Sexual Violence and American Manhood

by T. Walter Herbert

Overview

Taking up topics as diverse and timely as the work of FBI profilers, the pornography debates, feminist analyses of male supremacy as sexual abuse, the ritual meanings of fraternity gang rape, and the interplay of racial and sexual injustice, T. Walter Herbert illuminates the chronic masculine anxieties that seek compensation in fantasies of sexual coercion and in sexual offenses against women. His work offers an unusually clear view of this prevailing convention of insecure and destructive masculinity, which Herbert connects with contemporary analyses of male identity formation, sexuality, and violence and with cultural, political, and ideological developments reaching back to the nation's democratic beginnings.

Reading iconic nineteenth-century texts by Whitman, Hawthorne, and Stowe, and pursuing the articulation of their gender logic in Richard Wright's Native Son, Herbert traces a gender ideology of dominance and submission, its persistence in masculine subcultures like the military and big-time football, and its debilitating effects on imaginations and lives in our own day. In materials as diverse as Hannah Foster's post-Revolutionary War novel The Coquette and the Coen brothers' 1996 movie Fargo, this book taps into popular culture and high art alike to outline the logic of American manhood's violent streak—and its dire consequences for a culture with truly democratic and egalitarian ambitions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674009172
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	11/22/2002
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

T. Walter Herbert is Professor of English at Southwestern University.

Table of Contents

Prologue

1. Frontiers of Masculinity

2. Rape as an Activity of the Imagination

3. Becoming a Natural Man

4. Pornographic Manhood

5. Investigations behind the Veil

6. Rape as Redemption

7. Democratic Masculinities

Epilogue

Works Cited

Acknowledgments

Index

What People are Saying About This

Thread by thread, Walter Herbert reveals the knot conjoining masculinity, sexuality, and violence. Compelling, carefully reasoned, and large in scope, the book is ambitious--and it delivers. Using literature, popular culture, and, most movingly, his own story, Herbert authoritatively places sexualized violence in a particular American context, This is an important work that should be read, not only by historians, psychologists, and sociologists, but by anyone desiring a better understanding of our current world, or anyone dreaming of a better one.

David Leverenz

This is a passionate and provocative book, more a polemical sketch than an in-depth scholarly study, but powerfully urgent in those terms. It literary analyses are first rate, uncommonly pithy and wide-ranging. An important and unusually intimate book.
— David Leverenz, Professor of English at the University of Florida

Dana Nelson

Herbert demonstrates the centrality of violence to the developing culture of democratic manhood. The book's power comes in the lean simplicity and directness of its argument, and its framing personal reflections that document the author's own willingness to apply this analysis to himself, and invite readers to see the possibilities of such self-analysis. Sexual Violence also demonstrates Walt Herbert's absolute passion for social change, for the idea that people can, by struggling courageously with their own flaws and demons, improve their own lives and American democratic practice.
— Dana Nelson, Professor of English at the University of Kentucky

Terrence Real

Thread by thread, Walter Herbert reveals the knot conjoining masculinity, sexuality, and violence. Compelling, carefully reasoned, and large in scope, the book is ambitious--and it delivers. Using literature, popular culture, and, most movingly, his own story, Herbert authoritatively places sexualized violence in a particular American context, This is an important work that should be read, not only by historians, psychologists, and sociologists, but by anyone desiring a better understanding of our current world, or anyone dreaming of a better one.
— Terrence Real, author of How Can I Get Through to You: Reconnecting Men and Women and I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression

Andrea Dworkin

This book is hopeful and sympathetic. Herbert's argument is measured, nuanced, and patient. His discussion of pornographic manhood is insightful and his outstanding observations about martial rape advance the issue.

Editorial Reviews

[Herbert] exposes the myths that allow men to justify sexual domination, whether it takes the form of physical abuse or exclusion from decision-making.

Christian Century - Leon Howell

Herbert demonstrates the centrality of violence to the developing culture of democratic manhood. The book’s power comes in the lean simplicity and directness of its argument, and its framing personal reflections that document the author’s own willingness to apply this analysis to himself and invite readers to see the possibilities of such self-analysis. Sexual Violence also demonstrates Walt Herbert’s absolute passion for social change, for the idea that people can, by struggling courageously with their own flaws and demons, improve their own lives and American democratic practice.

Dana Nelson

Thread by thread, Walter Herbert reveals the knot conjoining masculinity, sexuality, and violence. Compelling, carefully reasoned, and large in scope, the book is ambitious—and it delivers. Using literature, popular culture, and, most movingly, his own story, Herbert authoritatively places sexualized violence in a particular American context. This is an important work that should be read, not only by historians, psychologists, and sociologists, but by anyone desiring a better understanding of our current world, or anyone dreaming of a better one.

Terrence Real

This is a passionate and provocative book, more polemical sketch than in-depth scholarly study, but powerfully urgent in those terms. It literary analyses are first rate, uncommonly pithy and wide-ranging. An important and unusually intimate book.

David Leverenz

Herbert mines American literature and film, as well as his own experience, to weave a disturbing, but finally hopeful volume about the shaping of American codes of masculinity.

National Catholic Reporter - Rosemary Ruether

This book is hopeful and sympathetic. Herbert’s argument is measured, nuanced, and patient. His discussion of pornographic manhood is insightful and his outstanding observations about martial rape advance the issue.

Andrea Dworkin

[Herbert] exposes the myths that allow men to justify sexual domination, whether it takes the form of physical abuse or exclusion from decision-making.
— Leon Howell

Christian Century

Herbert mines American literature and film, as well as his own experience, to weave a disturbing, but finally hopeful volume about the shaping of American codes of masculinity.
— Rosemary Ruether

National Catholic Reporter

Herbert (English, Southwestern Univ.) traces the shifting ideologies that have created and justified the sexually abusive behavior of men in 19th- and 20th-century America, mainly through an examination of literary texts. Surveying what he calls the tradition of "despotic manhood," Herbert alights on some very familiar works, including those by Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawhorne, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin. His conclusions about the past and present culture of misogyny in America are as convincing as they are sobering, but Herbert sounds a hopeful note throughout, believing that Americans can draw on their democratic traditions to achieve more egalitarian sexual relations. His brave, highly personal prolog and epilog serve to humanize the author and make the book a lot less preachy than it might have been otherwise. Herbert writes in an engaging and accessible manner, free of academic jargon. Highly recommended for public libraries.-Andrew Brodie Smith, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lib., Washington, DC Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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