Kimmel - Student Center

READING
Xffiffi
Reol Men Join ihe Movement
Michoel Kimmel
Cory Shere didn't go to Duke University to become a
profeminist man. He was going to be a doctor, covering his bets with a double major in engineering
and premed. But his experiences with both organic
chemistry and feminist women conspired to lead
this affable and earnest 20-year-old Detroit native in
a different direction. Now in his junior year, he still
has a double
major-women's studies and psychol-
ogy. And he works
with a group of men to raise
awareness about sexual assault and date rape.
Eric Freedman wasn't profeminist either, when
he arrived at Swarthmore College three years ago. A
2}-year-old junior literature major from Syracuse,
New York, he became involved in a campus antiracism project and began to see the connections
among different struggles for equality. At an antiracism workshop he helped organize, he suddenly
found himself speaking about male privilege as well
as white privilege. This fall, he's starting a men's
group to focus on race and gender issues.
Who are these guys? And what are they doing in
the women's movement?
They are among a growing number of profeminist men around the country. These aren't the angry
divorc6s who whine about how men are the newvictims of reverse discrimination, nor are they the
weekend warriors trooping off to a mythopoetic retreat. They're neither Promise Keepers nor Million
(199/)
ment about which Gloria Steinem rhapsodized when
she wrote how women "want a men's movement. We
are literally dying for it."
Profeminist men staff the centers where convicted batterers get counseling, organize therapy for
rapists and sex offenders in prison, do the workshops on preventing sexual harassment in the workplace or on confronting the impact of pornography
in men's lives. On campus, they're organizing mens
events during Thke Back the Night marches; presenting programs on sexual assault to fraternities, dorms,
and athletic teams; taking courses on masculinity;
and founding campus groups with acronyms like
MAC (Men Acting for Change), MOST (Men Opposed to Sexist Tradition), MASH (Men Against
Sexual Harassment), MASA (Men Against Sexual
Assault), and, my current favorite, MARS (Men
Against Rape and Sexism). Muyb. John Gray was
right after all-real men are from Marsl
TEMINISTUI
AND TI,ITN'S I.IVES
I first met Cory, Eric, and about a dozen other young
profeminist men in April at the Young Feminist
Summit, organized by NO\M, in Washington, D.C.
They were pretty easy to spot among the nearly one
thousand young women from colleges all over the
country. As we talked during an impromptu workshop, I heard them describe both the exhilaration
and isolation of becoming part of the struggle for
women's equality, the frustrations of dealing with
other men, the active suspicions and passive indifference of other students.
It felt painfully familiar. I've spent nearly two
decades in feminist politics, first as an activist in antirape and antibattery groups, and later helping to
Man Marchers vowing to be responsible domestic
patriarchs on a nineteenth-century model.
You might think of profeminist men as the "other"
men's movement, but I prefer to consider it the "real"
men's movement, because by actively supporting
women's equality on the job or on the streets and by
quietly changing their lives to create that equality at
home, profeminist men are also transforming the
definition of masculinity. Perhaps this is the move662
Reollilen lointhe lilovement
organize the National Organization for Men Against
Sexism (NOMAS), a network of profeminist men
and women around the country. More recently, I've
tried to apply the insights of academic feminist theoryto men's lives, developing courses on men, debating with Robert Bly and his followers, and writing a
history of the idea of manhood in the United States.
Of course, men like Cory and Eric are a distinct
minority on campus. They compete with the angry
voice of backlash, those shrill interruptions that
scream "Don't blame me, I never raped anyone!
Leave me alone!" They compete with that now familiar men-as-victims whine, Men, we hear, are terrified
of going to work or on a date, lest they be falsely accused of sexual harassment or date rape; they're unable to
support their scheming careerist wives, yet are
vilified as bad fathers if they don't provide enough
child support to keep their ex-wives in Gucci and
Donna Karan after the divorce.
