In his introduction to this collection of academic essays about different aspects and types of contemporary Australian masculinity – or, as the authors prefer, masculinities – R.W. Connell notes that: ‘It is now a familiar observation that notions of Australian identity have been entirely constructed around images of men.’ This is a familiar observation. Another old chestnut that better sums up recent discussions of masculinity and men, including this book, is that masculinity is in ‘crisis’, and that, at least in part, the solution lies in ‘problematising’, ‘deconstructing’, ‘destabilising’, and then collapsing’ it. It’s all, as such language makes clear, terribly sociological and cultural studies in approach. Which is not beyond interest, once one swims beneath the dense disciplinary jargon to the ideas below.

But I must be honest and say, as someone who has spent the last few months reading everything l can get my hands on about masculinity, that I have begun to feel somewhat downtrodden by the relentless negativity about all things male that seems to be the sine qua non of such research and ‘discourse’. Men, this collection argues, continue to ‘construct’ their masculinity through the degradation of the female and homosexual; men pursue submissive wives using Internet sites that traffic poor women from the developing world; men murder other men who insult their masculinity through homosexual advance in order to preserve their honour and self-respect; the ‘hyper-masculine’ male sporting body continues to dominate sports coverage, while the sexual objectification of the female sporting body continues unabated. And on it goes. I can only imagine the impact such a relentless list of ‘male troubles’ has on readers of the opposite sex.