Gail Bederman Manliness And Civilization Summary

Gail Bederman, author of “Manliness and Civilization” published in 1995, explains how manliness is associated with race and civilization. She states that historians explain manhood as a normal aspect of human nature and although it may be expressed differently at different times, the meaning of it always remains the same. Bederman indicates her thesis, “ This book will investigate this turn-of-the-century connection between manhood and race. It will argue that, between 1890 and 1917, as white middle-class men actively worked to reinforce male power, their race became a factor which was crucial to their gender.”(p. 4) The author uses a group of a people with different cultural assumptions about race, manhood, and civilization to explain her

-I will be concentrating on the different, even contradictory, ways people invoked the discourse of civilization to construct what it meant to be a man.” (p. 25) She argues that the specific aspects of discourse of civilizations are race, gender and power. The author uses different people to prove her thesis. She does this to illustrate different views of manhood in different times and also genders. Every person has impacted the idea of manliness and has demonstrated various aspects of it in their specific era. To support her thesis, Bederman uses primary sources such as monographs, newspapers, pamphlets and photos. She demonstrates a picture on every chapter of the specific person that she is discussing about. At the end of every chapter, Bederman provides a conclusion to summarize all the arguments and influential ideas that can relate to her arguments. This is helpful to the reader because it can get challenging to understand the whole story about the person and also grasp the points that Bederman

After reading about all the different people and how they influence her concept about manliness, it is safe to say that her arguments can persuade the audience to agree with the thesis of the book. As stated previously, every chapter contain different viewpoints that support her argument. They are all different in their own way but in the end they are able to make a connection between manhood and race. White men think they are superior to black race and for that reason, they believe they are the ideal man. Manhood is very important to them during this time, but also women believe that they should be considered in the civilization that men are always fighting for. Bederman states that women argue that they are part of the civilization. With all this information given, she is able to persuade the audience that manliness, race and civilization are all part of what the true definition of manhood really is. Bederman states that these three concepts work together to define manhood and to explain them all she's uses different people’s story to describe how the concepts