Io sono un corpo. Politiche e pedagogie della maschilità

Abstract

Studying men means reading them within the category of patriarchy, analysing it according to the axes of its internal hierarchy, homo-sociality and the command to inter-gender competition. These policies of western masculinities are closely related to the male body, defined through a precise ideology of sports activity and a strict standardisation of sexual intercourses. Thus described, the masculine is shown not as the pure effect of a biological and anatomical injunction (sex), nor as the mere outcome of a socio-cultural construction/constriction (gender), opening spaces to the possibility of future validation of the hypothesis - here suggested - that masculinity is the social product of a complex educational system (formal, non-formal, informal) which is indeed incorporated by individual men, but which can be the object of collective pedagogical criticism.