Conclusion

The basis of the argument presented in this book was that the possibility of achieving a social justice in gender, which represents the product of a movement beyond oppressive traditional structures, to a situation of openness, is not attainable given the continuity – conceptually and practically – of hegemonic masculinity. The argument that hegemony and, therefore, hegemonic masculinity represents a negativity about gender has in the recent past assumed an axiomatic status in the literature on masculinities, and has also infiltrated into the broader debate about social justice in gender. Nevertheless, at its core sit two crucial yet problematic conceptual positions. Hegemonic masculinity is interpreted as a dominant and dominating ideal type of masculinity whose efficacy ensures the continuity of a legitimated closure around a particular gender order. But even more significant for the question of social justice is that, while conceiving of hegemonic masculinity in this way it is based on an interpretation of hegemony drawn from Gramsci, its underpinning logic fails to elaborate the full complexity of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and, as a consequence, reduces the possibilities for social justice to the demise of hegemony. This is anathema to Gramscian politics as developed here. Nevertheless, the importance of this position is that it enables masculinities theory to sustain the profoundly regressive argument that there is no basis either in history, the current situation or in the future for a hegemonic ‘other’ (Connell 1987: 183). Therefore, hegemony and social justice are mutually exclusive socio-cultural phenomena. Accordingly, social justice in gender is possible only through strategies that negate the hegemonic, such as in a ‘de-gendering strategy’ delivered through ‘alliance politics’, which seeks to dismantle hegemonic masculinity and construct in its place, not a new hegemony but a de-gendered world (Connell 1995: 232-238).