Is there any need for a Men's Movement?

August 17, 2002 6:17 PM

Is there any need for a Men's Movement?
Or is the struggling existence of such organisations, and the sporadic publishing of Achilles Heel magazine, for example, evidence that organised groups and 'movements' for men are redundant? Maybe it's evidence that 'men's' needs are still under rated and unsatisfied, and that we don't focus on our needs because we are working too hard? [More inside] >>>
posted by dash_slot- (22 comments total)

Surely, it didn't have to be this way...The struggle for understanding seems to have become a fight - for men's unity against womens hegemony (according to some of those in the 'Movement'), though cross-gender alliances are springing up between organisations of men & women.

There was a time, I thought, when men and women could explore their inner worlds in a spirit of mutual respect without threatening each others fragile egos. Not any more it seems. The introspection that promised equality allegedly has been exploited by legislators (on the side of the so-called FemiNazis) and Judges to right the wrongs of patriarchy.
Some men's group participants probably did agree that they "aimed to challenge traditional forms of masculinity and male power and support the creation of alternative social structures and personal ways of being" -[Achilles Heel].

Others in the International Men's Network are sure that they are victimised: "My aim is to show people how feminism is a MAJOR CAUSE of violence, assault, domestic violence, sexual assault, robbery, child abuse, drugs, teenage pregnancies, poverty, poor educational standards, prostitution, paedophilia, harassment, bad manners, traffic congestion, pollution, terrorism, vandalism, burglary, murder, teenage delinquency, road rage, alcoholism, other addictions, hooliganism, depression,
gender conflict, hysteria, the judicial punishment of innocent individuals, the growing prison population, family breakdown, the corruption of the justice system
and the democratic process, the corrosion of academicintegrity, the degradation of the social sciences and the law, poor public services, the impoverishment of
pensioners and hostile rap music." Wot, no terrorism?

[Disclosure: The men's group I belong to formed around the guidance offered in Bill Kauth's book 'A Circle Of Men' which has some real helpful stuff about rediscovering our emotional connections with our fellow men. Yes, I know it sounds 'gay' for those of you that hurl that insult at any male who doesn't beat his chest or his woman: however, I'm actually the only queerboy in it.]
Some groups are ill-disguised excuses for sexist socialising - but we won't go there. Any one else had experience in men's groups particularly, or in it's disaffected cousin, the Men's Movement?
posted by dash_slot- at 6:22 PM on August 17, 2002

I'm not certain what the purpose of this is. This, for example, is a legitimate concern:


"The men's studies part will be about sources of online information about studies relating to men's issues, such as child custody, domestic violence...


While there was a time when Men always got the children in a custody battle, that isn't the case anymore, and there are times when the father is the better parent. However the last part of that sentence, "and the depiction of men as evil and unnecessary to the human race." , while funny, decreases the strength of their platform, at least in my opinion.

Worse, this, and many more such men's movements seem nothing more than a reaction to the changing status quo, not unlike the rebirth of Klan-type white supremacists in the last couple decades as the civil rights movement finally began to bare some fruit. I won't say that all men who join such organizations are misogynists terrified of a woman who can compete with them, but the majority of them seem to be.


As a man I've never felt that my rights were somehow infringed because of my gender, and am only bothered by the part of the feminist movement that demand equality and chivalry. Equal treatment means just that, equal. However I have rarely encountered a woman disagrees with my preceding statement, and when I do I can avoid them, without a group to back me up.
posted by Grod at 6:56 PM on August 17, 2002

[to stimulate discussion on the topic, for the first time on Mefi, as far as I can tell]

Mens Groups in my experience have a consciousness-raising aspect, similar to the groups in decades gone by. The so-called Men's Movement is a related but separate phenomenom, but totalled up come to a smaller membership than your average 'Teach Yourself Mongolian Throat Singing' club. I for one find that interesting, and I'd guess someone in our 15,000 in addition to me has experience or opinions on the subject.
posted by dash_slot- at 7:13 PM on August 17, 2002

ah yes. mens movements. i had a friend who went with other men on 'tribal reawakenings' where they banged on drums for hours and got in touch with thier feelings. i think the mongolian throat singing thing was a splinter group, in fact. personally, i find one movement a day keeps me in the , er, pink.
posted by quonsar at 7:22 PM on August 17, 2002

Once you get married and have kids, the idea of an essentialist men's movement becomes kind of ridiculous.

It becomes obvious that protecting your kin and advancing the economic and social status of the family is the single purpose of being a man.

The men's movements which are of interest to me are those which address this role of a man: ranging from Promise Keepers on one end, to Marriage Encounter / Family encounter on the more liberal end, to the aggrieved divorce child customy and alimony agitators.

