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Conference quark::mennotes-v1

Title:Topics Pertaining to Men
Notice:Archived V1 - Current file is QUARK::MENNOTES
Moderator:QUARK::LIONEL
Created:Fri Nov 07 1986
Last Modified:Tue Jan 26 1993
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:867
Total number of notes:32923

446.0. "Men's movements - an article" by SKYLRK::OLSON (Partner in the Almaden Train Wreck!) Mon Apr 23 1990 02:29

    The first reply to this topic contains a fairly long article
    from a political sort of newsmagazine called the New Republic.
    It is interesting to me in that it surveyed several vastly
    different and completely disjoint efforts going on about the
    role of men in U.S. society today.  I disagree with the way
    the author lumped all these separate things together and called 
    them a men's movement; and I found the analysis flawed in several
    points.  But it is interesting to see all of the different sorts
    of things going on, from academic to political to self-improvement
    circles, about how many men are questioning their roles; those that
    society has imposed upon us, and those we have chosen.  I think such
    questioning and discussion is healthy.
    
    So...discuss!
    
    DougO 
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446.1SKYLRK::OLSONPartner in the Almaden Train Wreck!Mon Apr 23 1990 02:30214
    THE GENDER RAP - By Daniel Gross 
    From The New Republic, 16 Apr 1990, pp 11-14.

    [Used with permission.  Permission granted for the use of employees
    of Digital Equipment Corporation for personal discussion only. 
    Please do not reproduce this outside of Digital.]

    All is not well with roughly half the human race.  Males commit a
    lot of violence, have trouble expressing their feelings, and get
    screwed over in divorce court.  Fed up with the injustice of it
    all, some men have taken matters into their own hands: academics
    are giving the male species a thorough inter-disciplinary
    analysis; male feminists are trying to mold men into more benign
    beings; Free Men are working changing "discriminatory" laws; and
    Mythopoetic Men are trying to get men in touch with their
    preindustrial masculinity.  New terms, some touchy-feeliness,
    plenty of scapegoats, and a fair amount of infighting-- yes, we
    finally have a men's movement.  It lacks only national recognition
    and an ism of its own.

    The most visible aspects of the movement are men's studies
    classes.  Nearly 200 schools, from Amherst to the University of
    Wisconsin, now offer a men's studies class, typically called "The
    Psychology of Men" or "Sociology of the Male Experience."  Last
    year more than 100 scholars attended the first annual Men's
    Studies Conference.

    Men's studies scholars think behavioral traits and sociological
    problems particular to males have been ignored in academe. 
    Professors apply questions traditionally asked about the human
    condition to the *man* condition.  "Men's studies is focusing on
    what it means to *be* a man," says James Doyle, a psychology
    professor at Roane State Community College in Tennessee.

    A representative course is "Men and Masculinities," taught by
    Harry Brod, a Kenyon College men's studies specialist who has
    edited several scholarly collections-- most recently, _A Mensch
    among Men: Explorations of Jewish Masculinity_.  The course covers
    the importance of sports in male identity, paternal relationships,
    the portrayal of men in literature, and men's attitudes toward
    pornography.  Brod also devotes individual sessions to the
    biological, sociological, and psychological dimensions of the
    transition from boyhood to manhood.  Such courses don't generally
    have a political agenda, but students do learn about "male
    liberation"-- i.e., the freeing of men from traditional, confining
    gender roles.

    Doyle chairs the growing 200-member Men's Studies Association and
    edits the *Men's Studies Review* (circulation 400).Most of the
    articles in the Review are pretty tough going.  "The Developmental
    Journey of the Male College Student" delineates "limiting
    patterns" that define male students' gender roles.  Among them are
    restrictive emotionality, obsessions with competition and
    achievement, homophobia, etc.  The author, a University of Oregon
    administrator, concludes that "we must further conceptualize the
    process of gender role consciousness and design intervention
    strategies that promote it."  But there are exceptions.  In "Some
    Working Men Eat Yogurt," Jack Loughary lucidly, if not eloquently,
    evaluates the behavior and self-awareness of construction workers
    who labor at his housing development.  In some ways this sample
    consisted of stereotypical blue-collar workers-- beer-drinking,
    roughhousing, homophobic tough guys.  But these fellows also
    avoided foul language in the presence of women and shared their
    lunches.  "A few even eat yogurt in public," Loughary writes.  He
    concludes: "They think maleness is a silly term."

    Of course, the methodology buttressing men's studies is largely
    feminist.  "We're thoroughly indebted to women's studies
    scholarship," says Brod.  Men's studies scholars-- most of them
    sociologists and psychologists-- have expropriated the feminist
    notion of gender as a power structure in politics, culture, and
    society.  And to some degree, men's studies scholars dread the
    wrath of their precursors.  "Most of us don't advocate having
    men's studies departments for fear of treading on the feminists,"
    says Doyle.

