Mens Friendships as Feminist Politics?

This book discusses mens friendships in relation to queer, discursive, and intersectional feminist theories. It analyses stories of intimacy, touch, hugs, and conversations, connecting these with current discussions within feminism and critical masculinity studies on new men, mens political activism, and how friendships are lived and conceptualised in relation to heteronormative relationship ideals. Drawing on individual and dyadic interviews with middle-class Swedish men, all engaged in or sympathetic to feminist issues in some sense, this volume shows that Swedish gender equality ideologies as well as feminist, therapeutic, neo-liberal, and individualist discourses prevalent in the Western world structured the mens friendships and their engagement with gender politics. Chapters cover friendship temporalities, gendered friendship ideals, friendship as mens politics, and friendship as performed in interaction. Bridging the literatures of feminist research and friendship, the author points to tensions and contradictions in pro-feminist mens political projects and in contemporary masculine positions.