Paul Nathanson, Katherine K. Young - Replacing Misandry - A Revolutionary History of Men-McGill-Queen's University Press (2015)

r e p l ac i n g m i s a n d r y
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Replacing Misandry
A Revolutionary History of Men
pa u l n at h a n s o n
and
k at h e r i n e k . yo u n g
McGill-Queen’s University Press

Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago
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© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2015
isb n 978-0-7735-4553-3 (cloth)

isb n 978-0-7735-8378-8 (eP DF )
isb n 978-0-7735-8380-1 (eP UB)
Legal deposit third quarter 2015

Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free

(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian
Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to
Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada

Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the
financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book
Fund for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Nathanson, Paul, 1947–, author

Replacing misandry: a revolutionary history of men/Paul Nathanson
and Katherine K. Young.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.
isb n 978-0-7735-4553-3 (bound). – is bn 978-0-7735-8378-8 (pdf). –
isb n 978-0-7735-8380-1 (eP UB)
1. Men – History. 2. Misandry. I. Young, Katherine K., 1944–, author

II. Title.
HQ1090.N38 2015 305.3109 C2015-902455-2
C2015-902456-0
This book was typeset by Interscript in 10.5/13 Sabon.
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Prologue: A Revolutionary Theory ix
1 From Hunter to Urbanite: The Neolithic and Agricultural

Revolutions 3
2 From Peasant to Proletarian: The Industrial Revolution 38
3 From Subject to Conscript: The Military Revolution 60
4 From Father to Sperm Donor: The Sexual and Reproductive

Revolutions 96
Epilogue: Postmodern Man 137
Notes 141
Index 211
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Acknowledgments
We thank the Canadian Federation of the Humanities for a grant to

support the publication of this book. In addition we thank the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Associa-
tion of Theological Schools, and the Donner Canadian Foundation
for past support, which made possible our cultural history of new
reproductive technologies in relation to men and families. We would
also like to thank Dorothy Chandler for her work on the index,
which was very helpful indeed.
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Prologue: A Revolutionary Theory
This volume begins a reconstruction of men’s history – that is, human

history from the specific perspective of men and more specifically
from that of straight men, with the explicit intention of noting their
specific needs and problems. Consequently, we return to square one
by focusing on men directly instead of on theories about men that
ideological feminists have concocted. The goal is to reverse the tide of
misandry by replacing the conspiracy theory of history – that men
rebelled against an egalitarian society in the remote past, established
patriarchy, and have thus oppressed women ever since – with what
amounts to a revolutionary theory. It is revolutionary in the meta-
phorical sense unlike other current theories. It is revolutionary also,
however, in the literal sense: a history of the male body, from prime-
val times to postmodern times, in connection with at least four major
technological or cultural revolutions. Our goal is to suggest a new
phenomenology of manhood.
Before proceeding, we need to clarify the complex relation between
two of our central terms: nature and culture (what some people call
“nurture”). In the context of men and women, the significant distinc-
tion is between sex1 (the natural distinction between maleness or
femaleness) and gender2 (the cultural distinction between masculin-
ity or femininity). Because people are always part of both nature and
culture, to study humans adequately is to study both. According to
Deborah Best,
The similarity in gender stereotypes found cross-culturally sug-

gests that the psychological characteristics differentially asso
ciated with women and men follow a pancultural model with
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x p r o lo g u e
cultural factors producing minor variations around general

themes. Biological differences (e.g., females bear children, males
have greater physical strength) serve as the basis for a division of
labor, with women primarily responsible for child care and other
domestic activities, and men for hunting (providing) and protec-
tion. Gender stereotypes evolve to support this division of labor
and assume that each sex has or can develop characteristics con-
sistent with their assigned roles. Once established, stereotypes
serve as socialization models that encourage boys to become
independent and adventurous, and girls to become nurturant and
affiliative. Consequently, these characteristics are incorporated
into men’s and women’s self-concepts, aspects of their masculin-
ity and femininity. This model illustrates how, with only minor
variations, people across different cultures come to associate
one set of characteristics with men and another set with women.
Pancultural similarities in sex and gender greatly outweigh
cultural differences.3
There is much truth in what Best says about this similarity, although
she downplays cultural variation unnecessarily.
Through culture, humans adjust to or even “correct” the givens of
nature. We suggest that this leads to ways of thinking, feeling, and
behaving that respond to nature in either of two ways: pro-naturally
(cultural responses that affirm natural tendencies by encouraging,
extending, augmenting, or reinforcing some tendency, affinity, apti-
tude, or mechanism) or contra-naturally (cultural responses that
work against natural tendencies by repressing, subverting, or modi-
fying some tendency, affinity, aptitude, or mechanism).4 Because soci-
ety might find it advantageous to encourage some natural tendency
(such as pair bonding or the use of reason) but discourage others
(such as socially disruptive behaviour), neither cultural response is
inherently good or bad. In fact, historical or other contexts can make
it necessary to change from one to the other in the interest of survival.
To be a man is to be both male and masculine, at any rate, no matter
how culture defines the latter. To be a woman is to be both female and
feminine, likewise, no matter how culture defines the latter. Our topic
here is men, however, not women.
A few peaceful societies, which experience very little stress, have
almost dispensed with masculinity and femininity. The functions of
men overlap considerably with those of women – except, of course,
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a r e vo l u t i o n a r y t h e o r y xi
gestation and lactation. Other societies, those that experience a great

deal of stress, select men for functions that involve distinctive fea-
tures of the male body: relative strength, speed, and mobility. When
men use these aspects of the male body, they are acting pro-naturally.
And societies have needed male bodies. Or, to put it another way,
they have needed the services that most men, by virtue of their bod-
ies, can perform better than most women.5 Versions of masculinity
that build directly on maleness therefore usually confer healthy col-
lective identities on men. Despite the grave risks and severe stresses,
after all, they at least enable men to make contributions to society
that are distinctive, necessary, and publicly valued. When the stress
becomes too severe (or when society fails to acknowledge any contri-
bution from men), the result is an unhealthy collective identity.
This has happened not only in a few small-scale societies but
also in more complex societies over the past twelve thousand years
because of several technological or cultural revolutions: (1) the
Neolithic and Agricultural Revolutions; (2) the Industrial Revolution;
(3) the Military Revolution; and (4) the Reproductive Revolution.
These revolutions have increasingly marginalized the male body as a
healthy source of collective identity. Unlike primeval men, therefore,
postmodern men must rely primarily on culture to establish their
identity as men. But postmodern culture, given its preference for
deconstruction, is a most unlikely matrix for the construction, let
alone reconstruction, of any identity at all.
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1
From Hunter to Urbanite:

The Neolithic and Agricultural
Revolutions
Men have to dream to get power from the spirits and they think of every-
thing they can – songs and speeches and marching around, hoping the
spirits will notice them and give them some power. But we [women] have
power … Don’t you see that without us, there would be no men? Why
should we envy men? We made the men.1
We know hardly anything of primeval men or women, those who

were evolving gradually as one hominid species among others. At
some point between two and three million years ago, our remote
ancestors began to use stone tools. This period – the prehistoric,
Paleolithic or Old Stone Age – included most of human history. We
know very little about these people. They left no written records,
although they did leave some physical remains and material artifacts.
To interpret these, archaeologists sometimes rely on logical parallels
between very ancient societies and their current equivalents, hunting-
and-gathering societies. They cannot prove that these parallels are
accurate. They cannot know the extent, for instance, to which even
the hunting-and-gathering societies of our own time have actually
changed over the millennia.2 Nonetheless, archaeologists comple-
ment archaeological evidence with anthropological evidence. Like
them, we do so to fill out our picture of ancient societies. This is pre-
cisely what many other academics, including feminist ones, do for
precisely the same reason.
Paleolithic people lived in small bands. These relied on the male
body for at least two important activities in addition to reproduction:
defending their communities from animal predators and supplying
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4 r e p l ac i n g m i s a n d r y
meat or fish.3 In communities that relied on dangerous big-game

animals and were therefore vulnerable to predation, maleness was a
distinct asset. Bringing down these big animals was exhausting, and
so was carrying the carcasses back home. Men’s work was de-
manding not only physically but also mentally; it required men to
learn skills, organize expeditions, and cooperate with each other
for the common good. It also provided men with a healthy collec-
tive identity.
To the extent that these early people established notions of mas-
culinity and femininity at all, they did so in connection with male-
ness and femaleness, probably without resorting to elaborate and
arbitrary gender systems. Both sexes, by virtue of maleness or
femaleness per se, made distinctive and necessary contributions to
their communities, which must therefore have valued both men and
women. Men protected society and provided it with food by hunt-
ing or fishing; women bore children for society and gathered food.
In doing so, moreover, both sexes faced mortal danger on society’s
behalf. Predators often killed men, and childbirth often killed
women. It was this complementarity that made possible the egali-
tarianism that probably characterized Paleolithic societies (and still
characterizes contemporary hunting-and-gathering ones). According
to Maxine Margolis,
Anthropologists have long recognized that most hunting and

gathering societies have relatively egalitarian gender roles com-
pared with more complex societies. Aside from women’s contri-
bution to subsistence, foragers do not distinguish between public
and private domains, another variable that appears to influence
female status. Life is lived in the open among the nomadic !Kung
Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. People eat
and sleep outside, conversations are public, and almost all activi-
ties are visible to the band as a whole. As such, the notion of a
private or domestic sphere is absent.4
Men and women were thus equal in value – no society could exist
without both – but different at least to some extent in function.
Men had one psychological and symbolic problem, however, that
women did not have. Women had to create new lives and sustain
them, but men had to take lives – those of animals – in order to
sustain human life. They might have deeply regretted the need to do
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t h e n e o l i t h i c a n d ag r i c u lt u r a l r e vo l u t i o n s 5
so, however, and not only because of the risks that killing involved.
Consider hunting as it exists today in hunting-and-gathering societ-
ies. The following descriptions by anthropologist David Gilmore
might provide us with an insight into what hunting was like for our
Paleolithic ancestors.
Although the men enjoy hunting and look upon it as one of the
acmes of masculine activity, it is extremely exhausting and time-
consuming work. The hunters leave their villages shortly after
dawn and travel long miles through the forest and across sunbaked
savannah before raising the tracks or scent of game. There then
follows an arduous pursuit that sometimes lasts for hours. And the
successful hunter often ends his day by carrying a hundred-pound
wild pig on his back for three hours on the homeward trail to
the village … [T]he men hunt nearly every fair day …5
Men are always given the task of procuring animal protein, fend-
ing off predators … hunting involves not only danger but also
risk – to both body and reputation – because hunting is a contest
of wills in which there is always a winner and a loser. The man
tries to kill animals much more mobile than he; his quarry uses
all its cunning and strength to escape, and it may be bigger and
stronger than the hunter. It is this challenging, combative, winner-
take-all aspect of the male role that demands the kinds of tough-
ness and autonomy that need special motivation. Women’s
contributions are equally important in their own way and may
demand extreme patience and dexterity, but they do not often
involve personal risk, a struggle with nature, or the killing of
dangerous foes. Roots and berries do not fight back and do not
run away. Childbirth is painful and a test of stamina, but it is not
a contest a woman can “lose” by running away. In addition, the
hunting and fishing that men do often involve distant journeys
over rough and dangerous terrain.6
Although Gilmore ignores the fact that childbirth, too, was a dan-
gerous struggle with nature, often ending in death, he makes an
important point in the second passage. It made sense for societies to
choose men for big-game hunting instead of women. In fact, there is
little evidence of women as hunters.7 Killing animals is bloody and
horrific, no matter how exciting it might be. It is morally ambiguous,
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moreover, no matter how useful. Hunters in some societies, therefore,

actually offer apologies to their prey.
The hunter kills, as it were, for professional reasons; to be a

successful hunter, that is, to kill much game, is a natural wish
dictated by the urge for self-preservation. In contrast to the natu-
ralness of killing, however, a major part of the hunter’s ceremo-
nial is oriented not to glorify the act of killing, but to nullify and
negate the unavoidable deed. We find corresponding customs in
all regions where hunting peoples still live. We hear, for instance,
that the successful hunter will try to shift the blame by telling the
slain animal his arrow “had lost its way” or that not they, the
hunters, but “the toad” or “the sun” had killed it. At the same
time, the “master of the animals” watches to ensure that no
more game than necessary is killed. Thus customs and ideas
show clearly that killing is not viewed as a desirable or laudable
act but as an encroachment into a non-human realm, forced
upon man by the struggle for sustenance.8
Consider the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. When the hunter

strikes an eland with his poisoned arrow, “he identifies himself as
completely as possible with the agony of the stricken beast until it
succumbs to the poison in death.”9 The same is true of the Canadian
Inuit. Bears stand up on their hind legs and resemble men. “An initial
relationship between the bear and masculine sexual power appears
with the killing of the first bear, which is the proof of adult virility,
and with the eating of the bear’s penis by sterile women.”10 Although
the Inuit survive by killing bears, they never do so without acknowl-
edging the link between these bears and humans: “If a bear was
killed, the same restrictions on work and play were observed as if
someone had died in the camp. It was said that the soul of a bear was
dangerous, that it should be treated like that of a kinsperson, and so
all work had to be stopped for three days. The person who had killed
the bear had to remove all his outer garments before entering his
home and for a month could not eat the bear’s meat or fat.”11
Paleolithic societies probably knew little of war. Killing other peo-
ple was probably anomalous, not the result of conscious planning. “In
Paleolithic art,” writes R. Dale Guthrie, “scenes of human-to-human
violence are not as common as hunting scenes or erotic images. I have
found only sixteen, isolated drawings that portray people (or seem to
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– most are very rudimentary) riddled with spears or darts – but no

portrayals of fights between individuals or groups.”12 Archaeolo-
gists have found no mass graves from the Paleolithic period, more-
over, which suggests that people seldom engaged in warfare. The
population density was low, so bands of people could avoid conflict
simply by moving off in different directions (which could account for
the migration of Homo erectus, an extinct ancestor of Homo sapiens,
from Africa to Asia and Europe).
Approximately 14,000 years ago, however, came a major techno-
logical development. Bows and arrows made it possible to attack
animals from a distance. This was much less risky than face-to-face
encounters with them. And the same thing applied to encounters
with other humans. The first evidence of a real battle is visible at a
cemetery, where many bodies contain arrowheads. From that period,
moreover, comes the first work of art to depict the use of arrows in
combat.13
In this chapter, we examine an early phase of men’s history and
more specifically that of the male body’s gradual marginalization as
a source of collective identity for men. We do so in connection with
(1) the Neolithic Revolution, which saw the rise of both horticulture
and pastoralism; (2) a transitional period, which saw the rise of
chiefdoms; and (3) the Agricultural Revolution, which saw the rise of
archaic states and then that of advanced ones – civilizations – due to
the introduction of plough agriculture, irrigation, long-distance trade
routes, craft specialization, urbanization, and sometimes literacy.
The Neolithic Revolution began approximately twelve thousand

years ago, although the transition did not occur everywhere at the
same time. It involved the domestication of both animals and plants.
Neolithic societies, therefore, were of two kinds.
The domestication of animals created pastoral societies, which
maintained flocks or herds of livestock. Having to follow their ani-
mals in search of grazing lands, these people became nomads. What-
ever the origin of pastoralism,14 it is clear that managing these
animals required the size, strength, and mobility of men. Economies
that relied on the accumulation of property in the form of herds led
to lineage systems, so that people could pass their property on to
their descendants. Because these economies relied primarily on men,
their lineage systems were usually patrilineal, property passing from
one generation to another through the male line. Of importance here
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is that the accumulation of herds made raiding those of other com-

munities desirable, which eventually led to warfare. It is true that
pastoral peoples often lived in peace with their settled neighbors,
trading animal products for agricultural goods and handicrafts, but
conflicts did occur. Brian Ferguson, an anthropologist, writes of con-
temporary pastoralists that they
have subsistence technology and skills which can be carried over

into combat … The technology of war itself is an infrastructural
factor with direct bearing on military planning and action …
Whatever the general subsistence orientation, many factors affect
the ability to make war on targets at varying distances, including
distance between local groups, topography and ground cover, the
technology of movement and communication, the existence of
unoccupied territory allowing free passage, and the feasibility of
a column literally living off the land … the point should be clear
that infrastructural conditions are largely responsible for many
aspects of the characteristic practice of war in any culture.15
On the Eurasian steppes, for example, domesticating horses approxi-

mately six thousand years ago and developing bridles and chariots in
the following millennium gave pastoral societies military advantages
over other ones.16
The domestication of plants, though, created horticultural societ-
ies, which probably used slash-and-burn techniques to prepare the
land and hoes, or digging sticks, to seed their small gardens. People
supplemented their diets, moreover, by keeping small domesticated
animals, hunting or fishing, and gathering plants. They continued to
live with at least some of their kin but now did so in small villages.
Anthropologists have characterized a few contemporary horti-
cultural societies as egalitarian and relatively peaceful.17 Robert
Denton18 has studied the Semai, who live in the remote hills and
mountains of central Malaysia. They have a mixed economy: primi-
tive horticulture, fishing, trapping, and occasionally hunting for extra
protein. In their remote and inaccessible region, which is where the
Malays have pushed them, the Semai can avoid external conflicts.
When conflicts do occur, they simply flee or submit. To avoid internal
conflicts, moreover, they share everything and thus avoid any pretext
for aggression. Although they raise chickens, they refuse to kill the
animals. Instead, they use them for trade with the Malays. Women
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accommodate men sexually, even foreign men, to avoid conflict

between rival men. By the same token, men ask for their sexual coop-
eration mildly. Parents do not discipline their sons or teach them to
be tough. The Semai always subordinate personal interests to collec-
tive ones. They reject private property and thus discourage personal
desire. They forbid sports, too, which create winners and losers. As
a result, Semai men do not care about personal rights, status, or hon-
our.19 They make very few distinctions at all, in fact, between men
and women. Both men and women function in public space. Both
men and women function in private space. Both men and women
become leaders. Both men and women become midwives (although
men do that less often than women do). Nonetheless, only men occa-
sionally hunt with poisoned darts that they shoot from blowpipes.
These blowpipes alone signify masculine identity, therefore, which is
why the men carefully make, polish, and ornament them.
Now, consider the Tahitians. They live on an island in French
Polynesia. Once bellicose, they had become peaceful by the time of
contact with Westerners in the mid-eighteenth century. Ritual circum-
cision is now the only remnant of earlier initiation ceremonies for
young warriors. Drawing on reports of early explorers and the eth-
nography of Robert Levy,20 David Gilmore21 suggests that the Semai
and Tahitians are very similar – although the latter are not as peaceful
as the former. Tahitian men face little stress, because both their gar-
dens and the lagoons provide them with abundant sources of food.
Because men do not feud, they are passive, gentle, and generous. They
ignore slights or even harms. Moreover, they see no need to protect
their women. As for the women, they feel free to have sexual relations
with men as they please, including foreign men. Like the Semai, the
Tahitians make few distinctions at all between men and women.
Women may become chiefs, play sports, and even beat their husbands.
Men freely pretend to give birth and nurse infants. No wonder, then,
that Paul Gauguin considered them androgynous.
According to anthropologist Bruce Knauft, ostensibly peaceful
societies do erupt in violence from time to time. Sometimes, they kill
deviants (especially those who seek higher status, engage in sorcery
or some other antisocial activity). Carefully and tightly repressing
anger, moreover, sometimes leads to murder. Whatever the cause of
any particular act of violence, though, the effect in these horticultural
societies is always collective amnesia. People immediately “forget” in
order to restore group solidarity and thus prevent feuding.
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Even so, most horticultural societies in modern times have been

violent. And most Neolithic groups probably experienced common
and even institutionalized violence. If the parallel between pastoral
and horticultural societies of the present and those of the remote past
holds, therefore, Neolithic men must have faced serious disadvantages
that Paleolithic men had not faced. Of interest here are two particular
ones: endemic warfare and either economic or familial marginaliza-
tion. Constant warfare must have made men more vulnerable than
ever before, their physical survival being continually at stake. If we are
correct, then they must have endured high levels of stress.
Unlike hunter-gatherers or pastoralists, who could solve conflicts
with other nomads simply by separating and moving off in different
directions, horticulturalists settled on the land. They could not eas-
ily pick up and move on. Although they could minimize conflict by
intermarrying, they could not eliminate it. They competed directly
with other settled communities, after all, for both land and water.
They stockpiled food and other resources, moreover, which made
raiding desirable. As a result, the possession of resources came to
define status, power, and even survival. War22 emerged because of
competition for resources that benefitted everyone in victorious com-
munities, however, not because of some innately male characteris-
tics.23 Gradually, the causes of wars came to include additional
motivations such as revenge. War can be both adaptive and maladap-
tive. “It can lead to a reduction of the pressure of population on
resources which led to the fighting. In doing so, war might protect the
integrity of the environment by preventing over-use and long-term
degradation of the resource base.”24 But it can also be very costly in
connection with lives lost and resources diverted.
Neolithic societies needed not only protection from raiders but
also encouragement to become raiders. More specifically, they needed
men who were willing and able to kill not only predatory animals
but also predatory humans. Warfare was not random or anomalous
violence. It was organized violence on behalf of the entire commu-
nity. Most men were better suited than most women to raiding, to be
sure, just as most men were better suited than most women to hunt-
ing or fishing.25 Most men were stronger, faster, and more mobile,
after all, than most women were.26 But women, as we will show,
were hardly pacifists.
Neolithic men were more likely than women, in any case, to con-
front their enemies. This requires us to pause here to offer a brief
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discussion of maleness and femaleness in connection with warfare

both then and now. Immediate threats to security – that is, high levels
of stress – briefly increase the flow of adrenaline (epinephrine). Both
men and women secrete that hormone, which provokes responses
of “fight” or “flight.” Some urgent situations provoke men to fight.
Other urgent situations, however, provoke them to flee. Adrenaline
itself does not cause aggression, however, let alone war. It merely
enables people to respond immediately to existential threats either by
fighting or by fleeing. Without men nearby to choose one of those
two strategies, of course, women do so for themselves; their adrena-
line works as well as that of men in emergencies.27 Having men
nearby to make these decisions for them, however, women can con-
tinue caring for their children (although older people and even older
children can do so in a pinch). To the extent that caring for children
involves nursing infants, only women can do that. You could argue,
therefore, that women in early horticultural societies were more
likely than men to choose the “flight” response to danger and men
more likely than women to choose the “fight” response. But both
women and men did so within cultural contexts and in view of imme-
diate needs. Because hormones alone did not keep men in dangerous
situations for very long, every society that engages in either hunting
or warfare has used culture to supplement nature and thus prevent
men from running away. And they have done so, characteristically,
using rituals that initiate boys into the world of men.
No Neolithic society could expect to exploit men effectively during
raids without carefully training them to accept the routine killing of
other men as an essential feature of everyday life. This meant facing
danger and enduring pain without flinching. Producing men who
could and would do so, reliably, required a massive cultural effort;
male nature itself was not enough to do the trick. Just as Paleolithic
boys had to develop and ritually demonstrate the courage to kill ani-
mals and thus become men, Neolithic boys had to develop and ritu-
ally demonstrate the courage to kill either humans or animals and
thus become men. To take advantage of these new circumstances and
turn boys or men into warriors, Neolithic societies had to repress the
natural tendency of all human beings to preserve both their own lives
and those of other humans. “Killing does not come naturally to men,”
writes Joshua Goldstein. “Combat is a horrific experience marked by
confusion, noise, terror, and atrocity, in addition to any physical
injury. Societies historically have worked hard to get men to fight.”28
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Because natural traits neither prevented men from killing nor forced
them into killing, in short, Neolithic societies must have prepared
them to kill or be killed for the community. Demonstrating that abil-
ity, therefore, often became a defining feature of access to manhood.
In view of what we know about the horticultural societies of our
own time, moreover, we can suppose that those of our Neolithic ances-
tors used myths and rituals to support their definitions of masculinity.
People expressed parallels between the human and the divine in ritu-
als and legitimated those rituals in myths. Just as ordinary men sacri-
ficed themselves to protect the community or provide it with resources,
for instance, the gods did so to generate and fertilize the crops.
When circumcision occurs at puberty, as it still does in the contem-
porary counterparts of Neolithic societies, it tests the courage of
boys. Can they withstand the pain without flinching during a ritual?
If so, then they are likely to withstand it also during warfare. Stoicism
(in the current sense, not the ancient philosophical one) promotes not
only physical self-discipline but also emotional self-control, which
have long been characteristics of masculinity in these societies but
not of femininity. Women usually perform grieving rituals, for instance,
which often consist primarily of wailing.29
Anthropological evidence links initiation with warfare,30 torture,31
cannibalism, and head-hunting. After all, initiation rituals require
dramatic feats. Some warriors torture captives, eat them and then
display their severed heads. Doing so in the context of ritual demon-
strates the courage and prowess of boys, their ability to take on the
heavy responsibilities of adult men. At the same time, doing so dem-
onstrates their incorporation of virility in the most direct possible
way. Scholars have proposed various explanations of cannibalism.
For one reason or another,32 initiates probably try to consume the
spiritual power of enemies by eating their physical remains. As for
head-hunting, many societies consider the head a source of what-
ever they need for survival: life, courage, anger, and violence. For this
reason, initiates preserve the heads of their enemies as trophies.33 The
link between heads and food could go back to the Paleolithic tradi-
tion, moreover, of collecting skulls so that the master of animals
could transform them into living animals and thus renew the food
supply. The Neolithic version (which continued in some horticultural
societies down to the twentieth century) often involved collecting
human skulls and displaying them in the fields or using them in plant-
ing rituals.
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These initiation rituals demonstrate the attainment of skills that

warriors require. “There are tribes that practice both head-hunting
and cannibalism,” writes Eli Sagan: “the head is preserved as a tro-
phy and the body of the victim is eaten. If we think about the occa-
sions for head-hunting, they appear to be identical to those for
cannibalism – war, revenge … and proof of masculinity.”34
Neolithic men must have required extensive training, partly
through myth and ritual, before most would routinely have to risk
being mutilated, tortured, killed, and eaten. Societies that special-
ized in raiding tended to focus symbolic significance on male heroes,
celebrating physical courage and glorifying the male body.35 In fact,
mortal heroes were often more important than immortal ones.
Because these societies believed that it was shameful for men to die in
bed, moreover those who did so forfeited access to eternal life.
In some ways, the male body remained a powerful source of mas-
culine identity during the Neolithic. Women themselves affirmed its
value. If contemporary horticultural societies are any indication,
women became cheerleaders. They urged their men on to feats of
military valor. Besides, women had vested interests in victorious
raids. For one thing, these brought booty in the form of animals or
other resources. They brought security, too, from possible rape or
capture by enemy raiders. “[In] simple societies,” writes Goldstein,
“the role of women in warfare varies cross-culturally, but women
generally support more than oppose war … No society routinely
requires women to fight in wars. But often women ‘engage in ceremo-
nial activities … while their men [a]re away fighting’ – dancing, act-
ing out the war, remaining chaste, and so forth. Women sometimes
help to drive the men into a war frenzy by dancing, singing, and other
supportive activities … Women also often actively participate in
shaming men to goad them into fighting wars.”36
Even though Neolithic societies glorified mythical male heroes, the

threat of surprise raids must have created a great deal of stress for
ordinary male people. But Margolis refers to additional factors that
must have led to stress. “One suggests that it is found in societies in
which the interests of the sexes are opposed and, in effect, men
marry their ‘enemies’; while another proposes that it is a reaction to
the threat of overpopulation since it may reduce sexual contact
between man and women … C.R. Ember … tested four theories
about men’s fear of sex with women cross-culturally. She found
27079_Nathanson.indd 13 2015-08-11 11:14:23

worldwide support for both the ‘marrying enemies’ theory … and the
population-pressure theory.”37 The existence of extreme stress, he
adds, creates a distinctive cultural complex. “In varying combina-
tions, the complex includes notions of male purity and female pollu-
tion, ideologies that women pose a danger to men, behaviors that
separate women and or their belongings from men, elaborate male
rituals that exclude females, anxiety about male sexual depletion,
extreme sexual segregation, gang rape, female subservience, male
dominance, and generally hostile relations between the sexes …
Several explanations have been given for the complex.”38
Some Neolithic societies became matrilocal (families living with
the mother’s household) and matrilineal (property passing through
the mother’s line). This increased the stress on Neolithic men. Anthro-
pologist William Divale points out that warriors in contemporary
societies of this kind require a high level of male bonding.39 Because
they must fight against enemies from beyond the community, they
cannot afford to fight against enemies from within it. What they need
is solidarity among the leaders of potentially conflicting families. To
achieve that, some societies rely on matrilocality.40 Men leave their
own families and move to the villages of their wives, where they live
together in men’s lodges. They spend little time with their wives and
children. Consequently, their primary loyalty is to the community of
warriors, not to their own families or to the men of other lineages.
But the cost of this adaptation is high. Boys grow up in the house-
holds of their mothers and become familiar with the cultural world
of women. Then, however, they must move to the men’s lodges of
their fathers and become familiar with the hidden cultural world of
men. They must suddenly reject both women and the feminine side
of themselves. Otherwise, they might regress and lack the courage
that they will need as warriors. Dramatic initiation rituals, not sur-
prisingly, mark the transition from boyhood to manhood in many of
these societies. The events are exciting, to be sure, and even glamor-
ous. But they are also terrifying, because they culminate in torture,
killing, or cannibalism.
In the event of divorce, moreover, men must move once again and
start all over again. This means that they become even more margin-
alized than ever from the reproductive and intergenerational cycles.
The men of some matrilocal societies in our time either live in men’s
lodges or spend most of their time there. This makes it more difficult
than ever for young boys to acquire masculinity, because they must
27079_Nathanson.indd 14 2015-08-11 11:14:23

leave the world of women and enter that of men. Apart from anything
else, they must renounce anything in themselves that society defines
as feminine and glorify anything that society defines as masculine.
Having lived among women, nonetheless, they have already come to
believe that women are both superior to men (because only women
can “create” new life) and advantaged over men (because society does
not deliberately expose them to death or mutilation in war).
Now, with all of this in mind, consider two horticultural societies
in Brazil’s Amazonia. Both exemplify a common cultural pattern
among horticulturalists of their region. After migrating because of
overpopulation, the Mundurucu settled in Brazil’s Amazon Valley.
There, they made several additional transitions: from hunting to
horticulture (with some hunting); from patrilocality to matrilocality
(with some patrilineality); and from a relatively peaceable mentality
to a relatively bellicose one. In fact, the Mundurucu have become
head-hunters. Robert Murphy explains, moreover, that they
exhibit the most complete development of the male-female

dichotomy and accompanying men’s house complex in South
America … All the post-pubescent males, married and single,
sleep and relax in its confines, and it is additionally the center
of the cult of the sacred musical instruments … The young man
caught in the process of change to matrilocality was thus forced
to accommodate himself to permanent residence in a village in
which he had no supporting group of kinsmen … The man who
marries a woman of another village becomes integrated into the
men’s house, where he finds a large group of men of the same
moiety.”41
Of great importance here, from our point of view, is the close link
between the stress that men experience during combat and the stress
that they experience in daily life. Either way, their situation contrasts
with that of women. One myth is about the original dominance of
women. It concerns sacred flutes, which represent power. One day,
some women hear music emanating from a lake. Looking for the
source of this music, they find three fish. When these fish turn into
flutes, the women hide them in the forest. Instead of doing their work,
they come to the forest every day to play with the flutes. The flutes
give women power over men. As a result, the men now have to
do women’s work: fetching water, carrying firewood, and making
27079_Nathanson.indd 15 2015-08-11 11:14:23

manioc cakes. But the flutes require offerings of meat. This gives the
men a chance to restore the old social order of hunting. They refuse
to provide meat from their hunting expeditions. Before handing over
their flutes, however, the women rape the men. Yolande and Robert
Murphy make the following observations:
In one sense, the myth is an allegory of man’s birth from woman,

his original dependence upon the woman as the supporting, nur-
turant and controlling agent in his life, and of the necessity to
break the shackles and assert his autonomy and manhood. The
mother is the center of love and affect, but she is also an eternal
threat to self-individuation, a figure of authority, a frustrator of
urges, and a swallower of emergent identity; she can devour and
reincorporate that which she issued, and the vagina, the avenue
to life, is ambivalently conceived by the men as destructive. The
role of the male, then, must be maintained by vigilance and con-
tinual self-assertion.42
Mundurucu women like to “play” with these flutes, which Freud-

ians in our own society would consider disembodied phalluses.43
They want the power of men, at any rate, but not the men themselves.
Not surprisingly, Mundurucu men fear the autonomy of women.
From an early age, girls contribute to subsistence activities and the
care of younger children. By fourteen, they are ready for marriage.
After marriage, they continue living at home in this matrilocal soci-
ety. On the other hand, they have romantic affairs and sometimes
marry three or four times. Although boys have a longer and freer
childhood than girls do, they must leave their villages when they
marry. From their point of view, therefore, marriage is far more
threatening than it is for girls. “The man is attached to the house of
his wife, but he does not live in it, thus occupying a curious marginal
role between that of member and that of constant visitor. It would be
erroneous to say that the man is master in his own house, for his
proper house is the eksa [men’s lodge] – and the household of his wife
is led by its senior woman. The man is indeed the head of his nuclear
family, but it is a family that has few functions.”44
When their wives take on lovers, the husbands must leave their
villages, seek new wives somewhere else and start all over again.
Because women often initiate divorce, moreover, their husbands have
good reason to feel anxious. And the same is true in connection with
27079_Nathanson.indd 16 2015-08-11 11:14:23

reproduction. Women resort to birth control, abortion, and infanti-

cide. Because they do so secretly, men fear the killing of their own
children, especially their sons.45
Men try to compensate for their vulnerability in several ways. For
one thing, they tell themselves that semen is necessary for the grow-
ing fetus. They insist on symbols of their own superiority, moreover,
to women. This is why women sit and walk behind men, eat after
men, lower their eyes in the presence of men, and go outside only
when accompanied by other women. When women indulge in adul-
tery, they do so discreetly, because women who flaunt their sexual
freedom can expect gangs of men to rape them. And women who try
to see the sacred flutes can expect the same thing. They generally play
by these rules, but they are nonetheless self-confident people.46
Men might be the controlling political figures for whatever that is
worth in a classless and rankless society, but women are the reposito-
ries of affective relations. They not only control the attachments
of their sons but also keep their daughters at home. And despite all
the cohesion of the men, the women are bound together by stronger
emotional ties.
Despite the marginalization of men and their envy of women,
Mundurucu society is more harmonious than some other horticul-
tural ones. Mundurucu men treat women “with a deference and cau-
tion that is in sharp contrast to the ritual expression of sex relations.”47
They enjoy visiting their wives several times during the day and play-
ing with their children.48
The Mehinaku, like the Mundurucu, live in central Brazil’s Amazon
Valley. In many ways, they resemble the Mundurucu. Both societies
polarize the sexes, for instance, and tell similar myths about sacred
flutes.
Mehinaku men initiate affairs due to sexual desire. Women do so,
on the other hand, due to gifts, especially fish, from their lovers. Their
families, therefore, consider sexually active women economic boons.
But so many sexual liaisons make it hard for anyone to establish the
paternity of their children. Consequently, the Mehinaku acknowl-
edge joint paternity. “With comic intent,” writes Thomas Gregor,
“the men refer to joint paternity as … an all-male collective labour
project.”49 But their humour could be a way of disguising real anxi-
ety over their marginalization in reproduction.
Despite their statements to the contrary, these men actually
envy the women for menstruating. On the one hand, they see that
27079_Nathanson.indd 17 2015-08-11 11:14:23

“menstruation is the most anxiety-charged of the physiological char-

acteristics of women. Caused by deadly fauna living in the vagina,
menstrual blood is associated with wounds, castration, poison, dis-
ease, stunted growth, and enfeeblement.” On the other hand, they
acknowledge some occasions on which “men symbolically menstru-
ate, the most significant of which is the ritual of ear piercing.”50
Some myths are about the envy that Mehinaku men feel toward
women. In one, Kiyayala has sex with a male friend through the
rectum. The friend becomes pregnant and gives birth to a boy. The
process, which tears him up inside, is very painful. Nonetheless, he
picks up the infant and holds him to the breast of a woman. The boy
grows up to be tall and handsome.51 It seems clear from this story
that men envy the ability of women to give birth. And the Mehinaku
tradition of “couvade” confirms this interpretation. This institution
is common cross-culturally. Derived from the French verb couver, to
hatch or incubate, couvade refers to fathers who imitate the mothers
before and just after childbirth. This can involve anything from
obeying informal food taboos to re-enacting labour itself. Among
the Mehinaku, couvade involves seclusion.52
Like Amazonia, Papua-New Guinea has many horticultural societ-
ies. And like Amazonian ones, these tell myths about men stealing
sacred flutes from women to gain power over them. Because hunting
gradually died out in the western highlands, people cultivated taro.
As early as one thousand years ago, however, they relied also on the
domestication of pigs. They did not eat all of the pigs; they exchanged
some for political patronage, labour, women, power, and prestige.
This created a demand for more and more pigs. Later on, moreover,
they discovered that land, if unsuitable for the taro, might be suitable
for the sweet potato and thus support even larger herds.
But in the eastern highlands, the environment was less hospitable.
Because this territory is a rain forest, people must endure heavy rain
for nine months of the year and often heavy fog as well. Only recently
have these societies turned to the cultivation of sweet potatoes and
the domestication of pigs, which generated increasing conflict due to
competition over land. Traditionally, they resolved conflict by fission,
breakaway groups moving on to new land. Now, they can no longer
afford to keep moving on. Unlike the western highlanders, who have
developed peaceful techniques for resolving conflict, the eastern
highlanders have therefore resorted to endemic warfare.
27079_Nathanson.indd 18 2015-08-11 11:14:23

Warfare is not the only situation that causes stress for men. Another
can be economic marginalization. This sounds counterintuitive to
those of us who live in modern and industrialized societies, where
women have faced economic marginalization (although underedu-
cated men will in the near future), but ours is not the only human
society and its problems are not the only human ones. The Sambia
live in the western highlands of New Guinea.53 Of interest here is one
particular preoccupation: the polarity that divides maleness from
femaleness in both themselves and nature. Sambia women produce
and control the most important crops, especially sweet potatoes.54
In several passages from Guardians of the Flutes, Gilbert Herdt
describes the suffering of these men due to their deep anxiety over
women (despite macho posturing). Sambia
men say women have the knack for regularly planting almost
any kind of crop and getting it to flourish … there is something
innate in women that results in the fecundity of their gardens …
Men say that precisely because they possess penises they are
unable to produce sweet potatoes. This is not said boastfully …
[it is] a sensitive spot in men’s perceptions of the women whom
they so often deride. Men state that if they planted their own
sweet potatoes, the yield would be only stunted, “stringy” tubers
matted with hairlike feeder roots akin to “our penises.”55
Men believe that a girl is born with all the vital organs and fluids
necessary for her to attain adult reproductive competence natu-
rally. This conviction is embodied in perceptions of the girl’s bio-
logical development from the moment following sex assignment
at birth. What distinguishes a girl … from a boy … is obvious:
“a boy has a penis and a girl does not.” Yet the simplicity of that
idea is belied by an ingenious theory about female procreation
and ontogeny to which men cling, and firm opinions about the
natural divergence of male and female growth. Girls grow easily
and more quickly, outpacing boys. They have it easy, men have it
hard. These differences are thought to be innate, absolute, irre-
versible … Girls … grow unfettered into maturity, whereas boys
are blocked along the way. What needs telling is men’s urgent
concern that children are closely bonded to their mothers; that in
girls this is unproblematic; but that in boys such an attachment
27079_Nathanson.indd 19 2015-08-11 11:14:23

stifles the unfolding of masculinity. Indeed unless initiated and

ritually treated, boys remain small and weak … Men notice that
from the earliest years, girls seem to mature faster than boys.
Speech comes more quickly. Girls become taller, with bigger
limbs, torso, and girth, their buttocks start to shape and their
eyes seem livelier … It bothers men that girls physically outgrow
or “succeed” over boys … girls seem steadier and more depend-
able than their brothers … assume garden chores and babysitting
responsibilities.56
Male fragility applies to babies, too, many of whom die not long
after birth. Boys, the Sambia know, are at greater risk that girls are.57
But Sambia men use ritual to overcome anxiety about their iden-
tity. Initiation, for example, involves a series of rituals. These include
“egestive” ones (vomiting, defecation, and nose-bleeding), which
destroy the pollution that arises from contact with women; “inges-
tive” ones (swallowing new foods and homosexual insemination),
which allow men to participate in the care of boys; “insertive” ones
(spreading sweat, snot, urine, spittle, and body hair onto trees or
plants), which give men power over the fertility of plants; and
“confirmatory” ones (performing active fellatio on novices, joining
raiders and getting married), which complete the process of mascu-
linization. These rituals for men establish their collective identity as
men. Ironically, they do so partly by imitating key events in the lives
of women!58
Generally speaking, men do not recognize status distinctions in
relation to other men but do so in relation to women, whom they
consider inferior to men. In fact, sexual polarization is severe. Men
say that women are not only inferior to men (being soft, dark and
“no good”) but also dangerous to men (being polluted, licentious
and sexually insatiable). Not surprisingly, they insist on sexual segre-
gation. Women work near the bottom of a hill, for instance, and men
near the forested top. That is where they build their lodges, centers
of ritual activity, and where they hunt pigs. Even the huts, where men
and women live together, are sexually segregated. Boys and girls play
apart. Men hunt and fight; women garden and care for young chil-
dren. And everything in nature follows the same pattern, they believe,
which is why the Sambia classify everything as either male or female.
But there is more to all of this than meets the eye, because Sambia
27079_Nathanson.indd 20 2015-08-11 11:14:23

men exempt their own wives, sisters and daughters from slurs.
Moreover, they see marriage as the source of many rewards. To be a
whole person, a fully human being, is to be married.
The Nama live in the eastern highlands of New Guinea, not far
from the Sambia. These men, too, exemplify men’s economic margin-
alization. But their reaction against women is much more extreme
than that of the Sambia.
Nama men no longer hunt, and women have recently begun to
grow sweet potatoes and raise pigs. To raise pigs, they need better
land than the Sambia do. And more than survival is at stake. Nama
men require a surplus of sweet potatoes and pigs, which they use as
status symbols. Now status, by definition, involves rank or hierarchy.
From this, it follows that men must engage in competition and strug-
gle. For several reasons, then, they experience far more stress than
their Sambia counterparts. They must continually risk their lives in
battles over land and continually compete with other men for status.
Moreover,
women’s labour has gained significantly in value and there is

a greater degree of reliance on the production of women to
enhance men’s prestige activities … It is in these societies that
we might expect sexual antagonism to be highly visible and pol-
lution ideologies and cult life to flourish. J. Watson … long ago
noted that the change to sweet potato “thrust upon women the
major economic burden, and an importance greater than before.”
This “importance,” arising from a much increased demand for
their labour and products of their labour … was matched only
by men’s increased reliance upon women’s work and products
for their ceremonial, political and prestige-seeking pursuits.59
Hunting no longer provides Nama men with a healthy source of

masculine identity. Moreover, men are economically dependent on
women. Sexual antagonism among the Nama is therefore truly path-
ological. According to anthropologist D.K. Feil, a young man shoots
his future wife in the thigh with an arrow to demonstrate his unyield-
ing power over her.60
But Nama men are not the only ones who think about sexual rela-
tions in this hostile way. Nama women express extreme hostility
toward men.61 Women do this, Feil observes, because they need the
27079_Nathanson.indd 21 2015-08-11 11:14:23

protection of warriors. Given the constant possibility of being

attacked, in other words, their compliance is a necessary trade-off
and not simply a burden that men impose on them.
The Nama are in transition, moving from kin-related groups
(which have no supreme leaders) to chiefdoms (which do have
supreme leaders and rely on loyalty to them instead of kinfolk). Some
chiefs go further than others. As despots, they recruit men through
intimidation and bravado.62 With the advent of despotism and
extreme emphasis on hierarchy, of course, solidarity breaks down
among the men. Surrounding them on all sides are enemies. Vulner-
ability and anxiety pervade their lives. In these circumstances, they
are seldom able to cope with stress in healthy ways. The government
of Papua-New Guinea has sponsored many pacification projects, but
these have backfired by eliminating the one and only remaining
source of identity that has remained for men: warfare. As a result,
many of these societies have begun to disintegrate.
If all these situations – harrowing initiations, warfare, economic
and kin marginalization – come together in the horticultural societies
that anthropologists study and also in the Neolithic ones that archae-
ologists study. Neolithic men, like their counterparts in our time,
must have experienced severe stress, generating both fear and envy of
women. Men probably compensated by defining themselves as natu-
rally or culturally superior to women. But Neolithic women, too,
would have experienced severe stress and loss in warfare. By partici-
pating in torture, moreover, they participated in the cultural ethos on
which they relied for security and health. But their stress did not
equal that of men, who were responsible for risking their lives to
protect the community and lived with the enduring fear of death. We
suggest that stress resulting from both physical vulnerability, and
economic or familial marginalization led to pathological conse-
quences among many Neolithic men just as it does among many of
their counterparts today.
The Neolithic did not last long as a phase of history (although some
of those ancient societies continued until modern times); it led directly
to a new age in some regions. If the parallel with present-day horti-
cultural and pastoral societies holds up, some lineage elders and vil-
lage headmen – those whom the community acknowledged as its
leaders because of their skills, prestige, and resources – began to act
out of personal interest, not the collective interest. Some people argue
27079_Nathanson.indd 22 2015-08-11 11:14:23

that these leaders, those who became chiefs, invented “individual-

ism,” though admittedly not the civic-minded individualism that
eventually produced the Enlightenment and American democracy. A
much less confusing word than that would be “selfishness.” Personal
power over others became an end in itself. The resulting tyranny was
not due entirely to the inner world of these chiefs, their personal
ambition, their personal malice toward rivals, or even their personal
need to compensate for vulnerability of one kind or another. The
external world did present these societies with real threats and there-
fore these chiefs with real challenges. The new world order required
these societies to reorganize themselves with new social, economic,
political, and military needs in mind. And hierarchies, including sex-
ual hierarchies, either concentrated power or distributed labor in
ways that were effective for the collective good. But there were as yet
no rules to mitigate the brutality. Those who took power felt no need
to restrain their use of it, and those whom they victimized still lacked
the resources – moral or legal codes – to resist it. Excess was the rule,
not the exception. Moreover, those in the chief’s entourage tried to
emulate their leader on a smaller scale and thus gain in wealth or
prestige. As a result, the principle of hierarchy, including a sexual one
that left men in general with more prestige than women in general,
became encoded in symbol systems and thus passed on to later gen-
erations – including those of early states.
Eli Sagan has studied this transition in Polynesia, Africa, and else-
where.63 As a few men gained power, they began to control and
exploit other men in their own communities and enslaved ones from
other communities. These chiefs came to believe that they were not
merely powerful but omnipotent, a belief that they demonstrated by
organizing massive human sacrifices,64 demanding the wives of other
men, capturing or raping women en masse, making war on a new
scale, murdering men who stood in their way, raping, slaughtering
defeated men, and so on. But these chiefs ruled very unstable societ-
ies, partly because other men, sometimes their own brothers or sons,
developed the same thirst for unlimited power. These societies con-
quered and absorbed others and evolved either quickly or gradually
into early, or “archaic,” states.
Sagan explains this transition from bands to chiefdoms and then to
states. Bands suppressed personal ambitions in order to maintain col-
lective solidarity. But instability due to changing social and economic
conditions created scope for experiments with personal autonomy.
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These experiments led to anxiety and even more instability. Seeking

personal autonomy, he argues, made chiefs profoundly anxious over
separation from their kinsmen (like that of children who must sepa-
rate from their mothers) but also made others profoundly anxious
over the regression of their chiefs (like that of children who refuse to
grow up). Many chiefs were infamous, in fact, for their childish tem-
per-tantrums. One way for chiefs to remove debilitating stress was to
project their own vulnerability onto others by means of horrific acts
such as human sacrifice. Eventually, chiefs took human sacrifice to
a new level. Disconnecting it from communal welfare, they turned
it into a symbol of their own omnipotence: being able to kill a nyone
at any time for any reason. Killing weaker people, they believed, was
a symbolic way of killing weaknesses within themselves. Although
only a few men had the initiative to experiment with autonomy, con-
tinues Sagan, they set the tone for many others. Some made the leap,
and others did not. 65
But of greatest importance here is simply the fact that these changes,
although they encouraged the excessive power of chiefs and their
entourages, which meant tyranny over all women and almost all
men, had less to do with maleness – some innate greed or lust for
power – than with historical circumstances.
The Agricultural Revolution, actually a series of closely related cul-

tural revolutions, began approximately ten thousand years ago with
two technological innovations, the iron plough and irrigation, which
made agriculture itself possible. More efficient than horticulture,
agriculture led to food surpluses and therefore to larger populations.
No longer did everyone have to work the land. This situation led to
the rise of cities, specialized professions, social and political hierar-
chies, legal codes, elite literacy in some cases and eventually to reli-
gious or philosophical speculation.
Archaic states began to solve the problems that men had faced but
created new ones for women – especially elite women. Most states
adopted patrilocality, for instance, and patrilineality.66 The result
was greater prestige and influence for fathers. This meant, apart from
anything else, that the male body had a stronger relation to mascu-
line identity, which solved a major problem for men. But the intro-
duction in addition of complex gender systems created a new one for
women. Just as nature decreed that only women could do some things
27079_Nathanson.indd 24 2015-08-11 11:14:23

(gestate and lactate), culture now decreed that only men could do
other things (administering cities or irrigation projects, writing
sacred texts, performing some religious rituals, trading in foreign
lands, and so on). These new gender systems did not make much dif-
ference to most men or women, who were peasants or serfs, but they
made a big difference to other men and women. They kept elite
women at home, for instance, denying them access to activities that
they could have done just as well as men.67 And, given the principle
of “on earth as it is in heaven,” divine gender systems paralleled these
human ones. Gods replaced goddesses or demoted goddesses.68
The rise of early states was an uneven process. Some disintegrated,
but others stabilized and turned into early civilizations. Archaeologist
Bruce Trigger examined seven early civilizations: those of the Meso-
potamians, Egyptians, Chinese, Mayans, Aztecs, Incas, and Yor-
ubas.69 By “early,” he referred not to chronology but to structure.
Early civilization, as anthropologists use this term, denotes the

earliest form of class-based society that developed in the course
of human history … They are (or rather were, since none cur-
rently exists) characterized by a high degree of social and eco-
nomic inequality; power was based primarily on the creation and
control of agricultural surpluses. While the technologies of these
societies tended to remain simple, the organization and manage-
ment of human labor could sometimes be quite complex. These
societies were internally stratified in a hierarchy of largely endog-
amous classes. Each civilization was based upon exploitative
relations, in which a king and a small ruling class extracted sur-
plus production from the lower classes. These surpluses sup-
ported an elite style of life that was clearly distinguished from
that of the lower classes by its luxuriousness and by the creation
of monumental art, architecture, and other status symbols. Both
slavery and coercive institutions, such as corvée labor and man-
datory military service, existed, but they were less developed than
in many subsequent preindustrial societies. Yet those in control
possessed sufficient political power and social sanctions to con-
serve the stability of their regimes over long periods. The symbols
that were used to conceptualize and discuss social relations in
such societies were drawn mainly from the sphere of religion,
which at its highest levels was subject to state control.70
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These early civilizations produced elaborate material cultures. Elites

appropriated material wealth partly for the purpose of conspicuous
consumption – that is, to “manifest and reinforce political author-
ity.”71 Of particular importance here is that they allowed men to
establish strong collective identities specifically as men. Maleness
proved useful for some men in connection with iron ploughs and for
other men in connection with iron weapons.
Because these early civilizations adopted technologically advanced
forms of warfare, the resulting stress led some men to seek refuge
from war and even from society. In India, for instance, some men
withdrew altogether from society and became wandering ascetics.
Both Buddhism and Jainism probably emerged from these ascetic
groups.72 Accompanying the rise of these civilizations, in fact, was
the gradual rise of new religious movements, which challenged and
resisted the unbridled power of early rulers.73 Gradually, justice
replaced private revenge, and law replaced blood feuding. In other
words, these early civilizations evolved into much more sophisti-
cated ones.
For example, Greek civilization began as a collection of unstable
city states with powerful aristocratic lineages and weak social institu-
tions. To put it bluntly, as David Cohen has done, the Greeks had to
tame raw competition with its “nexus of honor, insult, humiliation,
and revenge”74 among powerful people. They had to institutionalize
competition by organizing it according to rules that would foster per-
sonal competition but in ways that would serve public needs. This
meant a major shift in values. Masculinity could no longer rely on
the self-interest of aristocrats and the pride of heroes. It had to rely
instead on their ability to support the polis. The ideal man became the
good citizen, who defined honor not by lineage or fame but by contri-
butions to the common good. Greek citizens now resolved disputes
in courts of law. The state could not eliminate conflict completely, of
course, but it could discourage violence within its territory. A new
concept of honor integrated equality and hierarchy. It relied on
a notion of equality in honor at the same time that the point of

the competition is to establish one’s superiority as the primus
inter pares … The paradox of democratic Athens is that in this
ideologically egalitarian society those with the greatest claims
to honor, the elites competing amongst themselves for wealth,
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power, and influence, submitted, in the Assembly and the courts,

to the judgment of those with far lesser claims. This role of the
demos was seen as crucial to the equilibrium of the democracy.
Aeschines argues … that democracy requires honor (philotimia)
be granted by the people, not appropriated for themselves by the
powerful … The tension between equality and hierarchy must be
negotiated by granting distinctions which set some citizens above
the rest, but by also keeping the decision about honor and hierar-
chies in the hands of the people as embodied in popular institu-
tions like the courts … As Demothsenes puts it … in democracies
freedom is preserved by the competition of the virtuous for the
honors of the people.75
But the Greeks found an even more effective way to maintain social
and political stability: the propagation of civic virtue. They actively
promoted exemplary figures. At first, they used the words of Homer
to instill a heroic mentality. Later on, they used collections of sayings
and anecdotes. Eventually, every philosophical school had its own
version.
Roman civilization, too, evolved. From the beginning, Romans
had valued songs and poems about their founding heroes. But they
“received from Greece,” writes Clive Skidmore, “the idea that moral
education should depend upon examples. It was not, of course, a
novel idea to them. The Roman elite had its own aristocratic ideol-
ogy of competition and rivalry with one’s fellow aristocrats in the
service of the state … Just as the Homeric hero devoted his life to the
pursuit of arete [goodness, excellence, virtue] so the Roman aristo-
crat pursued virtus,76 and the desire to be the best dominated both
societies.”77 To make these virtues accessible, the Romans compiled
comprehensive lists of heroes and their virtues, organizing them
thematically.
These later works – a good example is Memorable Words and
Deeds, by Valerius Maximus – relied on two primary notions. One
was virtue, the standard of moral conduct. Roman virtues included
staunchness, restraint, self-control, justice, benevolence, moderation,
tolerance and even mercy or pity.78 The other notion was vice, the
standard of immoral conduct. Roman vices included rashness and
fury. The reward for the former was public recognition and prestige;
punishment for the latter was public condemnation and infamy.
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The pursuit of excellence … is always dependent upon respect

for one’s peers, laus … [praise], for the public recognition of vir-
tus is the just reward of achievement as well as its motivation.
Therefore Roman aristocrats felt the need to quantify their
achievements on tombstones in terms of facts and figures, the
number of one’s offices and conquered enemies … ancestors too
were objects of imitation, and the real incitements to virtue lay in
the entrance halls and forecourts of noble houses in the form of
captured arms and trophies, genealogies and records of each
ancestor’s achievement … Most important of all were the ances-
tral images (imagines), which acted as visual examples.79
But Roman religion could not maintain the moral order of a vast
empire. The gods were amoral, intervening capriciously in human
affairs only to please themselves – usually their own vanity – and not
to reward virtue or punish vice. The Christian god was different.
One aspect of civic virtue and therefore of masculinity as well was
“stoicism.” Among other things, Stoic philosophers urged their fol-
lowers to endure pain or deprivation without flinching. Some sub-
cultures, such as monastic ones, linked this mentality with pacifism
and explicitly rejected the warrior ethos. But even those subcultures
incorporated stoic virtues – embracing self-discipline, renouncing
worldly pleasure and repressing emotion – by applying them to non-
military contexts.
Scholars have noted the theatricality of their stoical behavior.80
Our word “stoic,” in fact, comes directly out of this context.81 The
Stoic philosophers of Greece and Rome, like their Eastern counter-
parts, consciously denied the value of emotion – both joy and suf-
fering – in order to cultivate reason. Moreover, they legitimated
self-willed death for men in specific circumstances. In fact, they con-
trasted men who chose easy forms of suicide such as hemlock poison-
ing with those who chose harder – and therefore more honorable
– forms. As a result, death became their ultimate statement on mas-
culinity. The Stoic philosophers were a long way from members of
the modern Hemlock Society, who insist on “death with dignity” but
without pain. For the Greeks and Romans, that would have
amounted to cowardice and therefore to shame. Easy death was okay
for women, slaves or political prisoners82 but not for male citizens.
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These civilizations introduced codes of law and moral guidelines.83

