Moving Men, Changing Men, Othering Men: On Politics, Care and Representation

Abstract

This article focuses on problematics around men, masculinities and changing unequal gender power relations. It is based on the assumption that it is very unlikely that greater gender equality will be achieved without both greater equality and rights for women, and changing men and masculinities away from persisting patriarchal ways and means. The question then is how is changing men and masculinities towards greater gender equality to be analyzed and enacted in policy, politics and everyday practice. Specifically, the paper engages with these ongoing problematics that, over the years, the author has found to be important for theory and practice: feminism and the man/ men problem; the trouble with masculinities; naming and deconstructing men; the material-discursive; the hegemony of men rather than hegemonic masculinity;patriarchy, patriarchies, and trans(national)patriarchies; the growing politics of absence; gex; the abolition of ‘men’; and some future gender scenarios. These various problematics are both interconnected and in dialogue, even contradiction, with each other, as part of broad politico-theoretical concerns.