Crossing into Manhood: A Men’s Studies Curriculum
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Crossing into Manhood: A Men’s Studies Curriculum By Christopher ...

Chapter 1:  Introduction
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In describing the power man, Kimbrell asserted that dominance and power are basic characteristics of the masculine mystique and that men need to have power over such things as money, resources, and labor because of their masculinity. This definition of masculinity denies men their traditional, nutrient power and associates them with the shadow sides of power as manifested in rape, harassment, the destruction of the planet’s ecological resources, and the exploitation of workers. The identification of men with technology and power has resulted in men becoming one-sided and dysfunctional, causing them to forsake participation in and relations with other men, women, and nature. The paradox of power contributes to sexual confusion and dysfunction in men. Kimbrell wrote,

The power-man model demands that men be able to dominate women as part of their sexual role, that they penetrate women to control and conquer in true Baconian fashion. Men in our society face a difficult bind. While the growth of technology, with its identification with masculine power, swells in Priapus-like fashion, the average male faces the terror of the potential failure of his all-too-human personal power machine. If he is to be validated as a power man, he has to “get it up,” keep it up, and use it in tireless pumping fashion so as to dominate and subdue his partner, preferably through her exhaustion from total sexual satiation. Anything less is seen as a failure of power by many men and women alike. So-called impotence (literally lack of power) or premature ejaculation then becomes the intimate sexual corollary to unemployment or technological illiteracy for men. It stigmatizes a man as a failure—demonstrates his inability to fulfill the dictates of the machine and power mythologies. (p. 128)

The result is that men are caught in the masculine mystique bind of male identity from which they cannot escape, which makes them a disposable gender, which subjects them to a system in which work is meaningless and endless, and which results in high incidents of physical and emotional maladies.

Keen (1991) used the metaphor of the “self-made man” to describe the eighteenth century American masculine gender model. Industrialization and westward expansion witnessed the elevation of scientists, inventors, and manufacturers who were masters of themselves and nature. Manhoodwas described as “muscular, pragmatic, and action-oriented” (Keen, p. 106).