Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity

by David D. Gilmore

What does it mean to "be a man" in different cultures around the world? Anthropologist David D. Gilmore explores this question in  "a provocative, rewarding cross-cultural survey." ( Publishers Weekly )

In the first cross-cultural study of manhood as an achieved status, anthropologist David D. Gilmore finds that a culturally sanctioned stress on manliness—on toughness and aggressiveness, stoicism and sexuality—is almost universal, deeply ingrained in the consciousness of hunters and fishermen, workers and warriors, poets and peasants who have little else in common.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Sociology, Philosophy, Anthropology, Gender, History

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Affad Shaikh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superb read. I was fascinated by the topic largely after reading Jared Diamonds "Guns, Germs, Steal" and also reading "Boys Adrift" by Leonard Sax in which gender, masculine construct, and cultural opportunity costs discussed introduced the idea of masculinity, male image, and expected roles. I realized the concept of masculinity is strained because of the multiple layers of experience I have: the cultural norms of South Asia, the role of Islam, being an immigrant in America, being an American, and then having friends who are feminists and men who don't subscribe to "masculine norms."

As any good book should do, Gilmore left me not with answered questions but with refined ones, and he provided a foundation to search out answers. The majority of cultural masculine norms and ideas and structures presented were useful; I was left uneasy with the people of Sambia and the pederasty involved in their rituals.

[Amberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Gilmore was my anthropology professor for 4 straight years. His dry wit is matched only by his crusty charm and sincere love and dedication for his craft. The book's good too.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found out about Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity from the Art of Manliness website. I was curious about this book because as I grow older I think about my identity as a man and what it means for me and the world I live in. I believe this book helps me have a stronger grip on that concept and identity. The author explores what manhood means in many different cultures across the world. From modern American culture to indigenous cultures of Africa and South America. Is there a universal definition of what manliness is? After exploring, he does find an intersection of themes that are some what accepted universally across the worlds cultures. In general, most cultures define manhood and manliness as the ability to be strong, stoic, hard working, productive, risk-taking and assertive to provide, protect and procreate for his family, his society and the human race. This is done in a generous, selfless and sometimes self-scarificing way. Men are indeed the disposable ones. A reality they must own and be fearless of. Some cultures view manhood as a test that must be proven perpetually and publicly. It is always fleeting and one does not hold it forever. Interestingly enough, men are nurturers too just like women. They do it in an indirect unseen and more obscure way though. As the author puts it "by shedding their blood, sweat, semen, ... and by dying if necessary in faraway places to provide a safe haven for their people". There are some examples of cultures that have antithetical views of manhood and because of this the author recognizes that manhood is a bit culturally ingrained by a society. We do see that these cultural identities have some basis in biology though. Overall, it was a well written fascinating read that has helped me understand my and the world's identity of what it means to be a man.

[John Stepper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting to see the many similarities of “masculinity” across cultures. Even more interesting to see the differences!

[Kaleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful book comparing and contrasting the idea of manhood in different cultures. This was my first anthropology book, and I enjoyed it a lot.

In almost all societies, manhood is something that has to be proven or earned. You can fail at being a man, or you can win at being a man, and this testing process is basically universal. Sometimes it's a formal ritual when the boy reaches the right age. The Samburu in East Africa circumcise a boy, and if he flinches or cries out in pain, "he is shamed for life as unworthy of manhood, and his entire lineage is shamed as a nursery of weaklings." In other societies, there's no formal ritual, but a boy becomes a man by constantly proving his manhood through competitions or work. The Truk in Micronesia prove their manhood by getting drunk and brawling, and being good hunters. In Spain, men prove their manhood by providing for their family, going out and being social, drinking, and not cooking or spending too much time with woman. Possibly theory is that societies that are more violent or have fewer resources need to create more violent men, leading to more violent/competitive rituals.

