Keywords

The Whiteness Problem

Let us begin by looking to Linda Alcoff’s work on white anti-racism as a fruitful comparison for making sense of the possibility of normative feminist masculinity. In particular, let us consider how Alcoff addresses what she calls the question of white identity:

But what is it to acknowledge one’s whiteness? Is it to acknowledge that one is inherently tied to structures of domination and oppression, that one is irrevocably on the wrong side? In other words, can the acknowledgement of whiteness produce only self-criticisms, even shame and self-loathing? Is it possible to feel okay about being white? (2006, 206)

Avowed white supremacists might feel okay about being white, but what about white people who are committed to anti-racism? Alcoff holds that each of us needs some felt connection with a larger community, some history beyond ourselves to avoid falling into nihilism and stay invested in the value of social progress. While it is understandable that anti-racist whites might wish to disavow their unjust social privileges, Alcoff sees the attempt to repudiate white identity as itself a problem: “whites cannot completely disavow whiteness or distance themselves from their white identity. One’s appearance of being white will still operate to confer privilege in numerous and significant ways” (215). Thinking that one has successfully disavowed whiteness when one hasn’t is not only mistaken but counterproductive, licensing us to shirk responsibility to contribute to dismantling white supremacy. Those who disavow whiteness, Alcoff warns, “might consider a declaration that they are ‘not white’ as a sufficient solution to racism without the trouble of organizing or collective action. This position would then end up uncomfortably close to a color-blindness attitude that pretends ignorance about one’s own white identity and refuses responsibility” (215).

This is what Alcoff calls the whiteness problem—“why maintain white identity at all, given that any group identity will be based on exclusion and an implicit superiority, and given that whiteness itself has been historically constituted as supremacist since its inception?” (2006, 221; also Bailey 1998). One way to address this is to remember, regarding whiteness and the value of identifying with histories and communities, that the histories of white supremacy and the white communities who accept their racial privilege unreflectively are not the only white histories and communities. Anti-racist whites must acknowledge their relationship to white racist histories and communities, Alcoff says, while also committing to keep “a newly awakened memory of the many white traitors to white privilege who have struggled to contribute to the building of an inclusive human community” (2006, 221).

Alcoff describes this white identity as a kind of double consciousness, inspired by but different from the double consciousness identified by W.E.B. Du Bois (1903). Here double consciousness means anti-racist whites acknowledging how white identity has figured into racial inequality and exploitation while also remembering the contributions made by anti-racist whites to dismantling white supremacy. Alcoff aims neither to let white people disassociate themselves from bad white histories and communities nor to allow white people to wallow in guilt-ridden stasis, as though an unavoidable white identity robs one of any and all capacity for anti-racist work. Histories of white anti-racism can also be histories with which white people identify, not instead of but alongside of histories of white privilege, ignorance, and exploitation. Identification with white anti-racism does not come automatically, to be sure. It must be earned—giving further impetus to white people genuinely committed to anti-racism to actually and persistently do something.

Feminist Allyship: A Relational Account

Alcoff’s analysis of white anti-racism is worthwhile in its own right, but for present purposes, I want to emphasize two features that extend fruitfully to the question of feminist masculinity. The first point is her insistence that socially privileged identity and group membership are not easily disavowed: not only will disavowal be difficult for the person himself given a lifetime of privilege, but the world will continue to confer privilege in many subtle, pervasive ways regardless of one’s disavowals. In this way privilege is, as Marilyn Frye put it, “an odd sort of self-regenerative thing which, once you’ve got it, cannot be simply shucked off like a too-warm jacket” (1992, 29).

The second complementary point is that allyship against oppression can be constitutive of anti-racist whiteness, through contributions to justice and an abiding sense of how such contributions fit into anti-racist white histories and communities. This point dovetails with Harry Brod’s (1998, 210) critique of Stoltenberg’s (1989, 1993) rejection of manhood: “what is lacking is precisely the standpoint from which to practice a transformative politics that being profeminist as men provides. One is left with only an ungendered individual moral identity, rather than a gendered collective political identity that I believe is essential for sustained, effective political action.” Judith Newton similarly emphasizes the importance of “the pleasures of collectivity” (2002, 183) available to men which can help sustain their progressive political activities.

