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ix PREFACE Acollection of essays, both new and old, often causes nostalgic moments, putting an author in a reflective frame of mind—recalling the occasions for which some essays were written, or the historical events that spurred them, or the seeming urgency of the political moment to which they responded. Even the new ones are freeze-frames, individual snapshots of a moving political target. Some of these essays, those responses to then-urgent political moments, may feel utterly anachronistic in the current climate, while others might speak to these issues as they reshape themselves in the present environment. VMI and the Citadel may be coeducational now, but the struggle for women’s equal inclusion continues in firehouses and locker rooms across the country (and, indeed, in public arenas around the world). Middle-aged middle-class men may not be trooping off to the woods to chant and drum, but the malaise and uncertainty among those same men has only deepened, fueled now by right-wing blather about how “they” have taken away “your” birthright. The movements of the extreme right have only been fueled by the election of our nation’s first African American president, and his liberal policies on immigration, employment discrimination, health care, and human rights. Of course, a collection of essays on similar themes is bound to run into some degree of repetition. After all, a formulation that seemed to work when describing one issue might seem to work just as well when I touched on that same issue a year later in another context. In those cases where the article was published elsewhere first, I’ve left those paragraphs untouched and beg the reader’s indulgence. As a whole, though, the book has a definable shape. Between the first essay and the last two essays in this book lie a series of works about what I think are political mistakes, missteps on the way to redefining manhood in an age characterized by greater gender equality than ever before in our history. Antifeminist rants, mythopoetic retreats, evangelically based political exclusion of gays and women in the guise of embracing a more masculine Jesus—all these represent evidence that the once-solid ground of American masculinity has been so definitely shaken that it now feels, to many, like quicksand. Marx once wrote about the amazing ability of the bourgeoisie to revolutionize everything: Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relation with his kind. The same could be said about gender relations. Women’s increasing equality has been dramatic—and has taken place unbelievably fast. It’s shaken the foundations of traditional American masculinity—a masculinity rooted in easy camaraderie among men who were similarly situated by class or race (that is, the casual comforts of white working-class men) and whose sense of entitlement was unchallenged by women. In less than half a century, women’s entry into the labor force has shattered previous myths about women’s “natural” lack of ambition or professionalism. Imagine if, in only half a century, the percentage of male secretaries or nurses had gone from less than 10 percent to more than half. Wouldn’t that be the story of the year—in any year? Or if the most dramatic increase in any high school extracurricular activity were among male cheerleaders? Would that not get a mention on ESPN? (The most dramatic change in middle and high school in the past three decades has been girls’ participation in sports, which rivals only the introductions of computers in transforming children’s lives.) It is not in the least Pollyanna-ish to remark about how dramatic and how sudden this transformation has been. There is, of course, still a long way to go. These days, for example, rape is defended not as men’s prerogative but as the expression of the accumulated force of evolutionary history to be reproductively successful. The more equal women get, the more their opponents resort to biological bases for inequality; the more similar women and men are, the more feminism’s...

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