EXCERPT | 'Only partly a man' – Kopano Ratele on the troubled masculinity of men designated 'boys’

BOOK: Why Men Hurt Women and Other Reflections on Love, Violence and Masculinity by Kopano Ratele. (Wits University Press)

Psychology professor Kopano Ratele, who will be speaking at the Franschhoek Literary Festival later this month, is the author of Liberating Masculinities, The World Looks Like This from Here: Thoughts on African Psychology and, most recently, Why Men Hurt Women and Other Reflections on Love, Violence and Masculinity (Wits University Press). In this book Ratele argues that men in our society suffer from an unrecognised yet painful love hunger from boyhood, which may lie at the root of male violence. In this excerpt, he probes 'the masculinity of a man who is a boy'.