CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

 

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the theoretical underpinnings of contemporary men’s movements.  The study relates these contemporary movements to the leading ideology of hegemonic masculinity prevalent in North-American society, where to be masculine is to be male, heterosexual, public, and dominant. This chapter introduces the study of men’s movements. It considers the theorising of masculinities, the typology of men’s movements, common interests within men’s movements, and the sociological contributions, the social relevance, and chapters of the present study. 

 

Masculinities & Men’s Movements

While hegemonic masculinity has been relatively well theorised, its relationship to men’s movements remains largely ambiguous and unexplicated. Theoretical and operationalised frameworks do not incorporate the actual range of North America’s masculinities typified within men’s movements. The present study attempts to correct this theoretical drawback by developing a typology of men’s movements. After identifying various men’s movements, this study investigates their theoretical underpinnings, philosophies, and praxes.

The emergence of men’s movements with their attendant styles of masculinities inevitably raises questions about their presence and their praxes.  Some of the more vital questions are, (a) do they meet the criteria of social movements? (b) Is there a typology of men’s movements?  (c) Are they hegemonic or counter-hegemonic? (d) What are their claims? (e) What are their practices? (f) How do their practices impact others? Answers to those questions facilitate this thesis mapping of newly emerging masculinities exhibited within some contemporary men’s movements.

 

Typology of Men’s Movements

The thesis develops a typology of three types of men’s movements: (1) equal treatment, (2) spirituality, and  (3) pro-feminist. These movements often exhibit different political, legal or social priorities.  This thesis advances the argument, however, that there are characteristics common to men’s movements. Men’s equal treatment movements emphasise the need to be ‘equal with women’. They use various courts to challenge women’s hard-won gains in pay equity, taxation, and affirmative action. They argue that Family Courts have an inherent bias, ‘favouring’ women in custody disputes, dissolution of assets, and family law. Men’s rights want either inclusive ‘gender studies’ or equal resources to establish ‘men’s studies’ programs. Men’s rights movements also want equal opportunity victimization. They want it understood that men are no less harassed, victimised, wounded, and in pain than women.

The second major type of men’s movements is spiritual, and includes religious promise-keepers and mythopoetic men.  Both are expressly and profoundly anti-feminist. Promise Keepers want patriarchs to ascend to their rightfully dominant role and women to re-assume their role as men’s subordinate helpmates. Mythopoetics celebrate the ‘ancient patriarch’, the ‘warrior within’, and the hoary, ‘deep masculinity’ of mythology. Using a Jungian framework, they seek bonding with sons and the removal of sons from mothers. Mythopoetics view women as seductresses and manipulators.

The third major type of men’s movement is pro-feminist and claims to operate within a feminist theoretical paradigm.  While it avows a commitment to ‘feminism’, its political actions and social theory indicates a fragmentation on how to respond to women’s issues. At one end of the spectrum, there are liberal pro-feminist men who support workplace reforms and actions to expose violence against women, and the provision of resources for abused women. At the other, radicals among pro-feminist men publish the names of men who have perpetrated crimes against women.

 

Common Interests Within Men’s Movements

In spite of the range of positions on a continuum, men’s movements share an ‘awesome’ commonality in maintaining patriarchal interests. Consequently every type of men’s movement presents a problem to women and feminisms. Therefore, it is argued here that men’s movements vary only in the degree of danger they present to women.

The current study contends that men in men’s movements are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Men’s movements have the effect of potential tricksters and deceivers who present as progressive but are regressive. As deceivers, some men’s movements appropriate the theories and language of feminism(s), either claiming it as their own or not giving due credit. As tricksters, some men’s movements rebuke and seek to subvert feminism(s) and feminist theory.  They want to subordinate feminism to masculinism, and they are prepared to manipulate media, theory, and courts to maintain essentially historical patriarchal privilege.

 

Sociological Contributions of the Present Study

Some studies of men’s movements tend to see them as a single movement (Faludi, 1991; Hagan, 1992; Kimmel 1995) or assert that there is one men’s movement with a variety of interests (Morgan, 1992; Kaufman, 1993). Other studies see separate movements, yet fail to theorise them all (Connell, 1987).  This study examines the breadth of men’s movements, and develops a  three-part typology.

However, ideal types within this typology of men’s movements are not ‘ideal’ in the Weberian sense of a logical  intellectual construct of idealised perfection. Rather, ideal types of men’s movements emerged from the readings, and from my observations. The three types men’s movements solidified ideologically within this thesis only when measured by scholarly literatures and less formal critiques of hegemonic masculinity and other masculinities. Finally, interpersonal knowledge of, and interaction with, men in movements, their supporters, and their critics supported the typology.

     This study is socially relevant for four reasons.  First, it alerts feminists to the theoretical underpinnings of men’s movements. That is, it explicates the dangers of men’s rights movements with their legal ramifications -laws that theoretically purport to be emancipatory but in everyday life disadvantage women.  Secondly, this study looks at how men in the recovery sector of men’s rights appropriate the language of victimization.  Men in recovery movements emphasise woman-blaming admonitions that invert reality, absolving men of poor judgements by identifying women’s socialised supportive behaviours as sick ‘co-dependency’.  Thirdly, the study exposes the misogyny of the mother-bashing Mythopoetic movement that advocates separation of sons from mothers. Fourthly, this study explicates how pro-feminist men exploit and impeach feminist theory while blocking feminist scrutiny and accountability, and how they compete with feminists for scarce resources.

 

Methodology

Basically, the methodology pursued in this thesis is a secondary analysis through literature reviews and a limited primary analysis through the Internet technology. The comprehensive literature review of men’s movements included traditional readings in University and public libraries at several geographical sites. The review covered sociology, psychology, legal sources, and political and criminological texts.

A number of men’s movement Internet home pages were also accessed, and Internet ‘chat rooms’ were irregularly visited.  In my opinion, chat room debaters ranged from misogynist men and excusing women to feminists and pro-feminist men. Given the consequence-free anonymity, the possibility of technological tampering, and the uncertainty of truthfulness of these exchanges, it was necessary to weight encounters carefully in conjunction with scholarly literature.

Researching the topic of men’s movements was not a linear development with orderly progression.  Rather, it was a process of going back from source to critique and back again, from traditional to non-traditional, from checking to counter checking, from contrasting to comparing. It was, then, a multi-layered approach to understanding men’s movements. From media to books, from sociological journal to law texts, from clippings to television, my research progression might be likened to the metamorphous of a pupa to a butterfly. 

This methodological approach proved tiresome at times - yet necessary. Only weaving back and forth between sources, positions, authors, critiques by men in other movements, feminists and pro-feminists allowed me to see the emergence of a typology of men’s movements and the development of questions for analysing these movements.

 

 

The Chapters

This thesis is comprised of six chapters. Chapter two presents a literature review of feminism, hegemonic masculinity, social movements, and emergent men’s movements. It considers the evolution of traditional or hegemonic masculinity in social theory, and how it has changed over time. Chapter two also looks at how hegemonic masculinity tolerates emergent masculinities exhibited by contemporary men’s movements.  The literature review in this chapter covers the class, race, and status of men’s movement members, their political and public practices, as well as theorised consequences to, and implications for, women.  Chapter three outlines the critiques of men’s movements in the literature. It includes critiques of fathers’ rights, men in recovery, men’s studies, Mythopoetic men, Promise Keepers, and pro-feminist men. Chapter four analyses the typology of men’s movements, their claims, and their practices. Chapter five identifies the contributions of this study. It theorizes the implications of men’s movements for women and families, and the thesis suggests areas for future research.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

 

The present chapter covers the literature relevant to the study of men’s movements. Divided into seven parts, it considers (1) feminisms, (2) Marxist hegemony, (3) Gramscian hegemony, (4) Gramscian counter-hegemony, (5) hegemonic masculinity, (6) social movements, and (7) men’s movements.

 

Feminism(s)

Feminism or more correctly, feminisms are the backdrop to this study’s analyses of men’s movements. Feminist theories emerged to explain and transform the subordination of women to men. Feminist theory is especially important to this thesis in explaining how men’s movements specifically subordinate women.

Liberal feminist strategy for change is a direct mobilisation of women, emphasising their common interests against that of men (Tong, 1989). Liberal feminism generally attributes women’s disadvantages to stereotyped expectations that are institutionalised through mass socialisation, and held by both genders but internalised by women (Wollstonecraft, [1792] Ed. Posten 1975; Friedan, 1963; Jaggar, 1983; Steinem, 1983). In principle then, according to liberal feminism, inequalities can be eliminated by breaking down the stereotypes, by giving girls better training and varied role models, by introducing equal-opportunity and anti-discrimination legislation or programs, and by freeing labour markets of male bias (Tong, 1989).

Liberal feminism informs legal equality –suffrage (Wollstonecraft [1792] ed Posten, 1975), equal employment opportunities and equal pay for work of equal value legislation (Friedan, 1963). Liberal feminism explores the contradictions within bourgeois, North American families (Friedan, 1963).   Liberal feminists also theorise the economic exploitation of wives by husbands (Delphy, 1977).

Marxist feminism is concerned primarily with how capitalism is reproduced (See Jaggar, 1983). Marxist feminism considers gender inequity to derive from capitalism, where men’s domination of women mirrors capital’s domination over labour (Walby, 1990). Socialist feminists expanded the Marxist analysis to show how work is divided by sex (Howe, 1977; Game and Pringle, 1983; Cockburn, 1983, 1986), thereby forcing women to provide free child and husband care (Luxton 1980; Armstrong & Armstrong, 1994).

Psychoanalytic feminism focuses on our culture’s gender arrangements and on how men and women conceive of themselves and the opposite sex (Dinnerstein, 1976). Psychoanalytic feminism expounds the theory that women ‘mother’ because their sense of relatedness to others is overdeveloped, while that of men is underdeveloped (Chodorow, 1974, 1978). This mode of analyses addresses generational reproduction of social structures (Mitchell, 1975; Dinnerstein 1976).

Radical feminism theorises a global patriarchy sustained by fear, collaboration, and force (See Daly, 1978; Dworkin, 1981; MacKinnon, 1977; 1989; 1997). It theorises rape (See Brownmiller, 1975) and pornography as men’s sexual occupation or exploitation of women’s bodies (See Dworkin, 1981; MacKinnon, 1997), the sexual reproduction and child-rearing roles and how they affect women’s suppression and subordination (See Firestone, 1970).

In this study, liberal feminism helps us understand how and why men’s rights movements are successfully mirroring liberal feminist strategies of legal challenges and legislative goals. Psychoanalytic feminism’s approach is relevant to understanding  the Mythopoetic men’s movement. The Mythopoetic men’s movement assumes a deep and essentialist masculinity constructed in diametric opposition to femininity (Kimmel & Kaufman, 1994) and therefore is unable to move towards anything but patriarchy (Clatterbaugh, 1995). Psychoanalytic feminism counters claims of inherent psychological, sexually determined, dominant roles for men. Radical feminism, dealing with male sexuality, power, and aggression, informs some part of all pro-feminist men’s movements, and all of radical pro-feminist men’s movement. Therefore, radical feminist theory is the appropriate framework for evaluating pro-feminist men’s movements. 

 

Hegemony

A commonly held opinion is that practices of masculinity always employ the same standards and values. The truth is that masculinity has changed over time (Pleck & Pleck, 1980; Connell, 1987). To explicate how this happens we must first understand the basis of belief in a single hegemonic masculinity. 

Karl Marx explained that the dominant class not only controlled the means of production but also produced and legitimated the ideology that serves its interests (Marx, [1847] 1976). For Marx, all systems of intellectual thought, legal, social, or political practices, and religious beliefs constituted a superstructure that developed out of, and reflected, society’s economic relations and the interests of the dominant class (Marx, [1847] 1976). Societal norms, values, and expectations are based upon the social consciousness and interests of the dominant ruling class (Marx & Engels, [1847] 1976; Gramsci, 1971). The elite class rules, then, by organising and sanctioning relations that sustain, support, and promote its domination (Marx & Engels,[1847] 1976; Gramsci 1994).

The main arguments made by Antonio Gramsci (1971) centre around how the ruling class secures consent. Gramsci extends Marxist concepts of ideological hegemony to the capacity to expose the systemic ways that dominant classes manipulate and distort knowledge, ideas and values to legitimate their self-serving ideas and systems (Gramsci, 1971). Gramsci shows how even those they subordinate accept their ideas as the ‘natural order’. Ideological hegemony is used as an organising principle of the bourgeois class to mystify and justify deprivation, and to induce passivity and acceptance by those who internalise its message (Gramsci, 1971).

Gramsci used Marxist frameworks to expose how ideological factors are deeply affected by concrete or material social realities (Gramsci, 1971). For Gramsci, consent was necessarily won through ideological struggles and material concessions to construct a collective identity (Gramsci, 1971). This collective identity unites dominant and subordinate classes into a political community even as it privileges some and disadvantages others (Gramsci, 1971). Gramsci’s analyses find both centralised power in coercive state practices, and diffused power within institutional sites such as families, courts, and religions (Gramsci, 1971). Therefore, although the state organises and exercises power, so too does civil society through ideologies of gender, race, and ethnicity (Gramsci, 1971). 

Gramsci’s unique contribution to this project is his assertion that hegemony rests upon a historically specific organisation of consent (Gramsci, 1971). This Gramscian perspective assists in understanding how hegemonic masculinity is organised in ways that seek to secure “consent” among men and women, feminists and non-feminists. 

 

Counter Hegemony

Gramsci sees that both the state and civil society can be points of dissidence and conflict (Gramsci, 1971). Those conflicts are characterised as social conflict or challenges organised by reformers (Gramsci, 1971). Gramsci thinks that while leadership comes from intellectuals, it is their ties to subaltern groups that facilitate a movement’s growth (Gramsci, 1971).  That is, movements become a broader counter-hegemonic consciousness sensitive to specific conditions at certain historical times (Gramsci, 1971).  For Gramsci, counter hegemony is more than dissidence and conflict. It means advancing comprehensive critiques of power and alternate notions of society (Gramsci, 1971). A counter hegemonic movement not only challenges existing order, it also envisions a radically different order than the status quo (Gramsci, 1971).  Gramsci refers to this new order as a ‘historical bloc’ that is waging a ‘war of position’ with institutionalised powers for new space and social alternatives (Gramsci, 1971). That is, Gramscian analyses move us toward more comprehensive critiques of power and possible forms of action [1]  (Carroll & Ratner, 1996).

Gramscian notions are important to this study because they point out that social movement researchers must not only be interested in understanding contemporary movement practices, they must be able to apprise their potential beyond single issues and local concepts.

Gramsci and neo-Gramscians provide notions of ideological hegemony and counter or competing hegemony.  This is relevant to this study since I will be dealing with hegemonic masculinity and the counter hegemony of three types of men’s movements. Additionally, Gramscian perspectives are reflected in both social movement literatures and men’s movement literatures.  

 

 

Hegemonic Masculinity

Masculinity has changed (Pleck & Pleck, 1980; Connell, 1987), and now accepted masculinities have a variety of practices, standards and values (Connell, 1987). To explicate how this happens and what it means to society, we must first understand on what basis a single hegemonic, universalistic masculinity is historically theorised (Connell, 1987).

Hegemonic masculinity involves power, authority, aggression, and violence within a context of race, class, and gender (Connell, 1987). But hegemonic masculinity is not a realistic description of masculine practices, but rather it is a normative pattern or aspiration. Therefore, it neither ensures absolute cultural dominance nor obliterates alternatives (Connell, 1987). Rather, hegemonic masculine standards rank alternatives. Two notable examples of this ranking would be black masculinity and gay masculinity.

Black masculinity is an area of study that examines the impact of a history of slavery, asking what effect slavery had on to-day’s black manhood. Contemporary imagery of black men ranges from historical slavery to super-macho sexual stud,   from idolised sports star to criminal, battering, and inadequate husbands and fathers (See: Hoch, 1979; Staples, 1982; Segal, 1990; Taylor, 1994; Mac An Ghaill, 1994; Williams 1986; and Connell 1996; Marriott, 1996). Being a black man in a white male dominant society has created real problems for black men both in the public sphere and in the private sphere (See: Staples, 1982; Connell 1987; Frye, 1992; Hamilton, 1996; Clatterbaugh, 1997). 

It is important to note that daily social relations for people of colour are experienced within legacies of colonialism, cultural and economic imperialism, and even historical slavery (Hamilton, 1996). However, because of racism, black men do not automatically have systemic privilege over women as do white men, and while racism is experienced by both sexes, it is experienced differently (See Lourde, 1984; hooks, 1992). 

Gay masculinity is a growing and elaborate field of sociological and psychological study. However, gay masculinity is unquestionably ranked lowly, a subordinate masculinity by hegemonic masculine standards (Connell, 1987, Schwalbe, 1996).  Furthermore, gay men, like women, struggle for liberation, security from oppression, and freedom from random violence (Schwalbe, 1997; Clatterbaugh, 1997).  Gay masculinity is subordinated within this framework by an array of material customs, including political and cultural exclusion, cultural violence, legal sanctions, street violence, economic discrimination, and personal boycott (Clatterbaugh, 1997; Connell, 1987). Furthermore, these facts lead gay men to conclude that homophobia strongly moulds heterosexual, hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1987; Clatterbaugh, 1997). Many gay communities seized the abject language of their vilification, using those terms as empowerment and to reclaim gay pride (Thompson, 1987). 

