Cultural Contexts and Masculinity Shifts

Abstract

Masculinity and men’s studies, initially seen as one particular section of explorations of what
it means to be a man, appeared as a secondary field, even if linked to Simone de Beauvoir’s “the
first sex.” In de Beauvoir’s feminist manifesto of the second wave, “woman” apparently had an
identity of her own, but was only defined as being the absence, the “lack,” the Other, against
which man defined himself. The current essay examines the historicity of gender roles and the
developing contexts in which perceptions of them and theories about them are largely defined
by new contexts for which the activation of hegemonic or feminine masculinities, for example,
is more than a reasonable choice. The last section engages with literary responses to masculinity
as articulated by Lowell, Vonnegut, and Heller in a less-than-heroic age where significant
masculinity shifts emerged in American fiction as well.