In his not-so-little sketch of the big picture of changing Western masculinities, Bob Connell underscores the double-edged character of the title, "Unraveling masculinities," of the conference that led to this special issue. "Unraveling masculinities" is at once an apt and utopian moniker for the endeavor we convened to scrutinize. It concisely signals our feminist premise that masculinities have histories, and thus they are always unraveling. It is utopian in hinting at our feminist desire to unravel permanently what Connell has termed "hegemonic masculinities" For we wish to expose, and thereby to undermine, the power sources, discourses and practices that render these gender regimes oppressive (and deadly). This is a utopian aspiration, because new hegemonic masculinities are always being refigured and reconstituted, perhaps more quickly than the older ones unravel. Taking up the welcome invitation to engage in reflexivity about our collective intellectual enterprise, I find myself worrying about the sort of gender regime our well-intentioned efforts will advance. Connell correctly points out that something like the "Unraveling Masculinities" conference was unthinkable twenty-five years ago. Indeed most academic conferences then served (as they do still) as occasions for the enactment and performance of one brand of hegemonic masculinity, rather than as opportunities to excavate or contest it. They enact what Connell calls domination via "expertise,' Although we hope to subvert this, there is always the danger that form will overwhelm substance, (or, as my poststructuralist friends might put it, that our discursive conventions will mock intentionality.) Certainly, during the past quarter century, feminists cannot have failed to observe how the tribal customs, dialects, and social rituals of the academic conference allow even women and anti-sexist men to perform and buttress a form of hegemonic masculinity.