Images of men as strong and stoic coexist with those of engaged fathers and family cooks.
Alternative images serve as catalysts for changing understandings of manhood and masculinity.
Professor Michael Kimmel emphasizes that there is "more than one way to be a man."
Historically, American men have been less involved than women in challenging gender norms, though this is changing.
Profeminist Men’s Groups
Also known as progressive men and male feminists, emerged in the 1960s.
Some men in New Left social movement organizations recognized the validity of women’s criticisms of sexism and sought to change their attitudes and behavior.
They joined forces with women to work for women’s rights.
Close relationship with liberal feminism generated two distinct foci:
Related to women
Related to men.
Male feminists support women’s battles for equitable treatment and participate in efforts to increase women’s rights.
Most male feminists support:
Ending men’s violence
Rights for LGBTQ people
Men’s greater involvement with family
Working for social justice
Profeminist men’s movements increasingly have members of different races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and gender identities.
Visible on a global scale.
One strategy used by some profeminist men is performing a traitorous identity.
Criticizing attitudes or actions common among members of their group.
Challenges the group to become better.
Act as “privilege punks”—allies that leverage their power on behalf of those with less.
Male feminists engage in persuasion to convince friends and coworkers to alter discriminatory attitudes and practices.
Challenge society’s prescriptions for masculinity.
Endorsing the liberal belief that men and women are alike in most ways
Want to develop the emotional capacities that society approves in women but discourages in men.
Encourage men to be more caring, open, and comfortable engaging in close relationships with women and other men.
These men’s feminism enriches their parenting, friendships, and self-identity.
In 1975, the first Men and Masculinity Conference was held in Tennessee.
This continuing conference explores the meaning of masculinity and provides a support network for men who want to talk about problems and frustrations inherent in cultural views of masculinity and the roles and activities appropriate for men.
NOMAS (National Organization for Men Against Sexism)
One of the most prominent and long-lasting male feminist organizations.
Sponsors workshops to expand men’s awareness of ways in which their emotional development has been hindered by restrictive social views of masculinity.
Guide men in becoming more feeling and expressive.
Often serve as safe testing grounds in which men experiment with talking about their feelings, needs, and problems.
Condemns conventionally masculine qualities, such as aggression, violence, and emotional insensitivity.
One of the major achievements of NOMAS is its Fathering Task Group.
Issues a newsletter called Brother, which promotes strong, supportive ties between men.
At NOMAS conferences on men and masculinity, four issues consistently arise as priorities:
Recognizing and resisting the power and privilege that accompany being men.
Ending violence against women by analyzing how cultural codes for masculinity legitimize men’s violence against women.
Working to end men’s homophobic attitudes and the resulting cruel, sometimes deadly, attacks on gay and trans people.
Developing men’s studies at colleges and universities.
Modeled on the consciousness-raising groups popular with many second-wave feminists, NOMAS discussion groups encourage men to talk about what our society expects of men and the problems these expectations create.
NOMAS members are often involved in educational outreach programs that aim to raise other men’s awareness of the constraints of traditional masculinity.
NOMAS members often enact traitorous identities to challenge everyday incidents of homophobia, sexism, and devaluation of women.
ACT UP: The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power
A grassroots movement that used street-based direct action and civil disobedience to advocate for people living with HIV and AIDS.
The group fought for medical treatment and changes in social attitudes toward those disproportionately impacted by HIV/AIDS, including but not limited to gay men.
Their activism and legacy inspired changes in health policy, social attitudes toward gay men, and cultural expectations for men.
Founded in 1987 in New York, at the height of the U.S. AIDS crisis.
Challenged political leaders, medical professionals, religious authorities, pharmaceutical companies, and the public to respond to the health crisis with research, education, and awareness to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Recalling tactics of civil rights movements and radical feminists of the 1960s, ACT UP groups were intentionally leaderless and democratic in order to encourage participation.
ACT UP often used direct action politics, leading visible and effective demonstrations against various organizations that discriminated against people living with HIV/AIDS.
Highlighted the fluid and performative aspects of gender and sexuality.
Although ACT UP was largely led by white, middle-class men and worked primarily to challenge and change discrimination against men, women were also involved.
ACT UP also drew inspiration from the women’s health movement and created underground networks of self-educated health care providers to get HIV/AIDS patients the care they desperately needed.
Men’s Antiviolence Groups
Profeminists are committed to ending violence against women.
Believe that violence against women is not just a “woman’s issue.”
Reason that it’s a men’s issue since most violence against women (as well as men) is enacted by men.
The White Ribbon Campaign (WRC)
An international organization working to end men’s violence against women.
Formed in 1991, the WRC is the largest men’s antiviolence group in the world.
Began when a group of Canadian men responded to an appalling incidence of violence against women (the Montreal Massacre).
Members defined their mission as taking the responsibility as men to speak out against men’s violence against women.
