EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Some have argued that more men should play a role in ending violence against women - but what do we know about those men who are already ...doing so?
Using case studies from Spain, Sweden and the UK, this book highlights those men who are already taking action. Examining the social, cultural, political and economic factors that support men to take a public stance, the authors explore what we can learn from their experiences in order to help build the movement to end violence against women.
This important study will inform scholars and students of sociology and gender studies, as well as social movements and organisations working to involve and engage men and boys in achieving gender equality.
The article is located within research on cross-gender interviewing and concerns methodological and analytical challenges in a study of (pro)feminist men and seeks to contribute to the literature on ...interview interaction and the knowledge to be gained from such research experiences. The article discusses the negotiation of interviewer/interviewee interaction, practices of gender and theoretical knowledge along with how this might influence the coconstruction of interview performances. Interviewees reflexively turned narratives into theoretical analysis which turned out to be important aspects of presentation of self and in the doings of gender and feminism. The concept of “cofielding” is introduced to address these interview performances but is suggested to have a wider applicability to studies of researcher/researched relationships characterized by discursive closeness and overlapping positions. Cofielding practices point to how the doings of interviewer/interviewee and power relationships can be performed and negotiated—even played with in the speech act of interview interaction.
"EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Using case studies from Europe and the UK, this book highlights those men who are taking action to eradicate violence against women. ...Examining the factors that support men to take a public stance, the authors also demonstrate what we can learn from their experiences to help build the movement to end violence against women. This important study will inform grassroots movements working to involve and engage men and boys in building gender equality."
This article addresses some aspects of the 'Man Question' in feminism, by way of the analysis of men's diverse gender-conscious positionings in relation to gender, gender equality and feminism. It ...builds on earlier work, making use of theoretical models in feminist literature combined with the micro-sociological concept of passing. The article is primarily concerned with the theoretical and empirical complexities, contradictions and ambiguities of men's positionings, as when they are self-defined as 'feminists' (or similar identifications) in radical or deconstructive ways. In this, Swedish interview data are used. Sweden is considered particularly interesting, with a qualified societal consensus on gender equality and a broadly positive place accorded to men's relations with feminism. The authors argue in the final section that there is a need to further dialogue between analyses of men/masculinities and the multidimensionality of feminisms, as well as a need for more empirical studies of men's different (pro)feminist positionings in order to elaborate the theoretical implications of different social contexts. The framing presented seeks to provide greater possibilities for such complex, nuanced and situated understandings of men's relation to feminism, theoretically, analytically and politically.
The article is located within research on cross-gender interviewing and concerns methodological and analytical challenges in a study of (pro) feminist men and seeks to contribute to the literature on ...interview interaction and the knowledge to be gained from such research experiences. The article discusses the negotiation of interviewer/interviewee interaction, practices of gender and theoretical knowledge along with how this might influence the coconstruction of interview performances. Interviewees reflexively turned narratives into theoretical analysis which turned out to be important aspects of presentation of self and in the doings of gender and feminism. The concept of "cofielding" is introduced to address these interview performances but is suggested to have a wider applicability to studies of researcher/researched relationships characterized by discursive closeness and overlapping positions. Cofielding practices point to how the doings of interviewer/interviewee and power relationships can be performed and negotiated-even played with in the speech act of interview interaction.
This thesis explores constructions of gendered and gender political positions and practices of men identifying as ‘feminist’. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with 28 men aged 20-34. ...At issue is how seemingly contradictory positions for men as feminists are made comprehensible in theory and practice. An introduction showcase theoretical discussions on gendered experiences and the possibilities of men being feminist, mainly from standpoint, radical feminist and poststructuralist radical constructionist perspectives. Men doing feminism emerge as an unresolved complex matter. This is followed by a critical discussion of state feminism, double emancipation and research on men and masculinities in the welfare state. The support for men’s participation, predominantly as white heterosexual fathers, in the Swedish gender equality project has consequences for the construction of men as potentially ‘new’, ‘good’ gender equal feminist subjects. In the construction of profeminist positions in interview performances, interviewees are located in-between the radical feminist, poststructuralist and gender equality perspectives on men, masculinity and feminism. Two themes involve an implementation of the concept of passing and introduce the analytical concept of co-fielding. Passing consists of the microsociological process of making radical and deconstructive profeminist positions authentic and yet being able to manage masculinity in homosocial contexts. Co-fielding refers to the conjoint interlacing of experiences, knowledge and meaning-making in interview interaction where relations of researcher-researched are characterized by discursive closeness and overlapping positions. Co-fielding practices affect the outcomes of co-construction of interview performances, the negotiation of gender and power relations and the reflexive use of (in this case feminist) knowledge in qualitative interviews. In analyzing the presentations of self, ambiguous meanings of profeminist positions emerge and the doing, undoing and redoing of feminism and masculinity appear multi-faceted. Radical feminism and radical constructionism seem intersected in making men’s feminist positions comprehensible. Such rebellious positions emerge as oxymoronic and, when critically brought into the gender equality context, located in a no man’s land out of place. In all, the thesis seeks to bring together theoretical, national and empirical locations of profeminist men, and in a concluding chapter also explore issues of ethics in feminist research and cross-gender interviewing.
