The Belly of the Beast (I)
Sex as Male Domination?
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23696230 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lynne Segal (Birkbeck, University of London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Pages | 171-194 |
| Publication date | 2007-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Slow Motion (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan UK (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1057/9780230582521_8 |
| OpenAlex | W2495707980 |
| ISBN | 9780230582521 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 5 |
‘Man is complicated’, Catherine Stimpson announces, introducing one of the early North American texts in ‘Men’s Studies’.3 The more we explore the social and historical dimensions of masculinity, the more it is revealed as heterogeneous and contradictory. It is defined primarily through a series of hierarchical relations: rejection and suppression of femininity and homosexual desire, command and control over (often seen as ‘protection of’) the ‘weak’ and ‘inferior’. But while the notion of masculinity becomes ever more complex, the ‘problem of men’ becomes ever more pressing. We may come to understand sexual difference in terms of a shifting reality — a multiplicity of meanings rather than simple opposition — but the cultural, social and political domination of men over women persists. The vexing paradox for feminists has been the need to criticise and challenge the social construction of ‘woman’ as definitively less-than, subordinate to or complemented by, ‘man’, while at the same time retaining for ourselves those aspects of womanhood which we value but which are disparaged in dominant male-centred discourses and realities. In consequence we may end up defending notions of feminine experience which we need to demolish as exclusively ‘feminine’. A similar paradox in relation to men lies in the importance of challenging the existence of any fixed essence of ‘man’, while at the same time insisting upon the continuing practical problem of men. The danger here is that we may end up dismissing the diversity and changing meanings of ‘masculinity’, some of which we might need to help strengthen as a challenge to the more traditional ones.
Aesthetics · Femininity · Masculinity · Opposition (politics) · Political science · Politics · Queer · Sociology · Value (mathematics) · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Law · Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
|---|