In this spirit, the sort of reclaimed feminist masculinity I have in mind frames masculinity in political, gendered, and relational terms. Specifically, I submit that allyship enables a viable open-ended normative model for feminist masculinity distinct from androgyny (although friendly to it) and grounded in feminist values. To start, let us describe an ally as one who supports and works alongside another in a shared project or end (Gibson 2014, 200; Blankschaen 2016, 9; Smith and Johnson 2020, 7). For present purposes, I would note three features of allyship relevant to feminist masculinity. The first is that a good ally neither dominates nor takes over a shared project. As bell hooks reminds us, the goal is one of cooperation rather than domination (hooks 2004, 117; Smith and Johnson 2020, 8). This leads to our second point: the project is shared (Edwards 2006), meaning that an ally working with others values the project relationally. It is not merely that their interests happen to converge, but rather, they value the project at least in part because these others value it as well—allyship is an invested relationship (Sullivan-Clarke 2020b, 32). The third point is that an ally is in some significant sense in coalition with others (Reagon 1983): an alliance is a relationship involving allied parties who are non-identical in a relevant way rather than, as Raewyn Connell aptly puts it, “mobilization of one group around its common interest” (2005, 205). No two parties are wholly identical, of course: the point is that differences between or among allies are themselves relevant to their participation and their contributions to be made in the shared project, and thus relevant to their relationship being one of allies working together in coalition.

This way of thinking about allyship embraces differences among allies as a source of collective strength rather than an obstacle to overcome. This echoes Audre Lorde’s (1984, 110) argument in “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” that differences among women are not to be feared or ignored, and if solidarity is based only on what all women have in common, then women of color will only continue to be marginalized and excluded from mainstream feminist analyses and actions. My hope is that the account of feminist allyship masculinity to be articulated in the rest of this book does justice to Lorde’s insight. One notable feature of my approach here is that while I underline the importance of difference, I do not follow many sociologists and men’s studies scholars who draw a bright line between allies and other members of social movements. Daniel Myers for example differentiates between beneficiaries and allies, where the former are “rank-and-file activists who hail from the population that would expect or wish to benefit from the movement’s activities,” and the latter are “movement adherents who are not direct beneficiaries of the movements they support and do not have an expectation of such benefits” (2008, 167).

It can indeed be useful to distinguish between those who benefit from a social movement and those who do not, but feminist allyship as I understand it does not neatly track that distinction. As with hooks’ observation that it can be true that patriarchy both oppresses women and harms men too, I would not want to assume that men do not and cannot benefit from emancipatory feminism, nor that allies more generally do not and cannot benefit from the social movements in which they participate (hooks 1984, 73; Pease 2000, 37). “One of the things holding men back from being better allies,” argues Kimberly Doyle, “is they don’t often understand what they have to gain from being an ally” (Smith and Johnson 2020, 9). To say that men can benefit from gender justice is not to presume that men benefit as much or in the same way as their allies, just as we can recognize that all women and gender non-binary people do not benefit in exactly the same way from gender justice either. I would not want to assert that men by definition cannot be feminist allies to one another nor that women or non-binary people cannot also be feminist allies to differently situated others with whom they work in coalition across difference. For Emma Dabiri (2021, 85–86), the dubious distinction between allies and beneficiaries is one reason why she urges moving from allyship to building coalitions around our shared interests. When the concept is decoupled from beneficence, however, we do not have to choose between allyship and coalition. We can recognize that working together in coalition across difference is itself at the heart of ally relationships.

