This chapter discusses the politics of men’s roles and responsibilities in efforts to end gender-based violence. Feminist analyses of the arrangements of power and male privilege that both produce and are produced by such violence make clear that ending such violence cannot simply be a matter of individual men changing their violent behaviour. Political action is required to challenge the patriarchal power and privilege underlying this violence. But what can men’s roles and responsibilities be in such action, given the ‘dividend’ that men share from living in patriarchal societies?
It becomes easier to answer this question when the political connections between men, gender and violence are made more explicit. This is to say, it is important to locate the connections between men, gender and violence, and strategies to address these connections, in the political space in which multiple oppressive social relations are formed and can be contested.
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