John A Tosh Masculinity Summary

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Recommended: Gender roles in the 19th century

John A. Tosh is a British historian and Professor of History at Roehampton University. In his article, ‘What Should Historians do with Masculinity? Reflections on Nineteenth-century Britain’, Tosh analyzes masculinity in the nineteenth-century. He is able to depict the thought that masculinity has always been around but not discussed as a debate and it has just always been looked at as “that is the way it is supposed to be”. What is meant by this is that a man should portray traits that are the opposite of being feminine similar to being “strong” or a “provider”. These attributes stem from the thoughts such as saying that a man is not supposed to cry when they are hurt but to not show emotion at all and act tough, and the showing of emotion could then make the man to be thought of as homosexual or even less of a man. The socialization of manliness in our general public starts in his …show more content…

A female then leaves a house a female and is constantly reminded that she is a woman and when she comes home she is still a female because she then has to take care of her household duties as a mother and a wife and make sure everything is in order as it should be. This article was decent at supporting its’ thesis by allowing us to see how masculinity was seen in the nineteenth-century letting readers to be able to compare how the topic was seen back then and how similar it is

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