The all-powerful protector and provider stereotype pressures men to conform, powerless to face modern social challenges
From first-ever university courses to academic conferences,an increasing interest in the concept of “men’s studies” is being fueled by the fact that race and class have made historical power formulas far more complex—and that patriarchal models of understanding are being gradually replaced by the irrelevance of gender in postmodern times.
Marc Lafrance, who teaches about men and masculinity as part of several courses on gender and sexuality, believes we need to look beyond the power and destructiveness of masculinity—and see that masculinity “as a structure, as a lived experience, can also be fundamentally disempowering to men.”
We speak with Marc Lafrance, who is an assistant professor of sociology at Concordia University in Montreal.