However, the book ends with two significant exceptions, the Tahiti and Semai peoples. Both groups have almost no gender roles, and there's very little violence or competition between the men. Homosexuality also isn't that taboo in many places. In fact (warning: this is very graphic), the Sambia make boys fellate the men and swallow their semen as part of their manhood ritual. Also, it's common in many different cultures for male homosexuality to be acceptable for the top, but shameful for the bottom.

I could go on and on; this book was really interesting, and I had a lot of fun reading it. It's cool (and sometimes disturbing) to read about how different other cultures are from us.
4.5

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book to be extremely fascinating. I am not an anthropologist or even a psychologist, but the cultural examples in this book were extremely interesting. It gives examples of what is considered "manhood" in different advanced and "primitive" societies around the globe. It's an intriguing read that I highly recommend.

[Abu Kamdar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating anthropological study of cultures of masculinity across the globe.

[Abdul Raheem · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book explores the ways in which manhood is defined. It does so by investigating a series of fascinating case studies. To take but two of these, we see that the Truk of Micronesia have a pattern of adolescent drinking and brawling that can be seen as both a holdover of a more bellicose past and a stage through which to pass into marital and parental life; furthermore, we find that Tahitian manhood is subdued, probably reflecting the relative ease and cooperative nature of their subsistence basis (fishing and agriculture) as well as an absence of intergroup aggression. The ways by which males achieve status across cultural contexts vary with respect to the social and ecological conditions faced by a given society. Where warfare prevails, for example, a society's warriors earn high status, and are typically favored by women as mates. Common to many societies, men must "impregnate women, protect dependents from danger, and provision kith and kin (p. 223)." Such provocative conclusions, attention to ethnographic detail and clear writing make this a book difficult to put down. The main drawback rests with some of the interpretation of the cultural and universal patterns of manhood. The Freudian interpretations commonly make little sense and the group selection arguments need re-couching in terms of individual selection; otherwise, most interpretations seem sensible. Overall, this book does a great job of addressing manhood in the making.

[Jeremy]

Mentioned positively here.

[Simcha York · Rating 3 out of 5]

David Gilmore's Manhood in the Making provides an interesting glimpse at the ways masculinity is defined in various cultures. It is a view that is, unfortunately, somewhat marred by the author's overly credulous acceptance of psychoanalytic and other soft-science theory, and his seemingly lack of curiosity about the work of neuoroscientists and evolutionary biologists that could cast some much-needed light on his work. In short, the book often misses the forest for the trees.

While Gilmore's work does provide some very enlightening case studies that would be undoubtedly useful in exploring such issues as the role of culture and nature in the development and nurturing of male aggression and the ubiquitous presence of the procreator-provider-protector roles in cultural definitions of what makes a "real man," he makes only desultory efforts to draw any sort of convincing big-picture conclusion from the evidence he compiles. Again, one can't help but think that he is hampered in this regard by far too much reliance on soft-science theory and not enough reliance on a harder investigation of the empirical evidence in light of what was known, even at the time of the book's writing, about primate evolution and human biology (though in all fairness, the book was first published in 1990, so one should give him the benefit of the doubt of perhaps having been more receptive to such evidence had he had much of the information that has been made available to us by both biologists and neuroscientists over the intervening decades).

Manhood in the Making is enlightening in its exploration of the prevalence of cultural definitions of manhood as a state which must be actively pursued within narrowly defined constraints and which for most of human history has had male expendibility as a core feature. Even more interesting are a pair of case studies, the Semai and Tahitians, that seem to suggest that such definitions, while prevalent, are not universal. It is a shame, then, that Gilmore does not spend more time exploring the environmental and biological factors that appear to favor certain cultural definitions of manhood over others.

[Abdulaziz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun read about the ways masculinity presents itself in different societies around the world, almost all of which are concerned about work and providing, the environment's resources and scarcity thereof, and the type of work needed, and just how that work needs to be done changes up masculine ideals around the world. "When men are conditioned to fight, manhood is important; where men are conditioned to flight, the opposite is true." "All social value is the product of human labor acting upon the raw materials of nature", "culture is nothing more than work, physical and mental: human effort, constantly reporoducing the conditions that give it birth".

