Since the advent of second-wave feminism, sexual-political issues about men have come onto the public agenda. From some quarters we hear optimistic reports about the extent of change in men's lives, and even those who find actual change to be slow are inclined to stress the change in public rhetoric – ‘at least we are talking about it’. But what are we saying?

I wrote this book because I felt something vital was missing from most discussions about men and social change: a serious recognition of the central role men's material interests play in their motivation to defend the gendered status quo. While at one level ‘everyone knows’ that men still benefit from various privileges, what initially surprised me as I surveyed the extensive public debate about men and change was the way this point is systematically obscured or marginalised in both popular and academic discussion. Slowly, though, surprise turned to understanding – after all, if the social conversation about men is blandly apolitical this is itself in the interests of men.

My analysis ranges broadly over social and psychological theory, feminist theory (especially the type most popular with men), empirical social science, the pop-sociology and pop-psychology of popular experts and media pundits, popular culture and popular ideologies. This is not quite such a huge and unmanageable range as might first appear, since social theory often turns out to be not very different from popular ideology. Perhaps this is particularly true in the case of gender, where tough truths about the social world seem to be particularly unpalatable. There is much at stake.