Dilemmas of Masculinity: A Study of College Youth

Contemporary Sociology 6(5) (September 1977):600—1. Dilemmas of Masculinity, like its predecessor, Blue Collar Marriage, seems destined to be a classic in the field. Addressing herself to the reality that “few would deny that gender roles today reflect massive institutional and cultural disorganization . ,” Komarovsky critically assesses most of the current crop of books on “men’s liberation” as being assertions that men “reap dubious rewards for the alleged advantages of masculinity superiority,” or are pleas for liberation from the more restrictive aspects of the traditional male role (p. 2). That the path of men toward “liberation” is infinitely more complex than a simple escape from the traditional male role is what this book is about. As was the case in Blue Collar Marriage, this is a small, insightful study which unfolds in unexpected directions the more you think about it. It is not, alas, the definitive work on men faced with the “new woman” or a new and sometimes contradictory social order. The sample consists of sixty-two men who are college seniors at an eastern university. They tend to represent the class distribution of college students, although the sample was stratified in terms of race, religion, and education of father. Still another problem in generalizing these data is that they were gathered in 1969—70, when the women’s movement was just beginning and before backlash movements of any significance had appeared on the scene. However, the methodology that the author uses——a case study approach with repeated intensive, openended, semi-structured interviews—— is one which lets the men in this study speak for themselves. And therein lies the beauty of it. Komarovsky, as we know from her previous work, is a skilled and often critical interviewer. Thus when men in the present study tell her that they approve of mothers with pre-school children working, she also elicits the doubts, hesitations, and reservations surrounding this opinion which (in her words) “virtually nullify it. ” The picture of the “dilemmas of masculinity” which emerges from this study is an intriguing one. Perhaps as a product of the time in which thedataweregathered,Komarovsky’s respondents are neatly torn between an expressed, verbal, ideological commitment to women’s liberation (a commitment they genuinely feel), and the entailing sacrifices of carrying through such a commitment. These men have serious problems integrating their ideals with their reality, but the most interesting part of the study is the extent to which these men are unaware of the gap between the two. These men are caught in a cultural doublebind.Theyideologicallysupport equality for women, although it is interesting to note that the few sex role traditionalists in this study scored lower on Well-being and Intellectual Efficiency in the California Psychological Inventory. They want an equal, but an equal who will never threaten them or have divergent or contradictory needs. An equal, in short, who is always willing to subordinate herself. But the double bind occurs because once a woman subordinates herself she is no longer by definition an equal, and (to use a variation of an old line) the man loses respect for her. The most striking example of this 676 In Retrospect: 1977