This study uses autobiographical reflection to investigate the negative impact of essentialist masculine gender socialization on men's lives. In particular, I use personal recollective accounts both from my early childhood socialization-in the traditional Greek-Cypriot culture of the 1970s and 80s-and from my own introspections and analytical conceptualizations concerning intimate relationships in general. I analyze these accounts by using a feminist postmodern ideology of gender deconstruction and reconstruction. Men oftentimes fall victims of patriarchal masculine scripting by suppressing their needs for intimacy, connectedness, and self-disclosure, qualities traditionally devalued as feminine traits. Suppressing such needs exacerbates inadequacies in male intimacy with possible manifestations in the form of generalized non-clinical male sexual anxiety. Implications are also discussed in terms of the by-products of male sexual anxiety, such as non-clinical sexual addiction and male victimization. / Ph. D.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/30030 |
| Date | 11 December 2001 |
| Creators | Philaretou, Andreas Georgiou |
| Contributors | Human Development, Allen, Katherine R., Few-Demo, April L., Hughes, Michael D., Bryant, Clifton D., Arditti, Joyce A. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | FiguresNew.pdf, Dissert1-5new.pdf |
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