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THE END OF MANHOOD: A BOOK FOR MEN OF CONSCIENCE by John Stoltenberg.
New York: Penguin, 1994. 308 pp. $21.00, $10.95 (Paper).
If all violence committed by males were somehow eliminated from the planet, we wouldn't need a special issue on violence. And yet, discussions of gender, and especially "masculinity," as a socially constructed identity that needs to be engaged and deconstructed are often marginalized into gender studies, or, worse yet, women's studies (as if it's their problem) and are virtually missing as a focus within debates about violence and violence prevention. The detailed critiques and impassioned common sense of feminist thinkers through twenty-five years of "women's liberation" in the women's movement have helped make possible the current men's movement, with its similar aspirations of "liberation." Exactly what men need to be liberated from is, of course, the first central question one must address before any meaningful movement toward male liberation can begin. In The End of Manhood: A Book for Men of Conscience, author and lecturer John Stoltenberg addresses this question and a host of others with a bold passion, sense of humor, gift for story telling, and a deep commitment to what he calls "loving justice."
Stoltenberg presents a radical critique of the very concept "manhood," arguing that it serves no socially desirable function--only hurtful functions that can and should be eliminated from men's personal identities and social interactions. He presents a provocative alternative to most thinking about men and the problematic aspects of our behavior and identity. He bases his critiques on the claim that "manhood," in all of its various masculine incarnations, is at odds with, and in fact mutually exclusive of, an authentic sense of "selfhood"--a selfhood necessary for relating to others in just, moral, and non-violating ways. He argues:
This book therefore rejects the widespread notion that "manhood" can be somehow revised and redeemed--the contemporary project variously described as "reconstructing," "reinventing," "remythologizing," "revisioning," and re-whatevering gendered personal identity so as to bring its hapless adherents back into the human fold. That project is utterly futile, and we all have to give it up, as this book will carefully explain. (p. xiv)
Stoltenberg's book provides a detailed and complex analysis of gender relations and identity formation around his underlying argument...