Tracking the Men's Movement

Abstract

A group of men sit around a fire. In the trees that surround them hang African masks used in initiation. Before the fire, moving around the circle as he speaks, is an older man who tells what it is like to be a man. He especially tells of his relationship to his own father. The men in the circle grunt their approval or beat drums to express their emotions. Where are we in this passage? Five years ago the answers would have been: in a National Geographic magazine or documentary; among Native Americans; in an ethnographic account of prehistoric or traditional peoples. In the nineties, we are where it's at. For despite its evocation of primitive peoples and exotic rituals, this passage describes a contemporary Wildman's Retreat, populated by white, middle-class, middle-aged, Texans, part of what is often called the men's movement or more precisely the mythopoetic men's movement, a recent attempt to define masculine norms and affirm identity. Three recent books have catalyzed the mythopoetic men's movement: Robert Bly's Iron John, Sam Keen's Fire in the Belly, and Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette's King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. All posit a stable entity called male and see initiation as a key to achieving it. Other recent books challenge the views of identity raised by the men's movement: in anthropology David Gilmore's Manhood in the Making, in religion Nancy Jay's Throughout Your Generations Forever, and in feminist studies Women Respond to the Men's Movement, edited by Kay Leigh Hagan. To discuss first the men's movement texts and then gender or feminist studies may look like a setup: ridicule the men and then praise the women. But instead, I intend to show why the men's movement should be taken seriously and perhaps even nurtured.