Masculinity as Resource: Bridging Identity and Structural Gender Inequality Through Property Theory

Much theoretical development within critical masculinities studies is spurred by a disagreement over whether to take the individual or the structural as starting point of scholarly analysis. Rather than settling the debate, this article dives into an unusual terrain, namely legal theory, and more specifically, property theory, to offer a conceptual framework or metaphor that allows us to think, name and visualize how individual men can profit from, perpetuate and resist the structural subordination of women, which benefits them as a group. Bringing together earlier scholarship on property, identity and inequality, I argue that masculinity, understood as a reified social relationship of power, could be viewed to function as a resource or asset which its “owners” can use or mobilize to relate with others and benefit from belonging to the group of men. Conceptualizing masculinity as property not only sheds new light on a theoretical debate within critical masculinities studies but offers scholars and activists a helpful new way to talk about, visualize and understand instances in which structural male privilege works to the benefit of individuals.