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In this article, the Swedish gender-equality initiative Men and Gender Equality is analyzed. The goal is to empirically examine some of the affective dimensions at play in the ways in which a ‘norm-critical’ perspective on masculinity is articulated as a solution to gender equality. Our analysis reveals ambivalences operating within the initiative’s use of norm-critical perspectives. Despite the apparent intention to offer men the hope of emancipating themselves from sedimented practices and modes of being men, these end up potentially reinforcing certain assumptions and aspects of extant society. They include (neo-)liberal assumptions about individual responsibility as well as post-feminist and anti-feminist discursive logics and tropes. With a theoretical focus on fantasy, we show how a reformist attempt to reimagine what male identities could be ends up perpetuating certain myths and assumptions that work against the emancipatory vision nurtured within such discourses.

This article problematizes subjectification through the practice of norm critique. The study builds on interviews with some of the key initiators and participants in a project working norm critically with men and masculinity in relation to gender equality and climate change in Sweden. Through the psychoanalytical framework of enjoyment and fantasy, I develop a perspective on how and why a certain understanding of the norm-critical subject emerges. The analysis makes visible how the practice of norm critique, while challenging hegemonic masculine norms such as emotional stoicism, reinforces neoliberal ideals of individualized self-emancipation and the quest for authenticity and wholeness, which risks de-politicizing the issue of climate change.

This article analyzes how social and ecological sustainability is problematized and given meaning through a norm-critical feminist perspective on masculinities. The study builds on qualitative interviews with both initiators and participants in a Swedish feminist initiative working norm critically with men and masculinity in relation to sustainability, as well as on the instructive materials guiding the initiatives norm-critical workshops. Drawing on a discourse theoretical framework, the analysis illustrates how neoliberal ideals of individualism and self-improvement are reflected and reproduced through norm critique as a discursive practice, even when that critique aims to challenge dominant norms and structures. Furthermore, the article points towards some political implications of this reproduction in relation to both social and ecological sustainability. By considering how ideology ‘grips’ subjects through the aspect of desire and enjoyment, the paper contributes with a perspective on the affective dimensions that are at play in the relationship between norm critique, neoliberalism, and sustainability discourse.

This article offers a critical reading of the concept of Norm Critical Pedagogy through narratives of its historical development and theoretical framework, especially in relation to its claimed poststructural influence. In Sweden, norm critique has grown into a well-established tool used within several different disciplines, organizations, and governmental agencies to counteract discrimination and inequality, and has come to be associated with feminist theory and gender studies research. Inspired by Clare Hemmings analysis of Western feminist storytelling, we investigate the political implications of norm critical stories, including the impulse to defend the concept against presumed misunderstandings. Our analysis illustrates that the narrative of norm critical pedagogy promotes a discourse of consensus and optimism about the possibilities for social change and, as such, a turn away from critique towards identity and affirmation. This, we argue, obscures important differences and conflicts both within feminist theory and gender studies as a field and risks de-politicizing the issues which norm critique aims to address.