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A man is a synthetic thing. He is made, invented really, not observed. Without the agreement of another, or a group of others, he can't be a man. It is cultural consent that gives us men, cultural experience that tells us what a man is and isn't like. How this experience is taken up intrapsychically, how it is elaborated as a self-state representation, or a variety of them, is consequent to, and a constituent of, collaboration, the bidirectionality of influence. And not only the influence of persons upon persons but the influence of culture and mind upon each other, an influence that must resolve in an accord that is also a synthesis: a man is what he thinks he is and a man is what he can pass for. In either case,
he is never quite himself, i.e., he is modified and commodified by an idea of masculinity, an idea that is also a fantasy. This coaction between cultural conscription and the conscription of the mind is crucial to the establishment of identity generally and, especially, to the establishment of masculine identity. A man depends upon the collaborative synergy of culture and mind to come into being. When we talk about identity formation we recognize that identity is that which arrives, which coalesces, and may just as easily de-form or come undone. Men are not only synthetic; they’re fragile, too.
In Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Man, Donald Moss takes up the subject of what might be called “conditional masculinity,” an identity dependent upon influence and authorized by consent. As a drive theorist, his focus is steadfastly on interiority and the demands the body makes upon the mind. Following Freud, the most important of these demands for Moss is the demand for work. Only work can satisfy the drive impulses, can fulfill their aims. So there is work involved in being or becoming a man and yet, according to Moss, one neither is a man nor becomes one because masculine experience is always and only approximate. As masculinity is ideational, one can only be li