Related to the non-beneficiary conception is what we might call a dominant group membership conception of allyship, such that allies are by definition dominant group members seeking to end prejudice in their own lives, relinquish their privilege, and foster institutional and cultural change (Brown and Ostrove 2013). While many contemporary discussions of allies and allyship start from this sort of definition (cf. Gibson 2014; Brown 2015; McKinnon 2017; Bourke 2020; Radke et al. 2020), I share Andrea Sullivan-Clarke’s concern that it “renders the contributions from individuals from outside the dominant social group invisible” (2020b, 34). Sullivan-Clarke identifies Veterans Stand with Standing Rock (VSSR) and Black Lives Matter (#BLM) as two groups whose actions against the Dakota Access Pipeline incursion on Standing Rock tribal lands made them not only active bystanders but committed allies to Indigenous water protectors there:

Once one considered the examples of VSSR and #BLM, it becomes apparent that the definition of allyship proposed by Ostrove and Brown fails to sufficiently address the needs of colonized people. The VSSR and #BLM allies at Standing Rock were not necessarily from privileged groups, and it is difficult to locate the privilege they are relinquishing so that others may be treated humanely. (2020a, 183)

Sullivan-Clarke sees critical roles for both allies and active bystanders in Indigenous environmental justice but resists the idea that the contributions of members of non-dominant groups are limited to latter category. “An active bystander steps in as the need arises and may intervene in real time” (2020a, 181); while this is indeed valuable to the goals of social justice, it also means that “active bystanders are not committed to act beyond the moment and once completed, it seems their work is done” (2020b, 32). The actions of VSSR and #BLM members at Standing Rock substantiated a more lasting, epistemically and affectively committed relationship to Indigenous water protectors, which Sullivan Clarke identifies as working toward decolonial allyship. “It is a relationship that is not temporary, but reflects an investment in the flourishing of both participants” (2020b, 36). To insist that only members of dominant groups can act as allies is, she says, to continue to understand allyship in colonial terms.

A proponent of the dominant group membership conception of allies and allyship might remind us that individuals can be members of dominant groups in one respect but not another, given the multiple systems of oppression predicated on race, class, colonialism, gender, sexuality, religion, and other aspects of human social identities. Thus members from different non-dominant groups still could be allies to one another provided that they also hold membership in a dominant group: for example, that Black men could be allies to white women in virtue of their gender while white women could be allies to Black men in virtue of their race. I worry however, that as a general rule this conception only works by presuming a narrowly additive conception of social oppression that intersectional feminist theorists take pains to dispel (Spelman 1988; Crenshaw 1989; Taiwo 2018). Intersectionality affirms not only that people are oppressed in different ways but that the axes of oppression intersect in messy, complicated, not so easily disentangled ways. To insist that Black men can be allies for white women only in virtue of their gender would be to presume that Black men experience oppression only ever in virtue of their identities as Black and never in virtue of their identities as Black men specifically. To insist that white women can be allies for Black men only in virtue of their race would similarly presume that white women experience oppression only ever in virtue of their identities as women and never in virtue of their identities as white women more specifically. One feature of the relational approach to allyship that I take here is that it allows for and is indeed grounded in recognition of social differences between and among allied parties, but does so without assuming that allyship practices can only be performed when one falls on the non-beneficiary or dominant-group side of a coalition. While this way of conceiving allyship may not align with how it tends to be framed in contemporary sociological and popular discussions, it is not especially new either. In a special issue of the feminist journal Sinister Wisdom, for example, Gloria Anzaldúa (1994), Andrea Calderón (1994), and other contributors speak about allyship in relationally mutual terms, where different communities of color and differently positioned women can be allies for one another. As Lisa Rudman (1994) puts it, “I think allies recognize differences and connections between us and ask, how are we going to function with each other?”

