Masculinity, Male Development, Gender, and Identity: Modern and Postmodern Meanings

Modern and postmodern scholars are addressing the crisis in masculinity by questioning the meaning of masculinity and by rethinking masculinity, male development, gender, and identity. This article explicates current modern humanist positions and postmodern positions on these topics. The first section summarizes contemporary theories advanced by scholars in the relatively new discipline of men's studies. The second section presents postmodern positions exploring sex as a biological given, the emerging critiques of differentiating sex and gender, and poststructural psychoanalytic positions on simultaneous production of individual subjectivity (sense of self), masculine identity, and society. Implications of these perspectives are identified.