Men, Did You Know That You Have Rights? a Sociological Analysis of Narratives of Male Victimhood in Contemporary India

In the contemporary world, the digital space has emerged as one of the pivotal sectors for enunciating gender politics. However, the last decade has marked a growth of anti-feminist digital subcultures, popularly known as the ‘manosphere’. Central to this anti-feminist discourse is a narrative of ‘male victimhood’ which rests upon the belief that the contemporary social order has been fundamentally transformed by the feminist movement in such a way that it disproportionately privileges women and marginalises men. It is from this vantage point that the paper seeks to understand the cultural construction of ‘male victimhood’ intrinsically tied to men’s rights activism and, whether and to what extent it is used as a means to service particular political ends – discrediting the feminist movement and legitimising an inegalitarian patriarchal social order. Anti-feminist groups in India have persistently argued that the Indian legal code is biased against men and gender specific legislations in spheres such as divorce, child custody, criminal law aimed to protect and empower women actually end up eroding the rights of men. Hence to answer the aforementioned research question in relation to legal precincts of men’s rights this paper will use cyber ethnography to analyse web contents designed by two prominent Indian Men’s Rights Activist organisations All Bengal Men’s Forum (A.B.M.F) spearheaded by Nandini Bhattacharjee and Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF). Therefore, masculinity and femininity in the context of this study are understood as culturally constructed categories that are fluid and relational and we hope to understand the cultural meanings that are attributed to the masculine and feminine in these narratives of ‘male victimisation’.