Images and ideas associated with masculinity are forever in flux. In this book, Donald Moss addresses the never-ending effort of men-regardless of sexual orientation-to shape themselves in relation to the unstable notion of masculinity.

Part 1 looks at the lifelong labor faced by boys and men of assessing themselves in relation to an always shifting, always receding, ideal of "masculinity." In Part 2, Moss considers a series of nested issues regarding homosexuality, homophobia and psychoanalysis. Part 3 focuses on the interface between the body experienced as a private...