Living with Violence: Men University Students Negotiate the Masculinity Mandate in Mexico

Abstract

The literature on men and masculinities has established a clear and complex link between masculinity and violence. I contribute to the study of that link by exploring the relationship that men students from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) have had with violence along their life trajectories and in their everyday experience. I discuss this in relation to the notion of the “masculinity mandate” put forth by feminist scholar Rita L. Segato. Through the analysis of 43 in-depth interviews with undergraduate students, I show how these young men have incorporated various forms of violence to their action repertoire to keep their masculine positions and identities stable in different moments in their lives. In many cases, this has also meant these men have had to position themselves vis-à-vis violence walking away from it, manifestly rejecting it, or overtly challenging it. Likewise, students are embarked in a process of negotiation with the different denunciations of masculine violence put forth mostly by mobilized feminist collectives and public discourse within their university context and in the city at large.

Introduction

The literature on men and masculinities has established a clear and complex link between masculinity and violence (e.g., Dekeseredy and Schwartz 2005; Ellis 2016; Gottzén et al. 2021; Gilligan 2010; Kauffman 1998). This article contributes to the study of that link by exploring the relationship that undergraduate students who are men from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) have had with violence along their life trajectories and in their everyday experience. ¹ This is discussed in relation to the notion of the “masculinity mandate” (Segato 2003b). This inquiry takes place in a setting where intense denunciation of gender violence against women, both within UNAM and in the larger context of Mexico City, by politically organized and mobilized groups of women who identify with various positions on the spectrum of feminisms.

The UNAM is located mainly in the Mexico City valley, with a few other centers for education and research around the country. It is the largest Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Mexico. ² Feminist mobilization has put violence perpetrated by men within the university at the center of the discussion of the inequalities (re)produced by the larger gender order in Mexican society and its corresponding gender regimes (Connell 2020) at UNAM. Such a context makes it pertinent to interrogate the relationship that these students have established with violence throughout their lives and in their capacities as members of a university community.

The article opens with a brief discussion of the need to address the complex relationship between masculinity and violence, and the ways that it can be framed by the idea of a masculinity mandate that demands that men engage in violence in some form to obtain and preserve their status as men (Segato 2003b). This is followed by a short exposition of the methods employed in this study. After this theoretical and methodological framing, the analysis of interviews with men who are undergraduate students at UNAM is presented, documenting three emergent themes from those interviews: the process of becoming aware of the masculinity mandate and its coexistence with and exercise of violence; the ways they navigated this mandate throughout their school years; and attempts to negotiate the denunciation of violence in the university as members of that community.

The main argument is that the processes through which these men relate with the masculinity mandate for violence have entailed an ongoing negotiation since quite early in their lives. This negotiation is informed by the expectation for men to coexist with violence in its many forms and to deal with it in efficient and effective ways. Furthermore, this process of negotiation affords men the potential to engage in different violent processes stabilizing their claims to masculinity in the face of challenges to it, and to gain or reassert positions within hierarchies of masculinities in which they find themselves immersed.

Masculinity and Violences

Following Connell’s (1987, 2000, 2005) theorization, I conceive of masculinity as a particular position in the structure of gender relations that configures ways of being in and interacting with the world. Those configurations are multiple and in dynamic interaction with other social ordering structures such as class, race, and so on. The multiplicity of masculine configurations is such that they can —and indeed ought to— be spoken of in plural terms, as masculinities (Connell 2005; Morgan 1987). Connell’s idea that there is a hierarchy among these multiple masculinities revolves around her notion of hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1987, 2005; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Messerschmidt 2018), the way of being a man that is most respected and honored in a given social, cultural, and geographical space and time that establishes itself as superior to femininity (Connell 1987), and in relation to which other forms of masculinity are positioned as complicit, subordinated or marginalized (Connell 2005).

Despite this multiplicity, violence seems to feature in many configurations of masculinity to various degrees of integration (Barker 2016; Ellis 2016; Hearn 1998, 2021; Kauffman 1998, Equimundo, 2022). As Messerschmidt (2018) rightly points out, however, violence should not be seen as the main instrument to enforce the purported superiority of masculinity over femininity. Moreover, even when many men often use violence against women as an instrument to assert their dominance over them, not all masculine violence has the control of women as its ultimate goal. Nevertheless, violence in its different manifestations serves an important role in establishing and sustaining hierarchies among masculinities, to the point that it can be regarded as constitutive of them and of the lived experience of most men.

