Reviews for The perils of masculinity

The average rating for The perils of masculinity based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-04-04 00:00:00 Richard Gouse I'm only adding this book because I want credit for skimming it. The author makes a useful argument for my research into masculinity and sexual addiction. (He says that sexual addiction is the result of male sexual anxiety, which is the result of trying to live up to impossible masculine ideals, particularly for men who are either over or under masculinized). Whew. I am planning to argue this argument's dopplegonger: that the behaviors we now class as "sexual addiction" are residues of the sort of masculine behavior we generally accepted until feminism came along and challenged those notions of masculinity. As a result of this feminist challenge, men no longer have simple, clear models for masculine success. One consequence of this is that we have these behaviors that are in the contested realm and, when they spoil a man's identity, he has recourse to a medicalizing term for what might otherwise simply be called "bad behavior." That said, I've come across some errors in this book (confusing essentialism with social construction, for example), and ridiculous in-text citations for statements that just about anyone would know already. Oh, and citations to things that, I'm pretty sure, aren't true: did Derrida say we need to deconstruct *gender roles*??? I'm not a big Derrida chick, but I'm fairly certain feminist critiques (like Butler) *used* Derrida to do such things. NOT THE SAME THING. Here is an example of what I'm talking about: "Sexuality and gender are strongly linked" -- yup, I think that's a fair claim to accept a priori. So why the cite (Ruttter & Schwartz, 1998)?? On I go. Sigh.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-03-18 00:00:00 Tariq Shams Very repetitive. He had several good arguments, but they were outed in the beginning of the book and the rest of it seemed to be saying the same things over again. I also didn't like the causal language he used in the processes he described. Maybe he explained it in his long sections justifying autobiographical research, but I skimmed those sections because they didn't seem relevant to the information I wanted from the book.