With Good Will Toward Men

This article appeared in Transitions - Newsletter of the National Coalition of Free Men, Vol. 13 No.6, November/December 1993.

I believe we can trace the woeful decline in American society back to the 1960s, and in large part to the ascendancy of the notion that men, especially in family life, are disposable at best, and the embodiment of all that is harmful at worst.

For 30 years we've heard an articulation of male-female issues primarily from a female point of view. Feminism is dominating the gender issues agenda by demanding and achieving wide consideration of such questions as "Who has better jobs?", "Who earns more money", "How can we make men pay more child support" and "Who is in Congress?" The recent book Women Respond to the Men's Movement clearly demonstrates modern feminism's reluctance to expand the inquiry to include other questions, such as "Who lives happier, richer, warmer, more connected, more fulfilling lives?", "What is power, anyway?", "Don't children need anything from their fathers other than money?" and "Why is no one in Congress willing and able to see and address the problems facing men?"

When I read Women Respond to the Men's Movement, the title of another neo-feminist volume - Backlash - came ironically to mind.

To achieve better understanding and cooperation, to promote love and respect between women and men, we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that women are the only gender with valid items on the agenda, and that men constitute the only sex that has an advantage to share. An image that often pops into my head is of women and men sitting across from each other at a negotiating table. The females are pointing at the males and saying, "You do this wrong, you do this wrong, and you do this wrong. And to correct it you need to give us this, give us this and give us this." Men are crossing their arms and turning away. "Okay, what's in it for us?" is the natural and healthy question that seems never to have been answered, primarily because men have never thought or felt free to ask it.

Besides men are largely unable even to articulate what it is that they would like to have coming their way across the negotiating table. Women's domination of the public discussion of gender issues has made it nearly impossible for men - individually or collectively - to consider their needs.

Men do not address the fact that they commit suicide four times more often than women, that men die seven years younger than women, that men are more likely to be alcoholic and abusive of drugs, that men often don't know their kids, that men's lives often are empty, mechanical and cold.

But men know deep in their hearts that one of the greatest shams ever foisted is the notion that by virtue of their gender they enjoy lives of power and privilege while women live lives of unmitigated degradation and oppression.

Notice that a few paragraphs ago I said, "For 30 years we've heard an articulation of male-female issues primarily from a female point of view." I did not say "feminist point of view." The feminist perspective is not the only female outlook that holds great sway in America. Feminists and conservative women like Phyllis Schlafly may think of each other as enemies, but they both focus on women's wants and needs. The conservative women's agenda, because it is supported by the status quo, is stated not as questions, challenges or demands, but as calm assertions of immutable fact. We often hear conservative women state with equanimity that "Women's essential nature is to nurture" and "Women instinctively know what is best for children and families" and "Men were put on this earth to be good providers." Curiously, feminism, pursuing its unacknowledged backlash against men's incipient inquiry into their situation, seems to be reembracing the prerogatives of motherhood and the exclusive economic focus on fatherhood, especially where divorce forces the question of fairness, equality and the proper roles of men and women. This alignment of conservatism and feminism has left little room for people of progressive mind on issues of gender. We must carve out new territory in which men's concerns can be given due consideration.

I believe that women of good will are essential to our effort. "Why?" you might ask. "If men really need a change, why don't they just make it happen?" The answer lies in a paradox. It could plausibly be argued - and it is, in fact, often said - that the reason only a few men are speaking up on the issues of their gender is that most men feel there is nothing to say, there are no problems. It is my belief however, that the reason most men are not speaking up is precisely because there is so much to talk about.

One of the things that most needs to be talked about is what keeps men from talking.

We would recognize the folly of mistaking a maximum security prison for a country club: "Nobody is leaving. It must be awfully nice in there." Men, I would submit, are in the most maximum security prison of all, the prison that convinces its inmates that they are right where they want to be, that they are perfectly and enviably positioned to achieve all the success they want, that as economic providers they are admired, loved and appreciated, and that if they ever begin to think otherwise, they must have a "personal" problem to be denied and buried in shame.

The oft-stated notion that women's work is undervalued has a corollary: Men's work is overvalued. Society's ancient, single-minded focus on survival and efficiency viewed men's difficult and lonely struggles on the front lines of production, protection and competition as absolutely essential.

Perhaps men's traditional work is often inherently stressful and unrewarding in any spiritual or emotional sense, society must rely on customs and mores to rigorously enforce and persuasively induce men's attendance to their narrow range of duties. Words like "failure" and "loser" suggest the power of enforcement. "Money" concisely names the inducement.

On the other hand, perhaps women's traditional work of tending the homefire with the children is seen as inherently attractive and rewarding. Perhaps society is less in need of endowing it with artificial "value" to induce women to perform it, and is less insistent that women "prove" their womanhood by submitting to it. Perhaps society is less apprehensive about women experimenting with alternatives to "women's work" than it is about men exploring different ways of being "manly." Perhaps that is why women have been freer than men to talk about "choices" and have been able to achieve the widespread expansion of their gender roles we have seen in the past 30 years.

The question now is: What will women do with their ever-growing freedom? I am optimistic that women of good will, once they see the "male bastion" for what it is, will toss men the key: "Hey, snap out of it! That's no country club you're in. We'll still love you if you leave it. We'll adjust. We want our men to be alive and free."

But to the extent that women harbor doubts that they really want men to unlock their lives, to the extent that men perceive that women love them for staying where they are and doing what they do, men are unlikely to be convinced that freedom and options will bring them happiness. We need assurance that we can venture forth without losing women's love and acceptance.

Another reason women must be involved in the discussion of men's gender-based social concerns is that in discussions of sexism, men are the suspect class; we have been effectively defined as the enemies of gender justice.

One day a few years ago, I was talking about gender issues with a friend of mine. "Did you ever notice," he asked, "that we have the word misogyny to denote anger at women, but we don't have a word - except misandry, which no one knows or uses - for anger at men?"

..."Yes, I have," I answered. "Isn't that something?"
..."It sure is," he responded. "It just proves that in this man's world, being angry at men is simply not allowed."
...Surprised, I said, "Gosh, I came to an entirely different conclusion."
..."How could you possibly come to a different conclusion?" he asked. "It's obvious."
..."Well," I began, "what's the word for crossing the street against a light or in the middle of a block?"
..."That's jaywalking." he answered.
..."And what's the word for crossing the street at an intersection with a green light?"
..."There isn't any word for that. It's just called crossing the street."
..."And so maybe," I suggested, " the reason we have a word to spotlight anger at women is because we want to punish and discourage it, and the reason we don't have a word for anger at men is because, like crossing the street with a green light, it has complete social sanction."

My friend has no response - other than to insist that surely I must be wrong.