Masculinity and the Ruling of the World

Masculinity and the Ruling of the World argues that there is a world-wide culture of masculinity that breeds arrogant dissociated men who are the prime culprits in the depredations that have brought humanity to its present grievous condition. The argument is that male domination not only oppresses women, it distorts the whole of the social world. At the same time, the book argues that male supremacy is not the whole of the social world. There is also something that might be called ‘genuine humanity’, which provides a life-affirming force that resists the impositions and seductions of male supremacy. Five institutions are used to illustrate some of the ways in which male domination permeates the social world, institutions rarely, if ever, considered in terms of masculinity—capitalism, fascism, surrogacy, transsexualism and US ‘welfare reform’. All these institutions are interpreted in terms of their dissociation and arrogant male entitlement, even though at first sight they may appear to have little or nothing in common. This interpretation brings a new perspective to bear on the phenomenon of male supremacy and seeks to challenge the ideological subterfuges that maintain it. While it owes a debt to the many feminist writers that came before, by focusing on the system that does the oppressing the book undertakes to advance the feminist project that saw a resurgence in the 1960s and 1970s.