Psychology and anthropology support the popular distinction between sex and gender. Sex is what the body is, that is, male or female. Gender is everything that is not limited to the body; it is a complex of behavior, mental qualities, and personality characteristics-everything we mean when we say that someone is masculine, a real man, a Mensch, or (more rarely), feminine, a real woman, a lady. Gender sometimes refers specifically to sexual behavior; that is, masculinity can mean the male desire for heterosexual intercourse, but I do not mean it in that restricted sense. Gender means, in a distinction that is becoming widely accepted, the wide range of qualities and behavior (including the sexual) that make up the realities we call masculine and feminine. Maleness

for these things come at the end of feasting. (xxi.428-430)

Masculinity and femininity are characterized, respectively, by separation and communion, as David Bakan describes: "Agency manifests itself in the formation of separations; communion in the lack of separation."12 Bakan explains that agency manifests itself "in isolation, alienation, and aloneness . . . in the urge to master . . . in the repression of thought, feeling, and impulse . . .," and that communion manifests itself in "contact, openness, and union . . . in noncontractual cooperation . . . in the lack and removal of repression."13 The process of the formation of agency parallels the formation of masculine identity: "The very split of agency from communion, which is a separation, arises from the agency feature itself; and it represses the communion from which it has separated itself."14 Separation implies death, and in the Freudian view is based on "the separation of the ego from the world" which produces "aggression."15 Satan, according to Bakan, is the image of "agency unmitigated by communion."16 Both by their maleness and by their masculinity, men, far more than women, are oriented to death, as all statistics of mortality show, and men are often tempted to the final separation of nihilism, which is satanic. Even their different sexual responses reinforce the difference between men and women. Since "the aim of agency is the reduction of tension, whereas the aim of communion is union,"17 men seek to reduce tension (the petite mort of orgasm is a parallel and foretaste of the final death of the body), while women seek communion, which is initially fulfilled in pregnancy, but stretches forth to a communion with all beings that reaches beyond death.

The Eleusinian mysteries of the ancient Greek world have been reconstructed by Harold Willoughby from indirect evidence.56 They consisted of a sacred drama, sacred instruction, and the exhibition of sacred objects. The drama was based upon the myth of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, and her daughter Persephone: While gathering flowers at Eleusis, Persephone was abducted by Pluto, the god of the underworld, with the permission of Zeus, king of the gods. Demeter came to Eleusis and, disguising herself as an old woman, searched for her daughter. She was offered hospitality by the king, her identity was discovered, and she was worshipped by the populace. In return, she taught them her mysteries. She refused to let grain grow on the earth until Zeus ordered Pluto to return Persephone. Pluto relented, but Persephone had eaten some pomegranate seeds in the underworld, and had to return to her husband for three months of each year, during which Demeter would permit nothing to grow.

is a physical quality, masculinity a cultural and spiritual one, although one that is connected with the physical realities of being male. Nevertheless, a male must be initiated into the mysteries of masculinity before he can become a man in the fullest sense of the word, and it is this initiation that is the theme of much of world literature, from Homer to Hemingway.

Then he cut them up limb by limb and got supper ready,

Some topics in this essay:
Calypso Calypso, Nancy Comoro, Germanic Mediterranean, Carol Jacklin, Masculinity20 Gilmore, Hawley Masculinity, Rosalind Miles, David Bakan, Hazards Male28, Masculinity Maleness, ideology masculinity, death rebirth, male body, male female, male identity, van gennep, mother child, mystery religions, masculine identity, david gilmore, female pattern body, van gennep identified, basic female pattern, confront dangers life,