Political Identities and Political Landscapes: Men's Narrative Work in Relation to Women's Issues

Abstract

This article presents case studies of two men who have a history of political activism on “women's” issues. The aim of my analysis is to describe the interpretive practice (Gubrium and Holstein 1994) through which the respondents construct individual political identities that make sense of their activism. The analysis treats identity as a narrative construction and also demonstrates that the context of this identity work is itself a construction. When respondents talk about their involvement in women's issues, they simultaneously construct an image of the political landscape, their own identities, and a relationship between the two.

In their narratives, the two men constructed very different images of the political landscape and identities in relation to it. One man interpreted the autobiography he constructed in terms of socialization and social learning in an effort to demonstrate an ongoing engagement with feminist concerns. The other man invoked a folk theory, consistent with feminist standpoint epistemology (Harding 1990), that used his gender to “define him out” of activism on women's issues.

I argue that these cases (1) demonstrate that narrative operates as a site at which men negotiate their relationship to gendered politics and women's issues and (2) represent a previously unrecognized dynamic of interpretive practice (Gubrium and Holstein 1995) in which actors assume discretion over the narrative construction of both their identities and the context in which that identity is to be understood.