Elusiveness of male sexuality

The New Man

Nature

The new western man has been encouraged to be sensitive and caring, to develop his female side. He will share the child-raising and housework, eschew aggression and over-intellectualism. Socially the new man is caught between images of the more conservative "real man" of the enterprise culture - who is able to support his family without relying on unions, special interest groups or the welfare state - and the "social man" with strong group identification and ideals of cooperative capitalism of the labour/socialist side.

Claim

Men are challenged by an elusive masculinity. This is: because of the way society defines male sexuality exclusively in terms of a partial and limited (and marketable) sexuality, namely genital sexuality; because only mothers parent and so men are not equally integrated into the reproductive process, hence there is a cultural alienation regarding paternity; finally, because of the natural alienation men experience from the living products of their own sexuality, in that men can never be sure if the baby is their child.