Kathryn Bond Stockton on gender and masculinity

“There are so many different things interacting with that thing we falsely isolate as ‘gender.’ What is the interaction of those elements that produces either a sense of ease, or a sense of concern and anxiety?

“Part of what we’re seeing in our culture is tremendous anxiety surrounding boys, young men, and I have to imagine that that doesn’t really end later in life. Sometimes later in life we all kind of get used to things and we chill. But I have a feeling that these things do remain of concern because they are so extremely bounded. And that’s where, if you watch something like Fight Club, or watch other cultural products, they get at the strange way that white men in particular sort of painted themselves into a corner. Masculinity becomes a whole series of things you can’t do.”

— from The Ezra Klein Show – Gender is complicated for all of us. Let’s talk about it. (2022, August 5). The New York Times.