Gender and Culture Series

Cool Men and the Second Sex

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Academic superstars Andrew Ross, Edward Said, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. Bad boy filmmakers Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee, and Brian de Palma. What do these influential contemporary figures have in common? In Cool Men and the Second Sex , Susan Fraiman identifies them all with "cool masculinity" and boldly unpacks the gender politics of their work.

According to Fraiman, "cool men" rebel against a mainstream defined as maternal . Bad boys resist the authority of women and banish mothers to the realm of the uncool. As a result, despite their hipness―or because of it―these men too often feel free to ignore the insights of feminist thinkers. Through subtle close readings, Fraiman shows that even Gates, champion of black women's writing, and even queer theorists bent on undoing gender binaries, at times end up devaluing women in favor of men and masculinity.

A wide-ranging and fair-minded analysis, Cool Men acknowledges the invaluable contributions of its subjects while also deciphering the gender codes and baring the contradictions implicit in their work. Affirming the legacy of second-wave feminist scholars and drawing as well on the intersectional work of third-wavers, Cool Men helps to reinvent feminist critique for the twenty-first century.

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,2003

This edition

Format
224 pages, Paperback
Published
October 22, 2003 by Columbia University Press
ISBN
9780231129633
ASIN
0231129637
Language
English

About the author

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April 26,2025
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The chapter on Quentin Tarantino was especially relevant to things that have been on my mind recently, as well as the bits on Spike Lee and Brian De Palma. I don't feel like I've studied Edward Said, Andrew Ross, or Henry Louis Gates Jr. enough to have gotten as much out of those chapters but they were still very interesting. The queer theory chapter was definitely relevant to things I saw/see happening in my feminist community at college.

Chapters 5 and 6 I definitely could have used a whole lot of hand-holding and explanations. It's been awhile since I read anything so obtuse though Fraiman clearly doesn't aspire to incomprehensibility like some theorists seem to.
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