    Unlike the men's studies crowd, which just wants to contemplate
    the condition of men, feminist men want to do something about it. 
    The National Organization for Changing Men is a gang of man-haters
    trapped in men's bodies.  Although many members describe
    themselves as "feminists," NOCM co-chair Gordon Clay says, "Men
    can't be feminists because they are not females."  Last year the
    group removed the words "male positive" from its statement of
    principles partly because NOCM felt people would construe the
    phrase as meaning "in support of all males including Ted Bundy."

    The 500-member organization is avowedly political, albeit in a
    non-traditional sense.  NOCM (rhymes with hokum) doesn't lobby or
    publicize causes, but holds workshops and discussion groups to,
    essentially, resocialize men, sensitizing them to the needs of
    women.  "Men are socialized to put women down and devalue them,"
    Clay says.  "What we try to do is ask men to look at power and
    give up that power."  First on the chopping block are the
    "patriarchal values" of oppression and violence.  Recalling the
    case of Mark Lepine, the Canadian psychopath who killed 14 women
    in Montreal last year, Clay wrote, "I think there's a little bit
    of him in all of us."

    Male guilt is a sentiment completely alien to men's rights
    activists, sometimes referred to as Free Men.  They're unabashedly
    male-positive, brazenly insensitive, real men.  They hate male
    feminists, whom they accuse of gender treason.  "Male feminists
    are like the men's auxiliary to the women's movement," sneers Fred
    Hayward, executive director of Men's Rights Inc. (a.k.a. Mr.
    Inc.).  "To call them part of the men's movement is like calling
    Phyllis Schlafly part of the women's movement."  But Free Men hate
    female feminists more.  It is "The Old Girls' Network" that is
    challenging traditional male dominance and turning the law against
    men.

    Hayward generously concedes that women have suffered
    discrimination and may even deserve some relief.  But today men
    are also plagued by sexism, gender bias, and objectification. 
    "Women have reduced themselves to checking out men as providers. 
    They check out our cars.  This is dehumanizing."  Free Men yearn
    for the days when women were docile creatures who quietly accepted
    their marginal roles.  Now men's rights activists cotton to the
    notion that men are an oppressed minority (there are six million
    more women than men in the United States) and charge that
    America's current mores and laws are discriminatory.  "Men have
    been held up to expectations and forced into certain roles,"
    complains Tom Williamson, president of the 2,000-member National
    Coalition for Free Men.  For example, whereas feminism has given
    women more rights and freedoms, men are still responsible for
    taking the initiative in relationships, fighting wars, and paying
    alimony and child support.

    In 1983 Sidney Siller, a New York lawyer, was enraged enough about
    divorce laws to found the National Organization for Men, "to raise
    the consciousness about the plight of men."  NOM now consists of
    8,000 vocal, angry men, many of them divorced.  Its main goal is
    the enactment of a uniform set of custody laws that would remedy
    the rampant discrimination.  As evidence of judicial bias, Siller
    cites the fact that women retain custody of the children after
    eight-five percent of all divorces, while fathers get sole
    possession after about ten percent (five percent end in some form
    of joint custody).  Of course, these statistics obscure the fact
    that men seldom apply for physical custody of their children and
    actually fair quite well in the small percentage of contested
    divorce cases, as Lenore Weitzman showed in her book _The Divorce
    Revolution_.

    Even more painful to Free Men, though, is the burden of paying
    onerous child support.  I asked Siller about Weitzman's claim that
    as women have entered the work force in greater numbers, average
    child support awards have decreased.  He says her figures are
    "incorrect" but offers none of his own in response, and dismisses
    the volume as feminist propaganda.  "It's a very dangerous book."

    Divorce law reforms are just one part of a larger NOM crusade 
    to re-empower men.  "Men have been wimpified.  They've been
    emasculated.  We'd like to see them fight for their rights," says
    Siller.  To this end NOM holds Father's Day demonstrations, has
    tried, unsuccessfully, to join all-female clubs, and gives out 
    NOM Wimp of the Year awards (this year's front-runner is Pat
    Schroeder).

    Finally, there are Mythopoetic Men, who meld elements from men's
    studies, feminist men, and the Free Men into a unified theory. 
    Mythopoetic philosophy, as expounded by the poet Robert Bly,
    spiritual founder of the movement and the subject of a recent
    ninety-minute Bill Moyers special, posits that modernization,
    urbanization, industrialization, and the feminist movement have
    distanced men from their earthy, rough, natural masculinity.  So
    men now quietly grieve over unknown inner wounds.  As the wispy,
    white-haired Bly told Moyers, "I think that the grief that leads
    to the men's movement began maybe 140 years ago, when the
    Industrial Revolution began, which sends fathers out of the house
    to work."  With their fathers absent, sons do not receive any
    knowledge of "what the male mode of feeling is."

