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Conceptualizing Backlash: (UK) Men's Rights Groups, Anti-Feminism, and Postfeminism
Abstract
Conceptualizing "backlash" and "postfeminism" is important to understanding the gender politics of men's movements and men's rights groups. Drawing on the work of relevant (feminist) scholars, I argue for a particular understanding of both backlash and postfeminism and map out a typology intended to help situate different men's movements. The typology distinguishes between backlash, postfeminism, and feminism in terms of the different empirical claims and value judgments relevant to each perspective. Backlash is based on the claim that society disadvantages men rather than women. Gender is seen as political and as requiring a collective, anti-feminist politics. Postfeminism is a fundamentally ambivalent perspective that assumes that gender equality has already been (mostly) achieved. Some feminist ideas are taken for granted, while feminism itself is cast as anachronistic. Gender is depoliticized and feminism becomes an individual lifestyle choice. Finally, feminism, like backlash, assumes that significant gender inequalities exist in contemporary society but sees women as the disadvantaged group. Here, gender is politicized, and gendered inequalities necessitate a collective feminist politics. To illustrate the different perspectives articulated by men's rights groups, I discuss UK fathers' rights group (Real) Fathers 4 Justice, arguing that they alternate between postfeminist and backlash narratives.
... While a discussion of all the different versions of feminist theories is beyond the scope of this article, the preliminary foundation of feminist perspectives is based on the position that significant gender inequalities exist in society (Jordan, 2016). However, while structuralist theories of gender center on how a skewed ACCEPTED VERSION (COPY-EDIT PENDING) 4 distribution of power in favor of men underlies violence (Anderson, 2005), post-structuralist feminist analyses of IPV also consider other forms of power such as race and class (Cannon et al., 2015), moving beyond binaries of situating men and women as oppressor and oppressed, towards intersectionality theory. ...
... The complexities in the gendered nature of violence become further apparent when we consider the following findings: while there were traditional gender role expectations operating in the relationships, with women being expected to be submissive or being penalised for being non-conforming to traditional feminine norms, there were also a) a backlash against the feminist movement and b) identification of the "double standards" existent in judging men's versus women's use of violence. Since the time Faludi (1991) identified the phenomenon of anti-feminist backlash, it has been well-recognized, albeit the conceptualizations and meanings of backlash are contested (Jordan, 2016). ...
... At its simplest, backlash refers to the phenomenon when the increased possibility of women's equality leads to feelings of threat and resentment for the group declining in power, which leads to actions aimed at undermining the progress women have made, either through claiming that women have already attained equality or through claiming that equality is detrimental to women (Faludi, 1991;Jordan, 2016;Mansbridge & Shames, 2008). Such anti-feminist backlash can be identified in the current study in comments such as 'women have reached their equality and are exceeding it' or 'the present situation is going to girls' hands'. ...
Purpose This study aimed to understand how college-going young men and women in Bengaluru, India experience violence
within dating relationships and their understanding of the role of gender in dating violence.
Methods In-depth interviews were conducted with 14 undergraduate students aged between 18 and 21 years old. The data
were analyzed using the framework of Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis.
Results Five key themes emerged from participants’ accounts: (1) defining abuse, (2) experiencing abuse (3) impact of
abuse (4) abuse is gendered and (5) abuse is multifaceted. The first theme identifies how definitions of abuse are ambiguous
and context-specific while the second theme discusses how young adults experience abuse as feeling controlled, losing
control or self-protection. The third theme highlights how abuse causes distress but can also invoke coping while the fourth
theme discusses the unique gender dynamics in abuse. Finally, the fifth theme identifies the perceived role of individual and
community-level efforts in preventing abuse.
Conclusions Violence is experienced as a complex and distressing part of dating relationships. The phenomenological
insights gained from the study underscore the need for early identification and have implications for developing dating violence
interventions in colleges and for future research in similar contexts.
Keywords: Dating violence · Abuse · Young adults · India · Gender · Culture
... However, its dominance depends upon the continued consent of those disadvantaged and oppressed and is always vulnerable to counter-hegemonic forces. The contemporary landscape of masculinity and the ideology of masculinism have been powerfully conditioned by the profound impact of feminisms in transforming social relations and institutional structures through a range of social movements, policy successes, and institutional transformations (Blais & Dupuis-Déri, 2012;Ferber, 2000;Jordan, 2016;Kimmel, 2010Kimmel, , 2017Messner, 1997). Feminism has been among the most transformative of social movements to have emerged over the past 60 years. ...
... Emerging from peace and environmental activism, women's voices and feminist forces have been largely universalistic and pluralistic in emphasis, stressing ethics of care, transnationalism, global human rights, peaceful coexistence, inclusiveness, and attentiveness toward others that transcend national boundaries and counter xenophobia and aggressive nationalisms (Enloe, 2007(Enloe, , 2014Gilligan, 1982;Runyan, 2018). Messner (1997) and Jordan (2016) identify a broad range of men's movements that have arisen in response to feminisms, including those that are oppositional and anti-feminist (such as men's rights groups and Christian promise keepers), those that are ambivalent toward feminism (such as the men's liberation movement, gay liberation movements, and male adherents of postfeminism), and those that broadly support feminism (such as radical and socialist feminist men's movements, including the National Organization for Men Against Sexism). Taken together these movements express the scope of the ideology of masculinism, which as an ideology is as multifaceted and complex as feminism (Blais & Dupuis-Déri, 2012;Dupuis-Déri, 2009;Nicholas & Agius, 2017). ...
... and its hegemony is always vulnerable to counter-hegemomic forces. As Messner (1997) and Jordan (2016) explain, there is a broad range of responses toward feminism and ideologies of masculinism are far from univocal. In the words of Connell, there has been "a major loss of legitimacy for patriarchy, and different groups of men are now negotiating this loss in very different ways" (Connell, 2005, p. 202). ...
Grounded in theorizations of the challenges associated with performing masculinities in the late modern era, and the tensions between nativist/populist reclamations of masculinity and contemporary feminisms, the article examines how young men learn their masculinities. In an analysis of the followers of an online Reddit site devoted to Canadian psychologist, Jordan Peterson, the core objective of the article is heuristic: To map typical narratives and discourses of emerging masculinity among those searching for meaning and identity. Through a narrative political psychological approach using thematic analysis, four themes are identified and illustrated: the attentive acolyte, the angry brother, the abandoned son, and the admiring student.
... In this kind of critique, gay rights and gender equality demarcate 'civilised' Western culture from 'backward' Islamic culture (Mepschen et al, 2010;Bracke, 2012), and only Islam or immigrants threaten these liberal values (Verloo, 2018). This 'liberal' anti-Islam critique is a particular manifestation of a post-feminist standpoint (Jordan, 2016): PRR parties generally claim that gender equality and gay rights are already 'achieved', and deny the continued existence of gender inequality (Spierings, 2017;Verloo, 2018). ...
... Radical-right discourses regarding gender and sexuality are shaped by two dominant standpoints. First, the backlash standpoint fundamentally opposes changed attitudes to gender and sexuality, rejects progressive notions of gender equality, and advocates anti-feminist politics -hence, gender is politicised (Jordan, 2016). Accordingly, some scholars describe this standpoint as a backlash against feminism (Faludi, 1991;McRobbie, 2004). ...
... Second, the post-feminist standpoint incorporates some aspects of the feminist agenda, recognised as valid goals, yet presents them as already achieved (Jordan, 2016). Furthermore, the ideal of progress that underlies feminist movements is rejected and the broader claims of the feminist movement are framed as defunct (Oudenampsen, 2018) -by claiming that 'women are emancipated' and 'homosexuality is accepted'. ...
This article investigates the ways in which online followers of the Dutch populist radical right discuss gender and sexuality. Analysing comments on the Facebook pages of the Party for Freedom and Forum for Democracy, we show that they use these issues to pit ‘us’ against ‘them’ – groups that are defined differently, depending on the context. Women’s emancipation and gay acceptance are defended and used to divide ‘civilised’ Dutch and ‘backward’ immigrants. This ‘liberal’ immigration critique is especially characteristic of Party for Freedom followers. Other progressive causes, such as transgender rights and feminism more broadly, are framed as elite projects, out of touch with ‘ordinary people’. This backlash standpoint is more often articulated by Forum for Democracy followers.
Key messages
Discussions on gender and sexuality on Dutch PRR Facebook pages are strongly related to nativism.
Women’s emancipation and gay-acceptance are instrumentally defended to pit ‘civilized’ Dutch against ‘backward’ immigrants.
Progressive issues like transgenderism and feminism mainly yield opposition.
Social media analyses enrich our understanding of PRR supporters, in addition to surveys or interviews. </ul
... The rapidly changing and contradictory media constructions of gender of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which simultaneously celebrated 'girl power' and female success while casting hostile scrutiny of women in the public eye caused some gender scholars to be sceptical of the 'post'-feminist optimism that was seen to be emerging (Gill, 2017;Jordan, 2016;Negra & Tasker, 2007). As an academic and media concept, postfeminism is often understood as an epistemological shift in feminist thought towards a period where feminist goals of equality have been achieved. ...
... The points at which resistance to women's rights become acute are defined as backlashes. Jordan (2016) highlights that "[b]acklashes do not spring from the void, they feed on undercurrents of antipathy towards feminism and are symptomatic of its (perceived) successes. Backlash is, by definition, parasitic on feminism and only becomes necessary when feminism is strong, rather than declining" (p. ...
... This has significantly expanded the visibility of feminism, thus leaving it open to attack (Ging, 2019). Postfeminist media discourses routinely locate feminism as anachronistic since it portrays gender equality as being (more or less) achieved thus is now a consumer identity or lifestyle choice (Jordan, 2016). McRobbie (2009) argues that postfeminism is "a new kind of antifeminist sentiment" where "elements of feminism… have been absolutely incorporated into political and institutional life," such feminism has been co-opted and watered down for the broader neoliberal project (p. 7). ...
