Epistemology of Critical Studies on Men and Masculinity: Perspective of a Boy from France, After 25 Years of Research on These Topics : ANDROCENTRISM—1 ST AND 2 ND DEGREE: THE STUDY OF MEN FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE, ANDROCENTRISM, AND THE HIDDEN MASCULINE EPISTEMOLOGY OF CRITICAL STUDIES ON MEN AND MASCULINITY: PERSPECTIVE OF A BOY FROM FRANCE, AFTER 25 YEARS OF RESEARCH ON THESE TOPICS FUTURE PERSPECTIVES FOR INTERVENTION, POLICY AND RESEARCH ON MEN AND MASCULINITIES: AN INTERNATIONAL FORUM

International audienceSince the creation of men’s groups in the ’70s, French critical studies on men and the masculinities have followed diverse pathways. While they’re sometimes presented within a binary scheme opposing masculinism and profeminism, the intervention intends to provide another typology that goes beyond this ideological, non heuristic vision in order to identify transversalities and the obvious or subtle mechanisms of gender relations and what French speakers call “rapports sociaux de sexe” (Trans. “gendered social relations”).”Since women can’t achieve equality, the end of male domination and the disappearance of gender without men, and since many of them want to put an end to soliloquies, this intervention aims at historicizing the critical studies on men, and contextualizing their analytical paradigms. In short, I intend to grasp both convergences and divergences in these analytical frameworks, and to deconstruct the masculine just as feminist women have been doing with "the eternal feminine."For a long time, while deconstructing the forms of domination that women suffered, gender sociologists, especially feminist sociologists, have been struggling against the androcentrism in social sciences. This androcentrism (what might be called the 1 st degree of androcentrism) made us think of the male as being normal, general, and the female as being particular, specific. Delphy (1998), Devreux (1985), and Guillaumin (1992) have amply demonstrated in their works the epistemological biases of our different disciplines, and their effects. There have not always been two sexes in sociology. Instead, we dealt with, on the one hand, a general being bearing the characteristics of humanity, actually the representative of that humanity, coinciding with male gender, and on the other hand, a specific gendered being, the woman. (Devreux, 1985, p. 23