Tough Guise

Abstract

This article makes a controversial proposal: to place masculinity at the center of a feminist analysis. This will seem an alarming move to some, who might say that men already are at the center of virtually everything. But that's just the point. If the world is designed around men and masculinity, a pressing task for feminists is to identify and dislodge the masculine norms that both marginalize women and police men into a straitjacket. The article applies this approach, called reconstructive feminism, to both the work-family and the sex-violence axes of gender.