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

'When I started researching this book, I was prepared to rediscover the old saw that conventional femininity is nurturing and passive and that masculinity is self-serving, egotistical, and uncaring. But I did not find this.'

Here's a brilliant anthropological cross-cultural study of manhood and masculinity, looking at multiple societies across the continents to try and pin down what it is, exactly, to 'be a man'. What is striking indeed is that, apart from a very (very) few exceptions (e.g. Tahiti, Malaysia...), manliness tends to always embrace the same characteristics. For example, I found it telling that, in many (many) cultures, being a man is not something specifically innate, but which has to be 'earned', through rites of passages and initiations mostly, always involving risks of some sorts to prove oneself (toughness, endurance, stoicism). Masculinity is not a given either -it can be lost if not defended.

Here's not your usual mumbo-jumbo and just-so stories, mostly found in the most idiotic part of the MRA or crappy radfem literature (two sides of the same coin, if you ask me...), all based on poor sociobiological sciences or, worse, biological determinism coupled with ideological dogma. Here's, in fact, a very intelligent book, a deeply in depth cross analytical study putting forth key points about masculinity (both from a male perspective, but, also, as expected by women themselves): being a man is about procreating, providing, and protecting. Put like that, it sounds simple enough. Yet, given the stereotyping and scaremongering bunk circulating about men these days, you'll be excused to feel the need for such a book to resurface!

Men, indeed, have been having a very bad rap recently, framed as they are as all 'potential danger', suffering from 'toxic' masculinity or else, with an emphasis put on violence and especially sexual violence. Now, of course, being a scientific work of anthropology first published in the early 1990s, this book doesn't go into such debates (I, for one, accept that there is such a thing as 'toxic' masculinity, but that's another topic...). Nevertheless, here are punchy reminders that contribute to debunk many of the so-called stereotypes in question. As such, this is a must read; particularly considering that the author doesn't focus on any cultures to make his strongest points, but, some considered as peddling among the most 'machist' ethos (e.g. Andalusia, that the author had previously written about).

'manhood ideologies always include a criterion of selfless generosity, even to the point of sacrifice. Again and again we find that 'real' men are those who give more than they take; they serve others. Real men are generous, even to a fault, like the Mehinaku fisherman, the Samburu cattle-herder, or the Sambia or Dodth Big Man. Non-men are often those stigmatised as stingy and unproductive. Manhood therefore is also a nurturing concept, if we define that term as giving, subventing, or other-directed.'

Here, of course, is not a defence of traditional manhood (a concept the author acknowledges the suffocating narrowness), nor is it about demeaning the importance of women. It's a welcome read reminding us that masculinity has always been about sacrifice and self-sacrifice for the benefits of family and groups, that even violence and danger (the situations men were expected to put themselves into -just look about what's been going on in Ukraine just recently...) served greater purposes than male ego.

It's a must read, especially for those having no clue about what 'be a man' truly means: both the most idiotic parts of the MRA, and, their female counterparts, the radfem stereotyping men as all being 'potential danger'.

Absolutely brilliant!

[Oscar Coles · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good introduction to Male Anthropology and the universal traits found in almost all cultures across the globe.