To make sense of feminist allyship in particular, let us consider feminism broadly construed. Susan Sherwin identifies several commitments common to a wide range of feminist theories:

a recognition that women are in a subordinate position in society, that oppression is a form of injustice and hence intolerable, that there are further forms of oppression in addition to gender oppression (and that there are women victimized by each of these forms of oppression), that it is possible to change society in ways that could eliminate oppression, and that it is a goal of feminism to pursue the changes necessary to accomplish this. (1989, 70)

One might add further commitments to these, to be sure, commitments central to and distinctive of various approaches to feminism. But starting here, we can say at least that feminists share these recognitions and contribute to pursuing such changes. Applying our general conception of allyship, we can further say that feminist allies come to such feminist recognitions and pursue such work alongside varied others, appreciating that others bring their own perspectives and experiences to bear on the work and ideas. Feminist allies make complementary contributions without subsuming, appropriating, erasing, or preventing others’ recognitions or their contributions. Feminist allyship masculinity, then, recognizes how gender norms and configurations of masculinity and femininity undergird social oppression, recognizes how those of us who are men both uphold oppressive systems and also can contribute to dismantling them, and achieves such recognitions and makes such contributions to undoing oppression in ways that are both similar to and different from our feminist allies, such differences owing to what differentiates our positionalities with regard to this work.

Sally Haslanger (2000, 42) reminds us that being a man under patriarchy is at least in part about how one is interpreted by others (and by oneself) as occupying a social position of male privilege. Manhood is fungible, gender fluidity is possible, yet as with Alcoff’s observation about anti-racist whiteness, attempting to disavow manhood to repudiate patriarchy is no guarantee as long as the world “will still operate to confer privilege in numerous and significant ways” (2006, 213). This is of course not to deny the right of trans women and men to affirm their respective identities as women and men against presumptive social categorization. Men seeking to distance themselves from masculinity in order to deny their gender privilege are in a rather different position, one in which repudiation of manhood assuages guilt and shame and encourages the tempting conclusion that doing this is sufficient to wash one’s hands of what Connell calls the “patriarchal dividend” (2005, 79). What men can do instead of attempting to purge ourselves of manhood is to exercise more significant and deliberate control over how we respond to privilege and patriarchy in ways that are consistent with and grounded in feminist values.

Masculinities, Connell and Messerschmidt (2005, 836) argue, are “configurations of practice.” We can regard men’s feminist allyship practices as constitutive of normative feminist masculinity such that the norms of feminist allyship give meaning to better ways of being men, ways that are distinct, constructive, and intersectional. Feminist masculinity so understood involves something akin to the awareness Alcoff describes—in this case, feminist men recognizing how men benefit from and are complicit in gender oppression while recognizing the meaningful contributions to undoing oppression that men have made historically and can make going forward. (I would make no assertion of masculine double consciousness, however, as I do not mean to suggest anything akin to what Du Bois describes as the pervasive lived experience of oppressed peoples.) Contrary to Michael Salter’s (2019) warning that contemporary criticisms of toxic masculinity risk reifying a commitment to a singular, real masculinity, some “fixed set of identities and attributes,” allyship masculinity is compatible with Connell’s recognition of masculinity as a product of arrangements, behaviors, and relationships. Feminist allyship masculinity is concerned not so much with finding an authentic manhood within each of us individually as it is with our recognition and participation in the ongoing creation of feminist configurations of practice.

Allyship has a social-epistemic dimension. Consider for example the idea of a progressive male standpoint grounded in critical reflection upon one’s own experiences as a man alongside mindful attention to women’s experiences as they share them (May 1998, 135; Pease 2000, 5–6). Achieving and maintaining this standpoint takes work, dedication, self-scrutiny, and sincere willingness to listen humbly. Drawing upon both men’s and women’s experiences of a gendered world, May’s progressive man does so as a faithful ally standing in different relation to women’s experiences than they do themselves. Indeed, May’s own account may be understood reflexively, as he strives to meet his own standard for a progressive male standpoint, drawing upon Bat-Ami Bar On, Sandra Harding, and others while testifying to his own particular perspective and gendered experiences (May 1998; Alcoff and Potter 1993).

