Living with Violence: Men University Students Negotiate the Masculinity Mandate in Mexico

Abstract

The literature on men and masculinities has established a clear and complex link between masculinity and violence. I contribute to the study of that link by exploring the relationship that men students from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) have had with violence along their life trajectories and in their everyday experience. I discuss this in relation to the notion of the “masculinity mandate” put forth by feminist scholar Rita L. Segato. Through the analysis of 43 in-depth interviews with undergraduate students, I show how these young men have incorporated various forms of violence to their action repertoire to keep their masculine positions and identities stable in different moments in their lives. In many cases, this has also meant these men have had to position themselves vis-à-vis violence walking away from it, manifestly rejecting it, or overtly challenging it. Likewise, students are embarked in a process of negotiation with the different denunciations of masculine violence put forth mostly by mobilized feminist collectives and public discourse within their university context and in the city at large.