[Neil White · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a part of a selection of readings I gathered to reflect on what a healthy approach to masculine identity would look like. I navigated my own journey into a version of manhood in my late teens and early twenties successfully, but now in middle age I see a lot of young men struggling to navigate this journey and for a variety of reasons failing to launch into life. I come to this with humility and curiosity seeking those who may be able to articulate more clearly the journeys that may lead young men to discover a fulfilling life of work and relationships and to help those moving into the space of elders to support and guide them in this journey.
David Gilmore is an anthropologist who taught at the State University of New York whose book Manhood in the Making examines manhood as it is expressed through a number of representative cultures which have been studied by anthropologists. The groups included in the collection of studies are primarily from tribal and traditional societies which are geographically separate from larger cultural influences. With a couple of exceptions, there are expectations of a passage into manhood in these cultures and the possibility of a male child failing to navigate the expectations of manhood and being “unmanly” and unreliable in their society. As Gilmore states,
there is a constantly recurring notion that real manhood is different from simple anatomical maleness, that it is not a natural condition that comes about spontaneously through biological maturation but rather it is a precarious or artificial state that boys must win against powerful odds. This recurrent notion that manhood is a problematic, a critical threshold that boys must pass through testing, is found at all levels of sociocultural development regardless of what other alternative roles are recognized. (11)
Or more simply, boys through culturally appropriate preparation and testing must be made into men. Simply being physically mature is not enough for the mantle of manhood. Men are made, not born. And although “being a good man” may have less focus than “being good at being a man” (30) there is in most cultures an expectation that “being good at being a man” involves providing for both kin and the larger society. “If a man rejects this provider’s role, he is said to be useless and to be dependent like a woman or like a child (Caughey 1970:69).” (73)
There are two exceptions listed in this study where the men are passive, the Tahiti and Semai. These societies with men who are conditioned to be more passive and peaceful are highlighted by some readers as an ideal for a modern society, but I don’t think these men would function well in modern society. As David Gilmore surmises as he wraps up the study, “When men are conditioned to fight, manhood is important; where men are conditioned to flight, the opposite is true.” (221) He concludes with two long statements which I will quote in their entirety because I find them very helpful:
When I started researching this book, I was prepared to rediscover the old saw that masculinity is self-serving, egotistical, and uncaring. But I did not find this. One of my findings here is that manhood ideologies always include a criterion of selfless generosity, even to the point of sacrifice. Again and again we find that “real” men are those who give more than they take; they serve others. Real men are generous, even to a fault, like the Mehinaku fisherman, the Samburu cattle-herder, or the Sambia or Dodoth Big Man. Non-men are often those stigmatized as stingy and unproductive. (229)
Men adopting the provider role provide more for their society than they take, and they will often do without so that others may have enough. One final quote from Manhood in the Making on the sacrifices men are expected to make for kin and society:
Men nurture their society by shedding their blood, their sweat, and their semen, by bringing home food for both child and mother, by producing children, and by dying if necessary in faraway places to provide safe haven for their people. This too, is nurturing in the sense of endowing or increasing. However, the necessary personal qualities for this male contribution are paradoxically the exact opposite of what we Westerners normally consider the nurturing personality. To support his family, the man has to be distant, away hunting or fighting wars; to be tender, he must be tough enough to fend off enemies. To be generous, he must be selfish enough to amass goods, often by defeating other men; to be gentle, he must first be strong, even ruthless in confronting enemies; to love he must be aggressive enough to court, seduce, and “win” a wife. (230)
I found Gilmore’s work to be helpful. At times he and his fellow anthropologists were a little overdependent on a Freudian framework, but the highlighting of the processes in these cultures to transform boys into men, something missing in any formal way in our society, and the expectation of a competent but generous masculinity in culture was helpful.

[Buck Wilde · Rating 4 out of 5]

An academic but readable investigation of cross-cultural interpretations of masculinity. Their ubiquity argues for an evolutionarily-reinforced conception of the masculine gender role. This isn't to say it's necessarily hereditary, but a manhood archetype that develops in response to certain environmental conditions, which happen to be the conditions that the human animal tends to encounter.

Manhood is earned and requires proving. You must demonstrate yourself, before your peers and elders, to be brave, autonomous, and both capable and willing to provide for your family. These traits all require selflessness -- don't argue with me on autonomy, the selfishness of living independently pales in comparison to an individual lacking in autonomy living parasitically -- which further distills to prosocial reliability. Manhood, across virtually all cultures, primitive and modern, is proven by consistency.

