Self-Representations of Gender-Equality-Oriented Men’s Organizations in Austria,Germany,and Switzerland

Abstract

Research is carried out on an institutionalizing transnational scene of gender-equality-oriented men’s organizations in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. In this article, I give insight into the websites of eight men’s organizations. The webpages demonstrate a special type of communication, indicate their desired outward perception and readership, and are part of a programmatic discourse. The webpage analysis shows a variety of statements, addressees, and aims, which indicate that a clear self-perception of men’s politics is not to be found. Instead, men’s politics is a field of different interpretive patterns and discursive battles for interpretive power.

Keywords

gender equality activism social movements pro-feminism politics men’s

Approaching the Field of Men’s Politics

The public sphere and media in German speaking countries are more and more pervaded by specific issues on men’s lives, such as the discourses about the so-called “men’s crisis,” about “boys as losers of education,” and “men as victims of jurisdiction.” Many of these narratives and discourses are notably anti-feminist. However, the discursivation of manhood and masculinities does not only present itself in anti-feminist men’s or father’s rights groups, but also in some men’s organizations,¹ associations, and men’s groups seeking “gender equality.” They aim to sensitize for a plurality of masculinities, to call attention to their own male problems with patriarchal costs and privileges, and they want to change gender relations. Michael Messner pointed out that the politics of masculinities can be categorized using a triangle of three possible approaches: stressing the costs of masculinities, focusing on the privileges of manhood, or emphasizing the diversity of men (Messner, 1997). A “balanced approach” would, therefore, be in the middle and contain all three foci.

My research is about gender-equality-oriented men’s organizations or men’s politics. I purposely do not use the term pro-feminist for men’s politics as pro-feminism is not the binding force between the organizations I am interested in. By naming them gender-equality-oriented, I use the self-descriptions on their websites, considering gender equality as a guiding principle, and I try to work out their understanding of it.

These organizations and associations declare their will for “gender equality,” collaborate partially, for example, with women’s institutions and federal institutions, and engage in several, sometimes diverse, activities. Some of those activities are, for instance, prevention work against sexual assault and domestic violence (Messner, Greenberg, & Peretz, 2015); counseling of men and boys to provide new perspectives on life, such as male friendship, sexuality, women, and divorce; lobbying and trying to influence federal politics (as part of the European Gender Mainstreaming concept); sensitizing each other for a plurality of masculinities within men’s consciousness raising groups; organizing conferences about “men’s issues” (such as “men and care” and militarized masculinities) or “boys’ days”²; or doing practical research about masculinities themselves. The term men’s politics (German: Maennerpolitik) becomes more and more a common description of these associations, groups, or networks (see below). Some of these organizations are successor institutions of the so-called “exit politics” (Connell, 1995), pro-feminist, and anti-sexist men’s groups of the 1970s, who wanted to give up the privileges they received as men from patriarchy.

My current research is concerned with their discursive and collective framing of gender and men’s politics, gender equality, and “appropriate” gender relations. I focus on organizations in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, as all of these three countries host several institutionalized³ organizations connected to each other. I am collecting data from their websites and conducting expert interviews with representatives of several organizations in all three countries.

