Manhood Acts: Gender And The Practices Of Domination

Manhood Acts: Gender and the Practices of Domination

In this book, Michael Schwalbe offers a new perspective on the social construction of manhood and its relationship to domination. The study of men and masculinity has reached a dead end in part because it has lost touch with its feminist roots and has been seduced by the politically safe notion of multiple masculinities. Manhood Acts sets out an alternative view that delineates the practices males use to construct women and men as unequal categories, to claim identities as men, and to compete for status as men. Schwalbes argument reclaims the radical feminist insights that gender is a field of domination, not a field of play, and that manhood is fundamentally about exerting or resisting control. Schwalbe also examines the intersection of capitalism and manhood, showing how manhood and economic exploitation are co-emergent and mutually sustaining. Manhood Acts arrives at the conclusion that abolishing gender as a system of oppression will require more than transgressive self-presentation. To end the damage caused by manhood acts and by competition for manhood status, it will be necessary to end the exploitive economic relationships that necessitate manhood itself.


Author Michael Schwalbe
ISBN 161205546X, 9781612055466
Format Paperback
Pages 205p.