Before the red pill : the men's rights movement and American politics, 1960-2005
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- "Before the Red Pill" traces the American men's rights movement (MRM) from its roots in the early 1960s to its growing influence in mainstream national politics by the early 2000s. Examining both MRM leadership efforts and grassroots organizing across the United States, this dissertation utilizes organizational papers, activist correspondence, oral histories, movement newsletters, advice literature and memoirs, and mainstream press coverage. The dissertation reveals the complex dynamics of gender, race, and politics in the growth of the MRM. The experience of divorce radicalized men's rights activists, who began organizing in the 1960s to reform family law. Rather than a mere backlash against feminism, men's rights thinkers adapted some of their most important insights and strategies from second-wave feminists throughout the 1970s, before becoming militantly misogynistic by the 1990s. Both conservative women intellectuals and second wives of divorced men's rights activists played critical roles during this era, softening the movement's public image and aiding in the development of a fathers' rights sub-movement devoted to child custody and support reforms. Overwhelmingly white themselves, men's rights thinkers made selective allusions to race to compare their politics to the Black freedom struggle, yet they distanced themselves from potential Black members amid the racialized politics of the 1980s and 1990s. By the turn of the twenty-first century, men's rights activists devoted themselves to undermining feminist organizing against rape, domestic violence, and sexual harassment while claiming that men, rather than women, were the true victims of gendered violence. The simultaneous intensification of antifeminist and anti-state sentiments among activists pushed the movement further rightward into conservative partisan politics. Understanding the men's rights movement helps explain the emotive roles of masculinity, grievance, and entitlement in mobilizing the far Right base and maintaining persistent inequalities in the contemporary United States.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2023; ©2023 |
| Publication date | 2023; 2023 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Iker, Theresa Michelle |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Burns, Jennifer, 1975- |
| Degree supervisor | Freedman, Estelle B, 1947- |
| Thesis advisor | Burns, Jennifer, 1975- |
| Thesis advisor | Freedman, Estelle B, 1947- |
| Thesis advisor | Schulman, Bruce J |
| Thesis advisor | Winterer, Caroline, 1966- |
| Degree committee member | Schulman, Bruce J |
| Degree committee member | Winterer, Caroline, 1966- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of History |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Theresa M. Iker. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of History. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/nh578fx0689 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2023 by Theresa Michelle Iker
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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