MASCULINITY

Birth of a new man
Men have to give up their power over women. But Chris Brazier argues that they could discover themselves in the process.

Husbands of the Nile
Muslim men get the world's worst press. But, according to Sherif Hetata, they too are beginning to change.

Queer fears and gay examples
Gary Dowsett explains why heterosexual men should stop vilifying gays and start learning from them.

High time men changed
A feminist perspective on masculinity from Rosalind Coward.

The weaker sex
African women grow most of the food and do all of the housework. Where does this leave the men? Osei Kofi reports.

MASCULINITY-THE FACTS

The evolving man
A sneak preview of some pioneering research into men by Bob Connell, Norm Radican and Pip Martin.

The absent father comes home
Men are being changed by a new kind of fatherhood. Dexter Tiranti reports from the front line.

SIMPLY... understanding boys

Soft-core sex
What is non-penetrative sex? Men should learn to love it, argues Paul Ryan.

Ideas for action

Faithful subscribers to the NI may remember last year's issue on Sex. In that issue's letter from the editor, Debbie Taylor mentioned for the first time in these pages our commitment to something called 'personal politics'. The exact meaning of this phrase even escaped some members of the editorial team, so readers could be forgiven for being unsure what we meant by it.

But it was by no means a new idea. The NI has always tried to make the most important ideas and events in the world intelligible to people by 'bringing it all back home' - showing how the lives of our readers (almost all of whom live in developed countries) connected with that of peasant farmers or plantation workers in the Third World. This wasn't just a technique - in fact it described more accurately than any other approach the shrinking world we live in, the way all of us are affected by the same global forces of economics and warmongering, inequality and neglect. The only change has been that in the last few years we have been more prepared to treat issues raised by the feminist and green movements, seeing their insights as an inescapable part of a genuinely internationalist vision.

This cuts both ways when you're trying to spread the word and help change things by selling a radical magazine. On the one hand it interests people who would never have been interested in the Third World: enticed by the fascination of learning something new about themselves, they also come into contact with what life is like for people in developing countries. By that I mean not just that we deal with the politics of hunger as well as the politics of sex, but also that we show (unlike other magazines) how the rich world is affected by the former and the poor world by the latter. In this issue, for example, there are articles by men from Egypt and Ghana as well as those by men from the rich world.

On the other hand people who have traditionally supported our campaigns on behalf of the Third World have been alienated or offended by some of our more personal magazines. Nor do we entirely escape such doubts ourselves. The Feminism and Sex issues of recent years in particular produced some long and painful debates within the co-operative - after all, a 'personal politics' approach affects us, too.

Why am I rehearsing all this history? Well, this issue on Masculinity is another one of those 'troublesome' magazines likely to cause offence in some quarters - saying that 50 per cent of our readers need to alter their behaviour is, after all, coming pretty near the knuckle. It is inevitably more controversial than, for example, Human Rights (due to be my next issue), of which everyone can safely feel they are 100 per cent in favour.

But it is also part of that history in the sense that it tries to fill a need created by our other specifically anti-sexist magazines. I remember talking to a group of men in Melbourne who said they had been very impressed by the Sex issue, but who ultimately felt it left them no hope. Faced with such a gloomy picture, what could they do? Crawl under a shell and die? This is something all men feel at one time or another.

There is a great deal we men can do, though. And in responding to women's demands, in ceding our traditional advantages, we may have a lot to gain, too. This issue aims to offer both women and men hope. It's an issue I've wanted to edit ever since I joined the NI but have put off partly out of trepidation. I hope, after all this time, that I've done the subject justice.

Letters
Letter from Mawere
Update
Briefly
Endpiece: by David Ransom
Reviews: including Walter Rodney classic
Country profile: Angola

COVER PHOTO: Mark Mason
ONLINE MAG MAINTAINED BY SIMON LOFFLER