J. Jack Halberstam, a professor of American studies and a prolific author, explores the nature of masculinity in men’s lives and finds that men’s masculinity is a myth. He finds that it is time to take a closer look at what makes men men—and how it has been constructed. "Is Masculinity a myth?" is the question he asks his readers, and he finds that masculinity is not a myth at all, but rather an illusion
He finds masculinity in the self-image of boys who have been taught from childhood to define themselves in terms of being men. Halberstam finds that this process has contributed to the current epidemic of male violence and sexual abuse against women, girls, and children.
We seem to assume that no one really wants to be a girl or a woman, and therefore some people, say female-bodied people, must be forced into these abject gendersJ. Jack Halberstam
To begin an ethnographic project with a goal, with an object of research and a set of presumptions, is already to stymie the process of discovery; it blocks one's ability to learn something new that exceed the frameworks with which one enters.J. Jack Halberstam
