The destabilising effect of feminist, queer-inclusion and therapeutic counter-discourse: A feminist poststructuralist account of change in men's friendships

Abstract

Critically engaging with prevailing theories of change in masculinities, this article offers a feminist poststructuralist account of Australian men's increasingly intimate same-gender friendships. Per Beasley, feminist poststructuralists treat social change as a consequence of contestation between discourses. In line with this, I contend that the increasing influence of feminist, queer-inclusion and therapeutic counter-discourses in recent decades has destabilised (but not overridden) masculinist discourse in the context of men's friendships, offering men an alternative subject position that allows care, expressiveness and intimacy. Here, I define each of these counter-discourses, demonstrate how they challenge the discursive components of masculinism and use snippets of data from an intergenerational study of Australian men's friendships to illustrate how this shapes men's homosocial practices. Ultimately, I argue that by applying a feminist poststructuralist lens, scholars can examine how men navigate new and contentious discursive terrain, and better account for the complexity of social change in masculinities.