This paper analyses feminist consciousness-raising among cis heterosexual men as a contradictory yet necessary form of resistance that remains insufficiently theorised. In a global context marked by patriarchal backlash, authoritarianism, and the re-legitimation of male supremacist ideologies – where the terms of men’s engagement in feminist movements are often either taken for granted or fiercely contested –, re-examining masculine feminist consciousness-raising becomes an urgent political and epistemological task.
Drawing on completed sociological research conducted in Barcelona, the paper examines how white, urban, middle-class cisgender men aged 20-24 and in heterosexual relationships come to recognise their gender privileges. The empirical material consists of twelve in-depth semi-structured interviews. Grounded in a feminist materialist approach – inspired by French sociologist Léo Thiers-Vidal – and standpoint theory, feminist consciousness is analysed as a lived position (position vécue) that unfolds materially through both time and concrete power relations.
I argue that the very possibility of a masculine feminist consciousness reveals that cis heterosexual men are already well aware of their position within the gender order – yet this knowledge remains difficult to articulate openly, collectively, and politically. Feminist consciousness-raising among cis heterosexual men thus emerges as an ambivalent process. On one hand, heterosexual couplehood functions as a key site for the domestication of feminist critique, while male homosocial spaces – particularly, male friendship – contribute to the regeneration of masculine solidarity in less visible ways. On the other, cis heterosexual men who attempt to “do feminism” encounter everyday resistances – both subjective and social – that reveal the costs, contradictions, and limitations of anti-patriarchal engagement under reactionary conditions.
Rather than advocating a return to essentialist or antagonistic positions, this paper calls for recentering heterosexuality in studies of men and masculinities and thus repoliticizing cis heterosexual men’s engagement with feminism. Shifting the question from who has the right to speak to how solidarities are built and sustained, I propose feminist male researchers follow Sandra Harding’s call to develop, precisely, resistance studies: that is, “asking what leads men to resist thinking and acting in the sexist and androcentric ways to which they are so entitled by the dominant institutions” (1998, p. 183). This can offer us, cis heterosexual men, possibilities for learning from the kinds of resistances, not so visible to women, that our struggles against patriarchy encounter. Therefore, Feminist Resistance Studies – clearly distinct from critical masculinities studies – appear as a crucial space for building a lived anti-masculinism and solidarity- and accountability-oriented research agendas and practices.