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Men and Masculinities
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Mama's Boys

JONATHAN HOLDEN

Kansas State University

In this narrative, the author compares identical twin brothers—one gay, one straight—to the character Jaromil in Milan Kundera's novel Life Is Elsewhere. He describes in some detail various rebellious experiments that one brother conducted and the way in which mother, Jaynet, managed the two brothers. The essay examines, implicitly, the notion that gay men come from families with a distant father and a strong mother. It is, coincidentally, also a critique of American upper middle-class liberalism, in the same sense as that Betty Freidan advanced in The Feminine Mystique. The methodological assumptions behind this essay agree with what sociologist Richard Sennett proposed in his book Authority, in which he asserted, boldly and perhaps heretically, that when a sociological study can capture the inner life of the individual under historical and psychological stress with the authenticity of a good novel, then the science of sociology might have a valid raison d'être.

Key Words: identical twins • homosexuality • mama's boys • children of intellectuals • Life Is Elsewhere • Kundera

Men and Masculinities, Vol. 1, No. 1, 46-57 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/1097184X98001001003
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