There is violence, of course, but it's usually braggadocio. Most cultures share the expectation that a man be sexually successful, both in the mechanics of the act and its procreative potential. The widely agreed upon trajectory for manhood is as follows:

1) Undergo your initiation. Distance yourself from mom. Reject creature comforts. Your suckling days are over.
2) You survived the initiation! Maybe you read the Torah, maybe you killed a buffalo, maybe you got your penis sliced up. Now get a job. Hunting is a job.
3) Succeed at your job sufficient to demonstrate your capacity to support a family. Use your status as a man and the resources you gather to woo a woman.
3a) Woo several women. This step is optional depending on the sexual permissiveness of the culture, but even among the few with death-penalty religious taboos against a certified pre-deflowered bride, a fella's dalliances tend to be regarded with good-ol'-boy backslapping.
4) Lock down a wife and pump her full of babies. The more babies, the more Man Points you get, so long as you can support them. Babies you are incapable of providing for will be provided for by someone else and, though biologically still your babies, will be viewed culturally as someone else's babies.
5) Remain established in the local social scene, smoking cigars and laughing at dick jokes well into old age. Bumming around at home all the time is a feminine trait, and you'll be expected to go to bars or village dances or the Knights Templar or whatever you do. Fistfight less frequently, the social appearances are all the manhood maintenance that's required now.

That's pretty much the take home from this book. The only exceptions to these rules at among the Sambians and Tahitians. They both live in paradise and food just comes out of the ground, so there was never any need to develop competition, or resource hoarding, or standoffishness, or boundaries in general. This has led to a much laxer interpretation of gender roles, culminating in a bonobo-like feminization of the tribes, a perpetually apologetic, polyamorous exercise in self-debasement where your wish is perpetually their command. It's seen as an act of unforgivable aggression to deny a request among these gentle folx, so you can just walk up and be like, "Can I sleep with your wife?" and they will be like, "Absolutely! Please!" for fear of being interpreted as rude. Abusing this permissiveness will eventually lead to the tribe considering you aggressive/rude in the same way, but since they are nonviolent to a fault, the only consequence to this will be a vague, sulky passive-aggression. The vibes will be off.

It brought to my mind a popular creeching among my fellow Millennials, where they gather in social media echo chambers and gnash their teeth about how the Boomers ruined the economy and now it's impossible for them to buy a house or have a living wage. While I agree things could be better, if they were actually bad enough to threaten you at the base of Maslow's hierarchy, you would have been forced by your environment to become one of these swaggering, scrappy He-Man provider types, as has happened to human men since they first became sapiens sapiens. The very fact that you have the time and inclination to bitch about it on the internet suggests that you came up in an environment closer to the Tahitians, where your immediate survival needs were never in question -- at least, not in the same way they would have been 20,000 years ago.

Hard times create strong men and all that, or so the anthropological record, and this book in particular, would suggest. We're out here trusting the science, right?

[David Maywald · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a cross-cultural study of manhood as an achieved status, by anthropologist David D. Gilmore.

“We might call this quasi-global personage something like “Man-the-Impregnator-Protector-Provider.”… Because of the universal urge to flee from danger, we may regard “real” manhood as an inducement for high performance in the social struggle for scarce resources, a code of conduct that advances collective interests by overcoming inner inhibitions… manhood is the defeat of a childish narcissism that is not only different from the adult role but antithetical to it.”

He writes that manhood’s “critical threshold represents the point at which the boy produces more than he consumes and gives more than he takes.” Several examples are described of male rites of passage, where boys are taken from their mothers by older men, and subjected to demanding ordeals to harden them for the burden of manhood. A contrast is made between girls passing through biological development to become women, whereas boys need to be prompted to undertake this acculturation. Describing one of the cultures: “girls have their own (nonviolent) initiations, there is no parallel belief that girls have to be made women, no “big impossible” for them”. This training for young men includes tests of physical strength, psychological and mental hardening, as well as the transfer of knowledge by caring elder men.

The book was published in 1990 by Yale University.