In this article, I introduce one of my data sources: the websites of selected organizations. My goal is to examine the websites with regard to the self-portrayals of men’s politics. On the basis of a symbolic-semantic analysis of media conducted by the German sociologist Reiner Keller, I dissected the webpage texts into the following segments: text-structure, addressed topics and actors, single arguments, symbolic-rhetoric tools used, problem structure (divided into cause and kind of problem, solution, obstacles; Keller, 2003, p. 219). Furthermore, I added the segment (assumed) addressee. I locate webpages on a programmatic discourse level, which means that they constitute the public image of an organization and are the “stages” of the desired outer perception.⁴ Moreover, the websites function as a mobilizing platform and are part of the framing of men’s politics. Framing is a concept set up by David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford (Snow & Benford, 1988) within the social movement research. According to this, social movements “frame, or assign meaning to and interpret, relevant events and conditions in ways that are intended to mobilize potential adherents and constituents, to garner bystander support, and to demobilize antagonists” (Snow & Benford, 1988, p. 198). Just as social movements have to frame activities and content to mobilize followers, so do other organizations, political parties and actors, and associations to mobilize members and supporters. According to some social movement researchers, an increasing institutionalization—which can be determined with regard to men’s politics—does not necessarily contradict the social movement character (Rucht, Blattert, & Rink, 1997). Therefore, men’s organizations can be defined as a social movement. But, at the same time, I expose the problem of a suggested complementary character to the women’s movement, as a “men’s movement” cannot count on solidarity within a marginalized group but will, rather, struggle against a privileged status, which is accepted by the majority of men. I will refer to the organizations as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) instead of a social movement; however, concepts and approaches from social movement research are useful for my research and will be applied. However, the method of webpage analysis is limited: Conclusions about the selected men’s organizations cannot be finalized by analyzing their webpages only⁵ .

First of all, the example of a men’s group will show the background of my current research and illustrate the development of the men’s group through the last decade.

Development of the “Forum Maenner”

The “Forum Maenner” (“Forum Men”) is a men’s group or network, as it calls itself, which has existed since the late 1990s. It is located in Berlin, Germany, and formally⁶ belongs to the Gunda-Werner-Institute, which is the department of feminism and gender equality of the Heinrich-Boell-Foundation, a foundation of the German Green Party.

During former research⁷ based on participatory observation and 10 guideline-based interviews, conducted in 2010 and 2011 with members of the “Forum Maenner,” I discovered an interesting development of this group within the last decade. Besides a striking degree of institutionalization, an increasing professionalization and politicization were prevalent. The informants explained that at the beginning of the group process, men from men’s and youth work came together with sociologists and researchers who were interested in masculinities. The idea was to create a productive group, consisting of gender-sensitive men from practice and research. They met to talk with each other about personal issues connected to masculinities, such as their own fatherhood, child custody, male friendships, or male communication. The group had no intent to address the public.

At an early stage in the group development, a division of labor had been established that divided the group into a constant group (“coordination circle”), which acts as an advisory board, responsible for the content-wise development of the “Forum Maenner.” On the other side, the realization of the concept (e.g., hosting conferences on specific topics) is carried out by small and changing groups of members. This division of labor and the resulting increase of efficiency can be understood as a first step toward professionalization. In addition, the group has a speaker and has established the regulation to organize closed member meetings once a year and a theme conference twice a year. One interviewee pointed out:

Over the years it professionalized insofar as these conferences were or are organized every half year . . . [it has] shifted to some kind of a conference business, at the beginning it was more, I would say during the first 3 or 4 years, it was . . . an in-group event as there always came the same 40 or 50 people, it really shifted.

The original character of an “in-group event” seems to have been lost, and the group developed into a group oriented toward outside perception.

Since the late 2000s, the group seeks an improved political perception and publishes political statements on its webpage to better distinguish itself from anti-feminist groups and men’s rights movements. One interviewee evaluated the development as follows:

I think that the major incisive change at the moment is . . . that it developed from an identity-guided troupe of men who felt like somehow exchange views, simply became a forum, which is perceived on the political stage.

The informants explained that the public perception of anti-feminist statements and groups has increased, and it was, therefore, of particular importance to make their own moderate attitudes toward feminism and men’s issues visible.

Another nuance of the development of the group affected the use of the term men’s politics: According to the interviewees, this term was once taboo but now has lost its anti-feminist connotation and became a usable word and is meanwhile a part of the online self-description of the forum. The group once agreed that the term men’s politics runs the risk of undermining women’s living conditions and discrimination. According to the informants, the term can be used today without an anti-feminist connotation. This change of meaning concerning men’s politics indicates a societal development that demonstrates a wider acceptance of (collective) actors that identify men as being affected by the gender system. Men’s politics serves as a representative of this development.

