Men, Sex and Relationships

by Victor J. Seidler (Editor)

Men, Sex and Relationships follows on the success of The Achilles Heel Reader also edited by Vic Seidler in being a judicious mix between he academic and the personal. Drawn from contributins to Achilles Heel it provides the reader with helpful and insightful material on the men's relationships with others.

280 pages, Paperback

First published June 18, 1992

Reviews

[Justin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The tricky thing about the subject of men and intimate heterosexual relationships is that any given book on the topic is extremely unlikely to meet its reader on common ground. I'm sure there's something I could glean from this book but much of what is presented by the contributors as a revelation strikes me as a given. At the same time there are autobiographical accounts of men choosing to essentially convert to homosexuality as a political act which strikes me as bizarre and performative (and not in Judith Butler's sense of the word). I suspect the fact that much of the writing in this book stems from as far back as the late 1970s contributes to the difficulty I found in relating to the various writers and speakers. However the problem of relatability persists in contemporary books in this genre.

I've found a better approach to developing a sense of one's self and consciously changing outlooks and habits is to just read or otherwise experience more fiction or philosophy. I recently read The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe and couldn't help but see chunks of my past self and bits of my current self in the protagonist. By displacing those sorts of qualities onto an external character (as though dressing a mannequin in an outfit you've worn or are considering) it becomes easier to analyze and critique and ultimately change what is yourself.