ABSTRACT
As young men engage in school-based gender equity work, do they also begin to remake their own lives, particularly with respect to gender relations? As they intellectualize the personal as political, do they also enact the political as personal? Put another way, to what extent do they make their learnings about gender real through their practices in living out relationships? By exploring these questions with young men who took up anti-sexist work as secondary school students, I came to see how they struggled to make sense of who they were, what they believed, and how they should act. Their talk provides insights into the ways in which a political consciousness about gender can develop among young men and how they theorize the gendered nature of their own lives. Their observations also reveal the power of deeply rooted, hegemonic beliefs about masculinity and gender relations and clearly suggest the pedagogical work that confronts educators committed to making a more equitable world.
