emmanuel reynaud holy virility the social construction of masculinity

possession of their rights, their women and their country. One
of the first peasant revolts in France (in 1067) was that of the
serfs of Viry, who rose up against the provost and canons of
Notre Dame in Paris, in whose power was their right to marry.
The serfs wanted to dispense with their requiring the monks'
permission to appropriate, through marriage, the woman of their
choice.
In keeping with the conflicts between them and the development
of the productive forces, large numbers of men have,
throughout history, been reduced to slavery, and as the genitals
are the basic criteria for the division into masters and slaves in
patriarchy, so castration has frequently been the result of the
exclusion of one group of men from the power race. It was
common practice in ancient times, and even if today it is
definitely less widespread, some still feel their oppression as
'castration', that is, as the destruction of the patriarchal symbol
of their power. Raoul Vaneigem puts as follows the idea
doubtless present in many men's minds: 'Regimes agreeably
baptised "democratic'' merely humanise castration.' [1] This
situation ―whatever form the exclusion from the sharing in the
division of power takes― obviously engenders permanent
antagonism inside the man class, which historically fairly stable
in its social manifestation, took, from the nineteenth century
onwards, a new direction in Judeo-Christian patriarchy.
[Between men / 107]
Indeed, that is when men seriously began to conceive the
project of a 'whole man' who would develop outside the
hierarchy and the struggle for power. Yet, in spite of being a
step in the right direction, this 'whole man' did not really
represent humankind, but clearly implied only the male of the
species. Between 1918 and 1921, in the anarchist Ukraine, one
of the greatest victories of the anti-hierarchical struggle inside
the man class took place. Nestor Machno ―who was nicknamed
''Batko'', that is, 'Father'― made some elegant speeches during
the insurrection:
«Win or die - that is the dilemma facing the peasants and
workers of the Ukraine at this historic moment. But we
cannot all die, we are innumerable. We are Humanity! And
so, we shall win . . . We shall not win only to repeat the
errors of the past: to place our fate in the hands of new
masters. We shall win in order to take our destiny into our
own hands, to organise our lives according to our own will
and with our truth.» [2]
But when Makhno (rightly) spoke of the emancipation of
humanity, that did not prevent him, in his everyday behaviour,
from restricting membership of humankind. Voline, who took
part in Makhno's insurrectionary campaign, writes: 'The second
shortcoming of Makhno and many of his close associates
―commanders and others― was their attitude towards women.
Especially when inebriated, these men indulged in inadmissible
acts ―hateful would be more exact― going so far as to force