Feminist anthropologist Segato (2003a) has spoken of masculinity as a status to be achieved by men, and of violence as the most evident vehicle towards its attainment. The author has compellingly argued that men’s violence against women, especially femicide and other extreme forms of physical and sexual violence, is driven by men’s reassertion of their masculine status. Segato speaks of “the masculinity mandate” (2003b; 2004; 2014; 2017) to refer to the imperative for men to systematically display their masculinity in pernicious, violent ways, which can account for the staggering occurrence of sexual and femicidal violence throughout the Latin American region. What distinguishes Segato’s argument from other feminist theses on the subject, however, is that she sees men’s violence against women as a “communicative act” that has not women but other men as the intended audience. That is, violence against women can be seen as a way for men mostly to establish their masculinity among their masculine peers. This constitutes what Segato (2018) refers to as a “pedagogy of cruelty” that teaches men that violence is useful and effective to reassert themselves and garner gendered status.

The Argentine author’s view has importantly influenced empirical work on the ways in which such a mandate shapes interactions within institutional contexts and drives a systematic exercise of men’s violence, especially against women. The notion of the masculinity mandate has been used to demonstrate how men’s exercises of sexual violence are driven by it, as they are seen as effective ways to obtain and retain (masculine) power. One example is Huerta’s (2020) study on what she calls “leering professors” in a HEI in Hidalgo, Mexico. Huerta argues that men exercise this type of violence, not by virtue of the power they have as professors but rather as a vehicle to produce said power. Despite regulations in place that proscribe such behavior alongside discursive condemnation by students, university authorities, and society in general, men professors’ leering helps reassert their (masculine) power, mostly over their women students but also students who are young men.

Similarly, a study by Martínez-Lozano (2019) argues that the masculinity mandate works to guarantee the continuity of “a patriarchal political order” within Mexican HEIs underpinned by masculine violence against women. Based on the analysis of women students and staff’s testimonies, Martínez-Lozano theorizes that men’s behavior is subject to surveillance by other men as part of a contemporary masculine phratry, monitoring compliance with the masculinity mandate within HEIs. This fosters their configuration as territories “owned” by men, where an unequal exercise of power between men and women is highly naturalized. In this analysis, men “own” the HEIs’ halls, classrooms, laboratories and so forth, in as much as they can display their power by putting down and disciplining women through leering at them, offering inappropriate “compliments,” harassing, touching, mocking, or outright insulting them.

So too does Giraldo (2021) employ the notion of the masculinity mandate to interrogate violence perpetrated by men on other men, through the study of the egregious case of the falsos positivos in Colombia. These refer to the mass murdering of innocent, mostly poor young men by law enforcement, military and paramilitary forces who then make the bodies pass as members of criminal organizations, to justify budgets or other professional benefits, or simply to meet crime-fighting quotas. Indeed, these have spiked since the early 2000s. Giraldo argues that the “pedagogy of cruelty” element of the masculinity mandate is at the core of this phenomenon, fostering a “selective desensitization” that has enabled not only current levels of violence, but also the creation of a narrative of exclusion of the victims’ (mostly men) undesirable masculinity that renders them expendable. This narrative has taken hold strongly, particularly among urban middle classes, allowing the mass murders to be tolerated, largely ignored, or actively justified. Thus, Giraldo’s (2021) argument builds on Segato’s assertion that men themselves can be considered as victims—indeed “the first victim” (Segato 2018, 16)—of the masculinity mandate and its inherent violence.

Furthermore, since early in their lives, men find themselves forced to bend to a masculine “corporative pact” by complying with its rules and hierarchies (Segato 2018). In this sense, Messerschmidt’s (2000) case study of two adolescent boys who declared to have committed sexual violence can help give this idea more depth. Messerschmidt’s analysis of the life-histories of both boys shows how violence becomes a recourse for them in overcoming what he terms “masculinity challenges.” These challenges came in the form of specific interactions that put these boys at odds with the hegemonic version of masculinity in place at their respective school environments. Sexual violence offered a way for these two boys to achieve the masculine expectations of bodily and sexual practices inaccessible to them by virtue of the way they were perceived by their peers in terms of their corporeality and demeanor.

What is most interesting in Messerschmidt’s theorization is the emphasis on the boys as agents who process those expectations and act on them in ways that make sense to them, even if this is not necessarily known to their peers. In other words, this case helps us observe how a masculinity mandate can operate within men’s subjectivities, and the role their agency plays in different instances where criminal violence is only one of many possible courses of action. Considering individual men’s subjectivities can also provide insight into why many men decide not to exercise violence in situations where it is deemed to be the default mechanism for achieving masculine status (e.g., Barker 2005).

