The permutation manipulates claims of gender violence to save the project of hegemonic masculinity.

Importantly, Russo’s work pulls together recent scholarship (including Agathangelou and Ling 2004; Butler 2004; Shepherd 2006; Nayak 2006) that examines how hegemonic actors deflect and distort criticism by explicitly invoking concern about gender violence. Thus, those who address gender violence in the same way as the hegemonic actor, are actually supporting and endorsing the hegemonic project even if they are resisting gender violence itself. Resistance movements and organizations, without careful and thorough interrogation of power, often leave undisturbed those power relations even as they attempt to address gender violence. In effect, resistance becomes about saving one’s own antagonistic relation to the Other.