Rejecting Violence, Reclaiming Men. : How Men's Work Against Men's Violence Challenges and Reinforces the Gender Order.

Sammanfattning: This study maps out and explores the reactions to and strategies of men working against men's violence against women and LGBTI people. It is based on interviews with men in gender-based violence prevention in South Africa and builds on previous research on women's organising and men's roles in feminism. It provides an analysis of dilemmas and challenges that they face and the strategies that they have developed, navigating in a feminist field and as men practising what could be seen as a challenge to the power and privileges of the social category of men. Using feminist theory and the theoretical concept “hegemony of men”, I critically interpret the potential for men to undermine men's privilege, arguing that efforts to create new masculinities reinforce the gender order and that the gendered context leaves little room for men's counter-hegemonic practices. I argue, finally, that a feminist emancipatory project is better developed by seeking identifications beyond the social category of men than within a framework of reforming masculinity.