Lucas Gottzén is a Professor at the Department of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University. His research takes feminist and critical perspectives on youth, gender, and sexuality, particularly focusing on young and adult men’s domestic violence. He is the author and editor of several academic monographs and volumes, including the lead editor of Routledge International Handbook of Masculinity Studies (2020, with Mellstöm & Shefer) and Men, Masculinities and Intimate Partner Violence (2021, Routledge, with Bjørnholt & Boonzaier).
Men, Masculinities and Domestic Abuse Perpetrators: Precarity, Masculinity Threats and Remasculinization Decades of neoliberalism has put the male breadwinner model under considerable pressure so that masculinity now provides limited protection against the social and economic losses that have afflicted the working and middle classes in many Western societies. Hegemonic masculinity has also been challenged by feminists and marginalized groups demanding recognition and redistribution. These parallel processes have left many men feeling marginalized and their masculine identity threatened, as white men often see themselves entitled to their social and political privilege. By drawing on research with young and adult partner-violent men in Sweden, I will demonstrate how men’s experiences of precarity may influence domestic violence. The interviewed men recurrently linked their social and economic problems to their abuse and narrated how immediate threats to their gendered position at times lead to violence. The discussion is expanded by showing how activists within the ‘manosphere’ advocate woman abuse as an adequate response to masculinity threats. Through this, I argue that domestic violence becomes a means of remasculinization of society and individual men.