Conference quark::mennotes-v1

765.0. "Iron John Review" by TOOK::BOTTOMS () Thu Feb 27 1992 18:33

The following is copied without permission from the New York Times Book
Review section, February 22, 1992.

By Jill Johnston. Jill Johnston is the author of the memoirs "Motherbound"
and Paper Daughter: Autobiography in Search of a Father."

(a review of Iron John by Robert Bly, now available in paperback [5th on
the list], hence the review, I surmise.)

..."He has no apparent interest in what the father' teaching - or lack of it
might mean for daughters entering the world. ...his program for men...depends
strictly on women playing their traditional roles at home.

...Sometimes Bly says the patriarchy is over, however Bly also describes his 
'new man' [who] remains the beneficiary of that still thriving, surely 
healthier-than-ever system of privildge endowing one sex at the expense
of the other.

...The backlash has hit women along every front and 'Iron John' has been its 
most successful literary product.

...A theme of men as victims of women runs through the literature of the men's
movement as strong as a fault line.  Sam Keen, in his best-selling men's
book 'Fire in the Belly,' writes, 'Men are angry because they resent being
blamed for everything.'

...Bly claims his book 'does not constitute a challenge to the women's movement'
(which he said he 'supports tremendously'), but obviously it does, if the 
story of the boy in 'Iron John' means anything at all. Crucial to the story 
is the boy's separation from his mother, who has to stay at home and take 
care of the boy, for the appearance of a male mentor to be significant or
necessary. If the mother doesn't stay home, the boy will have no good
emotional reason for being pried away. <italic>There would be no initiation
story.<italic-end> At home, she gives rise to the 'mother's son,' a son 
unduly attached, in critical need of deliverance. In our unbalanced
society, with the father not required to be a true parent in the early
stages of the child's life, the mother's function includes not only full
responsibility for the early care of boys but also the insult of being left 
at home in a society that has no respect for domestic work. Bly says boys
have to <italic>steal<italic-end> the key from under their mothers' pillows
(to release the Wild Man). Why? 'Because they are intuitively aware of
what would happen next--that they would lose their nice boys.'

  And we might add that they know their devaluation would be complete as
their sons enter the world of men and leave them behind. Male initiation 
<italic>always<italic-end> has to do with gender distinctions and the 
devaluation of women. If women were important, boys wouldn't need to get 
away from them and mothers wouldn't need to cling to their boys.

...[Bly's] traditional, prefeminist understanding of gender makes him powerless
to lead daughters in general into the world--that is, into 'men's societies.'

  The drumming, chanting and other ritual acts intrinsic to the men's meetings
could be said to help them restore their sense of lost power. But the fact
is that white men are not an oppressed group. These meetings smack of the
paranoid and racist overreactions of the David Dukes of this world, who 
feel that white (male) societies are threatened by black advances, however
minuscule these advances actually are.

...Bly has gone from one extreme to the other. At one time he identified 
regressively with the matriarchists, leading those Great Mother seminars,
imaginging that we'd all be better off if we set the clock back thousands
of years and reclaimed the values of the so-called feminine. Now, just as
romantically, he would like to reclaim a certain traditional masculinity:
a state where fathers and sons were bonded into a common all-male work
place.

...Bly never grasped, it seems, the core concept of feminism, that the 
attributes of masculinity and feminity are cultural fabrications, rooted 
in a caste system in which one sex serves the other. You can tell he 
missed the point and instead imagined that feminism meant the idealization 
of 'the feminine,' the reclamation of the Great Mother, when he says, 'More
and more women in recent decades have begun identifying with the female 
pole, and maintain that everything bad is male, and everything good is female.'

  Under the influence of feminism, that was the unfortunate polarization
<italic>he<italic-end> made. And now, under the influence of the backlash,
he finds that 'everything good' is male, or some mythic good male, now
being reclaimed.

  Bly's whole initiation structure is based on an old concept of the mother,
now grossly belied by the droves of mothers out in the work force.

  To make himself truly useful, the Wild Man could go back to the 'castle'
and relieve the boy's sisters, who not only come and go every day, taking
part in the boy's world, but also take care of the business the boy leaves
behind at home.

  But we also need wise men like him to help introduce the mothers and sisters
to the world. Many women are still bewildered and intimidated by the rules
of the game they never learned. Our culture is desperate for change: men
need to be initiated into primary parenting and real domestic responsibility,
as well as the world; women need to have the onus of total parental
obligation lifted, and to be afforded the complete set of keys for admission
to the world."

