Event Details:
Good Guys, Bad Guys: The Perils of Men's Gender Activism explores questions of masculinity, privilege, and identity to explain why men’s feminist allyship is not enough to solve gender inequality, and how men’s antifeminism moves us backward. The book compares the narratives of two very different groups of men gender activists: feminist men and men who are men’s rights activists, or members of an antifeminist social movement. Through in-depth interviews with the men themselves, the book pieces together men’s trajectories into activism. While one might imagine that feminist men and men’s rights activists are as different as they come, Good Guys, Bad Guys shows that they have the same motivation: they want to feel like and be seen as good men. Unfortunately, this rather superficial motivation prevents feminist men from imagining how they can concretely and effectively challenge gender inequality, and invests men’s rights activists in a virulently misogynist movement. As a result, even feminist men reinforce gender inequality through their attitudes, behaviors, and relationships. Good Guys, Bad Guys tells the surprising story of what men gender activists across the political spectrum share in common, and how their similarities end up sustaining gender inequality.
Speaker Bio:
Emily K. Carian is an assistant professor of teaching in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Her work examines how cultural beliefs, masculinity, and male supremacism contribute to persistent gender inequality. She is co-editor of Male Supremacism in the United States: From Patriarchal Traditionalism to Misogynist Incels and the Alt-Right. Carian earned her PhD in Sociology from Stanford University, where she was a Clayman Graduate Dissertation Fellow.