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Over the past twenty years, patriarchy has become a vitally important analytical concept for historians of women, gender and masculinity. By contrast, misogyny has been under‐explored, despite being an equally prevalent historical phenomenon. This article offers a cultural history of seventeenth‐century masculinity based on an analysis of the humorous jokes and stories found in jest‐books, a genre that appealed in particular to male adolescents and young men in their twenties. It argues that patriarchy and misogyny should be treated as separate analytical concepts and cultural phenomena that appealed to different sorts of men. While patriarchy offered a code of manly behaviour for middling‐sort married males to aspire to, misogynistic humour appealed predominantly to youthful single males, who were as antagonistic towards patriarchs as they were towards women. In articulating such an argument, this article engages with debates about manhood, misogyny and the reception and creation of everyday culture in early modern society.

In 1992 the West African nation of Mali proudly became a democratic republic under the leadership of the dynamic president, Alpha Oumar Konare. With this political transition came a host of dramatic cultural changes in the nation's capital, Bamako. One such change was a new kind of music called wassoulou. Gritty and funky, yet deeply rooted in the Wasulu traditions of Mali's southeastern heartland, wassoulou and its brilliant female singers carried a new voice to Bamako and beyond: a democratic voice that expressed fresh, youthful, and feminine perspectives about life. In the early 1990s, this new sound invaded the nation's commercial music sector, radio, and television with astounding success and swiftly became the driving musical force in popular culture.