Male victims of violence and men’s rights struggles

Abstract

Male victims of intimate partner violence hold an ambiguous position in feminist research and in theory, including in critical studies of men and masculinities. This is due to the ways in which male victims of violence are framed in intertwined academic and political struggles over gendered patterns of victimisation. Recently, there has been a rise of antifeminist mobilisation spanning from organisations and lobby groups to looser groupings on social media. This is an important context which further complicates the contemporary politicisation of male victims. This chapter sheds light on the interface between masculinist policies and men’s personal stories of victimisation by analysing how the narrative framing and affective space offered by a masculinist/antifeminist men’s rights organisation works for individual male violence victims. By highlighting the ambiguities between the organisation’s mobilisation of collective emotions bolstering an antifeminist narrative of men as a discriminated group, and individual male victim’s personal stories and feelings, the chapter elucidates the complex relations between the personal and the political in contemporary masculinist policies.