Friday Men Doing Feminist Work: Jeff Hearn

Jeff Hearn is a British sociologist who does work on men and masculinity from a profeminist standpoint. He is one of the founders of the sadly defunct profeminist magazine for men, Achilles Heel.

One of the things I find most fascinating about him is that it's always nice to run into scientists who are doing, y'know, actual studies on gender inequality. He is also a founder/member of CROME: Critical Research on Men in Europe, which bands together scientists of all genders to do actual research on men from a profeminist perspective. From Hearn's wikipedia entry:

During and after the time of his studies Jeff Hearn has been an active member of the profeminist men’s movement. With David Morgan, Colin Creighton, Chris Middleton, Ray Thomas and Clive Pearson, he initiated some ground rules for the study of men and masculinity, published as ‘Changing men's sexist practice in sociology’, Network, No 25, January 1983. Following work in the Men and Masculinity Research/Study Group at Bradford, the principles were developed and published in Achilles' Heel in 1987, and 3 years later Hearn and Morgan appended a sixth in the book "Men, Masculinities and Social Theory".

The principles in short: Critical studies on men should be profeminist and respect the autonomy of feminism/women's studies; critical especially to men's practices, interdisciplinary and use various methods; reflexive also to its own research.

The more often I find men who have been doing profeminist work around men's issues since I was in high school, the more I wonder how it is that I managed to not run into these men before now.

Check out some of the many books Hearn has written or contributed to here.