th century – and therefore the creation of the values that continue to reflect what our culture considers "manly" today.
Bederman compellingly and clearly argues that a discourse of "civilization" between Reconstruction and World War I essentially required that to be civilized meant to be a White man charged with "caring for" (ruling over) those who were less civilized – i.e., women and all non-White people. To be a true man, therefore, was to be White, and to be White, one had to be a true man – or a woman in her proper domestic sphere.
Focusing on four key figures in the era, Bederman shows how they used this discourse to subvert, reify, or otherwise enshrine these interlaced concepts of gender, race, and civilization. Ida B. Wells used the discourse to shame northern Whites into condemning lynching as unmanly behavior against manly, civilized Blacks. Pioneering feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman used the discourse to argue an alliance between White men and women would benefit "the race" while rejecting any potential alliance between White and Black women. Psychologist G. Stanley Hall used the discourse to advocate that boys be allowed to return to a state of "primitive savagery" so they could appropriately develop into true men. And Theodore Roosevelt wedded the discourse to nationalist ambitions and justified imperial expansion as a way to uplift uncivilized, unmanly races.
Overall, the story Bederman tells is fascinating, disturbing, and altogether important. Well worth reading as an academic, as a normal person, or anything in between.
Bederman compellingly and clearly argues that a discourse of "civilization" between Reconstruction and World War I essentially required that to be civilized meant to be a White man charged with "caring for" (ruling over) those who were less civilized – i.e., women and all non-White people. To be a true man, therefore, was to be White, and to be White, one had to be a true man – or a woman in her proper domestic sphere.
Focusing on four key figures in the era, Bederman shows how they used this discourse to subvert, reify, or otherwise enshrine these interlaced concepts of gender, race, and civilization. Ida B. Wells used the discourse to shame northern Whites into condemning lynching as unmanly behavior against manly, civilized Blacks. Pioneering feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman used the discourse to argue an alliance between White men and women would benefit "the race" while rejecting any potential alliance between White and Black women. Psychologist G. Stanley Hall used the discourse to advocate that boys be allowed to return to a state of "primitive savagery" so they could appropriately develop into true men. And Theodore Roosevelt wedded the discourse to nationalist ambitions and justified imperial expansion as a way to uplift uncivilized, unmanly races.
Overall, the story Bederman tells is fascinating, disturbing, and altogether important. Well worth reading as an academic, as a normal person, or anything in between.
March 8, 2022
Three stars might be a tad generous, but the book's topic is interesting even if its execution is rather flawed. The author does a good job of outlining the half-century shift in American society from "civilized manliness" to "primitive masculinity", and she discusses the intersection of race and gender and how there was a constant (and many-sided) tug of war surrounding whiteness and maleness. Of the four figures the author chooses for illustrative purposes, I found TR the most effective--the others made sense in some ways but stretched the argument in others. Biggest criticism: the terrible repetitiveness! There were so many times when the author seemed to say the exact same thing (just worded a bit differently) in three consecutive paragraphs. The book could have been as much as 25% shorter without this exhausting repetition.
June 28, 2017
Great book. As a hispanic from a country colonized by souther european catholics that didn´t prohibit miscenegation, I was impressed by all the bs that whites thought about themselves and about others in the US. Roosvelt´s ideas about masculinities were so fucking surrealistic and bizarre to the point that I started laughing. I was also schocked to read all the upheaval that ocurred when the first black boxer defeated a white boxer: riots, killings, beating, laws in the congress were passed and at the end Jack Johonson had to go into exlite because the police wanted him in jail. His crime? Defeating a white boxer!! What a barbaric time for America. Fortunately a lot of things have changed, although there are still a lot of remnants of the old white small penis complex.
June 19, 2018
This book explored the wide range of ways that the racialized discourse of civilization shaped conceptions of gender between the collapse of reconstruction and the first World War, providing five main case studies that are examined in detail on their own and compared against eachother in order to show the evolution of though across this period. My main complaint is that it is difficult to gauge the relative popularity of different ideas presented in the book when they come into conflict with eachother and how these ideas interacted with American public and foreign policy at the time
June 26, 2022
Bederman describes the cultural change in male perception over the turn of the 19th century. Clear and readable, the book details four stories to show the connection between civilization and manliness.
February 25, 2023
Just finished re-reading this for a class I'm teaching. Such a wonderful, thoughtful, well-constructed argument. If you were the kid who worked their way through each and every biography in your elementary school library, this is a book for you! Love it!
December 8, 2018
Easy-to-read writing but don't let that fool you into thinking it doesn't pack a punch. The writing can feel repetitive at times, but it's all to hone in the author's thesis.
June 6, 2019
It's truly an interesting look at how manliness and masculinity worked to with ideas of civilization in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century.
May 15, 2021
A wonderful research commentary on women, gender, race and culture that helped me understand why librarianship was a vital skill for women in the 19th century.
April 12, 2024
Sickeningly relevant
Read
May 17, 2025Vaguely interesting, but really doesn't say all that much that feels new. Perhaps a sign of its success but it was pretty boring.
