This book discusses men’s 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, men’s 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 men’s friendships and their engagement with gender politics. Chapters cover friendship temporalities, gendered friendship ideals, friendship as men’s 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 men’s political projects and in contemporary masculine positions.
Table of Content
1. Introduction.- 2. Couples, Careers, and Friendships: Normative Friendship Temporalities.- 3. Talkative Men, Therapeutic Friendships.- 4. “I Hate Laddishness!” Political Friendships.- 5. Nice Friendships, Nice Interviews?.- 6. Conclusion: Friendship Politics as Feminist Politics?.
About the author
Klara Goedecke is a researcher in Gender Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden. Her research focuses on men and masculinities from intersectional perspectives, and includes work on men’s friendships, homosociality, postfeminism, Swedishness, and gender equality. Her work has appeared in
Men & Masculinities,
Feminist Media Studies, and
European Journal of Culture Studies, and she is the co-editor (with Helena Wahlström Henriksson) of
Close Relations: Family, Kinship and Beyond (Springer 2021).
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