[As you can see, I've edited this heavily so I wouldn't have to type the
whole article. For the full effect I suggest you find and read the original
piece.]

I read 'Iron John'.  I enjoyed it.  I enjoyed it because I thought there
were parts that really went to the core of men.  I don't expect Ms Johnson
to understand the core of men because there are certain things that one
gender can't really know about the other.  Men will never know exactly what
it feels like to have a baby.  Women will never know what it feels like to
be an 18 year old male jet propelled by Testostorone.  The list goes on.
When Robert Bly addresses some of these gender specific issues, some women,
because they cannot understand it, interpret it as anti-female.  I think
they are wrong.

Patrick

    I agree with Patrick, I think the author of .0 is refusing to
    acknowledge any differences between the sexes. She believes that
    all sexual distinction is cultural programming, rather, perhaps,
    than cultural derived from biological.
    
    More later....
    
    -roger
    

    I see the refusal to acknowledge gender distinction alot too.

   All this talk of "Backlash" and of Feminisms insistence on making the
   sexes not only equal but "the same" is very saddening...  It makes me
   wonder if we will ever achieve a "True Global Community"...

      aaah well, I'll just keep doin my part...

Chris

    Hi, Chris!
    
    I agree... 
    
    I have seen other fear and misunderstanding around Bly's work and
    other "men's movement" things, and it's too bad.  I think, at its best,
    the men's movement offers something to all of us in this common life of
    ours, women as well as men. In Bly's book, where he talks about the
    boy's need to steal the key from under his mother's pillow, he makes
    a couple of interesting other statements:
    
    - No mother worth her salt would let her son have the key (without
      making him steal it).
    
    - Bly reports that in a mixed session, discussing this part of the myth
      of Iron John, one nice man asked "Couldn't we just get a group
      together and ask the Mother for the key?"  Bly says, "I could feel the
      spirits of all the women in the room rise up to kill him.  Men like
      that are as dangerous to women as they are to themselves." 
                                                                             
    
    
      I've seen men develop an enormous degree of respect for women out of
      feeling empowered as men, in a moment that I will never forget.  Some
      "backlash".
                    

    I guess the moral is, rather than emulate the book reviewers, I
    recommend the old-fashioned way - read it.  Although, it's somewhat
    vague (poetic?) and so by necessity I'm going through it a second time.

    I'VE READ "IRON JOHN" AFTER BEING INTRODUCED TO ROBERT BLY THROUGH BILL
    MOYERS SPECIAL ON PBS. I'M A SINGLE FATHER OF MY 19 YEAR OLD SON. WE
    WATCHED THE PROGRAM TOGETHER A FEW TIMES AND WAS AMAZED AT THE MANS
    VISION AND CONNECTEDNESS TO HIS SPIRITUALITY. HIS BOOK IS A TOUGH READ.
    SOME CONCEPTS HE BRINGS FORTH TAKES "DAYS" TO INTEGRATE. I NEED TO READ
    IT AGAIN BECAUSE I KNOW I'LL GET MORE OUT OF IT THE SECOND TIME AROUND.
    
    I AGREE WITH COMMENTS ABOUT WOMAN AND MEN NOT BEING ABLE TO RELATE
    BECAUSE OF THEIR RESPECTIVE POINTS OF REFERENCE. I WAS HAVING A DEEP
    CONVERSATION WITH A FEMALE FREIND ABOUT THESE DIFFERENCES AND SHE
    MENTIONED FEMALE TRAITS THAT ALLOW FOR SUPERIOR PARENTING SKILLS. I
    STATED THAT WE ARE INDIVIDULS FIRST, HUMAN BEINGS SECOND, AND THEN
    GENDER THIRD. TALK ABOUT A BLANK STARE! IN THIS CONTEXT WHO CARES ABOUT
    GENDER. TO BE CONTINUED

    Re: .7
    Welcome to MENNOTES.  Please don't use all upper case letters.  In
    notesfiles, that indicates you are yelling and is hard to read besides.
    You might want to sign your notes with your first name so people know
    how to address you if they want to reply to you. 
    
    					- Vick  (a moderator)

    Hey, I saw an announcement of a new book the other day. It's by Joe Bob
    Briggs, renowned drive-in-movie critic, and will be titled:
    
    	"Iron Joe Bob"
    
    Not making this up,
    -b