Black, Muslim, and gay/queer male allies: an intersectional analysis of men’s gender justice activism

“Black, Muslim, and Gay/Queer Male Allies: An Intersectional Analysis of Men’s Gender Justice Activism” explores how intersecting privileged and marginalized identities shape men’s efforts to reduce gendered oppression. While there is an increasing consensus among feminist scholars and activists that engaging men is crucial in working towards gender equality, men are often framed as a unitary category. While all men benefit from gender inequality, individual men share in these benefits unequally, depending in part on their location along other intersecting axes of difference (race, class, sexuality, religion, etc.). Eliding these differences is not only analytically inaccurate, but also has consequences for women, because if gender equality organizations are not reaching all men, they are not helping all women. ❧ This dissertation is based on a year of qualitative fieldwork in Atlanta, GA, with two men's gender justice groups directed towards men at specific intersections of identities, using previous research with unmarked men’s groups—those directed at all men—as background. Muslim Men Against Domestic Violence and the Sweet Tea Southern Queer Men’s Collective are both majority-Black grassroots gender justice groups that organize around their disjointed social locations as people who receive male privilege but also experience oppression. I argue that their intersecting identities shape their gender equality work, and explore how they navigate and deploy their multiple intersecting identities while working for gender equality. I find that men’s different intersecting identities effect many aspects of their work, including group formation, individual involvement pathways, activities, group-level culture, and struggles. ❧ By investigating the effects of social location on the ways men understand and engage in gender justice work, this dissertation complicates the burgeoning literature on engaging men and boys in women's rights work. It also extends and clarifies theories of intersectionality as they apply to individuals’ experiences of disjointed social locations, those intersections of identity where some identities are socially privileged and others are marginalized or oppressed. Finally, it contributes to scholarly analyses of identity movements by introducing the concept of intersectional organizing styles, different paradigms for understanding and navigating intersectionality that impact group cohesion and effectiveness.