Federal Men’s Politics

This normalization of the term men’s politics reflects also on the fact that in 2012, an anthology titled Men’s Politics (Maennerpolitik) was published by the president of the Swiss association “maenner.ch” (Theunert, 2012a). The book includes articles from actors in the scene of men’s groups, men’s organizations, and persons working in the field of gender equality in the German speaking areas of Europe. Another consolidation of men’s issues beyond national borders is also visible in symposiums co-organized by federal ministries, such as the conference on men’s politics in October 2012. Thereby, the topic has reached the level of federal administration. For example, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, and Consumer Protection established a policy department for the needs of fathers and boys in 2001.⁸ As a reaction to this, men’s counseling institutions and men’s offices in Austria formed the AMOE (“Arbeitsgemeinschaft Maennerberatungsstellen und Maennerbueros Oesterreichs”) acting as an opposite pole to the department. In Germany, the Federal Ministry of Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth established the department “gender equality policy for boys and men” (Gleichstellungspolitik für Jungen und Maenner) in 2009.

This centralization and concentration, partly on a state level, of alleged men’s concerns leads to new funding options for some organizations. In Germany, the Bundesforum Maenner was established in 2010 and has received start-up funding for 3 years from the Federal Ministry of Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. In Austria, the policy department for the needs of fathers and boys (Maennerpolitische Grundsatzabteilung) finances research and publications on male issues.⁹ Unlike Germany and Austria, Switzerland does not have a men’s policy approach institutionalized by the state. Instead, the organization maenner.ch refers to itself as an “umbrella association” and lobby for nationwide men’s and father’s organizations; it tries to influence political decision-making processes, specifically on the federal level.

Analyzing Men’s Organizations’ Websites

The analyzed websites should provide a first glimpse of insight into self-portrayals of men’s politics. Websites, which represent a fluid type of self-portrayal, ensure public attention within and outside of the “movement.”¹⁰ Thus, the homepage has a significant function to pre-interpret the content that follows on subpages (Reichertz & Marth, 2004, p. 9). In addition to the homepage, I also focus on the subpages, which reveal the collaborations, topics, foci, demands, fields of action, offerings, and addressees of the men’s organizations.

Upon analyzing the webpages of pre-selected men’s organizations in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, I realized my recurring inclination to position the organizations on a scale of feminist-to-anti-feminist-thinking.¹¹ Even though my research question does not include the will to categorize these organizations within this field, it seems to be almost impossible to analyze the demands, aims, and statements independently from feminist demands and equal opportunities policy. That results from the fact that the organizations, having similar topics as feminism, are rooted in a society of which feminist theories, women’s movements, and the resulting gender-equality politics are already an institutionalized part. Hence, these organizations cannot be viewed upon and analyzed autonomously from this field. Also, the will of feminist mapping can be explained by an anti-feminist backlash in media (Klaus, 2008) and an increasing amount of masculinist and right-wing expressions within newspaper articles but primarily in Internet forums (Gesterkamp, 2010; Kemper, 2012; Rosenbrock, 2012). However, my research does not aim to identify the organizations on a feminist scale. Instead, I am looking at their themes, activities, and self-portrayals without losing the context of feminism and equality politics.

First, I divide the organizations into three clusters: Umbrella Organizations, Counseling Organizations, and organizations at the interface of research, education, and counseling: I call this third group Joint Ventures. All of the organizations are connected to one another via their websites. The connection of all of the selected organizations to the country-specific Umbrella Organization was one criterion to select an organization and take it into the data sample.¹² Table 1 names eight organizations of every cluster and shows the main field of action.

Table 1.

Clusters of Men’s Organizations and Their Field of Action.