Now subject to transcendent authorities, kings acknowledged the
need to promote justice or even benevolence. Similarly, husbands
acknowledged the need to honor their wives, fathers to protect and
care for their children, householders to act compassionately toward
their servants and even their slaves, young people to respect their
elders, and humans to respect the land and its creatures. Ordinary
men still had higher status, at least nominally, than their wives and
children did. On the other hand, they always had lower status than at
least some other men and women did.
After moving beyond the archaic phase, many states found ways of
abolishing human sacrifice.84 Because they were powerful enough to
mitigate chaos and warfare, these states found symbolic substitutes
for cannibalism, headhunting, torture, and human sacrifice. They
gradually eliminated the latter, for instance, in one or more of three
ways: replacing it with animal sacrifice,85 then with fruit or grain sac-
rifice,86 and finally with spiritual sacrifice (reciting stories from sacred
texts87 or passages from sacred law,88 saying personal prayers, and
so on), or with symbolic sacrifice (such as the Christian Eucharist).89
Meanwhile, the Jews developed their own take on masculinity,
although it took many centuries to evolve from ancient Israelite
archetypes to rabbinic ones. The earliest Israelite heroes were the
tribal ones of pastoral nomads. These eventually included a law-
giver and a series of “judges.” Their authority derived ultimately
from God, not personal qualities. The rise of an Israelite state, two of
them for a while, introduced not only kings (despite God’s warning
against the tyranny that a kingdom would entail hardships such as
forced labour and forced military service)90 but also prophets (who
attacked most of the kings for ignoring God’s plan). The next trans-
formation of Israelite religion began with the state’s demise after its
conquest and the nation’s exile. Although many people returned to
their homeland after one or two generations, the second state never
achieved the wealth and power that the first one had attained under
Solomon (although the state had not been particularly wealthy or
powerful even under Solomon).
During that first exile (after being conquered by the Babylonians),
the Israelites began to transform themselves into rabbinic Jews. This
reformation, which began during an exile, involved an awareness
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that military and even political power were of no ultimate impor-

tance – an awareness that deepened after the second exile and during
centuries of persecution in foreign lands. At any rate, the rabbis
introduced a new source of masculine identity: knowledge of the
Torah. The ideal man was now a rabbi, a scholar. God himself was
now the chief rabbi of a celestial Torah academy. In addition, the rab-
bis reinterpreted even the most obviously military and political
archetypes. King David, the martial hero par excellence, became a
poet (and author of the psalms). At the heart of rabbinic manhood
were holiness and compassion (both acquired primarily, though not
always directly, by absorbing and enacting the Torah’s principles as
the rabbis interpreted them).
These civilizations continued to provide contexts in which mas-
culine identity could rely at least to some extent on the male body,
although the contexts varied, depending on the particular cultural
matrix of a given time or place – especially on the available technol-
ogy. The fact that most men had greater upper-body strength than
most women made it almost inevitable that they would be the ones
to use iron ploughs (even though they had draught animals to help
them).91 As for traders, they had to spend long periods travelling by
land or sea, which required the kind of mobility that was easier for
men than for pregnant or nursing women. In this case, male bodies
had value precisely because they did not gestate or lactate. To some
extent, therefore, identity still relied on the male body. These states
gradually developed strategies – religious, political and social – to
create stability and order. They either displaced or replaced defini-
tions of masculinity, for instance, that had relied on physical aggres-
sion and excessive individualism. This transition resulted in a new
ideal of manhood: not a brutal conqueror but a just king, a priest, a
prophet, a sage, a gentleman.
Moreover, these civilizations usually had the resources and the
security to allow men more than one form of identity. Men could
be soldiers, administrators, scribes, accountants, priests, ascetics,
philosophers, craftsmen, artisans, architects, merchants, traders, and
so on. But none of these, aside from soldiers and some craftsmen,
required massive physical strength, martial courage, or even mobility.
For these men – not peasants (who needed strength to till the fields)
or nobles (who needed strength to defend the state or extend it) but
men of the new urban elite and middle classes – there was no longer
a direct relation between maleness (distinctive features of the male
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body) and masculinity (activities that brought status). This situation

was virtually unprecedented. And it began a process that, over the
next ten thousand years, increasingly separated maleness from mas-
culinity among all men. In one sense, the male body has become
increasingly obsolete as a source of collective identity for men.
As the male body’s functional importance declined in early civiliza-
tions, moreover, so did its physical condition. In Clouds, for instance,
Aristophanes wrote that pupils of the Sophists “have the worst, the
most shameful bodies for warfare, incapable of hard work, but hunt-
ers have splendid bodies … to support the common good of their
fellow citizens.”92 Although the Greeks tried to counter physical
deterioration with a cult of athletic – that is, military – fitness that
they promoted for every citizen, male bodies became economically
irrelevant in both Greek and other cities. So did traditionally mascu-
line virtues such as endurance and courage.
But two major adaptations contained the problem. First, societies
went further than ever in restricting occupations to men. They legiti-
mated this measure by arguing that women would have been incapa-
ble of performing them. In other words, they used culture (masculinity)
to provide urban men with an identity that nature (maleness) no lon-
ger provided. Second, societies segregated men and women (a mea-
sure that had originated in some horticultural societies). Women
usually dominated inside the home (even though men were at least
the nominal heads of patrilineal families) and men outside the home
(even though some ancient civilizations, such as that of Egypt, allowed
women to own property and participate actively in commerce). Most
men by far were peasants, who used their iron ploughs to till the
fields. But consider the tiny minority of elite men. These members of
the landed gentry, who relied on serfs to work their fields, had profes-
sions that women could have done just as well. These men were par-
ticularly conscientious about sexual segregation.93
Because cultural expertise and knowledge are forms of power, the
cultural importance of masculinity improved even as the natural
importance of maleness itself declined.94 Consider one notable cul-
tural innovation of the Greeks: the competitive athlete, who had no
less symbolic importance (as a philosophical ideal) than practical
importance (as a potential soldier).
Michael Poliakoff95 argues that the Greeks did not invent com-
bat sports such as boxing and wrestling. More ancient peoples fea-
tured them in myths. But it was the Greeks who found them most
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fascinating. From inscriptions on Greek monuments, paintings on

vases, and verses of poetry, we learn the obvious: that the elite men
involved were not only young but also unusually tall and strong. This
was partly because private wealth bought both leisure and training.
And training was elaborate, involving not only calisthenics but also
the study of military tactics. It was expensive, moreover, involving
not only weights and punching bags but also massages, baths, and
the musical accompaniment of flutes.
But the Greeks (and especially their Roman imitators) took notice
of raw talent from any class. Governments subsidized the training of
boys from the middle or lower classes. Coaches found it profession-
ally rewarding and often personally gratifying to guide these boys.
Most prized of all were boys on the point of turning into young men.
Their beauty and strength – displayed to advantage, by custom, in the
nude – stirred widespread admiration. Sport was so important to the
Greeks that they traced its origin to either Zeus or Hermes, whom
they depicted with an erect phallus to celebrate both maleness and
masculinity.
Athletes were public heroes. And heroes, whether on the battlefield
or on the training ground, had access to immortality. Their cults, like
those of the gods, received offerings. And everyone understood the
parallel between athletic heroes and war heroes. Both featured
endurance, the result of strict training. Both, in fact, embodied the
masculine ideals of boldness, courage, self-reliance, fair-play, integ-
rity, perseverance, cunning, skill, asceticism, and leadership. Because
major competitions occurred during festivals and during the hottest
months, participants battled not only against each other but also
against the sun. Crowds honored victorious athletes, who celebrated
victories by giving testimonials. “I am the talk of all Asia, I Ariston,
who took the olive crown in pankration. Whom Hellas called a man,
seeing how in boyhood’s flower I held in my hands manhood’s power.
My crown lay not in kind fortune’s hazard, but in fight without
pause, I won of Olympia and Zeus the prize. Of seven boys, alone I
had no rest, but always paired the others of the crown I bereft. So
now I make glad my sire Eireinaios. And with immortal garlands my
land of Ephesos.”96 A first victory at the games was a rite of passage,
in fact, a coming-of-age ceremony.
Because of their strength and pride, some athletes overstepped the
rules of sport: “[W]e see the Greek admiration for the uninhibited
and unbridled assertion of self to which the agon gave expression and
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release. Society may well have found the hero difficult to accommo-
date, but he was an embodiment of passions whose existence the
Greeks were too honest to deny.”97 The danger made no difference.
Proper athletic training provided discipline for the soul no less than
for the body.
But the main point here is that athletic competition made possible
an important transition in the notion of manhood. The ideal Greek
man was not only a military hero but also a public-minded citizen.
The continuity was unmistakable. In the agora of his city, as on the
field of war, a man’s masculinity was judged in terms of honor and
shame. But there was now more to it than that. Elite young men
learned not only about war and sport but also about political respon-
sibility. And the latter meant much more than casting votes. It meant
actively participating and even taking leadership positions in all
aspects of public life. Greek citizens discussed politics, philosophy,
art, music, and so on. Poliakoff mentions a trial that took place dur-
ing the Classical period. The prosecuting attorney worried that a
witness for the defense might make a very favorable impression,
because he had once been a general and knew how to conduct him-
self “like one who has been in the palaestras and in learned dis-
course.”98 In the palaestra itself, which is where athletes trained at
state expense, were wide benches for physical relaxation and intel-
lectual discussion. Socrates often went there to lead discussions
with promising young Athenians. But many philosophers thought
carefully about sport.
Pythagoras, it is reported, told his disciples that participating in

sport, not winning, is the most important thing … the philosoph-
ical schools found the training and self-sacrifice of the athletes
to be of extreme interest, in fact, often of far greater value than
sport itself. The athlete’s ability to abstain from sex impressed
Plato … Plato concluded that if athletes could make such sacri-
fices of physical gratification for the sake of victory, youth could
develop more self-control and strength of character. Like Plato,
Aristotle lent only a little explicit approval to athletics, but he
found the boxer’s ability to withstand great pain for the sake of
victory extremely enlightening. This, Aristotle noted, could teach
a man even to sacrifice the life he enjoys for an important cause.
The succeeding Stoic and Cynic schools made the athlete’s train-
ing and contest, with particular attention to the grueling combat
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events, into an extensive metaphor for the good man’s struggle to

live properly.99
Gradually, Greek thinkers began to criticize sport for focusing too

heavily on the individual and on the body (rather than on the mind
and on character). Isocrates said that he had been “astonished at
those who hold festivals and set up athletic contests that they con-
sider physical success worthy of such great rewards, but have not
given any honor to those who personally labor for the common good
and so prepare their souls that they are able to benefit others.”100 At
approximately the same time, allegedly, Diogenes the Cynic made an
analogy between athletes and those who teach humility. He shocked
officials of the Isthmian festival by putting the pine wreath on his
own head, claiming that he had won even greater contests by defeat-
ing hardship and pleasure. As for Epiktetos, he strongly opposed ath-
letics. He argued for an abstract notion of training. For him, the truly
invincible athlete was one who could withstand temptation.101 First
the Greeks and then the Romans replaced male muscle with male
virtue, in short, and thus interiorized martial virtues.
This transformation continued among the early Christians. They
had no use for sport, as such, but found a great deal of use for sport
as a metaphor that described an internal wrestling match: flesh ver-
sus spirit. Consider the words of St. Paul: “I box not like a shadow-
boxer.” He is a true fighter, one who enters true combat in pursuit of
his faith. “I bruise my body and bring it into subjugation.”102 Paul
was an athlete for God, in other words, not for mere wealth or
fame.103 Occasional denunciations of the athletic establishment not-
withstanding, Christians continued to use athletic metaphors. But
their evaluations were not always the same. Clement of Alexandria
considered it fitting to train young men as athletes. Others disagreed.
The fourth-century Apostolic Constitution barred Christians from
participating in or even observing athletic events. Those who did, in
fact, could not expect baptism.
The transformation of martial values into ascetic ones can occur,
however, only in societies that either do not feel threatened by
violence or designate the men of specific classes to protect society.
Otherwise, asceticism would be a cloak for cowardice. This is how
Krishna understood Arjuna’s premature flight from his duties on the
battlefield, according to India’s Mahabharata, and ridiculed him as
effeminate or hermaphroditic.104
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Some societies have universalized the stoic mentality as an ideal for

all men, not merely for a few religious virtuosi. An interesting exam-
ple of this is found in modern Japan.
Although the samurai caste itself died out during Japan’s indus-
trialization, its central value system of unquestioned loyalty to
constituted authority did not disappear entirely but lived on in
a modernized bureaucratic form. It was taken over by Japan’s
growing bourgeoisie as a generalized code of conduct useful in
nation-building and administration. It was gradually universal-
ized to all other classes in Japan, rather like the Protestant Ethic
in Western Europe, so that the entire country was more or less
“bushido-ized” by the late Tokugawa period (1600–1868):
“Basically [writes Robert Bellah,] the ethic of a warrior class,
under the influence of Confucianism and Buddhism, became suf-
ficiently generalized so that it could become the ethic of an entire
people.”105
The societies that we are discussing here, those of agrarian civili-

zations, gradually spiritualized the rituals of initiation for boys.
Consider the Hindu ritual of upanayana.
It is regarded as the second birth of the initiate. The teacher who

performs the initiation and who imparts the Veda is said to bear
the pupil within him like an embryo and to cause him to be born
again in the Veda. Thus the … first three social classes (varna),
are called “twice-born” because they undergo initiation … Before
the rite the boy takes his final meal in the company of his mother.
Then his head is shaved and he is bathed … He is given a girdle,
a deerskin, a staff, and a sacred thread. The teacher performs
several symbolic acts that establish an intimate relationship
between him and his new pupil. The initiatory rite reaches its
climax when the teacher reaches over the pupil’s right shoulder,
places his hand over the pupil’s heart, and says: “Into my will I
take thy heart. Thy mind shall follow my mind. In my word thou
shalt rejoice with all thy heart … [T]he pupil remains for many
years at the teacher’s house, away from his home and family.106
The Sanskrit word veda means “knowledge,” which is what Hindus

call their most ancient scriptures. At first, fathers passed down this
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specialized knowledge to their sons at home. Later on, teachers

passed it down to their students in forest schools. These teachers
required the boys to memorize texts, interpret them and perform
rituals. In addition, teachers taught them about virtue, character, and
the skills that they would need in daily life. After lengthy training,
young men returned home to their cities or towns and married.
The Hindu women of elite castes stayed home. They gave birth,
cared for children, prepared food, produced clothing and other
household goods, and administered households (which included ser-
vants or slaves). This was true also of those castes that imitated elite
ones to gain status. At any rate, women did not need formal educa-
tion to perform domestic tasks (although they often received enough
training to perform domestic religious rituals). The gender system
had an ambiguous effect on Hindu women. On the one hand, it could
lead to psychological deformation and intellectual atrophy. On the
other hand – and some feminists prefer to ignore this – it released
elite and even middle-class women from backbreaking work in the
fields (which often led to psychological deformation and intellectual
atrophy among peasants both male and female). Henceforth, women
with the highest status were those who could afford to stay home,
and men with the highest status were those who could afford to use
their minds or at least their hands instead of their muscles (except,
however, for the few royal and noble warriors). Meanwhile, the sta-
tus of women was declining.
Peasant women continued to play vital roles in rice cultivation,
although the introduction of iron ploughs, which required male bod-
ies, diminished the status of their labor. Even so, men continued to
envy women in some communities. They expressed this either implic-
itly or explicitly. Wendy Doniger observes, for example, that Hindus
link female sexuality with power.
Authority is male, a kind of seed (virya), the carrier of social

hierarchy, while power (shakti) is not inherent in status or rank.
Gods have power and authority in relation to mankind; human
men have authority over human women, while human women
have more power than human men … Authority is a social force
(male) needed to tame, control, and channel pure power (female);
to say that he has authority and that she has power is to say that
he directs and shapes the life force that comes from her … The
husband’s awkward position of having to control a person on
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whom he is dependent and who possesses a greater means of

physical force (shakti) than he himself possesses, is a reversal
of the usual link between status and [power] in the caste
hierarchy.107
In goddess myths, “the exchange of male virility for female powers

of revivification appears also in some episodes of sex reversals: the
god turns himself into a woman in order to siphon off male powers
(often demonic powers), ultimately to return to his male condition
newly invigorated.”108 Similarly, male devotees of Krishna become
“women” during worship and then men again after worship – but
better men.109
To conclude, the Neolithic and Agricultural Revolutions created

enormous social and cultural stresses. Of particular interest here is
how they affected men. The new technologies began a long and grad-
ual process that increasingly marginalized the male body as a source
of collective identity for men. To compensate for what nature itself
no longer provided, men turned to culture – which is to say, gender
systems that arbitrarily assigned some functions to men and others to
women. Usually, this amounted to sexual segregation, the public
world being masculine and the domestic one feminine. This solution
propped up the collective identity of men, to be sure, but it simultane-
ously created problems for women.
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2
From Peasant to Proletarian:

The Industrial Revolution
The father was a key factor in the departure from home by the son. There
was a widespread assumption in the 1930s that the father was relatively
unimportant in child raising … When the father was unemployed, what
little impact he had in the home was lost. The result in many homes was
the emergence of the mother as the dominant parent, while the father
became an antagonist or, in the other extreme, a withdrawn and elusive
character. The father’s relationship with the son became more tense, cre-
ated by the father’s frustration and the son’s attitude that the father was to
blame for the family’s predicament – as well as his own. Thus, the combi-
nation of economic hardships and status loss made transition to the tradi-
tional adult roles more problematic and irregular for boys than for girls.1
Michael Scheibach
During the ten thousand years that have passed since the Agricultural
Revolution, not much has changed in connection with the identity of
men before the late eighteenth century. Some societies were relatively
urban and others relatively rural, but all relied directly and heavily
on agriculture. Some men required physical strength and physical
endurance as they toiled from sunrise to sunset in the fields. Other
men required physical strength for combat. Only a small minority of
men required brains or talents instead of muscles to function as trad-
ers, merchants, artisans, and so forth. For most men by far, therefore,
to be a man was still to serve the community with their male bodies.
The late eighteenth century, however, brought about two cultural
revolutions with profound implications for the collective identity of
men. In this chapter, we discuss one of them, the Industrial Revolution
and its affects on men during (1) the late nineteenth century and (2)
the twentieth century.
27079_Nathanson.indd 38 2015-08-11 11:14:24

t h e i n d u s t r i a l r e vo l u t i o n 39
The Industrial Revolution meant that one distinctive feature of the

male body, its muscle mass, would become obsolete both economi-
cally and as a source of collective identity for men. Machines more
and more often did, faster and more efficiently, what male muscles had
formerly done. The change was not obvious, at first, because some
industrial jobs still required physical strength. Gradually, though, it
did become obvious. Women2 and even children, after all, could tend
the gears and levers in a factory or the picks and shovels in a mine. In
the nineteenth century, though, legislative reform in Britain and then
elsewhere took women and children out of the factories and mines.
This left them more economically dependent than ever on men. Even
some poor women now lived primarily in the private realm of home.
And the gradual replacement of extended families by nuclear fami-
lies, due to massive migrations from country villages to industrial
cities, made their isolation even more difficult than it would have
been otherwise.
Nevertheless, women were among those who pressed most eagerly
for legislative reform. After all, the new laws took women and chil-
dren out of very dangerous and dehumanizing conditions. To those
women who would otherwise have had to work outside the home,
reform meant at the very least freedom to care for their children. Not
every couple could afford this luxury, of course, but those who could
were proud of it. To men, these new laws meant the opportunity to
form an identity as economic providers for their families, especially
important now that the male body itself was becoming less and less
important as a source of identity. (In the United States and Canada,
with vast areas of wilderness on the frontier to be tamed and farmed,
this process was slower than it was in Europe.) To the extent that
factories and mines still required male muscles, on the other hand, it
reduced men symbolically to the level of machines – that is, the cogs
who fed those machines (often losing their fingers or hands or lives in
the process). And below even these men were those whose bodies
were exploited in more primitive ways, because pure brawn was still
necessary for the least rewarding and least prestigious tasks.
According to Ann Douglas, the nineteenth century produced
a highly feminized culture in America.3 Characteristic of it was
the famous (or infamous) “pedestal” on which society reverently
placed women. Americans tended to see women, unlike men, as
“domestic angels.” By that, they meant innately, or at least cultur-
ally, moral beings. Americans explained the moral status of women
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in connection with the fact that only women could become mothers.
It is hardly surprising that they associated women with “civilization.”
Not only as mothers, though, but also as teachers and missionaries,
women became the primary transmitters of high culture. And as
founders of literary guilds or music societies, especially in small
towns and on the frontier, they became also the primary consumers
of culture. But the culture that they created and consumed, mainly
romantic novels and magazines, relied heavily on a combination of
moralistic preaching and sentimental piety.
This picture of women was widespread among both women and
men, though for different reasons. Many women, including the early
suffragists and feminists, thought in terms of essentialism. Women
were innately good, early feminists proclaimed, by virtue of their
ability to become mothers. This essentialism implied dualism: men
were innately evil. Therefore it implied hierarchy as well: women
were innately better than men. Some men, ironically, found this non-
sense convenient. If they were really innately evil, after all, and if their
evil nevertheless served some purpose in the grand scheme of nature
or even merely of the economy, then there was surely no point in try-
ing to “improve” themselves by giving up whatever pleasures came
their lowly way. Even so, many men believed in the moral superiority
of women and acted accordingly. Without the support of male offi-
cials and politicians, after all, the largely female temperance unions
would never have succeeded in bringing about Prohibition.
Now, consider what all this meant for middle-class and upper-
class boys. In American Manhood, E. Anthony Rotundo explores
nineteenth-century “boy culture.” Life began in the clothing of girls
– the kind of clothing that many people associated with Little Lord
Fauntleroy.4 Until the age of about six, they lived entirely within the
domestic realm of women.
The clothing that boys wore during their early years served as
a vivid symbol of their feminization: they dressed in the same
loose-fitting gowns that their sisters wore. One Ohio man
described the small boys’ outfit of his childhood as “a sort of
Kate Greenaway costume, the upper part of the body covered by
a loose blouse, belted in at the waist, allowing the skirt to hang
half-way to the knees.” Under these gowns, they wore “girllike
panties” which reached the ankles. Such “girllike” clothing gave
small boys the message that they were expected to behave like
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their sisters, and served also as a token of the feminine environ-

ment that clothed them socially at this point in life. More than
that, boys’ gowns and smocks inhibited the running, climbing,
and other physical activities that so often made boys a disagree-
able addition to the gentle domesticity of women’s world.
Whether they meekly accepted the way their parents dressed
them or rebelled against its confinements, boys were put in a
situation where they had to accept or reject a feminine identity
in their earliest years.5
Boys remained constantly under the watchful eyes of their mothers

and older sisters. Their fathers, working in factories or offices, spent
almost the entire day away from home. This form of segregation, like
every other form, had profound effects on everyone – including
young boys. By the time they reached the age of six, mothers (or ser-
vants) could no longer confine boys to the home. The outside world,
where they played, meant freedom from suffocating repression. They
were more than ready by now, in short, to rebel. The boys created
their own distinct space, their own subculture, in which they reacted
against not only the world of adults in general (women who fettered
them with rules and men who punished them for transgressions) but
also both the feminine (moralistic restrictions) and the masculine
(harsh duties). Observers of the time commented on their spontane-
ity but also on their noisiness and impulsiveness. Modern sociolo-
gists or psychologists, thinking of the nineteenth century, would
comment on their assertiveness and group loyalty but also on their
ritualized daring and general mayhem. They had rules, which relied
on notions of honour and shame, but they had no culturally endorsed
rite of passage either into or out of this semi-autonomous world.
These boys spent much of their time playing pranks and wrestling.
And they did not always do so in good fun. Some boys goaded the
others into fights, for instance, and insider boys hazed outsiders or
newcomers.
Beneath this violence lay curious veins of casual hostility and

sociable sadism. One of the bonds that held boy culture together
was the pain that youngsters inflicted on each other. If boys
posed a danger to one another, they were downright lethal to
small animals. Boys especially enjoyed hunting birds and squir-
rels, and they did a good deal of trapping as well. There were
27079_Nathanson.indd 41 2015-08-11 11:14:24

several reasons for hunting’s great appeal. In the rural North

of the nineteenth century, the gun and the rod were still emblems
of the male duty to feed one’s family. The hunt, in that way, was
associated with the power and status of grown men. Yet city
boys – given the opportunity to hunt – took the same lusty plea-
sure in it that their country cousins did. They just liked the chal-
lenge of the kill.6
When they imitated the struggles between settlers and Indians, the
boys portrayed the Indians as wild and aggressive. But they identi-
fied themselves with the Indians, not the settlers. They considered
themselves “savages” by mid-century, and their own parents saw no
reason to disagree with them. Writers called the boys “wild” and
“primitive” and full of “animal spirits.” They compared the boys to
Amerindians or Africans. One female writer even called them a breed
unto themselves, “the race of boys.”7
Girls and women had come to represent “civilization” (culture), as
we say, whereas boys and men had come to represent “savagery”
(nature).8 Today, it seems clear that the word “savagery” involved a
projection of European culture onto Amerindian cultures. In some
ways, that projection was a negative one. In other ways, though, it
was anything but negative. For boys and even adult men of the nine-
teenth century, it was a Romantic projection. They were positively
attracted to what they perceived as “real manhood.” (The word “civi-
lization” was equally ambiguous to Americans, however, having both
positive and negative connotations.)9
The high degree of conflict led to violence, sometimes sadistic vio-
lence, against animals and “enemy” boys alike. “Boys turned wood-
chuck trapping into woodchuck torture, and they often killed insects
simply to inflict suffering. While the boyish interest in hunting and
fishing reflected in some part a remnant of earlier manly duties, it was
also related to the pleasure that boys took in fighting and even ston-
ing one another.”10 You could say, in fact, that all this confinement
and domestication in early boyhood – all this feminization – had
resulted in a resurgence of neurotic “re-masculinization.”
As boys grew up, some of this neuroticism disappeared. But new
anxieties developed. Of great importance to young men was the fact
that they would have to provide financial support for families. There
were no specific routes to enter middle-class professions or mar-
riages. Despite the years of rough play, therefore, these young men
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now felt vulnerable and ambivalent about their lives. Rotundo makes
no apology for calling attention to their vulnerability in connection
with the attitudes of men toward women, courtship, and marriage:
“If young men felt that their situation in courtship was dangerous,
the reason lay not in a balance of power that was structured against
them, but in the fact that their feelings and their self-esteem were so
deeply at risk. In a situation like courtship, it did not take a design-
ing woman to hurt a man’s feelings. A kind, sincere woman, if she
discouraged his interest or refused his proposal of marriage, could
plunge her disappointed suitor into depression and tumult. Young
men knew that they risked pain and humiliation in courtship, and
they defended themselves with stubborn emotional restraint.”11 But
they were eager to have relationships with women. By examining
their love letters, Rotundo found that young men replied to the letters
of their lovers more quickly and more fully than young women did.
Young men were faced with many double messages. One cultur-
ally transmitted message was that women were spiritual and pure
(as wives and mothers). Another culturally transmitted message was
that women were erotic and dangerous (as prostitutes). Even within
marriage, things were seldom simple. Rotundo records the attitudes
of both sexes as they struggled with the demands that spouses, in-
laws, children, and society in general placed on them. Abandonment,
divorce, and emotional retreat were somewhat familiar responses to
problems. Men lacked a language of intimacy. Their identity, more-
over, did not rely on marriage to the same extent as that of women
did. Whatever common ground men and women might have felt, in
any case, faded into insignificance due to the assumption of a pro-
found psychological gulf between the sexes. “Women were pious,
pure, submissive, domestic; men were active, independent, rational,
dominant.”12 People experienced this in everyday life as institution-
alized segregation of the sexes, which directed men – that is, the
minority of middle-class and upper-class men – outward into the pro-
fessions or the world of business and women inward to that of the
home and the family.
Many elite men were content, in all likelihood, with the symbolic
status quo. Their complicity contributed to the general perception
that masculine values were immoral and feminine ones moral, that
men were selfish and women altruistic. Associating women with
morality, in effect, legitimated the current status quo by giving women
symbolic compensation for confinement to the home.
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Middle-class men established their identity primarily in work. (In

the United States and to some extent Canada, unlike Europe, even
upper-class men defined themselves in connection with work and
wealth instead of aristocratic lineage and idleness.) By earning money,
men provided for their families, proved themselves capable of manly
action, attained social status in an age of individualism and found an
outlet for competitive urges. In short, work gave men a sense of their
own value as specifically male human beings. “By cultural fiat and
the preference of individual men,” writes Rotundo, “the middle-class
workplace was a male realm. As such, it had boundaries that needed
defending. In other words, men needed ways to keep women out or
to keep them isolated. Men wanted not only to protect their power
but to defend the integrity of their cultural world as they conceived
it. The male defense of gender turf was an important aspect of the
culture of the middle-class workplace.”13
As a result of the Industrial Revolution, maleness became even
less significant than it had been (for elite men) as a source of collec-
tive identity. Not surprisingly, sexual segregation continued to serve
an even more desperate need. We see no reason to explain sexual
segregation in terms of a conspiracy: some perpetual, ruthless, or
even innate urge of men to dominate and therefore oppress women.
We suggest that it originated in a functional context as a way of solv-
ing real problems. The point here is not to endorse that particular
solution but to understand the complex situation that gave rise to it.
By the late nineteenth century, however, men were paying a price
for sexual segregation. Because work was so central to the forma-
tion of masculine identity, the realm of work could confer either
prestige or shame. “Many men had to learn how to grapple with
failure, and the fear of it was a common experience among males of
the middle class. To understand these men, we must understand
their attitudes and feelings about failure … Failure was a want of
achievement where achievement measured manhood. Moreover,
failure was viewed as a sign of poor character.”14 During the nine-
teenth century, two qualities explained “poor character.” One was
laziness, the other dissipation. (Only the Great Depression, in the
mid-twentieth century, convinced most people that either bad luck or
unjust economic and political structures could be factors in poverty.)
Nineteenth-century experts realized that pressure at work could
cause extreme anxiety and even emotional breakdowns. Called
“male neurasthenia” in 1869, this debilitating disorder involved
27079_Nathanson.indd 44 2015-08-11 11:14:24

insomnia, tension, depression, fatigue, and many other symptoms.15

Observers found neurasthenia among both men and women, actu-
ally, but with different causes. Among women, said experts, the stress
of pregnancy and childcare caused it. Among men, the stress of work
caused it – but so did the fear of failure and the need for success.
“Viewed in this way, neurasthenia was a matter of sex-role strain.”16
Worse, many men believed that it was unmanly to suffer any kind of
breakdown. Culture prevented them from accepting their own vul-
nerability, let alone admitting it to others or trying to do something
about it. When physical or psychological problems intruded on their
well-being, they went into what we now call “denial” for fear of
being ridiculed as unmanly. Listen now to Rotundo.
Looked at in terms of gender, male neurasthenia amounted to a

flight from manhood. It not only meant a withdrawal from the
central male activity of work, but it also involved a rejection of
fundamental manly virtues – achievement, ambition, dominance,
independence. A man who steered away from the middle-class
work-world was avoiding a man’s proper place. Moreover, the
neurasthenic man was retreating into the feminine realm. By
going home to rest, he was seeking out the domestic space of
women. He was also finding refuge in roles and behaviors
marked “female”: vulnerability, dependence, passivity, invalidism.
Even a man who traveled to recuperate was pursuing the life of
cultivated leisure which was associated with women. Unwittingly,
a neurasthenic man was inverting the usual roles of the sexes,
rejecting “male” and embracing “female.”17
Rotundo sees neurasthenia among men not only as a return to the

feminine (going home to rest in the domestic realm of women) but
also as a return to boyhood (seeking the protection or at least the
comfort of their mothers). The cure, after all, was to rest and indulge
in leisure activities. In short, it was a man’s way of regressing. “The
gender dimension of male neurasthenia becomes more clearly visi-
ble when one looks at the professions where male invalids clustered
– the ministry, the arts, scholarship – typed as feminine.”18 By the
mid-nineteenth century, for instance, men considered religious min-
istry a “feminine” occupation. Boys who were “pallid, puny, seden-
tary, lifeless, [or] joyless”19 had been “born for a minister.” At any
rate, ministers had more sensitive (read: feminine) temperaments
27079_Nathanson.indd 45 2015-08-11 11:14:24

than other men did. “Clearly, the minister’s tasks placed him at a
great distance from the men who subjected themselves to the daily
pressures of the market. The decline in the status of the ministry from
the late eighteenth and through the nineteenth century had many
causes, but the daily association of the clergy with women and with
the traits and cultural spaces allotted to women must surely have had
an impact on the popular view of their profession.”20
Even men who did not suffer unduly from neurasthenia, how-
ever, remained confused over what manhood actually meant or could
mean. Most men were profoundly affected by the feminine influences
of mothers, older sisters, teachers, and so on. They carried this femi-
nine culture inside them, moreover, even as they began to perceive it
as a problem. In many ways, there was a lag between the femininity
that they absorbed in early childhood and the machismo that they
adopted as grown men. Many men did not even reach the transition.
Both men and women attacked them as effeminate: intellectually
inclined, aesthetically sensitive, spiritually oriented, and restrained
by etiquette. Because many of these qualities had historic links with
aristocracy, moreover, they evoked even greater disdain in the raw
democracy of America. Men who failed to present themselves as
manly were men who had bypassed the established boundaries
between masculine and feminine. Some people classified them as
“dandies.” Others classified them as, in effect, women. For the mil-
lions of men who had these qualities – and most men did in one form
or another, to one degree or another – the consequences could be
extremely painful.
Neurasthenia and effeminacy, observes Rotundo, were not the
only common forms of regression among men. Liquor, saloons, ritu-
als, games, and prostitution provided additional ways of returning
to boyhood. But these things were different in one way from neuras-
thenia and effeminacy. They had nothing to do with returning to the
dependence of domestic boyhood. On the contrary, they harked
back to the independence of “savage” boyhood – its rejection of
home life and its emphasis on whatever seemed distinctively male.21
Many men tried to solve the identity problem by joining men’s
organizations. Lodges for middle-class men – these had originated
in taverns where adult men gathered for drinking, and telling rib-
ald stories – proliferated (along with exclusive clubs for upper-class
men). By the mid-nineteenth century, men were spending more and
more of their leisure time in fraternal lodges rather than at home. The
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“savage” boys had eventually grown up, married, and settled down,
after all, but many still wanted to re-enact the intense pleasures of
boyhood. Industrial societies were becoming similar to the ones that
we discussed in chapter 1. You could argue that the new men’s lodges
and men’s clubs did precisely what the early men’s lodges had done
in horticultural societies by providing men with their own distinctive
space and, by extension, identity. During the last third of the century,
according to Mark Carnes, almost a quarter of all American men
belonged to a group such as the Odd Fellows, the Freemasons, the
Knights of Pythias, the Knights of Labor, the Grand Army of the
Republic, the Lions, the Elks, the Shriners, the Grange, the Order of
Red Men, the Improved Order of Red Men, and so on.22 A primary
purpose of these largely middle-class organizations was to provide
initiation rituals that reminded members of boyhood play (and
anthropologists of initiation rituals in horticultural societies). At this
point, we must examine the lodges in more detail.
Consider rituals in the Order of Red Men. “Teach us the trail we
must follow,” say initiates, “while we live in this forest and when it is
Thy will that we shall cross the river of death, take us to Thyself …”23
The candidate for initiation, a “pale face,” paddles silently around the
lodge room and is then captured by “Indians” who think he is a spy.
The Indians confer among themselves. “This pale face is of a hated
nation: let us put him to the torture! … He is a squaw, and cannot
bear the torture! … He fears a Warrior’s death! Let us burn him at the
Stake!”24 They threaten to impale him on a knife. Suddenly, though,
they ask him if he wants to become a Red Man. When he says that he
does, indeed, they test his courage. After all, Red Men are without
fear. “The honest and brave man meets death with a smile,” moreover,
and “the guilty trembles at the very thought.”25 (That notion is sur-
prisingly similar to the Japanese one of a samurai warrior having to
die with a smile.) To test his courage, the others decide to scalp the
candidate anyway. In the nick of time, an Indian Prophet emerges,
halts the execution, and announces that he has the requisite courage
to be a Red Man. After his initiation, the middle-class man takes an
oath of secrecy. Make-believe psychodramas of male initiation were
enormously popular. This was the context for male bonding.
If one can take ritual as a stylized form of conversation among

its participants, then women also served as a chief conversational
topic in the fraternal lodges of the late nineteenth century. The
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rituals of the Masons and other orders completely dominated

lodge meetings, and they were focused in great measure on men’s
feelings about women. In particular, these rites dwelt implicitly
on men’s discomfort with their female-dominated upbringing
and expressed the wish for an all-male family – a wish that was
fulfilled both in the outcome of the ritual and in the fact of lodge
membership. Like the simpler, more direct forms of conversation
about women, fraternal rites expressed negative feelings that
rarely found an outlet in other arenas of everyday life.26
The somewhat morbid but nonetheless exciting rituals of these

lodges offered an imaginative return to that paradise of wild boy-
hood – which is to say, of freedom. “The double emotional function
of the ritual,” says Carnes, “produced a confusing combination of
roles: to cease being a squaw, the initiate became a man; yet to resolve
anxieties over the adult male role, he regressed to the status of a
child.”27 But as a recruit rose in the hierarchy, he enjoyed the role of
patriarch and the veneration that fathers received. It is possible,
therefore, that middle-class men of the nineteenth century found in
these rituals a replacement for emotional ties with their own chil-
dren. “The gender bifurcation of middle-class life,” adds Carnes,
“had produced fathers without attentive children as well as children
without effective fathers. Much as the rituals encouraged august
father figures to accept callow initiates, they also urged young men
to better understand their elders.”28 The emphasis on father-son
imagery in the coming-of-age ritual suggests, therefore, that men
were mourning the childhood loss of their fathers to the remote
world of work.
The lodges provided men with more than identity and entertain-
ment. They provided men with their own version of religion, espe-
cially the ritualistic aspect of religion. Of particular interest here,
though, is the fascination with death itself. Carnes observes that
death
was the central theme of most rituals. The candidate commonly

was “killed” during the initiation; one instance is Hiram Abiff’s
assassination in the Master Mason ritual. Often the initiate’s met-
aphorical voyage stopped just short of death. The candidate for
the Grand Army of the Republic, for example, was pronounced
a “traitor” and led before a firing squad; his execution was
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interrupted at the last moment. In other rituals initiates were

nearly slain by Indians, Old Testament patriarchs, or by God
himself.
Often they examined the physical consequences of death: the
ubiquitous skulls, skeletons, and funeral paraphernalia – particu-
larly coffins. In several Masonic degrees candidates were consigned
to a Chamber of Reflection occupied by a coffin and a corpse.
Candidates for the Odd Fellows, Grand Army of the Republic,
and the Knights of Pythias took their oaths before a coffin …29
Sometimes, amusingly sadistic imagery found its way into this

twilight world. The candidate learned that someone would thrust a
red-hot iron through his tongue, pluck out his eyes or cut off his
hands. Carnes thinks that this imagery was intended simply to gen-
erate a visceral response – as it does in the horror movies of today.30
Although it bordered on burlesque, it evoked the religious imagery
of crucifixion, death, and the afterlife. Carnes observes that the
Protestant churches, which dominated the religious landscape of
America, were at that very time liberalizing and sanitizing death by
dissociating it from both the Catholic preoccupation with suffering
and the Calvinist preoccupation with hell. They associated death
instead with a casual stroll into paradise. The lodges, with their skel-
etons and coffins, were simply reaffirming the old imagery – albeit
with many more props from non-Christian religions (especially those
of ancient Near Eastern civilizations and small scale societies). The
liberal churches were feminizing death, in short, while the lodges
were re-masculinizing it.
The latter was occurring, Carnes points out, even in the funeral
services that these lodges performed for members. Lodges often had
to struggle with families or churches to get hold of corpses. In fact, a
member’s death and funeral recapitulated his journey through various
spiritual “degrees” within the fraternal order. Death itself was “the
greatest initiation of all.”31 It would finally bring a man face to face
with an awesome, powerful god. A thin overlay of biblical or Christian
symbolism sometimes shrouded the displacement of Jesus and thus
avoided a direct confrontation with established churches. Many men
in nineteenth-century America, after their early years under heavy
feminine influence, found themselves utterly unable to identify them-
selves as men with what had become a highly feminized Christ – the
“meek and mild” Jesus of so many hymns and devotional pictures.
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The feminization of religion in nineteenth-century America was

clearly visible in every home and in every church. In Material Christi-
anity,32 Colleen McDannell discusses the history of popular devo-
tional objects. These included not only the furnishings of churches but
also countless mass-produced objects intended for either personal
devotions or interior decoration. Factories gave religious motifs to
even the cheapest and most utilitarian objects: chairs, tables, lamps,
and so on. In addition, of course, they produced objects that had no
purpose other than religious edification: wax crosses, say, or needle-
point passages from hymns. Art historians have long since attacked
these objects as religious kitsch or even as “religious porn.” Encrusted
with ornament, sentimental in tone, they function now, after the rise
of Modernism, as classic examples of bad taste. As McDannell points
out, though, many Christian leaders realized even then that male
members of their churches found sentimental piety and watered-
down theology very effeminate and therefore unacceptable.
And Christian leaders were by no means the only ones to see that
men were in trouble. Between 1875 and 1915, Americans began to
think about manhood in a new way (though partly as a continuing
reaction against what they considered European decadence). The
Gilded Age, they came to believe, had produced men who were
unworthy of their fathers – that is, men who had fought bravely in
the Civil War. Theodore Roosevelt was very influential in glorifying
the “active life,” physical exertion, and sometimes aggression, espe-
cially among men of the effete upper classes. Even Henry James, not
notable for his own physical exertion or aggression, included a rep-
resentative of this movement, Basil Ransom, in The Bostonians.33
Nonetheless, the churches and other institutions (such as the Young
Men’s Christian Association)34 were more influential in this respect
than any individual could have been. Liberal Protestants tried to
bring men back to the pews not only by promoting movements such
as “Muscular Christianity” and the “Social Gospel” 35 but also by
adopting the avant-garde definition of art for use in their churches.
According to avant-garde advocates, the function of art was to
challenge or subvert conventional ways of perceiving, not to edify
people by confirming the conventional or the familiar. Although few
churches introduced art specifically to shock their parishioners, many
brought in art that undermined the effeminate Jesus of Victorian art,
who offered comfort to everyone but made demands on no one.
McDannell does not dispute the widespread perception of Jesus, in
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Victorian America, as a “bearded woman.” On the contrary, her point

is that this perception was perfectly legitimate and deserves respect
as a distinctively feminine form of Christian art, not contempt from
the (male) avant-garde (whether artistic or theological).36
From the perspective of men, in any case, women were firmly in
control at home by the end of the nineteenth century. Though seldom
ordained as religious leaders, moreover, women set the agenda also
at church. They took their morality into public space with various
reform movements, continuing crusades (which had begun with abo-
litionists in the North) against the evils that they associated with
men: prostitution, intemperance, and secularism.37 Moreover, they
were demanding more influence in all spheres of public life. At least
partly on the basis of their own self-proclaimed moral and spiritual
superiority to men (which men, for reasons that we have already
noted, did not always challenge), they demanded the right to vote,
the prohibition of “demon rum,” and many other changes. Moreover,
middle-class women began working outside the home. Making this
possible was the development of improved contraception; to some
extent, women could now choose when to have children, how many
to have, or even not to have children at all.38
As anyone could have predicted, women began reacting against
the whole idea of lodges and their secret rituals. Opposition (espe-
cially from evangelical church women and the ministers under their
influence) gathered under the institutional banner of the National
Christian Association. Members attacked secret rituals, which (in the
absence of information) they considered the work of Satan. One
defensive strategy was for lodges to create parallel lodges for women.39
Early feminism challenged the ancient system of cultural compen-
sation through sexual segregation. By the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury, women were struggling to get the vote, enter universities, and
take up professions. Men fought back as a way of protecting not only
their power (a great deal of it for elite men and very little for other
men) but their identity, which amounted to almost everything for all
those who lacked real power. Losing one masculine realm after
another, men continually tried to redraw the lines. When women
entered the medical profession, for instance, men tried to constrain
their professional activity to what they considered the women’s
natural (but subservient) realm of nursing (even though nurses had
not always been women).40 In addition, they developed notions of
Christian warfare:
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Men found one solution to this problem through a strategy that

merged the worldly with the godly, the “male” with the “female.”
The strategy centered on the notions of Christian warfare and
the Christian soldier. By waging Christian warfare, a minister
could act with manly aggression while pursuing the sacred goals
of love and goodness that his culture linked to women. A lawyer
or businessman, by taking up arms as a Christian soldier, could
purify his wealth and power by using it to godly ends. The chief
arenas for this holy warfare were the revival and reform move-
ments that flourished throughout the nineteenth century …
Throughout the century, ministers also enlisted readily in Chris-
tian warfare. The great reform movements and revivals gave
them suitable opportunities to apply assertiveness, energy, even
masculine hostility to the cause of Christian goodness … By free-
ing up the aggressions of the clergy and purifying those of the
businessman and the lawyer, the image of the Christian soldier in
sacred warfare liberated vast quantities of male energy. Without
this spiritually charged assertiveness, the great antebellum and
Progressive reform movements would have been unimaginable.
Moreover, this sacred combativeness made career choice possible
for many young men by adding toughness to “feminine” profes-
sions and lending virtue to “manly” callings.41
With the turn of the nineteenth century and the move of women
into the public sphere came a renewed focus on the male body,
on maleness itself (as distinct from masculinity alone). Men
began to worry that modern males – particularly themselves and
their sons – had become so civilized that their relationship with
their own primal needs was now dangerously disrupted. Such
cultural spokesmen as these felt a burning need to preach the
existence of the masculine primitive, to remind men of the pro-
fessional and business classes that they indeed had a deep reser-
voir of savage drives and instinct – passions which men needed
in order to be men, to struggle, survive, and dominate. They
feared that civilization had so fully repressed their passions that
their very manhood – their independence, their courage, their
drive for mastery – was being suffocated. Thus, they clamored
and boasted about their “animal instincts” and their primitive
needs in hope of establishing a better balance between civiliza-
tion and the inner savage. In so doing, they gave passion a new
and honored place in the bourgeois definition of manhood.42
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Some people presented this as a need for physical health. A wave of

sporting enthusiasm swept America, and many men found body-
building of particular interest.
A study of magazine articles has revealed that, by the end of the

century, heroes were most often described in physical terms, with
an emphasis on their impressive size and strength. As much as
they were concerned with the bodies of other men, late nine-
teenth-century males were most concerned with their own. Men
of all ages noted their weight with care and precision, while
young males in their teens and twenties recorded changes of
body dimension in rapt detail … Indeed, men of the late nine-
teenth century went a step beyond Daniel Eddy’s assertion that
a strong body was the foundation for a strong character: they
treated physical strength and strength of character as the same
thing … Another man equated physical strength with moral
development.43
This embodiment of mind, spirit, and character reached a

peak of absurdity at the turn of the century in the doctrine of
Muscular Christianity. Using metaphors of fitness and body-
building, Christian thinkers imagined a strong, forceful Jesus
with a religion to match … This hardy Jesus with rippling mus-
cles was no “prince of peace-at-any-price.” He was an enforcer
who “turned again and again on the snarling pack of His pious
enemies and made them slink away.” The key to Muscular
Christianity was not the idea of the spirit made flesh, but of the
flesh made spirit. In proclaiming that the condition of character
follows from the condition of the body, the advocates of
Muscular Christianity were creatures of their time.44
This attempt to reaffirm the male body through cultural strategies

had as its corollary an emphasis on bold decisive action. And that
was accompanied by anti-intellectualism. More importantly, it led to
a positive evaluation of “male passions” such as aggression, greed,
lust and violence. Fighting, for instance, was now considered a way
“to build youthful character … Early in the 1800s, men and women
had seen youthful brawls as a badge of evil and a sign that manly
self-control was not yet developed. The same sort of fight was seen
late in the century as an emblem of developing character, a means
to manliness.”45
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Men celebrated their “primitive nature” as a reaction to the per-

ception that they had become “over-civilized.” With this inversion,
the metaphor of life as a battle became part of common parlance
among middle-class men. They looked back fondly to the Civil
War, of all things. That, they believed, was a time of action and
courage among men. Veterans had a new status in this climate. The
only trouble with this Romanticism was that they were living in a
time of peace, one that offered few opportunities for “real men.”
Some men found a substitute for war in competitive sports with
their cultivation of strength, speed, aggression, endurance, quick
wits, steadiness, and courage. Rotundo observes that “for men,
competition became an obsession. They even imposed it on situa-
tions where it was entirely out of place.”46 Clearly, it was a time of
desperation.
This led some men to want a real war. Teddy Roosevelt was among
them. And he, unlike everyone else, was the leader of a powerful
nation. In 1895, Roosevelt said what today – after the horrors of
twentieth-century warfare – would be inconceivable for anyone to
say: “This country needs a war.”47 No one should have been sur-
prised at the Spanish-American War, in 1898, which the Americans
won. But with that came the dilemmas of imperialism. It was
Roosevelt, once again, who led the way by promoting “manly”
engagement and the desire for world domination.
If we stand idly by … if we shrink from the hard contest where

men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all
they hold dear, then the stronger and bolder peoples will pass us
by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let
us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty
well and manfully … Let us shrink from no strife, moral or phys-
ical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that
the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard
and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal
of true national greatness.48
As we say, his solution was for men to be rugged, to adopt what he

called “the strenuous life.” All this suggests an attempt to shore up
the collective identity of men per se by an appeal not to public culture
(which women were fast appropriating) but to nature itself – that is,
to maleness.
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Despite the new emphasis on maleness, fathers had two problems.

