Patriarchy theory

So, first, how might political masculinities relate to, extend, complement or even contradict patriarchy theory? Patriarchy became an important framework in feminist theory from second-wave feminism for explaining the systemic persistence of gender inequality. It was used to frame and explain male domination, both broadly and specifically. Focused approaches included those emphasizing biology, sexuality, sexual hierarchy within the family, kinship systems, the domestic mode of production, reproduction, sex/affective production (Ferguson, 1989) and interrelations of male power and capitalism (Hartmann, 1979). With such variations in applications of the concept, arguments continued about its usefulness and different ways of analysing such relations, processes and sites/domains as structures. From the late 1970s, the concept of patriarchy was subject to increasing critiques from within feminism as being too monolithic, too categorical and Eurocentric.

These debates were further developed, synthesized and historicized in the patriarchy debates of the mid- to late 1980s and early 1990s. Walby (1986; 1990; cf Hearn, 1987) identified six main domains of patriarchy: capitalist/paid work, family/household, state, violence, sexuality and culture. Political masculinities could be seen as a useful extension of, or complement to, theories of patriarchy, for example, spelling out how masculinities are derived from, and enacted within, patriarchal domains in addition to the patriarchal oppression of women. Therefore, if one compares the political masculinities approach and these six patriarchal domains, then one might assume that one can identify: work(ing) masculinities, family masculinities, violent masculinities, state masculinities, sexual masculinities and cultural/ideological masculinities. So, where do political masculinities fit here? Are they part of, or adjacent to, for example, political party, state or movement masculinities? Or, is it rather that all these domains, in their sexual, organizational or family politics, might also be sites of political masculinities? Or, is it that all the possible masculinities just noted are sub-forms of political masculinities?

Later, Walby (2009) compressed the patriarchal framework through the concept of gender regimes, comprising four major domains: economy, polity, civil society and violence. These domains might be complemented by economic masculinities, political masculinities, civil society (family, sexuality and culture) masculinities and violent masculinities, respectively. In this interpretation, political masculinities are more attached to the political sphere of polity and policy as a domain of gender regimes.

Alternatively, political masculinities can be seen throughout patriarchy and gender regimes in terms of activity-in-time. For example, economy or civil society can be seen as sites of politics and political action, and sites of patriarchal political masculinity. In such interpretations, political masculinities appear to refer to the political quality of relations rather than separate political/policy/polity domains. In this argumentation, the notion of political masculinity, or patriarchal political masculinities, can be understood as consistent with, and complementary to, theories of patriarchy and its derivative gender regimes.

Masculinities theory

Second, how might the concept of political masculinity extend, complement or contradict masculinities theory? How do political masculinities and masculinities theory compare? Around the same time as feminist critiques of the concept of patriarchy were developing, there were critiques of sex/gender role theory (see, for example, Eichler, 1980), burgeoning literature on Black masculinity (see, for example, Franklin, 1984) and post-imperialist, class and gender critiques of masculinity (see, for example, Tolson, 1977). Building on second-wave feminism, CSMM opened up the constitution of masculinities (hegemonic, complicit, subordinated and marginalized) and their multiplicity, seen as power-laden and deriving from men’s unequal power relations, both to women and between men (Carrigan et al, 1985; Connell, 1995; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005). While this approach has been subject to diverse applications, elaborations and extensive critiques, it does supply a framework for understanding some political masculinities understood as power relations both between men and between men and women, and both within and legitimating patriarchy (or not).

Political masculinities can be related to all or any of hegemonic, complicit, subordinated and marginalized masculinities, and such further masculinities as resistant, ambivalent, dominant (Messerschmidt, 2016) and protective (Johnson, 2013; Johnson and Williams, 2020; Wojnicka, 2022), constructed intersectionally as sources of (gendered) power or loss/lack of such power. Hegemonic (as well as complicit, subordinated and marginalized), dominant and protective masculinities are all descriptors of masculinities (both types and processes) and can be specific versions of masculinity and/or political masculinity. While hegemonic masculinity, dominant masculinities and protective masculinity are all (likely to be) political, in the broad sense, and can overlap with political masculinities, they are not necessarily examples of political masculinity, as defined and discussed here (Starck and Sauer, 2014).