“The explosion of feminist writing on sex and gender in the past decade has advanced our knowledge of women’s roles but has left these manhood cults and codes virtually untouched… I suggest that there is something almost generic, something repetitive, about the criteria of man-playing, that underlying the surface variation in emphasis or form are certain convergences in concepts, symbolizations, and exhortations of masculinity in many societies but – and this is important – by no means in all… I will argue that manhood ideals make an indispensable contribution both to the continuity of social systems and to the psychological integration of men into their community.”

“Society is a delicate perpetual motion machine that depends upon the replication of its primary structures, the family in particular, because without the family there is no context for socializing children and thus for perpetuating the culture… The moral codes and norms of culture encourage people (sometimes through psychological rather than material reward and punishment) to pursue social ends at the same time that they follow their own personal desires.”

“manhood ideologies always include a criterion of selfless generosity, even to the point of sacrifice. Again and again we find that “real” men are those who give more than they take; they serve others… Men nurture their society by shedding their blood, their sweat, and their semen, by bringing home food for both child and mother, by producing children, and by dying if necessary in faraway places to provide a safe haven for their people… So long as there are battles to be fought, wars to be won, heights to be scaled, hard work to be done, some of us will have to “act like men.””

[Valentín Serrano García · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's the kind of book which needs to be approached carefully: I've noticed there are people who interprets its contents unilaterally without perspective.

On the one hand, it is an introductory, exploratory and early work (year 1990), and it has to be valued within this frame. The author recognizes that much has to be done, and even feels a bit shocked by the data shown. I think it is clear that sometimes he simplifies, as he just focus on hegemonic masculinity (which, in some cases, were muting quickly when he wrote the book: in Andalusia, for instance).

On the other hand, he (ab)uses psychoanalitic theory. Nothing to object about psychoanalysis, because it is a very useful tool for humanistic purposes...but when actualized and understood properly. David Gilmore remained stuck on a very old ego-psychology which, furthermore, distorted many of freudian insights regarding gender. This is not an impediment to read the book, but those who doesn't understand actual psychonalysis will abhorre the interpretations or could be pushed towards misguiding conclusions.

But, anyway, this book is enlightening to begin to understand a handful of facts regarding "manhood": that there is nothing inevitable about gender polarity, that gender is cultural, that politics, supersticions, irrationality and Power play their part, that others masculinities are possible, that environment and culture shape the way biology unfolds in human beings, that evolucionary psychology cannot provide universal explanations based only in biological needs...

Perhaps Gilmore was not bold enough as to state and highlight all of those conclusions so clearly, but those who followed his path, comparing different cultures in depth, did. Thus, perhaps we cannot blame him for still remaining too close to an ideal of "heterosexual manhood" (there is, in fact, an oblivion of homosexuality and an ignorance of certain philosophies and sociological facts which overthrown monolitical perceptions of "manhood"), attempting to find a common old-fashioned oedipal thread anywhere. What makes his enterprise successful is that he had to end up recognizing that it was (almost) impossible to maintain, given cases which threaten the ideal.

What we now know is that there are, by far, much more cases. Even in western society...

[Joel Wentz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is extraordinarily interesting, well-researched, and quite readable. This is essentially a comparative study of cultural practices and ideologies related to masculine identity from around the globe. The research ranges from shocking to utterly unsurprising, and the reader starts to gain a fascinating insight into the parallels that exist in wildly different cultures. The inclusion of a "counter examples" chapter is really smart, and actually illuminates some of the core ideas of the book even more starkly. His conclusions are sensible, and I felt like he did a great job displaying his own interpretive biases, so the reader can take account of the influence on his conclusions.

