This chapter explores fatherhood and adult masculinity in the Swedish children’s film series about Sune (1993–2021). The Sune films showcase a cultural shift towards child-centredness, where men are increasingly expected to be involved, emotionally present, and spend time with their children. However, fathers in the Sune films are depicted as foolish as they try to portray themselves as more involved fathers than they actually are. The foolishness of the fathers also reflects class dynamics, as fatherhood is enacted in terms of attempts to attain upper middle-class status, where fathers present themselves as financially successful. However, these performances lack substance and consistently fail, or are at risk of failing. As a result, adult masculinity in the Sune films becomes a ridiculous spectacle that evokes laughter. The films exemplify how financial challenges in a neoliberal culture are individualised, turning the struggles of meeting the standards of middle-class fatherhood into personal flaws or failures.

During the last decades, new forms of men’s rights activism have emerged, commonly referred to as the ‘manosphere’. This loosely connected, misogynistic online movement particularly attracts young men. Its shared ideology is the Red Pill, a neoconservative ideology that adopts essentialist notions of gender and sexuality, and selectively employs evolutionary psychology to support male supremacy. While the discourses of the manosphere have been mapped, little research exists on how and why young men join and leave such misogynist groups. This article contributes to critical youth and feminist scholarship by analysing the gendered dynamics of online misogynist radicalisation pathways. Based on narratives shared on a Reddit community for former ‘redpillers’, this article explores 30 young men’s experiences of entering and exiting the manosphere and details the essential role of vulnerability in these processes. The stories are synthesised into three phases to illustrate the paths in and out of the manosphere. 

Drawing upon the example of Annie Ernaux’s memoir A Girls’ Story (2020), and conceptualizing affect as working both within and beyond interpretive frames, this chapter presents three useful concepts when exploring affect and gender-based violence: event, atmosphere, and affective memory. Event refers to both dramatic experiences and the “silent cracks” that may materialize in connection with violence; both enable becoming-other and disintegration of sense. Atmosphere is a concept that stresses how collective, spatial moods may envelop both the violent event and the response from the relational setting. Finally, the chapter foregrounds the concept of affective memory to show how traumatic experiences may, at times, reside in our bodies and continue to affect us no matter how we comprehend the event.

This chapter explores the relationship between brain, media technology and young heteromasculinity by analyzing contemporary discussions about boys and pornography addiction. While concerns about these issues have been raised in many Western societies for some time, my starting point is recent debates in Sweden, where neuroscience has become a dominant way of framing pornography consumption. I further my discussion by analyzing Gary Wilson’s Your brain on porn, which has been influential to anti-pornography activists and young men desisting from pornography. Central to his claims about pornography addiction is plasticity, which presents the brain as becoming, but also reduces subjectivity and corporeality to mere brain processes. While pornography addiction discourse may make young men to passive recipients of mediated sex, constituting themselves as cerebral subjects also enables a neuro-based care of the self where they are encouraged to abstain from pornography.

Essän skisserar historiska och samtida mansrörelser, diskutera deras förutsättningar samt presentera två analytiska begrepp användbara för att förstå mäns könspolitiska aktivism: remaskulinisering och identitetspolitik

Research on men who have been violent against women has often shown how these men justify or excuse their violence, minimize their responsibility, as well as construct dominant forms of masculinity. However, as attitudes in support of intimate partner violence are declining around the world, we might expect perpetrators to become less self-righteous and more self-critical about their violence. This article reports data from a qualitative interview study with 14 young partner-violent men in Sweden. While our participants sometimes downplayed their responsibility, more often they condemned violence in intimate relationships, and reflected upon the place of violence in their lives. This included experiences of domestic violence as children, as well as their processes of moving away from violence. Drawing on feminist readings of phenomenology, particularly Heidegger, we suggest that phenomenological conceptualizations of embodiment, consciousness and practice are helpful in understanding the experiences of partner-violent men.

This article analyzes debates about online pornography filters and youth in the Swedish press between 2016 and 2020, focusing on the depiction of boys and young men. Critics of filtering software argued that boys could self-regulate if they were provided better sex education and if parents communicated with them about pornography. In contrast, advocates posited that boys are incapable of developing healthy sexuality because online pornography is a powerful drug that leads to addiction and contributes to a rape culture. As boys were considered unable to get a filter “in their head,” proponents argued for disciplinary supervision through software in schools.

Childhood adversities, such as abuse, neglect and parental alcohol and substance abuse, has been linked to higher rates of youth delinquency. Drawing on interviews with 33 young male offenders, incarcerated in Swedish prisons, this paper analyzes how they narrate their experiences of growing up, and particularly how they make sense of their childhood adversities in light of their present situation as incarcerated and convicted of serious crime. Three forms of narratives are identified: stories of childhood adversities affecting the present delinquent self; narratives where the problem child serves as the link between childhood and present self; and broken narratives where childhood adversities are depicted as not associated with the present self at all. The majority of the young men draw upon the latter two of these narrative types. The analyses conclude that in both of them the young men avoid presenting that their childhood adversities have affected their contemporary selves and criminal behavior, but rather emphasize individual responsibility tied both to street masculinity and to a discourse of responsibilization.

Den överväldigande majoriteten inom våldsbejakande extremistiska miljöerär män, ett faktum som sällan tas i beaktande i arbetet mot våldsbejakande extremism (VBE) eller ses som analytiskt viktigt inom den etablerade forsk- ningen inom området. Män, maskulinitet och VBE är ett växande, men jämförelsevis litet, forskningsfält. Det saknas kunskapsunderlag kring hur maskulinitet påverkar VBE-relaterade problem. Syftet med denna rapport är därför att ge en översikt av forskning kring män, maskulinitet och VBE. Genom att analysera refereegranskad, internationell empirisk forskning publicerad mellan 2000 och 2022 utforskas grundläggande ideologier och praktiker kring män och maskulinitet i extremistiska miljöer och fördjupar den samlade forskningen. Syftet är vidare att belysa kunskapsluckor och behov med bäring på förebyggande arbete mot våldsbejakande extremism. Rapporten redogör för forskning kring maskulinitet och våldsbejakande högerextremism, vålds- bejakande vänsterextremism och våldsbejakande islamistisk extremism samt våldsbejakande misogyni, vilket inkluderar grupperingar där kvinnohat är drivande i det politiska våldet.