The key point here is that hegemonic masculinity, dominant masculinities and protective masculinity are different kinds of concepts to political masculinity. Ozbay and Soybakis (2020: 29, 31) emphasize that ‘hegemonic masculinity is not the same thing as political masculinity’ and continue that ‘political masculinities and hegemonic masculinities … dynamically co-constitute and transform each other’ as ‘synchronous, sometimes overlapping and mutually constitutive. In certain contexts, political masculinity may help promulgate specifics of hegemonic masculinity, and vice versa’ (cf Myrttinen, 2019; Geva, 2020). Importantly, Connell and associates emphasized that hegemonic masculinity, along with complicit, subordinated, marginalized and (more lately) dominant masculinities, is part of theorizing wider gender order(s). Political masculinity is a different kind of concept to hegemonic masculinity; less tied to theorizing on hegemony and specific empirics, it can indeed be hegemonic, counter-hegemonic, dominant, anti-dominant, protective or non-protective.

To reiterate Starck and Luyt’s (2019: 435, emphases added) words: ‘the concept of political masculinities can usefully be applied in instances in which power is explicitly either being (re)produced or challenged’ – one might add, in many different, including counter-hegemonic, ways. Thus, political masculinities can be evaluated as a frame for analysing masculinities when power is explicitly mobilized. Interestingly, both hegemony and complicitness involve some degree of implicitness in the mobilization of power. Seen thus, political masculinities can be an important aspect of the emphasis, rather than a fundamental rethinking, of hegemonic, complicit, subordinated, marginalized and further masculinities – in terms of how explicit mobilization of power operates. Another possible contribution of masculinities theory, and CSMM more generally, is in highlighting implicit power in studying the political. The concept of political masculinities can be useful for those purposes. With these two possible ways (patriarchy theory and masculinities theory) forward from external evaluation and critique, I now move on to possible avenues of internal evaluation and critique.

‘Political players’

In invoking political masculinities as a core concept in studying and changing men and masculinities, a major question is: does political masculinities refer to a specific definition, for example, in relation to certain ‘political players’, or does it ‘simply’ bring with it (too) many ideas? Depending on how this question is answered, political masculinities may seem a very specific and narrow notion or very broad, even ubiquitous, and recuring continuously in all fields of life. So, a first question is: does ‘political players’ refer to those with a ‘big P’, as in mainstream public realm politics, whether formal political representatives or informal political players, such as political non-representatives, or those with a ‘small p’? In the first case, is this those who define themselves or are defined as politicians, those doing politics or all making political claims, in fact, all citizens or non-citizens? Palonen’s (2003) distinctions on what is included in politics are again relevant.

Mainstream, or malestream, politics is replete with forms, examples and enactments of what can be called ‘political masculinities’ ‘played’ by mainstream ‘political players’. This is perhaps most obvious in individualized, ‘heroic’, mainstream political leadership. These include the Big/Strong Man (see Mies, 1986; Ben-Ghiat, 2020; Rachman, 2022), dictator, autocrat, military leader, charismatic leader, flamboyant showman, populist (Linders et al, 2023), nationalist leader, fascist, liberator, terrorist (Emig, 2019), revolutionary, fixer, statesman and technocrat (see Dursun et al, 2021) – which can be ways of both being a political leader and doing masculinity. There are also political masculinities that might be described in terms of post-heroic leadership or more fluid leadership. As extensively studied, Trump wreaks of a certain kind of political masculinity: vulgar, outspoken and dominating yet, in part, fluid (Messerschmidt and Bridges, 2017). In a different, supposedly more subtle, sense, Biden enacts a different, more paternalist political masculinity (see Dursun et al, 2021: 30).

