Uneven routes of mobilizing ‘as men’: reconfiguring masculinities among anti-sexist groups of men in italy and spain
- Autores: Krizia Nardini
- Directores de la Tesis: Begonya Enguix Grau (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya ( España ) en 2019
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Jeff Hearn (presid.), Begonya Sàez i Tajafuerce (secret.), Dolors Comas d'Argemir (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Sociedad de la Información y el Conocimiento por la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
- Resumen
Academically based in gender studies and written from a socio-anthropological approach with a qualitative, feminist ethnographically engaged research, this thesis explored different critical-creative elaborations on men’s practices and gender relations coming from contemporary anti-sexist men’s engagements in Italy and Spain, in the context of a neoliberal economic crisis and information society. On an empirical level, the aim of this research has been to explore contextually how men’s practices can be materially-discursively reconfigured towards positive change; theoretically, the aims have been: to understand and draw genealogical relations between groups of men and the feminist traditions they relate to, to investigate the routes of their feminist-oriented masculinity politics, and to offer insightful material to contribute to politically and academically relevant debates in gender-transformative contexts.
This thesis argues in favor of feminist situated epistemologies and the ethicoontological transformative potential of questioning Abstract Masculinity and its unfair social relations of power. With this critical-creative approach I engaged with the field of men’s anti-sexist groups, whose actors are for the vast majority white, heterosexual and highly educated cis-men, a social positioning that historically found his socio-symbolic privileges in the absence of self-awareness and on the assumption of its own neutrality/universality.
The fieldwork I conducted in Barcelona and Bologna among anti-sexist men’s networks (with Maschile Plurale in Italy and the Asociación de Hombres por la Igualdad de género, in Spain) suggests that mobilizing ‘as men’ among Italian and Spanish anti-sexist activists is the strategy put into action. It has multiple outcomes: it offers situated epistemological locations (away from Abstract Masculinity) from which critical self-reflections are stimulated and gender-awareness is acquired; it provides material-discursive homosocial spaces where gendered practices are interrogated and renegotiated; and it creates activist engagement.
The politics of anti-sexist groups is articulated starting from and intervening in the personal experiences and transformation in men’s practices is advocated for. All the groups in the study, with different anti-violence approaches, take a public stand against gender-based violence (Ch. 2). Many groups in Italy practise the politics of consciousness-raising and sexual difference (Ch. 3) as a way to understand their situated experiences as men and generate critical positions on them. Anti-sexist masculinity politics in Spain is elaborated with interesting takes on love politics (Ch. 4) contributing to violence prevention. In Italy, the eradication of sexism and violence against women is strictly linked to rethinking heterosexual imaginaries of commercial sex; sexual politics becomes the issue to address for gender-transformative practices and for elaborating an ethics of relationships (Ch. 5). Crucial for men’s personal politics and social change is their active involvement in care, as it is shown by AHIGE’s egalitarian fatherhood politics (Ch. 6).
This thesis delivers a map of how men's anti-sexist activism in Italy and Spain is rooted in an explicit anti-violence commitment and how it draws upon different feminist contexts. The uneven routes of their feminist-oriented politics depart from gender awareness, a transversal force of their mobilization, in which gender acquires epistemological priority for reconfiguring men’s practices. Mobilizing ‘as men’ could be considered as form of strategic essentialism that serves to inspire and engage men into shifting material-discursive practices related to gender as a doing. Critically seen, this type of activism runs the risk of leaving the gender binary and hierarchies unproblematized, and of remaining self-referential. The maintenance of the ontoepistemological centrality of men, that this politics claims to deconstruct and transform by questioning Abstract Masculinity, constitutes the most concerning risk of this political effort that is not immune to paradoxes, contradictions and challenges.