This thesis explores the online ‘manosphere’ subculture of Involuntary Celibates (Incels). Incels have been widely discussed in contemporary media in recent years and have been cited as harmful after several mass-murders and attacks have taken place offline. Previous academic research has largely focused on individual-level explanations for Incel mass-murderers, with few studies seeking to uncover the structural determinants of the rise of Incels. This thesis attempts to fill this gap, exploring the subculture’s negotiation with the changing features of contemporary society. The study utilised internet-based qualitative research methods over a period of three-months to collect data on two Incel forums: r/Braincels and Incels.co. The data was then interpreted through thematic analysis within a constructivist grounded theory approach. The research found that Incels negotiate their anxieties of a rapidly changing globalised world with a sense of victimisation and ‘aggrieved entitlement’ through a worldview that understands society as set up to economically, socially, and sexually favour women. It was also found that through such a sense of entitlement, Incels conceive of a hetero-patriarchal racial caste-system that relies on uncritical readings of selected biological and evolutionary psychological studies. This worldview is known as the ‘Black Pill’ and is employed to ideologically condition Incels against out-groups. Through a shared mythology of victimisation, the Incel ideology of the Black Pill functions to produce a form of ‘stochastic terrorism’ in which individual users interpret the spectrum of beliefs from enacting online gender-based hate-speech to mass violence in the terrestrial world. This thesis presents understandings that could inform future educational programs in critical literacy skills that aim to dismantle the conceptual apparatus that feeds the ideologically charged hatred of groups like Incels.
... In other words, the goal of the #NotAllMen proponents was to re-frame the narrative about their implication in VAW by seeking to identify other ways of perceiving the issue. The challenge, however, is that any act of resistance or refusal to agree with a feminist narrative is often interpreted as a backlash or misogyny as evident in previous studies (Jordan 2016;Puente et al. 2017), and the #NotAllMen social media hashtag is a typical example of that. While it is true that online misogyny and backlash against DFA exist, this study conceptualised #NotAllMen as a counter-discourse whose purpose was to re-frame what it viewed as a hegemonic discourse (#MenAreTrash). ...
... The views that emerged, mainly from in-depth interviews, underscored the fact that resistance and opposition are integral elements of activism. Unlike much of the previous literature on DFA, which usually interprets any form of resistance towards feminist activism as fundamental acts of anti-feminist, online misogyny, backlash, online harassment, toxic masculinity and so on(Megarry 2014;Jordan 2016;Puente 2017;Mendes et al. 2019;Sener 2021;Reneses and Bosch 2023), the findings of this study ...
This study aimed to explore the views of South Africans on the impact of digital feminist activism (DFA) in addressing violence against women (VAW). It particularly focused on the #MenAreTrash DFA because of its significant influence across various social media platforms, especially Twitter (now X), between 2017 and 2020. To achieve its aim, the study focused on the following objectives: To critically evaluate the relevance of social media platforms as modern-day public spheres that facilitate activism against social issues such as VAW; to understand the rationale of the #MenAreTrash social media narrative and the logic behind the #NotAllMen counter-discourse; to conduct an in-depth exploration of the perceptions and attitudes of South Africans regarding the #MenAreTrash DFA; and to identify and analyse the challenges and barriers that may have interfered with the optimum performance of the #MenAreTrash DFA and to provide potential solutions for these.
... Instead, it argues that men do not hold power in society, and that men are even oppressed by a gynocentric social order. Studies also distinguish male victimhood from postfeminism, or the assumption that gender equality has already been achieved, which explains the decline in public support for feminism (Hall & Rodriguez, 2003;Jordan, 2016;Zehnter et al., 2021). Male victimhood ideology instead posits that gender discrimination is an ongoing social issue, with men now the primary victims, and that widespread support for feminism is a critical source of male suffering (Zehnter et al., 2021). ...
... However, in recent years, they have become the dominant rhetoric within antifeminist movements, marking a clear departure from traditional antifeminism. Interestingly, the majority of young men in high-income countries now hold egalitarian gender role attitudes (Dotti Sani & Quaranta, 2017), while simultaneously expressing hostility toward feminists or feminism (Green & Shorrocks, 2023;Jordan, 2016;Kim, 2023a;Off et al., 2022). These seeming contradictions can be explained by male victimhood ideology. ...
Male victimhood ideology, the belief that men are the primary targets of gender discrimination, has gained traction among young men in recent years, but the underlying sources of these sentiments remain understudied. Utilizing four different datasets, collected in 2015, 2018, 2020, and 2023 from representative samples of Korean men, this study investigates whether identification with male victimhood ideology is explained by objective economic hardships faced by men or by their perceptions of a status loss. The economic hardship perspective finds little support, as men who were less educated, had lower incomes, were unemployed, or had non-regular employment were no more likely to identify with male victimhood than their more economically stable counterparts. Instead, a perceived decline in socioeconomic status relative to one’s parents emerged as a significant predictor of male victimhood ideology, particularly among men from middle to upper class backgrounds. Additional analyses show that this pattern is not observed among Korean women of the same age group. Overall, the analysis of the four datasets consistently shows that male victimhood discourse is embraced most by those who perceive a loss of privilege, rather than by those who are marginalized.
... When creating a scapegoat, malice aforethought is assigned to their actions: they are not just responsible for victimizing the ingroup, they do so malevolently (Fisher & Kelman, 2011). As a consequence of the fundamental attribution error, even if the status threat is a result of the outgroup's benign search for social justice and empowerment, it is perceived rather as a purposeful attack on the ingroup and the complaints of the outgroup are disregarded as illegitimate (Jordan, 2016). According to SIT, members of outgroups are perceived to be alike and interchangeable -known as outgroup homogeneity -meaning that all members of the scapegoat outgroup share equal responsibility for the victimization of the ingroup (Cuhadar & Dayton, 2011). ...
... The incel narrative describes and demonizes the changes to western society caused by modernization and the rise of feminism (Hall, 2005). This narrative has its roots in the anti-feminist backlash of the 1980s, which claimed that women had already successfully gained all the same legal rights and protections as men, meaning that any further efforts made by feminism were considered an attack on men and a selfish pursuit of elevated status for women (Jordan, 2016). The contemporary incel narrative purports that feminism has always served this purpose, because of the 'myth of female oppression': women never truly suffered from gender-based oppression, as the traditional family model was a means for women to exploit men by benefiting from their labor without having to contribute themselves (Van Valkenburgh, 2021). ...
This article outlines a new model for the initiation of intergroup conflict, in which resentment is theorized as the motivating factor. This model – drawing from existing theories in social psychology and international relations – describes the process by which members of a group become willing to engage in violent conflict with a target group, beginning with feelings of resentment arising from a perceived experience of victimization. The model is then applied to the involuntary celibate (incel) ideology and the trend of mass shootings perpetrated by incels, with two case studies.
... A few researchers have argued that a distinct form of antifeminism, frequently referred to as modern antifeminism, which adheres to the notion of "men as victims," has emerged as a dominant antifeminist ideology since the 1990s (Anderson 2014;Blais and Dupuis-Déri 2012;Messner 2016). Modern antifeminism claims that full gender equality has been achieved; therefore, the feminist movement is unnecessary (Anderson 2014;Jordan 2016;Swim and Cohen 1997). Although ideologies underlying traditional and modern antifeminism may be correlated and equally propel opposition to feminism, modern antifeminism does not necessarily endorse the notion of male superiority and, in fact, often denies that men have power in society. ...
... The extant literature on antifeminist online communities provides mixed evidence. Some studies view the conglomeration and intersection of both traditional antifeminist and modern antifeminist as rhetoric (Górska et al. 2022;Jones et al. 2020;Jordan 2016;Marwick and Caplan 2018;Nagle 2017;Wright et al. 2020), while others find contradictions in their underlying ideologies (Hopton and Langer 2022). The psychological literature has demonstrated the multidimensional nature of sexism (Carian 2022;Glick and Fiske 1997;Zehnter et al. 2021). ...
Emerging research on antifeminism documents widespread antagonism among young men toward women and marriage. However, no quantitative study has explicitly investigated the connection between men’s antifeminist ideals and marital desire. Using a nationally representative sample of young Korean men ( n = 1,061), the author examines the latent variables of men’s antifeminist sentiments and their association with marital desire. Exploratory factor analysis revealed two dimensions of men’s antifeminist ideals: support for male superiority (e.g., men deserve greater power in society than women) and perceived male victimhood (e.g., male discrimination due to feminism). Support for male superiority predicted more positive attitudes toward marriage. On the contrary, male victimhood predicted substantially less favorable attitudes toward marriage and marital intention. The findings emphasize the multidimensionality of antifeminist sentiments and suggest a new avenue for understanding young men’s marital disinterest in a postindustrial context, that is, perceived male victimhood due to feminism.
... Luc's current interest expands on this previous work using feminist theory to guide an exploration of the roles and influence of online men's activism and activist spaces on the offline lives of those engaged with it. Included in this online involvement is the participation in men's rights activist (MRA) groups, which emphasize a perceived devaluation of men's rights and roles within Western society by other groups, and pays particular attention to women's groups and feminism (Banet-Weiser & Miltner, 2016;Jordan, 2016;Schmitz & Kazyak, 2016). These MRA groups, which speak for the reclamation of men's social roles and promote the entitlement of men to social power and prestige ( Jordan, 2016;Schmitz & Kazyak, 2016), encourage the deconstruction of women's and minority rights in favour of a hegemonic superiority for men. ...
... Included in this online involvement is the participation in men's rights activist (MRA) groups, which emphasize a perceived devaluation of men's rights and roles within Western society by other groups, and pays particular attention to women's groups and feminism (Banet-Weiser & Miltner, 2016;Jordan, 2016;Schmitz & Kazyak, 2016). These MRA groups, which speak for the reclamation of men's social roles and promote the entitlement of men to social power and prestige ( Jordan, 2016;Schmitz & Kazyak, 2016), encourage the deconstruction of women's and minority rights in favour of a hegemonic superiority for men. Their development and growth in anonymous and non-anonymous online communities is likely telling of hidden growth in offline sociopolitical spaces and we must ask: How do these ideas translate to offline spaces? ...