However, the notion of political players can apply well beyond those in formal political positions and professional or self-identified politicians, whether elected, appointed or aspiring. For example, they could include social movement politics, ‘alternative’ politics and non-institutionalized politics, as in (pro-)feminist, queer, anti-violence and, increasingly, climate, mobility and food activism. Examples of men’s relations to gender politics (Messner, 1997; Egeberg Holmgren and Hearn, 2009) include the White Ribbon Campaign, Equimundo, Sonke Gender Justice, Men’s Action to Stop Violence Against Women, MenCare, MenEngage Alliance and the long series of Ubuntu events during 2020–21. Doing pro-feminism can be seen as an example of political masculinity, along with other superordinate critiques and counter-hegemonic movements. Importantly, such political players may operate across the institutionalized–non-institutionalized political boundary (Bergmann et al, 2014).

In terms of the global political map, further masculinized groups of political power players include: managers of transnational corporations; oligarchs, with extreme wealth; dictators of authoritarian states; state elites of global metropoles (Connell, 2016); militarized masculinities, including peacekeepers; less violent masculinities promoted by global anti-domestic violence campaigns (Myrttinen, 2019); controllers of information and communication technologies (ICTs) (Little and Winch, 2021); and leaders in polluting and promoting climate change (Pulé and Hultman, 2021). Thus, the notion of political players is not a fixed category operating in a list of given political arenas or institutions; rather, it can be extended, including transnationally, while operating within what can be labelled, in some way, ‘political domains’.

‘Political domains’

The next element to examine is political domains and which domains we are most concerned with. In some ways, this returns us to debates on patriarchy and whether politics, or polity, is a specific separable domain of patriarchy, or whether politics operates across domains or without a specific site of its own. Societies clearly vary greatly in the extent to which there is an identifiably separable domain, or domains, of politics. Usually, political domain is a shorthand for some (relatively) public and (relatively) collective, if not necessarily democratic or representative, set of political processes – in effect, prioritizing some forms and forums of public politics. This may contrast with various approaches to deconstructing public domains and malestream public–private divisions (Clark and Lange, 1979; O’Brien, 1981).

Having said that, connections of (political) masculinities with public political domains are all too clear in much mainstream politics, not only in populist, authoritarian, ethno-nationalist, fascist and militaristic politics but also in somewhat different ways in democratic, liberal, socialist, anarchist, cyber and various other activist politics. At the collective level, many forms of mainstream, socialist, nationalist and right-wing politics harbour gender-inequitable, hierarchical, patriarchal and masculinist ideologies and practices (Bebel, 1971; Kollantai, 1977 [1909]; Cockburn, 1988; Brittan, 1989; Nicholas and Agius, 2017). Some of these forms of mainstream politics can be explicitly or implicitly gender conscious (Egeberg Holmgren and Hearn, 2009); some are simply misogynist and anti-feminist. At the same time, there are more fragmented and less formally organized political domains as sites of extra-formal political masculinities in the street, online or underground – ambiguously positioned in relation to, or separate from, public domains. These work across political spectra, from right and left anarchism and individualism to right and left collectivism, and may be explicitly or implicitly gender conscious.

The analytical problem is how to draw any reasonable line around political domains, both in an individual specific sense and more synthetically. In recognizing extra-formal organizing as in incipient political organizing or more organized social movements, it is very difficult to say what is not a political domain where politics of some kind are implicitly or explicitly practised, and where political masculinities are extended. This also shows the problem of drawing a neat border between the ‘sphere’ and the ‘activity’ approaches to politics, which brings us to the third main element of what is done in politics and politicking.

Claiming or gaining political rights

The third element that warrants critical attention is the claiming or gaining of political rights. What is to count as a claim and as claiming or gaining political rights? This suggests some notion of political orientation, or pursuing political ends. Arguably, the process of claiming or gaining political rights can link more directly to the ‘activity-concept’ of politics as constituted in and by politicization and politicking – with claims understood as verbal, discursive and material-discursive, as in political masculinity claims by violence.

Political rights raise challenges for both those in formal, organized and explicit politics and those affected, served or dominated by such politics (see Ozbay and Soybakis, 2020). We may also consider which political rights are addressed, among others: civil, political and social; feminist critiques thereof; and the expansion of rights claims, as with environmental rights. Political rights can be positive (demanding action) or negative (resisting action), and political claims can be across political spectra: progressive, regressive, feminist and fascist.

