Troubling Masculinities: Changing Patterns of Violent Masculinities in a Society Emerging from Political Conflict

Men’s dominance of the political and military dimensions of theNorthern Ireland conflict has meant that the story of the conflict has generally been a story about men. Ethnonationalist antagonism reinforced men’s roles as protectors and defenders of ethnonational groups and shaped violent expressions of masculinities. Due to the primacy of ethno-nationalist frameworks of analysis in research on the conflict, the relationships between gender and men’s violence have been under-theorized. This article employs the framework of Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities to examine these relationships and also explores the changing patterns of men’s violence in Northern Ireland.