Making a Men’s Movement

Posted on February 13, 2005 in Gender Reflections

The men’s movement originally began as a counterweight to feminism. In its development under Warren Farrell, it became a vehicle for fathers who just want to pick up and leave wives and the children that they spawned whenever they feel a wiggle beneath their zippers. Under Robert Bly, the men’s movement is a head rising out of the Easter Island grass. Man the Provider. Let’s go out and kill a mammoth!

I don’t find either one of these satisfying. For one thing, I don’t philander and, for another, hunting does not suit urban living. Men who live alone because of divorce often need to face their own selfishness and anger. They need to reconcile with their families, if not in person then in their hearts. As for the hunting bit, I don’t see where beating myself on the chest and heaving spears makes me anything other than a Flintstones’ cartoon.

A genuine men’s movement must address the issue of men being alone, challenge the myth that men can stand on their own two feet in any gale, bring down a fleeting gazelle with a single shot, and maintain a gritting teeth bravado as bullets whiz around them but never hit them. It must say, man to man, that men need emotional support to realize their projects as do women. It must admit that men sometimes take painful hits. It must eschew the traditional courses that men have followed in their flight from the pain such as alcohol, drugs, and thrill-seeking.

I noted elsewhere that when a woman cries, people surround her, trying to help. If a man says “I ache”, he often finds himself talking to the walls. He’s trapped not only by the expectations of the people around him, but also by the expectations he has of himself. Farrell promotes rage against woman. Bly promotes a life that can’t be lived. It’s time for some serious rethinking. It’s time to let men be human instead of caricatures.

The trick is to learn what feminism did right and not fight it.

One accidental legacy of feminism is that husbands are often rejoined to listen to their wives. Wives should also listen to their husbands. I grant that men often need to be retrained in presenting themselves. But this will become easier if we begin by taking the fact that they feel pain seriously. Bullets do hit and they hurt. Men must struggle to have the right to cry, to express anguish, to receive nonprovoking comfort when the world gets cruel.