Claiming and gaining is enacted towards those actors who (can) grant rights. This is often the state, but not always, as with inter-state organizations that address or even resist conventions of human rights. The linking of political masculinities to rights and rights claims also raises a much larger question: is politics only about rights and rights claims, and what is neglected by focusing on political rights? There are several possibilities here: first, political masculinities might be relevant in resistance to claims, progressive or regressive; second, those who grant claims, or not, might also enact political masculinities; and, third, politics can be understood as broader than rights and right claims, including critiques of human rights discourse. Moreover, there may be agreement on rights but disagreement about how to get there.

This, however, raises further questions, such as: why are explicitness and consciousness highlighted? What counts as explicit or conscious? Does this indicate the need for an explicit (political) programme, movement, collectivity, statement and intention? And why is the aspect of implicitness, as with, say, non-decision-making, hegemonic or capillary power, not recognized more fully in political masculinity? To address this last question, we may consider how power, whether more explicit or more implicit, can be theorized in multiple ways, as in one (directly behavioural), two (non-decision-making), three (structural), four (poststructural) and five (post-poststructural/post-constructionist) dimensions. Broadening understandings of power in political masculinity/ies towards more implicit and less conscious deployments of power involves recognition of how power around men, masculinities and the political might span one-dimensional behavioural, two-dimensional non-decision-making and three-dimensional structural (Lukes, 1974) approaches to power, as well as those inspired by poststructuralism (Foucault, 1980; Lukes, 2005), post-poststructuralism (Johnson, 1987) and post-constructionism (Lykke, 2010).

The discussion of crisis tendencies and masculine/ized attempts to recoup or challenge power opens up consideration of wider political processes beyond the immediate purview of the state, even if discussion is largely framed in the terms of societal (gender-patriarchal) crisis tendencies and/or postcolonial or related transitions. While the national/nation-state focus is generally paramount, a space is opened up for political considerations more widely still, as discussed in the following section.

Lastly, in this section, critical commentary is directed to the interrelations of these three highlighted aspects of politics: players, domains and claims. They might appear to fit neatly together in definitional terms but may not always do so in political realities, activities and politicking. This may be especially so with broadening the notion of political sites and locales, if not formal domains, and moving away from nation-state politics and societal crisis tendencies and towards the everyday and the multiple crises of the planet.

Beyond ‘political’ domains

On the first count, there is a whole variety of possible applications of ‘political masculinities’ to situations or arenas that are temporally more inclusive and often not recognized as overtly political (by some or many), and are not usually subject to explicit claims to political rights. Just as culture can be understood as the power to define and understand culture (Wright, 1998), so politics is also about the power to define and understand politics. We are now concerned more directly with politicking and politicization, not only with the named formal institutional political sphere, polity and policy. The applicability of political masculinities could be very widespread if the conscious, explicit aspect of definition is played down and/or, moreover, if explicitness is considered from the point of view of the (more) excluded rather than the (more) included actors. Indeed, in some such situations, ‘nothing happens’ or appears to happen explicitly and ‘nothing is done’ or appears to be done – no masculinities are, or appear to be, performed from the point of view of the ‘conscious’ political actors with their own political masculinities – yet, just by being there, there are profound political effects for those affected, who may of course enact their own political masculinities.

This perspective might direct attention to, for example, men’s occupation of the physical and social space just by being there, or stopping others being there, seen as a form of political masculinity – just as those of older age or with disabilities may experience the claims of the younger and able-bodied as political (masculinities). Different bodies occupy space and can appear taken for granted and ‘in place’ or awkwardly ‘out of place’ (Puwar, 2004; Hearn, 2007) in organizations, in the street and on the land. Similarly, men’s domination of automobility can be seen as doing political masculinities in making (often unspoken) claims for space. Another relevant example is the domination of digitally hegemonic masculinities and networked masculinities in the manosphere and cyberspace, including masculinist political masculinities online and their claims taking up virtual space to exclude women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer/questionning, asexual plus (LGBT*IQA+) people by trolling, intimidation, harassment and so on. Similarly, routine enactment of gender binaries might be experienced as the enactment of political masculinities by some – as with analyses of ‘heteroactivism’ (Nash and Browne, 2020), thus contesting and extending normalized understandings of ‘activism’ and ‘activist’.