... For feminist scholars, backlash is a socially pervasive phenomenon. Men backlash against women in private affairs (Chesney-Lind, 2006;Girard, 2009;Laidler and Mann, 2008;Minaker and Snider, 2006) fathers backlash against legislation tackling violence against women (Dragiewicz, 2008(Dragiewicz, , 2011, family-oriented women backlash against feminists (Steuter, 1992), men's rights groups backlash against perceived advantages of women (Jordan, 2016), and pro-family and pro-life groups backlash against birth control and abortion (Anderson, 1998;Harrison and Rowley, 2011). Feminist scholars also find backlash in resistance to laws protecting women (Dragiewicz, 2011;Meda, 2017), in objections against gendered conceptions of crime (Dragiewicz, 2011), in everyday pushback against the use of 'alternative reproduction technologies' (Northup, 1998), in structural barriers against feminist scholarship (Cudd and Superson, 2002), and in gender discrimination in the workplace (Burke, 2014;Burke and Black, 1997). ...
... The 'new backlash' thus seeks to distance women from feminism by portraying it as anachronistic (Vint, 2007: 162). It should not be overlooked that there are few feminists who do not see postfeminism as another backlash strategy (see Braithwaite, 2004;Jordan, 2016). They maintain that those who do 'deny the possibility of multiple meanings and layers of feminist theori[s]ing and politics' and, in so doing, even dissuade younger women from feminism (Braithwaite, 2004). ...
Antifeminist mobilisation is growing in the United Nations. It is led by a coalition of certain post-Soviet, Catholic, and Islamic states; the United States; the Vatican; conservative nongovernmental organisations, occasionally joined by the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation, the League of Arab States, the UN Africa Group, and the G77. Uniting them is the aim of restoring the 'natural family' and opposing 'gender ideology'. The group has become increasingly strategic, and its impact can already be seen in a number of UN fora, including the Security Council. By surveying feminist notions of backlash and comparing them to Alter and Zürn's definition of 'backlash politics', the article gauges whether the group's activities can be characterised as such politics. The conclusion is that they can, suggesting that we are looking at a group with the potential to alter not only the global course of women's rights but also how politics is done within the UN.
... A few researchers have argued that a distinct form of antifeminism, frequently referred to as modern antifeminism, which adheres to the notion of "men as victims," has emerged as a dominant antifeminist ideology since the 1990s (Anderson 2014;Blais and Dupuis-Déri 2012;Messner 2016). Modern antifeminism claims that full gender equality has been achieved; therefore, the feminist movement is unnecessary (Anderson 2014;Jordan 2016;Swim and Cohen 1997). Although ideologies underlying traditional and modern antifeminism may be correlated and equally propel opposition to feminism, modern antifeminism does not necessarily endorse the notion of male superiority and, in fact, often denies that men have power in society. ...
... The extant literature on antifeminist online communities provides mixed evidence. Some studies view the conglomeration and intersection of both traditional antifeminist and modern antifeminist as rhetoric (Górska et al. 2022;Jones et al. 2020;Jordan 2016;Marwick and Caplan 2018;Nagle 2017;Wright et al. 2020), while others find contradictions in their underlying ideologies (Hopton and Langer 2022). The psychological literature has demonstrated the multidimensional nature of sexism (Carian 2022;Glick and Fiske 1997;Zehnter et al. 2021). ...
Scholars and policymakers contend that severe work-family constraints for women are a key contributor to lowest-low fertility in industrialized countries. Two separate areas of research have examined supports that could alleviate these constraints and potentially increase fertility: institutional support in the form of public policies and domestic labor support from male partners. There are few studies considering the influence of both policy and domestic labor supports and no investigations of the interplay between these two support mechanisms. We develop and test a theoretical framework that considers how the combination of these supports could alleviate women’s work-family constraints and increase fertility. Using the case of South Korea, a country with one of the most sustained lowest-low fertility rates in history, we examined the relationship between women’s eligibility for parental leave and husbands’ share of domestic labor and the transition to a second birth. Our analyses revealed that both supports, independently, had positive effects on the likelihood of a second birth. More importantly, we found that husbands’ domestic labor had a positive influence on fertility only when women’s access to parental leave was limited, suggesting that policy and domestic labor supports are substitutes and alleviate the same underlying work-family constraint in the Korean context. Our study underscores the importance of understanding the nature of work-family conflict across countries and how various supports―alone or in combination―could relieve women’s constraints on childbearing and upturn lowest-low fertility.
... The analysis within this paper, and the larger research project, draws on the »discourse-historical approach« (DHA) to critical discourse studies (Reisigl/Wodak 2001, 2016 . The interdisciplinary approach »attempts to integrate much available knowledge about the historical sources and background of the social and political fields in which discursive ›events‹ are embedded« (Reisigl/Wodak 2001, p . ...
Backlash and hostility towards feminism are on the rise, as demonstrated by the growth of the ›manosphere‹: a loose network of men’s social media communities who argue that men are the real victims of sexism and feminists conceal these facts (Ging 2019). One manosphere group, »Men Going Their Own Way« (MGTOW), argue that heterosexual relationships are oppressive to men and consequently should be avoided. In this paper, I take a discourse-historical approach to critical discourse studies (Reisigl/Wodak 2016) to examine how MGTOW construct themselves as marginalised or oppressed. I identify four salient discursive strategies: appropriation of feminist discourse; role reversal; statistics; and self-presentation as unpopular.
... Negative views of feminists are associated with ideological attachment to social hierarchy and authority (Haddock & Zanna, 1994) and with hostile sexism, which portrays women as trying to usurp men by weaponizing feminine sexuality and feminist ideology (Glick & Fiske, 2001). This suggests that the misandry stereotype is an example of stereotyping functioning as a motivated distortion of reality (Fiske, 1993), which forms part of the backlash that perennially confronts feminism (Faludi, 2006;Jordan, 2016). ...
In six studies, we examined the accuracy and underpinnings of the damaging stereotype that feminists harbor negative attitudes toward men. In Study 1 (n=1,664), feminist and nonfeminist women displayed similarly positive attitudes toward men. Study 2 (n=3,892) replicated these results in non-WEIRD countries and among male participants. Study 3 (n=198) extended them to implicit attitudes. Investigating the mechanisms underlying feminists’ actual and perceived attitudes, Studies 4 (n = 2,092) and 5 (nationally representative UK sample, n =1,953) showed that feminists (vs. nonfeminists) perceived men as more threatening, but also more similar, to women. Participants also underestimated feminists’ warmth toward men, an error associated with hostile sexism and a misperception that feminists see men and women as dissimilar. Random-effects meta-analyses of all data (Study 6, n=9,799) showed that feminists’ attitudes toward men were positive in absolute terms and did not differ significantly from nonfeminists’. An important comparative benchmark was established in Study 6, which showed that feminist women’s attitudes toward men were no more negative than men’s attitudes toward men. We term the focal stereotype the misandry myth in light of the evidence that it is false and widespread, and discuss its implications for the movement.
... Is 'no platforming' a reasonable tactic?) and the characteristics of generations of young people (are they 'precious snowflakes' or activists imagining alternative societies?). Other attempts to theorise resistance -such as Jordan's (2016) insightful analysis of 'backlash' and postfeminism as 'active resistance to what is perceived to be the current gender order' (p 29) which has 'the potential to shape, challenge, and/or reinforce dominant constructions of ... norms around gender and gender politics' (p 42) -may prove helpful in understanding and responding to the resistance our work generates. ...
... Postfeminism reflects neoliberal discourses which position the individual as genderless, raceless, classless, and so on, shifting focus away from social structures of power and onto simplistic notions of individual choice and empowerment (Gill, 2007;McRobbie, 2009;Connell, 2011;Scharff, 2012). While postfeminist perspectives are distinct from 'backlash' politics, they may in some ways be even more difficult to challenge than overt anti-feminism due to their depoliticising effects (Jordan, 2016). ...
... Third, weaker forms of antifeminism claim that gender equality already exists and further measures advancing women's rights are unnecessary or discriminate against men (Gwiazda 2021;Jordan 2016;Kantola and Lombardo 2021;Mayer and Sauer 2017). This type of framing is labeled as postfeminism (Dean 2010, 19) or modern sexism (Swim et al. 1995). ...
While radical right parties commonly advance conservative gender positions, research on radical right voters’ gender attitudes remains inconclusive. To understand radical right voters’ gender attitudes, I first analyze previous research for frames that antifeminist actors commonly use to advance their arguments. I then draw on interviews with eastern German radical right voters to analyze whether and how these voters apply antifeminist frames to argue about feminist policy. I demonstrate that they use antifeminist frames to oppose mostly third-wave and recently salient feminist issues, but also support certain feminist policies, sometimes for instrumental reasons. Further, voters include particularities of their context in their arguments. Eastern Germany constitutes an atypical context, allowing for insights into voters’ (anti)feminism in a post-socialist context marked by atheism and relatively advanced gender norms. The study contributes to understanding complexities and nuances in radical right voters’ gender attitudes, and thereby to understanding cultural grievances beyond anti-immigration attitudes.
... Postfeminism reflects neoliberal discourses which position the individual as genderless, raceless, classless, and so on, shifting focus away from social structures of power and onto simplistic notions of individual choice and empowerment (Gill, 2007;McRobbie, 2009;Connell, 2011;Scharff, 2012). While postfeminist perspectives are distinct from 'backlash' politics, they may in some ways be even more difficult to challenge than overt anti-feminism due to their depoliticising effects (Jordan, 2016). ...
