Reconstructing Masculinity and Sexuality

Abstract

This paper attempts to synthesize general issues pertaining to masculinity and male sexuality using essentialist and postmodern theoretical ideologies. According to essentialist ideologies, the construction of male gender requires one's molding into a masculine role, which presupposes autonomy, competition, and aggressiveness, and the suppression of the innate human needs for connectedness, intimacy, and self-disclosure, which have been traditionally devalued as feminine traits. Alternatively, postmodern ideologies call for the deconstruction of essentialist notions of male sexuality and the reconstruction of a more balanced androgynous ideology drawing from the historical, social, and cultural determinants of sexuality and cherishing both masculine and feminine traits. The historical, social, and cultural perspective may be viewed as an overarching umbrella encompassing economic and power issues, an arena where the inequality wars are being waged, primarily those of gender, sexual orientation, age, physical ability, race, and social stratification. The reconstruction process is attained by helping one re-narrate his/her lifelong sexual narrative.