Cultural Contexts and Masculinity Shifts

Abstract

Masculinity and men’s studies, initially seen as one particular section of explorations of what it means to be a man, appeared as a secondary field, even if linked to Simone de Beauvoir’s “the first sex.” In de Beauvoir’s feminist manifesto of the second wave, “woman” apparently had an identity of her own, but was only defined as being the absence, the “lack,” the Other, against which man defined himself. The current essay examines the historicity of gender roles and the developing contexts in which perceptions of them and theories about them are largely defined by new contexts for which the activation of hegemonic or feminine masculinities, for example, is more than a reasonable choice. The last section engages with literary responses to masculinity as articulated by Lowell, Vonnegut, and Heller in a less-than-heroic age where significant masculinity shifts emerged in American fiction as well.

Keywords

• hegemonic masculinity
• female masculinity
• patriarchy
• men's studies
• the masculine mystique