... Is 'no platforming' a reasonable tactic?) and the characteristics of generations of young people (are they 'precious snowflakes' or activists imagining alternative societies?). Other attempts to theorise resistance -such as Jordan's (2016) insightful analysis of 'backlash' and postfeminism as 'active resistance to what is perceived to be the current gender order' (p 29) which has 'the potential to shape, challenge, and/or reinforce dominant constructions of ... norms around gender and gender politics' (p 42) -may prove helpful in understanding and responding to the resistance our work generates. ...
... Throughout its history, feminist activism has periodically faced a backlash (Ging and Siapera, 2019). This backlash, a countermovement to feminist gains (Faludi, 1992), assumes that society prioritises women's over men's interests or that gender equality is 'unnatural' and causes societies to become dysfunctional (Jordan, 2016). Although anti-feminism has accompanied the feminist movement for centuries, researchers have suggested that the use of digital technologies is linked to an unprecedentedly hostile tone. ...
... This perspective is further complicated by the fact that many of these groups neither are explicitly hostile to feminism nor deny the existence of specific discriminations against women; however, they strongly reject feminism as a label and political project. According to Jordan (2016), this stance can be seen as a consequence of the complexification of backlash caused by the prominence of postfeminist ideas. Postfeminism narratives create a context conducive to a gentler, moderate men's rights strategy that tends to selectively incorporate those elements of feminist narrative that confirm the 'liberal equalism' that characterises their liberationistic rhetoric, while disparaging other feminist argument as irrelevant relics of the past (Messner, 2016). ...
In the past ten years there have been intense debates in masculinity studies about transformations in men’s behaviour and their impact on gender relations. A significant part of these debates is dedicated to trying to understand how white heterosexual masculinities are produced and buttressed in Internet settings, as demonstrated by the increasing amount of knowledge about the heterogeneous nature of the so-called manosphere (Schmitz, and Kazyak 2016; Nagle, 2017; Marwick, and Caplan 2018). Although it cannot be subsumed under a single entity, manosphere comprises a loose confederacy of online communities, focusing on issues concerning men and masculinity. Most of the research on this phenomenon focuses on the US context, and in rare cases on other Anglophone realities (such as Australia and Canada). Conversely, in Italy there is still a lateness of studies exploring the manosphere, except for Farci and Righetti (2019) and Vingelli (2019) that reconstruct, respectively, the network of Italian online groups of men’s rights activists, and their antifeminist rhetoric, Cannito and Mercuri (2021) that analyse the politics of fatherhood on an Italian Facebook group, and Dordoni and Magaraggia (2021) that look at interactions, representations and discourses circulating within an Incel and Red Pill Italian community. This lateness is generally attributed to the scant institutionalisation of gender studies in universities and the lack of discussion, in both the academic and public arenas, regarding the rapidly changing world of masculinities among Italian men (Piccone Stella 2000).
While there are still few academic works on the manosphere, the last decade has witnessed the emergence of a growing number of antifeminist and men’s rights groups on the Italian web. According to Massanari (2015), the technological affordances of online platforms have facilitated the connections between different groups, based on similar interests, content and shared users. Even if they give the appearance of being distinct, these groups authorize and validate one another, conferring certain movements an outsized presence, which is often unreflective of or disproportionate to the real size of the community in question.
Considering the lack of research exploring the online presence and influence of men’s rights groups, this article attempts to investigate Italian MRAs on the Internet and their connection with the recent emergence of the so-called manosphere. To do so, this essay analyses the content of two of the most prominent Facebook Pages dedicated to men's rights issues, called Diritti Maschili – Equità e Umanità (Men’s rights – Equity and Humanity) and Antisessismo (Antisexism). These groups were chosen for several reasons. First, even though their participants often perpetuate the same antifeminism rhetoric carried on by more conservative MRA movements, their anti-sexist discourses seem to differ both from the heteropaternalism of fathers’ rights groups and from the anti-woman rhetoric and explicit misogyny of groups like Incels (Involuntary Celibate) or Red Pillers. Second, as much as they appear thematically connected, there are differences of opinion and beliefs within the groups themselves and some debates cannot be so simply reduced to traditional men’s rights issues. Third, although it is not possible to prove that they are representative of the entire MRA population, these pages seem to indicate the emergence of a new strand of moderate men’s rights’ activists, as demonstrated by the example of Ti prego Karen sono anche i miei ruoli di genere (Please Karen they are also my gender roles) that will be discussed in the essay conclusions.
Employing the principles of critical discursive psychological approach (Edley, 2001; Wetherell, Edley, 1999), the article investigates the discursive constructions of MRA activism in digital environment and identifies a range of linguistic resources, called interpretative repertoires, that members can utilize in the course of their everyday interactions on these pages. When people talk (or think) about things, their conversations are usually made up of a patchwork of “quotations”, in terms of particular images, metaphors, or figures of speech, that produce some highly regular patterns of talk. So, interpretative repertoires turn out to be “part and parcel of any community’s common sense, providing a basis for shared social understanding” (Edley 2001, p. 198). Our analysis identifies three key interpretative repertoires employed by Facebook users to discuss and question men’s issues within these groups: the nice guy discourse, the liberationist rhetoric, and the hybrid style of activism. As our data demonstrates, these interpretative repertoires are not always mutually exclusive nor belong to a specific page because many participants can use multiple strategies in a single post or comment. Although delving into written materials, a considerable time was spent observing contemporary men’s rights communities to contextualize data analysis and gain an insider perspective as much as possible.
It is vital not to underestimate how social media platforms are instrumental in the rising of close-knit MRA communities that polarize around topics of shared concern (Bruns 2019). However, this article tries to look at this phenomenon from a different perspective. Exploring how members can use different, and often conflicting, interpretative repertoires to make sense of their investment in anti-sexist, anti-feminist, and pro male groups, this work aims at demonstrating how difficult it is to define contemporary MRA movement in terms of a clearly defined worldview. Although the MRA is now considered an identity category in popular debates, it is possible to distinguish activists who are convincedly anti-feminist from those who are really worried about men’s issues. Focusing on such heterogeneity could be a crucial first step in bridging the divide between the men’s rights movement and feminism, which are still seen as opposing sides in the fight for gender equality.
... Gran parte de los hombres que participan en los espacios ADH han sufrido experiencias que son percibidas como discriminatorias en sus vidas: por ejemplo, una historia que se repite en estos entornos es la retirada de custodia de los hijos a favor de la mujer en procesos de divorcio o la presunción de culpa del hombre en casos de violencia en las que ellos eran las víctimas (Fox, 2004;Jordan, 2016). Uno de los argumentos sobre los que se soporta la filosofía de los Activistas de los Derechos de los Hombres es que la gran mayoría de denuncias de mujeres a hombres por violencia, malos tratos o violación, son falsas (Hodapp, 2017;Rafail y Freitas, 2019). ...
... We now live in an age of un-hidden gender wars (Graff 2020) where direct violence arises within online and offline spaces (Eslen-Ziya in press). The anti-feminist mobilisation has attracted the attention of a wide international group of researchers (Anderson 2014, Boyd & Sheehy 2016, Dragiewicz and Burgess 2016Dupuis-Deri 2016;Gottell and Dutton 2016;Halperin-Kaddari and Freeman 2016;Jordan 2016;Kimmel 2013;Kováts, Eszter, and Maari Põim 2015;Mellström 2016;Messner 2016). These anti-feminist misogynist developments occur as the nationalist and the right-wing populist regime become institutionalised (Grzebalska and Pető 2018). ...
This article, by addressing the growing anti-feminist activism and mobilization and its consequences for gender equality and women’s rights, sheds light on anti-feminist resistance in Turkey and Norway. Using the concept of counter movement, we study men’s rights mobilization in Turkey and Norway, two countries with different histories and realities of women’s rights and gender equality. We first compare how the respective men’s rights movements emerged in response to, or parallel with, the advances of women’s movements. Investigating mass media and social media content from the most prominent contemporary men’s rights groups in each country provides a qualitative comparative analysis of men’s rights mobilization. Men’s rights groups in Turkey and Norway share many of the same concerns, but while men’s rights activists in Turkey challenge gender equality and defend the traditional family, in Norway, men’s rights activism is a masculinist co-optation of the gender equality discourse.
... Piscopo y Walsh 2020). explicar cuándo y cómo las políticas de mujeres y LGBTI han sido impedidas, aplazadas, o invertidas a lo largo de las décadas (Biroli 2016;Faludi 1991;Jordan 2016;Krook 2015Krook , 2017Mansbridge y Shames 2008;O'Brien y Walsh 2020;Ruibal 2014). Sin embargo, esta tesis también ha sido cuestionada por varios motivos. ...
RESUMEN Este artículo examina la oposición organizada contra los proyectos políticos feministas y LGBTI en Colombia. Aunque existe una gran cantidad de literatura sobre movimientos feministas, y una literatura floreciente sobre los movimientos LGBTI, hay poca investigación sobre la resistencia en contra de los mismos. A través de un lente feminista interseccional, este estudio analiza la campaña "anti-género" organizada contra la perspectiva de género en el acuerdo de paz de 2016 en Colom-bia para demostrar las limitaciones de la teoría del backlash y de algunas de las ideas normativas sobre los derechos humanos. En contraste con las suposiciones según las cuales el backlash estaría predeterminado, el estudio demuestra que la movilización anti-género contra el acuerdo de paz fue más circunstancial que inevitable. Para resaltar como el backlash puede ser productivo, este ar-tículo rastrea cómo las personas oponentes a la perspectiva de género y al acuerdo de paz emplea-ron la retórica de los derechos humanos para crear un presente alternativo y promover un imagi-nario futuro arraigado en la exclusión y la represión. Además, muestra que las movilizaciones organizadas en contra de los movimientos feministas y LGBTI no necesariamente desaceleran o revierten las agendas de los respectivos movimientos.
