Ruth Whippman – Feminism and Religion

The following New York Times article titled “We Can Do Better than ‘Positive Masculinity’” by Ruth Whippman was published on October 9, 2024. Whippman is also the author of the book, REIMAGINING BOYHOOD IN THE AGE OF IMPOSSIBLE MASCULINITIES. Whippman’s New York Times article grabbed my attention.

Decades ago while taking undergraduate courses in the discipline that was then called Women’s Studies (now known as Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies), most of the authors I remember reading insisted that both masculinity and femininity (human ways of being in the world) were cultural constructs, not something innate in humans we refer to as women and men. Throughout the world, societies have shown a lot of variety in ways that women and men express themselves and are expected to behave.