I certainly don't think that feminism is any threat to a man's identity. Women working is simply a return to the norm of all human history from the strange upper-middle-class interlude of the late 19th and most of the 20th century, where technology and money reduced the burdens of homemaking to the point that many men could conceive of themselves as the sole support of their family, instead of a partner who completely depended upon his wife's contribution.

As for power in the family, I think that in a well-functioning family, power always has been largely equal ... and where the power wasn't equal, it was with the woman quite frequently, not the man. (Source: the domestic novels of the 18th and 19th centuries ... )
posted by MattD at 7:38 PM on August 17, 2002

It becomes obvious that protecting your kin and advancing the economic and social status of the family is the single purpose of being a man.

It couldn't be put more succinctly and perfectly than that.
posted by hama7 at 1:00 AM on August 18, 2002

Although the issues interest me a lot, I'm turned off by these groups (the ones I've learned anything about, at least). Either my tolerance for corny stuff is too low (e.g. the Robert Bly drum-beating adventures), or I'm not dumb enough to swallow the essentialist nonsense, or I can't relate to the we-are-victims-of-women element that's sometimes present, or I'm generally too happy to enjoy a group that sits around being all somber or angry or gratuitously earnest about the matter.

If there were a group I'd want to join, it'd be a group of people who are freaked out by the fact that so many people buy into the whole gender thing so uncritically, as if men and women were members of different species (or from different planets...[groan]). Also cool would be some discussion about ways to mix the whole gender thing up a little and carve out some new gender identity options. I get bored with playing Man pretty quickly and I'm not sure I want to reify the category, even in some liberalized form where we get to hug each other.

Maybe I'm lost in my own head but I love Judith Butler. I can't recommend her books highly enough if you can be bothered to wade through all the pomo-speak.

posted by boredomjockey at 1:11 AM on August 18, 2002

I personally believe that the interests of feminism and masculinity are going to have to collaborate if we're going to see any progress at all. I think Susan Faludi's Stiffed does a good job of making this point. The "feminists are man-haters" strawman is too deeply ingrained in people's consciousnesses for feminism to succeed without actively including men's issues.

The future goals of gender equality will be much less tangible than ending workplace discrimination and sexual harassment. The future battlefields will be the playgrounds where children who don't conform to gender norms have their psyches destroyed and in advertising agencies where men's and women's differences are exaggerated in order to sell sexy copy. You can't, and shouldn't, attack these issues legally: There needs to be a social backlash supported by both sexes that will make it possible for individuals to be socially free to choose their own gender identity. Men must feel free to cry in public. Women must feel free to be neither a virgin nor a whore.
posted by Skwirl at 3:48 AM on August 18, 2002

It becomes obvious that protecting your kin and advancing the economic and social status of the family is the single purpose of being a man.

Ye gods. I'm a woman - what does that leave me?

Men's groups fine - although personally I don't much like groups that are based on gender (no women's reading groups for me!) Men's movement?

I don't mean to be provocative, but it seems to me that if you're a man living in a industrialised, 21st century country and you think that all the bad things in your life are due to women's emancipation, you have such a reality distortion problem that we may safely ignore you. Poor sweet lambs - did the nasty ladies take your job?
posted by calico at 4:20 AM on August 18, 2002

if you're a man living in a industrialised, 21st century country and you think that all the bad things in your life are due to women's emancipation, you have such a reality distortion problem that we may safely ignore you

Couldn't agree more, but yikes it's not easy to safely ignore these guys
posted by murray_kester at 4:40 AM on August 18, 2002

Ye gods. I'm a woman - what does that leave me?

It could very well leave you as the caretaker of your children, and the adored queen of your household, if your husband is that kind of man.
posted by hama7 at 4:49 AM on August 18, 2002

I am of course already the adored queen of my household. When the time comes, however, I do not intend to be the sole caretaker of my children, nor do I intend to leave my husband (more likely live-in partner - been together 7 years and no ring yet) alone in advancing the economic status of our family.

But I shouldn't derail the thread. Murray - 300 men dressing up in uniforms in rural Australia? I think we can ignore them, you know.
posted by calico at 5:34 AM on August 18, 2002

During a lengthy custody battle I participated in several mens groups, both online and off. I was seeking guidance and support from others who had been through similar situations.

I didn't find either.

On one end of the spectrum (for the sake of discussion let's call it the right) I found misogyny and gender bashing from the secular; and from the fundamentalists pleas for restoration of 'traditional' values that inevitably included a measure of subservience from the female half.

On the other end of the spectrum, I found a heap of collective guilt and men striving to be more sensitive. Personally I feel little gender guilt and after nearly a decade of changing diapers, learning the intricacies of French braids and attending PTA meetings am about as sensitive as I want to be.