Palabras clave: Colombia, procesos de paz, anti-género, backlash, mujeres, LGBTI, Resolución 1325, plebiscito, derechos humanos
Esta es una traducción no oficial. Por favor citar como:
Corredor, E. S. (2021). On the Strategic Uses of Women’s Rights: Backlash,
Rights-based Framing, and Anti-Gender Campaigns in Colombia’s 2016 Peace
Agreement. Latin American Politics and Society, 63(3), 46-68.1
Muchas gracias a Juliana Restrepo Sanín y Priscyll Anctil Avoine por su gran ayuda con esta traducción.
... We now live in an age of un-hidden gender wars (Graff 2020) where direct violence arises within online and offline spaces (Eslen-Ziya in press). The anti-feminist mobilisation has attracted the attention of a wide international group of researchers (Anderson 2014, Boyd & Sheehy 2016, Dragiewicz and Burgess 2016Dupuis-Deri 2016;Gottell and Dutton 2016;Halperin-Kaddari and Freeman 2016;Jordan 2016;Kimmel 2013;Kováts, Eszter, and Maari Põim 2015;Mellström 2016;Messner 2016). These anti-feminist misogynist developments occur as the nationalist and the right-wing populist regime become institutionalised (Grzebalska and Pető 2018). ...
Abstract:
This article by addressing the growing anti-feminist activism and mobilization and its consequences for gender equality and women’s rights, sheds light on antifeminist resistance in Turkey and Norway. Using the concept of counter movement, we study men’s rights mobilization in Turkey and Norway, two countries with different histories and realities of women’s rights and gender equality. We first compare how the respective men’s rights movements emerged in response to, or parallel with, the advances of women’s movements. Investigating mass media and social media content from the most prominent contemporary men’s rights groups in each country provides a qualitative comparative analysis of men’s rights mobilization. Men’s rights groups in Turkey and Norway share many of the same concerns, but while men’s rights activists in Turkey challenge gender equality and defend the traditional family, in Norway, men’s rights activism is a masculinist co-optation of the gender equality discourse.
https://academic.oup.com/sp/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/sp/jxac011/6594337
Key Words: Men’s rights activism, Norway, Turkey, anti-feminism, counter movements
... this growing anti-feminist sentiment among younger men is not unique to south Korea. recent studies find that radical right parties have been successful in mobilizing young men using ethnocentric and anti-feminist rhetoric in Western europe and North america (Jordan 2016;Miller-idriss 2018). as exemplified by donald trump's 2016 bid for the presidency, populist politicians Nevertheless, the existing literature does not explain why antagonism towards gender inclusive policies is relatively high among younger men. the rejection of diversity by young citizens is puzzling in many ways. ...
Despite increasing efforts to implement legislative gender quotas, many countries still encounter substantial popular opposition to this policy. Previous work cannot explain why opposition to legislative gender quotas persists, particularly among young men, a group believed to be open to diversity. We develop and test a theoretical framework linking group threat to men's attitudes toward legislative gender quotas. While the salience of perceived group threat could trigger men's opposition to legislative gender quotas, we expect that this effect will be more profound among young men due to the heightened degree of economic insecurity experienced by younger generations. Using original survey experiments in South Korea, this study demonstrates the strong influence of group threat in the formation of negative attitudes toward legislative gender quotas among young men. These effects, however, are not mediated by traditional gender norms. Our findings have significant implications for the study of gender and politics and democratic representation.
... The backlash frame has been employed by feminist and LGBTI scholars alike to explain when and how women's and LGBTI policy has been thwarted, shelved, or reversed over the decades (Biroli 2016;Faludi 1991;Jordan 2016;Krook 2015Krook , 2017Mansbridge and Shames 2008;O'Brien and Walsh 2020;Ruibal 2014). However, this thesis has also been challenged on several counts. ...
This article examines organized opposition to feminist and LGBTI political projects in Colombia. Although there is a large body of literature on feminist movements and a growing literature on LGBTI movements, there is little research on resistance to them. Through an intersectional feminist lens, this study analyzes the "anti-gender" campaign organized against the gender perspective in Colombia's 2016 peace agreement to demonstrate the limitations of backlash theory and certain normative understandings of human rights. In contrast to assumptions that backlash is predetermined, the study demonstrates that the anti-gender mobilization against the peace agreement was circumstantial rather than inevitable. To highlight the productive nature of backlash, it traces how opponents employed human rights rhetoric to establish an alternative present and promote an imagined future rooted in exclusion and repression. In addition, it shows that mobilized backlash against feminist and LGBTI movements does not necessarily decelerate or reverse the respective movements' agendas.
... Antifeminist backlash crystalises, for example, in men's rights groups that fight against the perceived advantages of women (Jordan 2016), in attempts to push back against women's rights in the United Nations (Cupać and Ebetürk 2020), in physical and virtual attacks on women, in boycotts of feminist actions and activist groups, and in the creation of narratives that corrupt the meaning of feminism. With the current rise of conservative measures in Europe, LGBTQIA+ people frequently face violent attacks that go unpunished. ...
Given our situatedness as political subjects of knowledge — as activists and scholars from Southern Europe — we have mapped out in this issue some feminist responses to populism. This issue discusses diverse transfeminist and feminist political groups and ideas, and talks about feminisms as a constellation of accounts of politics, practices, knowledges, and experiences. Although it is beyond the scope of this issue to discuss the idea of populism, the plurality of definitions and their political implications, this collection of essays reflects our need to analyse modes of self-determination that, within feminism, are taking place in the name of the people and for the people. This Introduction sketches the situatedness of the essays in Southern Europe, the antifeminist backlash and the feminist responses that we have been witnessing in the past few years, and the appropriation of feminism by certain conservative groups.
... Recently, there has been a rise in antifeminist mobilisation in Norwaymirroring international developments (Anderson, 2014;Boyd & Sheehy, 2016;Jordan, 2016;Mellström, 2016; see also Blais, this volume) -spanning from organisations and lobby groups, to looser groups on social media (Dragiewicz & Burgess, 2016;Dupuis-Déri, 2016). This is an important context for the contemporary politicisation of male victims of IPV and the increasing claims of male victimisation (Venäläinen, 2019). ...
Male victims of IPV hold an ambiguous position in feminist research and in theorisations of IPV, including in critical studies of men and masculinities. This is due to the ways in which male victims of violence are framed in intertwined academic and political struggles over gendered patterns of victimisation. Recently, there has been a rise of antifeminist mobilisation spanning from organisations and lobby groups, to looser groupings on social media. This is an important context which further complicates the contemporary politicisation of male victims of IPV. This chapter sheds light on the interface between masculinist policies and men’s personal stories of victimisation by analysing how the narrative framing and affective space offered by a masculinist/antifeminist Men’s Rights Organisation (MRO) works for individual male victims of IPV. Through highlighting the ambiguities between the MRO’s mobilisation of collective emotions bolstering an antifeminist narrative of men as a discriminated group, and individual male victim’s personal stories and feelings, the chapter illucidates the complex relations between the personal and the political in contemporary masculinist policies.
... Recently, there has been a rise in antifeminist mobilisation in Norway -mirroring international developments (Anderson, 2014;Boyd & Sheehy, 2016;Jordan, 2016;Mellström, 2016; see also Blais, this volume) -spanning from organisations and lobby groups, to looser groups on social media (Dragiewicz & Burgess, 2016;Dupuis-Deri, 2016). This is an important context for the contemporary politicisation of male victims of IPV and the increasing claims of male victimisation (Venäläinen, 2019). ...
Abstract
Male victims of IPV hold an ambiguous position in feminist research and in theorisations of IPV, including in critical studies of men and masculinities. This is due to the ways in which male victims of violence are framed in intertwined academic and political struggles over gendered patterns of victimisation. Recently, there has been a rise of antifeminist mobilisation spanning from organisations and lobby groups, to looser groupings on social media. This is an important context which further complicates the contemporary politicisation of male victims of IPV. This chapter sheds light on the interface between masculinist policies and men’s personal stories of victimisation by analysing how the narrative framing and affective space offered by a masculinist/antifeminist Men’s Rights Organisation (MRO) works for individual male victims of IPV. Through highlighting the ambiguities between the MRO’s mobilisation of collective emotions bolstering an antifeminist narrative of men as a discriminated group, and individual male victim’s personal stories and feelings, the chapter illucidates the complex relations between the personal and the political in contemporary masculinist policies.
... Recently, there has been a rise in antifeminist mobilisation in Norwaymirroring international developments (Anderson, 2014;Boyd & Sheehy, 2016;Jordan, 2016;Mellström, 2016; see also Blais, this volume) -spanning from organisations and lobby groups, to looser groups on social media (Dragiewicz & Burgess, 2016;Dupuis-Déri, 2016). This is an important context for the contemporary politicisation of male victims of IPV and the increasing claims of male victimisation (Venäläinen, 2019). ...
Men, Masculinities and Intimate Partner Violence provides new insights into men as both perpetrators and victims of intimate partner violence, as well as on how to involve men and boys in anti-violence work.
The chapters explore intimate partner violence from the perspectives of researchers, therapists, activists, organisations, media as well as men of different background and sexual orientation. Highlighting the distinct and ambivalent ways we relate to violence and masculinity, this timely volume provides nuanced approaches to men, masculinity and intimate partner violence in various societies in the global North and South.
... When this occurs, officers may be less willing to promote the potential benefits of DVERT, leading to lower evaluations. Blending sociological arguments regarding backlash to increased gender equality (Faludi 2006;Glick and Fiske 2018;Jordan 2016) with social dominance theory (Sidanius and Pratto 1999), we argue that officers might devalue the potential benefits that DVERT provides to the target population (in this case, largely women) when they believe that the target population is already in a privileged position in society (or should not be further advanced). ...
