emmanuel reynaud holy virility the social construction of masculinity

skin is still hairless that he often helps nature along in the
privacy of the bathroom, exchanging with his friends the most
extraordinary recipes to speed up the growth of hair. As he gets
older, he does not necessarily outgrow his obsession with
hairiness; he may very well have problems with a smooth chest
or sparse growth on his arms or legs, and it is not unusual to
find advertisements in the press promising abundant hair or
offering a varied choice of sideburns and false moustaches.
However, man is not only preoccupied with being hairy, he also
takes an interest in his muscles and his brain; he sees the
strength of the human being in them and sees them as typically
masculine organs. Unlike the penis, and, to a lesser degree,
body-hair and beard, they are present in both the male and
female. Man must therefore, in order to make them into criteria
of differentiation, favour them in the male, and do his best to
discount them in the female. Whilst he sees himself as strong
and rational, woman should be fragile and irrational; and
whereas he considers himself capable of thinking and
transforming the world, he likes to imagine that she is hardly
capable of coping.
And when, in spite of everything, a woman comes out with an
indisputably pertinent statement, it is not because of the activity
of her brain, but because of her renowned 'feminine intuition':
women are not supposed to know how to think logically. When,
during fairground challenges, women fighters start to get the
better of their male opponents, mixed matches are forbidden,
because women are not supposed to know how to fight.
[Man and his body / 19]
This attitude has a twofold advantage for man: it deepens the
rift rift between the sexes, enhancing his own physical and
mental abilities to face the world, whilst it restricts those of the
woman. This way he establishes his power so firmly that he
ends up presenting it as 'natural'. Indeed, why shouldn't he
dominate since he is the strongest and the most intelligent?
Whereas woman is supposed to be flesh with neither brain nor
muscle, man interprets the body/mind dichotomy by seeing
himself as a head which commands his muscles. He makes his
body the instrument of his power by setting greater store on his
cerebral and muscular activities; and he attaches more or less
importance to the one or the other depending on his
hierarchical position within the man class. Whereas the mind
always controls the body, body and mind do not always belong
to the same man.
In the same way that the dead god on the cross is the son of the
Father, the strong arm of power, the body which is physically
sacrificed to serve any entity whatever ―glory, honour,
freedom― is generally dissociated as far as possible from the
brain which is really in control. Thus when man gives orders to
bomber pilots from the depths of the presidential office, he is
not usually worried about his muscles: his head alone is