{"id":6702,"date":"2025-07-12T15:39:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T20:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=6702"},"modified":"2025-07-12T15:41:47","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T20:41:47","slug":"psychology-professor-offers-unique-take-on-vidal-updike-and-masculinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2025\/07\/12\/psychology-professor-offers-unique-take-on-vidal-updike-and-masculinity\/","title":{"rendered":"Psychology professor offers unique take on Vidal, Updike, and masculinity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Sometimes the most interesting takes on an author come from great thinkers outside the field of literature. Such is the case with an article by Kali DuBois that was published in Medium<\/em>: “What If Gore Vidal and John Updike Had a Lovechild? Why Chop Dog-Eared These Pages Like a Hungry Man on a Cheeseburger Vagina.”\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

“Gore Vidal and John Updike reshaped what it meant to be a man in America\u2014and they did it from opposite ends of the battlefield,” wrote DuBois, who holds a Master’s degree in human sexuality and certifications in biological psychology, biofeedback, kinesiology, neuro-semantics, tantra, yoga, mind codes, and martial arts.<\/p>\n

“Gore Vidal taught men that the personal was political, and that sex was never just about pleasure but about power. He forced men to see hypocrisy in the mirror, questioning the structures they benefitted from while often feeling trapped within them. He mocked American masculinity \u2014 its obsession with conquest, its fear of vulnerability, its addiction to empire \u2014 and invited men to see themselves not as rulers of the world but as products of it,” DuBois wrote.<\/p>\n

“Vidal\u2019s men were sharp, politically aware, often bisexual or morally fluid, understanding that identity was both a performance and a prison. He planted in men\u2019s minds the belief that if you weren\u2019t willing to challenge the system, you were part of it \u2014 and if you wanted freedom, you had to face uncomfortable truths about who you were, what you desired, and what you were complicit in.<\/p>\n

“John Updike, meanwhile, told men it was okay to feel<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“His men were confused, lustful, terrified of aging, perpetually restless in their marriages, and looking for transcendence in the bodies of women they often did not deserve. Updike gave men permission to see their boredom, their longing, their sexual frustrations, not as shameful failings, but as a fundamental part of being alive.<\/p>\n

“But he also left men with the belief that their inner turmoil was something the world should revolve around, that their dissatisfaction was profound, and that the search for pleasure and meaning in the domestic was a noble, if doomed, quest.<\/p>\n

“Between them, these two men planted conflicting beliefs into American men:<\/p>\n