THE AFFAIRS OF MEN: Masculinity Revisited

This contribution to the small but significant literature of lament for traditional masculinity provides its readers with a "masculinity index," by which "the questioning male... might gauge that most elusive of qualities, his masculinity." Based on circular (some would say faulty) logic, the index presupposes that a man is masculine if he is "viewed by others in the society as securely ensconced in the male segment of the culture." Kaye, who has practiced psychiatry in New York for more than 40 years, writes in a caricatured British schoolboy voice—referring to "trousers," "rotters" and going to the "gents"—and apparently believes children still learn to decline Latin verbs in school. At times, his sentences sound like an SAT vocabulary review: " 'prematurity' may depend on the alacrity of his partner's satiatory capacities." Poor man, writes Kaye, "pelted on all sides by invidious assaults, he neither understands what is happening to him, nor knows where the next blow will originate." This vague prose and outmoded counsel has little use as history, sociology or self-help, the genre that it most resembles. In Kaye's view, all men and all women can be lumped together: class and race make no difference. Though he pays lip service to gay men in his survey, Kaye's masculinity index excludes homosexuality by including "finding women generally attractive" as a necessary attribute. Readers of the 21st century will balk. (July)