    For the mythopoets, ideal manhood existed in ancient times and the
    Middle Ages, as depicted in the works of Homer, the Epic of
    Gilgamesh, and other popular myths.  These self-assured men of
    yore, strong yet sensitive, hugged one another, cried, were
    mentors for adolescents, and played rough--perfect roles models
    for today's confused men.  "Since a lot of us have complaints with
    our dads, we have to skip a generation to our common ancestors,"
    says Shepherd --ne Walter-- Bliss, a psychology professor who
    coined the term "Mythopoetic Man."  King Arthur is a prototype
    Mythopoetic "elder".  More recent examples include Thoreau,
    Whitman, and Johnny Appleseed.  Bly updates this list with the
    cellist Pablo Casals, "a wonderful male mother."

    To get in touch with a more productive self-image, Bly and Bliss
    urge men to come together in nature, alone, in the absence of
    women and civilization.  "We're reassembling men around themes of
    brotherhood," Bliss says.  "Cooperative masculinity is very life
    enhancing."  So far an estimated 50,000 men have participated in
    retreats that Bliss and others sponsor.  These men pay about $200
    to get together and, well, act like men.  "We drum, we chant, we
    recite poetry, we talk about our fathers," Bliss says.  But
    according to one retreat participant, farting, crawling around on
    all fours, wrestling, crafting animal masks, and butting heads
    were de rigeur for the weekend.

    Bliss has a divinity degree from the University of Chicago,
    several years of postdoctoral work at Harvard, a radio talk show,
    and numerous articles to his credit.  He also fancies himself
    something of a neologist.  He recently coined the term "toxic
    masculinity" to describe that part of the male psyche that is
    abusive.  "I use a medical term because I believe that like every
    sickness, toxic masculinity has an antidote."

    Antidote?  There's no cure.  Masculinity is a terminal condition. 
    And although it's operable, precious few men choose a surgical
    escape.  But the academics, masculine squishes, and macho men who
    constitute the nominal men's movement will continue to
    compulsively think, write, talk, and complain about their
    problems.  Men would probably be better off if they emulated the
    yogurt-eating construction workers examined by Loughary.  "These
    men appear to enjoy being men.  My impression is that they do not
    think about being men."
    
446.2first impressionsSKYLRK::OLSONPartner in the Almaden Train Wreck!Mon Apr 23 1990 02:4420
    OK, a few of my comments on this article-
    
    The concluding paragraph was a travesty.  Gross ridiculed all of his
    subjects and basically said that we'd all be better off not thinking
    about these questions at all.  His ignorance that the questions raised
    and addressed by 400 readers of the Mens Studies Journal, 200 colleges
    worth of men's studies classes, 500 members of NOCM, 2000 members of
    the Free Men, 8000 member of NOM, and 50,000 workshop attendees, as
    well as by millions of other troubled men in this society, won't go
    away by wishing them away, seriously calls into doubt my confidence in
    his ability to have treated this subject fairly.  I wish someone else
    had been assigned to write this survey for the NR.  I already stated my
    opinion in the basenote, that discussion of these questions is healthy.
    
    On the better side, at least the article was written in a chatty,
    informal enough fashion to make slogging all the way through it
    possible for anyone with more than nominal interest.  Style points, 
    if nothing else.
    
    DougO
446.3interesting stuffUSIV02::BROWN_ROclam-digging in the minefieldsMon Apr 23 1990 19:3318
    Thanks for entering this article, Doug.
    
    It does seem to veer back and forth between reportage, and
    editorializaton, but it does give a good overall look at what's
    happening in the men's studies field.
    
    NOCM, NOM, and Free Men all seem to be reactive organizations to
    the woman's movement, or to certain perceptions of the woman's movment,
    both pro and con.
    
    The Mythopoetic approach is the only one that seems to be trying to
    create a new positive image, in it's own right. I'm both interested
    in it, and have reservations about it's validity, but at least Bly
    and others are trying to come up with something.
    
    -roger
    
    
446.4Helped broaden NY divorce lawsMCIS2::POLLITZThu Apr 26 1990 04:4720
    
    re .1  "In 1983 Sidney Siller, a New York lawyer, was enraged en-
           ough about divorce laws to found the National Organization
           for Men..."
    
             In 1964 Sid Siller and his wife had marital difficulties
           and wanted to divorce.  Apparently, adultery was the only
           legal grounds for divorce in NY at that time.  Mr Siller,
           a lawyer, pressed the matter and helped get the law "broad-
           ened to include 5 additional grounds for fault divorces and
           to allow for no-fault divorces." (1)
    
             In 1966 he and his wife were able to divorce.
    
             Mr Siller founded the National Committee for Fair Divorce,
          which became NOM in 1983.
    
            
    
                                                        Russ
446.5MCIS2::POLLITZThu Apr 26 1990 04:492
    1.  'What Men Really want' by Maggie Gallagher, 'National Review' 
         vol 39 5/22/87, p. 39