Type	Name	Field of action
Umbrella Organizations	Bundesforum Maenner (DE) Maenner.ch (CH)	Political lobby work
Counseling Organizations	Mannebüro zueri (CH) ForumMann (CH) Mannigfaltig e.V. (DE) Maennerberatung Wien (AT)	Psycho-social/therapeutic work with and counseling for men and boys
Joint Ventures	Verein für Maenner- und Geschlechterthemen Steiermark (AT) Dissens e.V. (DE)	Youth work/education, counseling, and research

Umbrella Organizations doing political lobby work exist in Germany and Switzerland, but in Austria, lobby work for male issues cannot be stated and financial resources for this type of work do not exist (Siegl, Scambor, Zingerle, & Mauerhofer, 2013, p. 12). The organization type Joint Ventures, on the interface of youth work/education, counseling, and research, exists in Austria and Germany.¹³ The German association “dissens e.V.” divided into two different associations in 2012. One association (Dissens—Institut fuer Bildung und Forschung e.V.) focuses on research, and the other one (Dissens—Pädagogik und Kunst im Kontext e.V.) does youth work/pedagogy in connection with art. They have two different websites and logos (but colored similarly). But as they use the same heading (dissens), they are strongly interweaved through their websites and claim to only closely collaborate, I will continue analyzing them as a Joint Venture.

The funding for all of these organizations is similar and quite often project-based. Most of them are registered associations and are financed through membership fees, as well as through private sponsors, sometimes through the public domain, and according to the project, also, private sector companies and foundations fund a few of the organizations.

Umbrella Organizations

The Umbrella Organizations in Germany and Switzerland build a political lobby and try to call the attention of federal polity and a wider public to men’s issues. They collaborate with federal offices and working groups. For example, “maenner.ch” collaborates with, among others, the Swiss Federal Office for Gender Equality (FOGE), the Swiss association for co-parenting, a non-partisan group of parliamentarians, and the Federal Council. The “Bundesforum Maenner” collaborates with, among others, the National Association of municipal women’s offices and equality bodies in Germany, and the German Women’s Council. Besides these collaborations, the Umbrella Organizations gather Counseling Organizations and Joint Ventures as consolidated member organizations.

The topics of the Umbrella Organizations include reconciliation of family and work, working conditions, fatherhood, violence, divorce, sexuality, health, age/older men/grandfathers, gender-equality policy/women’s policy/men’s policy, and gender roles. The topics are related to their demands, which can be split into those concerning men’s lives directly and those concerning society. The demands for men’s lives constitute the major part and can be summarized as providing more possibilities for men. Both kinds of demands focus mainly on the topic of reconciliation of family and work. Other strong demands are the involvement of men into gender politics and the assumption of responsibility by men within gender relations. Some of them are rather abstract (e.g., societal support and acceptance of active fatherhood, abolition of the male breadwinner model in favor of shared responsibility for both income and childcare) and some others request concrete legal measures (e.g., expansion of the so-called “partner months” within the federal legislation of parental leave in Germany, and abolition of the “childcare supplement”; the Betreuungsgeld¹⁴).

In 2013, before the election to the German Bundestag, the organization “Bundesforum Maenner” sent questions related to men’s/boy’s/father’s and gender-equality politics to the major political parties and published the answers of the parties on its webpage. In addition, federal ministries are addressed by the “Bundesforum Maenner,” and policy fields such as labor market policy, family policy, gender policy, and health policy are targeted. These fields are perceived to omit or marginalize men’s needs and issues, and change requests are formulated.

The topic violence serves as a generic term for different phenomena. The topic of physical/sexualized violence against women is rarely mentioned.¹⁵ Instead, violence is mainly used for demanding a higher visibility of violence against men and boys and their (assumed as tabooed) vulnerability. Accordingly, a large focus is on circumcision. In 2012, the so-called “circumcision debate” was triggered by a verdict of the regional court in Cologne, which declared circumcision a physical injury and was a widely discussed topic in Germany. The discussion involved anti-religious, partly anti-Semitic, perspectives, as well as arguments, which evaluated circumcision as a decision to be made by parents only and according to their attitudes or religious beliefs.