Considering the above, I argue that the notion of a masculinity mandate as proposed by Segato can be expanded by centering men as agents who coexist and constantly encounter violence themselves throughout their life-worlds. Segato’s (2018) concept of masculine mandate can usefully be employed toward analyzing the relationships that men establish with violence, and the various ways in which different men respond to or negotiate such a mandate. The literature on masculinities in the Latin American region has documented various ways that men face violent scenarios relating to their condition (e.g., Barker, 2005, 2016; García et al., 2021; Marcial, 2020; Martínez, 2016; Núñez and Espinoza, 2017; Núñez-González and Guillermo, 2019), and has advanced the notion that these forms of violence, even when the victims of men’s violences are other men, can still be understood as gendered. This line of enquiry warrants much further research.

We must beware, however, of simply thinking of violence as caused by gender. Instead, we ought to understand and treat violence as a form of social inequality in and of itself, as well as a social relation and structural division that generates inequality of its own (Hearn 2021), working through gender as much as through other forms of social ordering. This is particularly true in any analysis that purports to understand the intersections between gender and class or race (e.g., Barker 2005) resulting in multiple nuanced forms of violence exercised by men, and often causing the suffering of other men.

Through the following analysis of the biographical narratives of students, I highlight the ways these men have encountered the masculinity mandate, especially regarding the violence it promotes. Similar to what women experience as part of a “continuum of sexual violence” (Kelly 1987), I contend that these men have closely experienced violence throughout their lives to varying degrees and in different circumstances —as perpetrators, instigators, bystanders, or victims themselves. The idea of a continuum is useful to think about the nuances of men’s relationship with violence, beyond their position as perpetrators of sexual and/or other forms of interpersonal violence. Furthermore, the processual nature of violence (Hearn 1998, 2021) helps us think of the wide range of positions that men occupy vis-à-vis violence along their life trajectories, sometimes as instigators, others as accomplices, and others as the victims of violent acts.

Most notably, there is a constant negotiation at the center of these violent processes, such that violence can be seen at times as affording the reassertion of masculinity suggested by Segato (2018), while simultaneously continuing to reproduce hierarchy and subordination among masculinities, as argued by Messerschmidt (2000). After a brief discussion of the data obtained, and methods employed in my research, I discuss how this negotiation takes place through an intersectional analysis of testimonies provided by the undergraduate students in this study.

Data and Methods

The research was designed and developed through the deployment of diverse yet interconnected qualitative methods. Data collection and analysis was largely inspired by Messerschmidt’s (2000) life-history approach in the study of adolescent masculinity and sexual violence. As Messerschmidt explains, through life-history one can gain access to the “lived experience” of participants by closely analyzing the meanings that actors attribute to various aspects of their lives through their practices and the social worlds they inhabit. On this premise, biographical narratives (Bornat 2008) of the undergraduate students who all self-identified as men in this study were generated through in-depth interviews. The intention was to observe how these students have understood and dealt with the masculinity mandate, and the ways in which they have employed and/or deployed violence in connection to it, along the course of their lives and in their position as part of the community of the UNAM.

The research also incorporated principles of the grounded theory method. I utilized a purposive sampling strategy (Bryant 2017) which developed along the research with the intention to create a polyphonic sample (Mallimaci and Giménez 2006) capturing the experiences of students from various disciplines, socioeconomic backgrounds, sexual and gender identities, and so on. A call for participants was emailed to students in nine different faculties and schools within the university ³ through a network of lecturers and other academic staff. A second call was emailed out once the network of staff had expanded, extending to seven additional schools and faculties. The two phases of sampling spanned a period of 5 months reaching hundreds of students. A total of 47 answered the call.

A total of 43 interviews could eventually be conducted with the same number of students. Nine of them self-identified as gay or otherwise non-heterosexual. Participants interviewed were all enrolled in several different programs across UNAM’s various faculties and schools, spanning a wide array of majors and areas of specialization (e.g., Actuarial Science, Architecture, Art, different programs within Chemistry, Computer Science, Education, several programs within the Faculty of Engineering, Philosophy, Literature, Politics, Psychology, Sociology, and Veterinary studies). ⁴ Their ages range from 18 to 25, with a mean age of 22.

Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. They were first analyzed using a coding strategy until there was a satisfactory degree of saturation (Bryant 2017). This was combined with a later phase of narrative analysis (Bornat 2008) producing a more nuanced analysis of the experiences of participants with violence over their life course and their experiences as UNAM students. The results of the analysis are presented in the following sections, including quotations from participants’ narratives as illustration. All of them are given pseudonyms for the purposes of confidentiality.

