What is it about?
This article explores two recurrent patterns for cultural understanding and depicting extreme fat male sexuality in the 20h C. These two patterns--one of an over-sexual predator, the other other as asexual (through two subcategories: the presexual child or the dysfunctional eunuch)--both serve to present sexual desire and performance in the obese man as always an aberration--whether danger or failure. The underlying logic of these apparently mutually-excluding images is the cultural system of binary gender.
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Why is it important?
The paradox of these two seemingly opposed patterns of representation is resolved through examination of the underlying cultural system of gender distinctions. The such representations serve to police any sort of masculine sexuality that falls outside the narrow allowable possibilities. A fat heterosexual male violates the narrowly-constructed cultural understanding of "normal" masculinity, hence threatens to destabilize that system of gender normality.
Perspectives
It is more well-recognised--40 years after Women's Liberation became a household term--that women are oppressed by our culture's system of power divided along lines of sex and gender. This article underscores the ways that this system hurts and restricts men's freedom and authenticity also.
christine harker
Truman State University
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This page is a summary of: Fat male sexuality: The monster in the maze, Sexualities, August 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1363460716640734.
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