Only a few demands of the Umbrella Organizations address single men, others address the federal polity, and some demands are addressed with respect to women/feminists and gender-equality experts or equal opportunity representatives. In explaining men’s needs, the topics indicate the assumed readership: heterosexual, (White) employed men, who belong mainly to the middle class. No demands are made concerning discrimination related to racism, misogyny, homophobia, unemployment, or social welfare.

Counseling Organizations

The topics of Counseling Organizations are quite similar to those of Umbrella Organizations. Instead of pronouncing political demands, the webpages of the Counseling Organizations are more likely to simply inform the public of what they offer. In light of a “challenging situation for men in society,” for example, a “lack of orientation of (young) men and boys nowadays” (mannigfaltig, 2015a), counseling provides help. The themes are treated on a more individual level than on the websites of the Umbrella Organizations. These are, for example, divorce, alimony, fatherhood, work conditions, sexuality, alcoholism, addiction, bullying, health, gender roles, and male identity. Instead of referring to circumcision as a form of violence (as the “Bundesforum Maenner” did) the majority of Counseling Organizations treat violence in the context of prevention work and violence counseling for boys and men. The Swiss Counseling Organization “mannebuero zueri” focuses on violence, and men are mainly identified as the perpetrators of violence. The organization understands male violence as a problematic side effect of traditional masculinity and writes on its website that male violence against women belongs in a context of patriarchy and gender hierarchy. It also criticizes the tendency of psychologizing and/or criminalizing violence and, thus, displacing the problem onto an individual level instead of approaching it on the structural level. This displacement would disguise the violence against women in everyday life (Mannebüro Züri, 2015). The “mannebuero zueri” wants to stand up for male acknowledgment of responsibility for gender equality and, therefore, counsels men and boys who have been violent within their partnerships.

Unlike this statement of turning against individualizing, the Swiss organization “ForumMann” puts a strong focus on individual issues of manhood. In addition to the counseling offer, it broaches the issue of male initiation (from boyhood to manhood) and offers “sweat lodge seminars” (“Schwitzhuettenseminare”) for men, based on the model of indigenous sweat lodges. This offer promises physical purification and intense work on personal (male) questions within a same-sex group. Male initiation is not defined on the webpage, but indicates an orientation toward spirituality, an essence of masculinity or male power, and, thus, a mythopoetic tendency.¹⁶ This mythopoetic alignment is a unique feature on the webpage of “ForumMann” and I did not find it on another webpage of the selected organizations.

According to their foci, the Counseling Organizations collaborate with institutions doing prevention work against violence, municipal authorities, regions and regional equality bodies, youth welfare offices, advice centers for parents, foundations for children, or men’s organizations.

The target group or supposed readers are mainly (potential) clients, namely, men and boys, and sometimes women, such as mothers, partners, or wives. Besides psychosocial counseling for boys, men, and fathers, some Counseling Organizations offer their services for parents or organize school projects, such as casework, boys group work, everyday support, and classes on self-assertion (mannigfaltig, 2015b).

Other addressees of the Counseling Organizations are (potential) sponsors. The description of the offered work includes a justification of educational work for men and boys. The given reasons for the necessity of this work are the already mentioned lack of orientation of (young) men and boys nowadays, the need of taking responsibility for their children, and the narrowness of male role models. The need of justification could indicate fragile financing of Counseling Organizations and the wish for a broader acceptance in society.

Joint Ventures

The organizations at the interface of research and youth or educational work also address their funding institutions frequently on their webpages. The texts talk in a reporting manner about finished and ongoing projects. The topics, mentioned within these project reports, are named on a meta-level, compared with the Counseling Organizations. Involved in specific projects, the topics are, for example, reduction of gender hierarchies and stereotypes, crisis management, socialization, right-wing extremism, human rights abuses, dominance structures, gender mainstreaming, and “gender multiculturalism.” These themes point out that the assumed readership does not primarily look for counseling. These are often handled in connection with the (theoretical) concept of masculinity or masculinities and demonstrate a sensitivity toward discrimination categories other than gender. Like the Counseling Organizations, the Joint Ventures do not formulate demands on their websites. Moreover, they explain theoretical concepts such as intersectionality or hegemonic masculinity (Verein für Männer- und Geschlechterthemen Steiermark, 2015a).