Beyond methodological nationalism and towards global crises

Political masculinities, and debates thereon, have often focused on claims made within the nation state, between states, in relation to the state and, more recently, within postcolonial transitions, as with reassertions of colonial violence in and around the state or renewed turns to capitalism or earlier traditions. While not explicitly articulated in key texts on political masculinities, it is as if political masculinities are easier to see, or analyse, in national or newly forged nation-state contexts (Starck and Luyt, 2019; Luyt and Starck, 2020a). Methodological nationalism persists when national context remains unarticulated and reified, whether in politics, activism or research, and not least in the nation-state imaginary. Colonialist methodological nationalism is also easily reproduced in postcolonial transformations. Yet, increasingly, politics, including national and nation-state politics, as well as activist, (pro-)feminist and non-governmental organization politics, is transnational, transversal or pluriversal in form and spread, beyond national, even postcolonial, transformations.

Thus, political masculinities can be applied and need to be understood beyond the nation state and methodological nationalism. Political masculinities can be framed within or in relation to the transnational, or the national/transnational, and applied transnationally, in international relations and supranational relations, hence the notion of transnational political masculinities (Hearn et al, 2013; 2019). The transnational political field has diverse meanings – movements between nations, the metamorphosis of nations and the creation of new configurations beyond nations – and concerns, for example, global capital flows, migrations, information and communication and other advanced technologies, transnational cultures, and environmental change. These transnationalizations and transnational flows are not nation-based, and political masculinities in relation to them are not necessarily articulated in relation to nation-state political rights but rather potentially borderless.

Transnational shifts, beyond nations, become clearer in considering how political masculinities are involved in producing, and complicitly implicated in, global and transnational crises: often multiple, intertwining, engulfing crises for the whole planet, with uneven gender effects. These dire crises, until recently, with notable exceptions, downplayed in much CSMM, are increasingly taken up, along with the place of men and masculinities there, by scholars in and around CSMM. Political masculinities is not generally used as a productive concept in addressing such crises, but employing it might sharpen analysis of (individual/collective) gendered actors producing and resisting crises – including economic-financial-(de)growth, socio-political-(anti-)democratic and bio-environmental-ecological crises (Hearn, 2022). With limitations of space here, I focus on the last.

Bio-environmental-ecological crises, including around animals and non-humans, climate change, energy, water, extractivism, food, meat eating, oceans, transportation, and impacts on the planet and sustainability, derive very much from the tendencies of some men and masculinities towards domination and exploitation (of humans and non-humans, the environment, and the planet), and disregard for the effects of actions, with damaging environmental consequences. Political masculinities are certainly key in this planetary crisis, in several ways: in the creation of crisis in making claims for, for example, extractivism, meat eating, automobility and air travel, and potentially in making claims against these same processual phenomena and their possible alleviation, both cases make not only national but also transnational political claims. These are long-established themes within eco-feminism. Current critical research on men, masculinities and global environmental crisis is fast growing, explicitly naming the global crisis as an ‘ecocidal’ crisis in the (M)Anthropocene (Enarson and Pease, 2016; Hultman and Pulé, 2018; Garlick, 2016; Pease, 2019; Pulé and Hultman, 2021; Hearn, 2022; Aavik, 2023). Developing political masculinities to resist current dominant economic and political claims means going beyond nation-state politics and ‘rebranding’ masculinity/ies, as in ostensibly more ecologically oriented ecomodern(ist) masculinity, and instead contributing to a feminist politics of men, masculinities, (anti-)violence and environmental sustainability that makes political claims for now and the future for both humans and non-humans.

Broadening the political ‘domain’ from the nation state to the transnational means engaging with anti-racist, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist frames. The multiplicity of crushing crises – environmental, ecological, economic with global capitalist intensification, nationalist, xenophobic, authoritarian and (proto-)fascist – make a transnational, planetary orientation to political masculinities more urgent. Political masculinities can be recognized in the making of claims on the environment, non-humans, the natural world and the planet – understood within non-humanist or anti-humanist frames.