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Contemporary man1 is kaleidscopically married, single, coupled, throu-pled, sexual, asexual, gendered, bodied, bearded, corporatized, male-identified (or not), frozen, castrated, homophobic, heterophobic, depleted, over-heated, under-nurtured, smothered, overblown, lost. He is straight, gay, bi, trans, in-between. Man is phallic; man is cloacal . Many men in contemporary psychoanalytic treatment were unable to effectively learn how to become men from either their fathers or mothers. They grapple with what it is to be agentic, powerful, tender, sexy, strong. Some are young dads, about-to-be dads, want-to-be dads. Some are pressured to be fathers by wives or girlfriends anxiously marking the ticking of biological time. Suddenly male fertility pivots center stage. Counting sperm, discovering more about biological functions taken for granted, these scenes are potential minefields of humiliation, impotence, resentments, resistance to giving up “boys' night out” and “guys' weekends,” fears of home lockdown with a mate they love but are afraid of or feel weighed down by, fears of inadequacy as a parent and father. Some are gay men contending with internal and external homophobia, difficulties navigating the terrain of romantic dynamics, parenting, adoptions, and surrogacies while claiming and maintaining positions at work and in society.
Masculinity, particularly in the past two decades, has been reconfigured, reconstructed, and finally theorized apart from — but inclusive of and influenced by — femininity and queer theory, and in the process brought into the