Findings

The Violence-Masculinity Link

Participants spoke of being in contact with violence closely connected with masculinity since very early in their lives. The context of school was prevalent in most of the men’s interviews on this issue. Many students confessed early experiences with violence and masculinity pertaining to school “bullying.” In some cases, they used the term to refer to their own violent behaviors even if these were not systematically abusive conducts, and in many others, to label violence to which they were subjected. One example of the former cases is Armando (22, Computer Science major), who claimed he was “kind of a bully” because he would easily resort to physical violence as a child in elementary school:

[Ever since elementary school,] I’d constantly get in fights and stuff. It was usually as a reaction; if say, someone called me a name, I’d go ‘hey, what’s your problem, you wanna fight?’ And I’d start pushing them or hitting them and some would punch back. I think [this reaction] was a bit disproportionate, but also kind of useful, because you start building up a reputation that you’re someone not so easy to mess with.

Armando’s comment illustrates the perception of an environment in which physical aggression in the face of verbal or otherwise abusive behavior was understood as an effective means to establish oneself as a valid, authoritative masculine actor. Violence is perceived as a way of establishing and maintaining a hierarchy of masculinities. Other participants’ expressions, such as “You gotta push back or they’ll get you every time” (Joel, 21, Sociology major) or “You can’t just let others push you around like it’s nothing” (Omar, 20, Aerospace Engineering major), further illustrate the efficacy attributed to violent responses toward violent acts. Those “minor altercations,” as Armando called them, are framed as performing a preemptive sort of work, before actual masculinity challenges arise. The young men described a certain level of violence as helping underpin their hegemonic masculine projects, preventing them from being rendered subordinate. They described this understanding emerging early on in their lives.

Different degrees of school violence were presented as quasi necessary to maintain a good position in the hierarchy when masculinity challenges present themselves. This was produced in many participants’ narratives in terms of self-defense, thus legitimizing certain uses of violence. The case of Manuel (21, Chemistry major) is interesting in this regard as he explained how other boys would abuse him verbally because of an anatomic condition that caused his head to be lightly tilted:

I wouldn’t call it bullying because I was in on it, and I’d also pick on others, you know? It’d still hurt when they bugged me, but I went along with the banter still, picking on others’ physical flaws and stuff… I couldn’t say if I were the one who started it, or I was simply defending myself, ‘cause I do think if you’re picked on you gotta’ get them back, you know? Stand up for yourself. I don’t think being a pushover is the right thing to do.

Here, Manuel authorizes a certain degree of violence towards himself by virtue of him taking part in the “banter” dynamic. Although he was willing to identify his own behavior as bullying, he articulated it as the only effective response to this masculinity challenge. This causes a cycle of violence to be perceived as a natural part of the school experience for many young men who negotiate the masculinity mandate for violence through the establishment of what could be considered, in Connell’s (2005, 79) terms, “complicit masculinities.” Even if they do not fully embrace the idea of equating masculinity with violence under every circumstance, they profit from understanding how the mandate operates and can use it to reassert more hegemonic masculinities.

While many participants naturalized exercises of violence with expressions like “the normal boys’ horsing around” (Mario, 20, Architecture major) or “the usual nicknaming and bugging kids do” (César, 22, Mechatronic engineering major), most of them offered a narrative that also problematized violence. School bullying was described as a complex phenomenon in which intersecting factors are at play. Participants spoke of bullying as a vehicle for the enforcement of hegemonic masculinity that incorporated various other aspects beyond gender, such as class and race.

I was bullied as a child, but things got real in my early teens, because of the stuff I liked, sort of geeky stuff, which wasn’t popular; popular boys played soccer, hung out together outside school, had girlfriends, and I didn’t do any of that. It was usually just verbal abuse, rarely physical. And it was a private school, so there was also this thing where the darker your skin, the more susceptible [to] being bullied. (Edgar, 25, Philosophy major)

Although Edgar could articulate with clarity that he had suffered from bullying, his comments frame verbal and emotional abuse as significantly different from physical violence. This was also present in other participants’ “violence-talk” (Seymour, Natalier, and Wendt 2021), where the use of words such as “just,” “only,” or “normal” minimize violence and/or make violence less visible, discursively framing types of violence as tolerable. This opens various avenues towards compliance with the masculine mandate for violence: it can be regarded as an effective way to underpin a hegemonic project of masculinity. But it can also be seen as a useful way to prevent subordination through complicity and selective adoption of the mandate rather than complete rejection of it. Edgar also referred to hierarchy in terms of popularity as another way of articulating the hierarchical relationships among masculinities (Frosh, Phoenix, and Pattman 2002). Elements of racism and classism also come up as part of the material and symbolic elements that underpin the hierarchy, expanding the basis upon which the masculinity mandate rests beyond gender.

