This past decade has witnessed an extraordinary transformation in men's lives. For years, wave after wave of the women's movement, a movement that reshaped every aspect of American life, produced nary a ripple among men. But suddenly men are in the spotlight. Yet, the public discussions often seem strained, silly, and sometimes flat-out wrong. The spotlight itself seems to obscure as much as it illuminates. Old tired clichTs about men's resistance to romantic commitment or reluctance to be led to the marriage altar seem perennially recyclable in advice books and on TV talk shows, but these days the laughter feels more forced, the defensiveness more pronounced. Pop biologists avoid careful confrontation with serious scientific research in their quest to find anatomical or evolutionary bases for promiscuity or porn addiction, hoping that by fiat, one can pronounce that "boys will be boys" and render it more than a flaccid tautology. And political pundits wring their hands about the feminization of American manhood, as if gender equality has neutered these formerly proud studs. Misframing Men, a collection of Michael Kimmel's commentaries on contemporary debates about masculinity, argues that the media have largely misframed this debate. Kimmel, among the world's best-known scholars in gender studies, discusses political moments such as the Virginia Military Institute and Citadel cases that reached the Supreme Court (he participated as expert witness for the Justice Department) along with Promise Keepers rallies, mythopoetic gatherings, and white supremacists. He takes on antifeminists as the real male bashers, questions the unsubstantiated assertions that men suffer from domestic violence to the same degree as women, and examines the claims made by those who want to rescue boys from the "misandrous" reforms initiated by feminism. In writings both solidly grounded and forcefully argued, Kimmel pushes the boundaries of today's modern conversation about men and masculinity.

Collection of Kimmel's commentaries on contemporary debates about masculinity.

Neo-Gothic Narratives defines and theorises what, exactly, qualifies as such a text, what mobilises the employment of the Gothic to speak to our own times, whether nostalgia plays a role and whether there is room for humour besides the sobriety and horror in these narratives across various media. What attracts us to the Gothic that makes us want to resurrect, reinvent, echo it? Why do we let the Gothic redefine us? Why do we let it haunt us? Does it speak to us through intertexuality, self-reflectivity, metafiction, immersion, affect? Are we reclaiming the history of women and other subalterns in the Gothic that had been denied in other forms of history? Are we revisiting the trauma of English colonisation and seeking national identity? Or are we simply tourists who enjoy cruising through the otherworld? The essays in this volume investigate both the readerly experience of Neo-Gothic narratives as well as their writerly pastiche.

This book explores editorial and advertising discourses related to cosmetic procedures and beauty products and services in UK lifestyle magazines, offering a holistic perspective on the normalisation of cosmetic procedures and the societal context in which particular perceptions have flourished. The volume examines the societal climate that contributed to cultural perceptions of the body as object and project, and constructions of masculinities and femininities as context for developments in lifestyle magazines’ content on beauty and cosmetic procedures. Integrating approaches from Critical Discourse Analysis, Thematic Analysis, and Content Analysis, Hermans explores the varying ways in which cosmetic procedures and other beauty products are marketed to different audiences and examines phenomena such as the problem/solution rhetoric, and developments in beauty advertising discourse specifically targeted at men. The book also investigates the continuum view of beauty products and cosmetic procedures, and examines the implications of these blurred boundaries for the regulation of the cosmetic surgery industry. This innovative contribution to research on the representation of cosmetic procedures and beauty products in the media will be of interest to scholars researching at the intersection of language, gender, individualised body projects, and sexuality.

Public schools in early America were designed to ensure the reproduction of Eurocentric social values. It could be argued that little has changed. Gender Lessons takes an in-depth look at how schools institutionalize gender—how kids are taught the rules and expectations of performing masculinity and femininity. This work provides extensive examples of how elementary, middle, and high schools: sextype; defend and preserve patriarchy; weave gendered expectations in all things school related; promote inequity; and limit their students’ potential by explicitly and implicitly teaching that they must fit into only one of two boxes...“girl” or “boy.” Richardson argues that schools—a powerful and wide reaching publicly funded mechanism—should be engaged in social (re)imagination that disbands the antiquated girl/boy and feminine/masculine binary so that kids might have a chance at being themselves. This book is sure to provoke conversation in courses and professional communities interested in education, gender studies, social work, sociology, counseling and guidance. “In the 1970s, feminists fought to reform sexist school curricula and challenged taken-for-granted tracking of boys and girls. Forty years later, drawing from personal experiences and insightful research in schools, Scott Richardson shows us that the job is far from finished. Informal interactions and stubborn sexist beliefs about gender difference still press girls and boys in primary, middle and high schools into different—and highly constraining—gender boxes. Anyone who cares about taking the next steps toward gender equality in schools will find in Gender Lessons a useful and hopeful map to a better future for our kids.” – Michael A. Messner, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and author of Some Men: Feminist Allies and the Movement to End Violence Against Women “This book is unique in that it includes data from elementary, middle, and high schools from both students’ and teachers’ perspectives. These examples are familiar to anyone working in K-12 schools, but his analysis offers a new lens for many that can expose the frustrating and often heartbreaking nature of these taken-for-granted cultural norms.” – Elizabeth J. Meyer, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Education at California Polytechnic State University and author of Gender and Sexual Diversity in Schools

What can novels tell us about masculinity in Syria? In this book, Lovisa Berg explores over 20 Syrian novels covering the last 50 years of the 20th century. Uniquely, she examines only female writers in order to gauge the changing ways in which Syrian women perceived the function of masculinity, and the impact certain attitudes towards masculinity have on men, women, children and Syrian society, from a female perspective. The works of writers from Kulit Khuri to Usayma Darwish are analysed to explore changing attitudes to gender in Syria and the Middle East, as well as the political upheavals within the country and region. We see the idealistically portrayed men in the novels of female authors in the 1950s give way in time to a more critical depictions of patriarchy. Above all, we see through the use of novels a plethora of critiques of masculine hegemony in Syrian society, the authors of which are able with the use of fiction to reorganise and question maleness in a way denied to them in reality. This book will be of interest to scholars of Contemporary Syrian and Arabic Literature, Masculinity Studies and Women's Studies.

Groups seeking legal equality often take a victory as the end of the line. Once judgment is granted or a law is passed, coalitions disband and life goes on in a new state of equality. Policy makers too may assume that a troublesome file is now closed. This collection arises from the urgent sense that law reforms driven by equality call for fresh lines of inquiry. In unintended ways, reforms may harm their intended beneficiaries. They may also worsen the disadvantage of other groups. Committed to tackling these important issues beyond the boundaries that often confine legal scholarship, this book pursues an interdisciplinary consideration of efforts to advance equality, as it explores the developments, challenges, and consequences that arise from law reforms aiming to deliver equality in the areas of sexuality, kinship, and family relations. With an international array of contributors, After Legal Equality: Family, Sex, Kinship will be an invaluable resource for those with interests in this area.