[...]...Featherstone (Working) -3556-Ch-01.qxd 5/24/2007 10:38 AM Page 4 Working with Men in Health and Social Care political choices and consequences involved in adopting particular theoretical perspectives However, our approach is wide-ranging Tackling the misery and injustice of our world, particularly in relation to the changes needed in and by men, requires as many tools as possible... creation and perpetuation of male dominance The key to understanding why men and women develop as they do, as well as to why men continue to dominate women, lies in the fact that women, not men, mother In a society where women are devalued, women’s relations with their sons and daughters cannot but develop in contrasting ways Mothers experience their daughters as less separate from themselves and girls in. .. be opposites and this was, to a large extent, a gendered opposition He gradually came to focus not on the repression of femininity within men (he did recognise its presence within men) , but on the resulting balance between a masculine persona and a feminine anima He came to argue that the feminine interior of masculine men was shaped not only by individual men s life histories but also by inherited archetypal... scholarship into men and masculinities (often controversially, see McMahon, 1999, and discussion below) There were two main strands of engagement Juliet Mitchell (1974) in the UK and Irigaray (1982) in France, using the work of Lacan, were concerned more with theorising femininity than with masculinity, although there was an 10 Featherstone (Working) -3556-Ch-02.qxd 5/24/2007 10:38 AM Page 11 Understanding Masculinities... essentially, and have contributed to strands of thought within the social sciences, which increasingly support the recognition of men and masculinities as socially constructed and produced, varying over time and space Feminist and gay scholarship have provided crucial contributions at a 8 Featherstone (Working) -3556-Ch-02.qxd 5/24/2007 10:38 AM Page 9 Understanding Masculinities range of levels; particularly in. .. of masculinity and masculinities If much of the first wave of critical writings by men in the social sciences was ‘power blind’ (Whitehead, 2002), this situation changed with the publication in Theory and Society of an article by Carrigan et al (1985) They argued for an understanding of masculinity that recognised dominant interpretations and definitions of masculinity as embedded in and sustained by... desire and he notes the change in patterns of cathexis with the growth in visibility of gay and lesbian sexuality For Connell, understanding gender relations in all their depth and complexity requires concrete studies, not a priori theorising Masculinities includes life story research with a range of men including environmentalists, unemployed young men and gay men and, further, Connell’s work since... analysed in the context of how gender and other social divisions intersect in their construction A specific rather than an implicit or incidental focus on the topic of men and masculinities is required in the context of recognising them as explicitly gendered Finally, feminist, gay and other critical scholarships offer crucial insights in understanding men and masculinities A note of caution, however, is in. .. justice who say they are interested in working with men or ‘masculinity’ These phrases have some currency in practice culture, hence our use of working with men in the title of this book They do not, however, in themselves tell us much about what people do in their contact with men as clients or patients and they do not tell us anything about the underlying principles Why name men at all? What does... this climate of changing ideas about men (if not significant change in actual behaviour) we can see a developing interest in questioning dominant ideas about masculinity from practitioners in a variety of fields – health care, social care, counselling and criminal justice work – as well as some initiatives from government that aim to respond to particular issues concerning men In the UK, for example, . MEN 77 6 Working with men as fathers 79 7 Working with abusive men 96 8 Men s physical health and disability 115 9 Men s mental health 132 10 Working with. Practice models 1: Working with men as individuals 41 5 Practice models 2: Working with men in groups, families and communities 57 Part III WORKING WITH SPECIFIC