Violence is also present in participants accounts as part of structural and/or regional violent scenarios, as is the case in several countries in the so-called “developing” world. As Barker (2005) notes, even though the disadvantaged conditions in which many men grow up in the Latin American region do not cause the violence, “social exclusion is the framework for the interpersonal violence that gets the headlines” (27). In this sense, many students referred having grown up in “rough” contexts associated with disadvantaged or marginalized areas of the city, as well as with problematic home environments. This seems to be identified as a drastic materialization of the mandate from which they would try to distance themselves. Interestingly, even though this was usually framed in terms of the public/private divide in the Mexican school system, ⁵ particularly in urban areas, students from both sides of the divide spoke of violence in the form of bullying as a phenomenon across class yet taking on different characteristics in different spaces.

Alejandro (22, Mechanical Engineering major), for instance, who described his family as affluent and who did all his schooling before college at private institutions, said bullying in his school “was super common precisely because of this idea of always trying to feel superior.” The hierarchical dimension of masculinity interweaved with its class equivalent reinforcing one another. School violence appears like a process through which various elements come into play in maintaining hierarchies. Alejandro elaborated that “There was always someone discriminating against others for things as stupid as how much money someone had to party on a given weekend, or being small, fat, shy, or ‘ugly’ [gestures air quotes].” Here, violence in the form of bullying was predicated upon different symbols, but the element of subordination was common to all of them.

Negotiating with/through Violence

Closely related to the schooling experience, el futbol (soccer) was identified by participants as an important element of hegemonic masculinity as they grew up. Sport in general is a space where issues of masculinity and power closely intertwine (Messner 1995). In the case of these young men’s narratives, soccer appears as a realm where the presence of the masculinity mandate and the exercise of violence were of heightened symbolic importance. Many of their narratives included accounts of their relation to soccer and how that relationship was mediated by violence. For some participants, violence in the form of excessive “roughness” was a major deterrent to pursuing this activity further.

The experience of physical violence in soccer presented itself as a challenge to many participants’ masculinity. The case of Israel (18, Politics major) is illustrative of how different men coped. Israel resisted the violent competition that entailed “getting beat like a piñata” every week. Calling out the violence and telling his mother provoked masculinity challenges from other participants and coaches alike who started calling him a “softie” and a “mamma’s boy.” In this as in other cases, violence often started through encouragement to invest in the masculinity mandate. As Ulises (21, Art and Design major) put it, “If you don’t [initially] buy into this toughness dynamic, they get even more cruel with you.”

Situations like that of Israel reinforce the conviction that a certain level of violence is necessary to navigate specific life domains, such as the realm of el futbol, leading many to leave. As gendered challenges like these were perceived as insurmountable, the men in this study opted to pursue masculine status elsewhere. Israel, for example, eventually quit playing soccer and pursued other “manly” interests, such as brewing his own beer with a couple of his friends. In other cases, when boys were more willing and able to participate in higher levels of physical and verbal violence in soccer, this was justified as a byproduct of the competitive nature of the activity. Gilberto (23, Chemical Engineering major), for instance, claimed to enjoy the highly competitive environment that soccer fostered, even when it was practiced in more playful contexts. He articulated violence as “a normal part of the game” that emerges when the “natural drive to compete” is not kept in focus.

Through the example of students’ relationship with violence in the context of sports, it is possible to see that, beyond compelling men to simply exercise violence to overcome masculinity challenges, the masculinity mandate generates a wider range of expectations that students internalize. These include trying to deal with violence to avoiding and denouncing it unless it is deemed strictly necessary. Participants responded to those expectations at times by embracing violence as a natural part of a man’s progress through the educational system that men must simply learn to ignore. As Sergio (20, Veterinary major) put it, “If you ignore bullies, they usually go away, you know?”

As Barker (2005) notes, many men’s ideal of a man is far from violent versions and includes attributes such as productivity and economic responsibility in much higher esteem. However, stereotypical representations do not always illustrate this more complex understanding of masculinity. An example in this regard is that of Patricio (20, Food Chemistry major), who took a dressmaking workshop in middle school, an activity with which he was somewhat familiar as his mother did crochet and other textile work professionally. About this experience he said:

Some kids would give me grief for it, because I didn’t do electronics or something like that, but what I saw they did [in those workshops] seemed pretty pointless. I thought it was more useful to learn how to sew or mend my clothes or stuff like that; now I even make money making facemasks and selling them… I think those guys picked on me because they were jealous ‘cause in the workshop I was much more in contact with women than they were.