Still, by the 1990s, gay culture often embraced capitalist values, and therefore, gay communities featured elements of the hegemonic ideologies that subordinated women, including lesbian women (Connell, 1987). Gay masculinity may have spawned a massive counter-culture (Schwalbe, 1997), but that culture is nonetheless in accord with androcentric, male-dominant, and traditional male ideas and behaviours (Frye, 1983). While gay men suffer discrimination and subordination, that reality does not obliterate the fact that all men benefit from androcentric society (Connell, 1997).

There are, however, variations of hegemonic masculinity. By the 1970s, some psychological approaches rejected biological explanations of masculinity. Instead, "a paradigm representing the way society constructed a psychology of men" was theorised (Pleck & Pleck, 1980:1). ‘Masculinity’, possibly for the first time, was deemed fragile and debilitating, because patriarchy oppressed some men as it did women (Pleck & Pleck, 1980).  According to Pleck and Pleck,

  . . to be a man with other men means to always fear being attacked, victimised, exploited, and, in an ultimate sense, murdered by other men (Pleck & Pleck, 1980:425)[2].

 

The types of masculinities theorised by Pleck included, (1) a ‘No Sissy Stuff’ man employing a stigmata of anything feminine, (2) a ‘Big Wheel’ man typifying success, status, and invoked reverence, (3) a ‘Sturdy Oak’ man featuring manly toughness, confidence & self reliance, (4) and a ‘Give ’Em Hell’ man who was ultra-macho, aggressive, violent and (Pleck & Pleck, 1980).  Pleck and Pleck may be the first social scientists to theorise deviations of hegemonic masculinity, and to propose that there was fragility to the category of men.

Connell (1987) built on this theme, using Pleck’s notion of alternate modes of masculinity, and Gramscian and Marxist concepts of hegemony. For Connell, (1987) dramatic power differentials result when understandings previously shared by both ruled and ruler, such as the question of what is masculinity, change (Connell, 1987). For Connell (1987), hegemonic masculinity is a force that compels ranking of other masculinities against its tenets. He employs Gramsci’s concept of hegemony where social ascendancy controls social forces that organise private lives and cultural processes. Connell (1987) notes that masculine practices and values are embedded in everything from religious doctrine to public policy, physical planning to social policy, wage structures to one’s social value. The overwhelming dominance of hegemonic masculinity means that it is viewed by the bulk of society as the normative and desirable masculinity (Connell, 1987). Furthermore hegemonic masculinity informs the complimentary ideology of ‘emphasised femininity’ in which women are seen as weak, passive, irrational, and as victims (Connell, 1987).

In its purest form, hegemonic masculinity displays the well-known stereotypes of idealised maleness including

(i) Aggressive physical action, (ii) a strong sense of competitiveness and pre-occupation with the imagery of conflict, (iii) exaggerated heterosexual orientations often articulated in the form of misogynistic and patriarchal attitudes toward women, and (iv) the operation of rigid in-group/out-group distinctions whose consequences are strongly exclusionary in the case of out-groups and strongly assertive of loyalty and affinity in the case of in-groups (Fielding, 1994:47). 

 

Violence, then, is gendered, and is both a social problem and a consequence of masculinity (Stanko, 1993; Connell, 1987).   Hegemonic masculinity encourages men to use violence on an individual level in asserting their control over women, or between each other as they negotiate hierarchies of power (Newburn & Stanko, 1994). Moreover, the extent of male violence reflects the importance of aggressive physical action in constructing hegemonic masculinity (Newburn & Stanko, 1994). 

Masculinity is sometimes understood to be driven by biology (Marshall, 1994). But contrary to this limited biological perspective, masculinity may be viewed through the lens of social constructionism, implying gender-specific and socially constructed connotations or descriptions (Connell, 1987). Therefore it may be argued that ‘masculinity’ is socially constructed, and denotes manly and vigorous traits of gender-appropriate behaviours for men (Connell, 1987). So pervasive are these notions that within mainstream society masculinity is comfortably ensconced within daily practices and conventions of both capitalism and patriarchy (Connell, 1987).

Masculinity eventually comes to be seen as part of a socially-structured, North-American gender order based on a social dichotomy between men and women (Connell, 1987). Furthermore, for Connell (1987) gender order is practised as an institutionalised gender regime with macro politics far beyond the micro politics of an individual’s biology or sexuality (Connell, 1987). Gender, then, is arguably collective and institutionalised in historical practices and processes. Moreover, if hegemonic masculinity is an indiscernible social practice, it follows that sexuality is also socially constructed and ordered (Connell, 1987).   

     

Gender Order

Gender order affects macro society, where gendered and institutionalised resources mirror social gender inequities in “state powers, cultural and legal definitions, and even future gender relations” (Connell, 1987:139). Masculine gender training may be even more rigid than is feminine gender training (Chodorow, 1978). According to Chodorow, a boy -like a girl- has his mother as an ever-present role model, but the boy knows that he is nor supposed to be like her. Therefore, he must try to be what his mother is not. Furthermore, the mother encourages his separation from her, but not from his sister (Chodorow, 1978).  A boy, then, must repress his ‘feminine’ qualities, and reject or devalue women and the feminine (Chodorow, 1978). To establish their distance from women, men engage in high-risk behaviours of aggression, domination, competition, emotional distance, and preoccupation with money, power and status, and sexual prowess.  Although definitions of manhood vary by class, culture, and personal orientation, they are all measured by hegemonic masculinity (Chodorow, 1994).

To summarise, masculinity is an ideological mechanism and social construct that, among other things, subordinates women to men (Connell, 1987). It is also the standard against which multiplicities of masculinities within men’s movements are measured.

 

Standpoint Methodology For the Study of Gender Order 

When discussing from whose standpoint a study of masculinities should be done, the ones generally suggested are women’s perspective or men’s perspective[3] (Brod, 1990; Coltrane, 1994). Feminist standpoint theory starts with the ‘actualities of women’s lives’, adding the ‘concrete, relational, subjugated activities of women’ (Smith, 1987). That is, gender is socially constructed under specific micro-structural conditions (Smith, 1987).

Yet arguably, woman’s standpoint theory fails to appreciate the contradictory coexistence of male-normative power (Coltrane, 1994). That is, it cannot accurately appreciate men’s contradictory experience of wielding power over some men and women, while being powerlessness and subordinated themselves by more authoritative or commanding men, and occasionally, women (Coltrane, 1994).

Brod (1990) argues, however, that men’s perspective cannot counter or correct women’s perspectives. Rather, mans’ perspective, when added to women’s standpoint knowledge, would be an extension or radicalisation of feminism.  Brod (1990) argues that taking up the study of power relations between men as well as between the sexes allows a differentiated understanding of patriarchy (Brod, 1994). Furthermore, the blending of men’s and women’s perspectives would help us to understand the mutability and division of masculinities (See Brod, 1990).

Still, men studying men offers alternatives to the negative patriarchal and hegemonic portrayal of men as either bullies or testosterone heroes (Morgan & Hearn, 1990). As well, only relinquishing essentialist hegemonic masculinity that presents women as victims and men as oppressors makes visible the social reality of male victimization by men (See Brod, 1990; Stanko & Hobnell, 1994; Newburn & Stanko, 1994). This approach emphasises that anti-essentialist, anti-hegemonic, emergent, or subordinated masculinities explicate experiences of male victimization and establish a masculine-grounded approach to victimology (See Brod, 1990; Stanko & Hobnell, 1994; Newburn & Stanko, 1994).

 A critical analysis of male epistemological, methodological, sexual, and political issues and practices about masculinity might arise should men undertake critical examinations of their practices (Morgan, 1990, 1994; Feminano, 1991).  Advocates argue that only studies from the standpoint of men can appreciate men’s psychological pain and suffering (Jesser, 1996).  Such an enterprise might lead to a blending of men’s and women’s studies as a discipline of ‘genderology’ to situate how patterns and conditions under which gender categories are developed, limited, shaped, and finally, expressed as dichotomous (Jesser, 1996).  

Coltrane, however, argues that historically, men’s experiences are universalised, allowing men to overlook discrimination against women and to legitimate male domination.  According to this perspective, gender an important organising principle (Coltrane, 1994). Coltrane is concerned that the study of ‘gender’, by highlighting men and not women, carries the risk of dismissing the importance of gender in everyday life (See Blye, 1993; Coltrane 1994). Moreover, Coltrane  argues that it might legitimate taken-for-granted assumptions about dissimilarities between the sexes, and between men. Coltrane, then, is troubled that gender, used as an analytic category, may work against the larger goal of reducing its salience (1994).

According to Coltrane, men simply studying men do not, and cannot, change the constructions of masculinity and male dominance (1994). That is, both men and women need to examine categories of multiple masculinities because (1) women can better identify and highlight male power and abuses, (2) women can better question male agency, and (3) women can better identify, find, or analyse the structural patterns of their subjugation (Coltrane, 1994:57). Coltrane (1994), Brod (1990), and Blye (1992) agree that the study of men by men offers positive possibilities –but all also recognise the inherent dangers.

 

Social Movements

Social movement literature considers both movements that are hegemonic and those that are counter-hegemonic.  Hegemonic movements tend to support the status quo (See McCarthy & Zald, 1977; Gusfield, 1981), while counter-hegemonic movements call for a radical readjustment of the social order (See McCarthy & Zald, 1977).  Social movements present as a political paradigm where successes are measurable, among other ways, by how political solutions to social issues are integrated into public consciousness and policy (Offe, 1987). Social movements are not simply random and emergent, but feature predetermined, voluntary, purposive and collective behaviours (McCarthy & Zald, 1977; Piven & Cloward, 1988). Furthermore, social movements engender either positive empathy or negative resistance from those not members of the movement (Oberschall, 1993; Tilly 1978).

Historically, the political goals of movements have been over-emphasised by scholars so that individual interaction at non-political levels is deemed to be less significant (Gusfield, 1986). But contemporary theories -like feminism- consider the meaning of movements apart from their social and structural factors (Gusfield, 1986). That is, accumulative and interactive social change in western movements is practised and predicated on a micro or personal politic, yet movements have a collective effect on macro world practices (Gusfield, 1986).

Gusfield (1986) analyses hegemonic movements in the ‘benevolent’ welfare state.  According to Gusfield (1986), these movements are linked to the emergence of ‘social problems’; giving rise to what might be characterised as “troubled person” professions. Within those professions, contested and uncontested definitions of problems and movement mobilisations result in  more state attention on those problems (Gusfield, 1986)

Neo-Gramscian Carl Boggs (1986) argues that the most striking feature of new movements is that they “emerge primarily outside the bourgeois public sphere - as extra-institutional phenomena rooted in civil society” (Boggs, 1986:74). For modern, counter-hegemonic social movements, new sensibilities emerge as part of a sustained cultural radicalism in the context of larger social forces (Boggs, 1986). This cultural transformation corresponds to the Gramscian theory of counter hegemony, which also implies a renewal of the public sphere and a democratisation of political discourses (Boggs, 1986). This perspective argues that counter hegemony must be taken out of a simply Marxist narrative to an alternative  based on the struggle for democracy in a complex and modern world (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; Carroll & Ratner, 1994).

Carroll and Ratner (1996) explore the framing of, and networking within movements from a neo-Gramscian perspective.  For them, a broad framing movement(s) can be based upon a political economy account of injustice (Carroll & Ratner, 1996). Within this universalistic frame, structures of power are seen as articulated together, and their thrust is the politics of a powerful counter-hegemony (Carroll & Ratner, 1996).

An identity politics frame is attached to markers such as gender and race, and in the oft-cited case of white males of the dominant group (Carroll & Ratner, 1996).  For Carroll and Ratner

. . .(an identity politic frame) is often associated with practices that are corrupt, discriminatory, and so on, yet there is also the possibility of power shifts as people reject (patriarchal) models of human relations. . . .(and where) counter-power is conceived as empowerment. Oppression is viewed as a matter of exclusion (where) the oppressed are marginalised . . . This more particularistic frame resonates with sensibilities . . . whose counter hegemonic prospects rests in the disruption of dominant discourses and in the emphasis and agency and empowerment for subaltern identity groups (Carroll & Ratner, 1996:609). 

 

Carroll and Ratner (1996) note the tendency of like movements to develop interconnections and networks.  

Only recently has hegemonic masculinity –or any other type of masculinity- spawned social movements. Among masculinity scholars, Kimmel and Kaufman (1994) specifically linked movement theory to men’s movements while identifying and analyzing the Mythopoetic men’s movement. In their analysis of Mythopoetics, they identified four main movement components: (1) a central assumption of Mythopoetic ideology with a perceived ontological and essential difference between men and women, (2) a recognisable membership, (3) The promotion of Mythopoetic masculinity and men’s problems, and (4) organisational dynamics for accomplishing their stated aims (Kimmel & Kaufman, 1994).  They identified counter hegemonic masculinities-cum-movements both by the historical measure of what comprises a movement, and by emerging masculine ideologies (Kimmel & Kaufman, 1994). 

 

Men’s Equal Treatment Movements

Men’s equal treatment or “men’s rights” groups started in the 1970s and were informed by the women’s liberation  (Farrell, 1974; Fasteau, 1975). Farrell’s The Liberated Man had a forward by radical feminist Gloria Steinem who said the book represented ‘the other half of the revolution’.  Fasteau’s The Male Machine had a forward by Wilma Scott Heide, then President of the National Organisation for Women. However, things would change over time, with Farrell and Fasteau losing feminist support (See Faludi, 1991).

Farrell and Fasteau argued that men’s roles restricted their human potential. Goode also agreed that men’s roles were narrow and confining (Goode, 1980). Furthermore, he noted that when women were free it advantaged men in that the women in their life could be more productive, make more money, and be more loving Goode recognised, however, that women did much more work in the home, and that even in contemporary times women faced job segregation.  Nonetheless, Goode concedes that while men derive some benefits from women’s liberation, women’s sustained economic and social freedoms would inevitably weaken men’s dominant positions (1980).

Some feminists tried to show the interest that men heterosexual men had in the remaking of sexuality and the family in context of post-war North American society. For example, Barbara Ehrenreich argued that women’s liberation resulted from the male revolt against conformity and strict family roles of the 1950’s (1983).  The social contract between men and women, codified in law, was breaking down. Ehrenreich  crystallised feminist concern that male ‘liberation’ and its agenda for social change, would mean that most men would have little interest in supporting their children (1983).   

Male liberation was a curious mix of social movement and psychological self-help ideologies (Sawyer, 1970; Farrell, 1974; Pleck & Sawyer, 1974; Goldberg, 1975; David & Brannon, 1976). According to Kimmel emergent social movements such as the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and the Black Panthers had redefined masculinity (1976). For example, the Berkeley Men’s Centre Manifesto said that

 . . we (men) no longer want to live up to an impossible masculine image -strong, silent, cool, handsome, unemotional, successful, master of women, leader of men, wealthy, brilliant and ‘heavy’ (See Kimmel, 1996:281).

 

According to Kimmel, Politicians and the media began to characterise ordinary North-American men as besieged with hegemonic roles hard work and incessant demands made upon them. Traditional men turned into newly angry white males threatened by ‘femnazis’, that is, feminists who challenged the male culture of entitlement, privilege and special interests (Kimmel, 1996). Feminism, for angry white males, was emasculating, bringing guilt on all men. The result was a backlash (Kimmel, 1996).

Many theorists argued that contemporary masculinity is in the throes of an identity crisis (Kaufman, 1993; Connell, 1993, 1995; Kimmel & Kaufman, 1994; Newitz, 1996; Clatterbaugh, 1997).  Traditional definitions of masculinity are rooted in men’s economic autonomy and their support of wives and children, but global or geopolitical economies are changing and shifting and thereby causing many men to lose privileges (Ehrenreich 1983; Connell, 1993; Kimmel & Kaufman, 1994). Consequently, the public arena of hegemonic masculinity where men prove their economic and personal virility in a racially, sexually-homosocial, homogenous world is no longer the norm (Kimmel and Kaufman, 1994).

Scholars noted that economic independence that underpinned men’s autonomy had dwindled due to the rise of high technology, the emergence of civil rights, and women’s liberation (See Connell, 1993; Kimmel and Kaufman, 1994 and 1996; Newitz, 1996).  Subsequently, economic, political, and cultural changes psychologically affected middle-class and middle-aged, heterosexual white men (Kimmel and Kaufman, 1996, 1994; Newitz, 1996; Connell, 1993).

Elite male beneficiaries of hegemonic masculinity, confused and combative about their loss of privileges, saw that their exclusive space was being challenged, appropriated, invaded, and changed by ‘others’ as they experiences loss. ‘Others’ were not white, not middle-to-upper-class, and not middle-aged (See Newitz, 1996; Kimmel and Kaufman, 1994, 1996; Connell, 1995).

There is little doubt that men experienced some loss, but they over-reacted (Newitz, 1996).  That is, unfamiliar with a world without automatic privilege, elite white men thought that women’s and racial equality translated to their discrimination.  Yet, in reality they remain the most gender, class, race, and ethnically privileged people in the world (Newitz, 1996; Kimmel & Kaufman, 1894).

