The end of manhood

Why do men so often act as if they were split in two - like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - and why do even "good" men display behavior that hurts others? John Stoltenberg provides inspiring new answers, exploring such issues as male anxiety about the judgments of other men and the secret social truces by which men validate each other's manhood.

Filled with dramatic surprises, emotional intimacies, and playful wit, The End of Manhood offers a bold new model of sexual and personal identity for any male who truly wants to become his best self and live as a man of conscience. In a trenchant challenge to the gurus of "deep masculinity," Stoltenberg argues that embracing myths to get in touch with manhood is futile - because manhood is the biggest myth of all.

Rebutting their cultist devotion to manhood with a realistic vision of gender justice, he shows exactly how men of conscience can put his powerful wisdom to work in every aspect of their lives - in love, in sex, in families, among friends.

With unblinking candor, stirring conviction, and often biting humor, the author leads readers step-by-step toward personal recognitions that provide a meaningful way out of the manhood sham. In the astonishing last four chapters - written in a rogues' gallery of voices at once ribald and apocalyptic - Stoltenberg exposes the sexual subtexts of manhood run amuck: sexual objectification, male bonding, homophobia, and pornography.

Only then, in the Epilog, can this book's profound vision of human self-actualization be at last fully revealed.

No one who has been raised to be a man will think about his life the same way after reading this practical and prophetic book. It articulates men's clear-cut choice between believing in the myth of manhood or affirming everyone's sovereign selfhood, between marching in lockstep with other men's gender anxieties or following the beat of one's honestly human heart, between living the lie of manhood or living a life of loving justice.

The End of Manhood is must reading for every man who wants to make that choice in conscience - and for every woman who hopes he will.