Patricio demonstrates how some men navigate discursively reframing activities, as he produced dressmaking knowledge as even more productive than that offered in other “more manly” workshops. The masculine imperative of being productive is resignified rather than completely subverted, for example, by presenting a dressmaking workshop as a valid masculine interest. Moreover, heteronormative schemes were reaffirmed as illustrated by Patricio’s suggestion that it must have been his proximity and close interaction with girls what incited other boys’ anger. Thus, even when the violent crisis brought about by the bullying attempts was averted, and the masculine challenge successfully overcome, heteronormativity structured his negotiation of this conflict.

Some of these young men’s accounts did speak of openly rejecting violence by withdrawing from specific situations altogether. This entailed further negotiation of the hierarchical nature of masculinity, sometimes by effectively assuming a subordinated position. Victor (23, Education major) illustrates this well in his explanation of how he distanced himself from masculine violence in elementary and middle school by hanging out mostly with girls:

All boys were into soccer and Yu-Gi-Oh [playing cards], and I didn’t really like either. Then a kid said he was into hardcore [music] and, suddenly, all boys were into hardcore. I wasn’t! I liked the Beatles, you know? And the girls who were my friends got it, they didn’t bug me for what I liked or didn’t like. In fact, they defended me from the bullies. Especially this one girl, who was quite rough. She’d confront them in their violent terms, but they didn’t touch her because in the end she was a girl.

Victor forfeited the challenge to his masculinity as he perceived he was unable to overcome it. However, he found a way to avoid violent confrontation with other boys by forming friendships with girls. In the face of adversity, girls were able to establish relationships from a position of higher inclusivity than boys. Moreover, when this was used by boys to question his masculine status—calling him mariquita (sissy) or nena (girl)—Victor’s girl friends defended him, which gave him the reassurance that his status as a boy, even if tainted, was not fully compromised. In this sense, he, and other participants who also identified as gay or otherwise non-heterosexual, spoke of eventually “escalating” their relationships with girl friends to some form of a “crush,” even though they felt physically attracted mostly to boys. Their closeness to girls was used to negotiate the masculinity mandate, in this case, as it related to compulsive heterosexuality. They could be close to girls even if this meant that their heterosexuality would be questioned by other boys. But internally, and in the face of the girls, they could do a reparative job by giving their social and emotional link with them a romantic character.

These young men display an array of options to respond to the masculinity mandate of violence. It can be anticipated and dealt with through sporadic uses of violence, that proved useful in maintaining participants’ relationships with masculinity in environments they perceived as rife with potential to undermine that relationship. Beyond standing one’s ground, participants spoke of a sort of violence-ready behavior that could include a series of “preemptive strikes” conveying the message to other men that violence could be used if necessary.

The force of the mandate to incorporate some form of violence as quotidian part of men’s life is present in most students’ narratives. For instance, the idea expressed by many that one can be “unnecessarily rough” suggests that a certain amount of roughness is naturalized. Several interviewees spoke of feeling uncomfortable with the overall crude and/or vulgar behavior they felt expected to show when interacting in boys-only groups, and most of them narrated having participated in such dynamics to different extents but coming to a point where they decided to step away. The strength of the mandate is illustrated by the fact that different participants developed different degrees of tolerance to it and that only a few assumed the costs for completely rejecting it. This has become particularly relevant in the context of overt and active denunciation of violence in the university, which I discuss next.

Men and the Denunciation of Masculine Violence: Reshuffling Positions

Since around 2015, agitation around issues of violence against women within the university has been growing (Barreto 2018; Moreno and Araceli 2019). As a result of this unrest and the mobilization it has incited, sexual and other violences in the university, especially against women, have been positioned as a major issue to be discussed and tackled by the UNAM authorities and addressed by university communities. This has resulted in the implementation of mitigating measures by authorities, but has also found resistance in different forms, most notably from men (Inclán 2020). This attests to the resilience of the masculinity mandate, as many men perceive the limits that are trying to be imposed to several forms of violence as a challenge to the masculinity that for years has operated at the university (i.e., a form of masculinity that may discretionally limit and regulate exercises of violence, autonomously from feminine checks and balances).