Both selected Joint Ventures claim their critical perspective toward masculinities and expose the problems of male socialization. The Austrian organization “Verein für Maenner- und Geschlechterthemen Steiermark” frames this critical viewpoint within its division into two guiding perspectives: the “problem perspective” (“Problemperspektive”) and the “health supporting perspective” (“Gesundheitsfoerderungsperspektive”). Both perspectives refer to male-socialized problematic behavior such as violence and rowdyism, which would lead to damage to all sides: to the social environment of the person and to the perpetrator himself. The health supporting perspective contains positively formulated guiding principles, which are building of gender democracy and equality; support of gender multiculturalism; support of gender-based diversity; and support of gender rights (Verein für Männer- und Geschlechterthemen Steiermark, 2015b, para. 4).

By saying that “the kind of organizing gender within our society is not the only possible” (Verein für Männer- und Geschlechterthemen Steiermark, 2015b, para. 4), the association defines its understanding of gender as socially constructed. This publicly stated definition on their website can also be understood as an important statement against an essentialist understanding of gender and indicates the (desired) readership: people who are either (gender-) educated experts themselves, or are open-minded toward social constructivism and are not discouraged by those statements. This includes the will to exclude readers who have an essentialist or biologist understanding of gender and/or are supporters of traditional gender segregation and families. The “Verein fuer Maenner- und Geschlechterthemen Steiermark” cooperates accordingly with “women-specific institutions,” groups of (underprivileged) men, queer initiatives, migrants, women’s services, research institutions, and so on (Verein für Männer- und Geschlechterthemen Steiermark, 2015b, para. 4).

Unlike the majority of people working within the Counseling Organizations, namely, men, the employees of the Joint Ventures are men and women. Women working in the “Verein fuer Maenner- und Geschlechterthemen Steiermark” are primarily working within the field of research. The departments for violence, counseling, and boy’s work employ mostly men. The organization “dissens e.V.” does not mention whether boy’s educational work or men’s groups are carried out by men only or also by women. A job advertisement for this educational field suggests at least that a male employee is wanted (Dissens—Pädagogik und Kunst im Kontext, 2015), based on the use of masculine generics in the job offer.

Conceptualizing Men’s Organizations

Similarities in Formulating

In general, most of the organizations pronounce a positively connoted addressing of men and avoid a deficit perspective. But whereas some organizations such as the Counseling Organizations “mannebuero zueri” or “mannigfaltig e.V.” and both selected Joint Ventures make their critical perspectives on masculinities and male socialization explicit, the Umbrella Organizations “maenner.ch” and “Bundesforum Maenner” and the Counseling Organization “ForumMann” do not formulate a critical viewpoint.

Demands and descriptions of “difficulties of men’s lives” are often expressed in a very solution-oriented manner. Rather than “problems,” there are “challenges” to master. Rather than criticizing social conditions and naming the causes of and reasons for the problems, the focus of the webpage texts, instead, lies on the formulation of vision, aims, solutions, and positive images of a society they aim at. Of course, there are as well problems that are clearly named by organizations. For instance, the Counseling Organizations “mannebuero zueri” and “Maennerberatung Wien” name some problems such as “violence against women,” “societal role assignments,” “limited relationships of men towards women and towards other men,” “male search for orientation,” “boys as cause and sufferers of problems.” But other assumed problems can be derived only from offered solutions or aims: “manhood shall be desirable for men in its whole diversity—personally, familiarly, professionally, in friendship, and in communities”¹⁷ is an aim set by the organization “ForumMann.” The problem behind this aim can be interpreted as an underlying devaluation of manhood, not worthwhile in its current design, and characterized by limited options. Another example is the description of “maenner.ch” with regard to work conditions¹⁸: “Men engage willingly and a lot—within job, family, and leisure time. To find a balance between these demands is a special challenge for each man. To master it, a suitable professional environment is needed.”¹⁹ The initial situation is described positively and no deficits with respect to working conditions are mentioned, for example, the increasing number of fixed term contracts or the delimitation of labor. Instead, men are challenged to find a balance between different fields of life.