Men’s superordinate historical position tends to cause them to view women in ways that make women’s rebellion surprising an incomprehensible to them (Goode, 1980). Men have indeed lost aggregate patriarchal and personal power (Kimmel & Kaufman, 1894). Therefore, the angst of these first-world, traditional, white, heterosexual men arguably fuelled, and still fuels, society’s reactionary backlashes against feminism and subordinated masculinities (Kimmel & Kaufman, 1994).

The newest symbol of victimization, then, is North American men[4] (See Newitz, 1996). Just as women are rejecting traditional roles as victims, men are declaring that they are ‘victims of white manhood’. That is, white male movements are saying that they are victims and that traditional victims, women and black men, are now more powerful than white men (Newitz, 1996).

 

Men’s Rights’ Perspectives

According to Clatterbaugh (1997), men’s rights initiatives fall naturally into four areas: (1) legal rights regarding gender parity, (2) fathers’ rights (3) men in recovery and (4) men’s studies (Clatterbaugh, 1997). Strategically, they attack perceived prejudices against males through legal action, asking that courts make parents share child care costs equally (See Young, 1993). They oppose affirmative action programs predicated on gender, and research solely about female subordination or oppression (See Young, 1993). Their advocates oppose male circumcisions as rape and genital mutilation (Clatterbaugh, 1997). They view “affirmative action as reverse discrimination” (Young, 1993:319). They claim that men are sexually harassed by powerful women and falsely victimized by female charges of sexual harassment, rape, or assault (See Young, 1993). They claim that courts presume women are inherently more nurturing or innately more ethical (See Young, 1993).

Men’s rights advocates split into two philosophical categories (1) those who feel that both genders suffer equal oppression, but that women are so successful in achieving social change that they now are better off than most men (Clatterbaugh, 1997). (2) The second group thinks that greater male power is natural, but feminists have usurped natural male dominance and power (See Clatterbaugh, 1997).

Men’s rights positions may emphasise various political goals, but their rhetoric and philosophy remains singular. While movements split on political action, they agree that men are more victimised (Clatterbaugh, 1997). Recently men’s rights advocates have successfully established the term ‘gender reconciliation’ in their promotion of the position that men and women are equal (Clatterbaugh, 1997). The claim is not that women should be equal or will be equal, but that they are equal now (Clatterbaugh, 1997). To summarise, a fundamental premise of men’s rights ideology is that both men and women are victimised equally, although in different ways, and that both genders should acknowledge it (Clatterbaugh, 1997).

 

Fathers’ Rights Movements

In the 1970s pro-feminist men, arguing that they wanted to be better fathers, organised around fathers’ rights issues (See Coltrane & Hickman, 1992). Subsequently, they argue that: (1) men pay too much support, (2) court ‘biases’ favour women, and (3) woman relocate regardless of the inconveniences caused fathers in seeing their children (See Coltrane & Hickman, 1992, Young, 1993).

Fathers’ rights activists point out that: (1) ninety per cent of American divorces grant maternal custody, and that while recent legislation has strengthened payment enforcement, there is no corresponding legislation requiring women to facilitate visitation, (2) fathers are denied due process in hearings where mothers are given sole custody, or in disputes about visitation issues (See Williams & Williams, 1995). They maintain that allegations of sexual abuse are “the nuclear weapon of domestic relations” (See Coltrane & Hickman, 1992:410).  They seek to end “bitter ex-wives . . . allegations of child abuse because they (the women) know that courts will automatically suspend or limit the father’s visitations” (See Coltrane & Hickman, 1992:410).

The Canadian father’s right’s group ‘In Search of Justice’ claims a membership of 2,100 men who successfully forced mediation of custody and support issues, and of dissolution of assets upon divorce (Young, 1993). In 1990, they successfully targeted Ontario ‘feminist candidates’ in Ontario’s provincial election (Young, 1993). As well, the group persuaded Parliament to legislate compulsory mediation to resolve family disputes (See: Coltrane & Hickman, 1992; Young, 1993), and dissolution of assets upon divorce (Young, 1993). In the United States, father’s rights movements lobbied for tax relief, lower support payments, mandatory mediation, and automatic shared or joint child custody (See Coltrane & Hickman, 1992).   

Fathers’ rights constitute a powerful and persuasive political lobby for patriarchal interests in tax relief, lower support, forced mediation, and automatic shared or joint child custody (Coltrane & Hickman, 1992). The father’s rights movement has been extremely active in Canadian politics since 1989. Moreover, fathers’ rights advocates claim that "any pay based on one’s genitalia is sex pay, and equals prostitution" (Young, 1993:320).

Fathers’ rights movements contend that men, as holders of immutable “natural rights”, are being discriminated against by judicial systems and contemporary social practices. Their primary objection is that laws are not applied in gender-neutral ways. Fathers’ rights groups argue that in denying automatic joint custody, Courts are responding to feminists who stereotype women as nurturers. They claim that an egalitarian approach would deem men and women capable bread-earners and nurturers. For fathers’ rights advocates, ‘female chauvinist feminists’ argue for benefits as an interest group (See Williams & Williams, 1995).

Disputes between ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ wings of fathers’ rights are common (See Williams & Williams, 1995). On the one hand, conservative groups attack women and feminists for breaking down the traditional, two-parent family with its assigned sex-roles (See Williams & Williams, 1995). Charging feminism with the emasculation of men, and employing currently popular ‘pro-family’ traditional sex values, they seek a return to the past.  On the other hand, a more liberal element within the fathers’ rights movement sympathises with liberal feminism’s call for ‘gender equality’.  However, the theme that binds the two positions is the common ideology of men as victims of social and legal discrimination (See Williams & Williams, 1995). 

According to Corneau, a father’s rights advocate, men are terrorised by the prospect of being feminine (1991).  Men are traditionally frightened of becoming fathers because they will have to be nurturing and involved. However, contemporary men are replacing fathers’ silences with talk of their deep needs; or how men’s family absences affect their commitments to, and relationships within, their families (Corneau, 1991).

 According to Corneau, men’s absences from families deprives sons of contact with their natural aggression and how to control it, consequently making sons despise their masculine side (1991).  But in today’s world there are many single-parent families headed by women, and furthermore, even when fathers are physically present they may be psychologically absent. For Corneau, women are not blameless because “having a mother who is domineering, overprotective, repressive, or not present almost inevitably indicates that the father is absent” (Corneau, 1991:18).  Corneau argues that the signature of a missing father is a mother’s unhealthy dominance as well as the fragile masculine identities of his sons (1991).

Custody stories, characterised as “poor ‘Uncle’ Dad” yarns, often told by father’s rights advocates, tell tales of men victimized by vindictive wives and sexist courts (See Coltrane & Hickman, 1992). Mothers’ custody stories are often about women and children who are victimized by abusive husbands and male-biased courts. Arguably, women’s horror stories of custody underscore the danger of a ‘friendly parent’ rule that put women and children at risk (Coltrane & Hickman, 1992). Opponents of the friendly parent rule argue that it effectively silences women who risk losing custody if labelled uncooperative for opposing the abusive father’s child access (Coltrane & Hickman). 

Landau (1997) notes that mediation now permeates the legal system as informal dispute resolutions replace formal litigation. Mediation in family issues is touted to: (1) reduce tensions for children and to improve communications, (2) offer timely resolution, and to establish structure and clarity in shared parenting, (3) give parties equal control while diminishing formality, (4) save taxpayer money, and (5) to increase the parties’ commitment to the agreement that ensues (Landau 1996:8930-2).

Fathers’ rights were instrumental in an Ontario private member’s bill that successfully proposed mandatory mediation in family disputes (Young, 1993). Mothers experience that requirement as an anti-woman bias (Young, 1993). The practice, it is argued, establishes a Court presumption of joint child custody upon separation or divorce (Young, 1993).

In the United States, fathers’ rights groups raise issues of putative (See Zdon, 1994) and unwed fathers’ rights (See Shanley, 1995; Harris 1996). They argue that case reviews show that while abortion is a woman’s right, men too have a right to procreate.  Therefore, to deny men this right through court action or legislation is immoral (See Harris, 1986).

Fathers’ rights groups in North America have generated discussion of their issues in a plethora of articles since the 1980s (See Pearson et al, 1982; Gitlin, 1984; Folberg, 1985; Shepherd, 1986; Girtner, 1989; Silberman & Vincent, 1995). Fathers’ rights movements have enjoyed considerable philosophical impact, affecting how courts view custody, child access, and divorce (Shanley, 1995A, 1995B; Lytle, 1995; Roemer 1996). 

 

Men in Recovery Movements

John Rowan was an early advocate of male’s need for a recovery movement. For Rowan the historical construct of masculinity is problematic to men who want to change and to men seeking the power of brotherhood (See Rowan 1997, 1987). According to him men are socially constructed as testosterone-driven bullies, when in reality they suffer deeply wounded psyches.  Society presumes men are evil and women are nurturing earth mothers.  This essentialist gender dichotomy ‘wounds’ men, causing them to pursue therapy (Rowan, 1987; Jesser, 1996), and to come together for healing (Jesser, 1996). Men in men’s recovery movements counsel men to seek personal investigation and discovery within group solidarity provisionally provided by other men in the movement (See Seidler, 1992, 1989). Frustrated with the limits of consciousness raising, some men are drawn to alternative therapies, in part, because they are trapped even by patriarchal language (Seidler, 1992).

Men have little experience in emotionally caring for themselves, so they need therapy to instruct them (Seidler, 1992). For such men, only analysis and therapy facilitates change by developing appropriate insights that are both understood intellectually and felt emotionally (Seidler, 1992). In learning to relate to others, men reach out to each other. The consciousness-raising and therapy help men, but leaves them a legacy of frustration, pain, and problems (Seidler, 1992).

 Wounded men act out their ‘dark side’ through poetry, artistic endeavour, theatre, and institutionalised aggression called sports (See Jesser, 1996). Therapy may use rituals -masks, chants, music, and drums- releasing the “dark side” of men’s psyches and doing contemporary men’s “shadow work” (See Jesser, 1996:105-7).

Evangelist John Bradshaw has a therapeutic message for men -to recognise your powerless ‘inner-child’, and purge yourself of masculine shame.  For Bradshaw, the traumatised inner child seeks basic security and love, to be achieved with a twelve step program (Bradshaw, 1990; 1988).

Michael Kaufman argues that the lives of men are nasty, brutish, and short on love. He contends that the very idea of manhood is nothing but “a power relationship within a patriarchal society” (1993:38). If one heeds his analysis of the twin burdens of power and pain men are (barely) redeemable.  Primarily blaming systems of patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity, Kaufman wants men to crack the suit of armour that protects their vulnerability and pain. 

Men, then, are socially constructed to dominate, and warped to seize and abuse power. For him, men need to change themselves -and the world. That is, the two changes -self and society- must be indivisible if the personal change is to be lasting and the social change is to produce a New World order (Kaufman, 1993).    

In summary, wounded and socially discredited men seek the healing power of brotherhood, therapeutic healers, and charismatic leaders. Their inner power, as they struggle to cure their toxic masculinity, is found in the sensitive, nurturing, ‘inner-child’ resident in every man.

 

Men’s Studies Movements

Men’s studies supporters say that feminism has put the critical study of masculinities on the academic agenda (Brod, 1990). The move to establish men’s studies is generated primarily by academics who want to organise men’s sociological and psychological experiences into a new discipline (Messner, 1992; Hearn 1987; Seidler 1989; Brod, 1990; Hearn & Morgan & Hearn, 1990; Messner & Sabo, 1990; Rabow & Stanko, 1992). Some advocates argue that shattering the assumption that men have power and replacing it with the notion of downtrodden men is positive (See Farrell, 1993; Hearn, 1987). Other advocates argue that while it is possible to study men and their institutions, great care must be taken not to simply replicate the patriarchal balance of previous studies of men.  For this reason, men’s studies should be undertaken within a women’s studies framework (Brod, 1990, 1994; Blye, 1993; Jesser, 1996). 

Men’s studies tend to challenge the negative patriarchal and hegemonic portrayal of men as heroes or bullies, offering alternatives to hegemonic masculinity and new perspectives on masculinities (See Morgan, 1994). A critical analysis of male perspectives, ways of thinking and theorizing, customs, and sexual and political issues will emerge only when men undertake critical examinations of their practices (Farrell, 1993; Morgan, 1994).

Warren Farrell argues that men’s studies of gender would  support the reality that contemporary authoritative women are  dedicated to their successful public careers. Moreover, men’s studies helps explain that powerful women may abuse their power and sexually exploit, harass, and discriminate against non-executive men and women (See Farrell, 1993). Farrell argues that like feminism, men’s studies contests essentialist notions of feminism -and the projection of only positive images of women and the rejection of images of women as evil (Farrell, 1993).

Advocates of men’s studies argue that men are not ‘safe’ writing about women, and that men have been ‘ignored’ in gender research (See Morgan, 1994). They postulate that ‘feminist justness’ inevitably leads men to a guilty recognition of their complicity in systemic sexual oppressions (Morgan, 1994).

Acceptance of men’s studies, then, implies acceptance of men’s psychological pain and fragility. Moreover, it presupposes an acceptance of men’s struggle that logically lead to a blending of men’s and women’s studies under a discipline of ‘genderology’ (Jesser, 1996). Genderology situates the patterns and conditions under which the gender categories of man and woman are developed, limited, shaped and expressed as dichotomous. Genderology is a systematic study of rules, roles, relationships, personalities, and identities of men and women (See Jesser, 1996).   

One appeal of men’s studies is related to postmodernism’s ability to deconstruct the false dualism of mind/body, culture/nature, man/women, modern/primitive, reason/emotion, and subject/object (See Coltrane, 1994). The category of men, for post-modern men’s studies, would be ‘fractured’, ‘de-centred,’ and ‘reflexive’ (Coltrane, 1994).

Other theorists argue that men’s studies must start with feminist critiques of androcentrism in traditional scholarship and curriculum (See Brod, 1990). Consequently, men’s studies need not be separate from women’s studies, but rather could taught by feminist women under the rubric of women’s studies (Brod, 1990). 

 

Mythopoetic Men’s Movement

The term ‘Mythopoetic’ comes from mythpoesis, referring to the re-mythologising of masculinity (Bliss, 1995). Mythopoetic movements raise men’s issues that they claim are explicitly related to gender, spirituality, power, and inequality (Schwalbe, 1996). The movements are fuelled by changes in gender ideologies, and by contemporary social forces being experienced by millions of middle-class, white, North American men. Since the Mythopoetic men’s movements were initially mostly professionals withdrawing from traditional male roles, they implicitly supported feminism (Schwalbe, 1996).  More recently, they are focused intensely on gender issues of male spirituality (See Bly, 1990; Bliss, 1995).   

The Mythopoetic movement links Jungian analytic psychology with a deep ‘spiritual’ masculinity of mythical super warriors and wildmen (Bly, 1990). They believe in the importance of archetypal myths to achieve personal growth (Bly, 1990). They also believe in a collective consciousness. This collective consciousness emerges as a synthesised creation of beliefs and mythology (Bly, 1990). The Mythopoetic quest is to reclaim and reaffirm deeply masculine ideologies exemplified in the rituals of ancient mythology -drumming, sweat lodges, nature retreats, tribal masks, wild-animal costumes and fierce animal enactment (See Bly, 1990).

The threatening argument buttressing their demand for returning to deep masculinity is that our culture must deal with the warrior/wildman’s deep masculinity, or society will be ransom to men’s violence (Kimmel & Kaufman, 1994). Men themselves ignore their deep masculinity at their peril since if not honoured, it emerges as dangerous male violence (Bly, 1990; Keen, 1991). By participating in Mythopoetic rituals, men demonstrate how deep and fierce is their longing to reconnect with earth and their mothers, who physically embody men’s visceral connections with life (Kimmel & Kaufman, 1994).

For Mythopoetics, a father’s absences in a boy’s life, while father tends to public affairs and industrial and capitalistic marketplaces, means that the boy grows up confused and impotent (Bly, 1990). Consequently, ‘fatherless’ boys bond with their mothers, but mothers cannot teach sons about masculinity (Bly, 1990).  Therefore, they contend that single mothers should send their sons to live with their fathers by age twelve (Bly, 1990). 

Mythopoetics advocate separate lives for men and women to allow men, both young and old, to discover ‘the beast within’ (Bly, 1990).  Only separation from women enables men’s recovery of the wild man inside (Bly, 1990; Keen, 1991). That is

A man must go on a quest to discover the sacred fire in the sanctuary of his own belly, to ignite the flame in his heart to fuel the blaze in the hearth, and to rekindle his ardour for the earth (Keen, 1991:viii).

 

Mythopoetic movements posit that women’s emancipatory progress means that men are “engulfed by WOMEN” (Keen, 1991:12-13). They contend that female victory is assured in divorce, therapy, and even in a man’s psyche, where he “drowns in the dark waters of WOMAN’S world” (Keen, 1991:13-23). For Mythopoetic men,

“Women are larger than life female figures who inhabit our imaginations, inform our emotions, and indirectly give shape to many of our actions” (Keen, 1991:12).