The Domestic Violence Enhanced Response Team (DVERT) program is a mandated collaboration between police and victim advocates. Understanding the determinants of its perceived effectiveness among implementing officers will help illuminate and explain the various ways in which officers carry out their program-related duties. Using survey data collected from officers in a large city with a DVERT program, we find that officers who have i) history of using excessive force, ii) views consistent with a social dominance orientation, iii) insufficient access to job-related resources, and iv) longer tenured careers view DVERT as less effective.
... Gill (2008) expresses skepticism about the extent to which conformity to a narrow range of acceptable presentations of femininity which "coincidentally" match the desires of heterosexual men are the result of genuine empowerment, and raises questions about the internalization of conventional beauty norms. Without denying women's agency, it is important to challenge the logic of postfeminism which acts as a "thought-stopper," closing off questions and marginalizing issues of power before they can be asked (Jordan, 2016). This article explores how these negotiations are reflected in young people's understandings of sexual violence in the NTE, and their responses to such violations. ...
This article extends our understanding of how university students make sense of, and respond to, sexual violence in the night-time economy (NTE). Based on semi-structured interviews with 26 students in a city in England, we examine students’ constructions of their experiences of sexual violence within the NTE, exploring their negotiations with, and resistance to, this violence. Building upon theories of postfeminism, we interrogate the possibilities for resistance within the gendered spaces of the NTE and propose a disaggregated conceptualization of agency to understand responses to sexual violence, thereby offering useful insights for challenging sexual violence in the NTE and in universities.
Cet article a pour but de décrire la manosphère anglophone à travers les différentes communautés qui la composent. Au-delà des éléments historiques et idéologiques ainsi présentés, une revue transdisciplinaire de la littérature présentera l’état des recherches en sciences sociales sur la manosphère.
The #MeToo movement became an important historical moment around the globe, illuminating the pervasive spectrum of sexual harm. This, however, did not exist without significant backlash, backlash which became one of the defining features of our study with men. We individually interviewed 31 single, heterosexual men about their experiences and understandings of contemporary masculinity, singleness and heterosexuality. During this process, participants talked significantly about the #MeToo movement and women’s accounts of sexual violence, with a focus on the implications this might have for men and dating. Using a critical discursive approach, our analysis of men’s talk was patterned by three interpretive repertoires: I just don’t understand…; You can’t do anything anymore!; and She’s really only got herself to blame… Our analysis suggests that while #MeToo has succeeded in starting a conversation about sexual violence, work still needs to be done in interrupting traditional victim-blaming discourses, as exemplified though our data.
This paper explores feminism as a site of explicit struggle and implicit sense-making for young men. Through an analysis of interviews with twenty young people at two Australian universities, it considers how popularised feminist (and anti-feminist) discourses shape discussions of men, boys and masculinity. Actively grappling with the place of boys and men in certain high-profile feminist debates, participants’ responses revealed core sites of tension around their collective and individual responsibility for gendered harms, tensions reflective of those present within feminist debates themselves. The impact of feminism could also be seen in the gendered analysis so many participants produced to make sense of limiting emotional norms, even though they did not recognise this analysis as a feminist inheritance. Moving beyond an approach seeking to categorise young men’s responses as either pro- or anti-feminist, this paper highlights the entanglement of feminism in young men’s sensemaking around gendered issues.
Backlash is not always pushing back against progress for women, but how is it still patriarchal? Sliced into three sections – on confluence, contestations, and cartographies – this article draws on a thesis about backlash as the exploitation of insecurity wrought by apparent crises to re/shape social orders, through re-fixing symbolic sites, namely the body, family, and nation. It begins by describing a confluence of types of actors and projects silencing feminist voice. Contesting gendered backlash narratives about the three sites are then explored, followed by a more theoretical section reflecting on cartographies of resonant concurrence and contradictions in backlash. Reflecting on masculinities, identification, and levels of hegemonic power, the argument is that the fixing of sites re/naturalises three deep-level patriarchal logics – phallogocentric binary (body), hierarchical (family), and categorical closed-systems (nation) principles – which helps us theorise the evolution of patriarchal hegemonies. This may inform more strategic countering of backlash.
Pre-publication abstract (before final edits and copy-editing): Amid a rising tide of misogyny and gender violence across the world, terms like "patriarchal backlash" have increased in use to describe similar trends in different settings. Yet, backlash remains contested as a concept, variably perceived as an expression of male resistance, a patriarchal restoration, or a mode in which a broader reactionary politics play out and coalesce. Recognising that the predominance of recent academic literature on backlash centres on Europe and the Americas, we explore a broader set of debates, questioning how we can better understand backlash in a global context. We argue that backlash can be framed as a form of crisis management, as a confluence of crises-political, economic, climate, and pandemic-create volatility in hierarchical social relations, threatening the reproduction of elite rule and capitalist growth. Patriarchal backlash serves to reimpose order through a series of spatial fixes in the individual space of the sexed body, the privatized space of the traditional family, and the bordered, ordered space of the ethnically imagined nation. Amid a felt sense of crisis and ensuing ontological insecurity, hierarchies are fixed in place through appeals to a naturalised gender order, itself structured by racialised, neocolonial relations of power operating within and across national borders. As sites of struggle over discursive meaning and material resources, the body, family, and nation are critical spaces in which to counter backlash and its fixing of hierarchies.
Before the onset of COVID-19, the political mood in Europe shifted to the right. This is indicated, for example, by efforts to close the borders to migrants, an undermining of legislative and executive democratic structures as well as restrictions on free speech. Such anti-democratic developments have also impacted gender equality – at the level of policy and in daily life. Our paper aims to examine the policies on gender equality of the center-right Austrian government from 2017 to 2019 and their influence on feminist organizing. Applying a participatory, action-based research approach in the context of a neoliberal conservative nation state, the data shows a clear backtrack from a pluralist perspective of gender equality policies and regression towards heteronormativity, complemented by a focus on the gender binary that discounts the social construction of gender. These trends clearly influence feminist organizing.
Backlash is a reaction to real or perceived change, leaving progressives worse off by catalyzing conservatives to oppose change by changing their opinions to be more negative, holding opposing views more deeply, or taking action, including violence, when they would not have otherwise. The claim that progressive social change has been counterproductive is an empirical one, but too often those diagnosing backlash fail to distinguish what is truly a measurable setback from the fierce countermobilization of preexisting opponents who are losing ground. Progressives themselves have famously warned against using courts in particular to advance the causes of civil rights, gender equality, or gay rights, yet careful examination reveals no regression in response to legal progress. Once we complicate a simple linear understanding of progress, think about gender inequality intersectionally, and add an analysis of discursive countermobilizations to simple empirical measures of progress, we must conclude the implicit baggage the concept carries outweighs its usefulness.
Susan Faludi’s feminist classic Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women was first published in 1991, thirty-one years ago, and yet its message seems to resonate more clearly than ever. The current issue focuses on present-day Europe and the last few decades, covering a very wide spectrum. There are surveys of countries or their crucial sectors (Bulgaria, Italy and France). The social media are dealt with in a separate essay and various subchapters. The literary works studied include Ali Smith’s Summer and verbatim theatre. Prominent examples are Angela Merkel’s 1993 review of Backlash and the Spanish Manada case. In conclusion, an intergenerational dialogue highlights recent controversies and tries to find pathways forward.Part I of the Introduction argues that one of today’s major aspects of the patriarchal backlashes against women remains rooted in biological, deterministic socio-political constructions of women’s bodies, which aim to deprive women of their agency as human beings. After a critical discussion of the backlash concept, Part II briefly characterises the structure of the issue and the individual articles.
I use the men’s rights movement, an anti-feminist backlash movement consisting largely of straight, white men, to examine how high-status group members develop a collective identity leveraged by right-wing movements. Drawing on 31 interviews with men’s rights activists, I find that masculinity, whiteness, and straightness play crucial roles in motivating identification with the movement. Interviewees believe others see them as privileged and thus immoral because of these identities. This clashes with the way they see themselves, threatens their moral sense of self, and evokes negative emotions. In response, they reconstruct themselves – as straight, white men – as victims, thus developing a sense of “we” and a basis for collective action. In an effort to recoup a sense of moral goodness and build community, they also construct a new collective identity as men’s rights activists, which invests them in organized backlash. This paper develops a theory to explain collective identity formation among high-status group members, and illustrates how the identity work straight, white men undertake in the face of culturally legitimate challenges to their privilege can invest them in organized backlash movements.
Can recognition theories distinguish legitimate from illegitimate claims to recognition put forward by social movements? This paper identifies an under-theorised problem of recognition theories: in viewing struggles for recognition as a force for social progress in the mould of the New Social Movements of the 1960s and 1970s, existing accounts have trouble identifying and ruling out illegitimate claims to recognition as formulated by contemporary counter-movements like white supremacists or men’s rights activists. I refer to this issue as the symmetry problem of recognition since it amounts to difficulties in identifying grounds for excluding illegitimate claims to recognition that do not also symmetrically justify the exclusion of legitimate ones (and vice versa). I argue that criteria for telling apart legitimate from illegitimate claims to recognition need to include interpretation issues as a dimension of analysis, which consequently requires incorporating democratic deliberation as a necessary component of recognition theory.
Taking inspiration from responses in focus groups and an on-line survey in which feminists shared their experiences about antifeminism in their daily life, this paper demonstrates that everyday activism involves two protagonists confronting each other, in this case a feminist and an antifeminist. Focusing on feminists’ perceptions, emotions and tactical reactions, this paper also shows how these confrontations are not necessarily limited to one or two attacks and counterattacks and how they can be influenced by the presence of a ‘third party’ (other men or women, other feminists or antifeminists). In order to shed light on these conflictual dynamics, the question of antifeminist ‘humor’ and its effects on feminists is discussed more in depth. Finally, we show that there is a significant relation between public or organized activism and everyday activism, for both the social movement and its countermovement.
