Tonic masculinity in the post-gender era.
Abstract
The myth of male power has been associated almost exclusively with sexuality understood in the context of the quite-recent notion of gender. Following a period of much-needed interest in the lives of women, there is a resurgence of interest in male experience and masculinity. Tonic masculinity is an emerging new honesty about male experience at this time. The word tonic has two senses that I want to apply to masculinity. One, found in music, refers to the home key of a composition. The other denotes an invigorating substance or influence. I believe that masculinity is re-emerging of necessity to provide both a sense of harmony as well as much needed positive energy to help heal an ailing social body.
Keywords: boys, males, masculinity, men, tonic masculinity
Author Biography
Miles Groth PhD, is professor in the Department of Psychology at Wagner College, in New York. He is founding editor of New Male Studies. He also edited the International Journal of Men's Health and Thymos: Journal of Boyhood Studies, which he co-founded. Dr. Groth studied at Franklin and Marshall College, Duquesne University and Fordham University, where he completed his PhD. He trained as a psychoanalyst in New York and has been in private practice since 1977. He has written invited papers for presentation in Australia, Canada, England, Hungary, Italy and Germany, as well as at many colleges and universities in the United States. He is the author of five books, the most recent of which is Resituating Humanistic Psychology (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), and many articles in peer-reviewed journals. He resides in New York.