In allyship masculinity, we can find resolution to the paradox of feminist pride in manhood aptly articulated by Richard Schmitt (2001, 399): “since we are not profeminists with unspecified gender but specifically profeminist men, we struggle in fact against ourselves, against what most persons in our society expect us to be, and against what we were raised to be.” Schmitt realizes that self-hatred while tempting cannot enable long-term contributions to feminist progress; yet he also feels that a call for pride in manhood “carries with it overtones of the old patriarchy with its distinctions between the natures of men and women” (399). In response, Harry Brod stresses that “men having a positive sense of themselves and pride in themselves as men, is first and foremost part of a political project, part of an effort to encourage and empower men to take collective action against sexism” (2001, 405). While I can sympathize with Schmitt’s apprehension, I think Brod is correct to pull us away from pride in terms of some essential gender difference and toward pride in terms of our contributions to collective action. If we acknowledge how men’s specific positions in patriarchal systems constrain and enable our relationships and contributions to social justice, we may better appreciate that the pride available to men as feminist allies is not pride in an essential male nature but pride in doing the work one can as a feminist man.

Ally Trouble?

The idea, then, is to understand men’s feminist allyship as non-essentialist practices of normative masculinity not only compatible with feminist values but grounded in them. Allyship masculinity shares with androgyny an opposition to traditional gender norms and oppressive power structures; the various behaviors and activities identified here as normatively masculine do not concern how we should dress, hold our bodies, pitch our voices, or numerous other traditionally gendered things. Instead, this reclamation of normative feminist masculinity is akin to Alcoff’s counsel to anti-racist whites to do the work necessary to become contributing members of anti-racist white communities and histories. Doing the work of feminist allyship masculinity so understood means contributing meaningfully to feminist work while being mindful of how our gendered privileges, expectations, ignorance, and knowledge as men situate our relationships and our contributions to this work in coalition with differently situated allies.

One might wonder what sort of account of normative feminist femininity is supposed to follow then from this account of normative feminist masculinity. My aim here is to make sense of feminist masculinity for its own sake, not to position masculinity as a default category with straightforward isomorphic implications for other gender categories. I would resist drawing conclusions from the present discussion for what feminist femininity should look like, or even whether this would be a good way to go about thinking of things. Men’s masculinities certainly are not the only existing or possible masculinities and normative masculinity is not the only conception of masculinity worth recognizing and considering (Connell 2005, 67–71). Norms of feminist allyship masculinity need not negate or limit performances of female masculinity nor performances of masculinity by non-binary people. As Jack Halberstam says, “it is crucial to recognize that masculinity does not belong to men, has not been produced only by men, and does not properly express male heterosexuality …it is inaccurate and indeed regressive to make masculinity into a general term of behavior associated with males” (1998, 241).Footnote 1

Whatever else it may have to contribute, the concept of allyship masculinity is not meant to be a generalized descriptive account of male behavior. To paraphrase Ruth Abbey (2019, 12), men’s performances of allyship masculinity are more contingent than tautological. There are many ways that people are and can be masculine, and allyship masculinity would not subsume or replace them all. Its aspirations are more limited: not a general account of masculinity but more specifically a normative framework for men compatible with and grounded in feminist values and practices. While I hope readers find allyship to be a compelling, constructive basis for a feminist alternative to both feminist androgyny and patriarchal masculinity, I would not presume to claim that it is the only such alternative pathway available.Footnote 2