I'm afraid I don't have much use for movements of any sort. I think that these gender based groups (and yes, I do include the more strident feminist organizations in this category) tend to increase divisiveness to further a given agenda rather than strive for conciliation and equity.
posted by cedar at 8:10 AM on August 18, 2002

i reckon that the point of our group (if i had a name for it, i would prolly breech confidentiality by mentioning it, so i have to be vague) is to rediscover our masculinity without hurting others. a part of being human is in finding out what we really feel about stuff, a process stymied by the crass upbringing most of us boys got cos our mums were afraid of molly-coddling us ('there-there, don't cry, it's only bleeding a little bit' // 'yeh mum, but it hurts!') & our dads rarely had the vocabulary for emotional expression (cos they were brought up with the same parenting culture a generation before).

sharing stories about the unnecessary distances our upbringing has put between our dads and ourselves, and learning from each other how to get past it, helps to break the cycle. the aim is peer-support and taking responsibility for our actions/feelings.

which is a good thing, imho.
posted by dash_slot- at 8:49 AM on August 18, 2002

I think masculinity and femininity are both spiffy things that any human should be able to adopt to whatever degree suits them. And as life rolls on, to change as the self changes.

We got to where we are now through a path that led through times of great hardship, when survival was by no means certain. The more-or-less strict adoption of separate spheres for male and female roles served us then, but it doesn't any longer. It's a hard skin to shed, to be sure.

One thing I've learned from one of my pet research topics, that of people who are intersex (with a gender that is not "normal"), is that male and female are not so different as we make them out to be.

I for one would like to be a part of some kind of group that explores gender issues in a way that is free to point out the good and bad from both sides, and seeks to move forward into a world where we aren't so limited, and aren't so blinded by hate and past wrongs.

People are people. Masculine and feminine are adjectives, not ironclad identities.

There's plenty of glory, hate, and love at all points along the continuum. Maybe someday people will realize that.
posted by beth at 10:37 AM on August 18, 2002

What about the ifeminists?
Libertarian feminisim, serving the expressed needs of all genders, who want to see shared responsibility for shared rights, or sneaky conservative feminism, trying to convince women with extremely complex political reasoning, that the status quo ain't so bad?
posted by oflinkey at 11:03 AM on August 18, 2002

The "feminists are man-haters" strawman is too deeply ingrained in people's consciousnesses for feminism to succeed without actively including men's issues.

Feminist strawMAN!?! OPPRESSOR!!!
posted by boredomjockey at 12:07 PM on August 18, 2002

well put, beth.
posted by mdn at 3:46 PM on August 18, 2002

I don't much like groups that are based on gender

I agree. And I strongly disagree with any essentialist gendering in pampering books like "Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus". Or, even worse, the "let's measure our manhoods"-therapy courses that seek to polarize the genders.

I am in favor, however, of the constructivist take on gender issues, and raising conscience on how we create discourses that form the way we think of the sexes. In this "men's movement" has significance. For instance, men are often expected to deal with emotional or social problems alone, and those who can't cope with such problems are considered weak and scorned, rather than pitied or helped.

Of course, such a raising of conscience shouldn't be seen as an accusation against women nor as an arms race of "who victimize who" the most. Rather it is aimed at women and men alike. Just as constructivist feminism blames women as much as men for what oppressive discourses dominate our life.
posted by cx at 4:04 PM on August 18, 2002

Once you get married and have kids..It becomes obvious that protecting your kin and advancing the economic and social status of the family is the single purpose of being a man.

If I don't intend to get married or have kids, am I allowed to have hobbies and watch tv? Or should I just shoot myself now? It's good to finally have clarity on my reason for living.
posted by bingo at 2:42 AM on August 19, 2002

I participated in a men's form on a bulletin board for couple of years. Eventually I decided to try a little bit of an experiment. "OK," I said, "let us agree to not talk about feminism for the next month." Most of the discussion prior to this statement had been a major battle between pro-feminist men and anti-feminist men. A dismal pall of silence embraced the forum, for a month there was nothing else to talk about.

Which is one of the major complaints that I have about the "men's movement." I have seen very few men's movement advocates who are honestly concerned about the needs of men, except as a rhetorical device to attack feminism. They talk at length about the handful of men who are survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, but when it comes to actual activism, they are nowhere to be seen.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 7:13 AM on August 19, 2002

As for power in the family, I think that in a well-functioning family, power always has been largely equal ... and where the power wasn't equal, it was with the woman quite frequently, not the man. (Source: the domestic novels of the 18th and 19th centuries ... )

Good lord. i don't know if I'm more frightened by your misreading of domestic novels or with your assumption that they unproblematically reflect the reality of any women (never mind the majority of women) of those periods.
posted by feckless at 10:00 AM on August 19, 2002