Rather than overt opposition to women’s denunciation and mobilization against masculine violence, there was ambivalence in some participants’ narratives as to what the feminist agenda might mean for them as men. A very clear example in this sense is what Gabriel (25, Politics major) described as his perception of the situation brought about by the denunciation of organized women and how the university as a community has been responding. He said he had decided to participate in the study on masculinities as he felt it was necessary to counterbalance women issues’ salience in recent years:

I think that the female gender has been privileged at UNAM. I mean, I love and respect women, they shouldn’t be touched even with a rose petal, but everything’s about women now; whatever a woman says is to be believed just because she’s a woman, it’s even more valid than facts; if a woman denounced me right now saying I harassed her I would be immediately suspended, even if I haven’t done anything wrong.

Gabriel saw the study as an opportunity to voice his concern about a sensed neglect of men students, and his perception that they were marginalized and vulnerable to abuses of what he frames as women’s power. This contrasts with what mobilized women have documented regarding the large number of both formal complaints filed before university authorities, and informal denunciation of violent acts as part of the mobilization, that have not had satisfactory resolutions or even been addressed. Nevertheless, Gabriel positions the agenda to tackle violence perpetrated by men against women within the university as problematic, as it seems to be undermining men’s privilege to navigate university life quietly. This appears to be a reaction to the questioning of the masculinity mandate and the hierarchy it helps uphold, which affords the most advantageous positions to men, establishing complicit relations with hegemony to keep reaping its benefits (Connell 2005).

This ambivalence was also expressed in some other participants’ comments about the risk of giving women’s views and vindications “too much credence.” They said that it was a mistake to portray men and masculinity as an enemy and presented themselves wary of what they framed as “overgeneralization.” During interviews, participants were asked to react to a graffiti by feminist collectives found on campus that read “Men ruin everything.” A few sympathized with them saying they understood “the sentiment.” However, the majority dubbed it as “too much” and generally hyperbolic. Even when many of them did recognize having been aware of “incidents” of gender violence perpetrated by men, they struggled to establish connections between those actions and the ways in which they themselves have experienced the masculinity mandate and its incorporation of violence in their own lives. Gender violence seems to still be perceived as somehow external to them, and the connection with their lived experience still appears as mostly confusing.

On the other hand, many participants did convey an awareness of the mobilization of university women and, at least discursively, shared favorable views of their general demands. This is exemplified by phrases, such as “I agree [with the mobilization of women]; it was a long time coming” (Rubén, 22, Food Chemistry major) or “It’s sad that it’s come to this. But it’s necessary” (Guillermo, 20, Psychology major). Many interviewees displayed familiarity with the discourses of the feminist collectives active in the university and a mostly sympathetic view that seems to be linked to a sort of anti-violence zeitgeist that they see themselves as part of. As Oscar (24, Food Chemistry major) shared,

I know as a guy I’m privileged in many ways, so I try to use that privilege for good, and try to give voice and visibility to people who need it. For example, if someone’s making a comment that’s abusive or inappropriate, I’m gonna call it out, I don’t care if they call me a snowflake or any other stupid name like that.

The notion of men’s privileges expressed by Oscar was present in many of the participants’ narratives. They did recognize the fact that identifying themselves and being identified as (cis)men helps them navigate university life with fewer hassles than women or people with other gender identities. Likewise, most of them articulated an understanding of the fact that women’s experiences of the university were radically different from their own.

Interestingly, the notion of “new masculinities” was employed by some of the participants to describe forms of interaction that did not appear to conform to the masculinity mandate, especially as it pertains to violence against women. They tended to associate violence, especially against women and gender or sexually diverse identities, to machismo and other forms of “traditional” ways of being a man they perceived as outdated. This resonates with what the following quote by Luciano Fabbri, a Uruguayan professor and self-described “antipatriarchal masculinity” activist:

Masculinity is not hegemonic according to its attributes, but according to the context of gendered power relations in which it manages to impose itself as such, fulfilling expectations about what is the legitimate and accepted way of embodying masculinity. To such an extent that this kind of inflationary phenomenon called ‘new masculinity’ may be the one that imposes itself as hegemonic in the contemporary gender order (Fabbri 2018, 81–82, my own translation).

This warning by Fabbri can help illuminate why more men might be getting more receptive to large scale denunciation of masculine violence. Moreover, it offers clues as to why such denunciation could be taking place among men at all. As hegemony transforms, so too do the challenges presented to it. Even though the masculinity mandate appears to be alive and well in many regards, as seen from the narratives of these young men, the legitimacy of the use of violence appears to be weakened, calling for deeper more complex negotiation for the use of violence.