The technique of positive formulations originates from concepts of (positive) psychology. The model of Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg (1999), for example, recommends not to blame or judge, but rather to express feelings, speak “from the heart,” and wish. In this sense, positive formulating could be a strategy to mobilize other men for their ideas. This is carried out under the positive psychological claim not to stress deficits but rather to formulate the positive aspects, aims, and vision to gain understanding and sympathy. These positive formulations demonstrate a content-related proximity of these organizations to psychological and pedagogical concepts, which is not surprising considering the psychological/pedagogical education of many of the responsible actors: The majority is educated in pedagogy, some are psychologists or sociologists, few men studied gender studies, and only a few men’s workers come from a totally different professional background.

However, positive formulating (and, thus, avoiding severely criticizing social conditions) could also be understood as a perspective that wants no or only few conditions to be criticized or, alternatively, wants to distract from them. Another reason for a textual solution-orientation can be fragile (project-based) funding, considering the fact that funding institutions are more interested in the (claimed) output than they are in the assumptions of societal problems of their fundees.

In any case, the strategy of solution-oriented texts instead of problem-oriented critics indicates a skipping of “diagnostical framing” as the first core task of the framing process, conceptualized by Snow and Benford (1988). The “diagnostical framing” identifies a problem and the cause of or the reason for the problem. The next step is the “prognostic framing,” which offers solutions and strategies to get rid of the problem.

This specificity of offering solutions instead of clearly mentioning problems in the first place distinguishes the websites of the selected organizations from media of social movements, such as women’s movements.²⁰

Differences and Contradictions

However, some formulations are adopted from women’s movements. The sentence “the sexual is political” on the webpage of the organization “maenner.ch” (maenner.ch, 2015c) is strongly reminiscent of the feminist slogan “the private is political” or “the personal is political.” This similarity indicates sympathy with feminist demands. Yet, the same website includes victimizations of men, a typical and frequent strategy of rather anti-feminist discourses. “Maenner.ch” demands “appropriate political framework conditions, so that the man can be more than a wallet and a ‘Sunday father’ at home” (maenner.ch, 2015b). This sentence indicates a huge emotionality of the subject fatherhood. The terminology “Sunday father” and the image of the “father as a wallet” indicate an (often) absent father, degraded to a paying function. This image is a metaphor that is also used by anti-feminist groups and father’s rights activists who generalize divorced fathers as victims of their wives or the mothers of their children. These groups tend to emphasize the powerlessness of divorced fathers, struggling for child custody, blaming wives, mothers, or family courts for their difficult situation (Wolde, 2007). In this sense, this image reproduces a victim discourse that allows for at least the assumption that “maenner.ch” does not avoid to be (mis)understood as using similar strategies and contents as father’s rights movements do. The fact that one website includes both, rather pro- and anti-feminist terms and discourses, suggests a contradictory and imprecise self-perception of the organization.

Not only among organizations, but also among clustered organization types, contradictory statements are made. A striking example within the Counseling Organizations is the opposition between the focus on individual “healing” and initiation (“ForumMann”) and the warning of individualizing the problem of male violence against women (“mannebuero zueri”): Whereas “ForumMann” aims to affect the lives of single men, the “mannebuero zueri” warns instead of individualizing structural problems. The mythopoetic alignment of an offering of “ForumMann” cannot necessarily be located within an anti-feminist backlash, but supports an essentialist understanding of masculinity:

Clearly, the mythopoetic men’s movement is not at the angry and mean-spirited heart of antifeminist backlash. But when members of a relatively privileged group organize themselves around a shared identity that is shaped by that privilege, and they refuse to recognize or confront that privilege, then they are covertly supporting the system that privileges them. (Messner, 1997, pp. 94-95)

The idea of men regaining an authentic masculinity through initiation rites is contradictory to the mentioned statement concerning the social construction character of gender written by the association “Verein fuer Maenner- und Geschlechterthemen Steiermark.” Rather, this perspective places this Joint Venture near a social-constructivist gender (studies) discourse and distinguishes it at the same time from essentialist, anti-feminist, and masculinist statements and groups.

