ABSTRACT

Family law, as a sub-field of legal studies, has in many respects been at the forefront of the study of masculinity within legal scholarship; it is family law, I will argue, which has come to exemplify and illustrate some of the conceptual and political limitations of masculinity for feminism more generally, resulting from a number of political and theoretical developments over the past decade. A rethinking of the male (gendered) subject in family law is a project linked to – indeed, I want to suggest, it is inseparable from – a growing debate taking place

It has been suggested that ‘feminist legal theorists are in disarray’; a situation engendered significantly (although by no means exclusively) by the twin impacts of neo-liberal market imperatives on the academy and the impact of postmodernism on feminist legal theory. This debate is embracing concerns about the relation between ‘high theory’ and (feminist) practice, questions of audience and accessibility; of the relationship of men to legal feminism;7 and, my concern here, about what it means to speak at the present moment, in the context of a growing debate centred around what has been termed the new ‘male victimhood’ in the field of family justice, of there being an interconnection between men, masculinity and family law.