The upheaval in sexual politics of the last twenty years has mainly been discussed as a change in the social position of women. Yet change in one term of a relationship signals change in the other. From very early in the history of Women's Liberation it was clear that its politics had radical implications for men. A small "Men's Liberation" movement developed in the 1970s among heterosexual men. Gay men became politicized as the new feminism was developing, and Gay Liberation politics have continued to call in question the conventional understanding of what it is to be a man. Academic sex-role research, though mainly about women in the family, was easily extended to the "male role." From several different directions in the 1970s, critiques and analyses of masculinity appeared. Quite strong claims about the emergence of a new area of study, and a new departure in sexual politics, were made. The purpose of this article is to bring together these attempts, evaluate them, and propose an alternative.We think it important to start with the "prehistory" of this debate early attempts at a sociology of gender, the emergence of the "sex role" framework, and research on masculinity before the advent of Women's Liberation. In this dusty literature are the main sources of the framework that has governed most recent writing on masculinity. It includes an agenda about modernization, a characteristic blindness about power, and a theoretical incoherence built into the "sex role" paradigm. There are also, in some nearly forgotten writing, pointers to a much more powerful and interesting analysis.Approaching the recent literature, we were concerned with three things: its empirical discoveries, its political assumptions and implications, and its theoretical framework. Its empirical content turns out to be slight. Though most social science is indeed about men, good-quality research that brings masculinity into focus is rare. Ironically, most recent studies are not up to the standard set by several researchers in the 1950s. There is however a notable Macquarte LIntverstty, Austraha.
