Directions for the Study of Masculinity: Beyond Toxicity, Experience, and Alienation

The relationship between the law and masculinity has not been as thoroughly examined as the relationship between the law and feminism or, more generally, between the law and gender. Yet, the reach of masculinity stretches deep into the very fiber of the law. Masculinity has for too long served as an invisible bedrock on which the law founded both its substance and method. The struggle for formal equality during the last half century sought the elimination of the masculinist bias, but has only exposed the extent of the entrenchment. The popular idea is that the law exists in a removed and exalted position where it sits in judgement of a pre-existing and fully formed masculinity. Indeed, much of the internal coherence of the law is premised on the integrity of the subject and the propagation of sexual difference. Thus, the law is precluded from acknowledging or engaging with its own productive power and vacuously characterizes itself as a neutral arbiter. Today, while significant changes occur in sex and sexuality, the study of masculinity appears theoretically stagnant