A Crisis in Masculinity, or New Agendas for Men?

Abstract

Recent years have seen the naming of men as men. Men have become the subject of growing political, academic and policy debates; in some respects this is not new; there have been previous periods of debate on men, and then, in a different sense, much of politics, research and policy has always been about men, often overwhelmingly so. What is new, however, is that these debates are now more explicit, more gendered, more varied and sometimes more critical. At their base is the assumption that men, like women, are not ‘just naturally like this’ or ‘just bound to be that way’, but rather are the result of historical, political, economic, social and cultural forces.