Analyses of gender-based violence during mass conflict have typically focused on violence committed against women. Violence perpetrated against men has only recently been examined as gender-based violence in its own right. Using narratives from 1,136 Darfuri refugees, we analyze patterns of gender-based violence perpetrated against men and boys during the genocide in Darfur. We examine how this violence emasculates men and boys through four mechanisms: homosexualization, feminization, genital harm, and sex-selective killing. In line with an interactionist approach, we demonstrate how (...) genocidal violence is gendered and argue that perpetrators committing gender-based violence perform masculinity in accordance with hegemonic gender norms in Sudan. We also show how gender-based violence enacts, reinforces, and creates meaning on multiple levels in a matrix of mutually reinforcing processes that we term the gender-genocide nexus. By extending the gender–violence link to the context of mass atrocity, this study facilitates an understanding of the mechanisms through which gender inequalities can be reproduced and maintained in diverse situations and structures. (shrink)

Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews, this article analyzes the ways that male residents in a drug treatment program signified a masculine self through compensatory manhood acts. I analyze four strategies of identity work that men used during group accountability sessions called “games”: signifying masculinity through aggression; subordinating women and nonconventional men; calling others to account as men; and “keeping your head”: managing emotions to assert control. This article adds to our understanding of the ways that compensatory manhood acts (...) are structured locally through interaction, highlighting ways that men’s interactions may be self-defeating and also reproduce inequality by reinforcing dominant ideologies of misogyny and homophobia. In addition, it speaks to the ways that masculine subjectivity is constructed against and through dominant narratives of addiction and treatment. (shrink)

Previous research analyzing masculinity and domestic violence has focused on men’s accounts of the violence they have committed; relatively little research has focused on men’s accounts of victimization. This article critically examines how men negotiate the competing discourses of victimization, hegemonic masculinity, and stereotypes about domestic violence when filing for a domestic violence protection order against a woman partner. Three themes related to gender and victimization emerged from the men’s narratives. First, the men’s descriptions of the violence they had experienced (...) focused on their power and control over their intimate partner. Second, the men described their active resistance to the abuse but were careful to note that their actions were not “abusive” and that they were not the “abusers.” Finally, although most of the men described both verbal and physical abuse, most did not express a fear of their partner. I discuss the results of this analysis in the context of the recent increase in men claiming victimization in a number of realms. (shrink)