According to Mythopoetics, men have an unconscious bond to women (Keen, 1991).  She is viewed as a powerful trinity -nurturing Mother and Matrix, spiritual Goddess, the Creatrix of life (Keen, 1991).  Mythopoetic followers are told that

As men, we need to recollect our experience, re-own our repressed knowledge of the power of WOMEN, and cease establishing our manhood in reactionary ways.  If we do not, we will continue to be workers desperately trying to produce trinkets that will equal WOMAN’S creativity, macho men who confuse swagger with independence, studs who perform for Mother’s eyes hoping to win enough applause to satisfy a fragile ego, warriors and rapists who do violence to a feminine power they cannot control and so fear . . . (and) . . . so long as we define ourselves by our reactions to unconscious images of WOMAN, we remain in exile from the true mystery and power of manhood (Keen, 1991:14-5).

 

According to Mythopoetic philosophy “to love a woman, men must first leave WOMAN behind” (Keen, 1991:13-23).  This advice is predicated upon the belief that men are consumed with endless, anxious concerns about sexual relationships (Keen, 1991, Bly, 1990). Mythopoetics theorise that this overwhelming concern heralds the demise of male independence, potency, and contentment (Keen, 1991, Bly, 1990).

 

The Promise Keepers Of Men’s Movements

According to Kenneth Clatterbaugh, the Promise Keepers are an evangelical Christian group that started as a fellowship of 73 athletes in 1990, and has expanded to 726,890 in subsequent years. They filled the streets of Washington D. C. on October 4, 1997 in a march conservatively estimated at 670,000, and liberally estimated at more than a million. The movement’s growth is attributed, in part, to churches and religious organisations like the Christian Coalition; Focus on the Family, and the 700 Club. The Promise Keepers employ a staff of 120 people at their Denver headquarters and at 30 state sites. Their goal is to establish a membership by the year 2000 in 400,000 churches, and to fill 50 stadiums in 50 states linked for national simulcasting (Clatterbaugh, 1997).

John Trent notes that the Promise Keepers subscribe to seven promises including:

·      Honouring Jesus Christ.

·      Pursuing vital relationships with other men.

·      Practising spiritual, moral, ethical and sexual purity.

 

·      Building strong marriages and families through love, protection and Biblical values.

 

·      Supporting the mission of the Church by honouring and praying for the spiritual leaders and by actively giving of their time and resources.

 

·      Reaching beyond any racial and denominational barriers to demonstrate the power of biblical unity.

 

·      Influencing the world by being obedient to the Great Commandment [Mark 12,30-31][5] and the Great Commission [Matthew 28,19-20][6].

 

By making these commitments, Promise Keepers believe that they can restore themselves, their families, and their relationships with others (See Trent, 1997). Only by establishing a personal, prayed-over plan for spirituality will allow the development of the man one can be in Jesus Christ (Trent, 1997).

Pro-Feminist Men’s Movements

Pro-feminism, for men, is both a label and a claim. Self declared male pro-feminism is rooted in the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s and constitutes a curious mix of social movement and psychological self-help ideologies (See Sawyer, 1970; Pleck & Sawyer, 1974; Farrell, 1974 & 1993; Goldberg, 1975; Fasteau, 1975; David & Brannon 1976).

According to Kimmel (1996) emergent social movements such as the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) affected pro-feminist men, and the radical Black Panthers redefined masculinity. This precipitated a crisis of masculinity that impacted men and encouraged them to question hegemonic masculinity (See Kimmel, 1996). The media began to portray ordinary men as beleaguered and besieged (Kimmel, 1996; Connell, 1995). 

Pro-feminist men align themselves with feminists, lesbians, people of colour, and gay men pressing for social change (Kimmel, 1989, 1992, 1996). Pro-feminist men are drawn to a new definition of manhood, because  

North American men are bewildered by the sea changes in their culture besieged by forces of reform, bereft by the emotional impoverishment of their lives.  For straight, white, middle-class men, a virtual siege mentality has set in. The frontier is gone, and competition in the global marketplace is keener than ever. The current era, in which middle-class incomes seem to slip downward (in purchasing power), for the first time since World War II, makes pinning one’s proof of manhood on the capacity to succeed as a breadwinner and provider increasingly perilous (Kimmel, 1996:330).

 

Men in general are seeking ways to deal with the dramatic social changes of the past few decades.  According to pro-feminist men one way for them to deal with the sea changes and take up feminist challenges in consciousness-raising sessions (Kaufman, 1993, 1994; Clatterbaugh, 1997).

‘Anti-sexist’ American men, by the late 1970s, had developed several national organisations that constituted what was then referred to as a pro-feminist movement (Clatterbaugh, 1997). Over time, pro-feminist men gravitated into two perspectives: (1) liberal pro-feminists who find symmetry in the situations of men and women because both men and women are bound by gender roles, and (2) radical pro-feminists who theorise men’s power and privilege. Therefore, liberal pro-feminists see misogyny as only one of a number of male traits, but radical pro-feminist see misogyny as the core of masculinity. Liberal pro-feminism is closer to mainstream liberal feminism, and radical pro-feminism closer to the radical feminist analysis of masculinism and the structures that maintain it (See Clatterbaugh, 1997) 

While some pro-feminist men initially credited radical feminism with explicating and challenging male violence as endemic to patriarchy (Seidler, 1992), others argued that  

 . . often radical feminist have denied the possibilities that men can change, even though in other contexts they are largely sceptical of an essentialist mode of analysis (Seidler, 1992:25).

 

As a result of radical feminist analysis, some pro-feminist men abandoned feminist analyses because they felt that feminism(s) held essentialist views of men, and because they felt that they could never please feminists (Seidler, 1992).

In Canada there are a handful of pro-feminist groups including White Ribbon movement, the Men’s network for Change, and Montreal Men Against Sexism (Spark, 1993). The White Ribbon Campaign invites men to wear a white ribbon on December 6th to ‘break the silence’ about violence against women. It also commemorates the Montreal Massacre where thirteen women engineers and an employee were murdered at a Quebec technical institute (See Spark, 1993; Men’s Network News, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1992). The White Ribbon movement accepts feminist analyses of male systemic advantages. They acknowledge that all males share complicity in patriarchy (See Spark, 1993; Men’s Network News, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1992). The Foundation’s successful image is intentionally that of new age, sensitive men opposed to violence and supporting feminist initiatives (Kaufman, 1992).

The Canadian Men’s Network for Change is also concerned with issues pertaining to male violence, sexism, racism and homophobia. Their mandate is to change male experiences of  “isolation”, “alienation” and “brutalisation”. The Network also aims to provide men a public and collective voice to support “women’s liberation” (See Spark, 1993; Men’s Network for Change, 1994).

The Kingston Network urged men to make financial contributions to local women’s shelters or to rape crisis centres, and they raised awareness of the issues of male violence in schools (See Spark, 1993). According to Jones (1993), the Kingston chapter ‘respectfully’ disassociated with the White Ribbon Campaign after eight months to show their solidarity with women. They disassociated because they felt that the White Ribbon campaign was appropriating feminist concern about the Montreal Massacre. The Kingston Network members were also concerned that they were in a “dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t” situation (See Jones, 1993).  That is, either ignore the issue of male violence, or trump feminist concern. Furthermore, they wanted to do practical work at feminist behest in their community, not wear white ribbons one day a year (Jones, 1993). The Network therefore held an alternative Community Action Weeks when they did free manual community work for women’s groups and services (Jones, 1993A). The Network also raised money for women’s shelters, and held food drives which “symbolically represented the violence against women that takes the form of a lack of basic resources such as food and clothing” (See: Men’s Network for Change, 1994:13).     

The pro-feminist Montreal Men Against Sexism opposes the White Ribbon campaign vilifying violent men as other than themselves[7]. They lobby the Quebec Government to reduce therapies for batters (See Montreal Men Against Sexism Brief, 1993). They contend that men in men’s movements facilitate rape by being excusatory of men’s violent actions. The Montreal men Against Sexism published on the topic of men controlling social change agendas, pointing out that pro-feminist men should counter the male community lobbying (Position Paper, undated). They noted that men’s movements are territorial and ignore feminists except possibly to steal, pervert or invert feminist theories. The Montreal Men Against Sexism maintain that treatment programs for batters are excusatory, and a waste of time and money (Dufresne, 1995).

The Montreal Men Against Sexism deem feminism the source of their theoretical development. However, they do not wish to burden women or feminists with the responsibility of deciding what they, as men, should do, say, or support. Rather, the Montreal Men Against Sexism argued that men must do hard, pro-feminist work themselves, and account to women afterwards (See Dufresne, 1992B). They engage only in political action that benefits women and feminists. They are critical of most men’s movements positions which they judge to be masculinist, self-serving to practitioners, excusatory of male dominance, and apolitical in emphases and actions (Dufresne, 1993).

The Montreal Men Against Sexism lobbied the Federal Government to ensure proposed legal reforms to custody and child access during divorce does not give undue or automatic child-access requested by abusive fathers (Dufresne, 1993). They expose how a Quebec father murdered his son to spare him the anguish of divorce as described in Jungian masculinist ‘bible’ of fathers’ rights movements (See Dufresne, 1994). The Montreal pro-feminist movement mounts a Valentine’s poster and media campaign asking ‘Do Men really Love Women’?[8].

Generally speaking, the liberal pro-feminism of men examined the socialisation of men, and called attention to the historical and cultural diversity of masculine practices.  Liberal pro-feminism seeks a balanced access to power.  Radical pro-feminism of men express urgency for making radical structural changes to society, replacing patriarchy. For radical pro-feminists, the centre of patriarchy is sexual and physical power. However, both argue that masculinity is culturally created, and so not biologically mandated (Clatterbaugh, 1997).

The most compelling argument against liberal pro-feminism is that it fails to offer adequate solutions to social injustices including poverty. The most persuasive argument for radical pro-feminist men is that they theorise dimensions of patriarchy –including racism and capitalism- that are part and parcel of masculinity and subordinated femininity (Clatterbaugh, 1997).   

This chapter has discussed the literature on men’s movements and examined their theories and their claims. The next chapter allows their critics to examine these assertions to see if their actions and praxes match the claims set out in this chapter. 

CHAPTER THREE: LITERATURE REVIEW OF MEN’S MOVEMENT CRITITIQUES

 

This chapter outlines the academic critiques of the (1) men’s equal treatment movements, (2) men’s spiritual movements, and (3) men’s pro-feminist movements. This chapter examines the claims of men’s movement to determine how their practice of masculinity compares with their declarations.     

 

Critiques of Men’s Equal Treatment Movements

Men’s equal treatment movements include (1) father’s rights, (2) men in recovery and (3) men’s studies. All seek equal gender treatment in legal and political policy and in everyday practice. These three types of groups are linked in ideology, and sometimes in practice (Clatterbaugh, 1997).

Pro-feminist scholars offer three major critiques of men’s equal treatment movements. First, man’s rights movements have uniform and profoundly anti-feminist masculinist goals that are shamefully visible (See Stoltenburg, 1990; Connell, 1893; Schwalbe, 1996; Kimmel, 1996; Clatterbaugh, 1997). For example, they note that men’s rights groups share an all-consuming interest in legalities designed to guarantee men’s privilege and power while blocking women’s emancipation and equality (See Connell, 1893; Stoltenburg, 1990; Schwalbe, 1996; Kimmel, 1996; Clatterbaugh, 1997). As such they oppose affirmative action, deeming it “reverse discrimination” (Young, 1993:319). Secondly, feminist and pro-feminist therapists and legal scholars theorise how men’s rights initiatives harm women (See Morton, 1989; Williams & Williams, 1993; O’Brien, 1996).  Finally, pro-feminists note how men’s rights’ profound opposition to women’s equality is explicitly anti-feminist regardless of their claims of desiring only ‘equality’ (Young, 1993). 

Annalee Newitz finds that men’s movements demanding equal treatment turn reality on its head by arguing that, in spite of empirical evidence, women are advantaged because of their sex (1996). She says that men take their arguments out of context when they suggest it is men who are subjected to numerous, generally unnoticed legal, social, and psychological injustices. According to Newitz, men’s rights’ movements oppose progressive legislation rooted in societal notions of women’s subordination (1996).

 

Critiques of Fathers’ Rights Movements

The fathers’ rights movement has affected women, children, and courts by using key elements of a liberal feminist master frame of gender neutrality and equality before the law as a powerful tool to ‘beat women at their own game’ (Williams & Williams, 1995). Fathers’ rights’ activists glean arguments from liberal feminism and turn them back on the women with glee and anger. Their interpretation of the liberal feminist framework pays scant attention to the intellectual or socio-political context in which the feminist framework was theorised (See Williams & Williams, 1995).

 Fathers’ rights’ groups have successfully tilted legislation and courts in their favour by presenting men as victims of vindictive wives and sexist courts (Roman & Haddad, 1978; Coltrane & Hickman, 1992 Weidlich, 1994). According to these critiques, father’s rights movements employ liberalism’s legal rights discourse and feminist elocution to subordinate women.  This rhetorical framing of issues within the hard-won political legitimacy of liberal feminist rhetoric situates fathers’ rights proponents as paradoxically yoked to the women’s movement they now oppose in court. As succinctly put by Williams and Williams

 . . . the FRM (Fathers’ Rights Movement) uses a particular interpretation of the “liberal feminist” rhetoric of gender neutrality to construct a “movement frame” that has the ironic consequence of privileging fathers’ claims to custody (1995:191).

 

Fathers’ right philosophies have arguably influenced how courts and governments act (Coltrane & Hickman, 1992). Canada’s Federal Divorce Act 16 (10) established the ‘friendly parent provision’ that justifies restraining mobility of the custodial parent and presumes that access with a non-custodial parent is in the child’s interest. However, both the tone of the provision, and interpretations of this provision, may inhibit claims to restrict child access when the child is in danger for fear of court censure or retaliation for appearing to be the “unfriendly” parent, and so possibly annoying the court (Bala, 1996:264). 

Some scholars have noted the contradictions between fathers’ rights’ participants public and private rhetoric (See Bertoia & Drakich, 1887). Using participant observation, ethnographic interviews, and document analysis, they studied thirty-two American fathers from four fathers’ rights groups who presented a uniform voice in support of fathers’ rights, and an public image as caring fathers simply seeking equitable treatment (Bertoia & Drakich, 1887). However, public posturing about gender equity dissolved when discussing  with their individual situations of post-divorce parenting, child-care, financial obligations, and responsibilities (Bertoia & Drakich, 1887). Other scholars document how contemporary court practices advocated by fathers’ rights’ disempower women because women’s worth and potential are evaluated in context of society’s androcentric norms and notions that gender parity has already been achieved (Schaffer, 1988; Grillo, 1991; Faludi, 1991; Rifkin 1994; Weidlich, 1994; Langer 1994).

Fathers’ rights movements are also criticised for demanding and convincing courts to support mandatory mediation upon divorce, because forced mediation makes women and children debate their abuser. Fathers’ rights philosophies have (arguably) influenced decisions geographically restricting women’s movements (O’Brien, 1996). Additionally, court decisions punish children reluctant to visit fathers (Brienza, 1996). Other critics contend that contemporary inclinations to support automatic shared custody puts women and children in physical danger from abusive husbands and partners (See Harned, 1984; O’Brien, 1996; Malinski, 1994; Field, 1996A, 1996B).  Moreover, it is argued that fathers’ rights movements negatively affect both discourse and decisions on abortion and reproductive rights in North America (See Pabst, 1982; Fagan, 1996). They interfere with timely adoption proceedings by supporting cases of reputed fathers contesting adoption, or seeking custody (Pabst, 1982). 

Finally, father’s rights groups also claim to be concerned about children’s, grandparent’s, societal, and familial rights, and even the rights of non-custodial mothers (Coltrane & Hickman, 1996). However, in truth, fathers’ rights advocates use those ideals to advance their own purposes (Coltrane & Hickman, 1996).

 

(2) Critiques of Men in Recovery Movements

Men in recovery movements argue that masculinity in Western society is in a deep crisis (Rowan 1994). That is, they assert that while masculinity brings men benefits, it also is a mask keeping men from their feelings and their creativity (Rowan, 1884).  Therefore, men embrace alternative therapies to heal the pain of hegemonic manhood, and to deal with the aftermath of that pain –addictions, hostilities, aggression, and depression (Bradshaw, 1988; Farrell, 1993).

However, while the therapies may reduce male pain, dissipate tensions, and encourage personal expression, Seidler  argues that the therapies are characterised by another blindness -the failure to theorise male domination and female subordination (1992). There is an exhortative, almost spiritualistic mystique embedded in most recovery treatments. Furthermore, there are many therapists themselves in recovery, giving the movement a “profoundly redemptive commitment that drives the transformation of professional re-socialisation” (Babcock & McKay, 1995:xvi). 

It is argued that this therapeutic approach undermines an understanding of the generalities and the specifics of women or men’s subordination (See Babcock & McKay, 1995; Babcock, 1996). Preoccupied with their ‘pain’ (Keifer, 1993), these wounded men often view the women in their lives as responsible for their anguish (See Bradshaw, 1988; Kipnis, 1993).  That is, in wounded men’s lives, women are deemed ‘toxic’ and ‘co-dependent’ (See Bradshaw, 1988; Kipnis, 1991; Babcock & McKay, 1995; Babcock, 1996).

