ABSTRACT
As highlighted earlier, the politics that surrounded masculinities from the 1960s has been pluralistic. A number of alternative gender-conscious men’s groups have emerged alongside the profeminist movement and have developed discourses and agendas around men’s identities in relation to contemporary gender relationships. These groups have developed a range of divergent discourses around themes such as men’s identities, the crisis of masculinity and gender power. Collectively, alternative groups’ interpretations of these categories challenge profeminist accounts of gender subjectivity and inequality. As subsequent chapters will illustrate, profeminists often define their politics in relation to the discourses developed by these men. Some strands of profeminism completely reject the perspectives of alternative gender-conscious men’s groups. Other strands have argued that profeminism needs to ‘listen’ to some of
the issues about modern masculinity that have been raised by other men who have been exploring their identities outside of the boundaries of feminist standpoints. This chapter discusses the discourses and agendas of three forms ofmen’s gender-conscious politics and exposes the differences between these groups and profeminism generally (Clatterbaugh 1990; Messner 1997). This chapter focuses on specific examples of groups that have emerged in US and UK contexts (see Hearn andHertta 2006; Hearn and Holmgren 2006 for analysis of the Scandinavian context).
