Since the inception of the modern women’s movement in the 1960s there have been a great many social/political responses that address the place of men and masculinity with respect to this movement. Of course, the women’s movement itself was extremely diverse; for example, some sought gender equality—that is, opportunities for women to pursue traditionally male roles and occupations—whereas others took it upon themselves to transform society and the gender roles that it embodied. This essay attempts to trace in outline form the social/political perspectives or masculinity politics that achieved enough momentum to become movements. In fact, there have been only four major social movements that focus on men and masculinity, namely profeminist, men’s rights, mythopoetic and the Promise Keepers. But each of these is a complex mix of sometimes incompatible views that hang together more because of an ideological commitment to what they oppose than what they defend.
Before turning to the complexities of each of these four points of view it is worth saying what components are required to make a social/political point of view into a social movement. First, each perspective must have an account of the social/political reality that it confronts. Thus, for example, the women’s movement stressed the kind of systemic inequality that women face in work, law and almost every area of society. Second, a movement must offer an analysis of that reality, what is right or wrong about it. This analysis goes well beyond the description of reality in that it identifies causal factors that explain the reality. Thus, the women’s movement often identified sexism, an undervaluing of women’s activities and an overvaluing of men’s, as the cause of the systemic inequality. Finally, a movement must offer some social/political agenda for removing what is wrong with the social reality or reinforcing what is right. This agenda must be both politically viable and morally acceptable to those who offer it. Thus a national Equal Rights Amendment seemed to many in the early women’s movement to be the appropriate mechanism for undoing the inequalities brought about by sexism. Some social critics might argue that a fourth condition for having a social movement is that there exist a critical mass of individuals who share this ideological perspective. In this essay the size of the groups engaged in masculinity politics is ignored because they all at one time had such a critical mass.
Of the four major movements concerned with men and masculinity only the profeminist men’s movement has been generally positive towards feminism. Initially this movement was deeply personal. Its founders were men whose lives had been greatly influenced by women. They were asked to confront their own sexism and to become reliable allies of feminism. They accepted the analysis of social/political reality that feminism offered and because there were multiple feminist analyses there were divisions within the profeminist men’s groups from the beginning. Some men following the lead of liberal feminism sought to create greater equality under the law and to ban discrimination against women. Other men, following a radical feminist perspective, focused on ending violence against women. Groups who called themselves ‘men against rape’ or ‘men’s antiviolence networks’ appeared in every country with a reasonably strong feminist movement. The two sides of profeminism were hardly incompatible except as a matter of emphasis. Typically men who favoured antiviolence work became impatient with men whose focus was on equal opportunity and equal wages. Conversely, liberal profeminists often argued that perhaps the best way to confront violence was to help women gain equal social and political status. In the United States and Canada this split led to a significant number of radical profeminist men leaving the coalitions of profeminist men and forming their own antiviolence organisations.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the primary opponents of profeminist men were conservatives who sought to hold on to the traditional male roles. These conservatives believed that men were better suited to be protectors and providers and that efforts to transform men from playing these traditional roles would be devastating to the social order. Sometimes these conservatives based their views in biology, but more often it was simply grounded in a vague concept of ‘male nature’. However, profeminist men soon encountered another political conflict with an emerging movement that called itself the men’s rights movement. This movement, like the profeminist men’s movement, enjoyed the support of some prominent feminist writers and activists. The men’s rights movement was premised on an agreement with the profeminists, namely that men were severely damaged by having to play the traditional male gender role. But they departed from the profeminists by arguing that this damage was so extensive that it was a mistake to view men as the privileged sex. They attacked feminists and profeminists from this vantage point and accused them of overlooking the oppression of men. They further charged that feminists and profeminists were actually contributing to that oppression by denouncing men as violent rapists and oppressors of women. The antifeminist rhetoric of the men’s rights perspective quickly resonated with the more traditional conservatives and fathers’ rights groups who felt that they were victims at the mercy of a feminist judicial system. By the 1980s there were men’s rights publications in most countries where feminism was strong and there was a growing alliance between the men’s rights perspective, the fathers’ rights groups and conservatives. Profeminist groups after a brief attempt to create a dialogue with men’s rights activists banned presentations from a men’s rights perspective from their national and international conferences. Of course, a counter exclusion came from the men’s rights coalitions.
