The principal question on at least some feminist agendas today is whether masculine gender, now that we know it to be a thing apart from sexed bodies, can or ought to be fully deconstructed and erased or whether men, or men and women together, can reform masculinity, make it available to both men and women, and purge it of its brutal, agonistic, and domineering qualities. I will try to demonstrate that the best antidotes to the universalist temptation that haunts gender analysis are historical and anthropological perspectives that situate masculinities in diverse temporal, social, and spatial settings. Sections of the paper analyze male bodies, and consider the rituals and practices through which masculinity is enacted, revealing how the presentation and performance of gender is inherently unstable, simultaneously undermining and reaffirming ideals and images of virility that circulate mysteriously in societies according to rules no one promulgates or controls. The paper finally turns to the burning issue of fatherhood; in a perverse way, concerns about paternity have siphoned off much of the critical and emotional energy ordinarily reserved for couples, marriage, and courtship. As I ultimately hope to show, the texts considered here provide a remarkable interdisciplinary survey of masculinity studies, even if they represent only a fraction of the significant work produced in the past few years.
