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Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood
Gary Taylor
Routledge Press
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Gary Taylor's Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood (Routledge, cloth, $25) is likely to jump off the shelf at bookstore browsers. But hold on-- there is more here (rather than less) than meets the eye. "What do women want?" queries Taylor (echoing Freud) in the beginning of this engrossing treatise on the changing nature of Western manhood. Well, his surprising answer is: "a eunuch." Taylor is quick to note that "women do not want to 'castrate' men," but simply that they want sexual pleasure without fear of unintended impregnation-- what many men want as well. Taylor's broad theme here is masculinity-- specifically in relation to reproduction. But his range of topics is as broad as his analysis is on-target. He is able to draw useful material for his arguments from sources as diverse as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Renaissance handbooks on animal husbandry. Taylor navigates through his eclectic topics with honed arguments and graceful prose.

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In a stunning feat of bravura literary criticism, Taylor uses a detailed explication of Thomas Middleton's obscure but important 1624 play A Game of Chess, a metaphysical commentary on the Reformation, as the centerpiece of his investigations. This is the sort of move that can work brilliantly or fall on its ass, but he pulls it off. While his more-than-evident credentials as a Renaissance scholar shine here, Taylor neatly links the play's concerns to the history of psychoanalysis and the sexual racialization of blacks and Jews.

At times a little arcane, Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood pays off in the end, for in figuring out "what women want" from men, he tells us a great deal about how maleness and sexualities of all sort get constructed, talked about, and acted on.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com