Men are Vulnerable too: Analysing the Self-presentation of Indian Men’s Right Activist Online Networks

Abstract

In this article, I examine the content of online pages of Men’s Rights Activists (hereafter MRAs) in India. The objective of my analysis is to illuminate what discursive elements are used by Indian MRA groups to motivate their existence and their mission. My primary sources are texts posted on websites and Facebooks pages. The argument I put forward in this paper is that Indian MRAs justify their mission by manipulating and re-articulating the meaning of ‘gender’ so that it becomes a useful category only when attached to men. While MRA groups are present and active in several countries worldwide, I argue that the Indian case is particularly illuminating when it comes to shedding light on the growth of anti-feminist communities at a time when “masculinist political revival” (Maellström 2016) is on the rise globally.