Allyship and Feminist Masculinity

Abstract

Despite the issues raised about feminist reclamations of masculinity in the prior chapter, I believe bell hooks was right to emphasize the relevance of relationality, intentionality, and justice to an alternate vision of manhood. We can indeed make sense of normative feminist masculinity, such that men as men have distinctive, constructive contributions to make to feminist work. Much like feminist androgyny, feminist allyship masculinity seeks to upend masculinity as a received social category, while also diverging with feminist androgyny in emphasizing men’s specific yet non-essentialist contributions to feminist projects.