Some of their sons, as we have already noted, were too wild. Others
were too effeminate, lazy, and narcissistic. Carnes and Rotundo
differ on how people tried to solve the “savage-boy syndrome.”
Observing a decline in their wildness, Carnes suggests that it
occurred because of a changing family structure. As women entered
the work world, they lost their insufferable claims to goodness. In
fact, they developed vices such as smoking and drinking. These
developments called into question the notion of female superiority
and thus enabled real friendship between husbands and wives. Both
young men and young women claimed more independence than
ever before. Surprisingly perhaps, despite the new emphasis on
machismo, most people in the late nineteenth century believed that
marital intimacy and companionship were cultural ideals.49 This
was due partly to growing individualism. Couples were no longer as
constrained by societal norms, in any case, as they had been. This
took the pressure off sons. Their fathers, not only their mothers, now
became involved in family life. Both parents became more fully
human, albeit for different reasons,50 than they had been.
According to Rotundo, though, the solution involved adult men
taking charge. They introduced structured games such as baseball
and football. Fraternal lodges had boys’ divisions, too, by the late
nineteenth century. This gave adult men more opportunities to guide
boys. Spending more time at school, too, harnessed the “savage”
energy of these boys. Because urban schools (unlike one-room rural
schools) were age-graded ladders of ascent, moreover, boys could
increase their status as they moved up (and refrained from associat-
ing with younger boys). This helped them negotiate the transition to
manhood.51
To deal with effeminate, lazy, or narcissistic sons, fathers began
to criticize the way that women were rearing them. Moreover, they
began to celebrate the new boy culture. Elite and sexually segregated
boarding schools became places for male teachers to encourage mas-
culine virtues such as hardiness in the wilderness and competition in
sport. They set up new organizations for boys, ones that men would
administer. In addition to the Young Men’s Christian Association,
for instance, they established the Boy Scouts, the Knights of King
Arthur, and so on. No wonder, then, that clothing for boys changed.
They now wore trousers by the age of two. Among their earliest
memories, in other words, would be of looking different from girls.
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Society was trying to solve problems that the Industrial Revolution

had created, but it could not solve problems that obsolescence of the
male body had caused. During the twentieth century, more than ever
before, it was obvious that men of the highest social and economic
status were those least likely to base their masculine identity on the
male body. In fact, men of the lowest social and economic status were
those most likely to do so. Men linked machismo with manual labour
and physical exertion, not with professional, artistic or intellectual
skills. Technology was now replacing even lower-class men, those
sturdy folk whom society had once needed (though despised) as
“hewers of wood and drawers of water,” with machines. The only
exceptions to this rule were professional male athletes. Their status
was highly anachronistic, though, because their achievements were
purely symbolic. Society valued them as sources of national pride, to
be sure, but they were neither distinctive (because female athletes
could do the same things) nor necessary (because no one depended
on them).
These problems continued throughout the twentieth century,
although historical events – the First World War, the Depression, and
the Second World War – complicated them. We discuss the two world
wars, which postponed the problem of identity for men, in chapter 3.
In the aftermath of the First World War, which had restored the idea
that men per se were necessary (albeit at the cost of their lives), both
men and women were busy creating a re-masculinized culture.
Modernist authors encouraged searing honesty instead of sentimental
piety or delicate euphemisms, for example, and disturbing complexity
instead of shallow and moralistic preaching. They were resolved, at
all costs, to abolish the stifling sexual repression of their Victorian
parents. At the same time, modernity was beginning to mean radical
change for the family. Mothers still dominated the home but did so
now in consultation with outside experts. According to Robert
Griswald, “the shrinkage of parental functions [due to the fact that
professionals and state officials were rapidly taking over functions of
the family] had left fathers with very little family role. Their responsi-
bilities as religious guides, educators, welfare workers, counselors,
and disciplinarians had all been usurped; consequently, the balance of
power had shifted within families.”52
By 1930, the identity problem had resurfaced in a dramatic
way. In the United States, massive unemployment during the Great
Depression53 created a profound identity problem for men. “The
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narrowed role of the male, so largely confined to money making,

took the brunt of the shock, with the general impairment of finan-
cial security and … families forced onto relief. With the man’s failure
went … inability to marry in many cases and the postponement of
children.”54 When men lost their jobs, in fact, they suffered from
much more than lack of money. “Bewilderment, hesitation, apathy,
loss of self-confidence, were the commonest marks of protracted
unemployment. A man no longer cared how he looked. Unkempt
hair and swarthy stubble, shoulders a-droop, a slow dragging walk,
were external signs of inner defeat, often aggravated by malnutri-
tion. Joblessness proved a wasting disease. What social workers
called ‘unemployment shock’ affected some men as if they were in
the grip of panic, driving them to frenzied search for work by day,
sleepless worry at night.”55 As Americans searched for a way to end
the Depression, experts called for a return “to separate spheres where
men would take on responsibility for rebuilding the country and
women would once again become the guardian [sic] of the hearth.”56
In short, experts reaffirmed the traditional gender system to prevent
women from competing with men for the very few available jobs.
Once again, the plan did not always have much to do with reality. It
is true that many middle-class women stayed home and, according to
surveys, preferred the traditional role of homemaker.57 Many lower-
class women, on the other hand, had no choice but to work outside
the home.
As Michael Scheibach points out, the Depression affected not only
grown men, who suddenly found themselves out of work, but also
their families and especially their sons. “What if existing manhood is
viewed as empty, static, obsolescent?” asked Bruno Bettelheim. “Then
becoming a man is death, and manhood marks the death of adoles-
cence, not its fulfillment.”58 Seldom had historical events so severely
tested the relationship between fathers and sons.
The father was a key factor in the departure from home by the
son. There was a widespread assumption in the 1930s that the
father was relatively unimportant in child raising … When
the father was unemployed, what little impact he had in the
home was lost. The result in many homes was the emergence
of the mother as the dominant parent, while the father became
an antagonist or, in the other extreme, a withdrawn and elusive
character. The father’s relationship with the son became more
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tense, created by the father’s frustration and the son’s attitude

that the father was to blame for the family’s predicament -as well
as his own. Thus, the combination of economic hardships and
status loss made transition to the traditional adult roles more
problematic and irregular for boys than for girls.59
In some ways, boys and young men did have a more difficult time
than girls and young women. “For young males, the turbulence of the
Depression era caused them to become imprisoned in traditional …
[gender] roles … and, in many cases, to suffer the consequences.”60
Society encouraged young women to stay home to avoid competi-
tion with men for the few available jobs. Some of these young
women aspired to careers outside the home in professions that
sought women. Others, of course, found menial work for inadequate
wages. According to a Maryland study of 1938, girls who worked
outside the home fulfilled their occupational expectations (although
these were lower than those of boys).61 When young women did
work outside the home, in any case, it was generally by choice, not
necessity. Women who did not have to look for jobs, in other words,
usually chose not to do so. Sometimes, of course, economic distress
did make it necessary for young women and even older women to
look for jobs. “But the stigma for not working only affected the male.
His role had not changed … The failure of the father to find employ-
ment was oftentimes assumed to be a personal failure; likewise, the
inability of the male youth to find employment created personal frus-
trations and self-blame.”62 In other words, women who supported
families in distress had gone beyond the call of duty, doing what
men should have been doing.
The Depression forced boys, partly through intense social pres-
sure, to take on the functions of adult men at earlier ages than ever
before in recent history. Some ascribed their failure to personal inad-
equacy and left home. Others ascribed their failure to society’s inad-
equacy and acted accordingly. Those who chose not to rebel, however,
often fell into years of dependency on their families.
The government solved some problems that the Depression had
created. During the 1930s, national leaders had to acknowledge
that millions of people needed help from the state at least temporar-
ily. One result in the United States was Franklin Roosevelt’s New
Deal, America’s version of the welfare state.63 Some of its economic
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experiments succeeded. For one thing, they maintained political equi-

librium in conditions that might otherwise have generated a revolu-
tion. And they reflected the growing moral and political consensus
that governments, to be legitimate, had to do more than prevent
chaos or resist foreign aggression. They had to help those who could
not help themselves.64
Technological revolutions have had profound effects on the collective

identity of men. The Industrial Revolution had a profoundly negative
one, because it removed men from family farms or workshops to
factories or mines. This meant that they could not teach their sons
traditional skills and participate in their daily activities. Worse,
although few men thought about it in abstract terms at the time, was
automation: the replacement of men by machines, which were stron-
ger, faster, and more efficient than any male body. A few men owned
factories and mines, to be sure, and managed them. Other men entered
“white collar” professions. Most men by far, though, became “wage-
slaves.” They sold their men, in effect, for very low-status jobs. And of
those, fewer and fewer required the brute strength of male bodies.
Gender distinctions relied on the arbitrary exclusion of women, not
disabilities that were innately female. This solution was short-lived,
not surprisingly, because women mobilized successfully not only for
the vote but also for legal recognition of their ability to do jobs as
well as men could. Meanwhile, many men had no jobs at all and
therefore not even symbolic claims on masculinity.
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3
From Subject to Conscript:

The Military Revolution
Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their
husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee
from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees
from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims.
Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children.1
Hillary Clinton
Yet when it comes to the inhumane treatment of noncombatant men and

boys, nearly everyone seems to have incurred a severe case of laryngitis. By
expressing little or no outrage for male victims of government barbarity –
or altogether denying there are male victims, as Amnesty often seems to
do – the international community does worse than merely expose an anti-
male bias that gainsays its own long-running plea for equal treatment of
the sexes. It also helps perpetuate state-directed brutality against both men
and women.2
Jerry A. Biggs
When Nancy Astor decided to become the first female member of

Parliament in the British House of Commons, just after women had
won the vote, she made the following comment: “We are not asking
for superiority, for we have always had that; all we ask is equality.”3
Was Astor seriously considering “equality”? The background to that
question is worth discussing in detail. This was in 1919, only one
year after the end of the First World War, which had killed at least
703,000 young men and wounded 1,663,000 others in Britain alone,4
and only three years after the introduction in Britain of military
conscription for young men but not young women. It might have
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t h e m i l i ta r y r e vo l u t i o n 61
seemed to Astor – and might still seem to many people – that this
lethal form of discrimination against men was a “law of nature”
and thus something that even egalitarian reformers could ignore.
Actually, it was the recent result of cultural upheaval – and a recent
one at that in terms of human history.
It was probably not purely by chance that a technological revolu-
tion coincided with political revolutions in the late eighteenth cen-
tury and early nineteenth. Both kinds of revolution were legacies of
the Enlightenment and its focus on reason. One state after another
rationalized its economic system and, at the same time, its political
system (though not necessarily by overthrowing it). By the twenti-
eth century, many of these states were not only more efficient and
prosperous but also more powerful than ever before. In other
words, they were able to control their citizens more effectively than
ever before. The urge to do so was hardly new. But modern bureau-
cratic states could do what even the most authoritarian ones of ear-
lier times could not do: they could keep track of people more
efficiently and punish dissenters more effectively. Even in the seven-
teenth century, peasants who failed to cooperate with royal plans –
paying taxes, accepting state religions, serving in armies – could
often run away and hide in the forests. But things were changing.
Louis XIV kept even the highest nobles under his watchful eye by
ordering them to live with him at Versailles. A century later, this
focus on control and centralization fused with the Enlightenment’s
focus on reason and efficiency. The result eventually produced mod-
ern bureaucratic states of not one but two types: liberal ones and
totalitarian ones.5 These principles of the Enlightenment – especially
where they led to increasing emphasis not on personal freedom from
state tyranny but on centralization and state control – came to gov-
ern military organization, which affected masculine identity to an
unprecedented extent.
Before proceeding, consider the precise scope of this chapter. In
view of the technological revolutions that explain the subtitles of
some other chapters, you would expect the title of this one to dis-
cuss a revolution in military technology. The subtitle of this chapter,
however, does not refer only to the transition from muskets and
cannon to tanks and fighter planes, no matter how revolutionary
those were. It refers also and even primarily to a sociological,
psychological, and social revolution: the transition in Western

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countries from “professional” armies or ad hoc armies to conscript

“citizen” armies.
We begin this chapter by discussing men in connection with (1)
pre-modern warfare. We continue by focusing more closely on men
in connection with (2) the rise of modern6 states and the advent of
conscription; (3) reactions to war and conscription since the early
nineteenth century; (4) the “willing conscript” as a contradiction in
terms; (5) a non-Western example of conscription; (6) the cultural, or
symbolic, implications of conscription for gender identity; and (7)
the specifically moral implications of conscription for any society
and those of male conscription for any egalitarian society.
Neolithic wars amounted to constant raids or skirmishes. They were

about keeping, gaining, or losing the fundamental resources – land
and water – that those societies required urgently for demographic
survival. For men, one major change from Paleolithic times was from
hunting to warfare. Before, men had hunted animals, and animals
had sometimes hunted them. Now, men hunted other men, as it were,
and other men hunted them. Preparing men to kill or be killed by
other men required an even greater cultural effort than preparing
them to kill or be killed by animals. Apart from anything else, there-
fore, it required more elaborate coming-of-age rites than ever before.
War was a central feature of life in proto-states and early states.
Some men separated themselves from the interests of their kin group,
began to wage war for personal gain, and became chiefs. Those chiefs
who managed to consolidate a lot of territory through war estab-
lished the first kingdoms. As kings, they used warfare also to stabilize
their domains and to ward off attacks by other kings. But this violent
process led to the development of major civilizations in the ancient
world both western and eastern.
Feudal Europe was not quite as “dark” as you might imagine from
the critiques of those who later described the period as the benighted
Dark Ages or Middle Ages. Kings and their vassals engaged in war-
fare almost continually, to be sure, but they did so, at least in theory,
within moral and theological constraints that relied on philosophies
to define “just wars.” Moreover, not all men participated in war. Most
men by far were peasants or serfs, not soldiers. Rulers required their
agricultural services more than their military services. Besides, the
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feudal hierarchy made them unfit for the high vocation of military
leadership as mounted knights. In theory, only those who belonged
to one class, the aristocracy, were suitable for military leadership.
European rulers required military service from lesser men of their
own class, as Indian rulers did.7 Surprisingly, however, even these
men could choose in Europe between the sword (for knights) and the
chalice (for priests and monks, whose way of life precluded military
service). Military leadership was the sign of nobility, in short, not of
manhood per se.
In fact, however, medieval and early modern rulers (like both earlier
and later ones) relied most heavily on mercenaries8 to fill the ranks, not
on a few barons and their retainers. Mercenaries sold their military
skills – in effect, their massive bodies – to the highest bidders.9 They
came from no particular class or region, although most were probably
disgruntled peasants or runaway serfs, and had no particular dynastic,
national, ethnic, or religious loyalties. They owed their loyalty instead
to anyone who could promise realistically to reward them. Mercenaries
risked death in battle, to be sure, but they might eat regularly; they
would have risked starvation otherwise. Those who survived enough
battles, at any rate, developed the combat skills or at least the brute
strength that soldiers required. And the best fighters among them
could rise in the ranks, because rulers sometimes rewarded them with
titles and land grants. At the very least, mercenaries could expect to
gain materially from victorious battles by looting.
By the eighteenth century, however, this ancient system was break-
ing down. Rulers still relied heavily on mercenary soldiers. But some
rulers began to think of peasants, too, as potential soldiers – cheaper
ones. Frederick the Great forced some Prussian peasants to serve in
his armies, for instance, especially those who happened to be unusu-
ally tall and impressive. British authorities allowed the Royal Navy
to form “press gangs,” moreover, which scooped up young men or
even boys directly from the streets. Nonetheless, officers had to whip
or beat these involuntary recruits into submission; the process of
turning them into reliable soldiers took not months but years. Neither
the Prussians nor the British tried to legitimate this kind of recruit-
ment, in any case, because neither felt any need to do so; each assumed
an unquestioned right to use state power coercively. That changed
because of two revolutions.
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From our point of view in this chapter, modernity began with

two revolutions. The American Revolution established a democratic
state, which relied on political philosophy to establish limits on its
own coercive power (albeit with varying degrees of success and con-
sistency). The French Revolution established what amounted to a
crusading state, on the other hand, which relied on political philoso-
phy to maintain its coercive power. Of greatest interest here is the
latter, which established a radically new cultural paradigm for war in
the modern world (although it relied to some extent on the militia
system of ancient Greece and Rome).
On the eve of the French Revolution, most reformers wanted noth-
ing more than a constitutional monarchy. But resistance from the
regime and also from rival political factions convinced many reform-
ers to adopt more and more radical positions. What began as reform,
in other words, turned into revolution. And the French Revolution,
unlike the earlier American Revolution, soon took on a life of its own
– which is to say, one faction after another lost control of it. Within
only a few years, leaders were no longer satisfied to raise armies that
would defend the revolutionary state from foreign armies. They now
wanted to spread revolutionary doctrines by conquering other states.
To do that, they required an army of unprecedented size. The solution
was universal military conscription – universal, that is, for men.10
More was involved than the need for soldiers or even reliance on
efficiency, though. By legitimating “universal” conscription, the revo-
lution clearly signaled a new social “contract” between citizens and
the state.11 This amounted to a social contract not only between men
and the state but also, indirectly, between men and women. Becoming
a soldier was no longer the vocation of aristocrats. It was no longer
the fate of hapless peasants who happened to be convenient resources
for local lords or even that of a king’s generally passive subjects. It
was now the acknowledged price that all men paid for becoming citi-
zens. And those who refused to pay that price had to pay another
one, either imprisonment or execution (which amounted to the tem-
porary or permanent loss of citizenship). In one stroke, therefore,
suitability for warfare became the ultimate and even defining feature
of citizenship.
The same logic excluded women from full citizenship, partly
because of the universal assumption that women fulfilled their duty
to the state, producing and caring for children, within the private
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realm. At the same time, therefore, suitability for warfare became the
ultimate and even defining feature of manhood. It was maleness itself
that qualified men for warfare, after all, not the interests or even the
physical abilities of any particular man. Men became full citizens,
but also soldiers, simply because they had male bodies. Women did
not become soldiers or full citizens, however, simply because they
had female bodies. Women did not vote or do much in the public
realm, but they also were not forced to fight for the nation or the
revolution.
Once Napoleon began to export the revolution by conquest, other
countries found it necessary to follow the French example by con-
scripting their own male populations. And they continued to do so
long after defeating Napoleon and restoring conservative regimes.
Always fearful of revolution, with good reason, they had to justify
unpopular measures such as conscription. They tried to follow the
French paradigm of a social contract, but they had one big problem.
Many of these states were neither constitutional monarchies such as
Britain, after all, nor republics such as France and the United States
– and even France reverted several times to monarchy. They could
not offer full citizenship, therefore, to their conscripts. Instead, they
offered other rewards. One reward was the increasingly intense emo-
tional appeal of nationalism,12 which governments could foster effec-
tively in schools and newspapers by the late nineteenth century as
a result of compulsory education. The other reward was (eventually)
some social programs such as disability compensation and old-age
pensions. The exception was Russia, which made no pretense of offer-
ing most of its soldiers anything like citizenship. John Keegan refers
to this as “selective conscription.” Russian conscripts had to endure
“long periods of service to an unrepresentative government.” In fact,
“twenty years was the term in Russia before the emancipation of the
serfs.” As the serfs and, later, the peasants and proletarians, under-
stood, this was “difficult to differentiate from the slave system.”13
Forcing men into combat, per se, was nothing new in the early
nineteenth century. Dictators of one kind or another – chiefs, kings,
emperors, warlords – had been doing this for thousands of years. But
two things really were new (a few exceptions in ancient times not-
withstanding): subjecting all men to conscription, as we say, and try-
ing to legitimate that institution in philosophical, theological, or even
scientific terms.
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Not all men accepted military conscription passively even in the nine-
teenth century. Consider New York’s Draft Riots of 1863. Thousands
of New Yorkers took to the streets, from 13 to 16 July, in opposition
to conscription – the draft. Many saw this as an infringement of
their freedom under the Constitution. What troubled them was not
only the draft itself, however, but also a loophole that let the sons of
rich families buy their way out of military service. What began as a
class conflict quickly turned into a racial conflict, moreover, as pro-
testers turned their fury on the city’s black population. Once the
Union restored peace, however, conscription ended until the First
World War.
That war caused millions of Europeans to question the legitimacy
of war itself, let alone a social contract that relied on conscription for
war.14 In August of 1914, most Europeans – both men and women
– welcomed the advent of war in an atmosphere of mass euphoria,
one that came close to collective ecstasy. Many people have written
about this extraordinary and, in retrospect, almost inexplicable
response to the outbreak of war. Barbara Tuchman produced a very
readable account, which relies on eyewitnesses, in the first chapter of
her best-known book: The Guns of August.15 One explanation for
the mass euphoria (as distinct from the war itself), ironically, was its
historical context: decades of peace and prosperity, not of conflict
and poverty. Young people had become bored with the stability and
comfort of an effete or decadent civilization. Moreover, they felt
suffocated by the elaborate constraints of propriety and decorum.
They wanted to experience the underlying pulse of life. To do that,
they emphasized the irrational, the emotional, and the unconscious
along with what they considered the savage or the primitive. They
responded, therefore, to revolutionary movements in painting, music,
dance, and other forms of art, all of which tried to capture the vitality
of earlier or exotic societies. Consider the intensely vivid colors and
violently distorted forms in paintings by artists such as Franz Marc
and August Macke or the supposedly primitive rhythms and disso-
nant chords of composers such as Igor Stravinsky. The latter’s Rite of
Spring, in fact, became an icon not only of the primitive but also of
Modernism and provoked riots during its Paris premiere in 1913. But
the thrill of unleashing atavistic impulses was primarily a preoccupa-
tion of elite circles. Many young men longed more prosaically for
opportunities to prove themselves worthy of citizenship16 or, at the
very least, to escape from crushing boredom in factories or on farms.
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Governments focused their attention on these young men. Using tra-

ditional imagery, especially images of knighthood and chivalry, early
war propaganda claimed that these young men could become heroes
and thus renew their sense of masculine identity. Every country
except Britain relied on conscripts, nonetheless, and even Britain
resorted to conscription in 1916.
It did not take long, after all, for everyone to realize that this war
was unlike earlier ones. Even generals no longer wore elegant uni-
forms with golden epaulettes and embroidered sashes, no longer
waved glittering swords around, and no longer charged ahead while
mounted on impressive white steeds. Men of all ranks wallowed for
months on end in filthy trenches, wore gas masks that offered at least
some protection during chemical attacks, and went “over the top” to
face machine guns and mass death. Except for the aerial duels of a
few “ace” pilots, this was a mechanized, industrialized, and therefore
impersonal war – its only precedent being the American Civil War,17
which had, for Europeans, erupted long ago and far away. This was
partly the consequence of new military technologies.
For veterans of the trenches, at any rate, this war had not been
about glory or even duty but about endurance. It had solved the
problem of ennui, to be sure, which had annoyed gilded youth during
what must have seemed to survivors like a lost golden age. But most
countries, including the victorious ones, had lost far more in the war
than they had gained. The most serious loss, of course, had been its
staggering and unprecedented loss of life. The war had almost
destroyed a whole generation of young men, the “lost generation.”
That involved personal tragedy for countless families but also politi-
cal catastrophe – and not only for the losers. Countries on both sides
now had only old men to lead them, notably those who had either
started the war or profited financially from it. The result was per-
vasive cynicism. Nonetheless, “universal” military conscription has
continued to this day in almost every European country except
Britain and, ironically, those on the losing side, briefly (because the
Versailles Treaty prevented them from doing so).18
After that Great War, what we now call the First World War, com-
munism gained ground and socialism became fashionable in some
circles. Both fostered contempt for the capitalist society that had
brought about the war, and both fostered the unity of all proletarians
and thus internationalism instead of nationalism. Moreover, both
promoted visions of manhood that stressed service for the common
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good. But socialism, unlike communism, rejected violence. The ideal

socialist man was a productive worker, not a soldier and certainly not
a dead soldier. Käthe Kollwitz, a socialist artist, became famous dur-
ing and after the war for her prints and drawings of dead young sol-
diers. She was interested in all victims of inhumanity, especially the
poor. Her own son was killed in the war, moreover, and she made a
point of using her art to protest against all war. “That these young
men whose lives were just beginning should be thrown into the war
to die by legions – can this be justified? There has been enough dying.
Let not another man fall!”19
Pacifism became fashionable for the first time and not only among
socialists. Although pacifist imagery remained unusual20 in postwar
memorials, the Canadian government allowed Walter Seymour
Allward to use a pacifist motif for one group of statues at its Canadian
National Vimy Memorial.21 One sculptured group, Breaking the
Sword, shows three young men, one of them kneeling and, as the title
indicates, symbolically rejecting war for all time. But it was probably
in Germany, which had been among the most militaristic countries
before the war, that pacifism became most popular (until the Nazis
took over in 1933).
By 1929, anti-war sentiment – which is to say, pacifist sentiment –
had generated two German novels of great importance: Erich Maria
Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues22 and Ernst Johannsen’s Vier
von der Infanterie.23 The very next year, 1930, produced the first
three major anti-war movies. Kamaradschaft24 is about cooperation
between German and French miners, former enemies. After an explo-
sion collapses a tunnel that joins mines on opposite sides of the bor-
der, German miners rescue their French counterparts. They do so
with only grudging acceptance by their bosses, however, who repre-
sent the governments that had led both sides into a cataclysmic war.
Immediately after the rescue, in fact, authorities on both sides restore
the barriers and thus perpetuate the adversarial system that had
caused the war.
Johannsen’s novel, Vier von der Infanterie, was filmed in Germany
as Westfront 1918.25 In a detached style that filmmakers would later
call cinéma vérité, it follows a group of young soldiers through relent-
less suffering from one trench to another. Highlighting the meaning-
lessness of their ordeals is Karl’s leave back home in his village, where
he finds that his family faces starvation. With this very possibility
in mind, his wife turns to prostitution. Not surprisingly, Karl brings
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his anger and confusion back to the trenches. This war, he tells the
others, is “everyone’s fault.” One scene shows fog – poison gas –
gradually dissipating. As it does, rising hope turns into rising terror.
Facing them across no-man’s land is certain death: a massive steel
wall of enemy tanks. The soldiers succumb to their fate without being
able to justify it, let alone to explain it.
Remarque’s novel, Im Westen nichts Neues, was filmed in
Hollywood as All Quiet on the Western Front.26 Like its cinematic
counterpart from Germany, Westfront, this movie presents the First
World War as a senseless and brutal slaughter of unprecedented mag-
nitude. Though made primarily for American viewers, its protago-
nists are all German and thus recent enemies of the United States. It
made a profound impression not only among Americans, not surpris-
ingly, but also on Germans. The story begins in a village schoolroom.
Paul and his schoolmates listen to their old classics professor urging
them to emulate the Romans as soldiers, fighting heroically to the
death. “Dulce et decorum est,” he says, quoting from the Roman poet
Horace, “pro patria mori.”27 Just outside the window, local soldiers
march proudly and confidently off to war. Intoxicated by military
glamour, the boys are eager to throw away their books and join their
brothers. But once they actually experience the mechanistic and
dehumanizing discipline of training, let alone the horrors of battle
itself, the boys question the jingoistic ranting of their teacher. One by
one, the boys succumb to modern warfare. The final scene shows
Paul lying in a trench. He is tired, thirsty, homesick, and thoroughly
disillusioned. Still alive, nonetheless, he responds to the fragile beauty
of a butterfly that flutters toward him. He reaches toward it. Suddenly,
during a loud explosion, he clenches his hand. A moment later, his
fingers open in death. Only the butterfly remains alive, a sign that life
itself continues. To suggest that life continues also in another world,
the camera rises to reveal a long column of ghostly soldiers marching
into the heavens. This movie had a profound impact not only viewers
but also on at least one of the actors. Lew Ayres, who played Paul,
became a fervent pacifist. Drafted for military service during the
Second World War, he became a conscientious objector and therefore
the target of intense public hostility.
This pacifist vision of manhood did not last long, especially in
Germany and the other defeated countries.28 In Germany, a massive
reaction set in even before the Nazi takeover. Actually, it was not a
reaction but a restoration, in far more virulent and even pathological
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form, of the old vision. The Germans had not only lost millions of
young men,29 they had lost those young men in vain. The country
had achieved nothing except a staggering debt to the victorious
countries. Like the people of other countries, those of Germany felt a
pressing need to memorialize the war dead. Public monuments soon
encouraged intense mourning. In addition, though, they encouraged
in some circles a kind of mythic and ritualistic cult that emphasized
defiance and revenge. This became Germany’s equivalent of the
Confederate “religion of the lost cause,”30 although it had even dead-
lier results.31 Because German soldiers had done their jobs faithfully
and effectively on the field of battle, some right-wing radicals believed,
it was neither they nor their military leaders who had failed but civil-
ians. These included not only political leaders but also those who had
profited financially from the war. The latter had “stabbed Germany
in the back,” as the Nazis kept saying. Immediately after the war, in
fact, German veterans banded together in right-wing military organi-
zations such as the Stahlhelm and the Freikorps. Their explicit aim
was to maintain public order in the face of collapsing institutions and
revolutionary excitement on the left. Their implicit aim, however,
was to restore the honour of German manhood. Meanwhile, left-
wing radicals were increasingly willing to fight back on the streets of
Berlin and other cities. In both cases, the effect was to shore up a mili-
taristic version of masculinity. One of Hitler’s first acts after taking
power, not surprisingly, was to ban both Westfront and All Quiet.
R.C. Sherriff’s anti-war play, Journey’s End,32 was the British
equivalent of German anti-war productions. The focus here, though,
was on class conflict instead of group solidarity. The entire produc-
tion takes place in an officer’s dugout, after all, and not all of the
officers in this war come from the upper class. Even so, the enormity
of war soon trivializes both personal and social problems. The play
ends with an explosion that destroys not only the dugout but also,
metaphorically, the officer class that had caused and perpetuated a
catastrophic war. Given this play’s massive popularity, it is clear that
the British winners were just as disillusioned and angry as the German
losers were. Public sentiment at all levels of society veered toward
pacifism. Those who declared that they would be unwilling to fight
another war for king and country, in fact, won a famous debate at
Oxford University.33 Pat Barker has observed in several of her nov-
els34 that among the many problems faced by men in the trenches
was something that most people considered the fate of women
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– prolonged passivity and docility – but on a scale and with an “inten-

sity” that women themselves would have found inconceivable. This,
according to one of her characters, was what accounted for the fact
that so many men broke down under the strain of modern combat.
The male population of France, too, suffered colossal losses in
the war.35 But it was not until 1937, on the eve of another war, that
the French produced their anti-war classic, La Grande Illusion.36
Set in German prisoner-of-war camps during the First World War,
Jean Renoir’s movie focuses more attention on class than on combat.
Captain von Rauffenstein has taken some French soldiers captive.
These include Captain de Boëldieu. Like von Rauffenstein, he is an
aristocrat. The two fight on opposite sides but nonetheless have in
common not only friends and interests but also a worldview, one that
transcends national borders. The war is about duty for them, not
nationalism. Also prisoners of war are Lieutenant Maréchal and
Lieutenant Rosenthal. Unlike de Boëldieu, they come from middle-
class families. Rosenthal, for instance, is the son of a wealthy Jewish
banker. Contrary to the stereotype, he is generous to his men, physi-
cally brave, and patriotic. All of these prisoners have one goal: to
escape, return to France and fight again. And yet not all think of
escape in the same way. De Boëldieu sees Maréchal and Rosenthal as
men of the future, men whose positions are due not to collective
privilege but to personal achievement. He sees himself, however, as
a man of the past. He has no place in the present world, much less
a future one. The days of aristocratic leadership, he tells von
Rauffenstein, are over. Given his experience of the war, de Boëldieu
realizes that the new world order – and given the real-life date of
1937, this clearly refers to the fascists and communists – will be much
more brutal than the old one. With this sad recognition in mind, he
sacrifices himself as a decoy so that his men can escape. Renoir’s
point in this movie is that state-sponsored nationalism, which sup-
posedly legitimates hatred on both sides and therefore causes sense-
less catastrophes, is an alluring but empty illusion.
On the surface, Americans did not experience overwhelming rage
or cynicism after the First World War. For one thing, the war had
killed relatively few Americans.37 And the United States was by all
accounts the biggest winner of all, not only militarily and politi-
cally but also economically. After the armistice in 1918, therefore,
Americans went back to business as usual. Lingering jingoism not-
withstanding, moreover, they reaffirmed their isolationist foreign
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policy. The rise of aggressive regimes in other parts of the world, after
all, seemed very far away. But prosperity did not last long. Americans
entered the 1930s in economic and psychological distress. The Great
Depression, as we have already noted, left millions of men unem-
ployed and dependent on government handouts, a severe blow to
their identity as men. And just below the surface, even Americans
were deeply troubled by the possibility of a new war.
This is clear from a powerful anti-war novel by Dalton Trumbo,
which appeared in 1939.38 Johnny Got His Gun39 is gruesome
enough to be almost unreadable – almost but not quite. The protago-
nist, Joe, lies in a hospital bed during the First World War. An explod-
ing artillery shell has left him not only without both legs and both
arms (which means that he cannot touch) but also without a face
(which means that he cannot see, hear, smell, or speak). After a tra-
cheotomy, Joe tries to suffocate himself but cannot move the appara-
tus that allows him to breathe. As a prisoner of his own body, or what
remains of it, he cannot communicate with anyone. He learns gradu-
ally to communicate in a rudimentary way, however, by banging his
head on the pillow in Morse Code. This allows him to express a final
wish: to be encased in a glass box and exhibited all over the country
as a witness to the horror and futility of war. Meanwhile, Joe day-
dreams sadly about his early life: his hopes and fears, his father and
mother, his girlfriend, and so on. Implicitly, however, he reveals com-
mon notions of manhood that war has forced him to question.
Despite isolationist sentiment (along with some hostility toward
Jews and admiration for Nazi Germany), many Americans realized in
the late 1930s that they would not be able to avoid another war.
President Roosevelt introduced the country’s first peacetime draft in
1940,40 almost two years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
“Entering the army were millions of civilian men who [had] crossed
county and state lines in search of work in war-related industries. The
war would also reinstate the dignity of American men, men who had
lost their prestige and status in the 1930s … As an immediate and not
at all unlikely possibility, the prospect of war should have a tremen-
dous appeal to millions of our youth. Despite the fact they will have
to do the fighting and the dying, they will also have a chance to per-
form the heroic deeds.”41 Although the war gave many young men at
least some dignity after a decade of undeserved shame, it did so at a
terrible cost in male lives.
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During the Second World War, Americans glorified their war

heroes. And, considering what was at stake in that particular war,
how could it have been otherwise? But during this war, unlike the
earlier one, no one expected men to revel in combat; it was enough
for them merely to serve in combat without complaining or desert-
ing. This was a clear implication of one scene in The Very Thought
of You,42 a wartime propaganda film. Everyone ridicules Cal for
using guile to get a medical deferment from the draft. Guilt makes
him overly defensive and therefore hostile to Dave, his sister’s fiancé
in uniform. In the end, of course, Cal gets his comeuppance. “I got a
laugh for you, Dave. Cal’s been reclassified 1-A! [that is, fit for com-
bat] Ha, ha!” These are the words of Cal’s own father. Men like
Cal were in a no-win situation; they could risk either dying with
honour or living with dishonour.
Not all wartime propaganda movies resorted to shaming young
men into submission, however. In Since You Went Away,43 a sensi-
tive (but not “gay”) young man is thrown out of military school for
incompetence and possibly hints of cowardice. When drafted, Bill
tells his girlfriend, who worries about him. But Jane’s mother has the
most revealing line. “Well,” she tells him, “I’m sure you’ll be glad to
get over there and have it out.” What else could anyone say? She
maintains the necessary fiction, and he refrains from contradicting
her. Bill goes to war, of course, but he clearly does so very reluctantly.
And everyone is proud of him all the same, not only Jane and her
mother but also – after Bill gets killed – the militaristic officer who
had been ashamed of his grandson. In view of the fact that this movie
came out at the height of the war, when victory was by no means a
certainty, it was a stark but insightful and effective concession to the
reality that going to war was sometimes necessary, both collectively
and personally, but never good and never easy.
Although movie directors depicted horrific violence, moreover,
they did so very carefully. Viewers could see grenades exploding, in
short, but not how they mutilated the bodies of soldiers on either
side. And war journalists adopted the same measures. Everyone real-
ized that showing the charred, shredded, dismembered bodies of
boys could undermine the war effort. Each body, after all, could be a
viewer’s son or brother. For that matter, each body could represent a
viewer’s own potential fate. So, cinematic and journalistic restraint
ruled even during a war that almost everyone considered just. Only
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occasionally did Life publish horrific pictures. Some issues included

Tom Lea’s paintings of combat but not the most horrific one of all.
It shows a young man, still alive, who has just had the entire right
side of his body ripped right off by a grenade.44 All in all, during the
Second World War, Americans tried to maintain both civilian and
military morale by presenting images of soldiers who would go into
combat either eagerly (and thus fostering fantasy) or obediently (and
thus accepting reality) but also by hiding much of what awaited
them there.
Several movies examined the difficult transition from war to peace
by acknowledging frankly that even the survivors of combat could
be severely scarred psychologically, physically, or both. The Men45 is
about a young lieutenant who, wounded in action, ends up in a hos-
pital ward for paraplegics. Ken feels sorry for himself, so he gets no
sympathy from the other veterans. His girlfriend is more sympa-
thetic to him but also more demanding. Ellen insists, courageously,
on going through with the wedding that they had planned. Eventually,
of course, Ken finds a way to rejoin society.
Probably the most memorable postwar movie about soldiers re
adjusting to civilian life, however, is The Best Years of Our Lives.46
This story is about soldiers of various ranks and therefore social
classes, who return from the war in states of emotional fragility. One
wealthy businessman finds it hard to live and work as if he had expe-
rienced nothing shocking or disturbing at war. Another finds it hard
to live with a wife who, untouched by the war, wants only to spend
money and enjoy herself. Still another finds it hard to live at all with
steel hooks instead of his hands. These movies do not say explicitly
that suffering due to war is the hidden cost of manhood, let alone
that death in war is the ultimate cost of manhood, but they imply that
society as a whole should share the burden of war by, at the very
least, being sensitive to the needs of veterans – and therefore, in those
days, to men in general. Soldiers returned from the battlefields of
Europe and Asia as heroes. After fifteen years of depression and war,
they were glad to be alive and increasingly prosperous. Many re-
turned to their former jobs. Others took advantage of the GI Bill to
continue their education.
American wars continued after the Second World War, and so
did the draft. The latter continued, in fact, during both peacetime
and wartime. Only during the Vietnam War, however, did massive
protests against it bring people out into the streets. Unlike their
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prototypes of a hundred years earlier, these protesters were sophisti-

cated. Most of them were college students, in fact, who had defer-
ments. Instead of giving spontaneous expression to rage, they created
a political movement. It is worth noting here that this movement,
one that emerged within living memory, seldom even referred to the
problem that we have focused on here. Many anti-war and anti-
draft activists observed that the military burden fell primarily on
blacks, who were much less likely than whites to have student defer-
ments. Very few activists protested that the military burden fell
entirely on young men, not young women. (A few did so, and we will
discuss one of them later on.)
How could people have ignored the proverbial elephant in the
room? The answer, lamentably, is very simple. Male protesters
realized that questioning the draft’s obvious sexual discrimination
against men, especially when the nascent feminist movement was
alerting the world to sexual discrimination against women, would
have subjected them to merciless ridicule from their political adver-
saries, enduring shame from society as a whole and possibly hostility
from their girlfriends as well. On a collective level, it was not cool to
admit that men, or at least white men, had any problems at all. On a
personal level, moreover, it was not cool for men to admit that they
were afraid of anything. Activists framed their opposition to the
draft, therefore, in terms of their opposition to the war itself. Not to
war in general, which would have meant pacifism and might there-
fore have undermined their identity as men, but to this particular
war. The debates were about hawks and doves or Geneva Conventions
and Paris Accords, consequently, not about the meaning of manhood
or about sexual equality.
In 1973, however, President Nixon ended the draft and introduced
the volunteer army. Since then, many Americans have allowed them-
selves to ignore not only the draft’s possible future, despite the continu-
ation of draft registration and occasional calls for the draft’s revival,
but also its documented past. On one episode of Boy Meets World,47
for example, characters find themselves “transported” back in time to
the Second World War. The young men volunteer for military service,
as many did in reality, but no one mentions the fact that they would
have been drafted anyway along with those who were unwilling to
volunteer. Finally, for those who still doubt the enduring importance
of this topic in the United States, it recurs now and then on distinctly
rancorous blogs; bloggers either approve or disapprove very strongly.
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This brings us to a striking anomaly, one that has nonetheless received

surprisingly little attention: the “willing conscript.” Many men and
some women volunteer for military service in peacetime, especially
those who see no other way of escaping unemployment and pov-
erty or, in some times and places, even eating regularly. Moreover,
many men and some women volunteer for combat in other con-
texts, especially those of invasion or – as they did recently in Libya
– revolution. Conscripts, by definition, do not volunteer. Dying
gruesomely in battle or living on with painful wounds is not, after
all, a self-evidently attractive fate. Why have most conscripts accepted
their fate passively and not become dodgers or deserters?48 Several
theories have tried to explain the “willing conscript,” not all of them
successfully: (a) innate aggression; (b) glamorized fantasies; (c) bribes
and threats; (d) nationalism; (e) the residue of Greco-Roman civic
virtue; and (f) the residue of Christian atonement theology.
One of the most common explanations, innate aggression, is also
one of the least adequate. Apart from blaming the male victims of
war, it relies on hormonal determinism (and inadequate knowledge
of hormones at that). To put this explanation in blunt form, “testos-
terone poisoning” simply hurls young men into war and other violent
activities from football to crime.
Actually, testosterone does nothing of the kind. Otherwise, how
could we account for the fact that all men are not always clubbing
each other? And how could we explain the fact that women, too, can
be aggressive? Taking those questions seriously means understand-
ing that aggression is not synonymous with destructive impulses;
no society could survive, in fact, without channeling aggression in
constructive ways instead of destructive ones. As for testosterone,
the so-called male hormone, it occurs in both men and women but
at much higher levels in men (although these levels fluctuate consid-
erably throughout the day).49 In men, it promotes the development
of both reproductive organs and secondary sex characteristics. In
addition, it promotes both physiological health and psychological
well-being. Theodore Kemper refers to the latter as “elation” due to
either dominance or eminence.50 But testosterone does not, in itself,
cause aggression (which, in any case, is not synonymous with vio-
lence). In 2010, Nature reported on a study that confirmed this
counter-intuitive fact.51 The study linked testosterone in humans
not with aggression but with fairness “if this serves to ensure one’s
own status.”52
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Adrenaline is another matter. This is the hormone that really does

provoke “fight” or “flight” responses to emergencies. But adrenaline,
unlike testosterone, occurs at roughly the same level in both men and
women. At some very early stage of human evolution, adrenaline –
not testosterone – might indeed (with cultural backup) have hurled
men into raids or skirmishes that lasted a few minutes or at most a
few hours.
Whatever the effects of either hormone, however, they cannot
account for two things. First is that humans – including men – are
very reluctant to kill; they require extensive training, therefore, to
overcome that reluctance.53 Second is that modern wars are funda-
mentally different from the skirmishes or raids of our ancient and
medieval ancestors. For one thing, they last for months, years or even
decades – much longer than any spike in the volume of any hormone.
Moreover, early modern and modern wars have originated in com-
plex economic, political, and ideological clashes – ones that have lit-
tle or nothing to do with the transient flow of hormones in any elected
official or even any dictator.
According to a closely related explanation, many young men suc-
cumb to glamorized fantasies of wartime adventure. There is some
truth to that explanation in connection with both culture and history.
Popular entertainment does present war as the venue of precisely
those things, not as the venue of suffering and death (at least not for
the protagonists). Most people do, moreover, want to see the world.
As recently as the mid-nineteenth century, most people never traveled
more than a few miles from the country villages in which they had
been born. For young men in these circumstances, running off to join
the navy – or bands of pirates – offered at least some hope for adven-
ture in foreign parts instead of drudgery in the local fields.
Well, times have changed. We live now in a much more mobile
world than that of even our recent ancestors. It is true that young
men (and women) often join the armed forces partly for patriotic
reasons but partly for practical reasons such as college tuition or
technical training, which they can use for either military or civilian
careers. “Be all you can be.” But they are volunteers and therefore of
relatively little importance in this discussion. They join the Army, the
Navy, the Air Force, or the National Guard in peacetime or at least in
more peaceful times than those of major wars such as Vietnam or
even Iraq. Naively, perhaps, many of them do not expect to end up in
combat zones overseas.
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According to a similar explanation, society explicitly bribes young

men who join up, willingly or not, by promising them greater post-
war prestige than those who stay home (including the necessary
credentials for holders of public office). And those who stay home, as
a class, are women or children. This prestige involves not only oppor-
tunities to display their rusty medals or dress up in their old uniforms
for annual parades on Main Street. It amounts, as we will show in
due course, to collective reverence with distinctly theological associa-
tions. In the past, moreover, society implicitly promised young men
who joined up, willingly or not, more rights or privileges than those
who stayed home. Until just after the First World War, for instance,
only men – those who, as a class, had gone to war – could vote. Even
after the Second World War, in which many women had served over-
seas in non-combat roles, the big winners were male veterans. Female
veterans were eligible for benefits under the GI Bill, but not many
took advantage of them. Service in combat was still encoded, cultur-
ally if not legally, as “male.” In these two ways, the nation at least
promised to compensate young men for complying with the law and
thus risking their lives in combat. This compensation is the prover-
bial “carrot,” which we will discuss more fully in connection with the
sexual integration of both conscription and combat.
In addition, society implicitly threatens young men with shame
and explicitly threatens them with punishment – in some cases,
deserters face execution54 – for not complying with the law. This, of
course, is the “stick.”
Both factors, bribing and threatening, are very complex projects.
They require massive cultural efforts, beginning in early childhood, to
make sense and therefore to sound convincing. To be effective in war-
time, these cultural efforts must convince boys and young men at
some deep level of consciousness – one that is visceral, not merely
cognitive – that engaging in military combat would be the ultimate
demonstration of their personal honour and that failure to do so
would be the ultimate demonstration of their personal shame. Our
point here is not that our society should use either inequality as a reward
or punishment as a threat but merely that our society and many others
have used both to ensure a renewable supply of “willing conscripts.”
Another explanation is that many young men believe very strongly
in national causes or moral causes and are therefore willing to die for
them, which means that governments do not actually need to draft
them. This explains not only why so many Americans volunteered
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to fight against Hitler by joining Britain’s Royal Air Force instead of

waiting for their own country to declare war but also why so many
Americans (and others) volunteered to fight against Franco during the
Spanish Civil War. Not being pacifists, we find it hard to imagine liv-
ing happily in a society that had not fought against evils such
as Southern slavery or Nazi genocide. We do not know how many
young men would have volunteered to fight, because these wars relied
on conscripts. But think of this: most conscripts on both sides of both
wars – the Civil War and the Second World War – believed strongly in
the value of winning,55 which should give pause to those who imag-
ine that the “willing conscript” is a corollary of the just war.
Closely related to that explanation is yet another. This one relies
mainly on subliminal residue from one of the two worldviews that
gave rise to Western civilization: that of the Greeks and Romans. At
the heart of Greco-Roman life was civic virtue. (And that word, “vir-
tue,” derives from the Latin word for man: vir.) Western countries,
especially the United States in its formative phase, have deliberately
cultivated Greek and Roman prototypes. They have done so not only
by imitating ancient architectural forms for public buildings, study-
ing ancient philosophical systems, or referring to ancient legal codes.
They have done so also by absorbing ancient assumptions about citi-
zens in relation to the state. These go back to republican Rome and
even further back to Greek city-states such as Athens and Sparta.
Of interest here are not only the ultimate honour that society
awarded to those young men who were willing to sacrifice them-
selves for the state but also the ultimate shame that society inflicted
on those young men who were unwilling to do so. (Here, once again,
are the carrot and the stick.) Mothers allegedly warned their sons to
return from battle either marching in victory or lying on their shields
– that is, carried home dead by their grateful comrades – but not as
living cowards. Even now, many people are familiar with one legend
of Spartan courage. A young man steals a fox and hides it under his
cloak. When someone questions him, he lets the fox tear him to pieces
rather than reveal it and then dies of his wounds. Until recently,
moreover, everyone who studied Latin in school read a similar legend
as recorded by Livy. Gaius Mucius “Scaevola” tries to assassinate
Lars Porsenna, the Etruscan king who has laid siege to Rome, but
ends up killing someone else by mistake. Porsenna finds out and
condemns Mucius to death by fire. But after a short speech in which
Mucius brags about his willingness to die for Rome, the young man
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thrusts his right hand into the fire and holds it there, without
flinching, until the flames consume his flesh. Impressed, Porsenna
releases him.
The most fundamental, most enduring, and most disturbing
explanation for “willing conscripts” in Western countries involves
Christianity. Many people are aware of a close link between the
rhetoric of war and that of religion, including Christianity. One obvi-
ous example is the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers.”56 Very few
people, though, are aware of the precise theological principles that
underlie that link. These principles still inform the rhetoric of war,
but in the United States, with its official separation between church
and state, they are now implicit more often than explicit. Within
living memory, the situation was somewhat different. The impact of
some twentieth-century wars was so traumatic that people on both
sides tried to make sense of intense collective grief by resorting to
religious ideas that many had begun to abandon. Of these, the most
important in this context is atonement theology.
Originally, “atonement” referred in English simply to reconcilia-
tion. In biblical Hebrew, however, it referred specifically to the price
that people paid in order to make amends for harms that they had
done to others and thus to establish reconciliation. It referred also,
even more specifically, to the price that a sacrificed “scapegoat” paid
every year on the Day of Atonement to make amends for the sins
of all Israelites. It eventually referred among Christians to the price
that Jesus, as the Christ, paid by sacrificing himself on the cross in
order to make amends for the sins of all people.
Of profound importance here is a paradox that lies at the heart of
Christian theology: the incarnation. For Christians, Jesus of Nazareth
was a man and therefore fully human. But he was simultaneously the
incarnation of Christ (second “person” of the Trinity) and therefore
fully divine. Christians believe that Jesus the Christ sacrificed him-
self, willingly and according to a divine plan, even though the local
authorities executed him for their own sinister reasons. Otherwise,
after all, the Christian God would be just another cruel god.
For Christians, the self-sacrifice of Jesus the Christ has a biblical
prototype in what they call the “sacrifice of Isaac.” But the prototype
is not obvious to non-Christians, because scripture depicts Isaac as a
(potential) sacrificial victim, not a (potential) self-sacrificial martyr.
God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac but relents at the last moment,
because this is merely a test of Abraham’s faithfulness. And yet, say
Christians, this story is a dry run for something much bigger. It
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“prefigures” the final and ultimate story in which Jesus, the Christ
actually goes through with the sacrifice but turns it into an act of
self-sacrifice. Our point here is that to make the prototypical story of
Isaac work as an analogue of the archetypal one of Jesus, the Christ,
Christians must believe that Isaac, too, willingly sacrificed himself.
And Christians have not been the only ones to interpret the story of
Isaac in this way.57
Because the Christian God is not an abstraction but a person – that
is, three persons – Christians believe that they can imitate God’s
incarnation as Jesus, the Christ. They cannot recapitulate the arche-
typal self-sacrifice of Christ, to be sure, which was once and for all
time. But they can sacrifice themselves in one way or another as an
affirmation of both human love and divine love. And to do that, ulti-
mately, they must take up the cross as martyrs.58 The ultimate goal of
Christians, therefore, is to sacrifice themselves for others.59 “Greater
love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his
friends.”60 This goal has operated, however, within gendered societ-
ies. In theory, all Christians can imitate Jesus, the Christ. In practice,
a deeply embedded gender system has often gotten in the way of
that theory. Men have imitated Jesus, the Christ, in other words, but
women have often imitated the Virgin Mary.61
Over the centuries, political and ecclesiastical leaders in officially
or even nominally Christian countries have appealed to the ideal of
self-sacrifice with precisely that in mind when referring to the war
dead in public rituals. Self-sacrifice in war has become the ultimate
way for young men, in short, to imitate the archetypal self-sacrifice of
Christ. This explains the effectiveness of Christian theology in dis-
guising what would otherwise be an unacceptable fate for men in
wartime. It was with precisely this in mind that C.K. Ogden referred
to the Great War (the First World War) as a “holocaust of young
men.”62 The English word retained, and still retains to some extent,
its original sacrificial meaning: a burnt offering at the Temple in
Jerusalem. Ogden used the word satirically to suggest that both the
parents of young conscripts and the state, acting on their behalf, were
actually sacrificing their sons for a supposedly rational goal.
Among the first and most dramatic American attempts to link the
rhetoric of war and that of atonement theology occurred during
the Civil War. In his aptly titled book, Baptized in Blood,63 Charles
Wilson shows that both sides used the Christian imagery of self-
sacrificial and redemptive blood explicitly and effectively. After the
war, Southerners argued in connection with the “lost cause” that
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shedding the blood of their sons had been necessary to purify the
nation from the Northern sins of materialism and tyranny.
Northerners argued that shedding the blood of their sons had been
necessary to purify the nation from the Southern sin of slavery. The
following lines are from “Memorial Day” by Katharine Lee Bates (a
popular poet of the early twentieth century, who became famous for
“America the Beautiful”).
Tears still are salt for those who fell,

Precious wreckage of shot and shell,
Bruised and shattered and overthrown,
Riders cleft by the saber-stroke,
Stormers torn in the cannon-smoke,
The dying who gaze could scarce descry
Floating flag from drifting sky, –
Trampled and rent and riven,
Their orison a groan,
Giving their life as the Christ’s was given,
For a mercy not their own.
O shining spirits who thronging went
Up from the awful sacrament,
By one keen agony shriven,
Up from the South where the slave wept,
Up from the land where truth had slept, –
O shining spirits, be well content!
Did not your blood atone?64
Neither nationalism nor romanticism could acknowledge the

orror of the First World War, too, let alone confer meaning on it.
h
Christianity, on the other hand, could do so. Recalling Civil War
rhetoric, soldiers “lay down their lives” on the nation’s “altar” or
“gave” their lives,65 for instance, which alluded to the self-sacrificial
death of Jesus and therefore the atoning death of Christ as well
(because the fully human Jesus was also the fully divine Christ). This
became a central feature of civil religion in every country that had
fought. They remembered the war (and would remember later ones)
by institutionalizing public memorial days, establishing military
graveyards, building cenotaphs for “unknown soldiers” or other
monuments with lists of those who had “fallen,” selling poppies66 (to
wear conspicuously at public events), honouring “gold-star mothers”
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of dead soldiers (but not, for some reason, their fathers), and so
forth. How else could governments have even tried to re-legitimate
themselves?
Every Western country followed the same pattern: setting aside
times and places for public remembrance of the First World War
(and, eventually, of more recent wars). John Stanhope Arkwright
wrote one poem, “O Valiant Hearts,” just after the war. It has become
a standard hymn that Christians sing on Remembrance Day, Veterans
Day, A NZ A C Day, or their equivalents in many countries. Note his
theological imagery in the fourth, fifth and sixth stanzas.
O valiant hearts, who to your glory came

Through dust of conflict and through battle flame;
Tranquil you lie, your knightly virtue proved,
Your memory hallowed in the land you loved.
Proudly you gathered, rank on rank to war,

As you had heard God’s message from afar;
All you had hoped for, all you had, you gave
To save mankind – yourself you scorned to save.
Splendid you passed, the great surrender make;

Into the light that nevermore shall fade;
Deep your contentment in that blest abode,
Who wait the last clear trumpet-call of God.
Long years ago, as earth lay dark and still,

Rose a loud cry upon a lonely hill,
While in the frailty of our human clay,
Christ, our Redeemer, passed the self-same way.
Still stands His cross from that dread hour to this,

Like some bright star above the dark abyss;
Still, through the veil, the Victor’s pitying eyes
Look down to bless our lesser Calvaries.
These were His servants; in His steps they trod,

Following through death the martyred Son of God:
Victor He rose; victorious, too, shall rise
They who have drunk His cup of sacrifice.
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O risen Lord, O Shepherd of our dead,

Whose Cross has bought them, and whose star has led.
In glorious hope their proud and sorrowing land
Commits her children to Thy gracious hand.67
But something changed in the bitter atmosphere that prevailed

in Europe after the First World War. Many people consciously and
explicitly rejected the Christian rhetoric of self-sacrifice, which they
found inadequate to describe participation in this unprecedented
catastrophe. They began to see a gulf between the official rhetoric, in
short, and what had actually occurred. More specifically, they began
to argue that most of the soldiers had not sacrificed themselves at all.
Rather, the state had sacrificed them on behalf of the nation. By the
state, they meant primarily corrupt politicians, who had led people
astray; incompetent generals, who had led soldiers to either victory
or defeat without any prospect of significant gain; and greedy indus-
trialists – the “merchants of death” or the “bourgeoisie” – who had
profited financially from the war.
Few poets writing in English expressed outrage over the war more
powerfully than Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Here is one
of the latter’s poems, “On Passing the New Menin Gate.” Sassoon
attacks the piety of public war memorials (such as the Menin Gate
in Ypres, Belgium) as hypocrisy that officials hoped would blur the
crucial moral and theological distinction between sacrifice and self-
sacrifice. And he refers directly to the “immolation” (sacrifice) of
“the conscripted” (victims), which he refers to as a collective “crime”
of the nation, not as an act of collective self-sacrifice by the victims.
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate,

Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?
Was ever an immolation so belied

As these intolerably nameless names?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.68
Some people carried the analogy further by referring to biblical

passages that condemn ancient Israel’s neighbors for practicing
human sacrifice. From this point of view, modern political leaders
and war profiteers became the metaphorical priests of Moloch,69
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sacrificing young men to a militaristic and exploitive state just as the