This article examines organized opposition to feminist and LGBTI political projects in Colombia. Although there is a large body of literature on feminist movements and a growing literature on LGBTI movements, there is little research on resistance to them. Through an intersectional feminist lens, this study analyzes the “anti-gender” campaign organized against the gender perspective in Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement to demonstrate the limitations of backlash theory and certain normative understandings of human rights. In contrast to assumptions that backlash is predetermined, the study demonstrates that the anti-gender mobilization against the peace agreement was circumstantial rather than inevitable. To highlight the productive nature of backlash, it traces how opponents employed human rights rhetoric to establish an alternative present and promote an imagined future rooted in exclusion and repression. In addition, it shows that mobilized backlash against feminist and LGBTI movements does not necessarily decelerate or reverse the respective movements’ agendas.
As part of the radical feminist legal analysis, this chapter will consider whether ‘the law is male’ (McKinnon, 2005), specifically with respect to the Family Justice System of England and Wales (FJS). The FJS is the legal system for arbitrating on family law issues (see Box 15.1). The focus will be on child arrangement proceedings (private family law proceedings) where the mother has been abused by the father of the child(ren) subject to the litigation. The aforementioned court cases involve disputes between parents concerning ‘contact’ and ‘residence’, formerly known as ‘access’ and custody’ (Herring, Family law, Pearson Education, London, 2019). This chapter evaluates to what extent the FJS provides justice for women victims of domestic violence and their children and offers an analysis of the often-hidden forces that lead to the imposition of unsafe contact orders in the FJS.
In this study, we revisit alternative feminist organizing in order to identify the dialectical tensions, paradoxical discourses, and agentic qualities of women’s participation in an online antifeminist space. We engage in text mining, semantic network analysis, and the constant comparative method to identify dialogical tensions and the paradoxical organizing strategies of Red Pill Women, an online community on the social networking platform, Reddit. Through analyzing Red Pill Women as an antifeminist space constituted through postfeminist logics, we identify three paradoxical tensions, begin to disentangle postfeminism from antifeminism, and build on alternative organizing theory with recent work on hidden and invisible organizations to further theorize gendered (in)visibility and (anti)feminist organizing practices.
The fathers' rights movement is a worldwide phenomenon that takes a particular form in our geopolitical region. Responding initially to an apparent judicial preference for mothers to have custody of children, the movement grew alongside, and in resistance to, the women's movement. In this paper, we analyse how texts of fathers' rights discourse strategically appropriate egalitarianism in the context of gendered struggles over rights within the nuclear family. Texts from four fathers' rights websites are engaged to locate, construct and critique the discursive power of the movement in Aotearoa/New Zealand. We discuss examples of strategies that appropriate egalitarianism, engage quantifying logic, and demonise women and argue how the fathers' rights sites exemplify resistance to the impact of the women's movement on Family Court and criminal justice interventions into violence against women at home.
Separated fathers often feel profound grief, distress, and anger at the end of their relationships with their partners and their children. Some participate in fathers’ rights’ groups, a movement which claims to advocate on behalf of men and fathers who are the victims of discrimination and injustice in the Family Court and elsewhere. Yet such groups may do little to help fathers heal or to build or maintain ongoing and positive relationships with their children. Some men do find support in these groups, but they also may be incited into anger, blame, and destructive strategies of litigation. The fathers’ rights movement prioritises formal principles of equality over positive parenting and the well-being of women and children. Some groups seem more concerned with re-establishing paternal authority and fathers’ decision-making related to their children’s and ex-partners’ lives than with actual involvements with children. However, other responses to separated fathers are more constructive.
This paper studies the arguments and strategies deployed by fathers' and women's rights advocates in the field of child custody and access law reform in order to raise questions about the capacity of the concept of equality to encompass the complex socio-economic relations that frame and limit parenting patterns. The paper critically analyzes the ways in which fathers' rightists and women's groups invoke equality, heeding reminders that political equality and economic equality are inseparable issues, and that the culture wars are not severable from the economic order. It re-thinks feminist approaches to equality by considering equality claims by groups that are not historically disadvantaged, specifically fathers' rightists. Fathers' rightists have drawn on a formal approach to equality, whereas women's groups have tended towards a substantive equality approach. Fathers' rightists sometimes suggest that women should not be permitted to benefit legally from the fact that they have taken different life choices in relation to familial responsibilities. Yet successful arguments on behalf of women tend to reinforce privatized economic remedies, which in turn reinforce women's dependency. The meaning of these success stories will be considered in relation to neo-liberal policies on the privatization of economic responsibilities.
Despite earlier critiques of left realists’ failure to adequately address feminist concerns, recent left realist theorizing
and empirical research have made valuable contributions to the understanding of woman abuse and other forms of gendered violence.
Left realism has further potential to contribute to the criminological understanding of woman abuse and its contributing socioeconomic
and cultural contexts. This article describes left realists’ early efforts to include gender in analyses of crime. It then
summarizes feminist critiques of left realism and reviews the work that has responded to them. Drawing upon two prominent
strands of feminist left realist theorizing about violence and gender, the paper proposes a preliminary left realist theory
of antifeminist fathers’ rights group activism. It then outlines a provisional research agenda on antifeminist fathers’ rights
groups, and proposes short and long term policies and practices to enhance the safety of abused mothers and their children
following divorce or separation.
All across America, angry fathers are demanding rights. These men claim that since the breakdown of their own families, they have been deprived of access to their children. Joining together to form fathers' rights groups, the mostly white, middle-class men meet in small venues to speak their minds about the state of the American family and, more specifically, to talk about the problems they personally face, for which they blame current child support and child custody policies. Dissatisfied with these systems, fathers' rights groups advocate on behalf of legal reforms that will lower their child support payments and help them obtain automatic joint custody of their children. In Defiant Dads, Jocelyn Elise Crowley offers a balanced examination of these groups in order to understand why they object to the current child support and child custody systems; what their political agenda, if enacted, would mean for their members' children or children's mothers; and how well they deal with their members' interpersonal issues concerning their ex-partners and their role as parents. Based on interviews with more than 150 fathers' rights group leaders and members, as well as close observation of group meetings and analysis of their rhetoric and advocacy literature, this important book is the first extensive, in-depth account of the emergence of fathers' rights groups in the United States. A nuanced and timely look at an emerging social movement, Defiant Dads is a revealing investigation into the changing dynamics of both the American family and gender relations in American society.
Gender equality is a widely shared value in many western societies and yet, the mention of the term feminism frequently provokes unease, bewilderment or overt hostility. Repudiating Feminism sheds light on why this is the case. Grounded in rich empirical research and providing a timely contribution to debates on engagements with feminism, Repudiating Feminism explores how young German and British women think, talk and feel about feminism. Drawing on in-depth interviews with women from different racial and class backgrounds, and with different sexual orientations, Repudiating Feminism reveals how young women's diverse positionings intersect with their views of feminism. This critical and reflexive analysis of the interplay between subjective accounts and broader cultural configurations shows how postfeminism, neoliberalism and heteronormativity mediate young women's negotiations of feminism, revealing the manner in which heterosexual norms structure engagements with feminism and its consequent association with man-hating and lesbian women. Speaking to a range of contemporary cultural trends, including the construction of essentialist notions of cultural difference and the neoliberal imperative to take responsibility for the management of one's own life, this book will be of interest to anyone studying sociology, gender and cultural studies.
This book investigates efforts by fathers' rights groups to undermine battered women's shelters and services, in the context of the backlash against feminism. Dragiewicz examines the lawsuit Booth v. Hvass, in which fathers' rights groups attempted to use an Equal Protection claim to argue that funding emergency services that target battered women is discriminatory against men. As Dragiewicz shows, this case (which was eventually dismissed) is relevant to widespread efforts to promote a degendered understanding of violence against women in order to eradicate policies and programs that were designed to ameliorate harm to battered women.
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Bromley's Family Law provides an accurate, detailed account of family law. The text presents a broad treatment of the key issues relating to adult and child law. This new edition has been edited and updated to take account of the latest case law and legislation, while also reflecting new debates and emerging issues in the area. Particular attention is also paid to the increasingly significant international dimension of family law, with a new chapter on this area. This edition has been updated to provide up-to-date coverage on cohabitation, the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 and Children and Families Act 2014. It also examines the proposals of the Family Justice Review. It considers in detail the Law Commission proposals for reform of the law on cohabitation, marital property agreements and needs, and non-matrimonial property on divorce.
Fathers' rights groups have been characterised by some feminist academics as part of an anti‐feminist ‘backlash’, responding to a perceived crisis of masculinity through a problematic politics of fatherhood aimed at (re)asserting control over women and children. This article analyses the construction of gender and masculinity/ies within fathers' rights groups, specifically, the UK‐based pressure group, (Real) Fathers 4 Justice. The article explores the construction of power‐laden gender identity/ies within (Real) Fathers 4 Justice and, in doing so, contributes to understanding the logic and implications of fathers' rights perspectives. The analysis is based on in‐depth interviews conducted with members of the group. The qualitative case study is used to explore critically the (gender) politics of fathers' rights. It is argued that the interviewees (re)construct multiple masculinities: bourgeois‐rational masculinity, new man/new father masculinity and hypermasculinity. These masculinity frames intersect with broader constructions of gender and need to be understood in evaluating the perspectives of fathers' rights groups which are complex in terms of their implications for gender politics broadly conceived. Overall, it is argued that each of the masculinity frames can be problematic, as they reinforce existing gendered binaries.
Since the publication of Susan Faludi's book in 1991, the terms "backlash" and "postfeminism" have come to be widely used in many feminist analyses to critique–and then usually dismiss—representations of both women and feminism throughout media and popular culture. This paper revisits both of these concepts, exploring some of the debates about the definition, meaning, and scope of feminism that both of these terms (often unwittingly) raise and then shut down. It argues that while seemingly useful ways to talk about popular representations, these concepts also replay many of the central (and often contentious) debates in feminist thinking, especially around what gets defined as 'feminism,' under what contexts, and for what purposes. Ultimately, it argues that these terms, as they are now most commonly used, deny the possibility of multiple meanings and layers of feminist theorizing and politics, refute the saturation of feminist ideas throughout the broader culture in ways and places in places not originally thought possible, and refuse the changes in feminism that are the locus of so much contemporary dispute. If women's studies and feminism is to successfully make the transition to other generations, other times, and indeed this other millennium, then the ubiquity of concepts such as these, and the exclusive thinking they ultimately point to, must be re-examined and challenged.
