Despite the demonstrated utility of intersectionality, research on men allied with women’s rights movements has largely focused on white, heterosexual, middle-class, young men. This study illustrates the importance of attending to men’s intersecting identities by evaluating the applicability of existing knowledge about men’s engagement pathways to the predominantly African American members of a Muslim men’s anti–domestic violence group and a gay/queer men’s gender justice group. Findings from a year-long qualitative study highlight how these men’s experiences differ from those in the literature. While the Muslim men’s experiences add dimension to the existing knowledge—especially regarding age and parenthood, online interactions, and formal learning opportunities—the gay/queer men’s experiences are not accurately represented within it. Their pathways begin earlier, do not rely on women’s input, do not create a shift in gendered worldview, and lack a pathway narrative because they connect to gender justice through their own intersecting identities and experiences. This suggests that a marginalized identity is not in itself sufficient to alter engagement pathways; the particular type of marginalization matters.

Privilege has been primarily conceptualized as invisible to those whom it benefits, but research on whiteness has suggested this is an oversimplification. Through interviews with fifty-two men who engage in gender justice projects and twelve women who work with them, this article investigates the complex ways some men do see, understand, and critique male privilege, as well as the ambivalent feelings and strategic decisions of both the men and women in response to the continuation of male privilege in feminist spaces. Many describe a “pedestal effect,” wherein men receive disproportionate rewards for their work as feminist allies. Emergent themes include five types of benefits, as well as internal conflict among interviewees who recognize that these added benefits conflict with their egalitarian ideologies. These men negotiate the contradiction between their anti-sexist commitments and the unequal appreciation they receive for these commitments in situationally specific ways and tend to be more satisfied with their responses at the microlevel than at the macrolevel. These results support a retheorization of privilege to recognize that it operates at multiple analytic levels and that individual action is often insufficient to address structural privilege.

Men's involvement in the antiviolence and women's rights movements has increased in recent decades, but men's groups still struggle to recognize difference among men. This study is based on a year-long participant observation and interview study with two gender justice groups directed toward men of marginalized communities. A third group, Men Stopping Violence (MSV), played a paradoxical role that elucidates some dynamics and difficulties of intersectional organizing: MSV's training and resources were crucial for both groups, but MSV's failure to organize intersectionally was as important in their formation. From these examples, I theorize three categories of ways that mainstream organizations fall short of intersectional inclusion-organizational elements that are culturally unacceptable to marginalized communities, necessary elements that are absent, and environmental comfort-and make suggestions for intersectional social movement praxis.

Gender-transformative interventions have been found to help ameliorate gender-inequitable norms and improve health outcomes for women and men. While narrative-based strategies are increasingly being used in public health programs, no evaluation publications exist to date for gender-transformative programming that employs men’s public narrative-sharing as a central means for promoting healthy masculinities. The Men’s Story Project (MSP) creates live productions in which diverse men publicly perform personal narratives that challenge hegemonic masculinity, promote gender equality, and highlight intersections of masculinity with other social identities. This study draws upon six focus groups with thirty-one audience members (AMs), two weeks after an MSP production at a US public university. The MSP led AMs to reevaluate key pillars of hegemonic masculinity, including a singular conception of masculinity, essentialist notions of gender, restricted emotional expression, and use of violence; AMs also gained an expanded understanding of intersectionality. Directions for future research are discussed.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Men's relationships to gender-based violence (GBV) have long been an area of sociological inquiry, but until recently men have primarily been framed as perpetrators of violence against women. More recently, research on men and GBV has broadened to include studying men as victims/survivors, as investigators and law enforcement officers, as passive or active bystanders, and as allies in working to address this social problem. We review this research in an effort to bridge these divergent bodies of work; we identify methodological trends and gaps in existing research, make recommendations for improved theoretical and methodological robustness, and suggest that research perspectives on men and GBV have shifted over time as wider understandings of gender and masculinities become more hopeful and more inclusive. While we see optimism and promise in new directions of GBV research, we urge ongoing research to retain the wisdoms and critical perspectives that marked the beginnings of GBV inquiry. K E Y W O R D S domestic violence, gender-based violence, men and masculinities, men as allies, men as victims, rape, sexual violence 1 | INTRODUCTION Over the last half-century, research on gender-based violence (GBV) has expanded dramatically as scholars work to better understand the phenomena and thereby contribute to addressing GBV more effectively. In this article, we use GBV to include primarily physical sexual violence (i.e., rape, sexual assault, and so forth), intimate partner violence, and sexual coercion, but also other forms of interpersonal physical and non-physical violence imposed on