In the public imagination, profeminist men also
compete with the mlthopoetic vision of the men s
movement as a kind of summer-camp retreat, and the
earnest evangelical Promise Keepers with their menonly sports-themed rallies, and the Million Man
March's solemn yet celebratory atonement. All ofFer
men solace and soul-work, and promise to heal men's
pain and enable them to become more nurturing and
loving. All noble goals, to be sure. But to profeminist
men, you don't build responsibility and democracy by
exclusion-of women, or of gays and lesbians.
And profeminist men compete with the most
deafening sound coming from the mouths of American men when the subject is feminism: silence.
Most men, on campus and off, exude an aura of
studied indifference to feminism. Like the irreverent
second child at the Passover seder, they ask, "\vVhat
has this to do with me?"
A lot. Sure, feminism is the struggle of more than
one-half of the population for equal rights. But it's
also about rethinking identities, our relationships,
the meanings of our lives. For men, feminism is not
only about what we can't do-like commit violence,
harassment, or rape-or shouldn't do, like leave all
the child care and housework to our wives. It's also
about what we can do, what we should do, and even
what we want lo do-like be a better father, friend,
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or partner. "Most men know that it is to all of our
advantage-women and men alike-for women to
be equal," noted NOW President Patricia Ireland, in
her Summit keynote address. Far from being only
about the loss of power, feminism will also enable
men to live the lives we say we want to live.
This isn't the gender cavalry, arriving in the nick
of time to save the damsels fiom distress. "Thanks for
bringing this sexism stuff to our attention, ladies,"
one might imagine them saying. "We'11 take it from
here."And it's true that some men declare themselves
feminists just a bit too effiortlessly, especially if they
think it's going to help them get a date. (A friend calls
it "premature self-congratulation," and it's just as
likely to leave women feeling shortchanged.)
In part, this explains why I call them "profeminist
men" and not "feminist men" or "male feminists." As
an idea, it seems to me, feminism involves an empirical observation-that women are not equal-and
the moral position that declares they should be. Of
course, men may share this empirical observation and
take this moral stance. And to that extent men support feminism as an ideal. But feminism as an identity
also involves the felt experience of that inequality.
And this men do not have, because men are privileged
by sexism. To be sure, men may be oppressed-by
race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, age, physical abilitybut men are not oppressed as men. Since only women
have that felt experience of oppression about gender,
it seems sensible to make a distinction in how we
identi!. ourselves. Men can support feminism and
can call ourselves "antisexist" or "profeminist." I've
chosen profeminist because, like feminism, it stresses
the positive and forward-looking.
In a sense, I think of profeminist men as the Gentlemen's Auxiliary of Feminism. This honorable position acknowledges that we play a part in this social
transformation, but not the most significant part. It's
the task of the Gentlemens Auxiliary to make feminism comprehensible to men, not as a loss of powerwhich has thus far failed to "trickle down" to most individual men anyway-but as a challenge to the false
sense of entitlement we have to that power in the first
place. Profeminism is about supporting both womert's
equality and other merls efforts to live more ethically
."i::r.", and more emotionally resonant lives.
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Activbm, Chonge, ond Feminbt Futures
The routes taken by today's profeminist men are as
varied as the men themselves. But most do seem to
have some personal experience that made gender
inequality more concrete. For some, it involved
their mother. (Remember President Clinton describing how he developed his commitment to
women's equalitywhen he tried to stop his stepfather
from hitting his mother? Of course, one wishes that
commitment had facilitated more supportive policy
assignments, or challenging support from professors.
After all, we all have women in our lives, and virtually all of those women have had some traumatic encounter with sexism. There has to be something else.
Feminists call it the "click!"-that moment when
they realize that their pain, fears, confusion, and
anger are not theirs alone, but are shared with other
women. Do profeminist men have "clicksl"? yes, but
they don't typically come from righteous indigna-
initiatives.) Max Sadler, a l7-yearold senior at
Tiinity High School in New York City, watched his
tion or fear, but rather from guilt and shame, a
gnawing sense of implication in something larger
professional mother hit her head on the glass ceiling
at her high-powered corporate job-a job she even-
and more pervasive than individual intention. It's
that awful moment when you hear women complain
about "men" in general and realize, even just a little
bit, that you are what they're talking about. (Much of
men's reactive defensiveness seems to be a hedge
against these feelings of shame.)