Canaanites had sacrificed infants or young children to a cruel god.
Artists on both sides of the war made this link either explicitly or
implicitly. One of these was an Australian cartoonist named Sydney
Wentworth Nicholls. A socialist, he was outraged in 1914 by the
prime minister’s decision to raise $20,000,000 for the war effort. On
4 December, Direct Action, a publication of Industrial Workers of the
World, printed the cartoon that would make Nicholls famous (or, in
some circles, infamous). Behind a huge cannon, viewers see a cross.
On the cross hangs a crucified soldier. Standing below the cross and
to the left is the caricature of a bloated capitalist or politician, who
holds a chalice near the cross to catch the soldier’s dripping blood.
Just to make sure that no one would miss the message, the editor has
added a caption: “P.M. [Billy] Hughes has offered another 50,000
men as a fresh sacrifice to the modern Moloch. Politicians and their
masters have always been generous with other peoples [sic] lives.”70
Others made the same ironic link between pagan sacrifice and
Christian self-sacrifice but with a political slant to the right, not the
left. Both during and after the war, a persistent rumour had it that the
Germans had crucified a captive soldier. As usual, the crucified sol-
dier was both a stand-in for the self-sacrificing Christ and also for the
sacrificial offering to Moloch. But those who had allegedly crucified
this soldier represented the wicked “Huns,” not the bourgeois capi-
talists. Even though no one ever substantiated this story, it found its
way into art. In 1919, British artist Francis Derwent Wood pro-
duced a powerful bronze sculpture, Canadian Golgotha, for the
Canadian War Memorials Exhibition in London. On a barn door
hangs the crucified soldier: a Canadian. Nearby, German soldiers
mock him. Because of the diplomatic controversy that ensued
between Canada and Germany, this work was not displayed. Eighty
years later, in 1989, it entered the Canadian War Museum’s collection
as a historical artifact.
George Grosz was among the German artists who made the same
ironic link between pagan sacrifice and Christian self-sacrifice. He
did so implicitly. Like Nicholls, Grosz served in the war and survived
to become a caricaturist. He satirized Weimar society relentlessly and
mercilessly. In one of his drawings, Christ with a Gas Mask, viewers
see Christ himself as a victim of the war. The publication of this draw-
ing, in 1923, led to a blasphemy trial that soon became a touchstone
for public attitudes toward both the war and religion. Fortunately for
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Grosz, he was able to escape Germany just before the Nazi take-
over. Hitler included Grosz on his list of degenerate artists. Otto
Dix followed the same pattern but not quite so blatantly. Featured in
Schützengraben,71 which he painted in 1923, is the barely recogniz-
able body of a soldier. He dangles horizontally from the bare branch
of a blasted tree. Below him are the mutilated and decaying bodies
of other soldiers, one of them still wearing his gas mask. The tree
would have reminded more than a few viewers at the time of a cross,
because the tree and the cross are symbolically interchangeable.72
Others would have known that from stylistic details, such as the
decaying flesh that reveals Dix’s inspiration by the famous sixteenth-
century Isenheim altarpiece73 – also a triptych with the crucifixion
on its central panel – by Matthias Grünewald. Dix implies that
Christian Germany has sacrificed its sons just as pagan Rome sacri-
ficed God’s son.
The notion of soldiers as sacrificial victims has remained pervasive.
Otherwise, how could we explain popular movies such as The
Believers?74 Cal, a psychiatrist, works for the police on a case that
involves the ritualistic murders of two young men. Cal goes under-
cover to learn about a local Santeria cult and finds that it has long
practiced animal sacrifice but has recently turned to human sacrifice.
He soon learns that members of the cult expect him to sacrifice his
own son. When Cal reacts in horror, one member says that he sees
no difference between the illegal sacrifice of sons to appease gods
and the respectable sacrifice of sons to win wars. And nothing had
changed twenty-five years later, which is somewhat surprising in
view of the fact that Americans had long had a volunteer army.
“Libya,” says one participant in a New York Times blog, “Who really
cares about Libya? When you wake up in the morning, do you won-
der about this dusty country of 6.4 million people? Do you have any
connection that would make you say, ‘Yes, I’ll sacrifice one of my
children for them’?”75
More recently, male feminists such as Stephen Shapiro, have unwit-
tingly revived the same symbolic cluster. He notes that “infanticide
was practiced openly until recently in the Western world.” Most of
the victims were female, he presumes without any obvious evidence.
“Second daughters,” he continues, “would not often live to receive
dowries.”76 He could have argued that society victimizes both sexes
though not necessarily at the same ages, but he refrains from doing
so. Earlier, though, he refers explicitly to that very topic.
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A friend of mine stated that he could not understand how any

father could send his son to war, any war. Having been psycho-
analyzed, he knew that such actions were infanticidal. Didn’t
God prohibit Abraham from sacrificing Isaac? My friend
reserved the absolute right to judge his government and with-
draw his son … from the community. What good father wants
his son to die in Vietnam or Nicaragua? … Because pervasive
mistrust has so deprived our institutions of legitimacy, such per-
sonalism can masquerade in our culture as the unmasking of
hypocrisy. One who doubts can simply withdraw.77
The analogy is provocative, Shapiro’s retort notwithstanding, even

though no analogy is perfect. Parents resort to infanticide as an end
in itself (getting rid of unwanted children), after all, but they resort to
conscription as the means to another end (winning a war).
The link between self-sacrifice and religion has remained explicit,
however, in churches to this day. Just as the Son of God sacrificed
himself for the human race, local sons sacrifice themselves for the
nation. This illusory focus on the altruistic “choice” of sons allows
parents, especially Christian parents, to avoid feeling guilty for send-
ing their own sons to be killed in war (although the rhetoric some-
times refers explicitly to mothers who “give” their sons,78 as we say,
a sharply contrasting alternative that originated not in Christianity
but in pagan Greek and Roman religions on the one hand and some
pagan Near Eastern religions on the other).The same illusory focus
on “choice” discourages sons, at least Christian sons, from question-
ing their own fate. They could not do so, after all, without also ques-
tioning their identity as willing followers of Christ – that is, those
who imitate Christ.
This deception is not quite as cynical as you might think at first.
Parents do not allow the state to sacrifice their own sons carelessly,
much less enthusiastically. They do so, especially in democratic
countries, in view of what they believe is the lesser of two evils:
upholding a fundamental moral principle (freedom of conscience or
the right to life) but losing a just war versus winning a just war but
denying a fundamental moral principle (the need to defend the
nation or oppose tyranny).
Religious explanations for “willing conscripts” in the West rely
not only on the assumption that they see themselves as self-
sacrificial martyrs (without which their fates would be meaningless
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and therefore unacceptable) but also on the assumption that most of

them believe in some form of life after death (which mitigates their
natural reluctance to die). And until the late nineteenth century in
Europe or the mid-twentieth in America, military officials could
make those assumptions with some degree of accuracy. But what
happens when conscripts cease to believe in one assumption or both
of them, as they did during the past century?
To conclude, Western countries at war have not relied exclusively
on the rhetoric of nationalism (according to which soldiers fight for
the nation – which is to say, until very recently, its “women and chil-
dren”). They have relied at a much deeper and therefore subliminal
level on the rhetoric that underlies not one but both sources of
Western civilization: civic virtue (which originated in ancient Greece
and Rome) and especially atonement theology (which originated in
ancient Israel and lies at the core of Christianity).
This book, like the other volumes in this series, is primarily about
gender in modern Western countries. But it is worth acknowledging
that male conscription has generated the very same cultural patterns
– the rhetorical conflation of sacrifice and self-sacrifice, the link
between combat for the state and full citizenship in the state, the rela-
tion between combat and masculine identity, the need to compensate
men with privileges for risking their lives in battle, the resulting ten-
sion between men and women – in non-Western countries.
Consider male conscription in South Korea. Insook Kwon draws
most of the same conclusions that we have drawn, despite the many
cultural and historical differences between Asia and Europe or
America, except that she, as a feminist, focuses almost exclusively
on the economic disadvantages that male conscription dumps on
women instead of the existential ones (matters of life and death) that
it dumps on men themselves.79
Kwon begins by observing that South Korean women, including
feminists, have largely ignored male conscription; they see it as a
problem of men and therefore of little or no importance to women.
But even social scientists have neglected this basic feature of political
culture.
Without understanding the subtle gendering of conscription, we

will not be able to make adequate sense of the persistence of a
culture of militarism today, even after the end of the cold war,
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even after a pro-democracy movement pushed the military out of

power. Therefore, I seek to demonstrate how male military con-
scription lies at the core of what most members of society believe
it means to be an “authentic” South Korean in the late twentieth
and early twenty-first centuries. I show that compulsory male
military service has played a crucial role in constructing citizen-
ship, nationhood, masculinity, femininity, motherhood and
fatherhood and in creating the essential “glue” that binds each
of these six potent ideas to the conception of the national-state
in contemporary South Korea.80
Of particular importance here is Kwon’s observation that “the

most common model for national self-sacrifice is the brave warrior
… Yet this connection between willing self-sacrifice for a nation-
state and the sacrifice of a person in the role of a warrior is not
gender-free … Furthermore, positioning the national sacrifice of the
warrior so close to the core of the nation-state has the consequence
of militarizing masculinity, not only inside, but also outside the mili-
tary.”81 Male conscription is not a superficial, ephemeral, problem of
the West. It is a profound and enduring problem of modernity, one
that lies at the heart of any debate over either society in general or
gender in particular.
Turning now to the cultural implications of conscription, we suggest

that reviving it – that is, a male draft – would have profound impli-
cations for masculine identity.82 This much should be clear in view of
what we have already said about war imagery. Of interest here,
though, is not the collective identity of Christian men but the collec-
tive identity of men per se.
This brings us back, first, to the ambiguous subtitle of this chapter.
Although the Military Revolution refers primarily to the advent of a
new institution, it refers also to the advent of new technology. This is
a secondary consideration only because the new technology, new
military technology, did not change anything; it merely accelerated a
process that had begun much earlier.
We have already observed in the first two chapters that technologi-
cal changes have gradually separated masculine identity from male-
ness per se.83 As long ago as the Agricultural Revolution, a process
began that eventually and gradually gave the highest status to men
who did not need powerful and mobile bodies, who did not need to
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use brute strength. At first, to be sure, most men – and most men by
far were peasants or serfs – still needed a great deal of it to work the
fields. And a few men at the very top – kings, aristocrats, and their
regiments – still needed it to lead troops into battle (though not
necessarily to hunt, which gradually became a ceremonial function
of elite men). In contrast, a small but slowly growing segment of
the male population – priests, scribes, administrators, artisans, archi-
tects, merchants, traders, physicians, perfumers, bakers, and so on –
did not need brute strength at all. They needed managerial, artistic,
or intellectual skills.
The fall of Rome in the West, which resulted in the reversion from
an urban economy to a rural one, slowed down the process that we
are describing here. Most men by far worked on the land once again
as serfs or peasants. They did work that required brute strength and
physical endurance. Endemic warfare, moreover, rewarded those
with the brute strength to be effective in combat. Before the wide-
spread use of gunpowder – though invented during the 800s in China,
gunpowder did not become a significant factor in European warfare
until the Battle of Crécy in 1326 – military leaders required not only
noble lineage but also physical stamina. Armies had relied on long-
bows or crossbows, lances, swords, and various bludgeons – all of
which required considerable physical strength to wield effectively.
Moreover, combatants had to carry around massive suits of armour.
Even after the arrival of muskets in 1520 soldiers needed the strength
to carry and manipulate these massive weapons. Service in the infan-
try still requires brute strength: carrying heavy equipment, supplies,
and wounded comrades. But not all soldiers are in the infantry.
The process gained momentum again, however, with the Renais-
sance, the Enlightenment, and especially the Industrial Revolution.
Farmers still needed brute strength to work the fields, although
new machinery would mechanize many tasks in the late nineteenth
century. And some proletarians needed it to work the mines, say, or
to haul products from here to there. But most proletarians – many of
whom, at first, were women and even children – did not need much
brute strength to tend the machines in factories. As for kings and
aristocrats, they no longer engaged in hand-to-hand combat (except
for the few who still engaged in ritualistic duels). More important,
neither did the rapidly growing number of middle-class men. And
most Western men today are their vocational descendents, not those
of either peasants or aristocrats.
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By now, the process is almost complete. Very few men work in the
fields, and those who do rely heavily on agricultural machinery. Most
men by far, on the other hand, work in offices and have therefore
become sedentary. Even military jobs do not necessarily require
brute strength. Those who serve in the infantry do, but many others
rely more heavily on other skills. Military leaders require college
degrees from military academies more than physical strength. Their
armies rely primarily on careful planning. Massive vehicles – tanks,
airplanes, ships, submarines – carry around much of the armour. In
short, modern warfare relies heavily on complex and sophisticated
technologies. Men with the highest status, therefore, are those who
have managerial, psychological, and intellectual skills to offer the
nation in wartime. Men with the lowest status, on the other hand, are
those who have nothing to offer the nation in wartime but their bod-
ies. Modern states that wage wars, no matter how necessary or even
noble those wars might be, have therefore considered the bodies of
these men expendable; like pawns in game of chess, they are resources
to be used up. Political leaders never make that explicit, of course,
but their moral calculus has been clear enough to generate a common
expression: “cannon fodder.” The male body is no asset, in short, to
most men in peacetime. Worse, it has been a severe liability in war-
time. Only in combat, after all, has the male body been a legal require-
ment. Only in connection with combat, moreover, do many people
still consider death an acceptable job outcome.
Meanwhile, the draft remains a legally defined fact of life for all
young men in the United States (as it does in many other countries no
matter what their political ideologies84 and no matter how unlikely
they are to engage in warfare).85 Because they must still register for
it at the age of eighteen, the very act of doing so has some connota-
tions that coming-of-age rituals have always had. It is enough to say
here that drafting only men once more would mean, as it always has
in modern times, that combat is the ultimate destiny that all men
potentially share and, at the same time, the ultimate destiny that all
women do not share. Although this would provide men with an iden-
tity, it would do so at a price that many men would now reject –
unless they remain blind to the effects of gender on men, which
would be very unlikely in a society as preoccupied with gender as
ours now is. Otherwise, after all, it would be clear to everyone that
conscription is an inexcusable violation of personal liberty in a free
society. Unfortunately, men cannot reject the expectation of being
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willing to engage in combat without also rejecting their claim, no

matter how tenuous, to manhood.
If masculine identity is at stake, however, revising the draft to
include women would have additional cultural and moral implica-
tions. With that in mind, consider the following comment, by Barbara
Ehrenreich.
The comfort women of World War II were captives of war –

so every assault they endured could be seen, by their assailants,
as a humiliation inflicted on the enemy. This doesn’t excuse the
Japanese; it just throws a particularly nasty light on the goings-
on [among Americans] at Fort Leonard Wood and the Aberdeen
Proving Ground. Generally speaking, sexual abuse is visited on
women of the other side. One’s own women are supposed to
be sacrosanct … All right, there can be a fine line, sometimes,
between sex and the abuse of it … But we’re talking about hav-
ing one’s clothes ripped off and being passed from pawing hand
to pawing hand (Tailhook, 1991). About being raped and then
told by one’s assailant that “if you ever tell anyone about this,
I’ll slit your throat” (Aberdeen Proving Ground, 1996). This is
not about sex and its regulation or lack thereof. This is about
war. What does it mean when soldiers start treating their com-
rades-in-arms as if they were members of an enemy force?86
What it means, actually, should be very obvious to everyone. The

male soldiers in question saw female soldiers – members of their own
army – as invaders and therefore as enemies. Why? Because, as one of
the very last public spaces that society has reserved for men, combat
has had the dubious advantage of allowing men a collective identity
(albeit one that exposes them to mutilation or death). The law that
keeps women out of combat is one of only two remaining laws that
explicitly discriminate on the basis of sex (the other being one that
requires young men but not young women to register for the draft).87
Ironically, therefore, men have something important to lose, symboli-
cally, whether women join them in combat (which eliminates one of
the few remaining sources of identity for men) or not (which prevents
equality).
When women enter combat, they symbolically destroy one impor-
tant historical feature of masculine identity – something that female
soldiers did not do in earlier generations.88 This is definitely not an
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argument for restricting combat to men; the physical lives of people

must take precedence over their symbolic lives. It is an argument,
however, for thinking more carefully than Ehrenreich does about the
meaning of intersexual strife within the military. (For a discussion of
Ehrenreich’s comments on how men see the women of enemy coun-
tries, see appendix 1 in our next volume.) She argues facetiously for
the restriction of combat to women, because “a military that runs on
testosterone is about as useful as a platoon armed with maces and
pikes.”89 But her real aim is to show that the only reason for keeping
women out of combat – and the financial or political rewards that
come with it – is irrational malice on the part of men. This, she says,
is the reason for men’s harassment of women in the military.90 Finally,
she points out that “we should be hearing a lot less of the sanctimo-
nious argument that women don’t belong in the military because
they occupy a ‘protected’ category.”91 Cynical to the core, she argues
that the idea of women as a protected category amounts to nothing
more – and nothing less – than political propaganda. And yet a great
deal of evidence, including countless letters from American fighting
men in earlier wars, indicates that they sincerely believed in their
duty to protect American women.
The debate over allowing – let alone forcing – women into combat
remains heated in the United States. We suggest that the crucial factor
for many men, though seldom a conscious one, is not legal permis-
sion for women to serve in combat and thus become career officers
(which is how advocates always frame the debate) or the physical
limitations of women (which is how their adversaries almost always
reframe the debate) but the ability of men to maintain their collective
identity as men. Because we have for so long associated combat
exclusively with men, and because combat has outlasted almost
everything else that society once associated exclusively with men,
combat is one of the very few things that prevents complete sexual
integration and therefore stands out all the more – for good or ill – as
a defining feature of masculinity.92 And this is true no matter how
men choose, either personally or collectively, to define masculinity.
Even some Amish men, who reject anything to do with combat and
insist on permission to do so as members of “peace churches,” must
think carefully about how and why they differ from other men.
Excluding women from combat has enabled men to establish a
collective identity as men, as we say, but men have paid an extremely
high price for the “right” to make this particular contribution to
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society. And the kind of collective masculine identity that relies exclu-
sively on defending society would not be a healthy one for boys, who
would have to repress any feelings that interfere with the psychologi-
cal skills required for combat. Nor would it be a happy one for
women, who would have to repay men for protecting them by allow-
ing society to give men at least a bit more status or a few more privi-
leges than it gives to women. The possibility of men lacking an
effective alternative source of collective identity, therefore, presents
everyone with a major problem.
Now, consider the specifically moral implications of conscription.

Apart from anything else, conscription is always, at least potentially,
a matter of life and death. This makes it an ultimate moral problem,
therefore, not a merely personal problem.
Almost everyone realizes by now that war is a moral problem, a
necessary evil at best (although, judging from centuries of debate
over the definition of a just war, this realization is by no means a new
one). But not everyone realizes that conscription for war presents a
more subtle moral problem.93 It denies moral agency to those who
actually fight in wars, after all, and thus hides the problem. It is one
thing to debate the advantages or disadvantages of going to war and
then making a choice at the ballot box. It is something quite different
to prevent those who must bear the ultimate burden of going to war
from making their own choices.
In debates over both combat and conscription for combat, people
either reject something that they consider evil or choose it as the
lesser of two evils: a necessary evil. Those who do the latter should
realize the moral implications of doing so. And most people either do
realize these moral implications or quickly begin to do so in wartime,
because the effects of war are self-evident and even quantifiable in
terms of casualties, property, territories, money, and so on. The moral
implications of conscription, on the other hand, are subtle and there-
fore not always self-evident even to conscripts themselves (except, of
course, when conscripts challenge their legal status in court).
Conscription relies directly on an instrumental view of human life,
which some people accept and others reject. This debate (like several
others) might be not only serious, therefore, but also insoluble. On
one side are those who believe that people are inherently ends in
themselves (as subjects), not the means to other ends (as objects). On
the other side are those who believe that people are not inherently
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ends in themselves and therefore are indeed sometimes the legiti-

mate means to other ends. But even those who generally assume that
human life is “sacred,” an end in itself, sometimes make exceptions in
circumstances that make this belief impractical. This is what happens
in debates over conscription. But the same thing happens in connec-
tion with other moral debates, notably the debate over abortion but
also the debate over euthanasia. In one way or another, many people
have come to believe that preserving human life is not necessarily the
bottom line. In that case, other considerations take precedence: win-
ning a just war, rejecting the burden of an unwanted child, ending the
agony of someone who has to some degree lost the “quality of life.”
At issue here is not only the cultural conditioning that most modern
countries have used to turn boys into men and men into soldiers,
therefore, but also the moral assumptions that shape debates over it
and ultimately form the moral substratum of society as a whole.
In this chapter, we have discussed the historical effects of war and

conscription for war on men. We suggest that the main effect was to
provide men with a source of masculine identity that rewarded com-
pliant men (at least in theory) with status markers and privileges. In
addition, though, we suggest that this system came with a very high
price tag. Many items appeared on the bill, including social and
political turmoil at various times, but we want to emphasize two
items here. Young men ended up dead or wounded. And a nation that
promised equality, an ideal at the very heart of its historical identity,
institutionalized sexual inequality.
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4
From Father to Sperm Donor:

The Sexual and Reproductive
Revolutions
“This is not a rejection of men,” insists Sherron Mills, a nurse practitioner

and executive director of the Pacific Women’s Health Services. Mills is
showing me her bank’s large barrel-shaped tank that can house up to
5,000 vials of frozen sperm, enough to propagate a small town. With her
short graying hair and comforting manner, she could pass for anyone’s
aunt checking to see if the cookies are done. She grabs what looks like an
oven mitt and lifts the tank lid, releasing a cloud of vapor from the liquid
nitrogen, and carefully pulls up a rack of labeled vials encrusted with
frost. “Men are very necessary to this process,” Mills says.1
Lynn Snowden
We condemn the use of women from exploited countries and poor women
by men and international conglomerates in the interests of global capital
and patriarchy. We condemn men and their institutions that inflict infertil-
ity on women by violence, forced sterilization, medical maltreatment, and
industrial pollution and repeat the damage through violent repair technol-
ogies. We support the exclusive rights of all women to decide whether or
not to bear children, without coercion from any man, medical practitioner,
government, or religion.2
FINR R A GE
So far, we have examined cultural revolutions that emerged in con-

nection with social and technological changes in the public realms of
agriculture, industry, and warfare. We turn in this chapter to cultural
revolutions that emerged in connection with even more radical social
and technological changes in the private realms of sexual behaviour
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t h e r e p r o d u c t i v e r e vo l u t i o n 97
and family life. These have had dramatic social, economic, and
political consequences. As the feminist slogan has it, “the personal is
political.”
At the heart of this chapter is fatherhood, a surprisingly controver-
sial and complex topic. Not at all surprisingly, however, popular cul-
ture has sometimes revealed conflicting attitudes toward fathers. In
Spreading Misandry,3 we discussed in detail the pejorative ways in
which popular culture has portrayed fathers routinely since the early
1950s, especially in sitcoms and commercials. Until recently, even
men s eldom complained. But popular culture was not always so hos-
tile to fathers.
Among the favourite targets of those known today as “cultural
critics” (especially among academics in the field known as “cultural
studies”) is Father Knows Best.4 What provokes mockery and even
contempt in our time is not the show’s quality – acting, writing, and
so forth – but the mere fact that it relied on the supposedly ludicrous
or even mendacious proposition that fathers might actually have a
distinctive and important function in family life. No matter what the
problem, Jim Anderson was able to discuss it patiently and rationally
with his children (just as Judge Hardy had done with his son Andy in
the movies of an earlier generation). It seems highly unlikely, despite
the glib comments of cultural critics today, that viewers had ever
believed that real fathers could be so consistently wise. What annoys
critics is not merely the fact that this show might have presented an
atypical home, as if sitcoms were sociological treatises in narrative
form and should therefore rely on statistics, but the fact that anyone
had the stupidity or audacity to take fathers seriously in the first
place. This show and several others of the period portrayed fathers
with gentle wit rather than cynical ridicule.
Cultural critics notwithstanding, sitcoms still feature men who try
hard to be good fathers. The main difference is that these circum-
stances – dead mothers, working mothers, young siblings with no
one to care for them, and so on – usually force these men to act like
well-intentioned fathers. Part of the humour in these sitcoms, there-
fore, supposedly comes from the mere fact of men trying to act like
fathers – or even mothers – and seldom succeeding. Their children are
usually so irritatingly precocious and cynical, in any case, that the
roles are partially reversed. And the women in their lives are always
ready to step in when Dad gets in over his head. Even in the 1950s,
there was a negative way of portraying fathers. It was Ozzie Nelson,
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in the Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,5 who became the prototypi-

cal father that he has been ever since. Though kind and amusing –
and present at home, because he never went to work – Ozzie was also
a hapless bumbler. He often needed lessons from Harriet or even
the children.
Nothing much changed over the next five or six decades except for
the lack of any replacement for Jim Anderson. Ozzie’s ultimate
descendant in T V -land appeared in the 1990s on Home Improve-
ment.6 Tim is kind and amusing, once again, but also a hapless bum-
bler. Worse, he represents almost everything that had long been
considered reprehensible in American men: his preoccupation with
power (or at least power tools), his bravado, his ignorance, and so on.
And then there was The Simpsons.7 Not all fathers on sitcoms have
been as incompetent and buffoonish as Homer Simpson, but some
have. The extraordinary success of this show indicates that it contin-
ued to perpetuate conventional stereotypes of men in general and
fathers in particular. Homer’s direct descendant appears on a more
recent animated sitcom called Family Guy.8 Peter Griffin is another
bumbling, blue-collar idiot. Like Homer, moreover, he has an intel-
lectually and socially superior wife. (It is true that some other genres,
including crime and science fiction, focus on alpha males. The latter
have either trophy wives or no wives at all. But these male characters
are not necessarily any more admirable than their primitive counter-
parts on sitcoms.) The comedic association of men with lower-class
boorishness and vulgarity remains intact, therefore, as does the con-
ventional American association of women with upper-middle-class
education, refinement, and ambition. Peter is a middle-of-the-road
father. Worse than Peter is Frank Gallagher, the drunken, selfish, nar-
cissistic, and cheating father on Shameless.9 Frank does show some
signs of concern for his children, sure, but only in the most dire cir-
cumstances (which he often causes in the first place). Better than
Peter is Phil Dunphy, the well-meaning but clueless father on Modern
Family.10 Phil’s idea of a good father is someone who pretends to be
a cool best friend to his children; the latter nonetheless show con-
tempt for him (rightly, because they need him to be a father, not a
friend). In the new century’s second decade, this might be as good as
it gets for sitcom fathers.
Fathers on other shows demonstrate behaviour that ranges from
criminal to pathological. In the criminal category is Walter White
on Breaking Bad.11 Although his criminal career begins in a way that
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generates sympathy – a diagnosis of terminal cancer leads him to

provide money as quickly as possible for his children – the conse-
quences of his venture into the drug trade are brutal for the children
of other people. In the pathological category is Don Draper, the
damaged man who leads a double life on Mad Men.12 Don does
almost everything wrong, but viewers can sympathize with him, to
some extent, because of his abused childhood, his experiences during
the war, the hedonistic culture in which he lives, his charm, and so on.
By 1995, according to Colin Harrison, children’s books were treat-
ing fatherhood as a problem. “How’s Dad doing these days? Not
necessarily very well. The mass culture long ago shucked the Ozzie
Nelson archetype; now the genial, clean-shaven man in a suit is
understood as a shorthand symbol for a set of disproved assump-
tions. (That the suburbs are safe, that America is prosperous, that
“father knows best.”) In the cultural calculus, the married, faithful,
dependable Dad is at worst derided as a fantasy and at best inspected
as subject of nostalgic veneration.”13
Of the three books reviewed by Harrison, only one is about a
decent father. “We know society has changed,” he writes, “we know
that many families are ‘dysfunctional,’ but I, for one, find it worri-
some that in these three stories, the only undamaged and undamag-
ing father lives in a tale set more than ninety years ago.”14
In this chapter, we present a brief historical review of fathers in
connection with two radical changes in the understanding of sex and
family life: (1) the Sexual Revolution and (2) the Reproductive Revo-
lution. These did not appear out of the blue. Rather, they appeared
within a specific historical context. Both began (or began again) dur-
ing the 1960s, and created seismic cultural shifts that have continued
ever since, generating questions of profound importance about the
collective identity of men. We conclude with (3) the cultural context
and the cultural fallout from these technological revolutions.
It could be argued that what we now call the “Sexual Revolution,” a

mélange of movements that became highly visible during the 1960s
and advocated (among other things) sexual freedom of many kinds,
began decades earlier. Millions of young (and older) people in both
western and central Europe cheered the outbreak of the First World
War, hoping that it would shake up a world that had succumbed
to bourgeois respectability, predictability, and tedium. Four years of
trench warfare generated rampant cynicism at all levels of society.
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And yet old and discredited political leaders remained in power, even
in the “victorious” countries. The survivors, who considered them-
selves a “lost generation,” rebelled against the worldview that had
allowed countries to send millions of young men to kill or be killed
for nothing of any enduring value. Alive despite the odds and filled
with the natural exuberance of youth, they set out not only to chal-
lenge rigid and repressive old social orders but also to create new and
liberating ones. This led to hedonism during the “roaring twenties”
but also to radical experimentation, especially literary, artistic, social,
and sexual experimentation (although even these had precursors
before the war and even earlier in “bohemian” circles). But the party
was over after only ten years. It came to a sudden end in the 1930s,
due to an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions, political
forces that led to the rise of pathological ideologies in some countries
and, within ten more years, to an even more destructive war.
After the Second World War came a second wave of social, cul-
tural, and political ferment, this time originating in the United States.
Like the first wave, this one began in reaction to the repression, now
called “oppression,” of earlier generations. But these experimental
movements, unlike those of the first wave, won one battle after
another. By the late 1980s or early 1990s, a period that we emphasize
in this book because of events that had powerful but unanticipated
and unacknowledged effects on men, what had been an experimental
worldview became the prevailing one in Western countries; what had
been the “counterculture” no longer needed to “subvert” anything
(although it retained the rhetoric of subversion, transgression, and so
on). Apart from anything else, this new worldview affirms all forms
of pleasure. More specifically, it affirms all forms of sexual behaviour
(except those that involve coercion or minors), all forms of family
organization (except polygamy), and all aspects of sexual equality
(except for the self-contradictory notion that women are more equal,
so to speak, than men).
Strongly supporting these phenomena were two developments of
interest here. In this section, therefore, we discuss briefly two very
well-known events in recent American history: (a) the advent of reli-
able birth control – “the Pill” – and (b) the legalization of abortion on
demand after Roe v. Wade.
In her historical study, Sex in the Heartland,15 Beth Bailey discusses

changing sexual mores in the United Sates between the 1940s and the
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t h e r e p r o d u c t i v e r e vo l u t i o n 1 01
1980s. Instead of focusing on New York or California, the avant-

garde’s epicentres, she focuses on a more representative case study:
Lawrence, a college town in Kansas. In other words, she focuses on
the fly-over region that some people either ridicule or ignore. Using
primary sources such as student newspapers, she describes not a
sudden change that coastal radicals imposed on the nation but rather
an evolutionary process that originated among people who had no
intention of instigating a sexual revolution and in events that had
nothing to do with sex at all. To understand what happened in the
1960s, she argues, it is necessary to understand first what happened
twenty years earlier.
The Second World War led not only to the increased power and
influence of federal agencies as distinct from local ones but also to
massive migrations both at home and abroad. During the war, thou-
sands of people from other parts of the country ended up in Lawrence
to work at a military plant. After the war, thousands of soldiers
ended up there as students under the G I Bill. Somehow, they all lived
together uneasily. At the same time, radio and cinema were replacing
local culture with a national one. The result was unprecedented
“diversity,” which undermined local sources of social or cultural
authority and made it harder than ever for them to enforce tradi-
tional standards of sexual behaviour even during the supposedly
repressed 1950s.
During the 1960s, Bailey shows, by no means all of the students
who demanded co-ed dorms and other changes did so for the same
reasons. Some of them argued for greater responsibility, others for
sexual liberation, and still others for a cultural or even a political
revolution. As for the Pill, that found most support originally as a
way of solving the “population explosion,” not as a way of encour-
aging women to have casual sex or of allowing men to escape from
the responsibilities of fatherhood. Eventually, some people came to
glorify sex as the venue of liberation; others came to denounce it as
the venue of oppression. All of these changes amounted not to a new
consensus about the meaning of either sex or gender, in short, but to
the dissolution of an earlier consensus on each.
Bailey covers almost every debate that led to radicalism during the
1960s and 1970s, notably an unstable alliance that gradually emerged
between the feminist and gay movements. (For some reason, how-
ever, she says very little about the most contentious debate of all: the
one over abortion.)16 Despite the fragmentation of campus life into
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political movements, most students eventually held in common a

vague or visceral opposition to “bourgeois” or “patriarchal” soci-
ety as a whole. In other words, evolution really did turn into revolu-
tion. But why should that surprise anyone? After all, not every
revolution begins as an attempt to destroy one order and replace it
with a new one.17
Given the “contested” meanings of sex and gender, Bailey tried to
present an objective account.18 She did not always succeed. It was
true, for instance, that women and gay people had benefited a great
deal from decades of sexual and social ferment. But that was by no
means the only result of all this ferment; new problems, in fact,
replaced the old ones. It was certainly not obvious, at any rate, that
people were happier then than they had been before all the ferment.
The “counterculture” contributed substantially to the rise of a “drug
culture” (which fostered not only crime but also countless therapeu-
tic movements and therefore undermined “personal responsibility,”
the original slogan of those who had sought sexual equality) and
what a later observer would call the “divorce culture”19 (which pro-
duced not only legions of fatherless children but also a host of social
and psychological pathologies).20 Even sexual equality, supposedly a
primary goal of the Sexual Revolution, proved elusive at least partly
because misandry simply replaced misogyny as a tolerated form of
sexist prejudice. (Almost everyone knew that misogyny did not go
away, although it was closely monitored and publicly denounced,
but almost everyone either ignored or condoned misandry.)21 In fact,
men and women were now at least as polarized as they ever had been
after forty years of influence by ideological feminists (and, since the
first book in this series, we have made a careful distinction between
ideological feminists and egalitarian ones).22
At least in the Western world, the Pill changed everyday life pro-
foundly by severing the link between sexual pleasure and reproduc-
tion. It freed people – men no less than women – from the fear of
having to worry about responsibility for unwanted children. Wide-
spread use of contraception not only undermined the ancient taboo
on premarital sex but also, eventually and in the context of an increas-
ingly hedonistic society, the historic definition of marriage itself. It
not only eliminated courtship and called into question the need for
marriage but also allowed women to seek sexual gratification just as
men did and thus called into question an ancient double standard (in
this case, one that had favoured men). In one ironic way, though, the
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Pill did not truly sever the relation between sex and reproduction.
Eventually, on the contrary, it glorified the relation between sex – that
is, the female sex – and reproduction. More about that in due course.
In any case, the Sexual Revolution was a brief prelude to the closely
related Reproductive Revolution, which would soon have profound
implications not only for young people but also for the nation and
even for the species.
Many people “forget” that another demand of the Sexual Revolution

was for legalized abortion on demand, possibly because that topic
remains, almost fifty years after Roe v. Wade,23 too controversial for
calm discussion.
Reliable birth control prevented a problem; legalized abortion
fixed one. Legalizing abortion on demand strongly reinforced the
effects of introducing reliable birth control. Both severed the pri-
mordial link between sexual pleasure and reproduction. It no longer
made sense, at least in secular communities, to insist on virginity
before marriage. Abortion was much less desirable than contracep-
tion as a form of birth control, however, partly because it remained
not only legally and politically controversial but also emotionally
fraught. Nonetheless, it did come to function for many people as a
last-resort form of birth control.
Proclaiming that legalized abortion was a matter “between a
woman and her doctor” (but not the father) was only the first step.
The next step was to be sure that even adolescent girls did not have
to consult their parents, let alone their boyfriends, before having
abortions. Pro-choice advocates certainly did not want any govern-
ment regulations to prevent women from having late-term abortions
or partial-birth abortions. Anything that diminished the autonomy
of every girl or woman, they believed, was an unacceptable example
of patriarchal control over women.24
Similarly, they insisted that the choice between giving birth and
having an abortion is about a “woman’s right to choose.” The father
had no corresponding right. He had no legal say whatsoever, in other
words, even though the birth of a child would affect him both legally
and financially for many years or even for decades – a problem that
sperm donors, too, have encountered.25
From this point of view, the conception, birth, and rearing of chil-
dren were strictly women’s business. And that was more than an
opinion; it had become the law. Fathers no longer had any say at all
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concerning the ultimate fate of their children. (They had hardly any
say even about the custody of their living children.) In some juris-
dictions, women no longer had to inform them of pregnancies. Once
women decided on their own to give birth, of course, they still
expected fathers to take financial responsibility for the resulting
children. And the law supported this expectation, which we discuss
in Legalizing Misandry.26 Society had come a long way since the
patriarchy of ancient Rome, which gave the pater familias absolute
control (at least in theory) over the ultimate fate of his children
even to the point of commanding the “exposure” of an unwanted
or unhealthy child. By the 1970s, an American mater familias had
almost the same authority. The main difference was that ancient
Roman society allowed fathers to kill infants and modern American
society allowed mothers to kill fetuses.
At issue here is not the moral legitimacy of abortion on demand
per se, however, but the exclusion of fathers per se not only from the
most fundamental of all decisions that any father could ever face but
also, implicitly, from any stake in reproduction and therefore in the
future of society. No talk about fathers helping out with diapers
could ever push those things very far into the background for long.
Since the legalization of abortion in the 1970s (and many court rul-
ings on custody in later decades), men have known that they have no
legal right to save the lives of their own children, let alone to gain
joint custody of their children or even to have any contact at all with
their children in many cases (when divorced mothers refuse to hon-
our the visitation rights of fathers). Was it any wonder that many
men – yes, there have always been men who wanted children and
wanted to care for them – began to distance themselves, at some level
of consciousness, not only from the possibility of fatherhood but also
from marriage itself? The message to men, beginning in the 1970s,
was clear: fatherhood was now not only irrelevant but also a poten-
tial liability.
The closely related Reproductive Revolution began ten or fifteen

years after the Sexual Revolution. Scientists were inventing innova-
tive technologies to solve the problems that infertility caused. These
technologies provoked heated public debates, but there was one
striking exception. Abortion had been around since ancient times, of
course, and had become legal in most Western countries by the 1970s.
But it had remained so controversial that politicians avoided the
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topic for fear of losing voters. Both advocates and opponents of new
reproductive technologies avoided it, too, for fear of drawing atten-
tion to the fact that abortion was part of the larger cultural system of
reproduction. Discussing abortion in connection with that larger cul-
tural system would have required consistency: using the same prin-
ciples for and against all reproductive technologies. Because all
reproductive technologies function partly as symbols within a single
cultural system, reproduction, it was highly artificial to raise ques-
tions about the legitimacy of all but one.
Not every reproductive technology was actually new in the 1980s
and 1990s. Surrogate motherhood, like abortion, had been around
since ancient times, though without the refinements of modern tech-
nology.27 Nor did donor insemination have to wait for the advent of
sperm banks and artificial insemination. Even contraception had
been around since ancient times, though not very effectively. Other
technologies, notably in vitro fertilization,28 really were new. And
still others, such as cloning (producing exact genetic replicas),29 male
gestation (implanting an embryo into a man’s abdomen), ex utero
technologies (using an artificial womb), and parthenogenesis (pro-
ducing embryos without fertilization)30 were by then on the drawing
boards.
With the striking exception of abortion,31 then, all of these tech-
nologies quickly provoked public debates that focused on reproduc-
tion in general – and not only on the reproductive problems of a few
infertile couples. And these debates led, in turn, to government stud-
ies, political lobbying, law reform, journalistic crusades, talk shows,
and even, as we say in Sanctifying Misandry, to religious or quasi-
religious movements that focused on the “divine” feminine.32 Debates
occurred not only in medical circles, then, but also in political and
ideological circles.
Moreover, public debates focused exclusively on the implications
of new reproductive technologies for women (not only mothers) and
also children. No one asked what these technologies might mean for
men (not only fathers). Egalitarian feminists had long wanted repro-
ductive choices for women. Without that, after all, how could women
plan for careers outside the home? Reliable contraception and legal-
ized abortion on demand had given choices to women.33 They pre-
ferred not to risk more acrimonious debates, therefore, over the latter.
Ideological feminists, however, had long demanded reproductive
autonomy for women. By that, they meant complete freedom from
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men and therefore complete reproductive control. In the 1980s and

1990s, ideological activists34 rejected technologies that posed poten-
tial threats to the health of women,35 the reproductive power of
women,36 or the collective identity of women.37 These feminists were
highly critical of what they understood as experimentation on wom-
en’s bodies. They worried that (male) physicians and (male) scientists
would control reproduction, thus reducing the “autonomy” and even
undermining the identity of women. These new reproductive tech-
nologies included not only in vitro fertilization but also sex selection,
artificial insemination, and surrogacy along with a few even more
radical ones that we have already mentioned.
At least partly because of political expediency, this debate ignored
the fact that all humans have (or should have) a collective interest in
human reproduction. In fact, the underlying questions that they
raised – about what it means to be a man or woman, to be part of a
family, to be part of society, to be a moral agent, and to give or take
life – are of universal concern. Even though no one asked those
questions at the height of public concern over new reproductive
technologies, we suggest, the fact remains that reproduction is not a
matter of personal concern only to infertile couples or even a matter
of collective concern only to women (let alone children). It is of cru-
cial importance to everyone, because everyone has a stake in the
future of society. Those who do not believe that they have any stake
in the future of society, after all, are likely to abandon or even attack
it. And men, we suggest, began during the 1980s and 1990s to feel
diminishing stakes in the future of society.
At first, ideological feminists insisted that the rights of “biological
mothers” should trump those of both “social mothers” and “biologi-
cal fathers” when interests collided. This legal hierarchy supported
their claim to motherhood (in the sense of genetic continuity and
“nurturing”) as the essence of femaleness. Women should take con-
trol over their own reproductive abilities by banning technologies
that would give men at least some control over their own interests in
reproduction. These feminists wanted not partial control but com-
plete control, or as complete as possible given the current need for
semen. But some of these technologies provided women with an ideal
opportunity to end all but the most rudimentary participation of men
in reproduction. Technology was fine in connection with abortion,
ideological feminists argued, because that gave women reproductive
autonomy. But it was definitely not fine, they claimed, in connection
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with surrogacy, which gave men (whose wives were infertile) the
opportunity to make reproductive choices. Acrimonious debates
made the public aware that some new reproductive technologies pre-
sented women with practical problems.38
Those who adopted this point of view organized as the Feminist
International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic
Engineering (FINRRAGE),39 which was most active during the 1980s
and 1990s but continues to this day. Its members met regularly to
discuss legal and scientific developments, set up task forces and
lobby among legislators for legal and political changes.40 Canadian
members, for instance, were among those who instigated a Royal
Commission on New Reproductive Technologies in 1989.41 Their
immediate goal was a moratorium on the use and even the study of
technologies such as in vitro and surrogacy. In addition, members
wrote books and articles, monitored scientific journals and pro-
duced a journal of their own: Issues in Reproductive and Genetic
Engineering.42
In The Mother Machine,43 published in 1985, Gena Corea relied
heavily on the conspiracy theory of history.44 She claimed that new
reproductive technologies represented nothing less than new ways of
asserting patriarchal control over reproduction and thus over wom-
en’s bodies (but ignored the fact that governments have controlled
men’s bodies in other ways). Referring to “subversive sperm,” “man-
made ovulation,” “doctor-induced infertility,” and so on, she warned
of “gynecide” through sex-selection (without referring to the “andro-
cide,” of course, that many societies have imposed at a later stage of
the life cycle in the form of conscription for military service).
Although technology would at first turn women into breeding
machines, she argued in connection with “the patriarchal urge to
self-generate,” technologies such as the artificial womb and cloning
would ultimately make these female breeding machines obsolete and
remove reproduction entirely from the control of women.
From this perspective, new reproductive technologies were urgent
and compelling political problems for all women, not merely for
those who happened to be infertile and certainly not only for women
who happened to live in the industrialized world. Here are some
clauses in the manifesto that F I NR R A G E issued:
We condemn the use of women from exploited countries and

poor women by men and international conglomerates in the
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interests of global capital and patriarchy. We condemn men and

their institutions that inflict infertility on women by violence,
forced sterilization, medical maltreatment, and industrial pollu-
tion and repeat the damage through violent repair technologies.
We support the exclusive rights of all women to decide whether
or not to bear children, without coercion from any man, medical
practitioner, government, or religion.45
FIN R R A GE abandoned even the rhetoric of equality, in short, and

replaced it with that of autonomy.46 Members and supporters fought
for the reproductive autonomy of women – that is, for exclusive con-
trol by women of human reproduction. Underlying this rhetoric was
the notion that women could be, and should be, completely indepen-
dent of men. During the 1980s and 1990s, F I N R R A G E favoured
technologies (such as contraception, abortion, and artificial insemi-
nation) that gave reproductive power to women but opposed those
(such as sex selection, surrogacy, and in vitro fertilization) that might
have required some negotiation with men for control or, even worse,
allowed men at least some measure of their own control. Reproduc-
tion, they believed, was women’s chief bargaining chip in the bid for
power – as long, that is, as men had to rely on women for reproduc-
tion. An artificial womb, they understood, could change that.
Because even implicit separatism is not a particularly attractive
position – most women did not want to get rid of, say, their sons –
ideological feminists adopted arguments that led implacably in that
direction but without sounding obviously unreasonable. They argued
that scientists were experimenting in their labs on women’s bodies
by using in vitro techniques to reverse the effects of infertility, for
instance, or that rich but infertile couples were exploiting surrogate
mothers as “rented wombs,” thus dehumanizing women in general
and poor women in particular.
As we say, though, F I NR R A GE maintained a double standard on
reproductive technologies. When it came to technologies that dehu-
manized men or undermined fatherhood, after all, they were either
silent or encouraging. They saw no problem with artificial insemina-
tion, for instance, which allows a single woman to become a mother
by relying on a sperm donor. Every donor amounts to nothing more
than the proverbial “teaspoonful of sperm,” which dehumanizes, or
“objectifies” him. In other words, artificial insemination reduces
fatherhood to a purely mechanical operation and gives total control
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over reproduction to women – including single women and lesbian

couples, who believed that they had a “right” to children.
Andrea Dworkin and her followers argued that surrogate mothers
were the new prostitutes. (In one of her novels, Margaret Atwood
called them the “handmaids” of patriarchy.)47 Therefore, (male) sci-
entists or physicians who encouraged women to use this technology
were the new pimps. Surrogacy allowed men (or rich women) to hire
poor women as breeders. It was one more way for men to control the
reproductive process, they believed, and therefore women’s bodies.
Not everyone agreed.
In the conceptual combination of the surrogate mother, the pros-

titute and the supposed innate male longing for power and death,
a feminist paranoia about men is voiced. A moral panic is created
and spread. Whereas in the beginning of this century, the meta-
phor of the prostitute was a way of delineating decent heterosex-
ual behavior … [it is now used] to create an overall feminist
identity that denounces heterosexuality itself …
In this process, the definition of oppression itself is becoming
more and more shadowy. By denying the existence of any free
will or the legitimacy of passions … the question of what is being
oppressed in women’s oppression can only be answered by refer-
ring to a hypothetical Woman or Femaleness. Nurturance, natu-
ralness and love are assuming the status of oppressed entities:
the problem seems to be that patriarchy denies us our femininity.
This is a striking point when we remember that in the first stage
of feminism it was that same patriarchy that imposed femininity
upon us. In this way, surrogacy is the “ideal” issue for stating
both the legitimacy and the “truth” of [ideological] feminism.
Natural motherhood and natural procreation can become the
real values of feminism, and surrogacy is the ideal negative mir-
ror image. The contradiction … that women are supposed to be
socialized as women while men are born as men, is increasingly
solved by positing an inborn femininity as well. Feminism is
no longer that vivid and colorful process of changing gender;
instead, it becomes a struggle of life and death between fixed
males and females.48
It would be a serious mistake to assume that this hostility to new

reproductive technologies (as distinct from at least one ancient
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technology) came from only a few radicals on the supposedly lunatic

fringe of feminism. Remember Mary Beth Whitehead? She was the
surrogate mother who made headlines in 1988 for demanding cus-
tody of the child that William and Elizabeth Stern had hired her to
gestate. Eventually, the court awarded “Baby M” to the Sterns and
allowed visiting rights to Whitehead. Many people understood the
need for genetic ties with their children or parents, but the Baby M
case revealed a double standard. Women who insisted on the primacy
of genetic ties (as did Whitehead, the surrogate mother) were praised
as good mothers for that very reason; men who did so (as did William
Stern, the genetic father) were denounced as idiosyncratic or even
selfish fathers. When this case became a cause célèbre, Newsweek49
featured on its cover both the surrogate mother (Whitehead) and the
adoptive mother (Elizabeth Stern) but not the genetic father (William
Stern). He, apparently, was insignificant. And the implicit message to
boys and men was that fatherhood is insignificant. Why, then, should
they stick around to care for their families?
Of particular interest here is the fact that members of F I N R R A G E
worried explicitly about the possibility that men would develop
ex utero technologies.50 These posed obvious symbolic threats
to women. The artificial womb, even then on the drawing boards,
would undermine the collective identity of women. And sex selec-
tion, they claimed, would favour boys and thus lead to “femicide” or
a “holocaust of women.” Michelle Stanworth did not flinch from
drawing what she considered the logical conclusion of using (high)
technology in reproduction: “Whether or not women are eliminated
or merely reduced to the level of ‘reproductive prostitutes,’ the object
and the effect of the emergent technologies is to deconstruct mother-
hood and to destroy the claim to reproduction that is the foundation
of women’s identity.”51 And yet no one acknowledged that some
new reproductive technologies could just as easily undermine the
collective identity of men, who have always faced a symbolic prob-
lem: the physiological asymmetry that allows women but not men
to give birth. Inherent in the genetic code that governs maleness,
after all, is this anatomical lack. Inherent in the various cultural sys-
tems that govern masculinity, therefore, is some cultural compensa-
tion that turns the negative into a positive. Either an artificial womb
or male gestation could do so by allowing men to participate more
fully in reproduction, but parthenogenesis might lead to the elimina-
tion of men.
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Massive social changes, notably the high rate of divorce, accompa-

nied those debates over new and old reproductive technologies. We
turn now to the cultural context and the cultural fallout from these
technological revolutions: debates over (a) motherhood, especially
single motherhood; (b) fatherhood, including single fatherhood; and
(c) either dual motherhood or dual fatherhood.
By the late 1960s, no-fault divorce had become available in many

Western countries.52 To no one’s surprise, the divorce rate skyrock-
eted. Earlier, most people assumed that divorce would damage chil-
dren. Even unhappily married people sometimes refrained from
divorce “for the sake of the children.” But then the reaction set in.
Many people assumed that children would be better off after a divorce,
or at least not worse off, than they would have been in unhappy
homes. It was a matter of intense debate even among the experts.
Everyone could agree that children might be more damaged by the
constant bickering of unhappily married parents than they would by
living with one parent or the other. But some people realized out that
this was not the only alternative. Another was for both parents to
conduct themselves responsibly despite their personal unhappiness.
Why was this possibility so seldom advocated or even considered by
social scientists (let alone political leaders and group activists)? The
reason was very simple. Society no longer valued self-discipline, let
alone self-denial. This expressed a sharp break with American tradi-
tion. Early Americans valued the “pursuit of happiness” highly
enough to enshrine it in the Constitution. In addition, though, they
valued self-discipline. Somehow, the two were supposed to balance
each other.
Feminists disagreed among themselves about motherhood, let alone
single motherhood. During the 1960s and 1970s, egalitarian femi-
nists tried to ignore motherhood or at least stay-at-home motherhood
and did not yet foresee the problem of single motherhood. Betty
Friedan53 implied that mothers who did not have careers beyond the
home were either stupid or oppressed. To bring about change in the
division of labour – in order to legitimate mothers who worked out-
side the home – egalitarian feminists distinguished between the cul-
tural institutionalization of motherhood (which restricted women to
the private realm) and the genetically programmed ability of women
to gestate and lactate (which many women might legitimately disre-
gard in order to have more interesting or more lucrative careers).54
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Early egalitarian feminists tended to downplay motherhood on the

personal level, in short, for the purpose of attaining economic inde-
pendence on both the personal and collective levels. By the 1980s,
however, feminists such as Sylvia Hewlett were ready to challenge that
approach.55 Hewlett argued that European feminists had found a
more effective strategy than American feminists. By not conflating
equality with sameness, they allowed women to be women. By that,
she meant mothers with access to affordable day care.
Ideological feminists went much further than their egalitarian
counterparts. After all, the ability to become mothers is innately
female. Even though not all women choose to become mothers,
therefore, that remains a defining feature of womanhood and there-
fore of collective identity and collective power for women. Conse-
quently, they believed, any challenge to maternal supremacy would
amount to an attack on women. Ideological feminists began to
emphasize motherhood not for practical reasons but for political
ones. And these relied, explicitly or implicitly, on the notion that
women, by virtue of their maternal instinct, are innately superior to
men. Paeans to motherhood soon became de rigueur among academ-
ics and politicians. These had always been de rigueur in popular cul-
ture, of course, despite a brief period during the 1950s, when they
co-existed with occasional paeans to fatherhood as well.
The glory of motherhood notwithstanding, according to early
ideological feminists, peril lurks everywhere for mothers. Among
the pioneering efforts to sound the alarm were those of Shulamith
Firestone,56 Kate Millett,57 and Germaine Greer.58 They argued that
the link between women and reproduction enslaved women. If so,
then women would have to break the link in order to liberate them-
selves. In The Politics of Reproduction,59 therefore, Mary O’Brien
argued that women’s reproductive labour is creative, not mechani-
cal or pathological (as men, presumably, had defined it). It is there-
fore an advantage, not a disadvantage, in the contest for value
against men’s merely productive labour. In fact, O’Brien said that
women could benefit from the “alienation” of men from reproduc-
tion. She referred to the “potency principle” by which men, margin-
alized in the private realm of reproduction and uncertain of paternity
in any case, created the public realm, in which to find compensatory
control or power.
Juliette Zipper and Selma Sevenhuijsen noted that “in the women’s
peace movement and in the eco-feminist movement, women speak in
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the name of motherhood, which is supposed to give a special wish

and capacity for protecting life and nature, which are said to be
threatened by patriarchal and/or male principles. In the wake of
these activities, the connection between Woman-Mother and Nature
is restored.”60 In fact, this is the theoretical paradigm that domi-
nated feminist discussions of sexuality in general and reproduction
in particular. “Sexual violence is seen as the paradigm of women’s
oppression, in terms that equate sexuality, heterosexuality and sex-
ual violence … Women’s oppression is defined as the appropriation
of women’s bodies by men and male principles. The fact that many
women consent to or even enjoy sexual relationships with men is
interpreted as a proof that male ideology defines the female.”61
Andrea Dworkin had already argued62 that motherhood had be-
come a branch of (female) prostitution. (In her acknowledgments
to Right-Wing Women, Dworkin, an icon of ideological feminism,
thanked Gloria Steinem, an icon of egalitarian feminism, for suggest-
ing the expansion of an earlier essay and insisting on its importance.)
Just as men had exploited and discarded women at will, she claimed,
they were now doing the same thing to parts of women – that is, their
eggs. By becoming whole people through feminism, she said, women
threaten the continuity of male supremacy in a patriarchal system.
The “brothel model” of biological reproduction worked for men, she
added, because, it allowed them to keep thinking of women – not
only prostitutes but also wives and lovers – as useful objects rather
than as whole people. For Dworkin, ideologically tied to both essen-
tialism and dualism, this evil was no historical aberration. On the
contrary, it was the essence of maleness just as the opposite was the
essence of femaleness.
From the beginning of second-wave feminism, in short, mother-
hood had been a bone of contention. Some feminists devalued moth-
erhood. It was the only remaining difference between women and
men. It was an obstacle on the road toward sexual equality, they
found, because they defined equality as sameness. This was certainly
very inconvenient for women who wanted to leave the home for
more exciting careers. But other feminists glorified motherhood. It
was indeed the only remaining significant difference between women
and men, they argued, and therefore the only focus of identity for
women (often adding or at least implying that motherhood was the
source and primary expression of women’s superiority to men).
Motherhood was either a curse or a blessing for women, in other
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words, depending not only on personal experience but also on

whichever point of view feminists found politically expedient.
The debate over motherhood quickly spilled over into a debate
over single motherhood. One unforeseen result of the divorce cul-
ture was a rise in the number of single parents, usually single moth-
ers, sometimes by default but very often by design. What Barbara
Dafoe called the “divorce culture” established a dramatically new
context for the debate over parenthood, one that opened up for
debate not only the custody of children after divorce but also single
parenthood63 in general and single parenthood by choice in particu-
lar. Because courts routinely granted custody of children to their
divorced mothers, moreover, the rate of single motherhood increased
dramatically. This meant that more and more politicians sought the
votes of single mothers. And this in turn meant that more and more
legislators sought ways of using the law to help them, especially by
extracting excessive amounts of money from their former husbands.
Meanwhile, the increasing focus on single mothers64 was turning
them from hapless victims or into fighting heroes. Single mothers
appeared on one talk show after another to tell the world that they
had beaten the odds, earned college degrees at night, took three or
four jobs to support their children, and so on.
Earlier, almost everyone had assumed that single parenthood was
sometimes a necessary evil. Even single parents agreed. After all, it
was the result of unwanted pregnancy, divorce, abandonment, or
death. It involved considerable hardship. Single mothers – most single
parents were mothers – deserved compassion or at least pity. But that
point of view began to change. In the eyes of many Americans, by the
1990s, divorced and other single mothers (with the possible excep-
tion of widows) were not only iconic victims of men but also iconic
heroes of autonomy for women. This explains at least one well-
known “teaching moment,” the public debate over Marcia Clark.
A divorced mother, Clark was also chief prosecutor at the notori-
ously controversial murder trial of O.J. Simpson. During the trial,
Clark demanded more money from her ex-husband despite her own
high-status and well-paying job. Every journalist and talk-show host
in the country began discussing the pros and cons of single mothers.
According to Lyn Cockburn, for example, Americans needed to
stop belittling women who create, maintain and run families.