June 12, 2025
God what is it with men feeling the need to prove their manhood to other men it’s so dumb
December 13, 2010
This is one of the better explorations of masculinity and US history, although it has its limitations as well. Bederman set out to discuss "the ways in which middle-class men and women worked to re-define manhood in terms of racial dominance, escpecially in terms of 'civilization'" in the period 1880-1917. To do so, she picked four case-studies: Ida B. Wells, an anti-lynching activist, G. Stanley Hall, a professor of psychology, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a women's rights advocate, and Theodore Roosevelt, Republican President of the United States. She then proceeds to give what is essentially a discourse analysis (her indebtedness to Foucault is acknowledged in the intro) on each, providing historical context for their arguments and noting the ways in which the tropes of primitive masculinity and civilized manhood are utilized by them. Bederman does not argue that manhood/masculinity are fixed concepts, but rather sees them constructed by the flux of discourse of a given era, and is interested in the ways in which they are negotiated through reference to commonly-accepted norms and conflicting ideas. Interestingly, she is skeptical of the idea of a "crisis in masculinity" which many authors on the subject base their arguments around, to the point where one (I forget which) has argued that masculinity is nearly always in crisis. Rather, she claims that gender "implies constant contradiction, change, and renegotiation," an observation with which I would tend to agree, although there may be certain points when such change causes a certain amount of panic and defensiveness for those who perceive their gender-identity as "dominant" and thus at least the perception of crisis. Overall, however, I find Bederman's theory to be sound, and somewhat more well-developed than a lot of the masculinity scholars one could name.
The weakness of the book is grounded more in her case studies, which are rather arbitrary (probably chosen because of the availability of sources) and questionably representative. It's hard to prove anything with discourse alone, as many historians have come to see in the years since 1995, and this is an example of a book that rest on little else. Further, if manliness was in a process of renegotiation, why should we look at such limited examples of the process of negotiation. Each of these examples is, arguably, a "success" in using gender for their own purposes, but what about the many failures? What about those who didn't quite "get" the argument, or who turned it against itself? Of course, these could be subjects for future study, but are four examples really enough even to prove anything about a dominant narrative, or are they just selective ways of reinforcing a pre-determined argument? That may be the weakest point of the book, it simply doesn't cast a wide-enough net to really prove its argument, although the argument, and the book, are challenging and interesting in their own right.
The weakness of the book is grounded more in her case studies, which are rather arbitrary (probably chosen because of the availability of sources) and questionably representative. It's hard to prove anything with discourse alone, as many historians have come to see in the years since 1995, and this is an example of a book that rest on little else. Further, if manliness was in a process of renegotiation, why should we look at such limited examples of the process of negotiation. Each of these examples is, arguably, a "success" in using gender for their own purposes, but what about the many failures? What about those who didn't quite "get" the argument, or who turned it against itself? Of course, these could be subjects for future study, but are four examples really enough even to prove anything about a dominant narrative, or are they just selective ways of reinforcing a pre-determined argument? That may be the weakest point of the book, it simply doesn't cast a wide-enough net to really prove its argument, although the argument, and the book, are challenging and interesting in their own right.
March 31, 2014
This book is a tightly woven argument for how masculinity has been intertwined with race and gender through narratives of civilization. Bederman demonstrates that modern conceptions of masculinity emerged in the late nineteenth century, along with racialization movements driven by a kind evolutionary millennialism. Different people "synthesized" race, gender, and civilization in different ways to make sense of social phenomena, like lynching, women rights, adolescence, and American imperialism. I'm particularly impressed at how Bederman uses the novel Tarzan in her conclusion to show how all these narratives work together in a popular text.
Needless to say, many of the discourses she identifies still play important roles in how masculinity is constructed today, even if some of the foundational ideologies have seemingly disappeared. This would be an excellent book to use in a gender studies class or even a cultural studies class. That said, the clarity of Bederman's argument and fascinating primary sources makes this a good read for anyone who wishes to expand their knowledge of turn of the century America or develop their sense of gender.
Needless to say, many of the discourses she identifies still play important roles in how masculinity is constructed today, even if some of the foundational ideologies have seemingly disappeared. This would be an excellent book to use in a gender studies class or even a cultural studies class. That said, the clarity of Bederman's argument and fascinating primary sources makes this a good read for anyone who wishes to expand their knowledge of turn of the century America or develop their sense of gender.
June 28, 2012
A little redundant at times, but it's a really interesting history of gender. What I liked about it is - unlike a lot of histories of masculinties - she doesn't conceptualize masculinity as a "thing." She considers it a "discourse" (a la Foucault) and charts the transition from a discourse of "manliness" to one of "masculinity." Google Ngrams support her idea - that masculinity gradually replaced manliness around the turn of the century. But, to illustrate how and why that happened, she uses four really interesting case studies (the best, IMO is Ida B. Wells). Good read.
January 29, 2008
From an academic point of view, this book has it's good points and it's bad. Bederman really supplies example after example. Unfortunately the examples are undocumented, and sometimes complete assumptions about how things might have been. However, she puts forth an interesting idea about Mankind as prey leading to the "Man's War" mentality of today.
September 22, 2009
Very interesting work, more of a school type but still some fun parts about Teddy Roosevelt and the first black boxing Champion, Jack Johnson...very good stuff on him. I do not however believe many of her ideas, but her research is sound.
May 31, 2007
Really interesting book, and responsible for my senior thesis. Presents a whole different interpretation on the way history is learned and our masculine heroes are worshipped.
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