ABSTRACT
This chapter considers contemporary issues surrounding gender, feminism and masculinity. Feminists, of course, argue that men are the dominant group in society, and it is thus privileged males who make and enforce the rules to the detriment of women. Feminism is nevertheless not a unitary body of thought, and we start with a discussion of the development of feminism and its different contemporary manifestations in societies permeated with the postmodern condition. There follows an examination of the notion of masculinity where feminism has encouraged a small but growing group of male writers to take the issue seriously and where it is recognized that men have different socializations and life experiences and thus cannot be considered a generic group. This is followed by a discussion of queer criminology and the contradictions that have occurred in this perspective recently, not least the sometimes rancorous debate between radical feminism and the transgender community. The chapter concludes with reflections on the notion of patriarchy in fragmented modernity, considering contemporary debates on misogyny, misandry and incels in terms of postmodern power relations.
