This book argues that masculine identity is in deep crisis in Western culture - the old forms are disintegrating, while men struggle to establish new relations with women and with each other. This book offers a fresh look at gender, particularly masculinity, by using material from the author's work as a psychotherapist. The book also considers the contrubtions made by feminism, sociology and anthropology to the study of gender, and suggests that it must be studied from an interdisciplinary standpoint. Masculity is seen to have economic, political and psychological roots, but the concrete development of gender must be traced in the relations of the male infant with his parents. Here the young boy has to separate from his mother, and his own proto-feminine identity, and identify with his father - but in Western culture fathering is often deficient. Male identity is shown to be fractured, fragile and truncated. Men are trained to be rational and violent, and to shut out whole areas of existence and feeling. Many stereotypes imprison men - particularly machismo, which is shown to be deeply masochistic and self-destructive.

A call to fathers to affirm their children--even when they have never experienced affirmation from their own fathers--Crisis in Masculinity points the way to wholeness for men and the women in their lives.

Men Out of Focus charts conversations and polemics about masculinity in Soviet cinema and popular media during the liberal period – often described as "The Thaw" – between the death of Stalin in 1953 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The book shows how the filmmakers of the long 1960s built stories around male protagonists who felt disoriented by a world that was becoming increasingly suburbanized, rebellious, consumerist, household-oriented, and scientifically complex. The dramatic tension of 1960s cinema revolved around the male protagonists’ inability to navigate the challenges of postwar life. Selling over three billion tickets annually, the Soviet film industry became a fault line of postwar cultural contestation. By examining both the discussions surrounding the period’s most controversial movies as well as the cultural context in which these debates happened, the book captures the official and popular reactions to the dizzying transformations of Soviet society after Stalin.

In Beyond the Crisis of Masculinity, Gary Brooks explores the psychopathology of mens everyday livesthe maladaptive strategies that men use to maintain a traditional male role that has increasingly come under assault. He then delves into the related question of why men overwhelmingly reject psychotherapy at a time when they need it the most. The key to engaging men in therapy, Brooks argues, is devising a male-friendly therapy, involving flexibility, consciousness-raising in mens groups and other out-of-office settings, and the therapists emphasis on an authentic empathetic bond with the troubled male client to discover meaning in the clients relational pressures and problems at work, with loved ones, and, most of all, with himself. Standard therapeutic models dont work for men, Brooks argues, so therapists must be eclectictranstheoreticalin negotiating therapeutic goals and tasks with their troubled male clients. The central tenets of multicultural counseling and therapy figure prominently in the transtheoretical model, as they allow the therapist to separate out and tackle peculiarly male problems that span different cultural and socioeconomic contexts. Inclusive cultural empathy and the transtheoretical models stages-of-change framework can sustain mens initial interest in the therapeutic option and, beyond that, in a transformative relationship. In such a way, Brooks concludes, the transtheoretical model advances a hesitant male client from the level of consciousness-raising and awareness of gender role strain to the level of action and change, as the locus of therapeutic agency shifts from the therapist to the client himself.

A study of post-Vietnam American literature and culture focusing on narratives of bodily trauma evident in a wide range of texts by and about other white men.

A rich analysis of the discourses and figurations of 'crisis masculinity' around the turn of the twenty-first century, working at the intersection of performance and cultural studies and looking at film, television, drama, performance art, visual art and street theatre.

This provocative, “critically important” memoir of working-class boyhood in rural Indiana offers a searing cultural analysis of toxic masculinity in American culture (NPR). As progressivism changes American society, and globalism shifts labor away from traditional manufacturing, the roles that have been prescribed to men since the Industrial Revolution have been rendered obsolete. Donald Trump's campaign successfully leveraged male resentment and entitlement, and now, with Trump as president and the rise of the #MeToo movement, it’s clear that our current definitions of masculinity are outdated and even dangerous. Deeply personal and thoroughly researched, the author of The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore has turned his keen eye to our current crisis of masculinity using his upbringing in rural Indiana to examine the personal and societal dangers of the patriarchy. The Man They Wanted Me to Be examines how we teach boys what’s expected of men in America, and the long–term effects of that socialization―which include depression, shorter lives, misogyny, and suicide. Sexton turns his keen eye to the establishment of the racist patriarchal structure which has favored white men, and investigates the personal and societal dangers of such outdated definitions of manhood. “ . . . exposes the true cost of toxic masculinity . . . and takes aim at the patriarchal structures in American society that continue to uphold an outdated ideal of manhood.” —Book Riot

A vital and sweeping examination of today's "boy crisis," demonstrating the ways in which we raise boys into a culture of toxic masculinity and offering solutions that can liberate us all Whether they're being urged to "man up" or warned that "boys don't cry," young men are subjected to damaging messages about manliness: they must muzzle their emotions and never show weakness, dominate girls and compete with one another. Boys: What It Means to Become a Man examines how these toxic rules can hinder boys' emotional and social development. If girls can expand the borders of femaleness, could boys also be set free of limiting, damaging expectations about manhood and masculinity? Could what's been labelled "the boy crisis" be the beginning of a revolution in how we raise young men? Drawing on extensive research and interviews with educators, activists, parents, psychologists, sociologists, and young men, Giese -- mother to a son herself -- examines the myths of masculinity and the challenges facing boys today. She reports from boys-only sex education classes and recreational sports leagues; talks to parents of transgender children and plays video games with her son. She tells stories of boys navigating the transition into manhood and how the upheaval in cultural norms about sex, sexuality and the myths of masculinity have changed the coming of age process for today's boys. With lively reportage and clear-eyed analysis, Giese reveals that the movement for gender equality has the potential to liberate us all.

White Masculinity in Crisis in Hollywood’s Fin de Millennium Cinema claims that Hollywood cinema had a significant relationship with the millennial crisis of masculinity. From Fight Club (Fincher, 1999) and American Psycho (Harron, 2000), to Office Space (Judge, 1999), The Matrix (Wachowski’s, 1999) and American Beauty (Mendes, 1999), Pete Deakin attests that alongside the emergent “crisis” came a definitive body of some twenty-five Hollywood “crisis” titles; each film with a representational concern for the apparent “masculine malaise”. Asking whether Hollywood helped create, propel or sooth the very notion of the crisis-of-masculinity at this time, Deakin engages with some important cultural questions: how discursive—or even authentic—was it, and more vitally, whose actual crisis was this? To this end, scholars of film studies, media studies, gender studies, history, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.

Whereas many of the men of Reagan's '80s seemed stereotypically hypermasculine, a host of '90s images suggest a new phase of more sensitive manhood. In the Clinton era, both academic and popular writers suggested that a «crisis of masculinity» had taken root - one that had men questioning traditional male ideas and seeking new identities. This book explores the conflicted ways in which this seemingly new climate of masculinity was negotiated. From Bill Clinton to The Promise Keepers and Titanic to Friends, a host of '90s heroes put this rhetoric of crisis to work to win elections, audience members, and ratings.