Male Powerlessness investigates black African men’s lived encounters with intimate partner violence (IPV) and the ways in which these men make sense of, and struggle to overcome, their unprecedented experiences of abuse at a time when research on women’s experiences of gender-based violence is expanding. In the transnational and dynamic gender environment of the City of Johannesburg, men (local and immigrant) engage in short- and long-term relationships that are typically marked by contestation and conflict. This book examines how men may become abused in heterosexual relationships, a topic that has received little attention in South African literature. The book examines the impact of IPV on black African men’s masculine identities and helps us understand the many masculine constructs that abused men may articulate. The book explores male powerlessness and its implications for men’s experiences of IPV and masculine well-being. The book makes an invaluable contribution from an empirical, methodological, and theoretical viewpoint to the corpus of gender-based violence literature that will interest students of sociology, criminology, social work, sexual politics, feminism, and critical men’s studies, among others.