In looking to feminist allyship practices as giving meaning to normative feminist masculinity, I do not mean to present allyship as something simple or uncontested. Some theorists and activists see allies and allyship as playing vital roles in social justice movements (Bishop 2002; Kivel 2011; Kivel 2013; Ravarino 2013; Drury and Kaiser 2014; Bridges and Mather 2015; Blankschaen 2016; Sullivan-Clarke 2020a). Others are more critical, particularly when it comes to men, white, straight, cisgender, and upper-class people describing themselves as allies (McKenzie 2014; Anderson and Accomando 2016; McKinnon 2017; Bourke 2020; Pugh 2020; Hesford 2021). “Don’t call yourself an ally,” Smith and Johnson (2020, 83) caution. “You are an ally for a woman when she calls you an ally and never before.” Ally self-ascriptions raise suspicion because they are further evidence of privileged persons’ misplaced priorities, focused more on glorification and public performance than doing the work of undoing oppressive structures. “Allyship is not supposed to look like this, folks,” Mia McKenzie (2014, 180) writes. “It’s supposed to be a way of living your life that doesn’t reinforce the same oppressive behaviors you’re claiming to be against.” Kurt Blankschaen (2016, 13) agrees with McKenzie’s critique of bad allies, though he still thinks the concept of allyship is worth saving. If nothing else, critics and proponents can agree that “ally” is better understood as a verb rather than a noun, a sustained activity rather than a badge of honor.

Indeed, the trouble is not limited to self-appointed “allies” but also includes contemporary social institutions that hand out and even sell ally badges, what Indigenous Action Media calls the “ally industrial complex” (2014). When allyship is commodified, its market depends on oppression as a persisting reality and those individuals and entities selling ally certification have conflicts between their driving profit motives and their ostensibly primary motivation to end oppression. Meanwhile those given the external validation of ally certification may exhibit the same sorts of complacency and overconfidence as self-ascribed allies do. They may feel that no further action is required once awarded the ally label (Bourke 2020) or feel licensed to correct and gaslight oppressed people on what “really” happened to them (McKinnon 2017). “A person’s behavior seems permitted given their status as an ally, but it really seems that how they perform for an oppressed group should be the focus” Sullivan-Clarke (2020a, 41) notes. As Rhian Waters puts it, our goal should be fostering “acts of allyhood” (2010, 2) more than ally attributions.

For these reasons I have sought to articulate allyship masculinity in terms of feminist practices and projects rather than self-ascriptions or institutional certifications. My hope is that maintaining focus on the practices that ground normative masculinity can avoid the self-congratulatory excess of allies and allyship culture. It is not enough for men to view or describe themselves as feminist allies in order to live up to allyship masculinity norms, any more than would be enough to view or describe oneself as trustworthy or generous in order to live up to norms of trust or generosity. It is similarly not enough to complete an official ally training to be a good ally any more than it would be enough to complete an ethics training to make ethical choices, develop a virtuous character, or stand in morally healthy relationships. So understood, the extent to which men individually and collectively are practicing allyship masculinity effectively will be because of what we have done and what we are doing, not by our titles or what we like to call ourselves.

This is not to say engaging in allyship practices is an always unqualified good. For one thing, it might be presumptive to regard certain social justice projects as shared projects. This is among Catherine Pugh’s reasons for skepticism about ally talk when it comes to white supremacy and the systematic perpetration of violence against Black people. “Racism is not mine, it’s yours, and it’s not called ‘help’ when it’s your mess we’re cleaning,” Pugh argues (2020). Even if we do not see allies in terms of auxiliary or secondary helpers, the point remains—dismantling white supremacy should be recognized as white people’s responsibility, rather than a responsibility they share with its victims. Furthermore, even when a project genuinely is shared, taking allyship as a relationship seriously means taking the conditions of healthy, trustful relationality seriously too. If I have not done the work needed for you to trust me as a potential ally, it could be not only ineffective but disrespectful for me to proceed as if that relational foundation were already in place. Relatedly, if I am unwilling to acknowledge prior or persisting injustices and to affirm your core social, ethical, epistemic, and even metaphysical commitments, I should not presume to have built the credibility I need to engage collaboratively in allyship practices toward the more advanced goals we share for social justice. The allyship practices that are open to me at this earlier stage are these more basic reparative acts of acknowledgment and affirmation, which I cannot rush past as uncomfortable or inconvenient. This is the difference that Sullivan-Clarke sees between merely putative allies and genuinely decolonial allies at Standing Rock (2020b, 36–38). The latter not only act in support of Indigenous water protectors but affirm Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, listen, and learn their histories—which includes their own (frequently ignored) histories and relationships to colonialization and settler privilege (see also Whyte 2018).

