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Why Have Men Not Been Held Responsible?

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Men After #MeToo

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Abstract

This chapter examines some of the societal conditions that make it difficult and sometimes culturally sensitive to focus on men as socially gendered, especially when it comes to the more controversial aspects of men’s everyday lives. Men, masculinity, and men’s powers and practices have typically been taken for granted. In particular, topics such as violence, prostitution, sexual harassment and rape have been systematically trivialized when it comes to linking these problems with men’s socialization. One rarely comes across discussions addressing how culture and upbringing form men’s lives and somehow are responsible for the fact that it is typically men who buy sex, and commit violence, sexual offences and rape. Rather, the focus has been on the social and gender-neutral aspects of these problems, which has meant that not enough attention has been paid to the socialization processes that (too) are at the root of men’s problems and aggressive behaviour.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    However, it is crucial to emphasize that black men and men of minority backgrounds have not had that ‘privilege’, as their behaviour has often been problematized as culturally deviant. See the section ‘Ethnicity and violence’ in this chapter for a further discussion on the impact of race and ethnicity.

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  1. Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

    Kenneth Reinicke

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  1. Kenneth Reinicke
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Correspondence to Kenneth Reinicke .

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Reinicke, K. (2022). Why Have Men Not Been Held Responsible?. In: Men After #MeToo. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96911-0_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96911-0_4

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