rc-am wrote:
> in this context, it made me
> think of other work on masculinity and subjectivity which I found less
> frustrating, such as R W Connell's work. Connell wrote _Gender and Power_,
> but I'm not sure if that's the book of his I have in mind where he talks of
> masculinity and class in particular.
I don't know Connell. Maybe you could tell me more about him. I have been interested in the ways construction of oppositional language and subjectivity depend upon strange kinds of homophobia. Strange insofar as it acknowledges a multiplicity of sexual practices, but depends, or falls back upon, various notions of normality which perforce are regularly about achieving a boy heterosexual apotheosis. Certain kinds of hearth and home and family and reproduction etc.
But boys don't necessarily always turn on who it is that they perform intercourse with. Being manly among other manly men takes on its own rhetorical performances. It presumes its own organizing strategies and tactics and programs and 5 year plans and listservs and zines and demonstrations etc.
what do you think is the relationship between class identification and being a boy?
michael