The centrality of the term co-dependency in current psychological, therapeutic, or treatment modes is linguistically similar to, and is historically related to, the notion of co-dependency in addiction therapies (Babcock, 1996). Babcock and McKay argue that, from this perspective, medicine, psychiatry, and psychology blames victims (1996). The concept of co-dependency expanded to include a pathologized variant of so-called ‘enabling’ behaviours on the part of the co-dependent, who is usually a woman. In effect, it places women as the enablers of men’s negative behaviours including addictions to alcohol, drug, sex, and tobacco. The concept of women aiding male addictions is now entrenched in popular culture and has become the basis of inherent assumptions that favour dominant men (Babcock & McKay, 1996). 

The term ‘co-dependency’ is the pathologizing of female partners, lovers, mothers, and friends, is therefore the euphemistic naming of women’s oppression and subordination. The label is embedded in the medicalization, treatment, and blaming of women for men’s problems and behaviours. If correctly named, both the label and the analysis of co-dependency would change. Imagine what would happen if instead of saying, “I’m co-dependent”; thousands of women were to say “I’m oppressed” (Babcock & McKay, 1996:15).       

Although the women in the lives of male addicts are often subject to violence or emotional and economic manipulation, medical and psychological practitioners label the victims as co-abusive (Babcock & McKay, 1996). The term co-abusive is acceptable to society because it blames women, perpetuates male absolutions, and excuses men by pathologizing women’s coping skills (Babcock & McKay, 1996, Hagan, 1996, Kaimner, 1996).

In our society, women have long been assigned primary responsibility for the family’s emotional balance, and so dysfunctional co-dependency is often described as a female disease. From this perspective, women’s deeply socialised nurturing of wounded men in her life becomes problematic since

This view of co-dependency as a pervasive, institutionalised disease that not only provides co-dependency authors with the largest possible audience, -everyone- it imbues them with messianic zeal. Co-dependency is, after all, considered fatal, for individuals, corporations, and the nation. It causes cancer and other stress-related diseases, these books warn, as well as business failures, environmental pollution, and war. Furthermore, if a society and everyone in it are addicted, self-destructing, and infected with left-brain rationality, then people in recovery are the chosen few, an elite minority of the enlightened, if irrational, self-actualizers with the wisdom to save the world (Kaminer, 1996:74).

 

However, by calling women co-dependent, and by constructing women’s so-called ‘co-dependency’ as a psychological disorder, co-dependent women are blamed as wounded men who lash out are excused. Furthermore, while women are blamed and held responsible for their role in facilitating male problems and addictions, men are encouraged to present as innocent, redeemable inner children (Babcock & McKay, 1996; Hagan; 1996; Kaminer, 1996). 

Finally, co-dependency literature combines pop psychology and feminism with new-age spirituality and some traditional evangelicalism.  That is, addiction and recovery manifests as being startlingly similar to notions of sin and redemption.  Addictions are often described as false gods, and recovery and suffering lead to truth and redemption.  There is confessional pride in co-dependent disorders where every addiction is a crucible (Kaminer, 1996).

Arguably, co-dependency, even in the most benign of American families, is the consequence of socialisation of women as caregivers. Co-dependency is a euphemistic term naming the reality of women’s internalised oppressions (See Hagan, 1996). Furthermore, the naming women’s internalised oppressions would suggest social change that would depose the power of dominant men (See Hagan, 1996).

It is noteworthy that wives’ behaviours are increasingly described as symptomatic of illness (Koken & Walker, 1996). For example, diseases such as alcoholism are no longer an individual disease, but now are ‘a family disease’ (Koken & Walker, 1996). By the 1990s, family systems thinkers began to theorise the drinker in a relational context, including family relations (See Kreston & Bepko, 1996). The substance treatment industry, and related self-help programs such a AA and Al-Anon[9] justify their charges that wives of substance abusers are co-dependent with vague, non-specific claims (See Fabunmi & Frederick & Bicknese, 1996).  Arguably, this approach off-loads men’s problems onto women who care for men.  That is,

. . women are not ‘co-dependent, co-alcoholic, co-addicted, near alcoholic, or enablers’, they are simply human beings living in tremendously difficult situations that requires immediate, urgent attention of support, education, opportunity and services (Koken & Walker, 1996:86).

Co-dependency is a billion dollar a year industry (See Von Warmer, 1996; McKay, 1996). Increasing large private caseloads, for-profit treatment facilities, and corporately-owned but tax subsidised institutions indicate the breadth of this emergent industry (McKay, 1996). Fully eighty-five percent of the treatment for co-dependency targets women. There are many books on subjects related to men in recovery and co-dependent women, and entire ‘designer lines’ of self-help products are marketed (Kaminer, 1996).   

Some feminist theorists find ‘co-dependency’ to be simply a construct used for victim bashing, a trap, or a way of exploiting women’s insecurities. In these perspectives, co-dependency amounts to the reconstruction of female experiences that undermines and disempowers women while empowering ‘wounded’ men (See Fabunmi, Frederick & Bicknese, 1996; Kreston & Bepko, 1996).

Many professionals and consumers have deconstructed the popular myth about wounded men and co-dependent women (Babcock & McKay, 1995). Some feminist critics suggest that co-dependency is part of a backlash against feminism. For them, the perfect historical examples that equate with the construct of co-dependency are hysteria and masochism. Co-dependency, for them, de-politicises feminism, and places blame in individual women (Babcock & McKay, 1996). Now feminist therapists and theorists are speaking out against the simplistic and sexist norms embodied in constructs of wounded men or co-dependent women. The term ‘co-dependent’ has evolved in psychotherapy and self-help literature due primarily to repeated omissions and marginalizations of feminist theory, and to other misogynist constructs in those disciplines (See Babcock & McKay, 1995).

 

Critiques of Men’s Studies

Pro-feminist men and feminists are concerned to varying degrees about establishing a new discipline of men’s studies (See Kamuf, 1987; Canaan & Griffen, 1990; Morgan & Hearn, 1990; Faludi, 1991, Blye, 1993; Brod, 1994). Much of their concern explores how to situate men and their institutions at the centre of analyses without replicating patriarchal biases (Brod, 1994). Hearn (1987) argues that men should critique themselves –but not necessarily engage feminists on their own terms. Men theorising without feminist standards would remain imprisoned in existing theoretical and methodological frameworks that devalue women (Messner, 1990). Furthermore, without a feminist basis and critique, there would be no rewriting of the theoretical, epistemological, or political structures that allow men to oppress women and some men to oppress other men (Blye, 1993).   

Brod (1987) argues that men’s studies should be supported as complimentary to feminist theorising of masculine practices and norms.  Re-conceptualisations of gender, according to Brod (1897) would resolve tensions between women’s studies  essentialist celebrations of women’s core selves.  Libertine (1987) replies, noting that woman’s studies already includes research about both men and women, and theorizing practices of masculinity.  Brod is incorrect, she argues, as there is no gap in women’s studies theorising of the practices of masculinity.  Women’s studies -not men’s studies- should be broadened and strengthened (Libertine, 1987).

Some men’s studies organisations, such as the American Men’s Studies Association, are not explicitly pro-feminist (Jesser, 1996), and want to remain independent of ‘activism’ (Clatterbaugh, 1997).  Its mandate indicates that it primarily provides opportunities for male teachers, researchers, and therapists to “exchange information” and “gain male support” for their “work with men” (Jesser, 1996:14). Jesser (1996) notes that the organisational intention, then,  is to recognise and respect the many emergent voices of men. 

Radical feminists critique men’s studies as just another patriarchal structure to keep men on centre stage academically (Ehrlich, 1977). For Ehrlich the very notion of establishing ‘men’s studies’ is insensitive academic sexism, since women’s studies emerged because all of academia was deemed to be men’s studies (1977). 

Clatterbaugh is concerned that men’s studies could become a forum for men’s rights, and notes that some already have.  Furthermore, the growth of men’s studies might limit the support for women’s studies (1997). 

Some critics argue that as academic feminism flourished, many feminist struggles outside academe were resisted, contained, or defeated (Stacy, 1993).  Therefore, there is a concern that pro-feminism will be subsumed into a largely academic discipline with esoteric methodologies as pro-feminism’s activism wanes[10] (Stacy, 1993). She notes that men’s studies are tied to the fate of feminism. Moreover, “there is evidence that the men’s movement is largely an academic discipline complete with esoteric methodologies, while its political activism fades from sight” (Stacy, 1993:713).

 

Critiques of Spiritual Men’s Movements

Spiritual men’s movements include the mythopoetic men, and the Promise-Keepers.  Although they differ in practice and belief systems, one being fundamentally and traditionally religious and the other being based on Jungian therapy and ancient mythology. Both movements address men’s spiritual needs.

 

Critiques of Mythopoetics

Mythopoetics movements differ among themselves on whether to emphasise collectively shared experiences or individual personal experiences (Connell, 1993).  However, either the personal or the collective quest allows largely heterosexual, middle-class, white men in movements to draw inward in contemplation of their own movement progress or individual troubles (See Connell, 1993). Connell argues that this contemplation offers men in movements absolution from feminist accusations leading to their feelings of guilt. It also withdraws energy from political concerns and the social issues of gender, sexual preference, race, ethnicity and equality (Connell, 1993).

Some of the first consciousness raising (CR) groups in the nineteen-sixties had both men and women participants, but when the Women’s Liberation movement gained autonomy, mixed CR groups were abandoned (Connell, 1995). CR groups remained popular with radical feminists, but the Mythopoetic men’s call for separation from women is made simply to re-establish separate gender spheres where men do what they want in privacy (Connell, 1993; Young, 1993; Schwalbe, 1996). According to the pro-feminist analysis of Schwalbe, when radical feminists criticised men as violent oppressors, the mythopoetics then  “closed ranks” to exclude women and their supporters (Schwalbe, 1996:24). This closing of ranks effectively ensure that “no feminist criticism spoiled things for men” (Schwalbe, 1996:25).

Young as well notes that when

. . exposed to growing questioning, men have used their silence as the best form of retaining the status quo, in the hope that the ideological formations that once sustained the myth of masculine infallibility will resurrect themselves from the fragments, and present a new mythology to hide men (1993:324).

Mythopoetics choose separation to avoid charges of overt anti-feminism (Young, 1993; Connell, 1993).

According to Young (1993), mythopoetic masculinity is counter- productive to social change since it specifically excludes women and female children. Furthermore, Mythopoetic men’s movements counter social change because they have been affected by contemporary aggressive neo-individualism of the entrepreneur, the competitor, and the self made man (Connell 1995). 

In Mythopoeticism, deep masculinity and male authority is celebrated, and the denunciation of ‘weak’ men ignores the economic and political inequality that wracks the world (Young, 1994). For example, Mythopoetics fail to account for the ways that men subordinate other men; instead, they blame women and feminism (Young, 1994).  Young argues that an estimated quarter of a million men have been to Mythopoetic workshops, yet there has been no major social reform benefiting women or oppressed peoples. Rather, participants and adherents look for, and find, new ways to skirt feminism’s challenges and demands. Mythopoetic exclusion and denial of women’s issues, then, is a technique to manage feminist defiance. Critics of Mythopoeticism note that there is no guarantee that those embracing deep masculinity will work co-operatively with women, children and other men (Young, 1994).

Radical feminists see mythopoetic ideology as a ‘backlash’ against women’s emancipation (Faludi, 1991). Faludi argues that Mythopoetic men, affected by women’s emancipation, are forced to internalise their anger, frustrations and failures while they blame ‘feminism’ for contemporary strife. For her the insidious war against women’s rights may be viewed as a cultural phenomenon that affects fashion, media, rhetoric, politics, and the harassment of working women. Mythopoeticism, according to this radical feminist doctrine, is thinly disguised woman-bashing (Faludi, 1991).

Radical feminists note that for some, the lucrative payoff of Mythopoeticism is more than deep masculinity and male bonding; it provides monetary gain (See Faludi, 1991; Paige, 1992).  Men buy books and board games about mythopoetic masculinity; they subscribe to movement newsletters; they sell advertisements in their radio and television shows; and members pay fees to belong to ‘brotherhood lodges’. They pay hundreds of dollars to attend workshops on how to be a ‘real men’ and not ‘wimps’. Movement leaders collect $20,000 per weekend for each of their workshops. They also make money from consultations, private practices, speeches, and keynote addresses (Faludi, 1991; Paige, 1992).

First Nation’s people criticise the Mythopoetic men’s movements’ appropriation, trivialization, and dishonouring of their traditional rituals of drumming, chanting, dancing, vision quests, sweat lodges, and animal spirit walking (Alexie, 1992). As Alexie says

The (mythopoetical) men’s movement seems designated to appropriate and mutate so many aspects of Indian traditions. I worry about the possibilities, men’s movement chain stores specialising in portable sweat lodges, the ‘Indians ‘R’ Us’ commodification of ritual and artefact; white men who continue to show up at our pow-wows in full regalia to dance (1992:31).

 

 First Nation’s representatives maintain that Mythopoetics need reminding that warriors do more than fight - they also listen to wives, wash dishes, picked up their dirty clothes, and try not to watch football all weekend (Alexie, 1992).

Some scholars contend that Mythopoeticism is, in part, a response to feminism and to other social movements as men are reacting to losing privilege (Connell, 1993). ‘Drum-whacking’ and ‘ho-shouting’ apart, mythopoetic men’s movements are simply another twelve-step recovery movement for men who hurt due to social reformation (Connell, 1993). For Connell, Mythopoetics are troubled, but blame others for their problems. At this particular socio-historic moment, they are a reaction to America’s deepening political conservatism (Connell, (1983, 1995).

Mythopoetic membership is overwhelmingly white, middle-class, heterosexual, and North American (Kimmel & Kaufman, 1994). Mobilised by feminist indictments of male dominance, Mythopoeticism deletes men’s guilt about their privileges as it celebrates masculinism (Connell, 1995). 

But in spite of their concerns, women do want men to become liberated from rigid hegemonic masculinity, and there are a number of feminist perspectives on men’s movements. For example, First Nations feminist Starhawk (1992) wants a men’s movement that she can trust.  She is part of a community of both men and women rooted and connected to ancient Goddess religions. For Starhawk (1992), her spiritual tradition has many names –paganism, Wicca, Witchcraft- but whatever it is called, they worship both Gods and Goddesses.  Their tradition has a rich imagery of male power -but rooted in nature and the earth, not in violence or force.  Her concern is that Mythopoetics worship male power rooted in war and force, in oppression and domination. Therefore, she anxiously awaits “a men’s movement she can trust”, one that has “a healing pattern” (1992:36). bell hooks sees men in feminist struggle as a necessary movement (1992), Gloria Steinem says that women “are literally dying for it” (1992:v), Vickie Noble has faith in the growth of men’s movements, but present concerns with men’s movement practices (1992).

Psychoanalytic feminism sees a boy’s need to separate from his mother as a problematic for his masculinity (See Chodorow, 1978, Dinnerstein, 1976, 1990). That is the asymmetrical family structure in which the father is absent means that onerous childcare falls to mothers. They note how the sexual division of labour in child-care leaves women primarily responsible for children  (Chodorow, 1978; Dinnerstein, 1976, 1990). 

For Dinnerstein, boys experience pre-Oedipal separation from femininity and mothering (1976, 1990). Dinnerstein emphasises the ‘female monopoly’ of child-care. For her, the sexual division of labour is a human constant in society.  She focuses on women’s work as mothers as the main determinant of adult emotional patterns of both males and females. Dinnerstein teases out the themes of children’s pre-Oedipal relationships with mothers to explain adult sexuality, men’s hatred of women, and women’s acceptance of public and political exclusion and subordination. She sees the ‘project of sexual liberty’ as central to whatever chance humans have of surviving (1976). 

Dinnerstein notes that in the mother role, women protect children from anxieties. As a result, children do not develop a realistic sense of themselves or of their mothers. Children, then, are so dependent upon mothers that it is difficult for them to establish secure identities (1990). A possible solution lies in the greater participation of fathers in nurturing and educating their children. Children will then father-identify, and men will learn and continue to nurture (Dinnerstein, 1976). Male bodies, then, not female bodies, would become the too familiar one that children grow away from, and ultimately, reject. The universal turning to the secondary parent, then, would be to and for the co-nurturing and inclusive female role, and not to the domineering and exclusive male role. According to Dinnerstein, males helping to care for infants would save our society from a male apocalypse (1976).

 Chodorow’s psychology of femininities is also based on a social, not a biological underpinning (1978). It is a psychoanalytic account of children’s emotional development. According to Chodorow, the sexual division of child-care labour is the core of the relationships that establish gender categories. She focuses on how women’s sexual character prepares them for mothering, but men’s do not. Chodorow argues that boys are pushed to disrupt their primary identification with the mother, in part because of the mother’s emotional investment in gender. Because of their different patterns of attachment to their mother, boys and girls develop different emotions. Girls grow up with less sharply defined boundaries of the self and a greater need for emotionally fulfilling relationships. Boys, however, develop more clear-cut ego boundaries, and feature a greater need to be separate. Boys develop character structures that emphasise boundaries between people. They do not need the relationships characteristic in women’s development (See Chodorow, 1978).

