ABSTRACT
Social life is organized through both formal organizations and more informal organizing, including social movement organizing. This chapter draws on two recent examples of South African activist organization and organizing to think about the possibilities and challenges related to profeminist male allies and partners for social justice movements. In particular, we ask questions about why an exclusion of a feminist agenda and continued reproduction of male power is so often the outcome of collaborations across movements. On the basis of these two cases, we surface the ways in which men frequently position themselves as the vanguards of culturally or nation-state coded morality, resist shifting normative masculinist, heteronormative representation of leadership, tend to “take charge” and control of public responses, and often gatekeep “the women’s question” and feminist issues in general. While such dynamics are not peculiar to South African activist organizations, we argue the importance of raising these challenges. The chapter shows how activist organizations, as with the majority of other organizations, remain underpinned by patriarchal logics and normative gendered power dynamics, which undermine solidarities and impede possibilities for change. We call for urgent attention to the gendering of men activists and the masculinization of activism organizations for current gender justice activist organizations to make a difference.
