This book explores the relationship between male games and violence against women by examining various theoretical rubrics, including the classic "Authoritarian Personality" model of Theodor Adorno, Nevitt Sanford, et al., Rene Girard's theory of scapegoating, Georges Bataille's depiction of male sexuality, and Luce Irigaray's post-Lacanian critique of androcentrism. McBride suggests that battering - like such male territorial games as war and its simulation, football - is symptomatic of a masculinist psychic economy predicated on deep-seated anxieties and expressed through hostility toward women. Rejecting the principle voices of the "men's movement" (e.g. Robert Bly, Sam Keen) as an alternative to the dominant model of masculinity in American culture, the book concludes that only radical changes in child-rearing practices can effect a new male subjectivity, freed from the compulsion to do violence against women.

Author Biography

James McBride teaches religion and social ethics at Fordham University.