America's Military-Masculinity Complex and Other Issues of Masculinity

From Bookforum's Omnivore blog, an interesting collection of links about masculinity - most of them dealing with the more toxic and violent (i.e., archaic) forms of masculinity. Looking at these, you might think men were little more than sexually coercive and violent criminals/terrorists.

Of these, the first one is perhaps the most interesting - here is the abstract:

Feminism, Masculinities, and Multiple Identities
Martha Albertson Fineman

Abstract:
Masculinities scholarship could be seen as distinct from and complementary to feminist theory — an independent and parallel companion theory, developed by men. In this regard, from a feminist’s perspective masculinities scholarship might be thought of as ethnography, helpfully providing insights into the operations and assumptions of a distinct masculine culture. This approach would seem to validate the notion that there are significant differences between men’s and women’s experiences and perspectives, and consideration of both is necessary to form a complete legal theory picture. Feminist legal theory and masculinities theory are thus seen as both contrasting and complementary in nature.

On the other hand, masculinities scholarship can be understood as providing the basis for a critique of feminist legal theory. This approach begins with the allegation that feminist legal theory generally and incorrectly treats men as a monolithic group when there is in fact a multiplicity of male identities. Masculinities scholarship, in this framing, could be categorized as the male-focused companion to critiques that have been made over the past thirty years that feminist legal theory is excluding and essentializing. It is this understanding of the significance of masculinities to feminist legal theory that prompted this Essay.

Toxic masculinity

APR 29 2013

9:00AM

• Martha Albertson Fineman (Emory): Feminism, Masculinities, and Multiple Identities. 
• Jamie R. Abrams (Louisville): Enforcing Masculinities at the Borders. 
• Why is the social shaping of masculinity not an urgent policy issue? Cynthia Cockburn and Ann Oakley on the cost of masculine crime. 
• Andrea Castillo on the problems with “patriarchy”: How does a system that was supposedly created for the domination of men fail so miserably to save such a large number of its prized specimens from such dreadful outcomes? 
• Jaclyn Friedman on Toxic Masculinity: If we want to end the pandemic of rape, it’s going to require an entire global movement of men willing to do the hard work of interrogating the ideas they were raised with. 
• Why are terrorists so often men? Tamerlan Tsarnaev was performing a kind of masculinity through public destruction. 
• America's military-masculinity complex is generating violence on a mass scale — at home.