Man Enough

This reply to Robert Bly's work "Iron John", offers a critical discussion of contemporary ideas of masculinity. The text moves away from the rationalist paradigm of masculinity, and demonstrates that a focus on men's somatic and emotional lives is a means of "embodying" knowledge.
In this book, one of the leading contributors to the growing debate about men, masculinities and sexual politics, Victor J Seidler, criticizes the Enlightenment coupling of white, heterosexual masculinity with reason'. He argues that in modern society masculinity can never be taken for granted. Men must always prove that they areman enough' to cope in the `correct' way with the problems and challenges of everyday life. Seidler believes that men have to break this chain of obligations to the Enlightenment notion of masculinity.

Through engaging with men's diverse relationships with their bodies, sexualities, emotional lives, feelings and desires, Seidler explores ways of affirming masculinities while critically engaging with the power that men have in the wider society. The book is also a contribution to antisexist politics. Seidler is interested in taking on those forms of men's politics which find it difficult to engage with men's power and society and also those who take it for granted that male power is normal and natural. He seeks to recognize both the power that white, heterosexual masculinities have in shaping forms of philosophy and social theory while at the same time recognizing that masculinity cannot be simply defined as a relationship of power.