Good Advice for Godly Men: Oppressed Men in Christian Men’s Self-Help Literature

Abstract

This paper is a critical content analysis of the genre of Christian men’s sefl-help literature. It examines the ways in which this genre constructs and addresses men as a collective beset by their own ‘unique’ problems (including sexual addiction) and considers why the authors favor such characterizations. Men are portrayed as being just like any other disadvantaged group whose lives are characterized by oppression. It is suggested that this mediated classification of men as an ‘oppressed group’ is favored because it marginalizes competing social conversations about men’s status in society, especially feminist critiques of male privilege.