Suddenly, it's not those "bad" men "out there"
who are the problem-it's all men. Call it the pogo
tually quit to join a company with more women in
high-level positions. Max shared her frustration
and also felt ashamed at the casual attitudes of her
male colleagues.
Shehzad Nadeem, a l9-year-old student at lames
Madison University in Virginia, remembered the way
his older sister described her experiences. "I could
barely believe the stories she told me, yet something
deep inside told me that they were not only true, but
common. I realized that we men are actively or passively complicit in women's oppression, and that we
have to take an active role in challenging other men."
Shehzad joined MOST (Men Opposed to Sexist Tiadition), which has presented workshops on violence
and sexual assault at Madison dorms.
Or perhaps it was having a feminist girlfriend, or
even just having women friends, that brought these
issues to the fore for men. "I grew up with female
friends who were as ambitious, smart, achieving,
and confident as I thought I was-on a good day,'
recalls |ason Schultz, a founder of MAC at Duke,
who now organizes men's programs to combat campus sexual assault. "When I got to college, these same
women began calling themselves feminists. When I
heard men call women'dumb chicks'I knew sometn,::-^ wrong."
revelation: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
That's certainly the way it felt for Jeff Wolf (not
his real name). A sexually naive college sophomore,
he found himself growing closer and closer to a
woman friend, Annie, during a study date. They
talked long into the night and eventuallykissed. One
thing began to lead to another, and both seemed eager and pleased to be with the other. Just before pen-
etration, though, Jeff felt Annie go limp. "Her eyes
glazed over, and she went kind of numb," he recalled,
still wincing at the memory.
This is the moment that many a college guy
of-her apparent surrender to his desire, even
was induced by roofies or alcohol. It's a moment
dreams
if it
when men often space out, preferring to navigate the
actual encounter on automatic pilot, fearing that
emotional connection will lead to an early climax.
As Annie slipped into this mental coma, though,
Jeff stayed alert, as engaged emotionally as he was
physically. "What had been so arousing was the way
we had been connecting intellectually and emotion-
ally,'he said. After some patient prodding, she finally confessed that she'd been raped as a high
THE PROTETIIIINIST
"CI.I(IS"
But there has to be more than the presence of feminist role models, challenges from girlfriends, brilliant
school sophomore, and ever since, had used this selfprotective strategF to get through a sexual encounter
without reliving her adolescent trauma. Ieff, it
seemed, was the first guy who noticed.
Reallfren
Others say their "click!" experience happened
later in life. In the 1970s, psychologist David Greene
was deeply involved in political activism, when he
and his wife had a baby. "Not that much changed for
I still went
around doing my thing, but now
there was a baby in it." On the other hand, his wife's
life was totally transformed by the realities of roundthe-clock child care. She'd become a mother.'After
several weeks of this, she sat me down and confronted me," he recalls. "The bankruptcy of my politics quickly became clear to me. I was an oppressor,
me;
an abuser of privilege-I'd become the enemy I
thought I was fighting against." The couple meticulously divided housework and child care, and David
learned that revolutions are fought out in people's
kitchens as well as in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
Terry Kupers, a 54-year-old psychiatrist, and author
of Revisioning Men's Lives, remembers his first wife
initiating some serious talks about the "unstated assumptions we were making about housework, cooking, and whose time was more valuable." Not only
did Kupers realize that his wife was right, "but I also
nur.r:".U I liked things better the new way.'
PROFEMINISTUI TODAY
-
AND IOMORROW
And just as sisterhood is global, so too are profeminist men active around the world. Men from nearly
50 countries-from Mexico to Japan-regularly
contribute to a newsletter of international profeminist scholars and activists, according to its editor,
Oystein Holter, a Norwegian researcher. Scandinavian men are working to implement a gender equity
mandated by law. Liisa Husu, a senior advisor to
Finland's gender equity commission, has developed
a parliamentary subcommittee of concerned men.