Instead, we need to celebrate, support and honor their abilities,
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their creativity, their innovations and certainly the love they give
their children. Women are capable, skilful, creative, powerful
people. They must be validated if they choose to participate in a
family with a man and equally legitimated if they choose another
model. Above all, women who create and maintain families must
never be made to feel they are somehow inferior because they do
not have husbands.65
Cockburn added that “women lose a lot of their power when the
validity of the family is based on whether or not it contains a man.”66
She failed to note, however, that the “validity” of a family depends
also – and usually more heavily – on whether or not it contains a
woman. After all, society had traditionally assigned women the task
of child care. For political purposes, therefore, single mothers were
ideal as exemplary figures. Some had thrown out their abusive hus-
bands. Others had never married their abusive boyfriends. All had
illustrated the basic feminist principle: that women do not need men
(even though some women need help from the welfare state67 and
therefore from at least some male legislators).
Single motherhood by default was turning into single motherhood
by choice.68 At first, most people – including most but by no means
all feminists – agreed that families were important social units.69
They did not want to abolish the family and redistribute its func-
tions to other institutions. Even Israeli kibbutzim retained family
units, no matter how subordinate these might have been in the com-
munal atmosphere; families might eat one meal a day, for example,
in privacy.
More and more people began to accept the legitimacy of “alterna-
tive families.” At issue for these people was merely which type of
family to foster. Some feminists, in particular, began to promote fam-
ilies that were headed by single mothers (and eventually by female
couples). Several assumptions underlay the argument for “alternative
families.” Some assumed that mothers, at least those who held down
jobs outside the home, could afford not to marry. Others assumed
that divorce affects children only temporarily and actually “enriches”
their experience in the long run. All agreed, though, that mothers can
do everything that fathers can do.
At the same time, many Americans were beginning to identify
“progress” with “diversity.” Just as the nation consisted of diverse
ethnic and religious groups, all of which had contributed to its vitality,
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it consisted also of diverse family forms. The problem was not alter-
native families, advocates claimed, but the stigma that had long been
associated with “broken” families. In Going Solo,70 a characteristic
product of the 1980s, Jean Renvoize argued that single-mother fami-
lies were better (or at least no worse) for children than other types of
family. But others argued that just because families with both moth-
ers and fathers were sometimes inadequate did not mean that fami-
lies with only one parent (or, eventually, two parents of only one sex)
were always adequate. Must we exchange one set of problems, they
asked, for another?
By the mid-1980s, moreover, few Americans still believed even that
single mothers by choice were harming their children by denying
them fathers. Renvoize argued71 that gender itself would disappear
with so many mothers at work outside the home, because their chil-
dren would now be statistically normal. This argument revealed the
assumption that women could expand their collective identity to
include all male functions (even though men could hardly include
one important female function). At the heart of her argument was
a definition of human identity that relied on utilitarianism. She saw
human identity from the perspective of function alone. Mothers
could do everything that fathers could do. Ergo, fathers were unnec-
essary in the family unit. Even mothers were unnecessary in the fam-
ily unit, presumably, after giving birth and nursing infants. She did
not draw the logical conclusion by arguing that fathers could do
everything that mothers could do aside from gestation and lacta-
tion.72 Her argument relied not on equality between men and
women but on autonomy for women. Ultimately, it rested on a pro-
foundly sexist foundation: turning the old gender hierarchy on its
head by defining men according to the standard of women. The
presence of men (in the family or even in society at large) was toler-
able, for her, only to the extent that they were willing to function
according to the expectations of women.
This could explain what viewers should have seen – but obviously
did not – as an odd omission on one episode of Beverly Hills 90210.73
This was an immensely successful television series about wealthy
high-school students, some of whom had “dysfunctional” or “alter-
native” families. In one episode, Steve goes to Albuquerque to look
for his “biological mother.” He actually succeeds in finding out, from
her father, that she is dead. But what about her husband, Steve’s “bio-
logical father”? He, too, is dead. Still, the idea of searching for him
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never even occurs either to Steve or to his grandfather. In other words,

it never occurred to the author of this episode and, presumably, to
viewers. Why were so many people either unable or unwilling to ask
what effect the lack of fathers might have on children? To answer
that question, we must remember that single mothers by choice fell
into several categories.
In one category were women who accepted either marriage or an
enduring “relationship” as the ideal setting for children but lacked
acceptable candidates for the job of Mr Right. Listening to the tick-
ing of their “biological clocks” made them feel desperate. They felt an
urge to have children. In addition, however, society made them feel
entitled to children. They wanted children, period, with or without
the fathers of those children.
In a second category were professional women in their thirties or
forties. After years of not wanting children so that they could get
graduate degrees and begin careers, they had changed their minds.
They wanted now to be professionals but also to be mothers. In short,
they wanted to “have it all.” What made other women accuse them of
selfishness – and some did – was not merely wanting to have it all but
expecting to have it all at the expense of their own children. The urge
for personal gratification trumped the need of children for fathers, in
other words, and thus demonstrated the emergence of a hedonistic
society – which is to say, one that placed supreme value not merely
on personal pleasure but on personal gratification of any kind –
sexual, emotional, intellectual, professional, financial, material, or
whatever – as an end in itself. These women rejected the idea of
meeting men at bars and “hooking up” with unreliable ones, let
alone paying for dating services. They wanted children immediately.
If they could not afford the time to stay home with their children,
they could afford nonetheless to hire people who could. By this time,
as we have already said, not many people retained any clear sense of
why or even whether children might need fathers. The solution was
to replace men with sperm. Many women either went to sperm banks
in person to select reliable genes (or, more recently, used the Internet
to order sperm). And if they met attractive men later on, well, those
men would be luxuries.
In a third category were ideological feminists. They denied not
only the need of women for men but also the need of children for
fathers. Like some women in the other categories, moreover, they
insisted that women should “have it all” and therefore rejected the
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very idea that women had to make choices (as if men did not have to
choose between actively building their careers and actively partici-
pating in family life). From this ideological point of view, single
motherhood by choice was not selfish at all. On the contrary, they
believed, it was a necessary stage in the advancement of women and
thus made children the means to an end. Otherwise, they argued,
women would never gain reproductive autonomy and therefore eco-
nomic autonomy as well.
In a fourth category were teenagers who had given birth to chil-
dren, sometimes without even telling the fathers, in order to provide
them with what no one else provided: unconditional love. Helping
them financially, of course, were their parents and, ultimately, the
welfare state.
Whatever their category, many women decided to bypass men
altogether. As Katherine Gilday showed in a documentary film called
Women and Men Unglued,74 moreover, even those who still wanted
enduring “relationships” were increasingly pessimistic. Because nei-
ther sex now needed the other, according to cinematic talking heads,
both sexes would have to rely on transient motivations such as sen-
timent and sensuality. Many of Gilday’s informants – these were
mainly young, white, urban, educated, and professional women,
along with a few men – said that they had actually come to envy their
married parents or grandparents. Maybe this explains the (continu-
ing) fashion for extravagant weddings, the wedding industry that
arose to provide these extravaganzas and the “reality” shows such
as The Bachelor75 and The Bachelorette76 that arose to glamorize
archaic notions of courtship in addition to the weddings. After sev-
eral weeks of competing for a wife in one case and a husband in the
other, each series concluded (and still concludes) with a highly ritual-
istic77 proposal of marriage and a “fairy-tale” (read: outrageously
ostentatious) wedding. Like jousting tournaments long after the
Middle Ages (when jousting was serious business), these weddings
had become vestigial artifacts: symbols of an ideal that most people
can no longer expect to attain except in their daydreams.78
Sure, millions of children grew up in “alternative” or “non-
traditional” families – the “politically correct” euphemisms for fami-
lies that lacked parents of one sex or the other, usually the male parent
– and millions of single parents struggled in adverse conditions. That
made them worthy of compassion, it is true, but many people thought
that it made them worthy also of adulation. This is what Americans
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encountered on countless talk shows during the 1980s and 1990s.

The public began to focus not so much on single motherhood but on
single motherhood by choice.
Think of the furore that Vice-President Dan Quayle provoked in
1992 with his comments on one episode of Murphy Brown. The
title character decides to have a child without marrying the father.
According to Quayle, Murphy had “mocked the importance of
fatherhood.” And many Americans agreed with him, including many
liberal Americans who had hitherto considered him a right-wing
idiot. But this controversy did not appear out of nowhere. It had a
history. Most of that history involved feminism, as we say, both egali-
tarian forms and ideological ones. Feminists of all kinds agreed that
“the personal is political.” Their point was that personal, or private,
aspects of life are actually of great political importance. Or, to put it
another way, feminists could debate these aspects of personal or even
private life with very effective political results. And what could be
more personal, and now political, than giving birth? In 1992, Marga-
ret Carlson pointed out that there was
nothing new about having babies without getting married. What’s

new is society’s attitude, which has gone from punishing it, to
tolerating it, to celebrating it. Ah, Murphy, she is too darn busy
and successful to have a baby the old-fashioned way, and any-
how, men are jerks. With her high income, Brown seems a poor
vehicle for examining the problem of children born without
fathers. Yet she has more in common with the inner-city teenager
than we might think. The 14-year old gets pregnant as a way to
give her life meaning. Murphy Brown and fortyish women like
her want a tiny version of their nearly perfect selves to give their
lives more meaning.79
Among other things, continued Carlson,
being a Murphy [Brown type of] Mom means having postponed

childbirth until one’s salary has reached the upper brackets and
one has sufficient disposable income to employ a full-time mural-
ist and buy enough Scandinavian furniture to induce existential
dread. But even at the upper end, where the career track is fast
and the dress code is for success, there can come the nagging
feeling that this might not be all there is. By then, of course, the
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flexibility to tolerate a big lug leaving his dirty socks on the floor
and the luxury of having time to find one are both in short sup-
ply. It takes a tiny leap for those accustomed to satisfying every
whim to see a baby as one more choice.80
Carlson concludes that it is one way to turn a life-style into a life in

nine months.
Actually, this problem was due partly to the glorification of indi-
vidualism (but in a self-centred way that the founders of America
would have rejected) and to the legitimation of self-indulgence (a
reaction against self-denial, which many had come to see as “puri-
tanical” and “repressive” and “patriarchal”). Marilyn French argued
that self-discipline and even self-sacrifice were “patriarchal” values
that led directly to oppression.81 An undercurrent of Romanticism,
moreover, glorified emotion itself. This gave rise to the talk shows,
the self-help or therapeutic movement, the “recovery community,”
and “New Age” religions (or new versions of older religions) that
relied on the ultimate goal of “self-realization” or simply “growth.”
In this climate, not surprisingly, many adults found it expedient to
assert that if they themselves were better off emotionally, their chil-
dren would be as well. And it certainly sounded logical; emotional
problems really can be devastating to children (although they are not
necessarily so).
But the problem was the result also of precisely the opposite: a
resurgence of collectivism (pertaining not to society as a whole,
however, but to groups within it) and the notion of “identity poli-
tics.” It was not only commercially unwise to risk hurting the feelings
of women or mothers but also politically unwise. Few people in the
entertainment industry worried about purveying offensive images
of men or fathers, though, because they had not (and still have not)
organized themselves as a powerful lobby wielding overt or covert
power over legislators.
Given that many children of divorced parents were not, in fact, far-
ing well and were suffering from a long list of social problems,82 at
least some attempt to reappraise what had become conventional wis-
dom in huge sectors of the population was clearly in order. By that
time, though, millions of people already had vested interests in the
new paradigm; rethinking their decisions would mean the possibility
of having to acknowledge serious mistakes. Very few were ready to
go into reverse, and this applied to society as a whole no less than to
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groups or individuals. As Whitehead put it, this cultural shift explained

what would otherwise be inexplicable: failure to see the rise in family
disruption as a severe and troubling national problem. Moreover,
it explains why there was virtually no widespread public sentiment
for re-stigmatizing either of these classically disruptive behaviours
(divorce and single motherhood by choice) and no sense – no public
consensus – that they could or should be avoided in the future. On
the contrary, the prevailing opinion was that we should accept the
changes in family structure as inevitable and devise new forms of
public and private support for single-parent families.83
Way back in the mid-1960s, people had attacked Daniel Patrick
Moynihan as a racist for questioning the effect of single-parenthood
on black children. Within a few years, though, even that topic could
no longer be ignored. Those who had the audacity to speak out still
knew that there would be a political price to pay. It became “politi-
cally correct” to insist that families, no matter how transient and
fragmented, were better than ever before. For one thing, saying any-
thing else would have appeared to be a political assault on single
mothers and their children. How dare anyone attack women, espe-
cially those who were obviously doing the best that they could do
under difficult circumstances? Those who did attack “women” were
not only emotionally insensitive but also politically ruthless. Once
word was out, anyone who had the audacity to raise disturbing
questions about the consensus was shouted down as a “conserva-
tive” or “religious conservative” – which had come to mean someone
who exploited public nostalgia in order to turn back the clock and
put women back in their kitchens. Even when feminists acknowl-
edged the truth, however, they often ignored it. The fragmentation of
families, they argued, had become an enduring fact of life.
Consensus eluded society. Many people continued to reject the
standard arguments in favour of either “diversity” in general or
“alternative families” in particular. The public furore was partly
about political opportunism, in any case, not social science.84 Of
great concern to John Leo, for instance, were public perceptions of
single parenthood.
Any country serious about its future would move to confront

this unfolding disaster, but in fact the opposite is occurring. The
truth is that the elite in this country considers single parenthood
a non-issue. In effect, that elite has decided not to look very hard
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at how children pay the price for the growing emphasis on indi-
vidualism and personal fulfillment. We once exerted heavy pres-
sure on couples to marry and stay together to avoid forcing
children to pay this price. But now fulfillment is king, and the
upper middle class is rich enough to afford breakups and inten-
tionally planned single-parent homes … As a result, Christopher
Jencks writes in his book, Rethinking Social Policy, “elite support
for the two-parent norm has eroded.”85
The legitimation of single motherhood by choice created the need for

safe artificial insemination. In an article for the New York Times
Magazine, in 1995, Peggy Orenstein observed that artificial insemi-
nation by donor had become a profitable industry over the past half
century. By then, it was a carefully regulated industry.86
Not all women, however, made their choices so deliberately. Many
become pregnant outside of marriage for a variety of reasons. At
no point did Orenstein discuss another problem: the message sent to
boys and men, but also to girls and women, about the irrelevance of
fatherhood.
In Hollywood, wrote one observer in the 1990s, “most prospective
parents request a white baby girl.”87 By that time, many ordinary
women had come to assume easy access to sperm. In an article for
Elle, Lynn Snowden wrote nonchalantly about new developments in
the twenty or so California sperm banks.
Most of them are accredited by the American Association of

Tissue Banks … which sets standards for donor screening and
has begun to make accreditation inspections. California has been
widely publicized as home to a “genius” sperm bank, the pomp-
ously named Repository for Germinal Choice, but much more sig-
nificant are [sic] the concentration of female-friendly sperm banks
– self-proclaimed as “feminist” – that have set, in the last decade,
a more personalized standard … Even the most traditional sperm
banks in California now bow to consumer demand for more
detailed information about donors, such as whether they’re
vegetarian, left-handed, and what their favorite color is …88
Women could now “shop for sperm banks,” Snowden observed,

“in the way that they would shop for anything else.” One bank
offered sperm according to sex, for instance, and women who thought
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that this would be horrible simply looked for another bank. Still,
most were quite definite about the characteristics that their donors
would have to have. One said, “I don’t want him to be fat.” Another
insisted: “Jewish, no allergies.” According to Snowden, they all wor-
ried about “the jerk factor.”89
They rarely even mention “semen” or “sperm” when referring to

what they buy, sell, and store. As with most businesses, there’s a
certain vocabulary to be observed: The men who masturbate into
the little cups, the “donors,” are performing what is called “col-
lecting”; the little room where they do that is a “collecting area.”
The actual ejaculate is referred to as “product” or “a specimen.”
When you phone the California Cryobank in Los Angeles, for
instance – a big bank with a booming trade in mail-order sperm
– you get no verbal clue as to its business. “Please dial 1 for the
laboratory,” a recorded voice says. “Please dial 2 for shipping …”90
These euphemisms indicated that many customers found even the

thought of sperm, the “product” of male bodies, somehow dirty or
disgusting. Because the customer was always right, sperm banks
sanitized the procedure symbolically as well as medically. They made
it possible for women to completely ignore the fact that men were
(minimally) involved.
Sperm banks have everything to do with reproduction and noth-

ing to do with sex. Like high schools intent on keeping the sexes
apart [in the past], sperm banks often provide separate entrances
for men and women. That physical separation is enforced proce-
durally: donors sign away custody rights to any potential off-
spring, and recipients sign exemptions from claiming child
support from donors, should the recipient ever discover the
donor’s name.91
Those in charge, of course, were indeed aware of the men. The

“masturbatoriums” of one sperm bank, decorated with posters of
muscular men holding babies, had tables with copies of Hustler and
Playboy “for inspiration.” Those of a more ideologically oriented
“facility,” though, had posters of flowers by Georgia O’Keeffe, fertil-
ity symbols, and talismans. After all, women “could never support
pornography.” This was a legalistic approach, which ignored the fact
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that donors had to create their own erotic fantasies in order to func-
tion properly.
Artificial insemination, said advocates, had several advantages.
Children found it easier to accept themselves as the results of donated
sperm, some argued, than they would as the accidents of one night
stands or brief liaisons. Besides, they added, this medical procedure
was safer than having sexual intercourse in an age of rampant sexu-
ally transmitted diseases such as A I D S . Sperm banks used genetic
screening, moreover, to avoid hereditary diseases.
Somewhere between 75 per cent and 90 per cent of the custom-
ers, straight or gay, were unmarried. Although Snowden acknowl-
edged that “society seems immensely threatened by the spectre of a
woman who is not only financially able to support a child herself
but technologically and biologically able to conceive without even
having sex with a man, let alone a relationship,” she implied that
those who felt threatened (that is, men) were either stupid or neu-
rotic. Following the lead of her informants (including those with
vested interests), at any rate, she was willing to dismiss the topic
without taking it seriously.
“This is not a rejection of men,” insists Sherron Mills, a nurse

practitioner and executive director of the Pacific Women’s
Health Services. Mills is showing me her bank’s large barrel-
shaped tank that can house up to 5,000 vials of frozen sperm,
enough to propagate a small town. With her short graying hair
and comforting manner, she could pass for anyone’s aunt check-
ing to see if the cookies are done. She grabs what looks like an
oven mitt and lifts the tank lid, releasing a cloud of vapor from
the liquid nitrogen, and carefully pulls up a rack of labeled vials
encrusted with frost. “Men are very necessary to this process,”
Mills says.92
Sure they are, she added, in the way that silkworms are necessary to
the fashion industry. What did all this say about the attitudes of soci-
ety toward fathers? Reduced to triviality, it was a wonder that anyone
still took fatherhood seriously. And what did all this say about the
attitude of women, in particular, toward fathers? Apart from any-
thing else, it said that nothing took precedence over reproductive
autonomy for women.
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Sperm banks quickly became a major industry in the 1990s. They

paid donors between $50 and $100 for a vial of sperm, which cus-
tomers bought for between $150 and $600 plus shipping. But the
price sometimes went up for additional services.
Many sperm banks sell various kinds of information about

donors, ranging from short profiles (height, weight, race, educa-
tion, etc.) which are usually free, all the way up in some cases to
personal visits with the donor, which can run thousands of dol-
lars. You can pay for baby photos, detailed genetic/health infor-
mation, written essays, staff interviews, psychological profiles,
audio tapes and so on.93
For a price, one sperm bank provided customers with a link to photos
of two or three celebrities, whom “our staff has deemed each donor
most closely resembles.”94
Another sperm bank helped donor-conceived children to find their
siblings. For $50 a year, they could join the Donor Sibling Registry,
which Wendy Kaminer had founded in 2000. There, customers could
post the identification numbers of donors in the hope that other
“searchers” would see these and make contact.95 The children of
donors could try to locate their sperm-donor fathers and reconnect
with their half-siblings. These stories get applause.
A psychotherapist named Jane Mattes had founded Single Mothers
by Choice in 1981. Look at its more recent website, which shows
that nothing changed over thirty years aside from changing the lan-
guage from marriage to partnership and then back to marriage due
to the rise of gay marriage.
A single mother by choice is a woman who decided to have or

adopt a child, knowing she would be her child’s sole parent, at
least at the outset. Typically, we are career women in our thirties
and forties. The ticking of our biological clocks has made us face
the fact that we could no longer wait for marriage before starting
our families. Some of us went to a doctor for donor insemination
or adopted in the United States or abroad. Others accidentally
became pregnant and discovered we were thrilled.
Most of us would have preferred to bring a child into the
world with two loving parents, but although we have a lifetime
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to marry or find a partner, nature is not as generous in allotting

child-bearing years.
Single motherhood is ideally for the woman who feels she has
much to give a child and who has adequate emotional and finan-
cial resources to support herself and her child. Our membership
includes thinkers, tryers, and mothers.
More than half of our members are “thinkers” (as we call
women who are considering single motherhood) or “tryers”
(women trying to conceive or adopt), and our organization
provides a unique support network for women who are going
through these very stressful and important stages. We encourage
women in the thinking and trying processes to become members
of SMC .
We have members all over and chapters in most major metro-
politan areas including, among others, Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore,
Boston, Chicago, Dallas, DC /Virginia, Denver, Indianapolis,
Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Portland,
Raleigh / Durham, Rochester, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto,
Western Mass and more. Whether or not there is a chapter near
you, you will receive a list of members in your area and contact
information for them.96
This organization did not originate as a front for any ideological or

political movement (although it offers implicit support for some of
these). “In general,” visitors to the site learn, “our members feel that
it is preferable to raise a child with two loving parents. However, in
the absence of a good partnership, and with the rate of divorce as
high as it is, we feel that being raised by a caring and competent single
parent is definitely a viable option.”97
By the early twenty-first century, single motherhood by choice had
become much more than a “viable option.” It was de rigueur in some
circles,98 which meant that it would have been political suicide for
any politician to question its legitimacy for fear of causing single
mothers to lose self-esteem. The new ideal became prominent, as
usual, in Hollywood, where some of the most glamorous single
women were single mothers. In fact, glamour magazines featured
articles on them.99 Although not all chose to be single mothers, none
regretted being a single mother or worried about their children not
having fathers. Among them were Jodie Foster, Sheryl Crow, Mary
Louise Parker, Sandra Bullock, Mia Farrow, Teri Hatcher, Madonna,
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Michelle Pfeiffer, Rosie O’Donnell, Sharon Stone, Meg Ryan, Kate

Jackson, Dianne Wiest, Minnie Driver, and Linda Ronstadt. “Not
only are actresses adopting,” noted one Hollywood maven, “but a lot
of women in the executive ranks are also becoming single mothers.
Women feel secure enough today to raise a child alone. You don’t
need a husband. That’s creating an enormous comfort level.”100
Meanwhile, few people thought about fatherhood at all, let alone

single fatherhood. Among those who did were some feminists. Col-
lectively, feminists have always been ambivalent about fatherhood.
Since the 1960s, egalitarian feminists have supported fatherhood.
After all, doing so follows the inherent logic of sexual equality and
also encouraged men to share the burdens of family life. But many
of these feminists supported (and still support) a particular notion
of fatherhood. Fathers, they assumed (and still assume), are mothers
in drag or assistant mothers, thus deviating sharply from historical
notions of fatherhood. Among the most important advantages of
two-parent homes, from this point of view, is the fact that egalitarian
ones can divide up both household tasks and household expenses
between two interchangeable parents (at least after infancy).101
As for ideological feminists, they had (and still have) no interest in
fathers at all except as sperm donors, the main problems of mothers
and the archetypal “patriarchs” of an oppressive society. As we say in
Spreading Misandry,102 popular culture had already been trivializing
and even demonizing fathers for decades with impunity. For almost as
long, as we say in Legalizing Misandry,103 politicians and legislators
had found it expedient to crack down on “deadbeat dads” and claim
that fathers had many duties but no rights. Meanwhile, as we say in
Sanctifying Misandry,104 ideological feminists themselves had been
deifying women as maternal incarnations of a Great Goddess. By the
late 1990s, not surprisingly, many of them were attacking fathers
for organizing on the Internet to challenge what had become con
ventional wisdom in ideological (but influential) feminist circles.
According to ideological feminists, for instance, these fathers were not
interested in regaining access to their children but only in regaining
control over their wives or girlfriends. From an ideological point of
view, in short, men – even fathers – were motivated primarily or even
entirely by some atavistic need to control women.
One ideological strategy was to foster public hysteria over phys-
ically or sexually abusive men, especially fathers. Consider the
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national preoccupation with “recovered memories” of sexual moles-

tation (which we discuss elsewhere).105 That episode lasted approxi-
mately ten years and destroyed thousands of families. Its psychological
and cultural legacies, however, have remained. Many men felt uncom-
fortable about hugging their own children. Many endured false accu-
sations, with dire results, due to ex-wives seeking sole custody. For
that matter, many unrelated men – teachers, doctors, clergymen,
coaches, scout leaders – worried about having physical contact of
any kind with the children in their charge.
But the indifference or hostility of ideological feminists toward
fathers involved more than blazing headlines and lurid court cases.
Their secret weapon was postmodernism.106 This academic fashion
launched a crusade against the idea that objectivity in scholarship
was possible or even desirable and thus gave academic and political
respectability to the “deconstruction” of anything. If participatory
fatherhood were nothing more (and nothing less) than the toxic
artifact of a “patriarchal” society, if it were without any basis what-
soever in the human condition (whether you define that in terms of
evolution, physiology, psychology, existential conditions, or what-
ever), then why not get rid of these “social constructions” without
further ado and start over again from scratch?
In theory, of course, postmodernists should have deconstructed
both fatherhood and motherhood. But they seldom deconstructed
motherhood, in spite of their approach’s inherent logic, because
many of them actually believed in feminist ideology and therefore
granted it the privilege of immunity to deconstruction. Even though
early egalitarian feminists had tried to deconstruct motherhood in
order to liberate women for careers outside the home, more recent
ideological feminists refrained from doing so precisely because of
postmodernism’s inherent logic: one that relies on both essentialism
(the innate “connectedness” of femaleness) and dualism (the innate
“alienation” of maleness). Both postmodernists and their ideological
protégées can go after fatherhood without hesitation, in short, but
not motherhood.107
Many feminists, whether egalitarian or ideological, accepted any
theory that would let women “have it all.” These theories relied on
the state to replace fathers, because they assumed that fathers could
provide only two things apart from sperm: material resources and
physical protection, which the state could provide either as well as
or better than many fathers could on their own. Men who refused to
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be frozen out of family life, however, were waking up to the fact

that they would have to fight lengthy legal and political battles.108
And they would probably receive little help from national leaders.
President Obama often deplored the fact that many fathers aban-
doned their families but failed to explain precisely why families need
fathers (as distinct from mothers). His focus was on punitive mea-
sures, not incentives, in order to discourage fathers from abandon-
ing their purely financial responsibilities (which would otherwise
fall to the state).
Given public indifference to fathers (except in connection with the
prosecution or even persecution of “deadbeat dads”) and public
sympathy for mothers (even though that did not necessarily translate
into adequate funding for affordable day care), it was hardly surpris-
ing that many fathers ended up feeling envious, frustrated, confused,
discouraged, and sometimes angry. They wanted to be good fathers,
but their role models and teachers were women (some of whom
either consciously or subconsciously resented the intrusion of men
on their home turf). It seemed as if children were the business of
women, not men. This was the message, unwitting on the part of
egalitarian feminists and deliberate on the part of ideological femi-
nists, that society sent to boys and men through both popular culture
(notably television sitcoms and talk shows) and punitive legal mea-
sures (notably in connection with divorce and custody). Why, then,
should anyone have expected men to make heavy emotional invest-
ments in family life?
Even so, almost everyone agreed that men would actually enjoy
being hands-on fathers. This was (and is) surely true for most men
(who have regretted, sometimes angrily, that their own fathers had
devoted very little effort to family life, let alone fatherhood). Not self-
evident, though, was precisely what that could or should have meant.
Few stopped to ask precisely what, apart from an innate male handi-
cap – their inability to gestate and lactate – makes fathers distinct
from mothers but also necessary participants in family life. But the
obvious sexual asymmetry did not trouble egalitarian feminists.
Neither did some common claims of both social scientists and ideo-
logical feminists: that women are innately more “caring” than men;
that mothers are therefore innately better “parents” than fathers;
that children turn to their mothers, not their fathers for comfort; and
that, anyway, children prefer mothers to fathers. According to con-
ventional wisdom, not surprisingly, fathers were luxuries in the home
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at best and liabilities or even potential molesters at worst. This made

many fathers feel awkward or even out of place within the family.109
The newspapers and news shows said it all, though not always
directly or deliberately. When mothers made mistakes (such as
neglecting, abusing, or even killing their children), it was often
because they were either mentally ill or victims of violent men; when
fathers made the same mistakes, it was often because they were either
innately incompetent or simply evil.
With these crude notions about fatherhood in mind, consider the
words of Caren Weiner in a review of Junior.110 This movie is about
a man who becomes pregnant: “And watching this fluff on the small
screen just trivializes it [childbearing] further. In fact, the more view-
ers are egged on to laugh at [Arnold] Schwarzenegger’s condition, the
less funny women – who actually do suffer through these trials – are
likely to find it.”111 By that time, no one would have said that child-
bearing was a curse. On the contrary, some implied that, with all its
sacrificial “trials,” motherhood was virtually sacred. To undermine
it, therefore, would be to commit sacrilege (anything that defiles or
mocks the sacred). Only those who are cut off by nature from this
sacred domain of femaleness,112 men, would be stupid enough to find
anything trivial in motherhood.
Recently, the debate over single motherhood has shifted to a debate

over dual motherhood or dual fatherhood. By the latter two arrange-
ments, we refer to families with either two mothers or two fathers
(sometimes in the context of gay marriage.) This shift did not come
out of the blue, but it did require a major reversal of rhetoric.
Only a few years before the debate over gay marriage, the rhetoric
about family life had focused on single parenthood. Social scientists
and other academics had given their seal of approval to the idea that
children would thrive with only one parent, which led almost inevi-
tably to a steep increase in the number of children living with single
parents. As we say, politicians recognized that they had a heavy
investment in these single mothers. Once it became clear that many
of those children were in trouble, however, it was too late for politi-
cians to rethink their policies. Who would have been foolish enough
(let alone “insensitive” or even misogynistic) enough to consider the
possibility of going into reverse? The only solution, they reasoned,
was to give single mothers and their children all the help that they
needed. By this time, no one cared much about single fathers. But it
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was obvious to most people (and always had been) that two parents
(and now two incomes) made it much easier to bring up children
than it would have been otherwise. That led directly to the idea that
any two parents were better than only one. More and more people
began to think that there was nothing wrong with children having
either two mothers or two fathers – that is, having either no fathers
or no mothers.
At first, however, advocates for gay marriage had very little to say
about children. They accused their adversaries of “trotting out the
children,” in fact, as a diversionary strategy. The battle hinged pri-
marily on fairness and equality for gay adults.113 Children were
clearly bystanders in the debate.114 Eventually, advocates of gay mar-
riage noticed the flaw in their own strategy, pointing out that they
themselves had children in need of the rights and protections that
marriage would guarantee. The debate still focused on the rights of
gay adults, and advocates of gay marriage often tried to gloss over
potential problems for children, but it was now necessary to do some
homework. Advocates had to show at least some evidence that the
children of gay couples would be just as well off, or perhaps even
better off, than the children of straight couples. In short, children
were no longer out in the cold. They had at least some rights.115 At
this point, the case for gay marriage became more plausible to straight
people. It now relied on arguments that many straight people in our
society, whether secular or religious, found hard to oppose – and
rightly so in most, though not all, cases.
Close to the heart of any modern democracy is equality, so why
make an exception in this case? Advocates of gay marriage pointed
out cogently that gay couples did not yet have the same rights and
benefits as straight couples. The only question for many people was
how to attain those rights for gay couples and thus end the hypoc-
risy of inequality. At issue was what had become a pervasive ideal of
marriage, one that focused heavily on supplying needs that almost
everyone had come to assume in modern Western countries (although
some had been recognized much earlier and in many countries).
Notable among these were the need to give public expression to pri-
vate goals, to gain state approval for private matters, to attain respect-
ability for themselves both personally and collectively, to provide
stability for their children, and to acquire legal or economic bene-
fits such as the right to make medical decisions for incapacitated
partners and the right to coverage by the medical plans of partners
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(although contracts would solve the former and universal medical

coverage the latter problem).
Underlying the debate over gay families were three closely related
debates, aspects of which we have already discussed. One of these
was over “alternative families” in general. Advocates associated the
latter either with circumstances that required compassion (death,
divorce, or abandonment) or with choices that evoked admiration
(such as single parenthood by choice). They argued that a wide range
of family types can strengthen society (without explaining precisely
how). They drew support from popular culture (without mentioning
aspects of it that they despised), pointing out that sitcoms and talk
shows did not create alternative families but merely acknowledged
their existence. “More precisely, they have taken the raw material of
demography and fashioned it into a powerful fantasy of individual
renewal and rebirth.”116
Among those who advocated new forms of the family were some
who argued – and still do – that the historic form, which ideally
includes both mothers and fathers, really was worthy of hostility. In
Raising Boys without Men,117 for instance, Peggy Drexler attacked
people who favoured intact families for insidiously attacking single
mothers. This hullabaloo about boys and fathers, she said, was non-
sensical at best and misogynistic at worst. Boys, she added, auto-
matically grew up to become men. In short, they did not need fathers
(or, presumably, mothers). The message to boys and men, therefore,
was that there was no need for them, possibly no room for them, in
family life (except, presumably, for the money that fathers can pro-
vide either willingly or unwillingly). At stake in this debate over fam-
ily life was not merely the practical problem of getting fathers to help
out with housekeeping chores. Nor was it merely the psychological
problem of getting fathers to be more emotionally involved with chil-
dren. At stake in addition was the symbolic problem of retaining
fatherhood as a source of collective identity for men.
Another underlying debate was over society itself. Here, it is
enough merely to note that egalitarian feminists did not want to
destroy the historic family form. They merely argued that adding
newer ones that would create “diversity” and therefore encourage
“pluralism” (without showing precisely why those were good things
or how either was necessarily different from fragmentation).118 As
egalitarians, they were content to see the historic pattern coexist
with newer ones. Ideological feminists and some of their gay allies,
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however, were not open to every “alternative family” and therefore

did not truly endorse “diversity” (which had its limits from their
point of view) let alone “pluralism” (which supposedly fosters many
competing ideas of truth). They identified the historic family not
only with “misogyny,” “patriarchy,” and “phallocentrism” but also
with “heteronormativity” and “heterosexism.”119 We have already
discussed those who considered marriage itself nothing more than a
form of “legalized prostitution” or even “slavery” for women. For
them, egalitarian marriage was an illusion. They routinely satirized
or attacked this one type of family as the ultimate source of all social
pathologies or “dysfunctions” and therefore demanded its decon-
struction or even destruction. As the keystone of an oppressive soci-
ety for women and sexual minorities, at any rate, marriage – the old
model of marriage – would have to disappear before anyone could
build a new and better social order.
Yet another underlying debate was over reproductive technology.
At first, most feminists had insisted that birth mothers – they
assumed that these were also genetic mothers – should take legal
precedence over all other parents in cases that involved reproductive
technologies. In view of increasing public acceptance of gay mar-
riage, though, many began to insist that the rights of “gestational
mothers” or “social mothers” should trump those of genetic moth-
ers. Why the turnaround?
One reason was very simple: political expediency. Having spent
thirty years trying to deconstruct the traditional family as nothing
more than a “social construction,” they had concluded that nature
had little or nothing to do with parenting. Anyone who “loves” a
child – gay or straight, married or single – could be a fit parent (bar-
ring some personal disqualification). Genetic ties were now just as
irrelevant, in short, as sexual orientation.
Another reason was that legal claims of men, depending on their
genetic relation to their children, could be eliminated if the state rec-
ognized only social parenting. But this was not such a neat separa-
tion. When conflict occurred between two gay women, for instance,
sometimes the genetic and birth mother argued that she was the real
mother and should be awarded custody. “A bio-mom can pull out the
ultimate trump card … She can say that these are my children, not
ours, and you’ll never see them again.”120
This brings us back to the implications of gay marriage for fathers
but also for men in general, which is why we have included this
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discussion of gay marriage here. Although very few men of the new
millennium were au courant with the latest academic or ideological
theories about gay marriage, some were aware that gay marriage
had become, apart from anything else, a powerful symbol of their
function, or lack of it, in family life. More and more jurisdictions
either allowed the names of gay partners or wives to appear on birth
certificates as “father” or eliminated both “mother” and “father”
from birth certificates to replace them with “parent a” and “parent
b” (or even “party a” and “party b”), each of which could refer to
anyone who has any kind of relationship – genetic, social, psycho-
logical, economic – with the child.121 The message to fathers was
becoming clear.122
In an essay written for GQ, and thus addressed primarily to men,
Anthony Giardina discussed his anxiety as a man over the declining
importance that our society attached to fatherhood. For him, the ulti-
mate symbol of that decline was the vogue for lesbian motherhood.
What bothered him was the belief that fathers were unnecessary, not
the fact of lesbian couples. The problem was not so much that Betty
or Billy had two mommies, in other words, but that Betty or Billy
had no daddy. “Are there any of us,” he asked, “who actually believe
that lesbian families aren’t going to alter the landscape in signifi-
cant ways? … For one thing, my role changes; at least the way I
think about it changes, because I’m being told I’m no longer utterly
necessary. In lesbian families, there are no fathers.”123 There were
not all that many lesbian-headed families, it is true, but their sym-
bolic power could hardly have been overestimated. As the title of
one newspaper article put it, “Fathers Wonder Whether They Are
Still Needed.” This article was about two gay women, who found a
sperm donor through the Internet. Their specifications for him
included the following factors: income level, nationality, age, height,
weight, personality, education, and sexual orientation. The author of
this article then commented:
I’m sure that Jane and Sarah will love their baby … But … con-
sciously or not, they send their offspring this message: Men are
irrelevant to the healthy rearing of a child. Their sole useful pur-
pose is in the provision of bodily fluids needed for conception.
After that, whether they serve that role as paid donors via com-
panies like NewLife or merely as randy, one-night-stand ama-
teurs, they are no longer needed. Nor, it would follow, do they
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bear or deserve any responsibility for whatever offspring they

produce. Fatherhood is nothing more important to society than
the simple act of appropriately timed sex and/or insemination –
the two being no longer intertwined. I wish for Jane and Sarah
that their baby is born healthy. But more, I wish them luck in
explaining to their son how meaningless they really believe him
to be.124
Hollywood, as usual, eventually found a way to back the winning

horse. Consider one very popular movie. The Kids Are All Right125
made headlines, because the kids have two mothers. Viewers get the
distinct impression that this is no longer an “alternative family” but
an ordinary family – and not a “dysfunctional” one. The children
decide nonetheless to find their sperm donor. When they do, he proves
likeable and even willing to participate somehow as a member of the
family. In the end, though, the kids and their mothers classify him as
a superfluous intruder. The explicit message is that sperm donors are
not really fathers at all, which is true in one way. But the implicit mes-
sage, which appears over and over again in popular culture, is that
even live-in fathers are irrelevant at best (as assistant mothers or
walking wallets) and sinister at worst (as potential molesters).
So far, though, no one has demonstrated that the families of gay
couples are immune to these problems – or, for that matter, to their
own distinctive problems.126 If you can argue that the presence of a
father is inherently dangerous, after all, you could argue also that the
absence of a father is inherently dangerous.127 Although some femi-
nists idealized lesbian couples, moreover, social-scientific evidence
indicates that they are at least as violent as straight couples.128
Because this book is primarily about men, and this chapter primar-
ily about fathers, we conclude with some comments on the day that
officially celebrates fatherhood. On Father’s Day in 2008, President
Barack Obama took the opportunity to scold American men for
abandoning their responsibilities as fathers. It is true that he got into
trouble with Jesse Jackson for scolding black fathers in particular.
Obama pointed out that fatherless families were particularly numer-
ous in black communities, after all, and that white racism alone could
hardly account for the problem. But Obama did not get into trouble
with any political leader for scolding fathers in general, when he
could easily have made the same point by praising good fathers.
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And the situation in other Western countries was no different. In

2008, for instance, some schools in Scotland forbade children to
make Father’s Day cards. The ostensible reason was “to avoid caus-
ing embarrassment to classmates who live with single mothers and
lesbian couples.”129 Never mind that only 7 per cent of the children
in Scotland live with single mothers. No school, however, forbade
children to make Mother’s Day cards.
Clearly, we have a long way to go before we can encourage boys or
men, unambiguously, to become fathers and then integrate them fully
into family life as those with a distinctive and necessary contribution
to make. We will discuss that much more fully in the concluding vol-
ume of this series. There, we will argue that fatherhood is the only
historic function of men that remains130 not only necessary but also
distinctive and therefore worthy of being publicly valued. Moreover,
we will argue that only in this way will boys and men be able to cre-
ate a healthy collective identity for themselves, one that relies on their
ability to make that very kind of contribution both to their families
and to society as a whole.
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Epilogue: Postmodern Man
What we conclude from the history of these technological or cultural

revolutions will probably cause rejoicing among neither men in gen-
eral nor women in general, albeit for very different reasons. We have
already shown that men have some severe problems. Some are innate,
others cultural. Some emerged in the relatively remote past, others
in the recent past. Some are the result of political changes, others of
technological changes. All have come together in our time, though, to
generate a massive and historically unprecedented problem for men
(and therefore society as well). Many men do not want to think about
any of this, because doing so would reveal collective vulnerability
with no obvious solution. Many women do not want to think about
men at all, moreover, except in connection with the needs and prob-
lems of women.
Ultimately at issue here, nonetheless, is something that neither men
nor women can avoid forever. All people, both personally and col-
lectively, need to know that they can make at least one contribution
to society that is distinctive, necessary, and therefore publicly valued.
Through most of human history, the male body allowed men to do
so; every society required people who could function as providers,
protectors, and progenitors. But things have changed over the past
twelve thousand years, at first for a few men and eventually for most
men, due to a series of technological or cultural revolutions. Today,
women can do almost all of these things either on their own or with
help from the state. Therefore, men can no longer make contribu-
tions of this kind – except, perhaps, as fathers. To the extent that
boys and young men no longer believe in their ability to do so – no
longer believe that even fatherhood remains distinctive, necessary,
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138 e p i lo g u e
and publicly valued – then they can no longer have a healthy collec-
tive identity. In that case, we can expect them to give up in one of
several ways: abandoning themselves to hedonism in the hope of
attaining at least ephemeral pleasure and thus blocking out underly-
ing pain; abandoning themselves to despair by dropping out of school
or committing suicide; or abandoning society by resorting to anti-
social behavior.
We conclude by placing all this in the context of postmodernism,
however, because that remains the dominant world view (albeit
one that filters down unevenly from the academic world). Do men
really need a collective identity? Does anyone? Postmodernists have
asserted in one way or another that collective identities – national,
economic, racial, religious, and so on – are not merely “social con-
structions” but dangerous ones, because they foster the dominance
of some groups over others. The direct origin of that idea is obvi-
ously Marxism, which urged proletarians of all nations to unite in
the effort to overthrow capitalistic states, along with their oppressive
religions, and thus inaugurate a “classless” utopia; the latter would
lack not only economic distinctions but also religious and other
ones.1 The trouble is that postmodernists hardly ever complain about
the collective identities of some groups – notably those of women
and sexual or other minorities – presumably in the belief that these
are the “constructions” of groups so lacking in power that they can
do no harm. And that is, indeed, always a possibility. But the post-
modernist urge to eliminate other boundaries by “deconstructing”
them and their supposedly sinister motivations evidently opposes
the human urge – judging from human history – to create or sustain
some boundaries, especially those that confer identity.
It would be hard to think of twentieth-century history, for instance,
without acknowledging the profound problem that modernity pre-
sented by turning people into “consumers,” “workers,” “numbers,”
“machines,” “cannon fodder,” and so on. Apart from anything else,
including the benefits of science, modernity meant abandoning the
religious traditions and face-to-face relationships of village life for
the seemingly chaotic and “faceless” or “rootless” quality of urban
life. Both fascism and communism tried to solve this problem. And
both did so by trying to obliterate personal identity, which had
dire moral consequences. The Nazis rejected modernity, inventing
a mythic alternative: the racial community. The Soviets glorified
modernity, inventing another mythic alternative: the collectivized
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postmodern man 1 39
community. Both experiments failed but for different reasons. The

Nazis mobilized collective identity very effectively, so effectively that
many people tolerated mass murder; the regime succumbed not to
public cynicism, although many Germans had become cynical, but to
invading armies. The Soviets mobilized collective identity effectively
enough to fight off invading armies but not effectively enough to
prevent many people from welcoming the invaders as liberators; the
regime eventually succumbed to moral anomie and public cynicism
(among other things).
It makes no sense to oppose collective identity, clearly, if people
actually need some form of collective identity. And we strongly sus-
pect that they do. But why does anyone need an identity specifically
as a man or a woman? We suggest that men have needed one since the
Agricultural Revolution, first a few men and eventually most men. At
any rate, men need one now, even if only because women have al-
ready insisted on creating an acceptable one for themselves and in
doing so, whether knowingly or not, an unacceptable one for men. It
would indeed make sense, therefore, to accept the needs of both men
and women for collective identities – if not in some ideal or eschato-
logical world then at least in this one – but identities that generate
justice and compassion instead of hatred.
In the next and final volume of this series, Transcending Misandry
and Misogyny: From Feminist Ideology to Intersexual Dialogue, we
propose a way to move beyond conflicts over the sexual identities of
men and women.
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27079_Nathanson.indd 140 2015-08-11 11:14:28
Notes
p r o lo g u e
1 See Bobbi S. Low, “Biological Bases of Sex Differences,” in Encyclopedia

of Sex and Gender: Men and Women in the World’s Cultures vol. 1, ed.
Carol R. Ember and Melvin Ember (New York: Springer, 2003), 27. Aside
from the basic difference between male and female chromosomes, Low
points out, “it is not simply ‘genetic or hormonal’ or a ‘difference in chro-
mosomes.’ Rather, sex differences, however mediated, arise from past
evolutionary and ecological pressures” (27). When comparing species, the
“specifics of sexual reproduction can differ, but sex differences are com-
mon and also predictably patterned. Males and females in most species
behave differently, in predictable ways, regardless of how sex is mediated”
(27). Moreover, “in genetically sex-determined species like humans, the sex
chromosomes are clear proximate influences on many traits. For example,
although both sexes produce both androgens and estrogens, they do so in
different proportions. There is still variation, of course, and the distribu-
tions of most traits overlap when the two sexes are compared” (28). Low
goes on to discuss physical sex differences: gross physical ones (such as
men on average having more upper-body strength and muscular develop-
ment than women) and more subtle ones (such as men and women having
somewhat different brains). In addition, there are hormonal, cognitive,
and perceptual difference, on average, between men and women.
2 See Cynthia Whissell, “Personality and Emotion” for a discussion of sex
differences and the “nature-nurture” controversy in Ember and Ember,
1: 63–4. She concludes that “Most researchers would not go so far as to
deny totally the validity of the complementary viewpoint (nurture / situa-
tion or nature / disposition) in explaining sex differences, but many have
27079_Nathanson.indd 141 2015-08-11 11:14:28

142 n ot e s to pag e s x –3
distinct preferences for one approach or the other, and these are evident in
their work” (64).
3 Deborah L. Best, “Gender Stereotypes” in Ember and Ember, 1: 11.
4 Our word “contra-natural” is not a synonym for “unnatural.” The latter
is of dubious value, because anything that exists in nature is, by definition,
natural. Some people use “unnatural” for anything that works against a
natural tendency, it is true, but even that does not convey what we mean
by “contra-natural,” because our word has no pejorative connotation. In
some situations, after all, we not only can but should work against natural
tendencies.
5 To eliminate the idea of male superiority, some feminists point out that
some women are bigger, faster, and stronger than some men. But when
they use this fact to deconstruct any sexual differences, they make it hard
to explain historical and cross-cultural patterns. Others admit that most
men really are bigger, faster, and stronger than most women. But when
they add that these differences are inconsequential, they make it equally
hard to explain historical and cross-cultural variation. Still others insist
that male size, speed, and strength add up to profound differences between
the sexes. Of those, some claim that these differences are complementary
and thus promote group survival. Others claim that these differences are
oppositional and thus promote dominance or submission. Susan
Brownmiller, for example, claimed in Against Our Will (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1975) that all men subjugate all women in all places and at
all times by threatening them with violence. This is tantamount to claim-
ing that men are “innately evil” (even though that would make no sense,
because evil always involves moral agency – that is, being able to choose
freely between good and evil – and cannot, therefore, be the result of
forces beyond anyone’s control).
chapter one
1 Ruth Underhill, quoting a woman of the Tohano O’odham (Papago) peo-

ple, in Papago Woman (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979), 92.
2 Although the evidence points to continuity in many ways, those of imme-
diate concern in this book, it points also to discontinuity in some ways.
We know that in Amerindian cultures hunting changed dramatically after
the introduction of horses and guns in the modern period. In his essay
“Communal Bison Hunters of the Northern Plains” (Hunters of the Recent
Past, ed. L.B. Davis and B.O.K. Reeves [London: Unwin Hyman, 1990]),
Reeves argues that this period introduced several innovations: pemmican,
27079_Nathanson.indd 142 2015-08-11 11:14:28

n ot e to pag e 4 143
a new meat preparation and storage technology; the bow and arrow; and
the horse (168–95).
3 Some feminists have tried to deconstruct the link between men and hunt-
ing, because they consider it the paradigm for arguments of male physio-
logical superiority. Barbara Ehrenreich, for instance, argues that it “is
tempting to discern, in myths connecting the goddess to the hunt and the
menstruating woman to the hunting animal, a time when real women
played a central role in the realms of both economies and religion: in the
economy, as participants in the hunt; in religion, as beings whose bodies
had the seemingly divine gift of bleeding without dying, and doing so
regularly, in tune with the most salient of the night skies” (Blood Rites:
Origins and History of the Passions of War [New York: Metropolitan
Books, 1997], 108). Women were powerful, she suggests, partly because
their periods synchronized in groups. As predatory hunters, they personi-
fied goddesses. In her opinion, the link was direct and positive.
Hunting, she explains, was an innovation that occurred late in the evo-
lutionary scheme of things. Before that, human beings banded together
against wild animals, she claims, and scavenged for their meat. Later, they
banded together as hunters of wild animals. The entire community now
hunted, she writes: men, women, and children. How did women and even
children participate? By dancing, making a lot of noise and driving the
animals into traps (over cliffs, into cul-de-sacs or bogs) where they died or
could be killed with stones, spears or clubs. So women and children, like
men, were hunters. For evidence, Ehrenreich points to analogies in hunt-
ing-and-gathering societies. The !Kung, for example, see one between a
girl’s first menstruation and a boy’s first kill. And Ehrenreich points to the
fact that Amerindians included women and children in their group hunts.
It is certainly possible that, when humans began to separate from other
primates, some women participated in scavenging or helped scare animals
into pits. But Ehrenreich’s reconstruction of history raises more questions
than it answers. Some evidence does not support it. Consider Boxgrove,
a lower Paleolithic site in Sussex. Boxgrove contained a waterhole that
attracted big animals such as rhinos, horses, bison, and giant deer.
Archaeologists have found thousands of bones there, many of which have
cut marks. This suggests that hunters deliberately killed them (see David
Derbyshire, “Stone Age Man: Spear-thrower or Scavenger?” National Post,
26 May 2003: A12; reprinted from the Daily Telegraph).
Ehrenreich observes that women and children were more fearful than
men were, because they were left unprotected during the hunt. Does this
not imply that men were acknowledged as better or stronger hunters?
27079_Nathanson.indd 143 2015-08-11 11:14:28

144 n ot e s to pag e s 4–5
The !Kung refer to a woman’s first kill metaphorically, not literally. In

fact, it is well established that women are not routinely hunters in hunting-
and-gathering societies – including that of the !Kung.
The analogy between a girl’s menstruation and her first kill might be
due to a morphological similarity between vaginal bleeding and the bleed-
ing wound of an animal.
The link between menstrual bleeding among women and ritual bleeding
among men might not have originated in connection with the blood of
either prey animals or predatory ones. Instead, it might have originated
in connection with the envy that men felt, because women went through
a natural rite of passage – unlike the arduous and dangerous cultural one
that boys went through before entering manhood – or because women
could apparently produce life. We identify it as envy, but it could be fear
or dread as well.
The idea of a predatory goddess need not have originated in the power
of hunting women at the dawn of human history, for which we have no
evidence. It might have originated among adolescent boys who feared
being shamed by girls and women for failing to kill an animal during initi-
ation. Hunting, especially for big game, was a very intimidating prospect.
Boys had to measure up if they were to be accepted as men; girls and
women were the cheerleaders. Boys might have elaborated on this fear,
as men, by creating the myth of a predatory goddess. Women would be
like predators, in other words, willing to eat boys who fail to become
men with the courage to kill on behalf of their communities.
Finally, we doubt that women really were routinely engaged in direct
struggles with wild animals, especially big ones. What if they were preg-
nant or nursing?
4 Maxine L. Margolis, “The Relative Status of Men and Women,” in Ency-
clopedia of Sex and Gender: Men and Women in the World’s Cultures,
ed. Carol R. Ember and Melvin Ember (New York: Springer, 2003), 1:
139. In this context, she cites P. Draper, “!Kung Women: Contrasts in
Sexual Egalitarianism in Foraging and Sedentary Contexts,” in Toward
an Anthropology of Women (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975).
5 Robert F. Murphy, Headhunter’s Heritage: Social and Economic Change
among the Mundurucu Indians (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1960), 54. This passage is about hunting in a horticultural society, but the
tasks that Murphy describes are the same whether they occur in horticul-
tural societies or hunting-gathering ones.
6 David D. Gilmore, Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of
Masculinity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 120.
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n ot e s to pag e s 5–8 145
7 Gilmore claims that “only one empirical case has been reported in which
women actually do kill large game by themselves. The case is that of the
Agta, a Negrito people of northeastern Luzon, the Philippines … This case
has been offered as evidence that hunting can just as well be a female occupa-
tion as a male one … Closer inspection of the evidence presented shows that
Agta female hunting has been somewhat exaggerated. The authors of this
study note that most native women hunt full-time only in ‘extreme circum-
stances’ and those that hunt on a day-to-day basis are laughed at by neigh-
boring people of both sexes … In addition, Agta women do not hunt when
either pregnant or nursing, so that the general emphasis still remains on hunt-
ing as a male role. Hunting, the Agta say, is a ‘sort of male activity’ …
something loosely associated with men, and something that men are better
at doing. Further, one must point out the unusual subsistence adaptation of
the Agta. These people collect virtually no vegetables, because they prefer to
trade meat to their farming neighbors for cultivated crops. This is a relatively
recent development, which has eliminated the traditional female gathering
role and which may explain the anomalous female hunting” (ibid., 118–19).
8 Adolf E. Jensen, Myth and Cult among Primitive Peoples (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1963), 163–4.
9 Joseph Campbell, The Way of the Animal Powers: Mythologies of the
Great Hunt, Historical Atlas of World Mythology, vol. 1 (New York:
Harper and Row, 1988), xix.
10 Bernard Saladin d’Anglure, “Nanook, Supermale, the Polar Bear in the
Imaginary Space and Social Time of the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic,”
in Signifying Animals: Human Meaning in the Natural World, ed. Roy
Willis (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), 189.
11 Ibid., 184.
12 R. Dale Guthrie, The Nature of Paleolithic Art (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2005), 180.
13 Ibid., 422.
14 For theories on the origin of pastoralism, see S.I. Vajnshtejan, “The
Problem of Origin and Formation of the Economic-Cultural Type of
Pastoral Nomads in the Moderate Belt of Eurasia,” in The Nomadic
Alternative: Modes and Models of Interaction in the African-Asian
Deserts and Steppes, ed. Wolfgang Weissledder (The Hague: Mouton,
1978), 128–30.
15 R. Brian Ferguson, “Explaining War,” in The Anthropology of War, ed.
Jonathan Haas (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1990), 34.
16 A.M. Khazanova, “Characteristic Features of Nomadic Communities in
the Eurasian Steppes,” in The Nomadic Alternative: Modes and Models of
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Interaction in the African-Asian Deserts and Steppes, ed. Wolfgang