Conclusions: where next? Westmarland, Nicole; Almqvist, Anna-Lena; Holmgren, Linn Egeberg ...
Men's Activism to End Violence Against Women,
07/2021
Book Chapter
Odprti dostop
Knowing how prevalent violence against women and girls is in society and the devastation it causes, it is our contention that more people - men and boys included - need to play a part in the struggle ...to reduce and ultimately end it. This means not only being an equal and non-violent partner in interpersonal, family and work lives, but also being willing to speak out publicly - to challenge and take a public stance against violence against women. This is controversial in some ways, not least because of some of the obstacles identified in this book. On the one hand, men may be 'put on a pedestal', potentially taking praise for work and ideas initiated by women. Some men involved in anti-violence against women work have themselves used violence, abuse or harassment against women. On the other hand, this research has shown that being a man speaking publicly on this topic is not without risks and struggles. It can be difficult for men to join friendship groups with other men involved in this work. However, they can simultaneously find it difficult to join in more traditional men's friendship groups because they can be seen as 'different' or 'argumentative' (for example if they challenge sexist jokes). Just as 'hate' mail - be it online or offline - is frequently experienced by women who work in this field (Lewis, Rowe and Wiper, 2017), this research has shown that men may also be on the receiving end of hatred from other men in relation to their public stance against men's violence against women.
Becoming involved Westmarland, Nicole; Almqvist, Anna-Lena; Holmgren, Linn Egeberg ...
Men's Activism to End Violence Against Women,
07/2021
Book Chapter
Odprti dostop
Why and how some men become active in speaking out about men's violence against women is a question which arouses considerable interest and curiosity. Yet it is a topic there has been relatively ...little research on to date, even though critical studies on men and masculinities has grown considerably as a field of research since the turn of the century. Where research has been carried out in this area, it has largely been based on contexts such as the United States and Australia rather than on European countries. Most of the data within this chapter comes from the interview sample, although we draw on the survey data where relevant.
In line with previous research outlined in Chapter 1, in nearly all cases (though with some notable exceptions where men were catapulted into the work following a family tragedy), men's involvement was a process rather than a particular epiphany, and the men were able to trace their involvement through a number of influences in their child and adult lives.
First, we will discuss our survey findings on why it is so important that men take a public stance against violence against women.
There are a number of potential benefits to men taking action against men's violence towards women - for women and girls, for wider society and for men and boys themselves (Jewkes, Flood and Lang, 2015). We asked our survey respondents about what they felt the main positive outcomes were.
Getting more men involved Westmarland, Nicole; Almqvist, Anna-Lena; Holmgren, Linn Egeberg ...
Men's Activism to End Violence Against Women,
07/2021
Book Chapter
Odprti dostop
In his book on anti-sexist men, Christian wrote in 1994 that the men whose life stories are presented in his book are probably an 'untypical minority' (1994: 4), but that he hoped it would be a road ...that more men will travel down in the future. Unfortunately, it remains the case today that the stories that are contained within our book still represent a somewhat 'untypical minority'. Indeed, one of the primary purposes of this book is to see how this may become a more common route for more men in the future, and it is this topic that we turn our attention to in this chapter. Using the interviews and survey results, we look at the contexts that our participants felt were more and less conducive to men speaking out publicly about men's violence against women, before considering some of the positives that we might build on in this regard, and then some of the obstacles. Some of these obstacles are ones that might need to be overcome, while others are likely to be more fixed and need men to be able to navigate or sit alongside rather than to actively try to overcome them.
In Chapter 2 we explored the individual motivations for the men in our interview sample to become involved. Here we are more concerned about the social, cultural, political and economic issues that might make it easier or more likely that men within particular social groups or contexts will think critically about violence against women and consider taking profeminist action.
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