Lad culture in Tudor and Stuart England

Follow this link to a review of a superb book, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England by University of Sussex historian Alexandra Shepard. Her thesis is very pertinent to our course. Dr. Sheperd has uncovered laddism as far back as the late 1400s: that is, large numbers of dissaffected young males conducting themselves in ways that drew strong condemnation and forceful suppression from the particular elite in power. The article concludes this way:

... her findings offer an alternative view to the "sex blindness" of the traditional theory that all men were viewed as intellectually and morally superior to women, thereby creating a system that benefited all men at the expense of all women. "We need a multi-relational framework when assessing gender relations," says Dr Shepard, "it involves a great deal more than the simple opposition of women and men."