Starting from his famous book "Iron John: a book about men", I cross his arguments with the mythopoetic perspective about what is to be a man. At the same time, it was my intention to expose how the author, the mythopoetic movement and the book, had effected the American society. That is, what were they impacts over that society. In order to do this, I searched in American embassy, in Lisbon, data bases all the magazines and newspaper articles that had "Robert Bly" or "Iron John" as key words.

Because it was a Master in American Studies (cultural studies area) it was my intention to focus on the gender theory and deconstruct Bly’s arguments. In suma, it is a thesis about how Robert Bly, father figure of American mythopoetic men’s movement, understands and defends the masculine identity.

This master thesis has 6 chapters:

Introduction; The Robert Bly’s book Iron John: a book about men: here I presented the book, the brother’s Grimm fairy tale, which is the base for the book, and all the Bly’s steps that all men should take if they want to be considered a real man; The analysis to the collected articles: here I intended to show the articles and cross their contents with Bly’s book, and demonstrate how society understood Bly’s message; Gender theory chapter: where I try to make the history of gender theory, since the 1960s, always focusing on masculine identity; Analysis to "Iron John" book: here I crossed the chapters 3 and 4. I deconstruct Bly’s arguments, show all the implication of the non-feminist male point of view to men and to the society; Conclusion: Robert Bly’s book is the way that the author found out to express and defend his arguments about masculine identity crisis, according to an anti-feminist perspective.

In short words, what he tried to do was to write a politically correct book, inspired in New Age movement, with the purpose of defending the "status quo" of a specific male group – the dominant one: white, middle-class, middle-age and heterosexual.