One concern about emphasizing the ways that men as feminist allies can help to make positive contributions to gender equity is that it risks erasing men’s complicity with and responsibility for perpetration of past and persisting violence against women and other forms of gender oppression. Men have vital roles to play in undoing patriarchy, not just because we are well positioned to do so but because we benefit from and contribute to it. We know the perpetrators of misogyny and of gender injustice more generally, because oftentimes we ourselves are those perpetrators. This is a concern raised by the authors and multiple interviewees in Messner, Greenberg, and Peretz’s book Some Men, on their ambivalence toward the growing popularity and influence of active bystander programs (2015, 121). Whether on college campuses, football teams, in the military, or elsewhere, Jackson Katz’s Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) Program and similar initiatives teach men to become active bystanders who step in to prevent or stop violence against women (Messner 2016, 62–64; Katz 2019, 277–310). What often becomes sidelined in these trainings, however, is the need to acknowledge and reckon with men as perpetrators of sexual assault and other forms of gender violence. In the rhetoric and role-playing of bystander trainings, it is inevitably other men who assault women, while we either passively let it happen or actively intervene as good men (Messner et al. 2015, 123).

This eliding of men’s perpetration of injustice extends beyond violence prevention programs to patriarchal systems and institutions and misogyny experienced by women and non-binary people throughout their lives. The point is not that men’s complicity and perpetrations of gender injustice make us forever unfit for feminist allyship—although the more and more we fail to acknowledge these injustices and work to make things right, the less and less our potential allies have reason to trust us. Feminist allyship masculinity is constituted by doing the reparative work to rebuild what has been damaged or destroyed by our own and other men’s perpetrations of gender oppression (Walker 2010, 2015). It means being accountable to our allies not only for the ways that we contribute to collective feminist projects, and not only for our bouts of bystander paralysis and other failures to act, but also for what we have done wrong, what we are still doing wrong now, and what we will do wrong in the future (Smith and Johnson 2020, 112; Jha 2021, 172).

“The biggest risk in forming alliances is betrayal,” argues Gloria Anzaldúa (1994, 50). Injuries inflicted by one’s allies are especially painful not despite but because of the relational vulnerability involved. Uma Narayan (1988, 35) explains:

The disadvantaged cannot fail to realize that being hurt by the insensitivity of members of the advantaged groups they endeavor to work with and care about, is often more difficult to deal with emotionally than being hurt by the deliberate malice of members of advantaged groups they expect no better of. Here, members of disadvantaged groups render themselves vulnerable because they accept the existence of good will... and have good reason to expect that they will, often enough, be hurt, good will not withstanding.

Feminist allyship as collaboration across gender and other social differences requires trust across gender and other social differences. As Annette Baier (1986) reminds us, trust is a valuable, fragile thing: difficult to build and maintain, and even harder to rebuild once betrayed.

Allyship and Intersectionality

In the previous chapter I raised concerns about the accounts of masculinity offered by bell hooks, Michael Kimmel, and others, that the things they see as constitutive of masculinity are embodied and expressed equally well by women and men. It is fair to ask, then, whether feminist allyship as a model for masculinity invites a similar critique. Does my own approach attribute something to men that is not distinctive of them? Women too act in contribution to feminist work, after all, mindful of how their sexually marked privileges affect how they understand this work. Men and women both can accrue gender privileges, some might argue, if and when they satisfy socially prescribed (heterosexist, classist, racist, etc.) norms. If gender privilege is not distinctive of what it means to be a man within a patriarchal society, does an allyship model of feminist masculinity face the same sort of problem raised for hooks, Kimmel, and others in the previous chapter?

