Some Men: Feminist Allies and the Movement to End Violence Against Women by Michael A. Messner, Max A. Greenberg, and Tal Peretz (review)

Some Men explores the history of men's involvement in the feminist antiviolence movement, tracking the rise of activist cohorts, their pathways to anti-violence work, and the sociopolitical contexts of their participation. Grounded in life story interviews with male activists, the book charts the shifting politics of feminist anti-violence work, from the radicalism of the 1970s toward its institutionalization in the 1990s and 2000s. Messner and his coauthors tell this story of de-politicization in a novel way by focusing on male feminists: the "outsiders within." The authors center the question of "ally" work in the book, asking what it means for men to be involved in activism focused on women's lives, and placing this work in relevant conversations about the role of privileged groups in movements led by marginalized groups.

The book is divided into analyses that reflect three cohorts of activists. The first is the Movement Cohort: activists who entered the field in the 1970s and early 1980s at the height of feminist grassroots agitation. The authors explicate a central tension in male activists' work during these years: to pursue a therapeutic approach, focused on the emotional costs of "being a man"; or to fight against institutionalized privilege. This tension divided male activists, and only those organizations that managed it effectively survived movement fragmentation. The authors further argue that the feminist "sex wars" (anti-pornography feminists versus "pro-sex" feminists) splintered women activists in such a way that male activists gained footing during this era. The authors focus a great deal on anti-pornography feminists and how their claims fractured the feminist movement, though their presentation of this history suggests that all of feminist anti-rape work in the 1980s was splintered along these lines. By telling the story of the movement this way, the authors risk caricaturing anti-rape work during this era, belying the nuance and diversity of feminist positions.

The Bridge Cohort of the mid-1980s and 1990s took on a more conciliatory tone and focused on organizational stability. Like women's organizations, men's organizations shifted their focus from public campaigns against sexism to service provision. Men's work took on its enduring shape during this era: violence prevention work with young men, based on standardized education curricula. This shift toward professionalization, the authors argue, is largely due to the passage of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994, which directed federal funds toward a public health model of prevention. The authors locate the development of the still-dominant "bystander approach" here; shifting tactics to be less antagonistic toward men, this approach positions the audience as "good guys," using sports analogies and asking them to be heroes by intervening in potentially violent situations.

The final cohort of activists, the Professional Cohort (mid-1990s onward), is characterized by the marketization of anti-violence work. During this era, there is a critical shift toward "men of strength" campaigns, which appeal to masculine norms of "strength" and "honor" in order to convince audiences that "real men" do not rape. In what the authors call the "ultimate contradiction," then, anti-violence programs become active promoters of hegemonic masculinity. The authors also devote a significant amount of attention to the increased racial and ethnic diversity of the Professional Cohort, which contributes an intersectional approach to the work.

One of the most important contributions of the book comes from the authors' discussion of "the pedestal effect" for male activists. The authors show that men receive more respect and praise for making the same claims that women activists have long made, that they are catapulted to the top of organizations' public work, that they get paid higher speaking fees, and that the most successful men in the field leverage their own performances of hegemonic masculinity in order to access this sexist "reward structure" (139). Successful male activists...