Both Chodorow and Dinnerstein’s accounts of the need for boys to separate from mothers is used extensively in recent analyses of male behaviour (Connell, 1995).  More traditional modes of psychoanalytic thought appreciate a fantasy world of the unconscious in which self and objects can be omnipotent (Benjamin, 1986).  Mythopoetic men use fantasy and myths -but they reach different conclusions than psychoanalytic feminists. That is, mythopoetics try to transport fantasy to the real world (Benjamin, 1986). On the other hand, psychoanalytic feminists balance fantasy in a relational world in which they recognise, emphasise, and grasp the subjectivity of real others (Benjamin, 1986).  Hamilton notes that the differences between males and females are relational in nature.  That is, it takes two to tango (1996). Therefore, the powerless and the powerful need each other equally, but their incapacity to accept this need results in social practices of domination and tyranny. The powerless make a desperate attempt to save their egos through identification with the powerful (Hamilton, 1996).

According to Benjamin, women’s subordination is rooted in gender polarity where one is either masculine or feminine (1986).  Benjamin points out that mythopoetic men’s movements want men to assume deep masculinity, the polar opposite of the feminine. Mythopoetic men actually try to live out the mythology of ancient warriors, as well as their inner fantasies of cultural dominance and gender separateness -not in fantasy, but in real life (Benjamin, 1986). 

According to Kimmel and Kaufman, Mythopoetic men claim to just want to heal their ‘mother wounds’ by inverting feminist psychoanalytic insight (1994). That is, Mythopoetic advocates do not call for an integration of the feminine and the masculine but for a  full flight from femininity to cut their “psychic umbilical cord” (Kimmel & Kaufman, 1994:26-7). It is argued men have it backwards.  It is not that the cord needs to be cut, but rather that Mythopoetics relentlessly, consciously, and unconsciously need to demonstrate to others that the cord is cut. To demonstrate this detachment, they ‘wrench’ a man out of his home and into the woods, away from his family, to be with strange men with whom he is required to bond and share his deep masculinity (Kimmel & Kaufman, 1994). 

In summary, Chodorow and Dinnerstein both theorise that part of the problem with how we construct masculinity is the requirement that boys and men present as severed from mother and ‘mother-work’.  Mythopoetic advocates, however, use feminist psychoanalytic theories to justify separating from mothers and women. For Benjamin intersubjectivity, or developing an appreciation for interdependence is the key to rewriting our gendered socialisation (1986). As Kimmel and Kaufman note, mythopoetic practices turn psychoanalytic feminist theory on its head, using it to justify increasing separation from women and from nurturing (1994).

 

 

Critiques of Promise Keeper Movements

The Promise Keepers are subject to criticism on a number of levels. For example, the theme of ‘honouring one’s wife’ (Clatterbaugh, 1997:188-90) barely conceals the message that men must honour women by protecting, by being moral and spiritual guides, and by leading the weaker and less capable sex (Clatterbaugh, 1997; Dobson 1995).

The Promise Keepers, obsessed with out of control male sexuality, nevertheless advocate exploiting that sexuality to control and guide women and children, as evidenced in their discourse at religious rallies and in their literature (Clatterbaugh, 1997; Stoltenburg, 1995). Finally, the pursuit of sexual purity in the Promise Keepers promises a “holy war and disenfranchisement of gay men and lesbian women” (1997:191). In fact, leader and founder McCartney endorsed Colorado’s notorious Amendment 2, calling homosexuality “an abomination of Almighty God” (Clatterbaugh, 1997:191). 

Some critics find Promise Keepers to be almost exclusively white middle-class men (Stoltenburg, 1995). However, others have reached different conclusions, surprised at the number of black teens and Latino youth in attendance at Promise Keepers’ symposiums (Minkowitz, 1995).  Therefore, while there is agreement that Promise Keepers tend to be anti-feminist, there are conflicting observations about whether they tend to be racially homogenous. The American National Gay and Lesbian Task Force note that the Promise Keepers attack gay families and communities, and therefore that they are hypocritical because they draw in people with emotional needs and then exploit them[11]. 

Notions of benevolent domination are at the core of the Promise Keeper’s vision. For example,

. . to the Promise Keepers, patriarchal power is legitimate, and, in fact, desirable so long as it is not ‘abused’ . . . everyone can remain in their place -men at the ‘head’ of the family, and women behind- so long as men are good and kind.  Women are innocent but inferior creatures who depend on men’s benevolent stewardship (Minkowitz, 1995:69).

 

In keeping with this standard, at Promise Keepers rallies women staff the overflowing mechandising zones, registration tables, and greet participants at the door with hand-out programs (Minkowitz, 1995; Stoltenburg, 1995). 

 

Critiques of Pro-Feminist Men

The Pro-feminist men’s movements claim to support a feminist agenda. However, just as there are junctures and ruptures in feminisms, so too are there differing opinions and strategies within these movements.  Furthermore, they often parallel the divides in feminist theory.  This study considers the White Ribbon Movement, The Men’s Network For Change, and the Montreal Men Against Sexism.

 

 

 

 

The White Ribbon Campaign

Interestingly, the pro-feminism of the White Ribbon Campaign pleased some feminists[12], other feminists found glaring inconsistencies between rhetoric and politic (See Spark, 1993). Perhaps the most damming criticism of Canada’s white ribbon movement is its tendency to divide feminist women (See Spark, 1993; Dufresne 1993). The WRC, in effect, sets up feminists, who cannot voice any critique of the campaign without being dubbed

. . ‘man-hating radicals’ by the media . . .. And as often [happens], a pro-feminist stance is used to put a kinder, gentler face on a structurally masculinist men’s movement (Dufrense, 1993:12, 16).

 

 Not only women challenge the White Ribbon men, radical pro-feminist men do as well.  For example, according to the Montreal Men Against Sexism, the Foundation provided financial support for ‘anti-feminist men’s organisations’ in British Columbia, a Mythopoetic group whose members opposed women’s reproductive rights (Dufrense, 1992).

 Stoltenburg (1989), the Guru of radical pro-feminism, says that pro-feminist men need to get past their current role as a men’s auxiliary, and join women in the political struggle for social justice.  According to Stoltenburg

The discipline of focusing on anti-sexist activism is really the only way that one can keep one’s moral identity alive and awake.  I don’t believe that one’s moral identity can survive in an action-less vacuum. It can’t just exist in one’s mind or one’s statement of principles. It has to be expressed in actions (Stoltenburg, 1989:197).

 

Stoltenburg (1989) says that ‘men of conscience’ spend countless hours agonising about what they as men should do to be politically correct as opposed to acting on issues (Stoltenburg, 1989). When men of conscience say they await instruction from ‘feminist central’ they mean they are waiting for women to hold their hands and lead them (Stoltenburg, 1989). For Stoltenburg (1989), the false pride of men’s movements must be given up as self-congratulatory, since the real pride is not in being ‘men’, but in being ‘men who --(do something)’.  Men should live their lives in a way that makes a difference (Stoltenburg 1989).

 

Summary

In summary, pro-feminist men closer to liberal feminist ideology are criticised by radical pro-feminist men for promoting rhetoric over action (See Clatterbaugh, 1997; Dufresne, 1992; Stoltenburg, 1989).  Feminists that comment on their failure to live up to the commitments made to feminists.  They denounce some   pro-feminist men for the discrepancies between their rhetoric, their politic, and their praxes (Spark, 1993; Craft, 1992).

However, critiques tend to be based on concerns with individual movements.  What is lacking in the critiques is an overarching analysis based on movement theory.  The next chapter offers my typology of men’s movements.  It questions whether those movements promote or counter hegemonic masculinity.  Chapter four synthesises what I have learned about men’s movements.

CHAPTER FOUR: WOLVES IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING?

 

This chapter delineates the characteristics of men’s movements in terms of their promotion of hegemonic masculinity, their memberships, funding, and communication systems. Then the chapter outlines a typology of men’s movements based on their stated goals of equal treatment, spirituality, and pro-feminism. Finally, the chapter analyses the men’s movements by comparing what they profess to do with what they actually do.

 

Men’s Movements As Movements

Men’s movements are organised attempts to promote hegemonic or counter-hegemonic masculinities. For example, men’s rights movements promote hegemonic masculinity. That is, they want only to change the ordering of tolerated masculinities, thereby ranking their version higher than other versions. Hegemonic masculinities seek a re-ordering of tolerated masculinities to achieve higher rank for themselves and their advocates.  Their desire to be accepted by hegemonic masculine standards, and to gain higher rank within it, makes them susceptible to political co-option and manipulation. 

Counter-hegemonic men’s movements are characterised by an egalitarian vision of society. These movements are arguably driven by a functional inclusion of those previously excluded by social or genders orders and so are less likely to be co-opted or managed by the status quo. Furthermore, in promoting a transformative approach, the movements can philosophically and actually serve alternate masculinities and women. 

Both the movements that support hegemonic masculinity and those that support counter hegemonic masculinity have stated goals and objectives. Furthermore, I note that these movements are purposive in nature, taking their positions intentionally.  Moreover, their political, social, and legal positions hold results and consequences for men, and subsequently, for women. 

Men’s movements are entities that both self-identify and/or are identified as movements by others, including the media.  For example, fathers’ rights call themselves a movement, as do those who critique their philosophy and practices. As well, men’s rights and men’s studies advocates adopt movement names and organise in what they themselves refer to as movements. Similarly, Mythopoetic followers are self-named and self-identified as a movement and theorised by others on that basis. Pro-feminist men are deliberately linked to feminists in their title and persuasion in order to delineate their differences from other men’s movements.

Men’s movement memberships tend to be comprised of more than one chapter or group. They seek constant expansion of that membership, financing their growth through membership fees, the sale of paraphernalia or publications, fees for services, or donations. Raising funds, having charismatic leaders, and promoting an ideology are all markers of men’s movement. All the men’s movements in this study, save the pro-feminist Men’s Network for Change and the radical pro-feminist Montreal Men Against Sexism, raise money through and from their membership. There are various methods used to raise money, sometimes more than one or even two of possible money raising schemes run either simultaneously or in succession (Gaines, 1991).

Although pointed out earlier, it is necessary to underscore the monetary gains of movement spokesmen, particularly in the Mythopoetic and men in recovery movements.  In this process of funding a movement –and its leaders- some men have a greater financial benefit than others; that is, some men are paid while other men pay.  In addition, while theorists and critics stop short of claiming that leaders in men’s movements are in it for the money, many note the enormous financial benefits accruing to leaders and teachers. Therefore

. .it is not surprising that others have grabbed a bucket (for gathering money).  A teacher of psychology who calls himself Shepherd Bliss holds ‘Wildman Weekends’ for wounded and Mythopoetic men in the woods of Minnesota, where they adopt different animal personae and make masks for themselves, and crawl around on the ground snorting, bleating, and butting heads. The calendar of events in a recent issue of the men’s movement magazine Wingspan listed 24 Wildman-related workshops or weekend gatherings for the month of May (1991) alone. It is estimated that more than one hundred thousand men have paid for workshops and weekends (Gaines, 1991:126-7).

 

While having no real evidence, I suspect that making money is a big incentive to many of the leaders in men’s movements. For example, Mythopoetics charge weekend warriors enormous fees for retreats (See Faludi, 1991; Paige, 1992), and Promise Keepers sell relatively expensive books of instruction and membership paraphernalia for men seeking a strong Christian patriarchy (See Clatterbaugh, 1997). Men in recovery movements make a lucrative business of co-dependency books, games, tapes and charts.  People pay men’s movement therapists hefty fees and buy books, games, and tapes (McKay, 1996). Pro-feminist men pay membership dues and mount fund-raising campaigns allegedly to ‘help women’ while funding men’s ‘educational’ activities (Spark, 1993).  Concern about the commodification of men’s movements and their attendant products is a common theme for a number of critical theorists (See Faludi, 1991; Stanton, 1991; Paige, 1992; Alexie, 1992; Spark, 1993; Kaminer, 1995; Connell, 1995; McKay, 1996; Clatterbaugh, 1997)

Additionally, movements generally have their own communication systems including magazines, newsletters, publications, media shows, books, web pages, electronic libraries, and chat rooms.  They deliver their philosophical messages through seminars, workshops, Internet chat rooms, public rallies, demonstrations, and mainstream media.  Men’s rights have an Internet electronic magazine for fathers’ rights’ advocates, men’s studies have their academic publications, Mythopoetic men have their weekend seminars, tapes, readings and retreats, and pro-feminist men have their newsletters and books. Wounded men in recovery movements have books and therapeutic connections, and church and sports networks and link Promise Keepers. Table One ranks men’s movements by an approximation of their memberships.

 

Table 1:  An Approximation[13] of the Size of Men’s Movement Memberships

 

Promise Keepers Men’s Movement

Mythopoetic Men’s Movement

Men’s Recovery Movement

Men’s Rights Movement

Fathers’ Rights Movement

White Ribbon Men’s Movement

Men’s Network For Change

Men’s Studies Movement

Montreal Men Against Sexism

Movements feature distinctive paradigms of thought and accompanying discourses. Men’s and fathers’ rights movements use the courts as they embrace a legal rights discourse.  Men’s studies movements use notions of inclusion and inverted feminist rationale to engage in academic discourse about the same.  Mythopoetic men engage, and practise the language of Jungian philosophy. Wounded men in recovery embrace a newly fragile, vulnerable male while engaging in the discourse of victimhood. Pro-feminist men enter paradigmatic feminist thought to speak the languages of a variety of feminisms.

 

Typology of Men’s Movements

Based on my readings and supported by my secondary analysis and other research, this thesis argues that men’s movements may be classified using a typology that exists on a continuum.  I have developed such a typology, which is based on the stated goals of men’s movements, and includes three types of men’s movements: (1) equal treatment, (2) spirituality, and (3) pro-feminism.

TABLE 2: TYPOLOGY OF MEN’S MOVEMENTS

TYPOLOGY	SHEEP’S CLOTHING	WOLVES
	Claims	Actions
EQUAL TREATMENT
Men’s Rights	Promotes ‘true’ gender equality	Ignores reality of women’s subordination
Men In Recovery	Women are co-dependent in men’s therapy	Blame women
Men’s Studies	Need men’s studies for male standpoint	Not critical enough of men
SPIRITUALITY
Mythopoetic Men	Returns men to ancient & deep masculinity	Appropriate cultures/subordinate women
Promise Keepers	Returns to traditional Christian values	Husbands dominate women and children
PRO-FEMINIST
White Ribbon Men	Speak/concerned about of male violence	Trump feminists/crisis workers in media
Men for Change	Practical help for women & feminists	Help Infrequently & when convenient
Men Against Sexism	Expose/end male violence	Remain a minuscule movement

However, although the movements can be organised into discrete types, there are overlaps among some of them. These overlays are generally between like groups in terms of being anti or pro-feminist in stance.  For example, Mythopoetics and men in recovery publish side by side in the same journals and both use psychoanalytic theory. Promise Keepers and fathers’ rights, both seeking a return to an even more patriarchal past, are linked electronically.  Pro-feminist men and men’s studies advocates often support each other’s work, and some pro-feminist books and authors. However, notwithstanding publishing and electronic links and cross-links, or their philosophical commonalties, the specific applications of their beliefs and praxes nonetheless do separate men’s movements from each other.

As shown in Table Two men’s equal treatment movements are comprised of men’s rights, fathers’ rights, men in recovery, and men’s studies.  I grouped them in this way based on their predominant themes or mandates.  The common themes in equal treatment movements are that they are men who (1) seek ‘equality’ with women, thus detracting from the emancipatory gains of women, and (2) their agenda -be it ambiguous or clear- is to retrench male dominance and female subordination. All the equal treatment movements of men seeking ‘equality’ with women embrace both these themes. In relation to hegemonic masculinity, then, men in equal treatment movements may be viewed as a continuum ranked from profoundly to moderately hegemonic in terms of their masculine ideology and practices. 

The next type of movement that I identified is spiritual movements, and they including Mythopoetic and Promise Keeper movements.  Their similarity lies in the fact that they both seek spiritual guidance to be better men. Their thematic differences are that, on the one hand, Mythopoetics believe that (1) men must separate from women, (2) sons must leave mothers, and (3) fathers must bond with sons and other men in a brotherhood of deep masculinity. On the other hand, the traditional religious Promise Keepers contend that men and women should cleave together.  Each gender, then, should take their respective Christian positions as head or helper in the family and the household.

Pro-feminist men’s movements include the White Ribbon Foundation, the Men’s Network for Change, and the Montreal Men against Sexism. With varying successes, pro-feminist men struggle to provide an emancipatory and transformative alternative to hegemonic masculinity. While their commitment to changing the gender order of society make them clearly counter-hegemonic, they nonetheless display a continuum of positions in relation to feminists and to each other.

In summary, men’s equal treatment and spiritual movements embrace the current gender order of masculinity and femininity.  They seek only adjustment within hegemonic ideals. They want to either include or elevate their particular practices of masculinity. Pro-feminist men, however, reject and counter hegemonic masculinity and its imperatives. They endeavour to supplant it with an inclusive and egalitarian new society. 

