Murder and Masculinity

Murder and Masculinity

Author: Rebecca E. Biron

Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9780826513472

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Rebecca Biron breaks new ground in this study of masculinity, violence, and the strategic construction of collective political identities in twentieth-century Latin American fiction. By engaging current sociological, psychoanalytic, and feminist theories, Murder and Masculinity analyzes the cliche of proving virility through violence against women. Biron develops her argument through close readings of five works: Jorge Luis Borges's "La intrusa," Armonia Somer's "El despojo," Clarice Lispector's A Maca no Escuro, Manuel Puig's The Buenos Aires Affair, and Reinaldo Arenas's El Asalto. Although men murdering women is often interpreted as nothing more than machista misogyny, Biron argues that the five narratives addressed in this book show that healed masculinities are essential to the achievement of cultural identity and political autonomy in Latin America. The introduction to this study deftly situates Biron's work in relation to previous theoretical arguments on the social and political dimensions of Latin American writing. The five subsequent chapters offer superb analyses of the individual texts. Like their male protagonists who experiment with the psychological and legal extremes of gender division, these narratives risk nonconformity to the laws of genre in their quest for liberation from violent social and literary conventions. In combining elements of detective stories, crime narratives, psychological case studies, and magical or grotesque realism, they offer metafictional commentary on a network of discourses that confuses images of masculinity, national identity, and political autonomy in postcolonial Latin America.


When Men Kill

When Men Kill

Author: Kenneth Polk

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1994-11-25

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780521468084

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Important policy issues regarding the role of gender and class in homicide are raised by descriptions of various patterns of crimes committed exclusively by males. Case studies of four specific "scenarios of violence" supplement this qualitative statistical analysis.


Angry White Men

Angry White Men

Author: Michael Kimmel

Publisher: Nation Books

Published: 2013-11-05

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1568589646

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"[W]e can't come off as a bunch of angry white men.” Robert Bennett, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party One of the enduring legacies of the 2012 Presidential campaign was the demise of the white American male voter as a dominant force in the political landscape. On election night, after Obama was announced the winner, a distressed Bill O'Reilly lamented that he didn't live in “a traditional America anymore.” He was joined by others who bellowed their grief on the talk radio airwaves, the traditional redoubt of angry white men. Why were they so angry? Sociologist Michael Kimmel, one of the leading writers on men and masculinity in the world today, has spent hundreds of hours in the company of America's angry white men – from white supremacists to men's rights activists to young students –in pursuit of an answer. Angry White Men presents a comprehensive diagnosis of their fears, anxieties, and rage. Kimmel locates this increase in anger in the seismic economic, social and political shifts that have so transformed the American landscape. Downward mobility, increased racial and gender equality, and a tenacious clinging to an anachronistic ideology of masculinity has left many men feeling betrayed and bewildered. Raised to expect unparalleled social and economic privilege, white men are suffering today from what Kimmel calls "aggrieved entitlement": a sense that those benefits that white men believed were their due have been snatched away from them. Angry White Men discusses, among others, the sons of small town America, scarred by underemployment and wage stagnation. When America's white men feel they've lived their lives the ‘right' way – worked hard and stayed out of trouble – and still do not get economic rewards, then they have to blame somebody else. Even more terrifying is the phenomenon of angry young boys. School shootings in the United States are not just the work of “misguided youth” or “troubled teens”—they're all committed by boys. These alienated young men are transformed into mass murderers by a sense that using violence against others is their right. The future of America is more inclusive and diverse. The choice for angry white men is not whether or not they can stem the tide of history: they cannot. Their choice is whether or not they will be dragged kicking and screaming into that inevitable future, or whether they will walk openly and honorably – far happier and healthier incidentally – alongside those they've spent so long trying to exclude.


Man Alive

Man Alive

Author: Thomas Page McBee

Publisher: Canongate Books

Published: 2017-05-25

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 1786890895

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If he is to become a man, what sort of man should Thomas Page McBee be? To find out, McBee must confront the suffering he has endured at the hands of men: the abuse he endured as a child from his father, and the violent mugging which almost killed him as an adult. Standing at the brink of the life-changing decision to transition from female to male, McBee seeks to understand these examples of flawed manhood, and reclaim his body on his own terms. Powerful, uplifting and profound, Man Alive is a story about transformation; about freedom, and love, and finding the strength to rebuild ourselves as the people we are meant to be.