Weissledder (The Hague: Mouton, 1978), 123–4.
17 These include the Semai, the Buid, and the Xinguano. But they are not
equally peaceful. The Semai always flee violence, for instance, whereas
the Buid and the Xinguanos sometimes react to attacks with retaliatory
raids. Moreover, they sometimes execute their own people for witchcraft.
According to McCauley, “Perhaps the most notable commonality of the
three peaceful groups is what [Thomas] Gregor calls an ‘antiviolent’
value system. Peace is supported by stigmatizing quarreling, boasting,
stinginess, anger, and violence, and by according prestige for generosity,
gentleness, and conflict avoidance. This value system is supported by
supernatural beliefs in which helpful friendly spirits are opposed by
malevolent and violent spirits who prey upon men. Further, the antivio-
lent value system is embodied in a contrast between the peacefulness of
the ingroup and the violence of outsiders, a contrast that forms an impor-
tant part of the everyday maintenance of the system. Outsiders are
bloody, violent, dangerous, ugly, evil, animal-like and, in a real sense, less
than human. Children are warned against outsiders and, especially, about
behaving like outsiders … Another commonality is the egalitarian nature
of all three societies, and an associated impairment of personal relation-
ships … Individuals are encouraged to depend only on the group, and not
on particular other individuals … all three peaceful societies have very
low degrees of social stratification, obtained by controlling expression of
individual wants and emotions in various ways … Other commonalities
… include slash-and-burn agriculture, patchiness of resources, small vil-
lages, relatively open-ended groups with blurred cleavage planes, endog-
amy preferences, sources of disputes (sexual jealousy, gossip, stinginess),
and agency of aggressive models” (Clark McCauley, “Conference
Overview” in Haas, 14–15).
18 Robert K. Denton, The Semai: A Nonviolent People of Malaya (New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979).
19 McCauley, “Conference Overview,” 15.
20 Robert I. Levy, Tahitians: Mind and Experience in the Society Islands
(Chicago: University of Chicago, 1973).
21 Gilmore, Manhood in the Making, 200–9.
22 War is “a subset of human aggression involving the use of organized force
between politically independent groups” (McCauley, “Conference
Overview,” 1).
23 In A History of Marriage Systems (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988),
G. Robina Quale discusses the ancient Near East. By 7000 B C , “the
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n ot e s to pag e s 10–12 1 47
pattern of separate sleeping huts and storage huts had changed to one of
a single, separate sleeping and storage facility for each family … With that
separation of ours-and-yours within the village, the larger community
within which basic family clusters of spouses and children lived must have
finally ceased to have the unity of the hunting-gathering band” (50).
24 Ferguson, “Explaining War,” 35.
25 Besides, fit male bodies attracted women. Thomas Gregor observes that
the ideal Mehinaku man is tall and muscular: “On the average, tall men
are more likely than short men to sponsor rituals, be wealthy, have many
girlfriends, and become village chiefs” (Anxious Pleasures: The Sexual Life
of an Amazonian People [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985],
36). But in Life Is With People: The Culture of the Shtetl [New York:
Schocken Books, 1962], Elizabeth Herzog and Mark Zborowski show
that traditional Jewish women from eastern Europe had a very different
notion of male sexiness. The women said that sexy men looked pale and
thin – as if they spent all their time in the synagogue, studying Torah!
26 Some people argue that societies assign men to war, because they need
extra women for reproduction – or, to put it more bluntly, because they
believe that men are reproductively expendable. But every pregnancy
requires both a man and a woman. And almost every society so far has
depended on men for protection. Very small-scale societies exist at the
margin of survival. When food is plentiful, they ensure survival by increas-
ing the population. Otherwise, however, they do so by reducing the popu-
lation. In short, we must not assume that any society can rely on the kind
of utilitarianism that quantifies human value.
27 It is hard to know if women or men are more likely to choose “flight” in
emergencies. If women have men around to choose “fight,” they might be
less likely to do so themselves. When no men are around, they are proba-
bly just as likely as men to choose “fight.” Otherwise, how could we
explain the many accounts of mothers who, at great risk to themselves,
defend their children from predatory animals and similar dangers.
28 Joshua S. Goldstein, “War and Gender” in Encyclopedia of Sex and
Gender: Men and Women in the World’s Cultures, 1:108.
29 See Katherine K. Young, “Grief and the Crisis of Masculine Identity in
Cross-Cultural Perspective,” plenary address for the International
Conference on Helping the Bereaved Male (London, Ont., 1980).
30 This conclusion emerges from a study of 108 societies, which represent all
major regions of the world. Karen Eriksen and Jeffrey Paige have coded
these in connection with several variables. (See The Politics of
Reproductive Ritual [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981]).
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148 n ot e s to pag e 12
Because Eriksen and Paige are interested in reproductive ritual, they do

not comment on the relation between available resources and ritual war-
fare. Examining their data, however, we found that out of 20 societies
with few resources (mainly hunting-gathering ones), only 2 organize ritual
warfare. Out of the 43 with many resources (pastoral, advanced horticul-
tural and agricultural ones), only 7 do. By contrast, out of 45 societies
with average resources (simple horticultural, fishing and mounted-hunting
ones), 27 do. We conclude, therefore, that headhunting and cannibalism
occur mainly among simple horticulturalists.
31 Listen to Eli Sagan on torture among the Hurons: “The captive selected as
a trophy of war, to gratify their vindictive spirit, was subjected to the most
inhumane and even more inquisitional torture. The nails of [his] … fingers
and toes were torn off by force; the three principle fingers used for draw-
ing the bow were lopped off; the skull was denuded of its hairy scalp, and
coals of fire and hot ashes were heaped upon the bleeding head, or hot set-
ting gum was poured upon it. Sometimes, he was made to walk across a
great number of fires with his body and feet entirely naked, between two
files of tormentors who struck him with burning firebrands and rubbed his
legs with heated axes. At other times, they threw hot water on his back to
increase his pain, and touched his fingers’ ends and his sexual organs with
burning cinders. Then they pierced his arm with a splint, drew out the
nerves and tore them away by force” (Cannibalism: Human Aggression
and Cultural Form [New York: Harper and Row, 1974], 10–11).
32 Peggy Reeves Sanday rules out the possibility that fear of starvation com-
monly provokes cannibalism, although it sometimes does (Divine Hunger:
Cannibalism as a Cultural System [Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1986]). Following James Frazer and Wilhelm Mannhardt, on the
other hand, Christiano Grottinelli suggests that these rituals dramatize
the seasonal cycle of cultivated plants and that “their periodic ‘death’ is
followed by their return or ‘rebirth’ before the next harvesting”
(“Agriculture,” in the Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade [New
York: Macmillan, 1987], 1: 245). René Girard argues that ritual killing
prevents violence within groups by siphoning it off – that is, killing
surrogate victims (Violence and the Sacred [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1972], 221). And Eli Sagan (Cannibalism) explains that
eating victims is a way of acting out aggression. He thinks that cannibal-
ism belongs to the most archaic type of society.
All of these theories are problematic. Sanday makes an observation but
offers no theory to explain it. Grottinelli’s old “death-rebirth” theory, on
the other hand, does not explain why killing a deity became a dominant
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myth among horticulturalists. In addition, it cannot explain why they resort

to killing humans. Hunter-gatherers hardly ever sacrifice animals, after all,
let alone humans. Girard does not explain why taking a victim from some
other community occurs among horticulturalists but not hunter-gatherers.
Head-hunting and cannibalism hardly ever occur among the latter, after all,
but often do among the former. Sagan, too, must be wrong. We see no link
between cannibalism or headhunting and the most archaic type of society.
33 Michel Meslin, “Head: Symbolism and Ritual Use,” in the Encyclopedia
of Religions, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 6: 222.
34 Sagan, Cannibalism, 36–7. Similar rituals occurred in India during the
1940s. Bikash Chandra Gohain observes that “the practice of head-
hunting … is associated with the fertility cult. The Nagas believed that if
the fertilizing aspect of the soul-substance could be acquired, their crops
would prosper … The Quoireng Nagas used to take heads because the
possession of a head brought wealth and prosperity” (Bikash Chandra
Gohain, Human Sacrifice and Head-Hunting in North-Eastern India
[Gauhati, Assam: Lawyer’s Book Stall, 1977], 67–8). Elsewhere, he writes
that “belief in the fertilizing aspect of the soul-substance takes us back to
the practice of cannibalism among head-hunters … The Lushais used to
taste the liver and lick, from the spearhead, the blood of the first victim
slain in war. The Thadou Kukis ate their first meals after taking a head
with hands stained with enemies’ blood (Gohain, Human Sacrifice, 75).
35 Among the pastoral Masai and Samburu of eastern Africa, young men are
not only expendable in battle but also unwanted as husbands. Quale says
that “young women’s parents looked for husbands for them in age-grades
older than the young warriors’ age-grade. They sought men who were no
longer liable to die in battle unless the conflict was so serious that older
men were also sent to fight” (History of Marriage Systems, 116).
36 Goldstein, “War and Gender,” 110.
37 Margolis, “The Relative Status of Men and Women,” 140.
38 Ibid.
39 William Divale, Matrilocal Residence in Pre-Literate Society (Ann Arbor,
Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1984).
40 Following Murdock, Divale says that about 70% of the world’s societies
are either patrilocal or virilocal and 11% either matrilocal or uxorilocal –
17% when you include all other female-oriented residence patterns (ibid.,
13–14).
41 Robert F. Murphy, Headhunter’s Heritage: Social and Economic Change
among the Mundurucu Indians (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1960), 101–3).
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42 Yolande Murphy and Robert F. Murphy, Women of the Forest (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1974), 95.
43 The myth reveals what psychoanalysts would call “fear of castration.”
This is clear in several other Mundurucu myths. “In one story, a young
man named Perisault has coitus with a jaguar-woman, who plans to kill
him and cut off his penis. In another, a man hears a female frog croaking
and threatens to insert his penis into her and make her croak with pain.
The frog later changes into a beautiful woman and seduces the man, but
at the point of orgasm, she retransforms herself into a frog and hops away
with the man’s penis locked in her vagina. She stretches it out to an incred-
ible length before she releases the penis, leaving the man immobilized.
Some others arrive on the scene, see the man’s plight, and apply a prepara-
tion to reduce his penis. They reduce it too much, however, and he goes
away with a penis the size of a little finger” (ibid., 100).
44 Ibid., 144.
45 See George Devereux in A Study of Abortion in Primitive Societies: A
Typological, Distributional, and Dynamic Analysis of the Prevention of
Birth in 400 Preindustrial Societies (New York: International Universities
Press, 1976). According to Devereux, women who do not want to take on
adult responsibilities abort or kill their children. In many smallscale societ-
ies, women must not enjoy sex until their children are weaned at the age
of three or four. Once they have one or two children and thus demon-
strated their fertility, they resort to birth control, abortion, and infanticide.
But depopulation is common for many other reasons in horticultural
societies. Men often capture small children, therefore, during their raids
against neighboring tribes. Other anthropologists have noticed the same
phenomenon and suggested that this practice originated not only in the
need to supplement the number of children but also in the need to give
men a role in providing children for the community (Theodore Wilmanns
and Ruth Wilmanns Lidz, Oedipus in the Stone Age: A Psychoanalytic
Study of Masculinization in Papua-New Guinea [Madison, Conn.:
International Universities Press, 1989], 160).
46 “That the fear of emasculation is far deeper among the men than is penis-
envy among the women is … suggested by the secrecy of the [flutes].
Women cannot view the instruments under penalty of gang-rape, surely a
clear indication of phallic power, but we never found any curiosity among
the women. Some of them must have spied on the roots of male power at
some time, however, as the women can give a fairly accurate description of
what they look like. And they do this with little sense of awe or fear … the
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women were obviously less impressed with male prowess and its props
than were the men” (Murphy and Murphy, Women of the Forest, 101).
47 Ibid., 217.
48 Ibid., 115.
49 Thomas Gregor, Anxious Pleasures: The Sexual Lives of an Amazonian
People (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 88.
50 Ibid., 186. Gregor describes the parallels between menstruation for girls
and ear piercing for boys. As soon as blood flows, people carry boys or
girls to their hammocks. Highly vulnerable to witches and spirits, both
boys and girls are safe only inside their houses. Every girl holds a cotton
spindle in her navel “to keep it from closing up.” Every boy clenches his
teeth around the dowel that someone will use to pierce his ears. Leaves
from the cotton plant, the plant that “never dies,” induce favorable dreams,
which boys and girls interpret with similar symbolic equations. Both boys
and girls must lie quietly and speak only in whispers. Both boys and girls
must follow food taboos to ensure both the rapid cessation of flowing
blood and favorable dreams. Both boys and girls fast, drinking water only
after one day. Following the fast, both boys and girls may eat any food
except fish, which would prolong the blood flow, because fish contain a lot
of blood from eating other fish. (Monkeys and birds eat only fruit, on the
other hand, and therefore have a different type of blood.) Both boys and
girls may eat them. Once the blood stops flowing, a ceremony reintroduces
fish to the diet. The boys go outdoors, taste a small amount of fish, and spit
it onto a fiber mat. The girls do so indoors. They may now eat fish but not
food that society considers either sweet or salty (ibid., 189).
51 Willmans and Lidz, Oedipus in the Stone Age, 60.
52 As soon as the child is born, the father enters seclusion with his wife and
infant. Called “the infant’s father” … he is said to “resemble” the mother.
In fact, the taboos and restrictions honored by the father appear to have
been generalized from the mother to him. Like the mother, he lives behind
a palmwood barrier, refrains from sexual relations and avoids those foods
that are taboo to a woman who is experiencing postpartum blood flow.
Specifically, he avoids fish, but he may eat monkey and bird meat brought
to him by close kin. When the mother’s postpartum bleeding ends, both
husband and wife sit on benches within the house and, in a ritual identical
to that of boys in the ear-piercing ceremony, chew a small morsel of fish.
The mother then leaves seclusion, symbolized by her going out of the
house by the front door, bathing, and frequenting the central plaza.
But the father does not “go out.” His food taboos change to reflect a
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“non-bleeding status,” similar to boys whose ears have healed and girls in
seclusion after their first menses. These food taboos and numerous other
restrictions on sex and on the kind of work he may perform … are hon-
ored in the interest of the child … The father’s period of seclusion lasts
until the infant assumes the status of a child … By these criteria, seclusion
lasts approximately a year, though some of the villagers claim that in past
times a new father spent as long as three years in isolation. With the birth
of subsequent children, the couvade is reimposed, but in an attenuated
form (Gregor, Anxious Pleasures, 194–5).
53 They reckon descent through the male line and practice exogamy (marry-
ing people from outside the group). Marriages are either monogamous or
polygamous. Each hamlet contains a few fortified houses, but several ham-
lets can coalesce to form a larger community of several hundred people
in the context of either ritual or warfare. This society is very loosely orga-
nized, although it recognizes war leaders, elders, and shamans. Only age
confers status among the men despite their disinterest in status symbols.
54 Gilbert H. Herdt, Guardians of the Flutes: Idioms of Masculinity (New
York: McGraw Hill, 1981), 83.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid., 168. “Women’s periods are steady and visible … a powerful force
alive and operating within her … there is nothing comparable in men …
[Women’s] bodily vitality is rich; their abundant blood repels disease. They
are thus innately healthier and longer-lived than men … Females do not
fall sick, not really, and they live longer than men to boot” (ibid., 190–2).
57 Ibid., 206. Herdt continues as follows: “A female being must give birth
to attain complete womanhood. This drive to birth is basic; it is innate; it
produces life; and it is fundamentally female. The natural drives of partu-
rition so evident in women are thus frustratingly dormant in men … The
birth of a child is the last step into adulthood … for man and woman
alike … Yet the place of the two sexes differs greatly in this development.
Having a baby and suckling it are visible and what really count. Only
females do this and so every man must have a wife. Parturition is innate
to femininity … Since femininity is that overwhelming and innate, all that
is left for men to do is to separate and defend boys from women, while
oddly simulating certain perceptually correspondent female changes by
means of ritual” (ibid., 199–202).
58 “Toward the end of the first initiation, after days of ritual and fasting, the
novices are nearly worn out. They are led from the cult house into the
edge-land forest. They are lined up before the mor-angu which is contextu-
ally likened to [the hut where women give birth]. Boys hear high-pitched
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n ot e s to pag e 21 1 53
cries from within that are said to be a squawking new infant but are actu-
ally produced by the bamboo flutes” (ibid., 203). In addition, Herdt says
that each “menses requires that men induce nosebleeds alone in the forest.
Of all manly rituals, this is the most painful, traumatic and intimately per-
sonal. Unlike menstruation, though, it is not shameful. Yet it is secret …
Women are ashamed of their periods … [so say the men]; men hide their
nose-bleedings. A woman hangs special leaves around her neck to signify
she is in her period; a man paints red ochre on his stomach, face, and
limbs, following that secret ritual he has enacted in the forest. The parallel
of activities is striking. Sympathetic identification is at work; parturition is
the focus” (ibid., 194).
59 D.K. Feil, The Evolution of Highland Papua-New Guinea Societies
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 184.
60 Ibid., 200. Feil points out also that, “Aside from physical separation in
domestic and public life, women were severely punished for adultery by
having burning sticks thrust into their vaginas, or they were killed by their
husbands; they were whipped with cane if they spoke out of turn or pre-
sumed to offer their opinions at public gatherings; and were physically
abused in marital arguments … This strident misogyny, of pathological
proportions, is nowhere so manifest in the highlands as here. Sexual
antagonism is fundamental, inherent, and, like warfare in the eastern high-
lands, unrestricted. Men do not require specific incidents or reasons to
abuse or mistreat women; it is part of the normal course of events; indeed,
in ritual and myth, it is portrayed as the essential order of things … The
solidarity of men versus women, a theme of initiation, and symbolized by
the secret flutes, is given further social reinforcement by institutionalised
age-grades … Initiation is designed to produce uncompromising warriors
who are hard and ungiving … Women represent an enemy, the enemy, and
aggression is based on opposition to them. At every stage of the develop-
mental cycle, men have an internal, united organisation as reference;
women and external enemies are the target of concern, they are conceptu-
ally equivalent, and the point of rigorous instruction and ordeal” (ibid.,
203). But according to Goldstein, even women sometimes participate in
torture. “Despite women’s exclusion from combat, a number of societies
have routinely used women as support troops … [In Apache tribes], [w]ar
prisoners were often taken back to camp for the women (especially those
who had lost loved ones in battle) to torture and kill. Women’s partici
pation in torturing and killing prisoners is also found elsewhere. The
Konkow sometimes allowed women to participate in torturing captured
male enemies. Among the Tupinamba of Brazil, women enthusiastically
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helped torture prisoners of war to death and then dismember and eat
them. Similarly, Kiwai women of Oceania had the special job of ‘mangling’
enemy wounded and then killing them with knives or digging sticks”
(“War and Gender,” 111).
61 Menstruating girls, for example, learn “about their new potency which
must not be used against men … Initiation [of the girls] is interrupted,
most dramatically, by female dancers imitating men, who chase the young
girls around the seclusion hut to the resounding chorus of ‘men are the
enemy’ … Such explicit statements of sexual opposition do not exist even
in male initiations [among the Hua or Gimi] … Why do women cooperate
in men’s initiatory proceedings, participating often enthusiastically, in bla-
tantly misogynistic events? … Hays and Hays deny brute force as a reason
and stress that women’s ceremonies emphasize the ‘complementarity’ of
the sexes, that women, as much as men, believe in their special powers and
dangers, which must be curtailed for the ‘common good’ … Women
acknowledge that their reproductive and other powers must be harnessed
… If society is to ‘survive,’ women and men must combine their efforts”
(Feil, The Evolution of Highland Papua-New Guinea Societies, 208).
62 Matato of Tairora was nothing short of audacious. He had sixteen to
twenty wives and eventually killed several of them. He murdered his
affines by contract, killed other members of Abiera when it suited him,
dispensed mercenary “armies” to fight foreign campaigns, forced wives of
Abiera men to copulate with him as he desired, telling their husbands to
wait outside their houses until he was finished … Affines and other villag-
ers were targets of his wrath (ibid., 105).
63 Sagan’s explanation is far too reductive, but his documentation of change
according to historical records is extremely valuable.
64 Remnants of head-hunting, according to Meslin, occur even in the Iliad.
“Dolan the Trojan dressed himself in a wolf skin and tried one night to
bring back the heads of Odysseus and Agamemnon; when he was discov-
ered, his own head was cut off by Odysseus and Diomedes” (“Head:
Symbolism and Ritual Use,” 222). Also practicing human sacrifice were
the pre-dynastic Sumerians, pre-dynastic Egyptians, first-dynasty Chinese,
and ancient Indians. In the Rig Veda, Sunahsepha prays to Varuna as he
is about to be immolated. In the slightly later Yajur Veda are detailed
instructions for human sacrifice; to attain supremacy, Brahmins and
Kshatriyas, the two highest castes, were supposed to sacrifice 179 people.
Finally, incipient agrarian states practiced human sacrifice. This usually
occurred in connection with royalty, rites of passage, public events, and
political crises (Eli Sagan, At the Dawn of Tyranny: The Origins of
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Individualism, Political Oppression, and the State [New York: Knopf,

1985], 120). As a rite of passage, the funeral of a king often included
many human sacrifices. Victims were no longer only enemy aliens; many
were the local poor and marginal. As the power of kings increased, so did
the number of human sacrifices. According to Sagan, societies in Buganda,
Dahomey, and Benin sacrificed five hundred people at a time. The Aztecs
sacrificed thousands at a time (ibid., 118–19). In accounting for the preva-
lence of ritual warfare as a way of training initiates to kill human beings,
we challenge the theory that human sacrifice is nothing but a variant of
animal sacrifice in the sense of hoping for divine rewards after they sacri-
fice either animals or humans.
65 Sagan cannot adequately explain the discrepancy, because the only argu-
ment at his disposal is that economic surpluses led rich men to assert
power over poor men. Sagan probably makes too sharp a distinction
between egalitarian societies that emphasized kinship and early hierarchi-
cal ones that emphasized other principles.
66 If this process does not precede state formation, it almost always follows.
This transition, according to Divale (Matrilocal Residence in Pre-Literate
Society, 204), had already begun in horticultural societies (pastoral ones
already being patrilocal). Divale’s study shows that even horticultural soci-
eties undergo a transitional process after migration: uxorilocal; matrilocal;
matrilineal; avunculocal; virilocal; and patrilocal-patrilineal (29).
Whenever patrilineality involved monogamy, it brought advantages for
everyone. In matrilineal societies, men had experienced a great deal of
conflict over their roles as both social and genetic fathers. They could
devote themselves exclusively and without ambivalence to their own chil-
dren. Moreover, they no longer had to worry that their wives or brothers-
in-law would take away their children. Finally, they could now bequeath
property – men controlled property in states – to their own children.
Patrilineality offered some advantages to women as well. In exchange for
marital fidelity, some states or religions guaranteed them economic provi-
sion and protection. This was especially important in an age of violence
and social breakdown, when many women turned to prostitution for sur-
vival and no woman was safe from the lust of marauding warriors.
67 By classical times, upper-caste women no longer received formal education
for several reasons. Knowledge was increasingly specialized, which
required attendance at a school, and schools were for men only. By appro-
priating formal education for themselves, men established a distinctive
masculine identity. Once women no longer knew the sacred language of
scripture, Sanskrit, they lost status. Authorities linked them consistently
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with the lowly shudras. Paradoxically, it was precisely their lack of educa-
tion that counted as their status.
68 Katherine K. Young, “Introduction,” in Religion and Women, ed. Arvind
Sharma and Katherine K. Young (Albany: State University of New York,
1994), 14–23.
69 Bruce G. Trigger, Early Civilizations: Ancient Egypt in Context (Cairo:
The American University in Cairo Press, 1993). For a more extensive
discussion, see Bruce G. Trigger, Understanding Early Civilizations:
A Comparative Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University 2003).
70 Ibid., 7.
71 Ibid., 10–11.
72 Asian societies promoted ascetic methods such as meditation to attain
enlightenment, or freedom from illusory polar opposites such as subject
and object. They expressed the resulting equilibrium as the imperturb-
able face of the Buddha or the Hindu yogi. Eastern ascetics developed a
tradition of willing their own deaths. Hindu and Jain ascetics fasted to
death. Japanese ascetics “fell” on their swords according to the samurai’s
bushido tradition (which relied on Zen Buddhism). By disembowelling
themselves, they chose the most painful possible death. All the same,
they died “smiling” and “falling down like cherry blossoms” (Katherine
K. Young, “A Cross-cultural Historical Case against Planned Self-willed
Death and Assisted Suicide,” McGill Law Journal 39.3 [1994]: 677).
Why did they choose such painful ways to die? Because these provided
opportunities to display heroic attributes of masculinity such as courage
and determination. Death was the final and ultimate test of manhood.
Like the initiates of former warrior cultures, they could neither flinch
nor flee.
73 The term “axial age” was first used by Karl Jaspers for the period that
began approximately 2,800 years ago and concluded approximately
2,200 years ago … when thinkers (such as the Buddha, Confucius,
Zoroaster, Socrates, Elijah, and others) arose in ancient Greece, the Middle
East, India and China. Although these civilizations were probably not in
contact with each other, many of their ideas about spirituality were simi-
lar. From this, we surmise that these ideas reflected similar historical con-
ditions. See Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1953). Karen Armstrong has revived this theory in
The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions
(New York: Knopf, 2006).
74 David Cohen, Law, Violence and Community in Classical Athens
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 142.
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75 Ibid., 187.
76 This word derives from the Latin vir, which means man. “Virtue,” there-
fore, was originally associated with “manly” honor.
77 Clive Skidmore, Practical Ethics for Roman Gentlemen: The Work of
Valerius Maximus (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996), 16.
78 The Romans valued tolerance along with mercy and pity but not compas-
sion. The Israelites, on the other hand, valued compassion but not
tolerance.
79 Skidmore, Practical Ethics for Roman Gentlemen, 16.
80 Anton J.L. van Hooff, From Autothanasia to Suicide: Self-killing in
Classical Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1990).
81 A.A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics, 2nd ed.
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
82 Socrates drank hemlock only as an alternative to execution by the state.
He managed to add a manly veneer to his sip of hemlock, however, by his
attitude of ease and cheerfulness. That rescued his honor. Only occasion-
ally, especially after the Roman Empire had slid down a slippery slope
in the practice of self-willed death, did drinking hemlock in imitation of
Socrates become a model for others. See Katherine K. Young, “A Cross-
Cultural Historical Case,” 657–707.
83 Some reforms ended up as new forms of older religions; others ended up as
new religions. In many cases, religions in both categories ended up as what
we now call the “world religions” that have survived to modern times.
84 The scale of human sacrifice among the Aztecs was exceptional.
85 One explanation for the origin of sacrifice was public accountability for
sharing meat after slaughtering a domesticated animal. To ensure this,
they ritualized both the killing and the sharing of meat – as they had done
during the Paleolithic. Given this direct continuity from hunting rituals to
sacrificial ones, it stands to reason that when people wanted to eliminate
human sacrifice (which had a different origin), they found an easy substi-
tute in the existing ritual of sacrificing domesticated animals.
Some societies replaced humans with pigs. Pastoralists usually preferred
goats, sheep, cattle, or even horses. Occasional relapses occurred. Sagan
notes, for example, that in “the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, the chorus cries
out against Agamemnon for sacrificing his daughter instead of the usual
animal. To indicate the horror, the victim is described as “unholy,
untasted” (Sagan, Tyranny, 133).
86 After the Buddha and the Jains criticized animal sacrifice, for instance,
Hindus changed their ritualistic tradition to worship the deities in statues.
They now offered flowers, fruit, and water.
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87 This happened in India. In the Kalika Purana, for instance, Devi, the
Goddess, is satisfied for a hundred years by the sacrifice of one person and
for a thousand years by the sacrifice of three. Chapter 59 praises Durga
during a human sacrifice. “Black and holding the trident, [thou art] like
the last dreadful night of creation; born fierce, of bloody eyes and mouth,
wearing a blood-red garland … drinking blood, and munching heaps of
flesh, thou art Asi [that which eats away the head of its victim] … thou art
Durasad [the giver of difficult attainable objects]; thou art Srigarbha [the
womb of prosperity]; thou art Vijaya [victory].” In addition, this text calls
the goddess Kali Kesai-Khati (eater of raw flesh). Other puranas discuss
human sacrifices to Chamunda, a dark and frightening goddess with a gar-
land of skulls. She holds a skull by the hair in one hand and a sword in the
other. Blood flows over her body. Shiva receives garlands of skulls. Shaiva
ascetics sit on cadavers during meditation, and eat from skulls. Shaiva
mendicants are called Kapalikas: possessors of skulls (Maitrayani
Upanishad 6: 8).
88 After Rome destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, Jews could no longer make
sacrificial offerings there. Daily and annual prayer services in synagogues
replaced daily and annual sacrifices in the temple. Even studying biblical
passages about the temple cult amounted to replacing it.
89 Jews and Christians have had somewhat conflicting views about human sac-
rifice. Jews explicitly reject the very idea of human sacrifice. “You shall not
give any of your children to devote them by fire to Moloch,” God tells the
people in Leviticus, “and so profane the name of your God” (Leviticus 18:
21). Moreover, “Any man of the people of Israel, or of the strangers that
sojourn in Israel, who gives any of his children to Moloch, shall be put to
death” (Leviticus 20: 2). Speaking in the name of God, Jeremiah rebukes the
people of Judah: “They set up their abominations in the house which is
called by my name, to defile it. They built the high places of Baal in the
Valley of the son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Moloch,
though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they
should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin” (Jeremiah 32: 34–5).
In Genesis, the same condemnation of human sacrifice appears in a
slightly less direct form. When God orders Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his
son, Abraham faithfully prepares to do so. At the last moment, God pro-
vides a ram instead (Genesis 22). For rabbinic Jews, as Elie Wiesel sug-
gests, the whole point of this story has been that God does not want
human sacrifice (Elie Wiesel, Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and
Legends [New York: Random House, 1976], 76), which is why the story
refers for Jews to the “binding” of Isaac. When Rome destroyed the temple
27079_Nathanson.indd 158 2015-08-11 11:14:29

in Jerusalem, at any rate, the Jewish sacrificial cult fell into desuetude.
Symbolically, however, it lived on in several ways. For one thing, the rab-
bis declared that prayer and repentance were substitutes for it. And they
democratized even these symbolic reminders of the cult. Every Jew became
a “priest,” every home a “temple” and every dining table an “altar.” The
parallel between temple ritual and home ritual could not be more obvious
than in connection with the elaborate procedures surrounding kashrut
(the rules for killing, preparing, and consuming of food). On special occa-
sions, the symbolic substitution is explicit. A piece of bone represents the
paschal lamb, for example, on every Passover table. For two thousand
years, moreover, Jews have lovingly studied biblical passages on the sacrifi-
cial cult and rabbinic commentaries on them. Symbolically, they partici-
pate in the cult by planning its restoration in messianic times. The most
dramatic example of the symbolic replacement of human sacrifice in
Judaism is pidyon ha-ben, a ritual in which fathers “redeem” their first-
born sons ceremonially instead of sacrificing them. Similar substitutions
appear in Christianity.
For Christians, however, the whole point is very different. After all, they
consider Christ the ultimate human sacrifice. Nonetheless, they implicitly
oppose human sacrifice. Isaac was a potential sacrificial victim, one who
prefigured the ultimate and final one. This is why Christians refer to his
story as the “sacrifice” of Isaac. Christ’s sacrificial death fulfils and abol-
ishes the need for sacrificial atonement by human beings.
In modern societies, human sacrifice persists on a colossal scale in the
context of war. Soldiers killed in modern wars, though, are not captured
enemies ritually sacrificed by the state. On the contrary, they are members
of the community itself who supposedly “lay down their lives” on its
“altar.” In other words, they sacrifice themselves for the good of their own
society – even though the state actually conscripts them for military ser-
vice. See chapter 3 for a much fuller discussion of this topic.
90 I Samuel 8:10–22.
91 Morgan D. Maclachlan, Why They Did Not Starve: Biocultural
Adaptation in a South Indian Village (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study
of Human Issues, 1983), 242.
92 Aristophanes, Clouds; quoted in John J. Winkler, “Phallos Politicos:
Representing the Body Politic in Classical Athens,” in Differences 2.1
(1990): 31.
93 Susan S. Wadley, Struggling with Destiny in Karimpur, 1925–1984
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). One variant of sexual seg-
regation is purdah (veiling of women). “In Karimpur, as in much of rural
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North India, purdah demands that married women, both Hindu and
Muslim, of families that seek high status or good reputations remain
secluded in their courtyards and houses, usually going out only for the
early morning latrine stop in the fields or to leave the village for a visit
to relatives, the doctor, or the district fair. Women should be not seen by
strange men, nor should they talk to them. Unmarried teenage girls are
also restricted in their mobility, perhaps visiting the village shop for some
spices or supplies for a festival, but always accompanied by other children.
When a daughter-in-law of the village does leave her house, she is envel-
oped in a shawl, with her sari pulled down to cover her face. Even in her
courtyard, the end of her sari covers her face, and she speaks in a whisper
in the presence of her husband and any male senior to him. She will also
veil herself to show respect when other women are present or on ritual
occasions” (52-53).
94 Sexual segregation in early kingdoms gave men a new chance to have
some distinctive identity, but we should not ignore the other reasons for it.
In the first place, kings segregated their wives in harems and aristocrats
followed their example. It was precisely because the king and his hench-
men carried symbolic associations with lust as well as power that the
wives of other men needed protection in the home. Sexual segregation,
in short, had several causes. Enhancing the identity of elite men was both
a cause and an effect.
95 Michael B. Poliakoff, Combat Sports in the Ancient World: Competition,
Violence, and Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).
96 Ariston; quoted in ibid., 21–2.
97 Ibid., 129.
98 Aeschines; quoted in ibid., 130.
99 Ibid., 141.
100 Ibid., 142.
101 Ibid., 142–3.
102 Corinthians 9: 24–7.
103 Ibid., 144.
104 Alaka Hejib and Katherine K. Young, “Kliba on the Battlefield: Towards a
Reinterpretation of Arjuna’s Despondency,” Annals: Bhandarkar Oriental
Research Institute 61 (1980): 2–12.
105 Gilmore 189; quoting Robert Bellah, Tokugawa Religion: The Cultural
Roots of Modern Japan (New York: Free Press, 1985), 188–9.
106 Patrick Olivelle, “Rites of Passage: Hindu Rites” in the Encyclopedia of
Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 12: 390.
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107 Wendy Doniger, Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 117–20.
108 Ibid., 129.
109 Ibid.
c h a p t e r t wo
1 Michael Scheibach, “Transition to Manhood: Effects of the Great

Depression on Male Youth,” Adolescence 20.79 (1985): 738.
2 Factory work posed some problems for women that it did not for men.
Women with infants had to nurse them, and women with older children
had to take care of them. New laws kept women out of factories
and mines. In addition, of course, this eliminated job competition between
men and women. By the late nineteenth century exploitation had replaced
protection; women got jobs, especially in offices, but for lower wages than
those of men. “Often owners would fire men from jobs men claimed
exclusive rights to and hire women (despite their ‘physical ineptitude’)
because they could pay them less. But men were successful at keeping
women out of jobs that required long apprenticeship; they formed unions
and fought to keep women out of them. Some jobs required special train-
ing for which women were considered inadequate – until they were needed
during World War I” (Marilyn French, Beyond Power: On Women, Men,
and Morals [New York: Ballantine, 1985], 196). Nonetheless, conditions
in the factories were so deplorable – long hours, low pay, rampant disease
– that women who did not need to work there for survival often sought a
way out. Moving into the middle class carried with it, by comparison, a
greater freedom, security, and ease of existence (housework and childcare
being less onerous than these tasks plus factory work). But the gains had
created new problems: confinement to the home, the church, and the
ladies group along with total dependence on their husbands economically
(unless they had their own inheritances). To the degree that men really
“ruled” the roost or avoided it altogether, domesticity would have created
claustrophobia. Middle-class women, then, often experienced ambiva-
lence. They were better off than working-class women and better off than
some men of their own class. But the realm of domesticity could be intel-
lectually and emotionally stifling.
3 Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York:
Doubleday, 1977). See also Mary Warner Blanchard, Oscar Wilde’s
America: Counterculture in the Gilded Age (New Haven: Yale University
27079_Nathanson.indd 161 2015-08-11 11:14:29

Press, 1999). In addition to what Blanchard says about Wilde in particular,

she points out that American women were active in the feminizing aes-
thetic movement that many people associated with him. This movement
was possible, she writes, only because the Civil War had destroyed more
virile notions of manhood; notions of masculinity were ambiguous, in
short, and unstable. Actually, though, the Civil War had not destroyed
older notions of masculinity. Even the First World War presented only a
severe challenge to it (mainly in Europe, where the losses were far greater,
and included the intelligentsia). Half a century of peace had merely made
traditional notions of manhood more problematic than ever. American
men were more anxious to prove themselves worthy of heroic manhood,
but they had fewer opportunities to do so. Many men contented them-
selves with nostalgia for the age of heroes, especially in the South, and
empty posturing.
4 Frances Hodgson Burnett, Little Lord Fauntleroy (1887; New York:
Garland, 1976).
5 E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity
from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 33.
6 Ibid., 35–6.
7 Rotundo, “Boy Culture: Middle-Class Boyhood in Nineteenth-Century
America,” in Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in
Victorian America, ed. Mark C. Carnes and Clyde Griffen (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1990), 15.
8 In point of fact, according to Rotundo, they sometimes released their deep
hostility against the adults not only at home but also at school and in soci-
ety as a whole – that is, at “authority figures.”
9 See Paul Nathanson, Over the Rainbow: The Wizard of Oz as a Secular
Myth of America (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991),
109–79.
10 Rotundo, American Manhood, 35–6.
11 Ibid., 113.
12 Ibid., 145.
13 Ibid., 209.
14 Ibid., 178–9.
15 Psychosomatic illness originating with the urge to withdraw from mascu-
linity, whatever that might mean, occurs in many societies. The symptoms
of koro, in China, include “acute anxiety palpitations, precordial [sic] dis-
comfort, trembling, and intimations of impending death. The most flam-
boyant symptom, however, is the belief that the penis is either shriveling
or retracting into the belly” (Gilmore, Manhood in the Making, 173).
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Chinese psychiatrists, who refer to this illness as a “syndrome,” note that

it is most common among young, uneducated, weak, fearful men who
think they lack virility or among those who are narcissistic and prefer fan-
tasies to responsibilities. The same kind of illness, reports Gilmore, occurs
in Indonesia and other parts of Asia (ibid., 182).
16 Rotundo, American Manhood, 190.
17 Ibid., 191.
18 Ibid., 191–2.
19 Ibid., 172.
20 Ibid., 206.
21 Ibid., 192.
22 See Mark C. Carnes, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 1.
23 Mark C. Carnes, “Middle-Class Men and the Solace of Fraternal Ritual,”
in Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian
America, ed. Mark C. Carnes and Clyde Griffen (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1990), 41.
24 Ibid., “Middle-Class Men,” 41. Note the reversal here. In other texts, white
men are the “men” and natives the “women.”
25 Ibid., “Middle-Class Men,” 42.
26 Rotundo, American Manhood, 201–2.
27 Carnes, Secret Ritual, 121.
28 Ibid., 123.
29 Ibid., 54–5.
30 Ibid., 55.
31 Ibid., 57.
32 Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture
in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
33 Henry James, The Bostonians (1886; New York: Barnes and Noble, 2005).
34 George Williams founded the YM CA in 1844, as the Industrial Revolution
was gaining momentum in Britain. The aim was to get young men off the
streets by helping them develop healthy bodies, minds, and spirits. To that
end, the “Y” promoted prayer and scripture. From the beginning, though,
this movement was unusual in that it crossed denominational boundaries.
By 1851, branches had opened in both Boston and Montreal. Mary Jane
Kinnaird and Emma Robarts, also British, began a movement that would
eventually produce an international counterpart for women: the Y WC A .
35 See Clifford Putney, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in
Protestant America, 1800–1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2001). “Muscular Christianity” referred to church promotion of
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164 n ot e to pag e 51
physical culture: restoring to men who worked in offices not only health
and vigor but also delight in adventure and competition. The “Social
Gospel” referred to a liberal movement that competed with evangelical
or fundamentalist forms of Christianity. Drawing on the work of Walter
Rauschenbusch in books such as Christianity and the Social Crisis (New
York: Macmillan, 1907), they used theology to attack and eradicate injus-
tice in the modern world. This movement continued to produce social
activism throughout the Depression and influenced religious thinkers such
as Reinhold Niebuhr, H. Richard Niebuhr, and Martin Luther King Jr.
36 According to McDannell, hostility to popular devotional art of the nine-
teenth and early twentieth century is due to nothing other than a conspir-
acy of men against women. In a very problematic chapter, “Christian
Kitsch and the Rhetoric of Bad Taste,” she argues that the public debate
over Christian material culture relies primarily on neither aesthetics nor
theology but on sexism (although she refrains from using that word).
Condescension alone motivates many Christian theologians, especially
Protestant ones, to denounce art of any kind – let alone “bad” art. The
strong, they claim, require no images at all to focus or support their
faith; only the weak do. The former are literate and intellectual, in other
words, the latter illiterate and emotional – which is to say, according to
McDannell, primarily women and children. She reverses this hierarchy by
claiming that those considered weak (women) are actually better in some
way than those considered strong (men). In fact, she claims that the
dichotomy is an illusion. “It is inevitable that a book on material
Christianity will include the activities of women, children, and lay men.
However, my intention is also to discredit the impression that educated
men do not form relationships with pious art, use healing water, or wear
religious garments. Lay men and clergy typically hold key positions in the
production and distribution of religious goods and the construction of
Christian landscapes … Material Christianity is a means by which both
elite and non-elite Christians express their relationship to God and the
supernatural, articulate ideas about life after death, and form religious
communities. To gloss over, ignore, or condemn material Christianity
because of its association with ‘marginal’ Christians is to misunderstand
who uses the tangible and sexual in religion” (12–13).
Elsewhere, though, McDannell’s interest in “gender” (women) causes
more problems than it solves. Her claim, as we say, is based on the con-
spiracy theory of history (although she does not use that term, either).
“The masculinization of the Christian arts is part of a subtle strategy, dat-
ing from the mid-nineteenth century, to continue Christianity’s patriarchal
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nature by making the church a comfortable place for men (whether minis-
ters and priests knew what made ‘men’ comfortable is another question).
Churches filled with women were not enough. ‘Honest’ religion had to
appeal to the normative human being: man” (195). At first glance, this
argument seems merely superficial. The problem was primarily one of
theology, after all, not aesthetics. Many theologians began to realize that
the reaction against Calvinism, a religion that relies heavily on cognitive
assent to doctrine, had gone too far in the direction of emotional self-
indulgence and passive dependence on divine rewards in the hereafter.
For whatever reason, men (and women) took the former seriously but
not the latter. McDannell’s conclusion is uncharitable, therefore, to say the
least. On what conceivable grounds could pastors have remained indiffer-
ent to the potential loss of half their flock? How could they possibly have
discarded the hope of attracting more men? (Church leaders now see the
opposite problem, it is worth noting, even though the women who attend
church still outnumber the men who do.) This had little or nothing to do
with notions of a “normative human being.” It had everything to do with
common sense (filling the pews) and basic theology (offering salvation to
everyone).
By referring to this “normative human being,” of course, McDannell
herself acknowledges a problem underlying any superficial rhetoric in the
debate over church art. In fact, that is her main point. For her, though,
what underlies the rhetoric is misogyny. “As long as any cultural expres-
sion is perceived as positive,” writes McDannell, “it is accorded either
neutral or masculine characteristics. When something needs to be deval-
ued, one rhetorical device available is to call it effeminate. Another device
is to accuse it of contradicting ‘natural boundaries’” (194). To illustrate
this double standard, she observes that a “feminized statue of Christ is
seen as perverse, but St Joan of Arc dressed in battle gear is heroic” (195).
But her analogy is flawed. Joan did dress and act like a man, but Jesus did
not dress or act like a woman. To the best of our knowledge, at any rate,
none of his contemporaries claimed that Jesus was effeminate. Nor would
anyone today consider his behavior effeminate. There really is something
perverse about distorting information that is available to anyone who
actually reads the gospels. As for contradicting natural boundaries, it is
true that Christian churches have always been gendered (in spite of what
St Paul said about there being “neither male nor female” in the Kingdom
of God). So far, though, every human society has been gendered (some
more thoroughly than others). It is fine to argue that gender itself is evil –
that no distinction between the sexes should be acknowledged – as long as
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you provide a reasonable solution that would inevitably be generated by

the experiment. This requires an explanation.
McDannell acknowledges the widespread belief among American men
after the Civil War that Christianity had been feminized. (Men were alien-
ated by pictures of Jesus, for example, that depicted him as a “bearded
woman.”) Consequently, they deserted the churches and flocked instead
to fraternal lodges. This much, historians have documented extensively.
See Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York:
Doubleday, 1977) and A Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the
1920s (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1977), and Mark C. Carnes,
Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). But McDannell implies that
men had no good reason for believing that Christianity had been thor-
oughly or even extensively feminized. They came to that conclusion, she
argues, only because they had been culturally conditioned to identify senti-
mentality not only as feminine but also as inferior and intellectuality not
only as masculine but also as superior. Understood this way, the problem
was simply one of power: to attain greater moral and spiritual power than
women (or to maintain moral and spiritual power over women), men had
to ridicule the feminine Jesus and “construct” a more masculine one.
Actually, the problem was (and still is) much more complex.
At issue for men by the mid-nineteenth century was not so much power
(which McDannell defines in purely economic and political terms) as iden-
tity. Men complained with good reason about their confusion. Consider
this in the specific context of religion. At church and at home (presided
over by mothers who had become “household angels”), boys learned to
love their enemies, turn the other cheek, and lie passively on the “bosom”
of Jesus. At school and everywhere else, they learned to compete aggres-
sively or even ruthlessly in the world of business, take up arms if necessary
in support of national causes, and be independent at all costs. How could
they admire a “meek and mild” saviour? To imitate that version of Jesus
meant to imitate women. In itself, that might not have been a bad idea;
both sexes, in fact, should be able to learn something useful from the
other. In the end, though, the fact remained that men were not women.
And if the churches could not tell men what distinctive, necessary, and
publicly valued contribution they could make to society specifically as
men, maybe other institutions could. For a while, it seemed as if father-
hood might fill this need. Fathers were once portrayed carefully reading
and explaining the Bible to their families. But, as McDannell herself points
out, the image of motherhood soon trumped that of fatherhood. Then, it
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n ot e to pag e 51 1 67
seemed as if the business world or even the military world might serve this
need (no matter how destructively for society and self-destructively for
men). Neither has been able to do so, of course. Women can do everything
that men can do, after all, but men cannot do everything that women can
do. Consequently, the situation has remained just as pathological as it ever
was. “While the men of the 1950s had firm control over business and poli-
tics,” notes McDannell, “they feared the moral and nurturing power of
their wives just as men had done in the previous century” (195). Just so.
The point here is that it is just as tendentious for McDannell to trivialize
the needs of men as it was for the academics and clerics she attacks to
trivialize those of women.
Not everything that McDannell says about gender is wrong. The prob-
lem is that she pays attention only to notions of gender that men – theolo-
gians, popes, art critics – presumably established in the interest of men. She
ignores the fact that women have always had their own ideas about gender,
ideas that paralleled or even contradicted those of men. Among those who
argued most persistently for the innate moral and spiritual superiority of
women, for example, were many of the early feminists – those who were
active at the very moment in American history discussed by McDannell.
And ironically, considering McDannell’s theory, these feminists claimed
that it was precisely their emotional proclivities that gave women their
superiority – and their justification for leading moral and social crusades
such as the temperance movement. They agreed with the essentialist theory
that women were governed by emotion and men by intellect. They just dis-
agreed (as women had for centuries) over the value assigned to each. In
other words, women propagated the same dualism that McDannell attacks.
37 At the end of the twentieth century, women are still crusading against the
evils that they associate mainly or exclusively with men, although the par-
ticular evils have changed. The new ones are pornography, racism, sexism,
and “homophobia.” Even the current critique of men as inherently evil
relies on the nineteenth-century view that men are inherently immoral
and women inherently moral.
38 C. Sharp; quoted in Gary Kinsman, The Regulation of Desire: Sexuality
in Canada (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1987), 85. Some members of the
middle class, however, found this trend away from motherhood and family
disturbing. At the turn of the century, Theodore Roosevelt remarked that
“The woman who flinches from childbirth stands on a par with the soldier
who drops his rifle and runs in battle” (Theodore Roosevelt; quoted in
ibid., 50). In Canada, similar attitudes prevailed. There were campaigns to
restore marriage and motherhood. In 1908, for instance, the Reverend C.
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Sharp warned his parishioners as follows: “God abhors the spirit so preva-
lent nowadays which condemns motherhood. How it must grieve Him
when He sees what we call race suicide: when He sees the problems of
married life approached lightly and wantonly; based on nothing higher
and nobler than mere luxury, and gratification of passion.” The victims
of the First World War greatly exacerbated anxiety because of a declining
reproductive rate. “The war,” observes Kinsman, “heightened the emphasis
on patriotism and maternity and the interdependence of cradle and
sword” (85). During the 1920s in Canada, Helen MacMurchy produced
a series of “Little Blue Books.” These promoted the idea that “the decent
wish for a true woman is to be a mother” and argued that motherhood
was “the highest form of patriotism, for if ‘No Baby, No Nation’” (quoted
in Kinsman 105). Governments encouraged women to return home, partly
due to anxiety over depopulation of the middle and upper classes.
Nonetheless, one effect was to bolster masculine identity by recreating
separate and distinctive identities for men and women.
39 Men tried several strategies. One of these was to explain that their secret
activities really involved social service for widows, orphans, and cripples.
Another was to explain that “imperiled by unregenerate men, True
Womanhood required the assistance and protection of the lodge” (Carnes,
Secret Ritual, 83). Yet another strategy was to explain that the lodge itself
humanized the wild nature of man and made him as “mild, gentle, patient,
charitable, and tender as a woman” (ibid., 84). The most radical strategy
was to set up parallel lodges for women. The Degree of Rebekah, for
instance, was the institutional counterpart of the Odd Fellows. But these
women’s branches, Carnes points out, were parallel in name only. Dull
biblical parables replaced the dramatic initiatory structures, for example,
moral woman replaced courageous man, and male ritual officers kept tabs
on the women. If the secrecy of men still bothered women, at any rate,
they could now live with it.
40 Early Western nurses included the Knights Hospitallers, for instance, a
military order whose vocation was to care for pilgrims to the Holy Land.
It was only in the nineteenth century, due to the efforts of Florence
Nightingale during the Crimean War, along with Dorothea Dix and Clara
Barton during the Civil War, that nursing became a women’s profession
(although a few men have now entered the field once more).
41 Rotundo, American Manhood, 174.
42 Ibid., 232.
43 Ibid., 226.
44 Ibid., 223–4.
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45 Ibid., 226.
46 Ibid., 245.
47 Ibid., 235.
48 Theodore Roosevelt, “Strenuous Life” speech of 1899; quoted in Rotundo,
American Manhood, 235.
49 The idea of companionate marriage, or family intimacy, was not new. It
had originated among the upper classes in the eighteenth century.
50 By the 1920s, membership in the lodges was declining. For those who
continued as members, there was less emphasis on the initiation rituals
and more on service and charity. This explains the current respectability
of Rotarians, Lions, and Shriners. In the wake of the First World War, men
and women were forming the first youth culture. Carnes seems oblivious
to nineteenth-century boy culture.
51 Organizations such as the Boy Scouts of America, begun in the 1920s,
packaged games and skills with rules and moral subtexts. These measures
helped (Rotundo, “Boy Culture,” 34–6).
52 Robert L. Griswald, Fatherhood in America: A History (New York: Basic
Books, 1993), 92.
53 The Depression affected many countries, but it was most severe in the
United States and in the countries that relied most heavily on its economy:
Canada because of its geographical proximity and Germany because of its
total reliance on American funding (and the American dollar’s strength)
to rebuild its industries after the war and pay the staggering bill for war
reparations.
54 Robert Lind and Helen Lind, Middletown in Transition (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, 1937), 177–8; quoted in Scheibach, “Transition to
Manhood,” 735.
55 Dixon Wecter, The Age of the Great Depression: 1929–1941 (New York:
New Viewpoints, 1975), 32.
56 Scheibach, “Transition to Manhood,” 730.
57 Ibid., 739–40. The author notes that these points were made by Maxine
Davis in The Lost Generation (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 90. This
book relied on a survey, which Fortune published. According to the survey,
young college-educated wives preferred the traditional role of homemaker.
Only 5.6% of married women disagreed in 1940 (if their husbands had
adequate incomes). It is worth noting, however, that their husbands pre-
ferred them to work outside the home.
58 Bruno Bettelheim, “The Problems of Generations,” in Youth: Change and
Challenge, ed. Erik Erikson (New York: Basic Books, 1963), 79; quoted
in Scheibach, “Transition to Manhood,” 732.
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59 Ibid., 738.
60 Ibid., 728.
61 Howard Bell, Youth Tell Their Story (Washington: American Council on
Education, 1938). The girls listed their ten occupational choices. These
were: nurse, teacher, stenographer, housewife, secretary, beautician, family
domestic, artist, musician, and inside salesperson. Surprisingly, six girls
were actually working in the jobs of their choice. The same was not true
of boys. Their expectations reflect the traditional importance of being a
provider. They preferred the following jobs: engineer, mechanic, farm
owner, aviator, physician, lawyer, electrician, teacher, musician, and
machinist. Not one boy, however, was working at the job of his choice.
Instead, all were working as farm labourers, industrial labourers, inside
salespersons, unpaid family workers, textile workers, clerks, truck drivers,
general helpers, and W PA or CCC workers.
62 Scheibach, “Transition to Manhood,” 735–6.
63 The welfare state originated in direct response to the social evils of indus-
trialism. The term “welfare state” appeared in Britain after the Second
World War, describing a state that would protect people from dependency
and destitution due to sickness, accidents, disabilities, unemployment, and
old age. But the welfare state had precedents even in ancient times. Rome
was the first welfare state. When the empire was at its height, hundreds
of thousands were on the dole. They received free grain from government
stores (and free entertainment at the circuses as well, not incidentally,
which kept their minds off poverty and misery). As a result, the urban
poor soon formed a permanent underclass. The modern welfare state, with
its vast bureaucracy, is far more effective. One of the first was Bismarck’s
Germany, which followed more gradual trends in France and Britain. His
primary aim was to maintain the political status quo by beating the social-
ists at their own game.
64 Even in the new millennium, when many countries are becoming painfully
aware of the financial burden that this system creates, very few people
would (openly) advocate its complete elimination. Nonetheless, they do
discuss unforeseen problems. Most modern states, including the United
States, have run up staggering national deficits. And the rich are not eager
to pay for welfare programs out of their tax dollars.
Another problem is even more contentious. Like ancient Rome, the
United States now has a huge and seemingly permanent underclass. Every
major social problem has many causes, and this one is surely no exception.
One factor, though, is particularly important: the effect of a welfare sys-
tem on families. The plight of single mothers has received a great deal of
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n ot e s to pag e 60 171
attention from journalists, activists, bureaucrats, politicians, and academ-

ics. In the run-up to welfare reform, some argued that these women found
it easier to take money from the government, having one child after
another, than to work for a living. Others argued that blaming these
women was easier than fixing the economy. So far, though, relatively few
politicians have asked about the plight of men in general and fathers in
particular. President Obama took Father’s Day of 2009, for example, as an
opportunity to scold men for abandoning their families or reneging on
child-support payments instead of congratulating those who defied the
legal and cultural forces against them and tried to be good fathers (Barack
Obama, “Obama’s Father’s Day Message: Dads Need to Step Up,” 14 May
2009, The Hill; available online at: thehill.com/capital-living/in-the-
know/98301-obama-welcomes-lady-huskies; accessed 14 October 2010).
Fortunately, his address in 2010 was more benign. But on the ground, as it
were, millions of fathers see not the slightest hope of earning enough to
support their families financially. As a result of hopelessness, let alone fac-
tors such as the devaluation of fatherhood both legally and culturally,
some do not stick around. What does this mean for their sense of identity
as men? What does it mean for their sons (and daughters)? This problem
is a ticking demographic time bomb.
chapter three
1 Hillary Clinton; quoted in Jerry A. Boggs, “The Greater Outrage for