 

My Analysis Of Men’s Movements

Based on my readings of men’s movements and their critiques, and supported by my Internet searches, informal interviews and discussions, and observations, I find that men’s movements appear to be sheep, but are actually wolves in sheep’s clothing. That is, they profess egalitarianism, inclusivity, and concern, among other things, about gender equality and male violence. However, they ignore the reality of women’s subordination, and they blame women and bash mothers.

Table Two highlighted the three main types of men’s movements as equal treatment, spirituality, and pro-feminist. It delineates the claims by men in these movements, and points out how their claims often contradict their actions and efforts.  In the following sections, an attempt is made to demonstrate how men’s movements are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

 

EQUAL TREATMENT MOVEMENTS

On the one hand, men’s equal treatment, or ‘rights’ movements’, seeks ‘equality’. They demand nothing less than strict gender parity. They use legal rights discourse to demand equal treatment for men. On the other hand, they ignore empirical evidence of women’s subordination such as (1) the trivialization of women’s work, (2) women’s intermittent participation in the labour force due to being primary child and care givers, (3) Women’s free domestic labour, (4) women’s low wages in public sphere work, and (5) the exigencies of women’s biological reproduction system (Tong, 1989; Morton, 1988).  Furthermore, the failure to theorise how gender presents as a bias to women but an advantage to men reinforces a gender order where hegemonic masculinity rules supreme (Young, 1993).

 Men’s equality movements arguably emerged to counter feminism (Young, 1993).  They deny that men live privileged lives, and they blame women for making them dependant on them (Young, 1993; Clatterbaugh, 1990). They oppose affirmative action, women’s shelters, reproductive choice for women, and claim foetal rights for fathers (Young, 1990).  Men’s movements use of a `rights discourse’ is a caricature of justice that ignores and inverts the real life experiences of women (See Williams & Williams, 1995; Coltrane & Hickman, 1992; Hart 1990; Shanley, 1990; Morton, 1989). For example, fathers’ of the equal rights movements 

. . . use a particular interpretation of the “liberal feminist” rhetoric of gender neutrality to construct a movement frame that has the ironic consequence of privileging father’s claims to custody (Williams & Williams, 1995:191).

 

This rooting of social change in legal rights discourse tends to ensure that “men will retain hegemonic autonomy and control and that women will remain the subordinate ‘other’” (Connell, 1987:xi, 103; 1995:82).  Fathers’ rights movements, then, under the guise of equal gender rights, take elements of liberal feminism, invert them and then incorporate this contorted rational into their theoretical framework.

Men’s rights movements accept the assumptions inherent in hegemonic masculinity. In doing so, they accept a subordinate femininity.  Their challenging of feminist legal and political gains supports this position.  They address what they perceive to be discrimination against men by challenging affirmative action programs and workplace adjustments that enable women to compete effectively in the workplace.

 

Fathers’ Rights

Fathers’ rights movements, on the one hand, urge courts and society to guarantee a father automatic inclusion in his estranged family’s life (See Williams & Williams, 1995; Newitz, 1995; Morton, 1988). To ensure this, they ask courts to require mandatory mediation and automatic co-custody (Newitz, 1995). Advocates want courts to guarantee a father access to his children (See Bala, 1996; Williams & Williams, 1995). They petition for equal decision-making powers about children and foetuses (See Fagan, 1996; Pabst, 1982). They want equal time, attention, and respect as that accorded mothers (Williams & Williams, 1992).

On the one hand, fathers’ rights members argue that a pro-feminist society silences them and in support they tell their stories of anti-father court biases. They argue that fathers are neither appreciated nor recognised by society, social policies, or courts. But I argue that fathers’ rights movements and activists actually bring women harm (See Williams & Williams, 1995; Newitz, 1995; Morton, 1988).  For example, recent Canadian Court decisions have compelled women to limit careers, travel, and choice of geographic area, and have compelled shared custodial or visiting rights to dangerous men. That is, fathers’ rights advocates have influenced Courts to constrain and limit a woman’s geographical mobility to guarantee a father’s access to his children (See Toronto Star, November 25, 1990:A7)[14]. 

Not satisfied with controlling women’s whereabouts through mutual parenthood, fathers’ rights campaign to control women’s bodies by law. That is, putative fathers, due to court challenges and decisions, are now involved in pregnant women’s decisions about abortion and adoption (See Harris 1986; Zoydn, 1995; Lytle, 1995; Shanley 1995; Fagen, 1996; Roemer 1996).  They have won court challenges that give unmarried fathers rights[15]. The result is women’s right to abortions and adoption procedures are effectively denied through legal delays and court challenges.

Fathers’ rights movements target feminist political candidates, public figures, and feminists (See Young, 1993; Toronto Star, July 3, 1990:B7). They advance forced mediation and automatic shared custody that disadvantages women, and puts women and children at risk of domineering and abusive men (See Hart, 1990; Byles 1990; Grillo, 1991; Pabst, 1992; Rifkin 1994; Ikelmi, 1996; O’Brien, 1996). Fathers' rights also force unwilling children to visit them (See Brienza, 1996; Field 1996). 

Fathers' rights utilise the Internet effectively[16]. In fact, since there is so little source data from them, a great deal of my research was dome on the Internet. I accessed literally hundreds of their sites, and downloaded numerous fathers' rights World Wide Web home pages. Fathers' rights link electronically to men’s rights and wounded men, for example, in an electronic magazine, or ‘E-zine’, called 'Balance'. 

There are forty eight Canadian men’s and two hundred and seventeen USA fathers' rights movements on the Internet[17]. Their World Wide Web Virtual Library notability has pointed titles like 'Fathers' Rights: What Are They", Fathers Are Capable Too', Fathers' Rights and Equality Exchange', 'How Victimised are Divorced Women?', 'Bad Judges and What to Do About Them', and in a shameless bid for justification, 'Boy, 9, Hangs Self Over Loss of Dad'[18].   

Fathers' Rights advocates use ersatz humour with an edge. For example, at the Internet Home page for Fathers Are Capable Too [FACT][19] a father asks:

 

Who gets the children?

Women, 98% of the time

 

What do Fathers get?

Life-long confiscation of income, unenforceable court access, increased risk of severe depression, alcoholism, and suicide.

 

Who get the money?

Lawyers, mediators, assessors, social workers, real estate agents, mothers, and (if there is any left, children.

 

What do you call a divorced dad who has lost everything?

A dead-beat Dad.

 

The Webmaster of this Home page dedicated it to the daughter that "he had not seen in three years".  He 'thanked' the Judge that took her away, and referenced his divorce and custody case numbers and details.  This site then is linked to an angry 'fathers' manifesto'. 

Fathers’ rights create the impression that they are concerned about others’ rights. For example, they run a "children’s rights site", where they advocate that the best parent is both parents and they publish a parent’s rights Web page -without mothers[20]. 

Fathers' rights Internet Virtual Library[21] provides supportive statistics for fathers, and features the writings of women (some claiming to be the new ‘power’ feminists) who support them. This father’ rights Internet site provides statistics that foster the impression that fathers are indispensable.  For example, they use Gallop poll data to argue that the most significant social problem is the physical absence of fathers from homes, and the notion that few people have unresolved problems with their fathers. 

This site also publishes polls from the National Centre for Fathers claiming that families interaction with fathers is so problematic that physically present Dads are effectively psychologically and emotionally absent. 

At another site[22] one finds (1) an article by Christina Hoff Sommers deploring that boys are casualties of feminism, (2) Senator Ann Cools critiquing the notion of a false memory syndrome (3) stories of grieving children missing fathers, (4) stories of psychotic mothers and wronged fathers, (5) out of context snippets from at lease fifteen feminists supporting a diatribe that feminism encourages victimhood and learned helplessness.

The absence of policing on the Internet means that fathers' rights publish banned data without repercussion. Among their many stories on this ‘information’ network are fathers who are disputing children's sexual abuse allegations, and men contesting or denying ‘family’ violence[23]. Victims of angry fathers, including their wives and children, or women’s advocates, or empathetic Judges and lawyers or other supporters are named and their addresses published. Mothers are identified when and while convicted but appealing men state their case for public scrutiny; moreover, they apparently do so without consequence and in defiance of the courts.

Academics theorise that fathers' rights Internet sites promote presumptive shared custody (See Williams & Williams, 1995; Coltrane & Hickman, 1992). My review of father’s rights Internet sites also confirms this. Moreover, although one such fathers’ right’s site claims a ‘genderless’ membership, all its links are to sites supporting fathers’ rights[24].  Still other fathers' rights sites have a sports emphasis.  The Minnesota Twins cosponsors essay contests seeking 'fathers of the year', and other fathers’ right’s groups share connections with the Kansas City Royals[25].  Ethnicity too gets a tug from fathers' rights[26]

In summary, fathers' rights Internet sites and home pages are characteristically antifeminist and misogynist in ideology.  They advance pro-father rhetoric, manifestos, tracts, position or discussion papers, and legal strategy. Through the Internet, they engage in pro-father and pro-male analyses, and bash women, feminist analyses, and women’s theoretical and legal gains.  Father’s rights’ organisations use the Internet to break the law.  That is, they publish names or tell details or specifics of family stories on the Internet although the Court has ordered a publication ban to protect the innocent victims.  Fathers’ right’s advocates exploit, introvert, and quote feminist theories out of context. They exclude feminist analyses that do not serve their goals, or do not correspond with their version of males as victims. Finally, they enlist women as spokespersons for their androcentric and misogynist positions on social and legal issues.

 Men in Recovery

 

Men in recovery movements tell of their anguish of being men trapped in rigid roles and constructed as unfeeling people (Rowan, 1987, Kipnis, 1991; Seidler, 1992; Jesser, 1996). They bond to other men in their pain (Rowan, 1987; Bradshaw, 1988, 1990; Kaufman, 1993; Jesser, 1996). Men in recovery movements admit to needing therapeutic help, either in groups or individually, to alleviate their pain and counter aggressive tendencies (Bradshaw, 1990; Kaufman, 1993; Jesser, 1996). 

Men in recovery movements embrace family therapy in hopes of healing the entire family unit (Bradshaw, 1990).  Men in recovery view “co-dependant” women as people who also need therapy and support -but only if he is present (Wilsnak & Wilsnak, 1992; Babcock & McKay, 1995, Kaminer, 1996).  They specifically advise women to avoid ‘femnazis’ who poison family relationships (Kaminer, 1996).  Men in therapy, therefore, advise women in their lives to avoid feminist support networks.    

‘Wounded’ men in recovery blame “co-dependent” women for their pain, be they mothers, daughters, lovers, teachers, or caregivers (Babcock & McKay, 1995; Babcock, 1996; Kaminer, 1996).  The route to shared co-dependency is painful for women (Hagen, 1996).  Therapists and wounded men claim that women are too frigid, cold, or non-supportive and therefore cause pain to men in their lives (Koken & Walker, 1996). Alternatively, they claim that women are too loving, and thereby tacitly encourage men’s bad behaviours (Koken & Walker, 1996).  Therefore, if a man’s abuse continues, it is deemed to do so because she fails to stop him. Alternatively, she facilitates/causes his bad behaviour with her cold, frigid rejection, or her warm nurturing and accommodating acceptance ((Koken & Walker, 1996; McKay 1996).

There are enormous commercial, financial, and professional benefits to the industry of co-dependency (Von Wormer, 1996; McKay, 1996; Kaminer, 1996).  This sector of commerce markets a new-age package of the centuries old practice of women blaming. They are successfully marketing yet another inversion of women’s realities.  That is, women must then heal men’s pain as they heal themselves. When socially and psychologically constructed as men’s problem, women then bear the blame of male angst.   

Ergo, the blame is transferred from immature and selfish men to nurturing and loving “co-dependent” woman, or alternatively, to the cold and non-nurturing “co-dependent” woman. Under the rubric of co-dependency, women’s’ cold endurance or warm sympathy is rewarded with abusive, male-excusatory, and misogynist judgement –they are “co-dependant”.  That is, women are not only responsible for male pain, but are also responsible for male actions.

However, this thesis argues that the notion that every woman has the social authority, the resources, the time and energy, and the moral responsibility for men’s actions is patently absurd.  Men in recovery are definitely wolves in sheep’s clothing. 

 

Men’s Studies

 Men’s studies claim that men have to study the behaviour and consequences of their actions (Brod, 1990; Brod & Kaufman, 1994; Morgan 1994). Furthermore, they argue that men’s analyses of masculinity will help men -and women- by explaining men’s contradictory experiences of felt powerlessness that coexists with their actual power over women and some men (Rabow & Stanko, 1989; Farrell, 1993; Morgan & Hearn, 1994; Jesser, 1996). 

However, men’s studies advocates either ignore or have failed to theorise the logical consequences of their demands. That is, they fail to appreciate the difficulties in critically theorising patriarchy while at the same time being beneficiaries of a patriarchal society (Connell, 1987, 1996; Faludi, 1993; Coltrane, 1994; Clatterbaugh, 1997).  That is, given their advantageous position in the gender hierarchy they may not be able to speak authentically about gender oppression.  A probable outcome is that men will not be critical enough of men or male praxes.

In addition, men’s studies fail to come to grips with the reality that their foray into gender studies competes with resources for women’s studies (Frank, 1993; Cannan & Griffin, 1994; Richardson & Robinson, 1994). Alternatively, advocates may promote women’s studies and men’s studies as a single discipline (Connell, 1987; Messner, 1990; Clatterbaugh, 1997).

In summary, men’s studies arguably threaten the independence of feminist theory, and may overwhelm it.  Advocates of men’s studies split around (1) Whether they should be an independent critique of masculinity and social practices, (2) whether they should be subsumed under feminist guidance into “gender studies”, (3) whether they should be a subterranean portion of women’s studies. 

What is clear, though, is that under any of the above pedagogical umbrellas, the ethical and honest study of men and masculinities has the potential to annihilate masculinity, as we know it. Given this reality, at least three among a number of possibilities seem of importance.  For example: (1) the change in pedagogy and academic praxes will be so threatening to men that they will use their dominance to ensure that only  partial or inadequate analyses and reforms are tolerated, or (2) men’s studies’ critiques will remove biases in pedagogy so absolutely that gender will automatically be an inclusive aspect of all theorising, or (3) society, beyond just academe, in the future may become truly egalitarian and inclusive, and thereby nullifying the need for either special women’s or men’s studies.

 

SPIRITUAL MEN'S MOVEMENTS

Spiritual men's movements include the Mythopoetics and the Promise Keepers. They are concerned with masculinity and spirituality as being essential to healthy males.

 

Mythopoetic Movements

Mythopoetic men’s movements view men as kindly patriarchs, mentors, leaders, brothers, teachers, poets, storytellers, and artists (Bly, 1990; Keen, 1991; Bliss, 1995; Schwalbe, 1996). Mythopoetics want to help men reclaim their ancient and deep masculinity (Bly, 1990; Keen, 1991; Bliss, 1995). For Mythopoetics, fathering is important, since sons need fathers to teach them how to become men (Bly, 1990).  Bly says that

. . . when sons are introduced primarily by the mother to feelings and emotions, he will learn to take the female attitude toward masculinity, and he will take a female point of view of his father and his own masculinity, he will see his father through his mother’s eyes . . . (And) . . . some mothers send out the message that civilisation and culture and relationships are things that the mother and the daughter, or the mother and the ‘sensitive’ son share in common; whereas the father stands for what is stiff, maybe brutal, what is unfeeling, obsessed, rationalistic, money-mad, incompassionate. “Your father can’t help it”.  So the son often grows up with a wounded image of his father –not brought on by the father’s actions or words, but based on the mother’s observations of those words or actions (Bly, 1990:24).

 

Mythopoetics must therefore look inward to their masculine selves to absolve the guilt that feminism heaps on them (Connell, 1993)

However, this thesis notes that the Mythopoetic movement fails to theorise all fathers. They speak not of absent, raping, abusing or damaging fathers. They are silent on issues of male violence. Furthermore, this study notes that they fail to situate these issues in term of sexual preference or political economy. 

Moreover, the Mythopoetic movement is transparently a misogynist movement. As an example, their ‘concern’ for young men takes the form of a blanket proclamation that at age twelve, boys should be taken away from single mothers to be raised by fathers. Mythopoetic men provide excuses for battering and violent men.  That is, according to Mythopoeticism, when men are made weak by women, and when men have their rightful authority and power socially constrained, then their masculine energy naturally emerges as male violence (Bly, 1990). Consequently, society, work, women, feminism  -anything or anyone but the abusive man himself- is to blame.

On the basis of my reading, mythopoetic males appropriate without apology the drumming, chanting, ritual, masks, and dancing of other cultures (Alexie, 1992). However, their ‘warrior’ chanting, drumming and re-enactments apart, the mythopoetic men’s movement tends to essentialise men and masculinity.  They fail to account for the fact that their elite white male perspective obscures how men are diverse and have many points of view and experiences. Sherman Alexie (1992), a First Nation’s warrior, resents the mythopoetic ‘Indians-R-Us’ commodification of his culture. He says that mythopoetics need to learn that warriors live in the real world where they rock babies and wash dishes (Alexie, 1992).