By 1990 the extensive and repetitive political infighting between profeminists and men’s rights advocates had made many men tired of sectarian political agendas. Men were looking for an alternative ideology. The publication of Iron John by Robert Bly provided the occasion for the third major social movement. The central thesis of Bly’s book was that men had been deprived of a proper initiation into masculinity. They were denied this by the industrial revolution that removed fathers (and uncles) from the home and left the nurturing of boys to their mothers and women schoolteachers. For various reasons Bly thought that women would misrepresent men and give sons an unfair and prejudicial view of their fathers. As adults these young men would feel this father loss in ways that would make them uncomfortable with their lives. As a remedy Bly helped to organise allmale gatherings where men could speak freely of the loss of their fathers and perhaps their anger at their mothers. The hope was to offer men a belated initiation into masculinity. Bly borrowed from Jungian psychology that talked about archetypes in the collective unconscious; he invented rituals that were followed at these gatherings such as passing a talking stick from speaker to speaker, he encouraged men to write their feelings out in poetry, and he criticised the image of men that in his mind women had helped to create. He saw the liberation of men as a spiritual/ psychological journey that could only be led by other men. These men identified themselves as the mythopoetic men’s movement.
Obviously this movement contained something for everyone who was active on the politics of masculinity stage. Many profeminists picked up on the gentle side of Bly’s message that men needed to learn to express their feelings, and poetry and ritual were seen as a way to do this. They also liked the friendship and trust among men that Bly was trying to create. Men’s rights advocates picked up on Bly’s distrust of women and the clear suggestion that women make men look bad. They liked the atmosphere at gatherings where they could vent against women and feminism—there was always a confusion between the two within men’s rights rhetoric—and not have profeminists criticise them. Bly’s message was of course intercepted and transformed. Other groups were created who developed different rituals: for example, they would go on outdoor retreats, build large fires, talk and make spears. Bly was increasingly critical of such spin-offs, and he became alarmed at what he saw as anti-woman rhetoric based upon his ideas. By the late 1990s this movement had spread widely, especially into Canada, Australia and Great Britain. There were multiple magazines and newsletters, the largest being Wingspan in the United States and Canada, written from this point of view; some were strongly profeminist, but most were a mix of mythopoetic and men’s rights writings.
The 1990s, however, saw a new development in the politics of masculinity. Christian men’s groups have been around since the early 1980s. They often focused on sexual purity, fidelity and avoidance of pornography. However, in the early 1990s a major evangelical movement called the Promise Keepers, founded by University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney, made a huge debut on the stage of masculinity politics. Starting with the premise that men were divinely mandated to be head of the family, church and community, the Promise Keepers held a series of gigantic rallies in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. These rallies (attended by 60,000 and more) were fairly typical of Billy Graham-type rallies with songs, music, witnessing and conversions. Men were asked to sign a pledge to honour Jesus, to pursue vital relationships with men, to live moral and sexually pure lives, to support their church, to reach beyond racial and denominational boundaries, and to influence the world by loving their neighbours and spreading the gospel. Women were discouraged from attending these gatherings, although women were present as organisers and workers. Men were encouraged to take back their traditional roles as head of the family, and women were encouraged to submit to their husbands. Similar dynamics were advocated for their individual congregations. Women, sometimes referred to as ‘the weaker vessels’, were encouraged to support the Promise Keepers’ agenda because they were told their husbands would be better providers, more sober and faithful husbands.
The Promise Keepers found few allies among the members of the three earlier men’s movements. Leaders of the earlier movements all rejected the religious fundamentalism of the Promise Keepers. But, some fathers’ rights groups embraced the idea that men should be head of the household and they were sympathetic to the theme that women and children needed a man in their lives. Generally, the Promise Keepers were not friendly to feminism or to profeminism, and they did not like what they saw as the paganism of Robert Bly or the secular nature of men’s rights. And although they agreed with social conservatives that men were better equipped to be leaders and heads of families, they rejected most biological or political assumptions that underlay these secular conservative views. The Promise Keepers read the Bible as literally true and took biblical passages such as Ephesians 5:22–33 at face value. The Promise Keepers overreached, however, and by the twentyfirst century were cutting back on the number and size of the rallies. There were extensive staff layoffs that greatly reduced the size of the organisation.
The early years of the twenty-first century fmd the politics of masculinity in free fall. The profeminist men’s movement is very small; courses taught at universities are becoming rarer; mythopoetic groups are small and most publications have disappeared; men’s rights groups have been increasing captured by the fathers’ rights movement that mainly opposes current divorce and custody practices; and the Promise Keepers still hold a few small gatherings, mostly in the United States. At the same time there has been a resurgence of political language favouring the role of fathers in the family. There is a general drift, especially in the United States, towards encouragement of marriage and traditional family values. But such a drift is also present in conservative governments in Australia, Italy and the United Kingdom.
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