Female Victims of Governments’ Brutality Perpetuates Risk to Both
Sexes,” 17 December 2003, Male Matters, online at: battlinbog.blog-city.
com/governments_violence_against_the_sexes.htm, accessed 13 July 2010.
2 Ibid.
3 Nancy Astor, quoted in Juliet Nicolson, The Great Silence, 1918–1920:
Living in the Shadow of the Great War (Toronto: McArthur, 2009).
4 “Despite intensive research by historians there is not – and there will never
be – a definitive list of the casualties inflicted during World War I. Where
detailed record-keeping was attempted[,] the demands of battle under-
mined it, as the destructive nature of the war, a conflict where soldiers
could be wholly obliterated or instantly buried, destroyed both the records
themselves and the memories of those who knew the fates of their com-
rades. For many countries the figures only vary within the hundreds, even
tens, of thousands, but those of others – particularly France – can be over
a million apart. Consequently, the numbers have been rounded to the near-
est thousand (Japan is an exception, given the low number) and the figures
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in this, and almost every other list, will differ; however, the proportions
should remain similar and it is these (represented here as percentages)
which allow the greatest insight. In addition, there is no convention as to
whether the dead and wounded of the British Empire are listed under this
umbrella title or by individual nation (and there is certainly no convention
for those regions which have since divided). I have decided to recognise as
many of the constituent countries as possible” (Robert Wilde, “Casualties
of World War I,” European History, undated, online at: europeanhistory.
about.com/cs/worldwar1/a/blww1casualties.htm, accessed 28 February
2011). Nonetheless, no one has seriously questioned the unprecedented
number of casualties: 44% of those mobilized had been killed (which was
a much lower proportion than in France, Germany, Austria, and Russia).
Given the total population (approximately 35,000,000 in 1921), this
meant that few families had not lost fathers, husbands, sons, or brothers.
Wilde took his figures from Colin Nicolson, The Longman Companion to
the First World War (London: Longman 2001) 248.
5 See Michael David-Fox, “Multiple Modernities vs. Neo-Traditionalism:
On Recent Debates in Russian and Soviet History,” Jahrbücher für
Geschichte Osteuropas 55.4 (2006): 1–36. The definition of “modern” is
very problematic, to say the least, for both political scientists and histori-
ans. Most people in countries such as Britain and the United States have
come to assume an inherent link between modernity and high levels of
education, industrialization, market economies, personal liberty, and polit-
ical institutions that support liberal democracy. But modernity has had
another face even in the West (let alone Russia and Asia). In Germany, for
instance, liberal democracy did not emerge from local political and legal
traditions. Instead, other countries imposed it on Germany after the First
World War and then again after the Second World War. Like other Western
countries, Germany – or at least German rulers – had experienced the
Enlightenment. And that eventually produced many features that we now
associate with modernity – but not institutions that supported liberal
democracy. Does this mean that Nazi Germany was not a modern state?
It would for those who make one or both of the following assumptions:
that the definition of modernity should rely entirely on one model (such
as Britain or France) or that countries must have every feature of moder-
nity according to that definition (as distinct from most or many features)
in order to qualify as modern countries. We agree, instead, with scholars
who argue that there are at least two opposing paradigms of modernity.
One paradigm originated under the rule of “enlightened monarchs” or
“benevolent autocrats” such as Catherine the Great of Russia and
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Frederick the Great of Prussia. It led to modern totalitarian states, which

(unlike earlier ones) have supported collectivist ideologies. The other para-
digm originated in constitutional monarchies such as Britain or republics
such as the United States (and France after several r evolutions and coun-
ter-revolutions). It led to modern democratic states, which have supported
liberalism and individualism.
6 From our perspective here, “modern” refers to the period that began in
approximately 1800. It is impossible on practical grounds for us to discuss
warfare and manhood in all modern countries or even all Western coun-
tries. We refer to Western Europe, primarily in connection with the French
Revolution and the First World War. We refer mainly, however, to the
United States. This is partly because the American context will be familiar
to most readers, but also because the American armed forces are more
active than those of any other country in the Western world. This means
that the stakes are higher for boys and men in the United States than they
are elsewhere. By “modern,” moreover, we do not refer to the vaguely
defined period in which we now live; intellectual historians often refer to
this as the postmodern period.
7 Historically, India confined military service to one class (the Kshatriya),
for example, and so did Japan (the Samurai).
8 John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Vintage Press, 1994), 228,
233–4.
9 By hiring out their bodies, mercenary soldiers were the male equivalents of
female prostitutes. This observation does not rely on any moral judgment
of either mercenaries or prostitutes; it is simply a factual observation,
which should be useful to those who study the functions of men and
women.
10 As George L. Mosse puts it, “Heroism, death, and sacrifice became associ-
ated with manliness, as did the discipline that had encouraged the military
to advocate the introduction of gymnastics into the school curriculum.
The new citizen army of the French Revolution was in itself a school for
manliness. At first, the French Revolution had relied on volunteers for its
defense, but in 1793 the Legislative Assembly proclaimed the levy of the
whole of the male population capable of bearing arms. This was a new
departure, the end of mercenaries who had fought for money or adven-
ture. Now soldiers were conscripted in a noble cause that itself would
inspire their struggle” (The Image of Man: the Creation of Modern
Masculinity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 50.
11 The expression “social contract” was a common one among philosophers
of the time, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau in The Social Contract. This
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was not a contract in the current sense, because it was imposed by the
state and was therefore not the result of negotiations between equals.
Nonetheless, even the state now acknowledged the need to give something
in return for compliance: full citizenship.
12 John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Vintage Books, 1993). “In
the long run, the establishment of universal conscription in the advanced
states of continental Europe was matched by the extension of the vote,
though for parliaments generally less responsible than those of the Anglo-
Saxon countries and by processes that had no direct or visible connection.
The result, however, was that, at the outbreak of the First World War,
Europe was composed of states in most of which some form of representa-
tive institutions existed and all of which maintained large conscripted
armies” (234).
13 Ibid., 228.
14 Here is John Keegan’s summary of events: “By 1917, the costs, psychologi-
cal as well as material, of making every man a soldier began to have their
inevitable effects. There was a large-scale mutiny in the French army in the
spring of that year; in the autumn the Russian army collapsed altogether.
In the following year, the Germany army went the same way; at the
November armistice, on the return home, the army demobilized itself and
the German empire was thrown into revolution. It was the almost cyclical
outcome of a process begun 125 years earlier, when the French had res-
cued a revolution by appealing to all citizens to support it with arms.
Politics had become the extension of war and the age-old dilemma of
states – of how to maintain efficient armies that were both affordable and
reliable – had revealed itself to be as far from solution as when Sumer had
first laid out its revenues to pay for soldiers” (ibid., 234; our emphasis).
Nonetheless, conscription has remained in place to this day in almost all
European countries.
15 Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York: Macmillan, 1962). See
also Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1975).
16 In 1914, for example, Jewish men were looking for opportunities to prove
in battle that they were worthy not merely of manhood but also of citizen-
ship in the states that had recently extended full citizenship to Jews.
17 In many ways, the US Civil War was the first modern war. Both sides were
industrial societies, although the North had moved much further in this
direction than the South (unless you classify the plantation system as
industrialized agriculture). Both sides relied on the mass production of
weapons, on railroads to transport their troops, and on the telegraph to
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communicate with troops on the front lines. Much of the fighting was
mechanized and therefore impersonal. For the first time, moreover, pho-
tographers such as Matthew Brady recorded the reality of war: bodies
strewn on battlefields, the ruins of cities, and so on. In other ways, though,
the Civil War was the last “traditional” war. Hand-to-hand combat con-
tinued with sabers, knives, or the bayonets on rifles. And photographers
sometimes rearranged scenes in order to make their pictures acceptable for
newspapers and magazines. The public preferred to maintain a romantic
perspective on the war. They expected dead soldiers to look like sleeping
heroes, not mutilated corpses.
18 Among Hitler’s early “accomplishments” was to rearm Germany by rein-
troducing military conscription in 1935. The United States has historically
preferred to avoid conscription in peacetime, although the draft continued
for twenty-eight years after the Second World War. Canada conscripted
young men in both the First World War and the Second World War but
refrained from forcing them into combat because of political pressure from
Quebec, which resented fighting for the British Empire. Britain entered the
First World War with a volunteer army but found it necessary to introduce
military conscription for men by 1916. During the Second World War,
Britain conscripted both young men and young women but expected only
young men to serve in combat. Israel still conscripts both men and women,
but expects only men – and not only young men – to serve in combat.
Israel does, however, allow exemptions for Orthodox young men who are
studying in religious colleges. Sweden, which has not gone to war for
centuries, conscripts only young men for its army – even though Sweden
prides itself on sexual equality. Switzerland conscripts only men for its
army, even though it has not gone to war for many centuries – and even
though Swiss women won the right to vote recently precisely on the basis
of “equal rights.” Many European countries conscript only young men for
military service but allow them to choose “alternative” forms of service.
In that case, you might argue, military service would no longer be univer-
sal and therefore could no longer be a defining feature of manhood. If that
were true, however, why do these countries not conscript young women and
allow them the same choice between military and other forms of service?
19 Käthe Kollwitz; quoted in Anton Gill, A Dance between Flames: Berlin
Between the Wars (London: Abacus, 1993), 36.
20 Three French monuments, however, express pacifism implicitly or even
explicitly. Instead of depicting soldiers, they depict widows and children
(along with names of the fallen). At Gentioux-Pigerolles, a child points to
the following inscription: Maudite soit la guerre (Cursed be war).
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176 n ot e s to pag e s 68–7 1
21 Edward VIII came to Arras, France, and dedicated this colossal monument
in 1936.
22 Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1929).
23 Ernst Johannsen, Vier von der Infanterie: Ihre letzten Tage an der West-
Front 1918 (Hamburg: Fackelreiter-Verlag, 1929).
24 Kamaradschaft (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1930).
25 Westfront 1918 (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1930).
26 All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930).
27 The same passage (“It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s fatherland”)
appeared in several ironic contexts during and after the war. These include
anti-war poems by Wilfred Owen, who described this passage as “the old
lie” shortly before being killed in action, and Ezra Pound.
28 After a few years, some people in the victorious countries were having sec-
ond thoughts of their own about pacifism. They now worried about being
unprepared to face the threat of conquest by totalitarian regimes in Italy
and Germany. Pacifism, it seemed to an increasing number of people, was
still a luxury. But it was too late.
29 In the German Empire, approximately 11,000,000 men had been mobi-
lized, 1,718,000 killed, and 4,234,000 wounded: a casualty rate of 54%.
In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, approximately 6,500,000 men had been
mobilized, 1,200,000 killed, and 3,600,000 wounded: a casualty rate of
74% (Robert Wilde, “Casualties of World War I”).
30 See Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost
Cause, 1865-1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980).
31 See Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma,
Mourning, and Recovery (New York: Picador/Holt, 2003).
32 R.C. Sherriff, Journey’s End (1929; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987).
33 On 9 February 1933, after Hitler had become chancellor of Germany, the
Oxford Union sponsored its infamous “King and Country” debate. Its
resolution, that “this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and
Country,” passed by 275 votes to 153.
34 Pat Barker, Regeneration (New York: Plume, 1991); The Ghost Road
(London: Viking, 1995).
35 In the French Empire, 7,500,000 men had been mobilized, 1,385,000 killed,
and 4,266,000 wounded: a casualty rate of 75% (Wilde).
36 La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937).
37 In the United States, 4,272,500 men had been mobilized, 117,000 killed,
and 204,000 wounded: a casualty rate of 8% (Wilde).
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38 This book appeared only a few years before the United States entered the
Second World War. By that time, Trumbo and his publisher agreed to sus-
pend printing a book that would undermine the war effort.
39 Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun (New York: Lippincott, 1939).
40 See J. Garry Clifford and Samuel R. Spencer Jr, The First Peacetime Draft
(Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1986).
41 Walter Thatcher Winslow and Frank P. Davidson, eds., American Youth:
An Enforced Renaissance (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940) 30.
42 The Very Thought of You (Delmer Daves, 1944).
43 Since You Went Away (John Cromwell, 1944).
44 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War (New York: Time-Life,
1959) vol. 2, 486.
45 The Men (Fred Zinnemann, 1950).
46 The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946).
47 Matthew Nelson, “No Guts, No Cory,” Boy Meets World, episode 95,
A B C , WV N Y, Burlington, Vt., 7 November 1997.
48 Many thousands of soldiers deserted on both sides, for instance, during
the Civil War. Some were imprisoned, others executed and still others
lynched by fellow soldiers. During the First World War, 20,000 soldiers
from the British Empire alone deserted. During the Second World War,
20,000 American soldiers deserted.
49 The level of testosterone rises and falls dramatically every day. No testos-
terone high alone can explain why many (but by no means all) men can
endure months or even years at war. As we say, it takes a massive cultural
effort to make them do so.
50 See Theodore D. Kemper, Social Structure and Testosterone: Explorations
of the Socio-bio-social Chain (New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University
Press, 1990). Kemper was among the first to study testosterone in connec-
tion with not only endocrinology and physiology but also psychology and
sociology. Moreover, he was among the first to depart from conventional
wisdom in several important ways. For one thing, he challenged assump-
tions about testosterone that had relied on animal studies. “The animal
research showed that dominance (often gained in violent encounters) or
loss of dominance affected T [testosterone]. Thus, social dominance, or
loss of it, among humans was conceived of as the critical independent
variable … But some studies showed that another type of social encounter,
though usually not as striking or dramatic, nor as compressed in time as in
dominance attainment, could also lead to T elevation. This type of
encounter involved recognition by a social group of significant personal
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attainment or contribution to normatively supported group goals. In this

mode of social encounter, opponents did not clash, and no one was
defeated. However, individually or collectively, others in the group found
reason to grant approval, deference, reward, benefit, rank, and the like …
The reasons for this [second mode] can be quite diverse: the other con-
forms to a group standard for performance, beauty, physical stature, wor-
thiness of character, or valued ascriptive attributes; the other is of noble
blood, for example. The social response here is to accord benefits, reward,
attention, precedence, affection, interest, concern, and, at the ultimate
level, love. In contradistinction to power relations in which compliance
is gained through coercion, compliance with the wishes and desires of
the other … is voluntary and uncoerced” (7–8).
51 C. Eisenegger, M. Naef, R. Snozzi, M. Heinrichs, and E. Fehr, “Prejudice
and Truth about the Effect of Testosterone on Human Bargaining
Behaviour,” Nature 463 (21 January 2010): 356–9.
52 “Testosterone Does Not Induce Aggression, Study Shows,” 9 December
2009, ScienceDaily, online at: sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/12/
091208132241.htm, accessed 2 November 2010.
53 See Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to
Kill in War and Society (New York: Back Bay Books, 2009) and On
Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and
in Peace (Milstadt, Ill.: Warrior Science Publications, 2008). From a
primatological or ethological point of view, moreover, see Frans de Waal,
Peacemaking among the Primates (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1989). The author’s point is that non-human primates are reluctant to kill
members of their own species.
54 During the First World War, 3,000 British deserters were sentenced to
death and 300 executed. During the Second World War, 20,000 Americans
deserted, 49 American deserters were sentenced to death, and 1 executed.
55 Whether they believed strongly enough to sacrifice their own lives specifi-
cally for the nation’s cause, as distinct from saving their comrades or other
personal motivations, is something that we cannot know. And whether
any state had a moral right to sacrifice them anyway is something that is
not directly relevant here.
56 Sabine Baring-Gould wrote the words of “Onward Christian Soldiers” in
1865, and Arthur Sullivan set them to music in 1871. Nowadays, some
Christians dislike the link between religion and war.
57 According to Shalom Spiegel, at least some of the early rabbis interpreted
the story, what Jews call the “binding of Isaac,” in a very similar way
(but without using it as a prototype, of course, for the Christian story).
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Realizing what his father must do in order to demonstrate faithfulness to

God, Isaac actually helps Abraham perform the sacrifice. This makes him
both a sacrificial victim and a self-sacrificing martyr. Spiegel adds, in fact,
that the canonical version of this story probably had a prototype in which
God does not call off the sacrifice. For Jews, at any rate, the canonical
version is about God’s rejection of human sacrifice, not the prototype of a
final human sacrifice. See Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial: On the Legends
and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice, The
Akedah (New York: Behrman House, 1967).
58 See, for example, Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23. A few early
Christians took up the cross, sometimes literally, as martyrs. Most have
done so metaphorically. Monks, for instance, sacrifice themselves by giving
up various physical and material comforts. Some Christians in Nazi
Europe, on the other hand, hid Jews at the cost of losing their own lives.
59 The ultimate goal of a Christian woman is likewise to sacrifice herself for
others – but in different ways, which Catholics, in particular, have associ-
ated with motherhood.
60 John 15:13.
61 For Mary Daly, that presents Christian women with an insoluble problem.
No woman, after all, can ever be a virgin mother. A paradox that might
make sense on the divine level makes no sense on the human level.
Ordinary women could be either mothers or virgins but not virgin moth-
ers. See Mary Daly, The Church and the Second Sex (New York: Harper
and Row, 1975). Given her exclusive preoccupation with the needs and
problems of women, Daly does not examine or even acknowledge the pos-
sibility that Christian men might have a very similar problem. Just as few
women can appropriate the virginity of Mary (and no women at all could
combine that with motherhood), no man can appropriate the divine sin-
lessness of Christ (let alone combine that with human sinfulness).
Moreover, Daly adds, the Catholic ideal for women is to be virgins –
that is, nuns – instead of mothers (let alone the sensual and hedonistic
women that Daly considers essential to femaleness). She assumes that the
(for her, oppressive) virginal ideal applies only to women. But because
Jesus himself never married (and presumably remained virginal), and
because St. Paul said that marriage was desirable only as an alternative to
“burning” with lust and therefore indulging in fornication, celibacy has
been the ideal state for women and men. So, Daly ignores what should be
an obvious parallel between imitating the Virgin Mary and imitating
Christ. Just as no woman can be both a virgin and a mother, no man can
be both sinful and sinless.
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62 Adelyne More [C.K. Ogden], “The One Thing Needful: A Suggestion to

Members of Parliament,” Cambridge Magazine, 29 January 1916, 240;
cited in Vincent Sherry, The Great War and the Language of Modernism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 67. The word “holocaust” (or
“Holocaust”) refers now primarily to the mass murder of Jews in Nazi
Europe. The Hebrew word for that event is shoah, which means catastro-
phe. By associating the mass murder of Jews with burnt offerings at the
temple, however, the word “holocaust” implies that their deaths had some
theological and atoning significance (even though that would make Hitler
a metaphorical priest of God).
63 Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost
Cause: 1865–1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980).
64 Katharine Lee Bates’s poem appeared in, America the Dream (New York:
T. Crowell, 1930), 102; our emphases.
65 There are countless examples from every country that participated in the
First World War (and other wars). The memorial at St Dunstan’s College
in London, England, reads as follows: “These tablets are erected in order
that the memory of those who gave their lives for the freedom of their
country in the Great War, 1914–1918, may live as a perpetual inspiration
to many generations of St Dunstan’s boys.” The headmistress, who led the
dedication ceremony, referred also, of course, to the old boys who were
killed during the Second World War (“Remembrance Ceremony 11 Novem-
ber 2010,” 2010, St Dunstan’s, online at: stdunstans.org.uk/news.php?
news_id=1159, accessed 8 December 2010).
Here are two unexceptional American examples. The memorial plaque
at the City Hall in Arlington, Washington, reads as follows: “In honor of
the boys of the town of Arlington who paid the supreme sacrifice in the
world war, 1914–1918.” Joe Mabel photographed the plaque (“File:
Arlington, W A: City Hall W W I Memorial,” 16 May 2009, Wikimedia
Commons, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arlington,_WA_-_City_
Hall_WWI_memorial.jpg, accessed 8 December 2010). The text on this
plaque, dedicated in 1924, is ambiguous. Who actually “paid,” after all,
the town or the boys? The dates, 1914–18, are unusual on an American
monument, because the United States entered the war in 1917. The memo-
rial plaque in Palatka, Florida, is unambiguous in its imagery (although its
dates, for some reason, are 1917–19): “Erected to perpetuate the honored
memory of those citizens of Putnam County, Fla., who gave their lives in
the world war.” Someone identified as Ebyabe photographed the plaque
(“File: Palatka World War I Memorial,” 12 August 2007, Wikimedia
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Commons, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palatka_WWI_memorial01.
jpg, accessed 8 December 2010).
66 The poppy became a symbol of wartime carnage. John McCrae wrote “In
Flanders Fields” in 1915, referring to the poppies that grew on one of the
bloodiest battlefield. In 1921, the Royal British Legion began to sell artifi-
cial poppies for use on Remembrance Day.
67 Arkwright’s poem appeared in The Supreme Sacrifice, and Other Poems in
Time of War (London: Skeffington, 1919); our emphases. See also Percy
Dearmer, Songs of Praise Discussed: A Handbook to the Best-Known
Hymns and to Others Recently Introduced (London: Oxford University
Press, 1933), 167. It has appeared ever since in hymnbooks such as The
Hymnary of the United Church of Canada (Toronto: United Church
Publishing House, n.d.) #525.
68 Siegfried Sassoon, “On Passing the New Menin Gate,”in Norton
Anthology of English Literature, vol. 2, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New
York: Norton, 2006); Sassoon wrote this poem between 1927 and 1928.
Quoted here by permission.
69 See, for example, Leviticus 18:21, 2 Kings 23:10, Jeremiah 32:35.
70 Billy Hughes; quoted in Takver, “Syd Nicholls, Radical Comic Artist; The
I.W.W.-Fatty Finn Connection Revealed,” [dated] 30 April 1999, Takver’s
Initiatives, online at: takver.com/history/nicholls.htm, accessed 7 Decem-
ber 2010.
71 For some reason, the English title is in the singular, not the plural: The
Trench. The Nazis destroyed this “degenerate” painting. The same image
appears in the central panel of Der Krieg (The War), however, which Dix
painted between 1929 and 1932.
72 For one thing, the cross is made of wood. More significantly, the cross
represents the new Tree of Life (just as Jesus represents the new Adam).
73 Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece (1515).
74 The Believers (John Schlesinger, 1987).
75 [Blogger number] 10, [identified as] Ravi, “The Opinionator,” New York
Times, 18 March 2011; response to Peter Catapano, “On Libya,
Suspicious Minds.”
76 Stephen Shapiro, Manhood: A New Definition (New York: Putnam’s Sons,
1984), 210.
77 Ibid., 190.
78 Some memorials mix the two metaphors: soldiers who sacrifice themselves
and mothers who sacrifice their sons. Here is the inscription on a British
and French monument at Gallipoli, Turkey: Those heroes that shed their
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blood and lost their lives, you are now lying in the soil of a friendly coun-
try … You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe
away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace.”
The words are those of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who dedicated the memo-
rial in 1934.
79 Insook Kwon, “A Feminist Exploration of Military Conscription: The
Gendering of the Connections between Nationalism, Militarism and
Citizenship in South Korea,” International Journal of Politics 3.1 (2000):
26–54.
80 Ibid., 26; our emphases.
81 Ibid., 35.
82 Identity is not only a psychological matter but also a cultural one. It is a
collective problem, after all, not only a personal one. Personal psychology
and collective psychology are always closely linked, to be sure, because
everyone either accepts or rejects the latter, at least to some degree, in
connection with personal needs and circumstances.
83 The replacement of muscle by machinery did not happen all at once.
Historical circumstances delayed the process in some places. Pioneer life in
the American West, for example, meant that the status of physical strength
remained high long after it had begun to decline in Europe. The realities of
everyday life in the wilderness demanded it. After the frontier was closed
in 1898, the high status of muscle might have diminished. But it did not.
Instead, the cowboy and the gunslinger became symbols of loss and nos-
talgia. Fondly remembered was not only the kind of freedom that could
not be tolerated in the modern, urban, industrial, and bureaucratic world
but also the kind of masculinity that relied directly on distinctive features
of the male body. Settlement of the West, moreover, had coincided par-
tially with the founding of the nation itself. Consequently, American men
can link the high status of masculinity in the form of machismo with
national identity as well as personal identity. Not surprisingly, masculinity
in modern America relies heavily on a “cult” of muscularity: the intense
preoccupation of many men with organized sports both as participants
and as spectators. Most American boys do not become professional ath-
letes. Even so, most of them grow up in a world that places heavy empha-
sis on the athletic prowess of men. This emphasis has driven many boys to
use steroids that artificially enhance their athletic ability.
There are historical precedents for this kind of anachronistic symbolism.
By the late fifteenth century, chivalry was no longer a code of behaviour
that effectively mediated social, economic, and political realities. The trou-
badours and courtiers had translated it into a largely ceremonial code of
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etiquette expressed in social, literary, and artistic conventions. Its function

was no longer to protect the social order but to protect the status of aris-
tocrats whose power was based on land against encroachment by mer-
chants and traders whose power was based on money. The pageantry of
late medieval chivalry was designed to hide the reality that aristocracy
was economically (and sometimes politically) anachronistic. Likewise, the
modern cult of machismo relies on empty rhetoric. This rhetoric hides the
painful reality that size, speed, and muscle, the major advantageous fea-
tures of maleness, are now economically and politically obsolete. And
when it comes to brain differences, many people now either say or imply
that the important ones favor women. Not every scientist agrees, however,
that there are major brain differences between men and women.
According to neuroscientist Gina Rippon, for instance, male and female
brains are very much the same; any differences are due to “the relentless
drip, drip, drip of gender stereotyping.” She points out that “saying there
are differences in male and female brains is just not true. There is pretty
compelling evidence that any differences are tiny and are the result of
environment not biology … You can’t pick up a brain and say ‘that’s a
girls brain, or that’s a boys brain’ in the same way you can with the skele-
ton. They look the same … differences in male and female brains are due
to similar cultural stimuli. A women’s [sic] brain may therefore become
‘wired’ for multi-tasking simply because society expects that of her and so
she uses that part of her brain more often. The brain adapts in the same
way as a muscle gets larger with extra use. What often isn’t picked up on
is how plastic and permeable the brain is. It is changing throughout out
[sic] lifetime” (Gina Rippon; cited in Sarah Knapton, “Men and Women
Do Not Have Different Brains,” Telegraph, 8 March 2014).
84 Democratic states conscript young men but not young women, even
though these states explicitly strive for equality. Americans have con-
scripted young men, moreover, even though the Constitution explicitly
promises all citizens that the state will protect their lives no less than their
“liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Fascist and communist states do
not rely on rhetoric of any kind to gather armies, relying instead directly
on coercive power. Even these states usually dress up the harsh reality,
however, with stirring rhetoric about heroic sacrifice in the name of col-
lective struggles.
85 Sweden has not gone to war since the early nineteenth century, for exam-
ple, but nonetheless conscripts young men for its army.
86 Barbara Ehrenreich, “Wartime in the Barracks,” Time, 2 December 1996,
87.
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87 These laws are so closely related that we cannot discuss one without the
other. Neither law functions effectively at this point: one because of the
gap between theory and practice, the other because of the fact that no one
at all is being drafted at the moment. But both laws represent what
remains of the gender system.
88 During the Second World War, for example, relations between men and
women in the military were very different. Consider June Halvorsen’s let-
ter to the editor of Time: “I felt a great sadness as I read your report on
the sexual harassment of women in the U.S. military [Nov. 25]. I asked
myself, Why is life for a woman in the military today so complex and
sometimes dangerous? … Whatever the cause, I feel sorry for the modern-
day young woman. About 50 years ago, I was in the Women’s Auxiliary
Air Force in England. I spent four very interesting, often exciting years as
a transport driver at an R.A.F. station. Even though there were about
500 women to 5,000 men, never once during those years was I treated
offensively by the boys I met, and I met many. Around our camp were
several Yankee camps. The Americans invited us to their station for coffee,
doughnuts and dancing. I never knew what sexual harassment meant. The
boys I met were gentlemen and behaved very courteously. One winter eve-
ning I got on a train in London during a blackout. On boarding, I almost
fell, when suddenly a light glowed in the compartment, and there in front
of me were three American servicemen. We chatted for four hours, and
one soldier took off his coat and put it around my shoulders. Finally, we
arrived at my destination, so we all said goodbye. One soldier put a piece
of paper in my pocket, telling me it was his address. Later, when I looked,
I found it was an English pound note. The soldier had said earlier he was
surprised and shocked to hear how little pay we got. What a difference
between then and now! I feel so sorry for modern-day youth. I guess I
lived in the days of innocence, and I was very privileged to do so” (Time,
13 January 1997, 6).
Today, career-oriented women have more practical reasons for joining the
military: better-paying jobs, education, and travel. By contrast, career-ori-
ented men think they are giving up better-paying jobs in the civilian world.
Moreover, “many men are attracted to the military by its intensely mascu-
line and deeply romantic character. The uniforms, the rank, the danger, the
purposefulness, the opportunity to earn the respect of men and the admira-
tion of women, all contribute to the military’s enduring hold on the imagi-
nation of men and boys. Such things have inspired many men to greatness,
but they too seem embarrassingly puerile in today’s world. Progressive
society prides itself with having evolved to a higher level where ancient
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impulses are deplored as childish machismo and where the most socially
respectable motivations are, ironically, the most material and the most self-
ish. Young men today dare not confess their captivation with the romance
of martial glory, even to themselves. Instead, when asked why they entered
the military, they say patriotism. The more thoughtful among them have
better answers, but they are equally evasive. Ask a young man entering a
service academy today why he wishes to go there and he is likely to answer
‘to get a good education’ or ‘to pursue a military career.’ Such answers
sound good but tell us nothing about the man” (Brian Mitchell, “Women
Make Poor Soldiers,” in Women in the Military: Current Controversies, ed.
Carol Wekesser and Matthew Polesetsky [San Diego: Greenhaven Press,
1991], 35). Another military man comments: “Women, however, are bliss-
fully unbothered by the psychological complications of masculinity. They
are not impressed with physical prowess, they do not relish competition,
they are not intrigued by danger, they do not need to prove their manhood,
and they see little reason to hide their weakness, psychological or physical
… The absence of machismo among military women is no advantage. In
war, physical prowess is important, dangers must be faced, and petty per-
sonal concerns cannot be allowed to interfere with greater events. The mil-
itary quite naturally holds physical infirmity in contempt. It encourages the
suppression of personal hurts and stigmatizes those who hurt too easily …
Good soldiers pride themselves on avoiding injury, ignoring illness and
enduring pain” (Mitchell, “Women Make Poor Soldiers,” 36).
It has been argued that questions of masculine identity are also related
to bonding: “The roots of group behavior among men run deep into our
being. All-male groups have existed in virtually every known society. Most
anthropologists agree that all-male groups produce a peculiar kind of non-
erotic psychological bond that men crave and cannot find elsewhere. In
some societies, bonds between male friends are stronger and more sacred
than bonds between husbands and wives” (ibid., 37). Furthermore, it has
been argued that “The military depends upon men acting as a team at the
very moment when every man is under great temptation to seek his own
comfort and save his own life. The personal bonds that men form with
each other, as leaders, as followers, as comrades-in-arms, often enable
ordinary men to perform acts of extreme self-sacrifice when ideas such as
duty, country, or cause no longer compel. The all-male condition reinforces
all of the military’s highest organizational values. The presence of women
inhibits male bonding, corrupts allegiance to the hierarchy, and diminishes
the desire of men to compete for anything but the attentions of women”
(ibid., 38). Remember that this was exactly the rational for the formation
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of matrilocality by horticultural, warlike societies: remove men from the

loyalty to their blood kin by having them move to the village of their wife
and encouraging them to bond in the all-male culture of the male lodge.
89 Ehrenreich, “Wartime,” 96.
90 The fact that the attrition rate of women in the military has been high
(Mitchell, “Women Make Poor Soldiers,” 33) has been blamed both on
their inability and on sexual harassment. Yarbrough points to a double
standard encouraged by women: “reformers want the military to stay out
of private matters with regard to fraternization, pregnancy, family matters,
and sexual conduct in general, but they call on the military to intervene in
private matters involving sexual harassment, and to use the authority they
are otherwise unwilling to acknowledge to reform offensive attitudes”
(ibid., 43). She also notes that many of the traditional military techniques
for instilling courage and a fighting spirit might be regarded as ‘sexual
harassment’” (ibid.).
91 When faced with negative empirical evidence that they are not as capable as
men for jobs requiring strength, speed, and so on, women usually argue that
physical test results can change due to more and better training, more
encouragement, and less harassment. (This is another version of the old cul-
ture-versus-nature debate, which is far from settled.) As for physical differ-
ences and their effects on the military, some men point to women’s
premenstrual syndrome and pregnancy as female problems. Women counter
this, however, by saying that they are more responsible, have fewer injuries,
and so forth. As for aggression, women in the military and their feminist sup-
porters argue that soldiers today no longer need it as much as they once did.
Aggression is not always advantageous, moreover, because many military
tasks are routine and others require submission to their leaders. And leaders,
no matter how aggressive, should think twice before taking foolish risks.
92 Boys do not receive a clear message about war; instead, they receive a
double message about it. From popular culture, especially video games,
they learn that war is exciting and glamorous. The implicit message is that
combat, unlike almost anything else, can still provide them with a collec-
tive identity as men. If so, then this would provide at least a partial expla-
nation for why some male soldiers give their female colleagues a hard
time. From elite culture, boys learn that war is, at best, a necessary evil.
Male bodies equip men to engage in combat, which allows them to con-
tribute something that is ambiguously good, not something that is unam-
biguously and therefore inherently good. Put together, you could argue,
the two messages say that masculine identity is a necessary evil or even
that boys and men are necessarily evils.
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n ot e s to pag e s 94–101 1 87
93 War and conscription are not necessarily linked, because nations can fight
wars without resorting to conscription – the United States is now doing so
– but they have been closely linked for a long time. The implicit link goes
back many thousands of years. Neolithic boys grew up with enough cul-
tural conditioning to become warriors. Later, some boys of one class
ended up as knights or the vassals of knights. Still later, many more boys
ended up in armies due to the coercive power of states. This explicit link
goes back two hundred years. Since then, all boys in most countries have
grown up with the expectation of becoming soldiers.
chapter four
1 Lynn Snowden, “Sperm and the Single Girl,” Elle, November 1991:
182.
2 F I NR R A G E; quoted in Made to Order: The Myth of Reproductive and
Genetic Progress, ed. Patricia Spallone and Deborah Lynn Steinberg
(Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1987), 212.
3 Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young, Spreading Misandry: The
Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture (Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 2001).
4 Father Knows Best aired on cbs from 1954 to 1955 and from 1958 to
1960 on nbc from 1955 to 1958.
5 The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet aired on A B C from 1952 to 1966.
6 Home Improvement aired on ABC from 1991 to 1999.
7 The Simpsons has aired on Fox since 1989.
8 Family Guy has aired on Fox since 1999.
9 Shameless has aired on Showtime since 2011.
10 Modern Family has aired on ABC since 2009.
11 Breaking Bad aired on AM C from 2008 to 2013.
12 Mad Men has aired on AM C since 2007.
13 Colin Harrison, reviews of My Dad, by Niki Daly; My Ol’ Man, by
Patricia Polacco; and Papa Tells Chita a Story, by Elizabeth Fitzgerald
Howard, New York Times Book Review, 18 June 1995, 25.
14 Ibid., 25.
15 Ruth Bailey, Sex in the Heartland (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1999).
16 Bailey refers to it only four times, en passant, in connection with birth
control, but she could have devoted a whole chapter to something that
was (and remains) the central symbol of social, cultural, and political con-
flict in connection with both sex and gender.
27079_Nathanson.indd 187 2015-08-11 11:14:30

17 The Protestant Reformation, for example, began as an attempt to reform

(but maintain) the Church; nonetheless, it soon turned into a religious and
political revolution and eventually (though indirectly) fostered the rise of
secularism. Although Bailey’s main point is to challenge conventional wis-
dom about the Sexual Revolution and clearly shows how demands for
mere reform led eventually to revolution, she says nothing about the defi-
nition of “revolution.”
18 Bailey highlights ambivalence, contradiction, and even outright expediency
on all sides. In the epilogue, though, she acknowledges her own admira-
tion for what could be called the liberal side as distinct from the conserva-
tive one. All in all, she says, the sexual revolution has done more good
than harm. And yet she shows no evidence to support that conclusion.
She could have taken more seriously the law of unintended consequences
– which is, after all, the basic premise of her argument.
19 Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, The Divorce Culture (New York: Knopf,
1999).
20 Many statistical compilations exist, and all are subject to interpretation
and debate. The effects of fatherlessness are among the most contested
topics. Advocates for fathers generally argue that children need fathers
no less than they need mothers and therefore suffer from father absence.
Advocates for single mothers and divorced mothers generally deny that
women are responsible for father absence and that, in any case, children
suffer no damage from father absence – or would not suffer if only gov-
ernments were willing to fund more programs to support single mothers
and divorced mothers. (For an example of that approach, which we would
classify as ideological, see Trish Wilson, “Myths and Facts about
Fatherlessness,” 2002, online at: nownys.org/docs/fatherlessness%20arti-
cle.pdf, accessed 7 April 2014.) Either way, we need raw data, for which
governments are usually reliable sources. Given the importance of extreme
precision in citing statistics, we offer here a quotation from one summary
of the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest figures (bearing in mind that Statistics
Canada and the equivalents in other Western countries report similar
trends). Everyone agrees that the number of children who lack fathers at
home has grown rapidly, and not many argue that the effects on children
are either unimportant or desirable. Why did this situation occur? What
can we do about it? These, of course, are other matters.
“In 2009, 7.8 million children lived with at least one grandparent, a
64 percent increase since 1991 when 4.7 million children lived with a
grandparent, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Among children living with a grandparent, 76 percent also were living
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n ot e to pag e 102 1 89
with at least one parent in 2009, not statistically different from the 77 per-
cent who lived with at least one parent in 1991. ‘The people with whom
children live affect their well-being,’ said Rose Kreider, a family demogra-
pher with the U.S. Census Bureau. ‘These statistics give us a lot of detail
about the number of parents children live with, as well as whether they
live with siblings, grandparents or other relatives.’ These statistics released
today come from the household relationship module of the Survey of
Income and Program Participation collected in 2009 and published in the
report Living Arrangements of Children: 2009. In 1991, 5 percent of
white, 15 percent of black and 12 percent of Hispanic children lived with
at least one grandparent. By 2009, 9 percent of white, 17 percent of black
and 14 percent of Hispanic children lived with at least one grandparent,
a significant change for white children but not for black or Hispanic chil-
dren. Many children who do not live with a parent live with a grandpar-
ent. More than half of the children living with no parents were living
with grandparents. Percentages for black children (64 percent) and non-
Hispanic white children (55 percent) did not differ from Hispanic children
(61 percent), but the percentage of Asian children living with no parents
who lived with grandparents was lower, at 35 percent. In 2009, 69 percent
of the 74.1 million children under 18 lived with two parents. Four percent
(2.9 million) of all children lived with both a mother and father who were
not married to each other. Between 1991 and 2009, children living with
only their mother increased from 21 percent to 24 percent. The percentage
of children living with their mother without a father present varied widely
among race and origin groups in 2009, from 8 percent for Asian children
to 50 percent for black children. Seventeen percent of non-Hispanic white
children and 26 percent of Hispanic children also lived with their mother
only. Seven percent of all children lived with one unmarried parent who
was cohabiting. The percentage of all children who lived with a cohabiting
parent ranged from 2 percent for Asian children to 9 percent for Hispanic
children. Falling between these were non-Hispanic white children (6 per-
cent) and black children (7 percent), not different from each other or the
percentage for all children. Overall, 16 percent of children lived with a
stepparent, stepsibling or half sibling. Thirteen percent of children living
with one parent and 18 percent of children living with two parents lived
in these blended families. Most children (78 percent) lived with at least
one sibling. Among those, most (83 percent) lived with only full siblings
from the same biological mother and father. Fourteen percent of children
who lived with siblings lived with at least one half sibling, sharing only
one biological parent. Living Arrangements of Children: 2009 examines
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the diversity of children’s living arrangements in households in the United

States and describes extended family households with relatives and nonrel-
atives where their presence may have an effect on the development and
economic well-being of those children. It also describes the degree to
which children are living in married-couple families, single-parent families
or with stepparents, adoptive parents or no parents while in the care of
another relative or guardian. The sample size in this survey does not allow
for comparison estimates for American Indians and Alaska Natives, Pacific
Islanders and people of more than one race” (U.S. Census Bureau,
“Census Bureau Reports 64% Increase in Number of Children Living with
a Grandparent over Last Two Decades,” U.S. Census Bureau, dated
29 June 2011), online at: census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/children/
cb11-117.html, accessed 7 April 2014). For the full report, see Rose M.
Kreider and Renee Ellis, Living Arrangements of Children: 2009, (Current
Population Reports P70-126), Washington: U.S. Census Bureau, 2011.
21 See Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young, Legalizing Misandry: From
Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men (Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 2006), 215–17.
22 See Nathanson and Young, Spreading Misandry, 194–234. Second-wave
feminism began with the admirable belief that men and women were of
equal value and should therefore have equal rights and equal duties. It ran
into trouble, however, with the somewhat naïve assumption that men and
women were not only equal in value but also (more or less) identical in
function. Ideological feminism came later, in the United States, and echoed
a parallel transition from the Civil Rights movement to the Black Power
movement. Ideological feminists have adopted a world view that differs in
no significant way from political ideologies on both the left and the right
and reveals many features that all have in common. Among the more
important ones are dualism (life as a titanic battle between “us” and
“them,” expressed as the conspiracy theory of history), essentialism (“we”
are inherently good and “they” inherently evil), hierarchy (“we” are supe-
rior to “them”), one form of consequentialism (the end can justify the
means), and collectivism (group interests take precedence over both per-
sonal and societal ones).
23 American laws that banned abortion were unconstitutional, according
to the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade (1973), because they prevented
women from enjoying a right to privacy (as articulated in the Fourteenth
Amendment’s due-process clause). Even so, the Court ruled that this right
diminished as pregnancy continued and that the right to abortion must be
27079_Nathanson.indd 190 2015-08-11 11:14:30

balanced by two compelling state interests in regulating abortion: protect-

ing the health of both the mother and the fetus. In other words, the court
still banned abortion after “viability.” In 1969, new Canadian legislation
allowed abortions as long as physicians declared that it was necessary for
the physical or mental health of mothers. In R. v. Morgentaler (1989),
however, the Supreme Court struck down that law as unconstitutional.
This made abortion neither legal nor illegal. Because the government failed
to pass any new abortion law, abortion on demand became, in effect, legal.
24 Many feminists, to judge from their Internet blogs, now agree with Carol
Smart (“There Is of Course the Distinction Dictated by Nature: Law and
the Problem of Paternity,” in Reproductive Technologies: Gender,
Motherhood and Medicine, ed. Michelle Stanworth [Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1987], 98–117). She argues against joint
custody (because this arrangement assumes that fathers have a distinctive
place in family life), against the right of adopted children to trace their
biological parents (because this assumes the importance of genetic ties),
and against the ideal of both a mother and a father (because single moth-
ers are perfectly capable of doing the job alone). All of these things,
according to Smart, are sinister attempts to assert paternal – that is, “patri-
archal” – authority. There is no such thing, in short, as a paternal right.
Paternal duties are another matter entirely. Smart does not argue against
placing financial obligations on biological fathers! Apparently, fathers
should accept legal burdens but not expect any legal rights. (There is no
such thing as an absolute right for any person or any group, because rights
often conflict with each other; this is why we need supreme courts to bal-
ance competing rights.) This has nothing to do with equality between men
and women; it has everything to do with the autonomy of women. Because
only women can be virtually autonomous (thanks to their reproductive
function), of course, it has everything to do in addition with the supremacy
of women over men. This is why many feminists demanded access to both
abortion and artificial insemination by donor for all women (married or
single, straight or lesbian) with precisely the same fervour that they
denounced access to surrogacy and ex utero technologies that would have
given at least some reproductive freedom to men. “To the extent that the
medical profession, official inquiries, the state and the mass media have
chosen to endorse the conceptive technologies,” writes Michelle Stanworth,
“it is only by denying the force of this trend towards autonomous mother-
hood” (Stanworth 24). Because people “construct” culture, people can
deconstruct it and then reconstruct it to suit their own needs or interests.
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25 Consider a recent case from Kansas. Replying to an ad on Craigslist,

William Marotta had donated his sperm to a lesbian couple in 2009 and
signed a contract in which he waived paternal rights. Because the women
had not hired a licensed physician to perform the artificial insemination,
however, Judge Mary Mattivi ruled that Marotta was “more than a sperm
donor.” He was legally the “presumptive father,” in fact, and thus legally
obliged to pay child support for many years to come (Michael Winter,
“Kansas Sperm Donor to Appeal Ruling over Child Support,” USA Today,
24 January 2014). Was this due to a lack of foresight or ignorance on the
part of Jennifer Schreiner, the inseminated mother? Or did she deliberately
exploit him in order to have a child of her own but avoid the inconve-
nience of providing it with a father? At issue here are two problems:
extracting money from a man who had never intended to become a father
in the sense of interaction with his child and encouraging the notion that
fatherhood amounts to nothing more than money. “The state encourages
single motherhood in all kinds of ways,” wrote one journalist, “because
the state … believes a woman can bring up a child as effectively alone as
with a father in the picture, and that – in the teeth of overwhelming evi-
dence to the contrary – children suffer no special harm growing up father-
less” (Barbara Kay, “State Supports Mothers Who Want the Child But
Not the Costs,” National Post, 23 January 2014).
26 See Nathanson and Young, Legalizing Misandry, 125–56.
27 In ancient times, for instance, relatively rich husbands of infertile women
simply married additional wives or “lay” with their female servants. One
obvious example would be from the biblical story of Abraham and
Sarah. Because Sarah was “barren,” Abraham sired a child by Hagar, the
handmaid.
28 The first new technology was in vitro fertilization. Louise Brown, who had
been conceived in a Petri dish, was born in 1978. This provoked intense
debates over the potential dangers for both infants and women. Would in
vitro fertilization lead to genetic engineering, baby factories, or sex selec-
tion? Would it lead to abortions of the unwanted fetuses (produced by in
vitro techniques)?
29 To produce a clone, scientists empty the nucleus of a somatic cell (with
chromosomes from both the mother and the father) and transfer it to an
egg (with chromosomes only from the mother). The result is an egg that
functions as a fertilized egg.
30 In a way, parthenogenesis is “asexual” reproduction. In another way,
though, parthenogenesis is all-female reproduction. It would still require
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eggs, after all, but not sperm. And it would produce only female offspring.
Consequently, it would create enormous symbolic problems, let alone
moral ones. Parthenogenesis is what religious traditions call “virgin birth,”
but it is no longer solely in the realm of either religion or science fiction.
In 2007, Hwang Woo Suk, a South Korean scientist, produced the first
human embryo from an unfertilized egg. The primary reason for develop-
ing this technology would be a practical one: to create stem cells that
genetically match the cells of women who have degenerative diseases.
Derivatives of stem cells could be used also, however, to grow organs for
them and thus avoid the need for transplanted organs, which the body’s
immune system attacks as foreign objects.
31 Controversy over abortion did surface in some religious circles, however,
because it was a side effect of technologies such as in vitro fertilization.
32 See Katherine K. Young and Paul Nathanson, Sanctifying Misandry:
Goddess Religion and the Fall of Man (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 2010). In that book, we show how ideological feminists
tried to confer metaphysical status on motherhood by “reviving” goddess
cults of the ancient world or by “restoring” a Great Goddess (often called
Sophia) to Western god-centred religions such as Christianity and Judaism.
To do this, they usually argued that goddess-worship was the original reli-
gion and that a Great Goddess had presided for thousands of years over a
peaceful and happy world. Then, one of two things happened. Either men
rebelled against the Great Goddess (although it is hard to see why they
would have rebelled against such an idyllic society under the aegis of a
benevolent divinity) or patriarchal societies invaded this primeval para-
dise, which meant that their evil gods usurped the wise Great Goddess
and created a patriarchal nightmare.
33 Women, however, are by no means the only people with a stake in the
continuing debate over abortion.
34 They organized as the influential Feminist International Network of Resis-
tance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering, which worked closely
with government agencies in many countries.
35 They worried about experimental techniques, for instance, that could
endanger women. It was of particular importance that most of the physi-
cians and researchers were still men.
36 They rejected surrogate motherhood, for instance, because that meant
turning poor women into “rented wombs” for rich but infertile couples
(even though they supported sperm banks, which turned men into genetic
carriers). Both men and women could be infertile, of course, but it was
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infertile men who bothered feminist activists most of all. They saw no rea-
son for women to use their bodies in a potentially dangerous way in order
to give infertile men genetically related children.
37 Ex utero technologies such as the artificial womb, for instance, threatened
to eliminate or marginalize the most fundamental source of identity for
women: the ability of their bodies to gestate and lactate.
38 At first many feminists opposed surrogacy. They claimed that it exploited
poor women, who gestated children for rich women. Several high-profile
cases showed what could happen, moreover, when surrogate mothers
refuse to honour their contracts by not giving up after birth the infants
whom they have gestated.
39 “History of FI N RRAG E,” 2008, , available online at: finrrage.org/history/
html, accessed 3 February 2010.
4 0 F I NR R A GE has been active mainly in Australia, Europe, and Canada. In
the United States, it has faced considerable opposition from libertarians.
41 See Patricia Baird and others, Proceed with Care: Final Report of the
Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies (Ottawa: Minister
of Government Services, 1993).
In 1989, The Canadian Government established a royal commission
to study new reproductive technologies. Many Canadians had come to
believe that legislation should govern their use. Among the most vocal in
calling for government action were feminists, especially members of the
Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic
Engineering (FINRRAGE), who advocated a moratorium even on research
in the field. They believed that these technologies would have harmful
effects, both symbolic and physical, on women (although they were indif-
ferent to any harmful effects, whether symbolic or physical, on men). They
referred to the institutionalization of experimentation on women’s bodies
in connection with in vitro techniques, for instance, and the “commodifica-
tion” of women’s bodies in connection with surrogate motherhood (“rent-
ing” the wombs of poor women to serve the needs of rich couples). The
commissioners did not study established technologies, however, such as
abortion and contraception. As it turned out, this commission was a hot-
bed of political strife, which provoked controversies that delayed its final
report several times. Proceed with Care appeared in 1993 and included
293 recommendations – among them, changing the Criminal Code to ban
some technologies and establishing a national agency to regulate others.
When the commissioners began their deliberations, feminists wanted a
moratorium on all research in this field. They certainly did not want any
technologies that might endanger either individual women or the collective
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identity of women. Nor did they want any technologies that might hinder
the reproductive autonomy of women, which is why they tried to deflect
attention away from abortion. They opposed surrogacy, in particular,
which could lead to genetic mothers bearing children for adoptive mothers
and then losing all rights to those children after a change of mind.
Legislators did not by any means agree to all recommendations of the
commissioners. Some feminists were outraged in 1995, when the minister
of health required only a voluntary moratorium on the use of what femi-
nists considered harmful technologies. In 2004, after four attempts to pass
legislation, Bill C-13 (the Assisted Human Reproduction Act) became law.
It banned, among other things, human cloning, the sale of human ova and
sperm (although it allowed the donation of ova and sperm), “rent-a-
womb” contracts (although it allowed informal arrangements for surro-
gacy), and sex selection.
By now, though, feminist opinion was changing quickly in view of
the debate over gay marriage. Some feminists, after all, were gay women.
Female couples wanted access to sperm banks, but the supply of sperm
was diminishing now that no one could buy it in Canada. Male couples
wanted surrogacy, on the other hand, but the supply of surrogates was
diminishing now that it was illegal to pay them in Canada. (American law
allowed payment, but paying American surrogates cost much more than
paying Asian surrogates.) In any case, gay women wanted to know that
the rights of fathers would never trump those of female partners or wives
in conflicts over custody, which meant emphasizing various social or func-
tional definitions of parenthood. It was now all about providing access to
reproductive technologies, not banning or discouraging them.
42 The original title of this periodical was Reproductive and Genetic
Engineering.
43 Gena Corea, The Mother Machine: Reproductive Technologies from
Artificial Insemination to Artificial Wombs (New York: Harper and Row,
1985).
44 See Spreading Misandry, 108–36.
45 F I NR R A GE; quoted in Made to Order: The Myth of Reproductive and
Genetic Progress, ed. Patricia Spallone and Deborah Lynn Steinberg
(Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1987), 212.
46 Political debates notwithstanding, the fact is that no one can be truly
“autonomous,” because our species is a social one.
47 Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (Toronto: McClelland and
Stewart, 1985).
48 Zipper and Sevenhuijsen 125–6.
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49 “Mothers for Hire: The Battle for Baby M,” Newsweek, 19 January 1987.
50 Quoting scientists such as Alan Trounson, director of The Institute of
Early Human Development at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia
and John Parsons, registrar and lecturer in obstetrics at King’s College
Hospital in London, the British magazine New Society reported that “the
technology exists to enable men to give birth. Although such a birth would
be dangerous, one expert said ‘undoubtedly someone will do it’ … Male
pregnancy would involve fertilizing a donated egg with sperm outside the
body. The embryo would be implanted into the bowel area, where it could
attach itself to a major organ. The baby would be delivered by caesarean
section … To achieve pregnancy, men would have to receive hormone
treatment to stimulate changes that occur in women during pregnancy …
The embryo creates the placenta, so theoretically the baby would receive
sufficient nourishment, the article said” (Associated Press, “Mr. Mom:
Scientists Say Men Could Give Birth,” Wisconsin State Journal, 9 May
1986, 2).
51 Stanworth 16; our emphasis.
52 Canada introduced no-fault divorce in 1968. In 1969, California became
the first American state to do so.
53 See, e.g., Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963).
54 Not all women idealize or romanticize motherhood. Consider the title of
Rozsika Parker’s Mother Love/Mother Hate: The Power of Maternal
Ambivalence (New York: Basic Books, 1996). Parker uses psychoanalyti-
cal theory to say what most people have always known: that mothers –
like all other human beings – have mixed feelings about themselves and
their families. (Parker discusses this from the mother’s point of view; oth-
ers, including anthropologists interested in the symbolism of motherhood,
discuss similar ambivalence as experienced by the children.) Although she
acknowledges the practical problems that mothers face in our society,
Parker is concerned in this book only with their inner lives. For that rea-
son, along with the fact that not everything about their inner lives is edify-
ing, some feminists would want to ignore her.
In a double review, Anne Roiphe discusses Parker’s book along with a
very different one by Diane Eyer (“Crimes of Attachment: Two Different
Points of View on Just How Binding the Bond between Mother and Child
Really Is,” New York Times Book Review, 12 May 1996: 29).“What
[Parker] describes is recognizable to most mothers,” writes Roiphe. “It’s
the way we feel blissful and in love with the nursing infant and also, less
consciously, afraid of being depressed, devoured, consumed, with our
anger turned against ourselves. It’s the way we feel guilty when we are too
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n ot e s to pag e s 112–13 1 97
furious with a child over the spilled milk. It’s the way we get overly anx-
ious about the health of our children, have frequent dreams in which a
child is run over or a piece of roof falls on her head. These dreams – what
mother hasn’t had them? – express an anxiety that rises from our hostile
impulses against our own babies. The human mind represses, banishes the
unwanted murderous thoughts that rise against those we love, that breach
our sense of ourselves as civilized, decent, moral people. But the nasty
thoughts, the impulse to have all the cake for ourselves, to retaliate when
we are threatened, to give to ourselves alone – these primitive impulses
survive in the subterranean soul and run like so many dark alligator-filled
rivers through our internal geography.”
Next, Roiphe considers a heavily ideological look at motherhood by
Diane Eyer: Motherguilt: How Our Culture Blames Mothers for What’s
Wrong with Society (New York: Times Books/Random House, 1996). Far
from arguing for a “maternal instinct,” one that gives women some essen-
tial superiority to men, Eyer argues the exact opposite. For her, in fact,
mothers are of interest primarily as victims of patriarchal evil. She believes
that the attachment theories of “baby gurus,” in particular, are part of the
conspiracy to exploit women. Convince women that babies actually need
their mothers, in other words, and you are using guilt to create what
amounts to forced labour. As Roiphe points out, though, the “psychologi-
cal needs of parent and child do not go away just because they are politi-
cally inconvenient and hard on feminists.”
55 Sylvia Ann Hewlett, A Lesser Life: The Myth of Women’s Liberation in
America (New York: Morrow, 1986).
56 Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist
Revolution (New York: Morrow, 1970).
57 Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971).
58 Germaine Greer, Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (New
York: Harper and Row, 1984).
59 Mary O’Brien, The Politics of Reproduction (Boston: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1981). See also her Reproducing the World: Essays in
Feminist Theory (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989).
60 Juliette Zipper and Selma Sevenhuijsen, “Surrogacy: Feminist Notions of
Motherhood Reconsidered,” in Reproductive Technologies, Gender,
Motherhood and Medicine, ed. Michelle Stanworth (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 124.
61 Ibid.
62 See Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women (New York: Perigree Books,
1983), 181–8, 191–2.
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63 There had always been single parents due to the death or abandonment of
the other parent. Moreover, there had always been a few single parents
due to divorce. But the relative ease of no-fault divorce raised the number
of single parents so dramatically that the phenomenon was no longer the
same. What was once an exception to the rule ceased to be an exception,
not immediately but quickly. The experience of being a single parent, or
the child of one, was therefore different from what it had been.
64 Here is a selected list of books published only in English, only during the
1990s and only those in the library of one university (McGill) under the
subject “single mothers” (other headings being “Afro-American single
mothers,” “unmarried mothers,” and “divorced mothers”). Louise
Armstrong, Of Sluts and Bastards: A Feminist Decodes the Child Welfare
Debate (Monroe, M e: Common Courage Press, 1995); Alex Bryson,
Reuben Ford, and Michael White, Making Work Pay: Lone Mothers,
Employment and Well-being (Work and Opportunity Series, 1
[Layerthorpe, England: York Publishing Services, 1997]); Martin D.
Dooley, Family Matters: New Policies for Divorced, Lone Mothers, and
Child Poverty, (Social Policy Challenge, 8. [Toronto: C.D. Howe Institute,
1995]); Kathryn Edin, Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive
Welfare and Low-Wage Work (New York: Russell Sage Foundation,
1997); Linda Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the
History of Welfare, 1890–1935 (New York: Free Press, 1994); Susan D.
Holloway and others, Through My Own Eyes: Single Mothers and the
Cultures of Poverty (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997);
Terence Hunsley, Lone Parent Incomes and Social Policy Outcomes:
Canada in International Perspective (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University
Press, 1997); Kathleen Kiernan, Hilary Land, and Jane Lewis, Lone
Motherhood in Twentieth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998); Melissa Lundtke, On Our Own: Unmarried Motherhood
in America (New York: Random House, 1997); Valerie Polakow, Lives
on the Edge: Single Mothers and Their Children in the Other America
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); and Virginia E. Schein,
Child, Parent, or Both: Who Should Be the Focus of an Effective Parenting
Program? (New York: Garland, 1995).
65 Lyn Cockburn, “‘We’re Complete as We Are’: Let’s Stop Saying Single-
Parent Families Are Broken,” Montreal Gazette, 15 June 1992: C-5.
66 Ibid.
67 The welfare system, too, has contributed to the displacement of men
within the family. When the state pays, men’s role as providers is no longer
necessary. The aim of President Clinton’s welfare reform was to make fam-
ilies more self-sufficient, especially those headed by single mothers, and
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thus relieve the tax burden. With this in mind, officials tried to find jobs
in the private and public sectors for welfare recipients. Also, they tried to
ensure that fathers pay child support. Unfortunately, they considered
fathers only as sources of revenue, not as members or potential m embers
of family units. It did “little,” writes Vanessa Gallman for Knight-Ridder
Newspapers, “to encourage job-training or parenting programs for those
not receiving the cheques, namely fathers. ‘I think it’s by design,’ said
Derwin Brown, an Atlanta police lieutenant whose Fathers Foundation
Inc. teaches young men how to raise their children. ‘I don’t think the sys-
tem is set up to help the family unit. The goal is to relieve the tax burden,
but not so much to put the family back together. They have a place for
black men and boys, and that’s prison’” (Vanessa Gallman, “What about
the Fathers? They’re Left out of Clinton’s Plan to Get Families off
Welfare,” Montreal Gazette, 19 June 1994, B-7).
One answer to Brown’s argument is that single mothers and their chil-
dren do form families. In that case, though, there is no point in trying to
convince fathers that they are needed within the family; they have been
made obsolete by the state. Otherwise, how could we explain the fact that
mothers now receive the training that they require for jobs in the public
sphere but fathers do not, for the most part, receive the training that they
require for child care (let alone jobs in the public sphere)?
Our society has abandoned the conviction that fathers are significant
members of the family unit. And the evidence went largely ignored until
the United States and other Western countries began to consider the purely
financial burdens imposed by welfare states and the resulting problems for
mothers, especially single mothers. Even after thirty years of attempts to
reform the family in ways that have marginalized fathers, many people
still refuse to acknowledge that something has gone wrong.
One segment of ABC’s 20/20 was devoted to a solution proposed by
Charles Murray (“Where Are the Fathers?” 20/20, A B C , WV NY -TV ,
Burlington, Vt., 15 April 1994). The author of Losing Ground (Charles
Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (New York:
Basic Books, 1984) argued that the only way to keep fathers within the
family was to eliminate a welfare system that makes unwed mothers and
their children dependent on the state and thus undermines the position
of fathers. The result of this proposal was, of course, a massive outcry.
Murray did not find a desirable solution, but he did provoke what could
have been a useful discussion.
When interviewed by John Stossel, Soledad Santiago announced that
“welfare checks do not make babies, sperm makes babies.” Her point was
that Murray’s proposal would penalize women unfairly. To the obvious
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charge that women, too, are responsible for the choices they make (except,
of course, in cases of rape), Santiago replied: “We’re expecting a sixteen-
year-old to be able to do that?” Well, why not? For centuries, for millen-
nia, young people – both male and female – knew that there were limits to
self-indulgence. And those who ignored the limits were expected to pay for
the consequences. How could they not know? Every time they met socially
it was under the surveillance of chaperones. No one would say that the
chaperone or the “shotgun marriage” were ideal solutions. Even in the
past, no one said that. Forcing two people to marry because of a “mis-
take” could hardly be expected to generate happy families. The “shotgun
marriage” was a deterrent, not an ideal. Its most useful function was to
prevent problems, not to cure them. To say that young people are simply
incapable of resisting temptation is both historically false and psychologi-
cally unsound. The chaperone system was only part of the solution, after
all, and anyone who really wanted to have sex could do so. But everyone
knew what the consequences could be. In any case, things have changed,
and we are unlikely to revive that system (although some religious groups
do advocate that). Today, the cultural context rarely acknowledges moral
responsibility; nor does it expect social ostracism. Only financial destitu-
tion is taken seriously. One woman told Stossel: “People don’t care any-
more. Their moral standards have dropped.” But she referred only to the
moral standards of men – that is, to the fathers who abandon their girl-
friends and babies. It did not occur to her, evidently, that the moral stan-
dards of women, too, had dropped. Neither men nor women expected to
marry in case of pregnancy.
Other critics noted that there would not be so many unwed mothers
were it not for unwed fathers. This was true, of course, but trite. There
would not be so many unwed fathers in the first place were it not for the
message from popular culture that fatherhood is both trivial and irrelevant.
As long as men are told that women alone can raise children perfectly well,
that raising children is “women’s work,” then at least some men will lack the
incentive to participate fully in family life – or even to stick around at all.
And the solution will require more than reforms in a welfare system that
penalizes poor mothers who marry. In addition, it will require reforms in a
cultural system that discourages both poor and rich fathers from sticking
around. Informing men that their status as married fathers is irrelevant
will prove just as harmful (though in a very different way) as informing
women that their status as single mothers was sinful. It will inevitably
contribute to the creation of more families in need of the material, psycho-
logical, and spiritual resources that could have been provided by fathers.
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Although single parents get a great deal of attention these days (partly
because there are so many more of them now than ever before), most
people would agree that the ideal situation is to have two parents (or, in
extended families, clans, villages, and so on, even more caregivers). The
reasons have been given so many times that little is left to be added here.
An extra parent means sharing the load of chores, obviously, and aug-
menting income. Moreover, it means increasing the psychological
resources available to children in the process of individuation. Finally,
it means adding security, especially if one parent dies or leaves.
68 Given the popularity of single motherhood by choice, the growing popu-
larity of single fatherhood by choice should come as no surprise.
“Statistics on single fathers by choice are few, but there are indications
that while they make up a sliver of the demographic, their numbers are
growing. Surrogacy agencies, surveys on adoption and father support
groups all say that they are seeing more single fathers by choice. Most of
these men are gay, agencies say, but there are also straight men seeking to
become fathers” (Mireya Navarro, “The Bachelor Life Includes a Family,”
New York Times, 7 September 2008).
69 In this context, recall the historical functions of families. From the begin-
ning, as it were, families have fostered renewal of the community, let alone
the species, by ensuring care not only for the young but also for the elderly
and the sick. Family life involves an intergenerational cycle.
At least since the rise of urban communities several thousand years ago,
moreover, families have had an economic function as well. At first, this
was due primarily to the division of labour by sex. Gradually, though,
families in many societies became economic units in a broader sense by
contributing specialized goods and services, one generation after another,
to the larger community. This is easy to forget now, in a society that
rewards individualism (in some senses), when families seldom own or
operate their own businesses and when children seldom continue these
in any case.
Finally, and most often forgotten in our time, families have had social
functions. They have not only socialized and educated children but, in
addition, created an environment that sustained the civil society and the
state. Even in societies that develop complex legal codes, some forms of
behaviour continue to be regulated less formally by moral codes and
enforced by the threat of public shame. Until recently in our own society,
for example, sexual relations were controlled largely (though not entirely)
in that way. Men who took advantage of women sexually (by indulging,
for example, in what would now be called “date rape”), used lewd
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language in the presence of ladies, or even made lewd innuendoes about

