Review: Eric Anderson’s Inclusive Masculinity: The Changing Nature of Masculinities

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review: 

As the sub-title indicates, Eric Anderson’s Inclusive Masculinity describes changes in the ways some men conceive of and enact their masculinity. Employing ethnographic methods and “social-feminist thinking” (14), Anderson claims that “university-attending men are rapidly running from the hegemonic type of masculinity that scholars have been describing for the past 25 years” (4). In the “acknowledgments,” Anderson dedicates his volume to three of those scholars: Michael Messner, Michael Kimmel and Donald Sabo, whom he credits for having published “academically accessible, cutting edge, meaningful gender scholarship” (xi). In so doing, Anderson effectively (unwittingly?) establishes the bar for his own work. Inclusive Masculinity readily achieves that bar, being both “accessible” and “cutting edge,” and will, in this reader’s opinion, eventually exceed it by proving not only “meaningful” but also prescient.