Masculinity from the Inside

Based on the author’s experience of teaching young men at a military academy, this book rejects the vocabulary and presuppositions of discourses surrounding men and engages with the ways in which men understand themselves, seeking to address the gulf that exists between theoretical accounts of masculinity and men’s own experiences.

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Rejecting the vocabulary and presuppositions common in Western talk about men, this book considers the ways in which men see, speak about, and understand themselves. Based on the author’s experience of teaching young men at a military academy and drawing on a range of theory, it identifies a disconnect between academic discourses on “masculinity,” based as these are on theoretical positions that describe the world from a position of “outsidership,” and the reality of most men’s experience—or, the way in which men see themselves. With an erroneous view of men dominating the airwaves, most men simply fail to engage, leaving the mistaken conceptions of masculinity to circulate and allowing policies to develop that treat men as predators and aggressors. Presenting insights into masculinity drawn from experience with young men drawn toward military life, Masculinity from the Inside seeks to address the gulf between scholarly understandings of men and men’s own understandings of themselves. It will therefore appeal to scholars and students of sociology, cultural studies, and gender studies, to anyone with interests in contemporary masculinity and the question of what it means to be a man.