Men’s efforts to tackle men’s violence: negotiating gendered privileges and norms in movement and practice spaces

Abstract

The involvement of men in efforts to challenge men’s violence is a crucial component for eradicating gender-based violence (GBV) and for disrupting the continued responsibilisation of women and survivors for addressing the problem at various scales. But as men’s participation in the field has evolved and become increasingly professionalised, so tensions have emerged regarding what happens when men enter women-majority professional and movement anti-violence spaces. Via a feminist discourse analysis, this article explores how men active in the violence against women and girls (VAWG) sector and movement conceptualise and negotiate the challenges associated with the reproduction of patriarchal privilege in the context of their work or activism. Analysis points to how gender inequalities and masculine norms are both instrumentalised as well as entrenched, even when men ‘allies’ seek to challenge them. Moreover, findings indicate how men’s often elevated status in anti-violence practice and movement spaces can be used to resource a type of ‘entrepreneurial masculinity’ which obstructs structural change as regards gendered norms and expectations. This article offers an empirical and theoretical contribution to the expanding literature on men’s role(s) in the prevention of men’s violence against women and minoritised genders, and the ways in which gendered privilege operates therein.