X Preface Preface xi social theory of gender.That is a generous ambition and one call it the 'theory of practice'for short.It seems to me consistent person's work can only be a fragment of the enterprise.But given with the best current research on gender and sexual politics,and the state of the problem it seemed timely to try out a large to offer resolutions of some of the dilemmas the theory of gender synthesis,to suggest how the different issues about gender might has run into.Accordingly the general approach of the book is to fit together.The argument,accordingly,ranges over a very wide bring together the theory of practice with the problems of sexual field and the research has led me into some unexpected corners politics.This is far from being a one-way trade,an application'; from the archaeology of ancient south-west Asia (trying to get it has involved reformulations of both.One of the unexpected some grip on the evidence for feminist'origins'arguments)to the outcomes was a demand for a practice-based approach to person- lesser-known followers of Freud.It is inevitable that some parts ality,which grew equally from a general principle of historicity, of the analysis are thin,and some are relatively abstract or the findings of psychoanalysis and the experience of sexual speculative.When there was a choice I put more time into problems liberation movements. that seemed relatively neglected,such as the institutionalization of The reasons for undertaking the enterprise were partly that I gender,than into issues now widely studied,such as sexual wanted to understand the problems myself and partly that theory ideology. is important,at least in the long run,for practical politics.Bad The basis of the synthesis,the logical starting-point,is the theories will do harm.There are enough dilemmas and strategic nature of social reality itself.Arguments about gender are plagued conflicts in sexual politics to make a decent theory of gender a by an assumption that what is biological or natural'is somehow tangible asset for progressive politics of many kinds. more real than what is social.For instance it was often suggested But theories don't grow on trees;theorizing is itself a social in the early 1970s that sex roles were'artificial'because they were practice with a politics.Most of the radical theorizing of gender socially created (by media,schools or whatever).There was a has been done by women or by gay men.I am a heterosexual sense that if you poked a finger at them it would go right through. man,married,middle-aged,with a tenured academic job in an Since then a good many fingers have been poked and they did affluent country-in world terms one of the very rich and secure. not go through.Sexist stereotypes are still with us,showing I owe an account of what I am doing here. impressive toughness and resilience.Social process has its own There is a view put by the 1970s 'men's movement'in the power to constrain,its own resistance to dissolution.And yet it is United States that 'men are equally oppressed'.This claim is entirely human.The oppression of women and gays is a matter demonstrably false.Some of the relevant evidence is set out below of human agency,not of nature. in chapter 1,which is intended as an introduction to the facts of How to get a good understanding of these qualities has been a gender inequality for those not already familiar with the issue. central issue in social theory over the last thirty years,and an Men in general are advantaged by current social structure, uncommonly difficult one.The debates around structuralism in heterosexual men more so than others.What the debate about the 1970s got badly hung up on a contradiction between the 'men's liberation'nevertheless showed is that there are costs for men impersonality and the humanness of social process.There is, in their social advantages,sometimes serious ones.It also showed however,an approach emerging in social theory that has a more that there are some groups of men who can recognize injustice when convincing answer,though it is still not widely known outside a they see it and are far from comfortable with the position they have technical readership.One of its sources is the theory of practice inherited. derived by philosophical critiques of mainstream Marxism;another For me,this discontent had several sources.I have been uneasy is the dualist or recursive models of the relation between structure with conventional masculinity almost as long as I can remember, and practice developed in theoretical sociology;and a third is the certainly since I was a teenager.I am not sure why;there may contextual analysis of the self,personal action and intersubjectivity be an answer in what Dorothy Dinnerstein says in The Mermaid developing in social psychology. and the Minotaur about the men who became student activists in There is no commonly accepted term for this approach;I will the 1960s.At all events my attachment to masculinity was