Studs, Tools, & The Family Jewels: Metaphors Men Live By

183 Pages·2001·1.06 MB·English

by  Peter F. Murphy

Studs, Tools, and the Family Jewels
Studs, Tools, and
the Family Jewels
Metaphors Men Live By
Peter F. Murphy
The University of Wisconsin Press
The University of Wisconsin Press
2537 Daniels Street
Madison, Wisconsin 53718
3 Henrietta Street
London WC2E 8LU, England
Copyright 䉷 2001
The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All rights reserved
5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Murphy, Peter Francis.
Studs, tools, and the family jewels: metaphors men live by / Peter F.
Murphy.
182 pp. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-299-17130-2 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 0-299-17134-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Men—United States—Language—Psychological aspects. 2. Sexism
in language—United States. 3. Masculinity—United States. 4. English
language—United States—Sex differences. I. Title.
HQ1090.3 .M87 2001
305.31—dc21 00-010619
Dedicated to Shere Hite, Leslie Fiedler,
and Roland Barthes (1915–1980)—those with whom
I share a profound interest in the everyday
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 3
I The Language of Male Bonding
1 Sex as Machine 17
2 Sex as Work and Labor 38
3 Sex as Sport 59
4 Sex as War and Conquest 76
5 Sex as Exclusively Heterosexual 98
II Beyond the Present
6 Insidious Humor and the Construction
of Masculinity 119
7 From Theory to Practice: New Metaphors
of Masculinity 135
Notes 147
References 159
vii
Preface
I realize that writing this book makes me vulnerable. By revealing some-
thing of my own sexual experiences and reactions to this discourse in a
less than heroic light, and in proposing alternative metaphors that are “un-
hard,” I open myself up to mockery. Men need to take these kinds of risks,
however, risks that women in the feminist movement have been taking for
decades (even centuries) as a way to confront what is touted as natural
and normal. If men are to participate authentically in the struggle to
change the way we think about masculinity and femininity, to move the
discourse beyond the oppressive and the demeaning, we too must take
some risks.
Writing this book has been emotionally difficult. As I worked my way
through each of these metaphors/tropes of male heterosexuality, I became
more and more disturbed by the alienated descriptions of what was pur-
ported to be my sexuality. Although I found some relief in the realization
that somehow I had managed to resist adopting much of this identity, and
that I was not alone among my male friends in this survival, I remained
saddened that most men have nonetheless been crippled by this discourse
(and to a great extent my friends and I are not exempt). The power of
language to create our identities and to teach us how to construct interper-
sonal relationships is so overwhelming that even those of us who have
reflected critically upon who we are as men will never be able to transcend
completely the effect this discourse has upon us.
Some figures of speech were individually more poignant to me than
others, but collectively they proved to be quite disturbing. “Blow job,” for
example, gave me the most trouble emotionally; I realized that even
though I was quite well aware of this trope, I initially failed to incorporate
it in the list of metaphors I planned to analyze. Although I eventually
made the decision to include it, it was not an easy choice. The reification
in this phrase, its reduction of one particular form of sexual pleasure to an
experience that is both external and mechanical, affected me profoundly.
“Gang bang” was another extremely troublesome phrase to think
about. The immediacy of the gang rape case in Gouverneur, New York, a
village in northern New York near where I grew up, made vivid my own
near-miss with this experience when I was a young boy. A gang bang, while
ix