Post-1989 feminist critique in Poland tried to establish itself academically not only in a social landscape of immense political and economic change, but also in a discourse that framed feminist arguments as communist relics. In analysing three major books in feminist Polish literary studies from the 1990s, we find there is a main interest on the condition of women and the specifics of female writing. This trending current propagates the introduction and stabilisation of two categories: the description of the female condition as an academic discipline based on political neutrality and objectivity, and the discipline of womanhood itself, framed by the enhancement of stereotypically understood femininity based on female corporeality and feeling. This main strand of Polish feminist critique of the 1990s thus affirms an apolitical and normative understanding of academic research and of gender roles, re-staging a bourgeois discourse that dismisses political engagement and critical deconstruction.

This paper addresses issues of feminism, masculinity, and the emotional culture of middle-class men who self-declare as feminists. The author discusses feminist theories on masculinity and its relations with femininity, critical theories of masculinity, and the role of emotional culture in the expression of masculinity. Feminists have proposed a dimorphic definition of feminism as a political movement and personal attitude critical of masculine domination. The critique of patriarchal, hegemonic masculinity has led feminists either to identify with “positive” masculinity or to reject masculinity for a post-gender narrative or material-discursive fact of “being a man,” which suggests an inadequacy of the sex/gender distinction in the description of gender identity. The identification with feminism allows men to avoid the crisis of traditional masculinity and the perspective of gendered emotions, as well as to gain insight into gendered determinants of emotional expression.