Overall, this is a really helpful and important book to visit right now, in the midst of our cultural discourse on gender and 'toxic masculinity.' Ultimately, I wish a few more pages had been spent teasing out conclusions and implications. I really liked his emphasis on the materialistic-economic causes behind the social need for "responsible" males, and I loved his emphasis on "manhood" as selfless, giving, and responsible. I do wish he had spent more time considering some of the biological factors at play, as I found that to be a weirdly-overlooked aspect of the argument (perhaps that felt way too outside his area of expertise? Or perhaps he simply didn't want to wade into controversial "essentialist" waters?) In any case, Gilmore's book addresses what feels like a massive blindspot in sociology/anthropology right now, and I hope more researchers follow his example.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was easier to read than I expected, but not many revelations. I appreciate that it is more about what men strive to be in these different cultures than a rant against men. It also explores what the similarities are in what men strive for from very different cultures. The question remains how much these common traits are influenced by culture and how much they are influenced by environment. Tahiti and Semai are the exceptions. The section on India, China and Japan was interesting, probably because I knew little about male culture in these countries in terms of how they perceive themselves. I grew up without a father and have two boys, so this was recommended by a Podcast that I have found to be very informative and thoughtful. I'm glad I read it, not sure if I would recommend it as essential reading.

[Robin Schmahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best works on masculinity I've read so far. Fantastic mix of anthropological considerations concerning masculinity in varying cultural contexts. The theoretical introduction, though obviously out of date given the book's publication year, offers nonetheless a good starting point for further investigations. Overall well written, coherent, and quite accessible despite targeting an primarily academic audience (presumably).

It's a must read for anybody who wants to seriously engage with manhood, masculinity, and gender in a more nuanced though still accessible way beyond what current popular contributions have to offer.

Go read it!

[J.D. Kloosterman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I get why people aren't fond of this book. But I felt the writer did a laudable job of collecting many disparate "manhood rituals" from around the world, and of linking together what they had in common while also pointing out the weaknesses in that style of analysis. He also pointed out counterexamples like the society in Tahiti, which makes no distinctions between male and female at all. I think at the very least it's a good overview of cultural notions about "manhood" that puts the lie to many western-based assumptions about what is "universally" considered manly.

[Florence Loh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Manhood is shaped similarly to how women are disciplined, with both roles designed to replicate social structures rather than pursue personal self-fulfilment or individualism. Culture’s brilliance lies in encouraging people to willingly choose to fulfill social expectations while also fostering a sense of self-realisation, often blurring the lines between individual and group goals. In resource-rich environments like Tahiti, traditional masculinity loses its necessity for maintaining species dominance, allowing men and women to exist in a more primitive and equal state.

[Can · Rating 4 out of 5]

"When I started researching this book, I was prepared to rediscover the old saw that conventional femininity is nurturing and passive and that masculinity is self-serving, egotistical, and uncaring. But I did not find this. One of my findings here is that manhood ideologies always include a criterion of selfless generosity, even to the point of sacrifice. Again and again we find that “real” men are those who give more than they take; they serve others."

[Zumzaa]

You could maybe argue that it's excessive with its case studies and meandering in its contentions until the concluding paragraph but otherwise, this is an ability brilliant insight into the nature of masculinity in culture. It provides enough angles and really good examples to see the picture broadly so that by the time we come to its revelatory conclusion everything makes sense and the illumination invites rather than intrudes. Brilliant.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even-tempered review of masculinity. Lays our bare what masculinity look like around the world from Europe to Africa to South American and Asia. If you want to know what drives the ethos of masculinity this is a must read.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book I've read in a long time. Puts the "gender is a social construct" hypothesis to bed—It's not.

Men (in all cultures) must seek to attain masculinity. This book makes that clear and provides hard evidence. Recommend every man read this at least once.

[James Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great read for those interested in understanding cultural differences as it relates to what it means to be a man, or "manly." Gilmore is well balanced and pragmatic with not only his assessments of cultures, but also in his review of literature and other researchers before him.

[Frederick Heimbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seems dated, especially in the degree to which it engages with Freudian thinkers, but just from the anecdotes alone this is fascinating. Of course, the book mostly traffics in the extremes so one should always temper one's conclusions, but still, very educational.

[Abdullah Warsame · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read if you’re interested in the concept of manhood and how its an achieved status across different countries and cultures.

[Matt Peck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really fantastic overview of different approaches to manhood in different cultures around the world. A must read for any academically oriented young man.