[...]... these issues in the following chapters as and when they bear on the relation between masculinity, law and the family Nonetheless there are important questions which I believe must be asked at the outset about law and masculinity, about the masculinism which informs the social sciences as a collection of disciplines and about the relation between masculinity and the continued exclusion of feminist and. .. 7 in the light of the following analysis of masculinity, law and the family At this point it is more constructive to turn the focus to law and to explore some of the connections between these sociologies of masculinity and law I shall do this through seeking to relate three of the principal themes of the studies of masculinity to the study of law. 19 These are what I shall term (1) the crisis thesis,... education and practice) Masculinity, Law and the Family seeks to complement the existing work on critical studies of law, the family and masculinity through seeking to address the relationship between all three I am concerned to present a systematic and coherent analysis of male heterosexuality in law and to introduce the reader to a number of debates currently raging about law and the family The book... law; it is about the very ideas and understandings we have of masculinity, law and family life and of what it is to be a man in our society Given that the problematic, contested and political nature of masculinity and male sexuality has long been identified by feminist 1 2 Masculinity, Law and the Family legal scholars to be central to theorising the connections between law and power, the absence of... I shall put forward an alternative, and preferable, approach to theorising masculinity, law and the family Introduction: on law and masculinity 13 The ‘crisis’ thesis: law as indicator of social change The critique of masculinity has been, first and foremost, about the possibilities of changing men However, the strategies by which this is to be achieved, and the theoretical presuppositions underlying... masculinity and the gendered dimensions of the institutions of law have tended to emerge from a specifically feminist standpoint (for example Smart 1989a; Thornton 1989a; Naffine 1990; O’Donovan 1993) So, the vast majority of law students—students of constitutional and administrative law, criminal law, family law, welfare law, company and commercial law and even of jurisprudence and legal theory—will... ‘Woman’—as an enigma, as the Other and as the object of male inquiry (and fantasy?) So the questions asked of law have traditionally been focused on women How does the law treat women? Are women discriminated against? How might the law promote (or deny) ‘equality’ between women and men? How are women constructed in law? In part the emergence of studies of ‘women and law within the doctrinal mainstream... heterosexual masculinity, on race, class, religion and ethnicity This book constitutes the beginnings of an unpacking of this notion of the family man’ in both law and popular culture (understood here as a paradigm and not the apotheosis of masculinity) What follows is, I hope, a contribution to the wider debates taking place around the family, law and gender It is not a traditional family law textbook,... approach to the power of law is infused with ‘a paradoxical mix of debilitating pessimism and unfathomable optimism’ (Jackson 1993:211) Here the law ‘reflects’ the power of men Law is infused with the qualities of masculinity The power of men and the power of law become one and the same, inseparable, as the state itself is identified as somehow ‘male’ in the form and content of its laws Central to Mackinnon’s... constituted, and thus changeable reality’ (Benhabib 1986:47) Though the focus of this book is law and the family, and the ways in which roles therein are differentiated according to gender, the conclusions have implications for legal studies generally as well as for gender studies and the sociology of masculinity The book is, in short, not just concerned with the relationship between masculinity and law; it . shall address some of these issues in the following chapters as and when they bear on the relation between masculinity, law and the family. Nonetheless there are important. concerned with the relationship between masculinity and law; it is about the very ideas and understandings we have of masculinity, law and family life and of what