ABSTRACT
Profeminist research for much of its history has, understandably, tended to focus on making visible the dynamics by which men’s practices have oppressed women, children and other men – and in that way to counter men’s violence. By contrast, the last few years have seen more pro-active attempts to systematically study why some men decide to openly challenge men’s violence – and so how to increase the number of such profeminist allies working directly with men and boys. This chapter reports on part of a recent qualitative study opening up some strategies to advance this vital task. The authors explore the dynamics by which some Swedish men have decided to work towards ending men’s violences in their daily work with men and/or boys. Given space constraints, the chapter focuses on one particularly powerful strategy that our study suggests has been relatively neglected by previous international research: what we call intersectional identification. We highlight how this strategy can be utilized more extensively and broadly than hitherto to maximize both numerically and qualitatively the contribution of profeminist men to challenging men’s violence against women and children.