Some of the participants spoke of the incorporation of gender issues to the public agenda within the university as providing them with tools to further problematize gender violence. The case of Victor (23, Education major) is worth noting in this sense, as he talked about his experience with gender violence within his own family, materialized in what he termed “the femicide” committed by his grandfather.

I was always very uncomfortable when my dad spoke of [his grandfather] as an exemplary man. It was as if he tried to justify him, the whole family. He was a very violent man, but they’d say: ‘Well, he was kind of tough, but it was because he liked order and things done right.’ I didn’t think of what he did as femicide until college, where I’ve learned that that’s the name for it, but I always had the feeling that he wasn’t a very good person, and I knew what he’d done was a terrible thing.

Victor said that his stay at university has been vital to his understanding of violence as a form of masculine control and domination over women, but also over other men. The intuition that his family’s discourse worked to naturalize or minimize his grandfather’s violence became a conviction with the help of a gender perspective casting light on it. The important feminist mobilization of recent years and the discussion that has ensued from it contributed to equip him with an ability to both recognize, question, and challenge these gendered forms of violence.

This was also true of other of the young men who described coming to a series of realizations regarding gender inequality while at university. Even when some participants did not display a full understanding or appreciation for feminist mobilization, many of them spoke of it as requiring men’s support. A few others showed a more sophisticated view of the mobilization, saying things like “Of course it concerns us [men]. But it’s not really about us, it’s a movement for women by women” (Enrique, 22, Metallurgical Chemistry Engineering) or “I’m totally behind them, in whatever they need us [men] to do, even if it’s stepping aside” (Ernesto, 22, Psychology major).

It is worth noting that for many of the participants who said to have gained a better appreciation of feminist discourse in their late teens and early twenties, they expressed being highly influenced through interactions with women who identify as feminist and participate in the mobilization, such as their romantic partners, sisters, or close friends. Indeed, some of the participants shared that current gender arrangements, despite privileging men, were also detrimental to them in different ways. As Moisés (21, Chemical Engineering major) explained,

It made a lot of sense when my girlfriend told me how machismo is also negative for us as men, like, that it’s bad for our mental health in how it teaches us that we can’t express our feelings and stuff, and how that’s why the feminist struggle might be beneficial even for us, too. I’d never really thought about it that way, but I found it hard to argue with, you know?

Participants like Moisés spoke of making sense of the denunciation of women regarding an unequal gender regime at the university by connecting those claims to the negative aspects of their own lived experiences with the masculinity mandate and the consequences and violences it inflicted upon men as well.

Conclusions

Through an analysis of narratives of the students who participated in the study, I have shown how these men undergraduates have encountered the masculinity mandate of violence along their life trajectories in different ways, how they have made sense of it, as well as how they have positioned themselves vis-à-vis violence in their everyday life and interactions. These young men have taken different stances on violence under distinct circumstances and in relation to different institutions, at times drawing away from violent processes, and other times rejecting and/or challenging violence, whether discursively or more actively.

This close interaction with the mandate, along with a perceived expectation to deal with violence in effective ways, however, also led participants to incorporate various forms of violence to their masculine repertoires of action deployed to keep their masculinity stable when challenged. Those forms tended to be presented by participants as attenuated and therefore negligible. However, apart from their various exercises of violence asserting their position within the masculine hierarchies, these young men seem to have engaged in negotiation with the masculinity mandate to navigate the challenges that the regional hegemonic masculinity (Messerschmidt 2018) has been facing in Latin America as part of what some authors have termed “the fourth feminist wave” (Freire et al. 2018) without fully compromising it.

There is also evidence of an ambivalent position towards the advancement of an egalitarian agenda, and a lack of elements in some of these young men to articulate the ways that a masculinity mandate is operating not only in the more evident and pernicious dimension of structural violence against women, but also in ways that are much closer to the everyday (re)production of masculinity in the space of the university.

At the same time, these men appear to be embarked in a process of negotiation with the different denunciations of masculine violence put forth mostly by feminist mobilization and discourse in the university. Many of them showed openness to discourses critical of the ways masculinity has been deployed in the university space, in many of those instances in severely violent ways, and of the gender order that is produced in their narratives as mostly unequal and hostile towards women. Moreover, some of them were also able to articulate some of the malaises that being subjected to the masculinity mandate brings about for men as well within a gender and feminist discourse framework. This suggests that it is necessary to further pursue feminist discourse and mobilization in this context as a method of incorporating men into the conversation of feminist change and reform.