(Vr4ren I met with them last fall, we spent our day
discussing our mutual activities, after which they
whisked me off to an all-male sauna resort on the
shore of an icy Baltic Sea for a bit of male-bonding
as a follow-up to all that equity work.) Scandinavian
men routinely take parental leave; in fact, in Sweden
and Norway they've introduced "Daddy days," an
additional month of paid paternityleave for the men
to have some time with their newborns after the
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mothers have returned to work. About half of
Swedish men take paternal leave, according to fatherhood expert Lars Jalmert at the University of
Stocholm.
The world's most successful profeminist organization must be Canada's \,\'hite Ribbon Campaign.
Begun in 1991 to coincide with the second anniversary of the Montreal Massacre-when a young man
killed 14 women engineering students at the University of Montreal on December 6, 1989-its goal was
to publicly and visibly declare opposition to men's
violence against women by encouraging men to
wear a white ribbon as a public pledge. "Within days,
hundreds of thousands of men and boys across
Canada wore a ribbon," noted Michael Kaufman,
one of the campaign's founders. "It exceeded our
wildest expectations-even the prime minister wore
a ribbon." This year, WRC events are also planned
for Norway, Australia, and several U.S. colleges; in
Canada, events include an Alberta hockey team
planning a skating competition to raise money for a
local women's shelter. WRC organizers have also developed curricula for secondary schools to raise the
issue for boys.
But just as surely, some of the most important
and effective profeminist men s activities are taking
place in American homes every day, as men increasingly share housework and child care, reorganize
their schedules to be more responsive to the needs
of their families, and even downsize their ambitions
to develop a family strategy that does not revolve
exclusively around his career path. "Housework
remains the last frontier" for men to tame, argues
sociologist Kathleen Gerson in her book No Man's
Land. ...
But the payoff is significant.
scarce commodity
If
power were
a
or a zero-sum game, we might
think that women's increased power would mean a
decrease in men's. And since most men don t feel
very powerful anltray, the possibilities of further
loss are rather unappealing. But for most men, all
the power in the world does not seem to have trickled down to enable individual men to live the lives
we say we want to live-lives of intimacy, integrity,
and individual expression. By demanding the redistribution of power along more equitable lines,
feminism also seeks a dramatic shift in our social
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Acti,rbn, Change, ond teminbt tutures
priorities, our choices about how we live, and what
we consider important. Feminism is also a blueprint
for men about how to become the men we want to
be, and profeminist men believe that men will live
happier, healthier, and more emotionally enriched
lives by supporting women's equality.
Part of profeminist men's politics is to visibly and
vocally support women's equality, and part of it is to
READING
quietly and laboriously struggle to implement that
public stance into our own lives. And part of it must
be to learn to confront and challenge other men, with
care and commitment. "This cause is not altogether
and exclusively woman's cause," wrote Frederick
Douglass in 1848. "I1 is the cause of human brotherhood as well as human sisterhood, and both must
rise and fali together."
s$ie&
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Wonder
Notolie Merchont
Doctors have come from distant cities
Iust to see me
(l 995)
Laughed as my body she lifted
Stand over my bed
Know this child will be gifted
With love, with patience and with faith
Disbelieving what they're seeing
She'1l make her
They say I must be one of the wonders
People see me
Of god's own creation
And as far as they can see they can offer
I'm a challenge to your balance
I'm over your heads
How I confound you and astound you
To know I must be one of the wonders
No explanation
Newspapers ask intimate questions
Want confessions
They reach into my head
way
Of god's own creation
as far as you can see you can offer me
No explanation
And
To steal the glory of my story
O, I believe
They say I must be one of the wonders
Fate smiled and destiny
Of god's own creation
And as far as they can see they can offer
Laughed as she came to my cradle
Fate smiled and destiny
Know this child will be able
Laughed as she came to my mother
Know this child wiil not suffer
Laughed as my body she lifted
Know this child will be gifted
Laughed as she came to my cradle
With love, with patience and with faith
Know this child will be able
She'Il make her way
No explanation
O, I believe