Designating a white ribbon as the symbol of men’s opposition to men’s violence against women, this small group convinced more than 100,000 Canadian men to wear white ribbons within six weeks.
The WRC has spread to many other countries.
Members present antiviolence workshops in schools, communities, and places of employment.
Emphasizes that it is not “bashing men.”
Walk a Mile in Her Shoes
Relies on community awareness and fundraising to end men’s violence against women.
Founded in 2001 in California to increase men’s involvement with local antiviolence work.
Each year in cities across the world, men establish teams, don high heels, and participate in a one-mile march through local streets to cultivate men’s compassion for women’s experiences, generate community awareness, and raise money for local violence prevention programs.
Aims for multiple levels of impact.
For preventive education, it helps men better understand and appreciate women’s experiences, thus changing perspectives, helping improve gender relationships and decreasing the potential for violence.
For healing, it informs the community that services are available for recovery.
It demonstrates that men are willing and able to be courageous partners with women in making the world a safer place.
Criticism: doesn’t go far enough in their analysis of men’s violence.
Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP)
Aims to educate men about socialization that links masculinity to violence and to motivate men to reject violence in themselves and other men as “empowered bystanders”.
Men are more likely to be violent toward dates if they associate with peers who verbally endorse or actually engage in violence against female partners.
Men are more likely to be involved with antiviolence work if their peers are supportive and/or also engaged in this work.
The program instills antiviolence attitudes in men who then teach their male peers not to be violent.
The program has two foci:
To teach men that aggression and violence are closely linked to cultural views of masculinity and thus part of routine masculine socialization
To call attention to the role of bystanders in preventing violence.
Masculinist Men’s Groups
Embrace cultural ideology, which holds that women and men are fundamentally different and, therefore, should have different roles and rights.
Also differ from profeminist men in attitudes toward gay men.
Men’s Rights
Among the most conservative men’s groups.
Goal is to restore the traditional roles of men and women and, with that, the privileges men historically enjoyed.
Think that discrimination against men is a greater problem than discrimination against women.
To support their claim that men are oppressed, men’s rights groups point to issues such as the military draft, shorter life spans, more health problems, and child custody laws that favor women.
Father’s Rights Groups
Angry and hurt that men don’t have at least 50% custody of their children after divorce.
Claim that courts discriminate against men by assuming that women should be the primary parents.
These groups file class-action custody suits to argue that a father has a constitutional right to be a parent, and thus he is guaranteed nothing less than 50% of the time with his children.
Key questions fathers’ rights groups ask:
Can fathers love their children as much as mothers?
Do children need their fathers as much as they need their mothers?
Is it sex discrimination to give mothers an advantage when it comes to custody rights?
Mythopoetic Men
Aimed to foster men’s personal growth, wholeness, and bonding in all-male gatherings.
Claimed that men’s formerly profound connections to the earth and to other men were destroyed by modernization.
Think ideal manhood existed prior to and during the Middle Ages, when men were self-confident, strong, emotionally alive, and sensitive.
Urge men to reclaim courage, aggression, and virility as masculine birthrights and as qualities that can be put to the service of bold and worthy goals, as they were when knights and soldiers fought for grand causes.
Central to modern man’s emotional emptiness is father hunger, a grief born of yearning to be close both to actual fathers and to other men.
Held workshops and nature retreats where men gathered in the woods to beat drums, chant, and listen to poetry and mythic stories, all designed to resolve father hunger and establish positive traditional masculinity.
Promise Keepers
See reconnection to God’s commandments as the path.
The movement urges men to be the leaders of their families because Promise Keepers believe that it reflects the God’s view of the proper relationship between husbands and wives.
Critics charge that “taking responsibility” is a code term for denying women’s equality, voices, and rights.
They assert that homosexuality is a sin, promote literature on “leaving homosexuality” on their website, and offer advice on how to challenge LGBTQ-positive branches of Christianity.
A final criticism is that Promise Keepers is more a conservative political movement than a social and spiritual movement.
Millions More Movement
Goals of the 1995 meeting were for black men to atone for sins and reconcile with one another.
At the march, organizers encouraged men to pledge themselves to spiritual transformation and political action.
The Millions More Movement is inclusive of all sexes, races, and sexualities, although its focus remains on racial disparities that continue to affect black people and communities negatively.
The evolution of this movement exemplifies the fluidity of activism surrounding race, gender, and sexual orientation.
Contemporary Men’s Movements
The economic downturn is one of three recent and large social changes that have fueled contemporary masculinist movements.
Research suggests that younger men are redefining masculinity beyond the traditional breadwinner role.
The Good Men Project
A multifaceted effort to stimulate a national conversation about what it means to be a good man today.
The book is a collection of stories by men who are black and white, gay and straight, rich and poor, NFL Hall of Fame Linebackers, and ex-cons. Each man’s story describes a defining moment in his life.
An online magazine whose readers and contributors represent diverse ages, ethnicities, races, religions, economic classes, and sexualities.