Men's relationships are characterized by

at least these things:

• That men's friendships with other men tend
to revolve around particular tasks, so they
have qualifying labels: "a work friend," "a
drinking friend," and so forth. Work as one of
the pillars of male identity.
• That men are more self-disclosing to women
than to other men, and that they tend to rely
upon women to be interpreters of their
relationships and interior lives.
• That for men sex seems the supreme
intimacy, and the notion of loving someone
as an adult peer seems to imply a sexual
relationship. Sex as another pillar of male
identity.
• That because they relate competitively
to them, fathers have a difficult time
disclosing themselves emotionally and
vulnerably to their sons.
• That men use humor as a guise for
intimacy and often as a defense against
it.
• And that our culture gives men little
guidance and few models concerning
adult intimacy without genital sexual
involvement.
 Underneath all explanations for
men's difficulty in friendship I believe
there lies one pervasive and haunting
theme: fear.
➢Fear of vulnerability.
➢Fear of our emotions.
➢ Fear of being uncovered,
found out. So my fear leads to
my desire to control—to be in
control of situations, to be in
control of my feelings, to be in
control of my relationships.
➢No one will really know my
weakness and my vulnerability.
➢ No one will really know my doubts.
➢No one will really know that I am
not the producer and achiever I seem
to be. Therein lies my real terror.
 The fragility of constructed
masculinity
• Masculinity is power. Not as biological
but ideological- it exists within
gendered relationships. Maleness is
equated with masculinity.
• There is no struggle to be male. The
presence of a penis and testicles is all
it takes.
• But there is so much insecurity about
masculinity. male social construction.pptx
 Man’s violence against himself

• Continual conscious and unconscious

blocking and denial of passivity and all the
emotions and feelings men associate with
passivity-fear, pain, sadness,
embarrassment is a denial of who we are.
• Men become pressure cookers.
• This whole range of emotions is directed
at oneself in the form of guilt, self-hate and
various negative behaviors.
 Violence against other men
• Relations between men whether at the individual or
state level are relations of power. Power as the third
pillar of male identity.
• Most men feel the presence of violence in their lives
(i.e.. brutal fathers, boys fighting). All other men are
my potential humiliators, enemies and competitors.
• Male institutions and clubs meant to mediate activity
and passivity.
• This is exclusively heterosexual –boys internalized
the culture’s definition of “normal.” The possessor
of a penis, therefore strong and hard, not soft, not
weak, not passive.
• To deviate is to arouse “castration anxiety.”
 Men violence against women

• Violence as an expression of the fragility of

masculinity combined with men’s power.
• Activity as aggression is part of the
masculine gender definition.(ie.male
domination of the household )
• dualism – men’s violence are a dynamic
affirmation of a masculinity that can only
exists as distinguished from femininity –
power exercised to cope with one’s negative
self-image and feelings of powerlessness.