A Good Man

A Good Man

Author: Ani Katz

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2020-01-14

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0525506640

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"I sat down to read A Good Man and didn't move until I'd finished...I loved this book." —Caroline Kepnes, author of You A dark and gripping novel of psychological suspense about a family man driven to unspeakable acts, in the vein of The Perfect Nanny and We Need to Talk About Kevin. Thomas Martin was a devoted family man who had all the trappings of an enviable life: a beautiful wife and daughter, a well-appointed home on Long Island's north shore, a job at a prestigious Manhattan advertising firm. He was also a devoted son and brother, shielding the women in his orbit from the everyday brutalities of the world. But what happens when Thomas’s fragile ego is rocked? After committing a horrific deed — that he can never undo — Thomas grapples with his sense of self. Sometimes he casts himself as a victim and, at other times, a monster. All he ever did was try to be a good man, but maybe if he tells his version of the story, he might uncover how and why things unraveled so horribly.


Is There a Cure for Masculinity?

Is There a Cure for Masculinity?

Author: Adam Jukes

Publisher: Free Assn Books

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9781853432095

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Barely a day goes by without a story of a man involved in illicit or illegal behaviour-from sex to violence or financial corruption. Regardless of their circumstances, these men all have one thing in common: their masculinity. In this powerful book Adam Jukes combines theory with compelling case studies to reveal why men behave the way they do. Quite the opposite of an innate condition, he argues, masculinity is more like an illness acquired in early boyhood. It is built on a `fault' created during the Oedipal crisis. On one side of the fault is the penis, a symbol of potency, activity, independence and strength. On the other side is a rejected `femininity' identified with dependency, passivity, vulnerability and emotionality. As a result, much of male behaviour-the quest for status and power, chronic sulking, excessive masturbation, workaholism, the use of pornography, sexual perversion, infidelity, risk taking and violent abuse-is a paradoxical defence against men's overwhelming feelings of weakness, vulnerability and humiliation. The cure, if there is one, starts with what jukes calls the `mad hypothesis'-an acceptance that men are responsible for everything that is wrong in their relationships and their lives. If they start here, Jukes argues, and gain insight into their original `fault' through therapy, relief from masculinity is possible for everyone.


Detecting Men

Detecting Men

Author: Philippa Gates

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 0791481387

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Detecting Men examines the history of the Hollywood detective genre and the ways that detective films have negotiated changing social attitudes toward masculinity, heroism, law enforcement, and justice. Genre film can be a site for the expression and resolution of problematic social issues, but while there have been many studies of such other male genres as war films, gangster films, and Westerns, relatively little attention has been paid to detective films beyond film noir. In this volume, Philippa Gates examines classical films of the thirties and forties as well as recent examples of the genre, including Die Hard, the Lethal Weapon films, The Usual Suspects, Seven, Devil in a Blue Dress, and Murder by Numbers, in order to explore social anxieties about masculinity and crime and Hollywood's conceptions of gender. Up until the early 1990s, Gates argues, the primary focus of the detective genre was the masculinity of the hero. However, from the mid-1990s onward, the genre has shifted to more technical portrayals of crime scene investigation, forensic science, and criminal profiling, offering a reassuring image of law enforcement in the face of violent crime. By investigating the evolution of the detective film, Gates suggests, perhaps we can detect the male.


A Murder Without Motive

A Murder Without Motive

Author: Martin McKenzie-Murray

Publisher: Scribe Us

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9781925321357

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A police procedural, a meditation on suffering and an exploration into the human condition.


For the Love of Men

For the Love of Men

Author: Liz Plank

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2019-09-10

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 1250196256

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A nonfiction investigation into masculinity, For The Love of Men provides actionable steps for how to be a man in the modern world, while also exploring how being a man in the world has evolved. In 2019, traditional masculinity is both rewarded and sanctioned. Men grow up being told that boys don’t cry and dolls are for girls (a newer phenomenon than you might realize—gendered toys came back in vogue as recently as the 80s). They learn they must hide their feelings and anxieties, that their masculinity must constantly be proven. They must be the breadwinners, they must be the romantic pursuers. This hasn’t been good for the culture at large: 99% of school shooters are male; men in fraternities are 300% (!) more likely to commit rape; a woman serving in uniform has a higher likelihood of being assaulted by a fellow soldier than to be killed by enemy fire. In For the Love of Men, Liz offers a smart, insightful, and deeply-researched guide for what we're all going to do about toxic masculinity. For both women looking to guide the men in their lives and men who want to do better and just don’t know how, For the Love of Men will lead the conversation on men's issues in a society where so much is changing, but gender roles have remained strangely stagnant. What are we going to do about men? Liz Plank has the answer. And it has the possibility to change the world for men and women alike.