Conclusion

The webpages of gender-equality-oriented-men’s organizations show differences and similarities between organizations as well as some contradictions. Neither a homogeneous positioning, nor a focusing and addressing of the same societal level characterizes the field of men’s politics. Statements and demands vary from perspectives rooted in critical men’s studies up to father’s rights arguments, which perpetuate the victim discourse and, thus, stress the costs of masculinities. Some organizations explicitly criticize masculinities, emphasizing the phenomenon of male violence against women as part of a patriarchal and traditional masculinity, and addressing men to acknowledge responsibility. Other organizations do not explicitly mention the phenomenon of male violence against women and, instead, stress violence against men, demand societal acceptance for the vulnerability of men and boys, offer different kinds of healing for individual men, and formulate (ambivalent) statements that are used also by father’s rights activists.

According to the specific cluster, the level of addressees of the webpage texts varies: Umbrella Organizations formulate a lot of demands, which are addressed to federal political structures and gender-equality organizations, Counseling Organizations predominantly write about their offers and address these to their clients, mostly men and boys, sometimes women; and sometimes they address their funding institutions. The addressees of the project reports of Joint Ventures are mainly financing institutions, but also institutions such as schools, parents, and gender experts. Despite the overlap in addressees, a tendency of the orientation toward three different social levels is visible: While Umbrella Organizations align to a macro-level, the Joint Ventures and partly the Counseling Organizations address the meso-level. The offerings of the Counseling Organizations are oriented to the micro- or individual level.

A cluster-crossing similarity of many of the selected organizations can be seen in themes and the assumed readership, which apparently is mostly heterosexual, White, employed, male (and sometimes female), and belonging to the middle class. Another similarity is their positive formulating on their websites. Also, many organizations, regardless of their cluster, want to avoid using only a deficit perspective on masculinities. Of course (as mentioned before), some organizations strike the relevance of a critical viewpoint toward hegemonic masculinity. But in addition, most of them also point out the fact that boys and men are victims of violence, too. This contributes to the emphasis on the diversity of masculinities.

Targeting their demands and issues on different levels and striking different problems or “challenges” of men and masculinities, the organizations show different perspectives on appropriate means to achieve gender equality. Whether they try to change political environments, the individual behavior of men and boys, or transfer their own conducted research into practical boy’s work—the ideas of an appropriate way of changing the gender system differ. There are obviously diverse ideas about the “right” way to achieve gender equality and men’s politics themselves constitute a field of different interpretive patterns and discursive battles for interpretive power. Similar battles for (interpretive) power, for financial resources, and for public attention are fought between women’s politics and men’s politics within a disputed political field and a gender-equality discourse. Additional research is needed and consists of the interviews I conducted with representatives of organizations, which will provide more detailed insights about the subject of discourses, the speaker’s role, and their formulations besides a programmatic stage, as the websites are.

Footnotes

Author’s Note

The article was similarly presented at The American Men’s Studies Association “XXIII International Conference on Masculinities: Engaging Men and Boys for Gender Equality,” at the Center for the Study of Men & Masculinities, Stony Brook, in New York City, March 5-8, 2015.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Mara Kastein studied cultural anthropology, science of religion and gender studies at the Georg-August University of Goettingen in Germany and at the Paul-Verlaine University of Metz in France. She is currently working on her PhD thesis about “(Gender equality oriented) Men‘s Politics in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland” at the Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main (Germany).

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