Individuals who belong to social movement organizations (SMOs) do not necessarily identify themselves with the larger social movement overall. This sharp disconnect presents challenges to highly motivated activists, who rely on widespread movement identification to achieve their most valued goals in the political arena. This study aims to map out the conditions under which the movement identification process takes place. A mixed methods approach employs both content analysis and logit modeling techniques on original data collected from 149 members of fathers' rights groups located across the United States in 2003. In terms of results, first, the content analysis methods that are used on the interview data illustrate that SMO participants most commonly cite the social movement's formulation of a strong, social change goal when they consider the movement identification decision. Second, the logit models which are employed on the quantitative data show that engagement in externally-oriented identity work activities—or those activities that require members to interact with nonmembers of their immediate group in building their collective identity—as well as personal strain and notions of political efficacy are the most significant predictors of individual-level social movement identification. These results highlight the social movement features that are most significant to both movement identifiers and nonidentifiers, and demonstrate the importance of externally-oriented identity work on the conversion of simple SMO participation to social movement identification.
What makes a good father in contemporary American society? And more important, can good fathers effectively "mother" their children? Without a doubt, over the past several decades, the cultural imagery surrounding what it means to be a fully participatory father has shifted dramatically (Burgess 1997; Coltrane 1989; Hobson and Morgan 2002; Ranson 2001). Instead of the ideal father being simply the breadwinner of the family, this "new father"—with commentators primarily spotlighting the desired behavior of the white male—combines both earning a living with the day-to-day care of his children (Pleck 1987). In other words, not only does he work full time, but he also is present at his children's birth, goes to school conferences, does their laundry, and prepares their meals. He is fully connected and essential to his children's well-being (Farrell 2001). This "new father" is, in fact, just like any other modern mother.
While this recent paternal imagery has been extremely powerful, scholars have also noted that fathers' actions have yet to meet this emerging ideal.1 While their contributions to child care have been increasing over time, particularly since the 1980s, fathers still lag behind mothers in the amount of parental work they perform on a regular basis (Ahmeduzzaman and Roopnarine 1992; Aldous, Mulligan, and Bjarnason 1998; Sandberg and Hofferth 2001; Sayer, Bianchi, and Robinson 2004). In fact, in one of the most recent and comprehensive studies that explored this division of responsibility issue, in 2000, Bianchi, Robinson, and Milkie (2006, 116) found enormous gaps in paid and unpaid work between the sexes, with women allocating 12.9 hours a week to child care, and men only completing 6.5 hours on this task.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that real world practices have yet to catch up to the new cultural ideal of fatherhood, fathers' rights groups have seized upon this compelling imagery in making their political claims. More specifically, these fathers' rights organizations, composed primarily of white, middle-class men, have grown in number in recent years in order to challenge the legal system that they must confront when their families dissolve. One of their most prominent assertions is that the family law system, specifically through its child custody procedures that tend to physically place children with their mothers, denies them the opportunity to effectively personify their "new father" roles. In this essay I explore precisely how fathers' rights groups have tapped into the cultural symbolism of the "new father" in order to buttress their claims.
The fathers' rights movement began to grow quite rapidly in the United States during the 1980s. With some estimates placing them at ten thousand members in total (Crowley 2008, 37), fathers' rights activists across the board charge that once their families break up, they lack certain parental rights (Clatterbaugh 2000; Coltrane and Hickman 1992; Fineman 1991; Williams and Williams 1995). Their grievances revolve around two critical areas: child support and child custody policy (Crowley 2003). For fathers' rights groups, these two issues are highly interlinked. Activists complain that policy makers force them to pay exorbitant amounts of child support to the mothers of their children, who typically receive primary physical custody. However, these payments would not be necessary at all, argue these men, if the child custody system were reformed in a way to automatically give fathers equal time with their children.
Across the United States, judges make custody determinations for dissolving families. There are two types of joint custody at stake. Joint legal custody refers to a partnership between parents over the major decisions that they must make regarding their children's well-being; joint physical custody refers to equally shared living arrangements for the involved children. Although joint legal custody is fairly common in the United States, joint physical custody is not and therefore is the focus of fathers' rights groups' concerns. According to the Current Population Survey, in 2005, approximately 84 percent of all custodial parents were mothers, while only 16 percent were fathers (Grall 2007, 3). When probed about their more formal custody arrangements, only about 28 percent of these custodial parents reported having some type of joint legal or joint physical custody order in place.2...
Domestic violence continues to be a serious problem for women in the United States. As a result, the battered women's movement has been tireless in campaigning for greater awareness of the issue, tougher penalties against offenders, and public vigilance against potential batterers, including fathers from dissolving families. In reaction to this stance, a small but vocal countermovement composed of activists in the fathers' rights movement has argued that the BWM is guilty of what I term enemy boundary creep, a perception whereby these men maintain that they have been inappropriately targeted. Using 40 in-depth interviews with fathers' rights activists located across the country, this article details the narrative that these men have composed as to why the BWM is expanding the scope of its enemies, the tactics that the BWM is using in this campaign, and the insidious effects that these efforts are having on fathers across the country. This narrative formulates a boundary-push back response. This analysis thus articulates how an unlikely countermovement can use the accusation of enemy boundary creep by its social movement opponents in an effort to shift the political discourse on a significant public problem.
Constructions of fatherhood are key signifiers of masculinity/ies and, in the context of a new politics of fatherhood, these constructions have been articulated in opposition both to motherhood and femininity/ies and to ideas of the ‘deadbeat dad’ (Collier 2006, Gavanas 2004, Kaye and Tolmie 1998). The fathers' rights movement has contributed to this redefinition of fatherhood. In the case of the UK group, Fathers 4 Justice, the central message is that ‘Dads aren't Demons [and] Mums aren't Madonnas’ (fathers-4-justice.org). The paper draws on in-depth interviews conducted with members of the fathers' rights group, Real Fathers for Justice/Fathers 4 Justice, to explore and illustrate the conceptions of fatherhood underpinning the campaign. My analysis of the interviews suggests that there is indeed an anxiety to distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’ fathers and also to underline the need for fathers by highlighting the existence of ‘bad’ mothers. In addition, conceptions of the good father expressed in the interviews can be further subdivided into the ‘nurturing father’, the ‘father as superhero’ and the ‘good enough father’.
To understand backlash theoretically, we must first carve out an analytically useful term from the cluster of its common political associations. In colloquial usage, “backlash” denotes politically conservative reactions to progressive (or liberal) social or political change (Faludi 1991 is a classic in this vein). Here, however, we attempt a nonideological definition of backlash embedded in a more neutral approach to its study. In colloquial usage, backlash includes acts of genuine persuasion as well as of power. Here, however, we suggest that it may be analytically helpful to confine its meaning to acts of coercive power. We draw on the sociological literature on social movements and countermovements, as well as the political science literature on power, preferences, and interests. We focus mostly on examples drawn from the United States and relating to feminism and gender. We begin where the process of backlash itself begins, with power and a challenge to the status quo.
This article examines the images of feminism and women’s groups in family law reform debates, particularly in the 1998 presentations of fathers’ rights advocates and related participants in Canada’s public consultations on child custody and access. These images are placed in the context of an increasingly sophisticated “backlash” literature that critiques feminist engagement with law and public policy. The article suggests that the fathers’ rights discourse invokes a caricature of feminism and identifies several mechanisms through which the discrediting of feminism occurred in the 1998 hearings. Feminism is also portrayed as a threat to dominant images of family, including the heterosexual norm. These portrayals of feminism and women’s groups in turn influence the law reform process due to the way in which “legitimate” knowledge is constructed. The article concludes with a discussion of why feminist voices are susceptible to discrediting and offers some suggestions for reasserting feminist analysis in areas that are critical to women.
This article argues that a feminist approach to the ‘politics of resistance’ offers a number of important empirical insights which, in turn, open up lines of theoretical inquiry which critical theorists in IR would do well to explore. Concretely, we draw on our ongoing research into feminist ‘anti-globalisation’ activism to rethink the nature of the subject of the politics of resistance, the conditions under which resistance emerges and how resistance is enacted and expressed. We begin by discussing the relationship of feminism to critical IR theory as a way of situating and explaining the focus and approach of our research project. We then summarise our key empirical arguments regarding the emergence, structure, beliefs, identities and practices of feminist ‘anti-globalisation’ activism before exploring the implications of these for a renewed critical theoretical agenda in IR.
Recent developments in social movement research have evidenced a greater underlying consensus in the field than one might have assumed. Efforts have been made to bridge different perspectives and merge them into a new synthesis. Yet, comparative discussion of the concept of ‘social movement’ has been largely neglected so far. This article reviews and contrasts systematically the definitions of ‘social movement’ formulated by some of the most influential authors in the field. A substantial convergence may be detected between otherwise very different approaches on three points at least. Social movements are defined as networks of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in political or cultural conflicts, on the basis of shared collective identities. It is argued that the concept is sharp enough a) to differentiate social movements from related concepts such as interest groups, political parties, protest events and coalitions; b) to identify a specific area of investigation and theorising for social movement research.
Demonizing Mothers: Fathers' Rights Discourses in Child Custody Law Reform Processes
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The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post
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Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture
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Dangerous Design: Asian Women and the New Landscapes of Fashion
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Men, Gender and Fathers' Rights "After Legal Equality" New formations of rights and responsibility in family justice
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Fatherhood, Law and Fathers' Rights: Rethinking the relationship between gender and welfare
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Backlash Discourse and Moral Panic
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