As mythopoetics ostensibly guide men to a ‘better’ manhood, they construct women as evil, plebeian opposites of regal men (Keen, 1991; Bly, 1990). That is, women are deemed to be manipulative, dangerous, deceitful, and unworthy; the “dangeroust (sic) dark waters of womanhood” (Keen, 1991:12-3)  -although they are sexually necessary to men of deep masculinity (Keen, 1991).  Therefore, women are to be used and then discarded, or at least, to be constrained and controlled in men’s lives. 

In summary, mythopoetic men’s leaders ‘scam’ their followers, taking advantage of elite white men’s struggle to restore their fractured identities. The mythopoetic movement’s philosophy is profoundly racist, sexist, androcentric, and misogynist. 

 

Promise Keepers Movement

The Promise Keepers movement wants a return to simpler times when men were patriarchs and women were honoured and cherished as helpmates and mothers.  According to a Promise Keepers’ workbook, the bible clearly instructs the two sexes:

Solomon’s bride (Song of Solomon 1:4) said “draw me after you and let us run together”.  Without a doubt, she was asking him to take the lead in the home.  Draw me after you, she said, not follow me . . . (And) . . . Servant leadership is not resented by the wife, because it reflects a husband who is seeking to love his wife as Christ loved the world (Trent, 1997:98).

 

Therefore, on the one hand, spiritual men must assume anew their responsibility for providing and directing family fortunes and members (Trent, 1997; Griffith & Deckard, 1993). On the other hand, women must find new contentment as loving helpmates and nurturers to their families (Trent, 1997; Griffith & Deckard, 1993).

To achieve this state of familial harmony, marital bliss, and spiritual grace, men make seven promises (Trent, 1997; Griffith & Deckard, 1993). Their promises include honouring Jesus Christ, befriending men, being pure, applying biblical standards to home life, supporting churches, eradicating racism, and changing society by being good role models (Trent, 1997; Griffith & Deckard, 1993 Trent, 1997).  Upholding these covenants restores men to morality as it heals families, relationships, and communities (Trent, 1997; Griffith & Deckard, 1993).

Unlike the spiritual group of Mythopoetics, Promise Keepers do not seek parity with women. They believe that God has singled them out as superior -not equal- to women.

Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians –including the Promise Keepers- draw upon the New Testament, especially Ephesians 5:22-33 where wives are urged to submit to their husbands; and Corinthians 11:13, 7-9 where women are told that men were not created for women, but women for them (Clatterbaugh, 1997:178).

For Promise Keepers movements “feminism is a Godless movement” that contributes to the “Godlessness of society” (Clatterbaugh, 1997:183). They blame feminism for much of contemporary society’s social realities that affect men, including sexual obsessions. They utilise antifeminist structures of fundamental religious networks of churches, broadcasting networks, magazines, and church-linked organisations to subordinate women (Clatterbaugh, 1997). Pro-feminist men are critical of Promise Keepers, noting that

. . . these guys have discovered that unless males are in league as men, male supremacy can no longer claim credible authority over females one-on-one (Stoltenburg, 1995:29).

 

I further note that the Promise Keeper’s language refers to men as family ‘heads’ and women as servile ‘helpmates’.  The purpose of this is to open the door to convince women that men are superior while they are inferior (Trent, 1997). Furthermore, it is sanctioned by no less an authority than the Christian Bible.

 Promise Keeper’s claim to be purely a spiritual organisation (See Trent, 1997), but this claim is critiqued as false (See Clatterbaugh, 1997).  Clatterbaugh (1997) argues that they strongly support and are closely allied or affiliated with right-wing, pro-family, anti-gay political agendas (Clatterbaugh, 1997). 

 

The man, as head of the family, controls the nature of his wife’s decisions and the scope of her actions.

 

Pro-Feminist Men

Pro-feminist men claim to support feminist analyses of female subordination and male aggression (Clatterbaugh, 1997; Kaufman, 1992, 1994; Seidler 1992; Kimmel, 1992).  Feminists and pro-feminists critics wonder if the pro-feminist men’s movements that women want desperately to believe in (see Steinham, 1992:V; Starhawk, 1992) can, or will choose to,  actually work against their collective and individual interests (Dufresne, 1993; Kaufman, 1993; Spark, 1993; Stoltenburg, 1989; Luxton, 1983).  This tension and disbelief may explain the ambivalence and awkwardness that comes from men’s groups historical relations with women’s movements (Itterante, 1981)[27]. 

This study’s research suggests that the growing diversity of feminisms, and the specificity of gender and other personal experiences, make both pro-feminist men’s movements and feminist women’s essentialism suspect. It also implies a difficulty in determining what action, if any is appropriate for feminist and pro-feminists alike at a given time.

 

White Ribbon Movement

The white ribbon movement is concerned about male violence (See Toronto Star: November 23, 1991:A7). The white ribbon foundation raises money to educate men about male violence and to help finance shelters for battered women (See Gerald Caplan 1992:B3; The Kingston Whig Standard, 1993:A1).  White Ribbon men link to pro-feminist men’s groups and movements, providing a male pro-feminist perspective on issues of violence (See Anonymous, Winter: 1992). 

The White Ribbon movement also sponsors events that challenge patriarchy. For example, on Father’s Day it challenges stereotypical notions of fatherhood, arguing that fathers must show children that they too can nurture, love children, and be kind (See Anonymous, Summer:1994).  The White Ribbon Foundation raises money to educate men about violence and to help finance shelters for battered women (See Spark, 1993; White Ribbon: 1994; White Ribbon:1995).

The White Ribbon movement is criticised for its isolation from other men’s groups (Dufresne, 1992), its honesty and ethics (Spark, 1993) and its results (Toronto Star: 1996; Anonymous, 1993). Based on my reading, research, interviews and observations, White Ribbon men seem more interested in promoting their image in the media than they are in helping women. For example, they provided Toronto’s women’s services with only two thousand of the hundreds of thousands of dollars they raised (Spark: 1993).  This thesis, then, suggests that while the White Ribbon Foundation and its larger membership in the White Ribbon movement may have lofty goals and commitments, they have failed miserably in their attempts to achieve them.

 

Men’s Network For Change

The men’s network for change in Kingston announced that on and around the December anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, it will make their time and resources available to local women’s groups (Winter:1993). Consequently, they have painted rooms, repaired doors, and built furniture for women’s groups or for individual women as requested by feminists[28].

However over the years they have helped less[29]. Some years, their efforts are so puny that they barely make a ripple. For example, they do so primarily when they can claim media credit. They appear to be men who are wonderful in comparison to less sensitive men. In 1997, the local and provincial movement disbanded, leaving only a few activists in the Ottawa area. 

 

 

 

 

Montreal Men Against Sexism 

The Montreal Men Against Sexism mirrors radical feminist analysis (Dufresne, 1992). This small movement exposes male violence by publishing the names of victims of violence (Dufresne, 1994). They connect masculinism and violence against women and lobby for legislative reform benefiting women (Dufresne, 1995). For example, they oppose custody and access reforms that would benefit fathers at the mother’s cost. The Montreal Men Against Sexism actively tries to counter male lobbying efforts of men’s and fathers’ rights movements (see Dufresne, 1993; Montreal men Against sexism, 1993, 1994; and ‘Countering the Male Lobby In Our Communities [undated]).  The Montreal group members translate and circulate feminist materials, oppose sexist advertising, and provide free child-care during women’s events (Dufresne, 1992; Men’s Network For Change [Journal] 1992). 

The Montreal Men Against Sexism oppose treatment programs for batterers, saying that any money spent should be directed towards victim needs (Montreal Men Against sexism, 1994). They confront known pedophiles and rapists (Dufresne, 1992).

They flew a banner about dead-beat dads at a Santa Claus parade[30].  They refuse government or any funding that cuts into women’s meagre resources. They are largely self-funded. They mock the halfway measures of all men’s movements, including their own, and they constantly challenge the White Ribbon movement leaders. They are self-critical, and strive to reach ever-higher standards of pro-feminism (Dufresne, 1992).      

The Montreal men’s movement is outstanding in comparison to other men’s movements.  Therefore, to critique them is difficult, even frightening.  Difficult because they seem to genuinely seek alternatives to gender ordering, and have a desire to destroy male dominance. Frightening because they are the radical fringes, and if I offend even them, what does that say about me?  And, who would replace them?  However, their message is that women must be on guard about men’s desire to dominate by whatever means necessary.

They seem to be fearless. Yet, while women die for back talking to abusive men; while sexual assault and crisis workers fear speaking out or publishing last names or telephone numbers for fear of reprisals, and while feminist women who oppose or expose rape and harassment regularly receive threats, the Montreal movement has received only one death threat in seventeen years of in-your-face activities. Only once did they experience physical threat for their actions. 

According to Martin Dufresne, a leading spokesperson, although the Montreal men’s movement opens themselves to charges of libel and vandalising, they are nonetheless never charged[31]. Actually, Dufresne said they get mostly positive strokes, mostly from women but also from men who prefer others to support feminism. They have no problem getting media coverage or letters to the editor printed. 

 

In fact, they are in demand, shooing away requests for media features about them. Dufrense shares the moments of anguish when the group’s membership dipped. The loss of a number of good colleagues was because he ‘blew his top’ at them.  He is ashamed that, although professing pro-feminism, women still have ‘good and plenty’ reason to challenge him for treating them ‘like shit’[32].  He notes that some eighty or so men have passed through their movement[33].   

However, in spite of their valiant attempts to counter hegemonic masculinity, the Montreal Men Against Sexism clearly have not been successful in getting many men involved in their organisation. Whether it is because they adhere to such absolute principles, or because they have not tried hard enough, I cannot tell. On the one hand, social change requires more than a handful of men. On the other hand, a small vanguard of few good men may make a difference in specific issues. Additionally, they provide examples of alternate masculinities and egalitarian social practices.   

Men’s movements do differ. Nonetheless, whether they support or challenge hegemonic masculinity, and whether they offer a truly counter-hegemonic philosophy and praxes of both masculinity and femininity, all men’s movements pose potential –and real- harm to women. They vary only in the extent and degree of that harm. 

When I inquired of a radical pro-feminist man if I was being too hard on pro-feminist men, he said that I was too soft on them[34].

Tragically, and in spite of the claims to the contrary of each and every type and sector of men’s movement offering alternatives to hegemonic masculinity, only pro-feminist men hold any promise of being truly counter-hegemonic. Pro-feminist men claim to seek a truly egalitarian society, but to date, their performance fails to match their proclamations. Therefore, men’s movements in this study are deemed wolves in sheep’s clothing. 

Table Three attempts to rank, based on their rhetoric and actions, the degree of harm that each type and segment of men’s movements present to women. According to this table, Promise Keepers present the greatest danger to women while the Montreal men Against Sexism pose the least danger.

 

 

 

 

Table 3: RANKING THE DANGER THAT MEN’S MOVEMENTS PRESENT WOMEN

 

Promise Keepers Movement (Highest)

Mythopoetic Movement

Fathers’ Rights Movement

Men’s Rights Movement

Men’s  Recovery Movement

Men’s Studies Movement

White Ribbon Movement

Men’s Network For Change

Montreal Men Against Sexism (Lowest)

 

 

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION

 

This concluding chapter outlines the contributions of the present study.  It delineates the implications of men’s movements for women and suggests areas for future study. This study builds on the work of Robert Connell in establishing the primacy of hegemonic masculinity, and the ways in which it replicates and empowers itself. It also builds on the work of the work of Michael Clatterbaugh who looked at emergent men’s movements and saw a series of positions that he called ‘perspectives’.  

 

Contributions of This Study

The present study draws on social movement literatures as well. Finding scant analyses of men’s movements as social movements, the thesis uses social movement theory to theorise men’s movements. In particular, the thesis differentiates hegemonic and counter-hegemonic men’s movements. Having done this, the combined theoretical perspectives identify both differences and similarities in men’s movements.  

The typology of men’s movements developed in this thesis demonstrates three things: (1) many fundamental differences between movements are simply variations of hegemonic masculinity, including those that appear or claim to be devoted to establishing a counter-hegemonic masculinity, (2) the startling similarities of privilege shared by all of the various men’s movements, be they hegemonic or counter-hegemonic, and (3) the dangers that various men’s movements pose for women. The typology presented illustrates common themes, junctures, and links between and among men’s movements.

Overall, the contribution of this thesis is that it integrates the analyses of hegemonic masculinity (See Connell, 1987) with works outlining various men’s groups’ perspectives (See Clatterbaugh, 1997). The present study presents my analysis and typology of men’s movement claims and praxes, thereby enriching the contributions of other scholars.

 

Wolf Pack Leaders and Wolf Cubs

The typology of men’s movements presented in this study includes (1) equal treatment, (2) spirituality, and (3) pro-feminist. Within this typology, it appears that equal treatment and spirituality movements do not counter hegemonic masculinity and seek primarily to restore fractured male identities to their formerly rightful and spiritual place in the gender order.  Therefore, it does not seem that equal treatment and spirituality movements hold out much hope for an egalitarian society honouring both men’s and women’s rights and spirituality.

On the other hand, pro-feminist men’s movements at least hold out the possibility of a fully emancipated society with “true” equality between men and women.  Leaving aside for a moment their actual successes or failures in attempts at social or personal change, we must credit pro-feminist groups with theorising the need for radical reform. That some men are able to abandon the paradigm of traditional thought on gender order, thereby disentitling their personal and collective selves, while making public claims about changing the gender order and all that it implies, is in and of itself notable.  However, the question remains, having theorised the needed social and political changes, can and will pro-feminist men develop and deliver them?           

My reading of men’s movement theorists and critics, men’s movement source material, and my secondary research all indicate that, to date, the answer is a profound and disturbing no. That is, while pro-feminist men offer ideological challenges to hegemonic masculinity, these men do not appear to be committed enough, in practice, to a reconstruction of the gender order.  Furthermore, while there is evidence that pro-feminist men are committed ideologically to an egalitarian society, there seems to be difficulty in actually applying that goal even in activities that they fully control –funding initiatives, personal and professional relationships, transparent goals and strategies, and feminist accountability.  It is for these reasons that this study concludes that men’s movements are wolves in sheep’s clothing.  That is, although some men’s movements may be comprised only of wolf cubs and others of rabid wolf-pack leaders, all conceal wolfish goals under lamb and sheep pelts.  In short, the claims of men’s movements do not equate with their actions, regardless of the nature or type of their movement.

 

Implications for Women

Men’s movements represent danger to women –be they feminist or not- in numerous ways.  Hegemonic men’s movements scapegoat women, challenge women in courts, compete with women for scarce resources, re-socialise and re-subordinate women, and control women and their reproductive capacities. Hegemonic men’s movements present the most clear and present danger to women as they try to claw back to a masculinist past. 

Counter-hegemonic movements present a lesser degree of actual danger to women.  They do, however, present problems for women. For example, they aspire to feminist principles and accountability, but balk at being held accountable to feminists.  They compete and even hoard scarce resources for social change. Pro-feminist, counter-hegemonic men’s movements seize and exploit feminist initiatives and theory, often without thought or credit. They are secretive, often falling into misogynist patterns of thought and practice in spite of public commitments to the contrary.  Finally, pro-feminist men compete with academically active feminists for control of an already contested, fragmented, and tiny theoretical margin of sociological theory and thought. Therefore, counter-hegemonic men’s movements trouble feminists and disarm women desperately hoping for meaningful change in masculinity.

 

 

Future Research

The extensive literature reviews, my secondary analysis, and my grounded secondary research, Internet searches, and subsequent feminist analyses summarised in this thesis suggest that the study of men’s movements needs to be broadened.  For example, we would benefit from historical studies of men’s movements, case studies of men’s movements in various communities, and studies of individual men in the various movements. 

Case studies of men’s movements in various communities could examine their claims and ideologies, asking if they are equal treatment, spiritual, or pro-feminist movements. Their social value in regards to social change could then be extrapolated from this framework.  Historical studies of men’s groups in other time periods would give us a basis of comparison to determine how and why they emerged at particular junctures. Historical research might also determine the consequences of men’s attempts to change our social and gender orders, or alternatively, why they sought to sustain existing ones. Finally, studies of individual movements could evaluate their potential contribution to women’s emancipatory goals.  These studies might ask whether individual movements offer subordinated women practical and timely assistance in deconstructing hegemonic masculinity. These studies may also underscore the rupture between rhetoric and politic.  Too many men subordinate women by raping and battering them.  To what extent do individual movement members participate in subordinating women in their every-day lives?  Such a practical approach would raise questions about the seductive value of men being associated with movements to impress women.

There is little doubt that men’s movements are wolves in sheep’s clothing, which present a greater possibility of danger to women than hope. ‘Equal treatment’ and ‘spiritual men’s movements are clearly dangerous, even pro-feminist men’s movements prove problematic.  Consequently, women may be nurturing the viper that will seize their theoretical margin, scarce resources, or emancipatory gains. On the other hand, existing structures conspire to subordinate her and her knowledge. The looming question for this feminist is can and/or will men’s movements change social and gender orders? Women and feminists appear dammed either way –biting the hand that seeks to emancipate them or being bitten by wolves in sheep’s clothing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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