Description
Carnage in the classroom, misogynists in high office, sociopaths in uniform, masculinity is a killer. From styles of dress to the stunted capacity for expressing a diversity of emotions, becoming a man involves killing off and repudiating anything that in our society is held as feminine. When a person is unable to show compassion and tenderness, or when exposed for their frailties, feels angry and humiliated, they have problems. Problems that none of us are immune to. Masculinity, Cremin provocatively declares, is a generic disorder of a sick society that afflicts even the best of us. Neither a condition of being human nor even of male, it is a disorder, as she illustrates, of a capitalist society that depends and even thrives upon its very symptoms.
From the perspective of a trans woman raised to be a man, the book maps the disorder and speculates on the possible means to overcome it. Instead of signifying weakness, catastrophes can be prevented when the qualities men often fear and women often feel subordinated to are prioritised, affirmed and nourished. Drawing, amongst others, on Marx and Freud, Cremin eloquently demonstrates why there can be no future other than one in which we are all reconciled as a society with the feminine. In such a future, the terms 'masculine' and 'feminine' will neither define us nor determine our relationship to one another.
Author: Ciara Cremin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 07/01/2021
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.89lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.56d
ISBN13: 9781350149779
ISBN10: 1350149772
BISAC Categories:
- Philosophy | Social
- Social Science | Gender Studies
- Psychology | Human Sexuality (see also Social Science | Human Sexuality)
From the perspective of a trans woman raised to be a man, the book maps the disorder and speculates on the possible means to overcome it. Instead of signifying weakness, catastrophes can be prevented when the qualities men often fear and women often feel subordinated to are prioritised, affirmed and nourished. Drawing, amongst others, on Marx and Freud, Cremin eloquently demonstrates why there can be no future other than one in which we are all reconciled as a society with the feminine. In such a future, the terms 'masculine' and 'feminine' will neither define us nor determine our relationship to one another.
Author: Ciara Cremin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 07/01/2021
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.89lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.56d
ISBN13: 9781350149779
ISBN10: 1350149772
BISAC Categories:
- Philosophy | Social
- Social Science | Gender Studies
- Psychology | Human Sexuality (see also Social Science | Human Sexuality)
About the Author
Ciara Cremin lectures in sociology and leads the Gender Studies programme at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has published a number of books, including Man-Made Woman (2017), that reflects on her early experiences of presenting publicly as a woman. Her work, in general, draws on Marxist, psychoanalytic and critical theory perspectives to diagnose the human condition in capitalism today.