them, were known as “cads” by those considered respectable members
of the community. These offensive and potentially dangerous men were
were denounced. They were isolated from male friends, ostracized by
women who might have considered them potential mates, and often dis-
owned by their own families. This was not merely a form of punishment
for disgraceful behaviour; it was a form of self-defence as well, because
associating with aberrant people, including your own children, could tar-
nish an entire family’s reputation (or even that of an entire minority com-
munity). And that could have dire consequences for other children,
because their eligibility for marriage depended on coming from “good
families” (defined not only by economic status but by moral reputation
as well).
Today, the economic function has largely disappeared. Not many peo-
ple, as we say, go into the family business. If they do, it is usually by
choice. As for the social function of families, even the rearing of children
has passed largely into professional hands. And lamentably few people
would still consider family disapproval a serious impediment to indul-
gence in any form of sexual expression. For the time being, at any rate,
we are left with the family’s role in reproduction and childrearing.
70 Jean Renvoize, Going Solo: Single Mothers by Choice (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1985).
71 Renvoize dismisses the need for fathers. She argues not only that gender is
irrelevant but also that the masculine version of gender is destructive. In
that case, of course, we would do well to eliminate it by eliminating from
the family those who have traditionally transmitted it: fathers.
72 Even lactation can be done artificially, with bottles.
73 Darren Star, “Walsh Family Christmas,” Beverly Hills 90210, C TV , C J OH,
Cornwall, Ontario, 24 December 1992; originally broadcast by Fox,
19 December 1991.
74 Katherine Gilday, Women and Men Unglued (National Film Board of
Canada, 2003).
75 The Bachelor has aired on ABC since 2002.
76 The Bachelorette has aired on ABC since 2003.
77 The ritual involves a male suitor falling to one knee and asking a woman
– whom he names formally – to marry him. The allusion is to an imagined
ritual in medieval Europe and hardly exemplifies modern notions about
the dignity of either women (who must wait for men to make the pro-
posal) or men (who must lower themselves, both literally and metaphori-
cally, to induce a positive response). For some reason, this ritual became
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n ot e s to pag e s 118–22 2 03
de rigueur, at least in popular culture, during the late twentieth century

and continues in the twenty-first.
78 Paul Nathanson, “Pop Goes the Family: Marriage in Popular Culture,” in
The Conjugal Bond: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Institution of
Marriage (under review).
79 Margaret Carlson, “Why Quayle Has Half a Point,” Time, 1 June 1992: 46.
80 Ibid., 46.
81 See Marilyn French, Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals (New
York: Summit Books, 1985). French takes aim at religious asceticism, for
instance, which she considers inferior to life-affirming “women’s spirituality.”
82 Since the 1990s, social scientists have been gathering data that indicate the
negative effects of divorce and single parenting on children. To put it very
succinctly, the children of single parents are statistically at far greater risk
than other children for every social, educational, legal, psychological, and
economic problem. There are those who explain this in connection with
poverty, not surprisingly, but the risk factors affect even middle-class chil-
dren. We will discuss several studies on fatherhood in the final volume of
this series.
83 Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, “Dan Quayle Was Right,” Atlantic, April 1993,
51.
84 “How do we begin to reconcile our long-standing belief in equality and
diversity,” asked Whitehead, “with an impressive body of evidence that
suggests that not all family structures produce equal outcomes for chil-
dren? How can we square traditional notions of public support for
dependent women and children with a belief in women’s right to pursue
autonomy and independence in childbearing and child-rearing? How do
we uphold freedom of adults to pursue individual happiness in their pri-
vate relationships and at the same time respond to the needs of children
for stability, security, and permanence in their family lives? What do we
do when the interests of adults and children conflict? These are the issues
at stake in the debate over family structure” (ibid., 48). She could have
been more specific in those last two sentences.
85 John Leo, “A Pox on Dan and Murphy,” US News and World Report,
1 June 1992: 19.
86 “In the concern over health and safety, however, some say the core ethical
issue of donor insemination – its effect on the children – has been lost”
(Peggy Orenstein, “Looking for a Donor to Call Dad,” New York Times
Magazine, 18 June 1995, 31).
87 Dana Kennedy, “Kidding Around: Adoption Gets the Star Treatment,”
Entertainment Weekly, 3 May 1996, 16.
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88 Lynn Snowden, “Sperm and the Single Girl,” Elle, November 1991: 180.
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid., 182.
92 Ibid.
93 “What Fees do Sperm Banks Charge?” 9 September 2009, SpermCenter.
com, online at: spermcenter.com, accessed 18 April 2011.
94 “Find a Sperm Donor,” undated, Sperm Bank, Inc. online at: spermbank-
california.com/find-sperm-donor.html, accessed 18 April 2011.
95 Amy Harmon, “Hello, I’m Your Sister: Our Father Is Donor 150,” New
York Times, 20 November 2005.
96 “Who Is a Single Mother by Choice?” [dated] 2009, Single Mothers by
Choice, online at: singlemothersbychoice.com/ accessed 5 March 2010.
97 “Philosophy,” 2009, Single Mothers by Choice, online at: singlemothersby-
choice.com.philosophy.html, accessed 5 March 2010.
98 Emily Bazelon, “2 Kids + 0 Husbands = Family,” New York Times
Magazine, 1 February 2009, MM30-38.
99 The goal of many articles and websites is to glorify single mothers, who
heroically endure hardships such as poverty, by featuring stories about
celebrities who become single mothers (even though celebrities seldom
have to worry about poverty). Although a few of these celebrities try to
bring in “father-figures” for their children, most do not. At any rate,
reporters seldom record the thoughts of these celebrities about bringing
up children without fathers. This helps to explain the widespread impres-
sion that children need time and money but not fathers. Consider the
cover story on single-mother Kate Winslet (Natasha Poliszczuk, “Kate Up
Close (and Very Personal),” Glamour Magazine [UK], February 2014,
142–51); the magazine’s website added brief stories about other movie-
star single mothers. The Huffington Post regularly featured stories such
as “8 Celebrity Single Moms We Love” (11 July 2011), “Our 11 Favorite
Celebrity Single Moms” (11 May 2012), “Connie Britton Opens up about
Being a Single Mom” (16 July 2013), “Bethenny Frankel Dishes on Being
a Single Mom” (15 August 2013), and “Watch: Single Mom Receives the
Ultimate Gift” (20 June 2013). Even when outlets of popular culture
refrain from glamorizing single mothers, they usually ignore fathers
(except, occasionally, single fathers). One article in a women’s magazine
advised single readers not to have children because of the extra stress
involved, but said nothing at all about the possible need of children for
fathers (Maura Kelly, “More Women Choosing to Have Babies Solo: A
Good Thing?” Marie Claire, 7 May 2010). The cumulative result is clear
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from surveys of public opinion. An American poll of people under 50

“found that 42 per cent of unmarried women without kids would con-
sider having a child on their own without a partner including more than
a third, or 37 per cent, who would consider adopting solo … The
AP-WE-t v poll also found that few Americans think the growing variety
of family arrangements is bad for society. However, many have some
qualms about single mothers, with some two thirds – or 64 per cent –
saying single women have children without a partner is a bad thing for
society. More men – 86 per cent – felt that way compared to 59 per cent
of women” (Associated Press, “Rise of the Single Mother,” Mail Online
30 May 2013). But the poll said nothing, once again, about any need for
fathers (as distinct from “partners”).
100 Dana Kennedy, “Kidding Around: Adoption Gets the Star Treatment,”
Entertainment Weekly, 3 May 1996, 16. Some women are never satisfied.
Susan Chira, for example, admits that single mothers are often portrayed
in popular culture, usually in a sympathetic way, but laments that “films
today present no unified vision of unwed motherhood (“Unwed Mothers:
The Scarlet Letter Returns in Pink,” New York Times, 23 January 1994).
But why should movies present a “unified vision” of unwed mothers or of
anything else?
101 Not all women appreciated men who were out of work, no matter how
useful they were in the home. The out-of-work father was often a dispos-
able father. “I don’t need another child,” as one joke put it, “to feed or
care for.”
102 Nathanson and Young, Spreading Misandry, 79–89.
103 For more on the Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act of 1998, see
Nathanson and Young, Legalizing Misandry, 125–56, 130, and 147.
104 Katherine K. Young and Paul Nathanson, Sanctifying Misandry: From
Goddess Ideology to the Fall of Man (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 2010).
105 Nathanson and Young, Legalizing Misandry, 3–20.
106 Ibid., 270–4.
107 Some social scientists, however, buck the trend. See Judith Rich Harris, for
instance, rejects biological determinism in favour of what she calls “peer
determinism” (The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn out the Way
They Do (New York: Free Press, 1998).
108 See Nathanson and Young, Legalizing Misandry, 125–56.
109 The truth is, moreover, that even women often feel uncomfortable with
men who become too involved in family life. These women do not want
their identity threatened by men taking over their distinctive role in family
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life. Mothers are considered natural parents, supposedly, and therefore

better parents than fathers. This is illustrated by the comic strip “Adam.”
The father – generically named Adam Newman – is a househusband.
When his wife notices how warmly the children respond to him, for exam-
ple, she flips. “Actually,” says Laura, “I’m jealous! Jealous because Nick
has become so attached and dependent on him that I might as well not
even exist” (Brian Basset, “Adam,” Montreal Gazette, 4 October 1988:
D-12).
110 Junior (Ivan Reitman, 1994).
111 Caren Weiner Campbell, review of Junior, Entertainment Weekly, 2 June
1995, 64.
112 Infertile women, too, are cut off from childbirth, unless they can make use
of some reproductive technology. But this does not necessarily undermine
their collective identity as women; genetically female, they are merely
exceptions to the rule. Men, on the other hand, are by definition cut off
from childbirth (although even that could change with the introduction
of an artificial womb).
113 See Chai R. Feldblum, “Gay is Good: The Moral Case for Marriage Equal-
ity and More,” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 17.1 (2005): 139–84.
Feldblum began to write this essay in 1996 (according to a version of it
that appears on the internet at law.georgetown.edu/moralvaluesproject/
Library/Papers/Feldblum_Gay_is_Good_Marriage.pdf) and thus reflects
the primary arguments of that period and ever since. Her own argument
focuses heavily on the pros and cons of marriage, especially for women
and gay people. She seldom mentions children at all except in connection
with the equal right of gay adults to produce children.
114 See Katherine K. Young and Paul Nathanson, “The Future of an Experi-
ment,” in Divorcing Marriage: Unveiling the Dangers of Canada’s New
Social Experiment, ed. Daniel Cere and Douglas Farrow (Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press for the Institute for the Study of
Marriage, Law and Culture, 2004), 41–62.
115 We did not invent the idea that children need both mothers and fathers.
The United Nations acknowledged this as a right in Articles 6 and 7 of its
Declaration of the Rights of the Child: “He shall, wherever possible, grow
up in the care and under the responsibility of his parents” and “The best
interests of the child shall be the guiding principle of those responsible for
his education and guidance; that responsibility lies in the first place with
his parents.” In 1959, of course, no one could have foreseen the fragmen-
tation of parenthood twenty-five years later: birth mothers, genetic moth-
ers, social mothers, genetic fathers, social fathers, and so on. The authors
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of this declaration assumed that the ideal environment for children was
with both their mothers and their fathers.
116 Whitehead, “Dan Quayle,” 52.
117 Peggy Drexler, Raising Boys without Men: How Maverick Moms Are
Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men (Emmaus, Penn.:
Rodale, 2005).
118 Postmodernists sometimes use words such as “diversity” and “pluralism”
as fronts for ideological goals – which they should deconstruct, in theory,
but seldom do. Only by deconstructing what they claim are oppressive
older institutions can they make room for their own ideological ones. The
word “pluralism” is particularly confusing. It usually refers to tolerance: a
society that allows people to believe whatever they like despite personal
disagreements. But this word often takes on a connotation of either moral
expediency or indifference to truth: personal acceptance of many beliefs,
even conflicting ones, at the same time – which would make no sense.
119 To deconstruct the historic family pattern, activists often claimed that
being gay conferred advantages on parents, which is to say that gay
fathers made better parents than straight ones. Others compared the best
of their own model (happy families of single people, say, or gay couples)
with the worst of its opposite (unhappy families of straight couples).
Ultimately, they claimed that the traditional family had been designed
to foster rape, incest, “hegemonic masculinity” and other horrors.
120 Sara Miles, “Jane vs. Jane,” Out, January 1998: 130.
121 Among the jurisdictions that have passed legislation to replace “mother”
and “father” with more (politically) neutral words or taken similar steps
are Massachusetts, Virginia, California, Ontario, and Spain. For a detailed
examination of this in connection with increasing interference by the
state, see Elizabeth Marquardt and others, The Revolution in Parenthood:
The Emerging Global Clash between Adult Rights and Children’s Needs
(New York: Institute for American Values in cooperation with the
Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, the Institute for the Study of
Marriage, Law, an Culture and the Institute of Marriage and Family
Canada, 2006). Justice Colleen Kenney of the Alberta Court of Queen’s
Bench had to make sure that a son would know his father. She called the
mother “selfish,” in fact, for trying to deprive the son of his father
(Sharon Doyle Driedger, “What Is a Father,” Maclean’s 110.3 (9 June
1997): 62–3.
122 Apart from anything else, this was one example of increasing interference
by the state to serve the needs of adults, sometimes at the expense of chil-
dren. Not only did the children of gay couples not necessarily have a right
27079_Nathanson.indd 207 2015-08-11 11:14:31

to know both of their genetic parents, they also did not necessarily have a
right to information about their more remote ancestors.
123 Anthony Giardina, “My Lesbian Problem,” GQ, December 1997: 169; his
emphasis.
124 Peter Menzies, “Fathers Wonder Whether They Are Still Needed,” Calgary
Herald, 15 July 1998: A-10.
125 The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010).
126 Thaddeus Baklinski, “Children from Same-Sex Households Much Less
Likely to Graduate High School: Large Study” [dated] 9 October 2013,
Life Site News, online at: freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3076980/posts,
accessed 11 August 2014.
127 Many advocates of gay marriage, like those of no-fault divorce forty years
earlier and those of single motherhood by choice more recently, argued
that the problems of fatherless or motherless children had an effective
solution: providing them with “father figures” or “mother figures”: friends
or relatives, say, in addition to their coaches, teachers, and so on. But what
if the occasional presence of these “role models” were not enough? What
if children need the enduring presence of both a man and a woman? To
this, advocates of gay marriage, like those of no fault-divorce and single
motherhood, replied that there had always been children who lacked one
parent or even both. But others pointed out that the mere existence of a
lack through history did not recommend it. Societies have found ways of
helping children who lack one parent or even both, to be sure, but not by
denying the exceptional status of those children. When any phenomenon
ceases to be an exception, moreover, it becomes, in effect, a new phenome-
non. The children of divorce, too, were once unusual exceptions. That was
no longer true by the 1990s.
128 Susan C. Turrell, “A Descriptive Analysis of Same-Sex Relationship
Violence for a Diverse Sample,” Journal of Family Violence 15.3 (2000):
281–93.
129 Kathleen Nutt, “Scottish Schools Ban Father’s Day Cards,” Sunday Times,
22 June 2008.
130 The other two functions were provider and protector. Both now apply
equally to women, who either do those things for themselves or rely on
the state for help in doing so. The state, in fact, has almost replaced men.
Only as progenitors, or fathers, can men have a healthy collective identity.
e p i lo g u e
1 Karl Marx borrowed this utopian ideal from Western religions, however,
which look forward to an eschatological paradise in which, as St Paul put
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it, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is
neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians
3:28).
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27079_Nathanson.indd 210 2015-08-11 11:14:31
Index
abortion. See reproductive in, 25, 30, 63, 65; professional

technologies soldiers in, 62; strategies of, 32;
adrenaline, 11, 14, 17, 77 training of, 32; and veterans, 74;
adultery, 17 volunteers in, 75; women in,
Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, 91–2, 186. See also collective
98 identity (men); combat; con-
aggression, 11, 30, 42, 50, 53, 76, scription; war
78 art, 6–7, 50, 90
Agricultural Revolution, 24–5, 38, artificial insemination, 105–6, 108,
65, 91. See also civilizations 122. See also sperm banks
Agta people, 145n7 artificial womb, 108
All Quiet on the Western Front, 70 Astor, Nancy, 60
Allward, Walter Seymour, 68 Atwood, Margaret, 109
alpha females, 25, 36 authority, 29, 36
alpha males, 20–1, 29–32, 40, 50, Axial Age, 156n73
98 Ayres, Lew, 70
American Revolution, 64 Aztecs, 25, 155n64, 157n84
androcide, 108, 110
anti-intellectualism, 53 Babylonians. See Mesopotamians
Arkwright, John Stanhope, 83 The Bachelor/The Bachelorette, 118
armies: citizens in, 88, 173; desert- Bailey, Beth, 100
ers in, 73, 76, 78, 177n48, Barker, Pat, 70
178n54; infantry, 91; and Bates, Katherine Lee, 82
knights, 63; and mercenaries, The Believers, 86
63, 173n9, 173n10; military Bellah, Robert, 35
technologies of, 7–8, 26, 90, Benin, 154n64
174n17; and peasants or serfs Best, Deborah, ix
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212 index
The Best Years of Our Lives, 74 Christianity movement, 53; and

Bettelheim, Bruno, 57 sacrifice (atonement theology),
Beverly Hills 90210, 116 29, 79–88; and self-sacrifice
birth control. See reproductive (imitation of Jesus), 79–88; and
technologies sentimentality in art, 50–1, 164n
Blanchard, Mary Warner, 161 36; and Social Gospel move-
boarding schools, 55 ment, 50, 163n35; Virgin Mary
Boxgrove (Palaeolithic site), 143n3 in, 179n61; and “willing con-
Boy Meets World, 75 scripts,” 81–9. See also Young
Boy Scouts of America, 55, Men’s Christian Association
169n51 cities. See civilizations
boys. See “wild boys” Civil War, 50, 54, 67, 79, 81–2,
Breaking Bad, 98 161n3, 168n40, 174n17,
Brownmiller, Susan, 142n5 177n48
Buddhism, 26, 35, 156nn72–3, civilization (word), 40, 42, 52, 54
157n86 civilizations (early); and bureau-
Buganda, 154n64 cracy, 35, 61; and ideal of the
Buid people, 146n17 just king, 30; philosophy, 12, 24,
business, 43, 53, 74, 123, 164n36, 27–35; and rationalization, 61;
201n69 and religion, 24–37; and social
stratification, 25; and specializa-
Canadian National Vimy tion, 7, 13, 24, 30–1, 35–6,
Memorial, 68 155n67, 201n69; and state for-
Canadian War Museum, 85 mation, 7, 23–33; and trade, 90,
Carlson, Margaret, 119 182n83; and urbanization, 7,
Carnes, Mark, 47 24–6, 30–1, 33, 36. See also war
children: birth rate, 167n38; early Clark, Marcia, 114
preference for mothers, 129; cloning. See reproductive
fatherless, 102, 117; as means to technologies
other ends, 118; need for fathers Cockburn, Lyn, 114
and mothers, 206n115; “right” Cohen, David, 26
to have, 109 collective identity (men), 9;
Chinese, 25, 90, 154n64, 156n73, requires distinctive, necessary,
162n15 and publicly valued contribution
Christianity: and athletic meta- to society, xi, 4–5, 26, 89, 93–4,
phor, 34; feminization of, 136–7, 164n36, 186n92; in
49–52, 164n36; on human sac- agrarian societies, 30, 38; and
rifice, 158n89; and martial combat, 22, 30, 67, 88, 92–3,
hymns, 178n56; and martial 167; and conscription, 89–94;
metaphors, 52; as Muscular and culture, 182; and education,
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index 213
155; and fatherhood, 24, 35–6, 62–3; mercenaries in, 30, 63,
56, 96–136; and fraternal 173; and natural reluctance to
lodges, 14, 46–55, 166n36, kill, 77; in Neolithic societies,
168n39, 169n50; healthy or 11–13; passive periods, 71; in
unhealthy versions of, xi, 4; and pastoral societies, 8; as patriotic
imitation of Christ, 87; and duty, 77; physical and psycholog-
Industrial Revolution, 39, 44; ical skills for, 63, 94; promised
investing in future of society, rewards for survivors, 78, 88;
106, 132; in Judaism, 30; lack and rape, 92; and sacrifice, 159;
of, leads to social problems, and self-sacrifice, 88, 158n89;
137–8; and maleness, 7, 13, 30, stress of, 71; as ultimate destiny
39; and marriage, 43; and mid- of male citizens, 91. See also mil-
dle classes, 44; need for, 139; itary revolution; conscription
and Neolithic revolution, 13; coming of age, 91, 14. See also
and pacifism, 75; possibilities initiation
for, 51, 138; and religion, 63; compassion, 157
and reproduction, 110; and competition: in America, 54–8,
sexual segregation, 14, 20–1, 31, 161n2, 163n35; and female sol-
37, 44, 51, 159n93, 160n94; diers, 185; in Greece, 26–33; in
and state formation, 7, 23–33, horticultural societies, 10, 18, 21
61; and status ranking, 56; and conscription: and anomaly of the
upper classes, 44, 56; and work, “willing conscript,” 62, 76,
xi, 26, 39–44, 56, 138 80–9; and citizenship, 64–6; as
collective identity (women), 106, coming of age, 91; and consci-
116, 206; and education, 155; entious objectors, 70; and defer-
and motherhood, 112, 206n112; ments, 75; and deserters, 73,
need for, 139; and reproductive 76–7, 177n48, 178n54; draft
technologies, 110, 193n35, riots, 66; financial costs of
194n36, 194n40; in India, 174n14; history of, 60–95,
155n67 107n12; and human sacrifice,
collectivism, 120, 138, 190 84, 158n89; informal coercion
combat, 10, 33, 38, 53; as one (press gangs), 63; and instru-
defining feature of masculinity, mental world view, 94; as legal
93; as adventure fantasy, 77; anomaly, 92; male bodies as
bribes and threats for recruits, state resources, 108; and mass
78; in Christianity, 80; cowardice death, 67; and moral agency, 94;
in, 34; and endurance of pain, as a slave system, 65; in South
167; and human sacrifice, 159; Korea, 88–9; “universality” of,
and journalism, 73; as masculine 64, 92, 173n11, 183n84. See
duty, 71; in medieval Europe, also collective identity (men)
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214 index
consequentialism, 190n22 double messages, 43, 186

conspiracy theory of history, ix, double standards, 110, 116, 130,
44, 107, 164n36, 190n21, 138, 175n18, 186n90
196n53 Douglas, Ann, 39
contraception. See reproductive draft. See conscription
technologies Drexler, Peggy, 132
Corea, Gena, 107 dualism, 40, 113, 128, 164n36,
counterculture, 100 190n22
culture, xi, 25; conditioning by, 95; Durga (hindu goddess), 158n87
debate over nature vs., ix–x, 77, Dworkin, Andrea, 109, 113
141–2; masculinity created by,
31, 56; massive cultural effort to eco-feminism. See ideological
prepare men for combat, 11; feminism
and public sphere, 54 egalitarian feminism, 105, 190; on
diversity, 132; on economic
Dahomey, 154n64 autonomy, 112; on motherhood,
De Waal, Frans, 178n53 111, 129. See also ideological
deconstruction: and boundaries, feminism
138; of culture, 191n23; of egalitarianism, 4, 8–9
democracy, 131; of historic fam- Egyptians, 31, 154n64
ily, 133, 207n118; of men as Ehrenreich, Barabara, 92–3, 143n3
hunters, 143n3; of motherhood, Ember, C.R., 13
110; and political expediency, Enlightenment, 61
128, 207n118; and postmodern- equality, 4, 26, 60
ism, xi, 207n118; of sex per se, Eriksen, Karen, 147n30
142n5 essentialism, 40, 105, 109, 113, 128
Depression. See Great Depression ethics. See moral philosophy
Divale, William, 14, 132,155n66 euthanasia, 95
diversity, 101, 115–16, 121, 132– Eyer, Diane, 196n54
3, 188n19, 203, 207
divorce: the “divorce culture,” 102, false memory syndrome, 128
114; effects on children, families: fragmentation or diversity
203n81; effects on men, 14, 16, of, 115–16, 121, 132; birth cer-
43; initiated by women, 16; and tificates, 207; functions of, 201;
mothers, 104, 111–27; the “no in popular culture, 132. See also
fault” clause, 111; and single children; fathers; mothers
mothers, 114–27; rate of, 111; Family Guy, 98
and reproductive technologies, Father Knows Best, 97
111–27 fathers, 24, 55–6, 97, 101, 137; as
Dix, Otto, 86 assistant mothers, 127; and
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index 215
custody, 104, 114, 127; as Feminist International Network of

“deadbeat dads,” 127, 129; as Resistance to Reproductive and
distinct from mothers, 129, Genetic Engineering (finrrage),
191n24; dual fathers, 130; 107–8
duties of, 191; egalitarian femi- feminization and masculinization,
nism on, 127; “joint paternity,” 39–59, 161n3, 164n36
17; as last remaining source of Ferguson, Brian, 8
healthy identity for men, Firestone, Shulamith, 112
164n36; as liabilities, 130; and First World War, 56, 60, 66, 82–8,
love, 133; as luxuries, 129; and 161n3, 168n38, 169n50, 171n4,
maleness, 55; Barack Obama 172n5, 173n6, 174n12, 175n18;
on, 129; as pariahs, 41; as pater in the arts, 68–72, 99, 162, 168;
familias, 104; presumed obsoles- casualties in, 171, 176; deserters
cence of, 103–4, 122, 127, 134, in, 177n48, 178n54; as a “holo-
198n67, 202n71; public indif- caust of young men,” 81; “lost
ference toward, 119, 129; Dan generation” of, 67, 100; and
Quayle on, 119; replaced by “shell shock,” 71. See also war
state, 128, 198n67; rights of, memorials
191–2n24; and sons, 35, 48, foraging societies, 4
57–8; as “teaspoonful of fraternal lodges, 14, 46–55,
sperm,” 124; and unemploy- 166n36, 168n39, 169n50
ment, 58, 205n101. See also col- Frederick the Great, 63
lective identity (men); children, Freikorps, 70
fatherless; single fathers French, Marilyn, 120
Feil, D.K., 21 French Revolution, 64
femaleness, ix–x, 4, 12, 141; and Friedan, Betty, 111
aggression, 76; and combat, 11;
dominance in lore, 15; fight or gay marriage, 130–4, 194n40,
flight, 147n27; and menstrua- 207n121, 208n126
tion, 17–18, 143n3, 151n50. See gender, ix–x, 4, 91, 101, 152, 165,
also collective identity (women); 184; and Agricultural
femininity; mothers; women Revolution, 34; divine proto-
femicide. See gynecide types of, 25; and employment,
femininity, ix–x, 4, 41, 43, 46, 51, 56–9, 76, 170n63. See also col-
75 lective identity (men); collective
feminism, 51, 75, 190; “personal is identity (women); femininity;
political” in, 97, 119; and repro- masculinity; men; women
ductive technologies, 88, genetic fathers, 106, 116, 133
191n24. See also egalitarian genetic mothers, 106, 116, 133
feminism; ideological feminism Giardina, Anthony, 134
27079_Nathanson.indd 215 2015-08-11 11:14:32

216 index
Gilday, Katherine, 118 peaceful exceptions, 8–9; and

Gilmore, David D., 5, 9, 144 sexual segregation, 31; tendency
Girard, René, 148–9 toward violence, 9–10, 18,
gods and goddesses. See religion 148n32; tied to land and water,
Gohain, Bikash Chandra, 149n34 10; transitional societies, 15–17;
Goldstein, Joshua, 11, 13 and vulnerability of men, 22–4.
Great Depression, 55–9, 72, 79, See also collective identity
100, 169n53 (men); masculinity; men;
Greeks, 26, 31–4, 79 Neolithic societies
Greer, Germaine, 112 human sacrifice: in agrarian societ-
Gregor, Thomas, 17, 146n17, ies, 154; among Aztecs, 157n84;
147n25, 151n49, 151n52 in ancient India, 158n87; in
Grosz, George, 85 ancient Near East, 84, 154n64,
Grottinelli, Christiano, 148n32 178n57; and early chiefs, 23;
The Guns of August, 66 echoes in biblical story, 158n89;
gynecide, 108, 110 in popular culture, 84, 154–5;
symbolic substitutes for, 29
Harrison, Colin, 99 hunting: dangers of, 4–5; moral
hazing, 41 ambiguity of, 5–6; motivation
hedonism, 100, 111, 120, 122, 138 for, 4–6, 42; in Palaeolithic soci-
hell, 49 eties, 6; as a rite of passage, 154;
Herdt, Gilbert R., 19, 152n57, and women, 143n3. See also
152n58 Palaeolithic societies
Hewlett, Sylvia, 112 hunting and gathering societies, 4
heteronormativity, 133
heterosexism, 133 identity, xi, 138, 182n82. See also
hierarchy, 21–7, 36–7, 155n65; in collective identity (men); collec-
armies, 184n88; and dualism, tive identity (women); personal
190n23; in fraternal lodges, 48; identity
and military caste, 63; reversal identity politics, 120
of, 116, 164n36 ideological feminism, 102, 105–6,
Hinduism, 34–7, 156n72, 158n87 127, 190–1; on alternative fami-
holiness, 30 lies, 132; on historic family as a
Home Improvement, 98 source of misogyny, 133; on
honour. See masculinity men, 96, 108, 112, 113, 142n5,
Horticultural Revolution. See 164n36, 167n37; on female
Neolithic societies superiority, 112–13, 129; as
horticultural societies, 12, 47; and male feminism, 86; on mother-
feuding, 9; and food supply, 10; hood, 112, 128–9; on no need
overpopulation in, 150n45; for men, 115; on patriarchy,
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index 217
109. See also egalitarian Keegan, John, 65, 174n12

feminism Kemper, Theodore D., 6, 177n50
Im Westen nichts Neues, 69 kibbutz, 115
imitation of Christ. See The Kids Are All Right, 135
Christianity Kollwitz, Käthe, 68
immortality, 32 Kwon, Insook, 88
Incas, 25
infanticide, 17 law: civilizations (early), 24–8,
Indians, 26, 35, 149n34, 173n7. Industrial Revolution, 39; “law
See also Hinduism of nature,” 60–1; as social con-
individualism, 23–6, 30, 55, 120, tract, 64–5. See also
122 conscription
Industrial Revolution, 38–59 Lea, Tom, 74
inequality. See hierarchy leadership, 71
infertility, 104 Leo, John, 121
initiation (boys), 14–15, 20, 41, Levy, Robert, 9
143n3, 152n58; circumcision as, literacy, 24
9, 12; into fraternal lodges, lodges. See fraternal lodges
47–9; among Greeks, 32; among Louis XIV, 61
Hindus, 35; spiritualized ver- Low, Bobbi S., 141n1
sions of, 35; war as, 11–13
Inuit people, 6 Macke, August, 66
intersexual relations, 43, 184 Mad Men, 99
Israelites. See Christianity; Judaism Mahabharata, 34
male feminism. See ideological
Jainism, 26, 156n72, 157n86 feminism
James, Henry, 50 male gestation. See reproductive
Japan, 35, 156 technologies
Jencks, Christopher, 122 male teachers. See men, as teachers
Jeremiah, 158 maleness, ix– xi, 54, 89, 141n1;
Jesus. See Christianity and aggression, 78; as alienation
Joan of Arc, 164n36 from childbirth, 112; and auto-
Johannsen, Ernst, 68 mation, 59; and danger, 11–13;
Judaism, 29–30, 158n89 distinctive contributions of, 3–4;
Junior, 130 and envy of women (couvade
justice, 26, 29 and ritual bleeding), 9, 18–29;
and the “inner savage,” 52; and
Kali (Hindu goddess), 158n87 iron plough, 26; and “instinct,”
Kamaradschaft, 68 52; and libido, 53; marginaliza-
Kaminer, Wendy, 125 tion of, 7, 10, 91; and
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218 index
masculinity, 24, 30–1; mobility, chivalry and, 67, 182n83; in the

30, 172; in Neolithic societies, arts, 164n36; and bonding, 14,
11–13; and penis, 6, 19, 47, 184n88; and citizenship, 26,
150n43, 150n 46, 162n15; and 33; and coming of age, 14; as
psychosomatic illness,162n15; compensation for maleness, 112;
and reproduction, 196n50; and as compensation for vulnerabil-
sperm, 123; as strength, 4, 30, ity, 17; as courage, 12; as denial
56, 63, 90; and testosterone, 76; of vulnerability, 45, 137; and
as vulnerability, 17; and war- hazing, 41; and heroes, 32; hon-
fare, 11. See also collective iden- our and shame in, 13, 33, 41;
tity (men); fathers; masculinity; and hunting, 5; and maleness,
men 30–1; as managerial skill, 90; as
manhood. See collective identity martial skill, 11–13, 30, 34, 92;
(men); maleness; masculinity; martial values become ascetic
men ones, 34; in matrilocal or matri-
Marc, Franz, 66 lineal societies, 13–14; in
Margolis, Maxine, 4, 13 Neolithic societies, 7, 14; obso-
marriage, 102; “brothel” model of, lete functions, 208n129; as
113; companionate model of, 55, pragmatic non-violence, 146; in
169; complementarity model of, patrilineal societies, 7, 24; in
4; monogamous model of, 155; patrilocal societies, 24, 149n40;
“shotgun” weddings, 198n67; in post-war period, 74; as
and wedding industry, 118. See “primitive,” 42–66, 98; proof of,
also divorce; gay marriage 13; and risk, xi, 11–13; in
Marotta, William, 192 Roman philosophy, 28; as “sav-
Marxism, 138 age,” 42, 46–7, 52, 55, 66; stoic
Masai people, 149 versions of, 12–13, 28, 35, 45,
masculine ideals: the ascetic, 156; 92; and stress due to vulnerabil-
the athlete, 31–4, 53, 56, ity, 17, 22–4, 43–5; and sym-
182n83; the healer, 30; the bolic association with death, 28,
macho jock, 46, 55–6, 182n83; 173n10; as “wild,” 42, 48, 55,
the pacifist, 68, 70, 176; the 74, 168n39. See also armies; col-
public servant, 27–8, 30, 67; the lective identity (men); conscrip-
religious leader, 29–30; the tion; war; wars; “wild boys”
scholar, 30, 147n 25; the self- masculinization. See feminization
sacrificial follower of Jesus, 49, matrilocal societies, 15
164n36, 173n10; the prophetic Mattes, Jane, 125
seeker of justice, 29–30 Mayans, 25
masculinity, ix–x, 4, 70, 72; in McDannell, Colleen, 50, 164n36
America, 182n83; anachronistic Mehinaku people, 17–18
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index 219
The Men, 74 maleness; masculinity; Second

men, 35; attitudes toward court- World War; single fathers;
ship and marriage, 39, 43; atti- Vietnam War; war; war
tudes toward power, 25, memorials
164n36; as citizens, 26, 33; as Mesopotamians, 25, 29, 154n64,
“civilized” or “over-civilized,” 174n14
52–4; and dependence on military service. See conscription
women, 21; as dropouts, 138; military revolution, 60–95. See
and envy of women, 18–29; also armies; combat; conscrip-
“expendability” of, 67, 91, tion; maleness; masculinity;
147n26, 149n40; fear of failure, men; war; war memorials
44; high status for intellectual, Millett, Kate, 112
artistic, or managerial skills, 91; Mills, Sherron, 124
low status for physical labour, misandry, 102, 120
91; in matrilocal or matrilineal misogyny, 102, 153n60, 164n36
societies, 13–14; of the middle Modern Family, 98
classes, 30, 40, 44, 46–7, 54, 89; modernism, 66
in Neolithic societies, 7, 14; as a modernity, 56, 64, 138, 172n5
new underclass, 170; and per- Moloch (Canaanite god), 84–5,
sonal autonomy, 5, 16, 23–4; as 158n89
“pimps,” 109; in popular cul- moral philosophy, 27, 29, 95
ture, 97–9; in post-war America, Mosse, George L., 173n10
74; and “primal needs,” 52; as mothers, 40–1; childbirth, 4–5,
proletarians, 65, 90; as protec- 167n38; and daycare, 112; as
tors, 3, 93, 137, 147n25, dominant parents, 57; dual moth-
208n130; as providers, 39, 42, ers, 130; in feminism, 113; and
104, 137, 208n130; as religious gestation, xi; and identity, 113;
leaders and sages, 30, 63; and and lactation, xi, 25, lesbians as,
reproduction, 106–9, 196n50; 134; as mater familias, 104; and
as suicides, 28, 138, 156n72; as nature vs. culture debate, 111; as
symbolic machines or weapons, peacemakers, 112; and “primi-
39; symbolically linked with the tive,” 196n54; as “prostitutes,”
lower classes, 98; as teachers, 113; as “rented wombs,” 108;
36, 55, 128; vulnerabilities of, reproductive labour of, 112; and
43–6, 137; and work 44, 48, sexual equality, 113; social, 106,
56–9, 76, 170n63. See also 133; as virtually sacred, 130
alpha males; Civil War; collec- Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 121
tive identity (men); combat; con- Mundurucu people, 15–17, 150n43
scription; fathers; First World Murphy Brown, 119
War; Great Depression; Murphy, Robert, 15
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220 index
Murphy, Yolande and Robert, 16 pacifism, 68, 70, 176n27, 176n28,

Murray, Charles, 199 176n33
Muscular Christianity, 50, 53, Paige, Jeffrey, 147n30
163n35 Palaeolithic societies, 3–4, 6–7
parents, 56, 121, 127, 195. See
Naga people, 149n34 also fathers; mothers
Nama people, 21–2 Parker, Rozsika, 196n54
Nathanson, Paul, 162n9 parthenogenesis. See reproductive
National Christian Association, 51 technologies
nationalism, 65 pastoral societies, 7–8
nature: “contra-natural” vs. patrilineal societies, 7, 24
“unnatural,” 142n4; and cul- patrilocal societies, 24, 149n40
ture, ix–xi, 11, 141n2, 142n4, peaceful societies, x–xi, 8–9, 15,
186n91, 191n23; as environ- 18, 93, 146n17
ment, 19–20, 113; and gender, personal identity, 138. See also col-
24, 31, 37, 133, 191n23; and lective identity (men); collective
“law of nature,” 60; and sex, 40, identity (women)
54, 126, 130; symbolism of, 42, philosophy: and conscription, 65;
542, 133. See also culture; in early civilizations, 24, 27–8,
femaleness; maleness; sex 31, 33–4; and “just war” theory,
Neolithic societies: chiefdoms, 62–3; and limits on government
22–4; headhunting, 12, 29, power, 64; in modern times, 79;
148n32, 154n64; instability, 23; and “social contract,” 173n11
men vulnerable in, 4, 10, 22, 43; pluralism, 132–3, 207n118
raiding, 10. See also foraging Poliakoff, Michael, 31, 33
societies; horticultural societies; postmodernism, 128, 138. See also
hunting-and-gathering societies; deconstruction
pastoral societies promiscuity, 101
neurasthenia, 44–5 puberty. See coming of age; initiation
New Age movements, 120
New Deal, 58 reform, 51–2, 64. See also
Nicholls, Sydney Wentworth, 85 revolution
Nixon, Richard, 75 religion, 12, 25, 144, 193. See also
nurses, 51, 168n40 Buddhism; Christianity;
Hinduism; Jainism; Judaism
Obama, Barack, 129, 125, 170n64 Remarque, Erich Maria, 68
O’Brien, Mary, 112 Renoir, Jean, 71
Ogden, C.K., 81 Renvoize, Jean, 116, 202n70
Orenstein, Peggy, 122 reproduction, 104, 106. See also
Owen, Wilfred, 84 fathers; femaleness; maleness;
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index 221
mothers; reproductive San people, 6

technologies Sanday, Peggy Reeves, 13, 148n32
reproductive revolution, 104–36. Santiago, Soledad, 198n66
See also sexual revolution Sasson, Siegfried, 84
reproductive technologies: abor- Scheibach, Michael, 38, 57
tion, 17, 95, 103–8, 150n45, Second World War, 56; in the arts,
190n23, 191n24, 192n28, 73–4, 78–9, 175n18, 177n38,
193n31, 193n33, 194n41; 178n54, 180n65, 184n88; con-
Canadian royal commission on, scientious objectors in, 69;
108, 194–5; cloning, 105, 108, deserters in, 177n48; and GI
192; contraception, 102; control Bill, 74, 101, 134; and gold-star
of women’s bodies, 108, 124; ex mothers, 82; migrations during,
utero technologies, 105, 101
196n49; and gestational moth- self-sacrifice, 33, 80–1, 84, 89. See
ers, 130; in vitro fertilization, also Christianity; human sacri-
105, 192; male gestation, 105, fice; sacrifice; war
196n50; parthenogenesis, 105, Semai people, 8–9, 146n17
110, 192n30; sex selection, 106, semen, 17, 106, 123
110; and social mothers, 130; Sevenhuijsen, Selma, 112
surrogacy, 105–6, 109. See also sex, ix, 101–2
genetic fathers; genetic mothers; sex differences, 4, 141n2
social parents sex selection. See reproductive
revolution, 61, 64, 66. See also technologies
reform sexual polarization, 19–21, 43,
Rippon, Gina, 182n83 109, 153n60
Roiphe, Anne, 196n53 sexual revolution, 99–104. See also
Romans, 27, 32, 157n78, 157n82 reproductive revolution
Romanticism, 42, 54,82, 120 sexual segregation: arbitrary clas-
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 72 sifications for, 31; and fraternal
Roosevelt, Theodore, 40, 50, 54, lodges, 168n39; and law reform,
167 39; public vs. private domains,
Rotundo, E. Anthony, 40 4, 9, 64–5, 111–12, 119; pur-
dah, 159n93; and sexual polar-
sacrifice. See human sacrifice; self- ization, 20–1; and work, 44
sacrifice; war sexual violence, 113
Sagan, Eli, 13, 23–4, 139n34, Shiva (Hindu god), 158n87
148nn31–2, 154nn63–4, Shameless, 98
155n65, 157n85 Shapiro, Stephen, 86
Sambia people, 19–21 Sherrif, R.C., 70
Samburu people, 149n35 Simpson, O.J., 114
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222 index
Since You Went Away, 73 urbanization. See civilizations

single fathers, 121, 200 Utilitarianism, 116
single mothers, 55, 111–27, 130,
132, 136, 170n64, 188n20, Versailles Treaty, 67
191n24, 192n25, 198n64, The Very Thought of You, 73
198n67, 201n68, 204n99, Vietnam War, 74–5, 87–8
205n100, 208n127 violence, 6; aversion mechanisms,
single parents, 114, 116, 120, 130, 146n17, 148n32; cannibalism,
198, 203n82 12, 29, 148n39; and “character,”
Skidmore, Clive, 27 53; and civilizations, 62; con-
Smart, Carol, 191 fined to warrior classes, 34; dou-
Snowden, Lynn, 122 ble standard on, 130; in gay and
social constructionism, 128 straight couples, 135; institution-
social contract, 64 alized, 10; and “rape culture,”
socialism, 67 142; in Neolithic societies, 9–29,
sperm banks, 105, 122, 127, 135 42, 47, 148n31, 153n60; and
Spiegel, Shalom, 178n57 socialism, 68; and the state, 26;
sports, 53–4 and “testosterone poisoning,”
Stahlhelm, 70 76; torture, 12–14, 22, 29, 42,
Stanworth, Michelle, 110 47, 148n31, 153n60; transition
Steinem, Gloria, 113 from martial to ascetic values,
Stern, Elizabeth and William, 110 34; among “wild boys,” 41–2
Stossel, John, 199n67
Stravinsky, Igor, 66 war, 10, 54, 73. See also armies;
stress, xi, 10, 21; and adrena- combat; conscription; First
line,11; and combat, 26; and World War; maleness; masculin-
vulnerability, 22 ity; men; pacifism; Second
suicide, 28, 138, 156n72 World War; Vietnam War
Sumerians. See Mesopotamians war memorials, 79, 180n65,
surrogacy. See reproductive 181n66, 181n78; and pacifism,
technologies 175n20; and sacrifice or “self-
sacrifice,” 180n 65; and
Tahitians, 9 “unknown soldier,” 82. See also
technology, 8, 91 First World War; Second World
testosterone, 76, 177 War
therapeutic movements, 102, 120 war profiteers, 70, 84
Trigger, Bruce, 25 wars. See Civil War; First World
Trumbo, Dalton, 72 War; Second World War;
Tuchman, Barbara, 66 Vietnam War
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index 223
Watson, J., 21 51; on “pedestals,” 39–40; and

Weiner, Caren, 130 power, 36, 51, 106, 112; as
welfare state, 170n63 “primitive,” 196n54; as “spiri-
Westfront, 70 tual,” 43; symbolically linked
Westfront 1918, 68 with middle classes, 98; as teach-
Whissell, Cynthia, 141n2 ers, 40, 129; threatened by
Whitehead, Barbara Dafoe, 110, househusbands, 205; as transmit-
114, 121, 203n84 ters of culture, 50; and violence,
Whitehead, Mary Beth, 110 153; as wartime cheerleaders, 13;
“wild boys,” 39–59, 138 and work beyond home, 58
Wilson, Charles, 81 Wood, Frances Derwent, 85
women: and adrenaline, 14, 17; World War I. See First World War
autonomy of, 16; and Christian World War II. See Second World
imagery, 179; and collective War
autonomy, 103–27, 191n23,
194n41, 203n84; and claims of Xinguano people, 146
moral superiority, 51, 60; in
combat, 88, 153; and conscrip- Yoruba people, 25
tion, 91–2; as consumers of “cul- Young Men’s Christian
ture,” 40; health of, 106; as Association, 50, 55
hunters, 143; in Neolithic societ-
ies, 10; oppose fraternal lodges, Zipper, Juliette, 112
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Paul Nathanson, Katherine K. Young - Replacing Misandry - A Revolutionary History of Men-McGill-Queen's University Press (2015)

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Paul Nathanson, Katherine K. Young - Replacing Misandry - A Revolutionary History of Men-McGill-Queen's University Press (2015)

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r e p l ac i n g m i s a n d r y

27079_Nathanson.indd 1 2015-08-11 11:14:19

McGill-Queen’s University Press

27079_Nathanson.indd 3 2015-08-11 11:14:19

isb n 978-0-7735-4553-3 (cloth)

Legal deposit third quarter 2015

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free

McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Nathanson, Paul, 1947–, author

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Men – History. 2. Misandry. I. Young, Katherine K., 1944–, author

This book was typeset by Interscript in 10.5/13 Sabon.

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Prologue: A Revolutionary Theory ix

1 From Hunter to Urbanite: The Neolithic and Agricultural

2 From Peasant to Proletarian: The Industrial Revolution 38

3 From Subject to Conscript: The Military Revolution 60

4 From Father to Sperm Donor: The Sexual and Reproductive

Epilogue: Postmodern Man 137

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We thank the Canadian Federation of the Humanities for a grant to

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This volume begins a reconstruction of men’s history – that is, human

The similarity in gender stereotypes found cross-culturally sug-

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cultural factors producing minor variations around general

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gestation and lactation. Other societies, those that experience a great

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27079_Nathanson.indd 1 2015-08-11 11:14:22

From Hunter to Urbanite:

We know hardly anything of primeval men or women, those who

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meat or fish.3 In communities that relied on dangerous big-game

Anthropologists have long recognized that most hunting and

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moreover, no matter how useful. Hunters in some societies, therefore,

The hunter kills, as it were, for professional reasons; to be a

Consider the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. When the hunter

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– most are very rudimentary) riddled with spears or darts – but no

The Neolithic Revolution began approximately twelve thousand

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is that the accumulation of herds made raiding those of other com-

have subsistence technology and skills which can be carried over

On the Eurasian steppes, for example, domesticating horses approxi-

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accommodate men sexually, even foreign men, to avoid conflict

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Even so, most horticultural societies in modern times have been

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discussion of maleness and femaleness in connection with warfare

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These initiation rituals demonstrate the attainment of skills that

Even though Neolithic societies glorified mythical male heroes, the

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exhibit the most complete development of the male-female

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In one sense, the myth is an allegory of man’s birth from woman,