ABSTRACT
Violence is gendered: it is a problem and consequence of masculinity. Contemporary state interventions to control violence are no less gendered: structures of response, from arrest through imprisonment, glorify tough cops, celebrate adversarial relations, and construct a virtuous ‘protective’ state by incarcerating or, in some countries, killing the ‘bad guys’. What alternatives are possible in an apparently closed system, where masculinity and masculinist structures are both the cause and the putative cure of violence?