I take this as a welcome challenge for allyship masculinities built around the recognition that, as men, our relationship to patriarchy is distinctively different than women and non-binary people, and our contributions to feminist work are sometimes distinctively different than our allies. It is true that sexuality, race, and other social categories undeniably affect how and when men are accorded gender privilege; it is also fair to say, at least in some sense, that women are rewarded if and when they conform to patriarchal requirements. Yet the ways in which men and women are accorded gender-based privileges are distinctively different, and the norms of men’s feminist allyship practices direct us to mind these differences in our gender privileges as we reflect, listen, speak, and act accordingly.

The ways in which different men are accorded gender privilege can also be different, of course. Intersectional feminist theorists (Spelman 1988; Crenshaw 1989; Crenshaw 1991; Collins and Bilge 2016) explain that the patriarchal oppression of women does not mean that all women experience patriarchy in exactly the same way. This does not mean only some women are truly oppressed, of course, nor does it mean that because their experiences of oppression are not identical then women across race and class identities have no basis for solidarity. The relevant intersectional insight here is that oppression works in a more complex fashion: sexism in practice is not isolated from racism, classism, homophobia, or other axes of oppression as these things are not isolated from each other either. An analogous point holds for how different men experience patriarchy. Consider Peggy McIntosh’s familiar image of a knapsack of privileges, a collection of social privileges large and small that each man carries around with him, always there even when taken for granted by the recipient himself (McIntosh 1988; see also Mutua 2012). Indeed, the ability to take these privileges for granted is itself a significant kind of privilege. Inside different knapsacks are some but not all of the same things; not all men across all social categories are accorded the same gender privileges manifested in the same way. So one upshot of an intersectional approach to male privilege is the reminder that as men strive to be trustworthy allies to women and non-binary people, so too can differently positioned men work to be trustworthy allies to each other. The coalition among allies may be diverse indeed.

What does an intersectional approach mean for a feminist model of normative masculinity? It complicates things in welcome and constructive ways. Men must work to be better feminist allies to women by recognizing the diversity among women’s identities and experiences, remembering that allyship with women necessarily bridges multiple dimensions of social power and difference. Men and women must work to be better allies to non-binary people, remembering also that those who live outside the gender binary of course have considerable differences among themselves too, and that given their different positions within patriarchy, men and women have different norms to fulfill and contributions to make as allies to non-binary people. Men likewise can be better allies to other men, recognizing the diversity among their wide-ranging identities and experiences and appreciating how trustworthy allyship among men requires bridging differences too.

What is it, then, that makes various men’s feminist allyship practices masculine, something that differentiates them from feminist women and non-binary people? It is obviously not that only men can be allies. Nor is it that all men should do the same things in their capacity as feminist allies. What is distinctive of men’s feminist allyship practices, and what makes them constitutive of a distinct kind of normative feminist masculinity, is that they are informed by and grounded in men’s experiences of and positionings within patriarchal systems as men. These are not always the same experiences, to be sure, but the fact that the people in question are men and not otherwise is significant for how patriarchy affects them, and so also significant for how they should contribute to its destruction.

When I am doing my part as best as I am able, my practices of feminist allyship masculinity overlap with and also differ from how feminist allyship masculinity is practiced by other similarly and differently positioned men. For this reason, we might do well to think of normative feminist masculinities, pluralized, recognizing a panoply of gender privileges and expectations accorded to men, pluralized, living within patriarchal systems. And just as feminist advocates of androgyny see its application not only to individual men and women but also to social systems and institutions, we can envision, (re)build, and celebrate histories, communities, cultures, and institutions rooted in men’s feminist allyship (see for example Kimmel and Mosmiller 1992; Guy-Sheftall 2006; Nall 2010). Among the distinct tasks for men striving to fulfill norms of feminist allyship masculinities are to reflect on and discuss the particular ways in which each of us experience gender privileges and expectations as men, so as to develop a better understanding of our particular place in feminist politics and to make more apt contributions to feminist projects accordingly.