(updated 2008-06-01)
The modern day men’s movement is totally different than the 1970-1990’s mens movements.
My dream for the men’s movement:
The first wave of the men’s movement was really dedicated to helping women unfold the women’s movement, and righting myriad historical wrongs. We didn’t really have an understanding of, “What’s intrinsic to men? What are men’s needs?” That wasn’t the priority at the time – the priority was focused entirely on helping women, so whatever a man might “need” was probably just a socially constructed delusion.
The first wave men’s movement (which connects with the 2nd wave women’s movement) is where the legal basis of the modern day and schooling traditions comes from.
The second wave men’s movement helped men reconnect with themselves, with the hearts, without relying on women to tell men what those were. “Okay, whatever we are, we are good, not bad… Right? So what are we?” Understandably, many women (and first wave men’s movement supporters) felt deeply threatened by men drumming in the forest, and used shaming attacks to undermine it. This is wrong, but we can understand what motivates these attacks.
The third wave I think is where us men are really developing a body, a protective membrane. Attempting to talk with 2nd-wave feminists & 1st-wave masculinists has not resulted in any change; For the most part, they are refusing to acknowledge or talk with us, and pretty much across the board. They seem to despise WarrenFarrel?, for instance, and I’ve seen many scrimmages down the line. Women as a whole, however, that I have encountered in the streets, seem to be much more receptive to 3rd wave men’s movement ideas, in my personal experience with talking with them. (ie, women who are not busy writing feminist papers and such.) Amber, for instance, recognizes that “men are treated like dirt,” and recognizes that this is “not fair,” that “something needs to change.” I have met many other women who have voiced this to me in confidence, as well.
I speculate that there is a small chance for communication between 3rd-wave men’s movement, and 3rd-wave feminist movement.
That said, it’ll require that men put down some spears, and women open their ears: The 3rd-wave mens movement is much more concerned with building an armor / cell wall / protective membrane, and this is an essential activity. And the 3rd-wave feminist movement in it’s compassion and spirituality is connecting across race, culture, and class lines – but is it listening to men? Not overtly, but I have seen some tremblings.
One sign is a comic called “Y: The Last Man,” (YtheLastMan,) and may represent a communication between the 3rd-wave feminist movement and the 3rd-wave men’s movement.
“But will it work?” I suspect that such communications are minor, and that 3rd wave feminism carries much of 2nd wave sentiment. I like to joke, “3rd wave feminists will talk with anybody on Earth, but men.” That is, they’ll communicate across the lines of class, talking with rich and poor alike. They’ll communicate across the lines of race, and culture, doing intensive work to really get into the lives of people (reads: women) in other societies. They’ll work on the environment, putting immense efforts there. They’ll struggle against militarism, and they’ll struggle against capitalism. And they’ll practice spiritual ritual and deep listening as well. But with the calendar so full, there is a voice that perhaps they just haven’t got enough hours in the day to listen to: the voice of men.
That said, it’s not all that bad. You can’t listen to all those people (many of which are men,) and not at some point start to think about men. Read the Wikipedia article on 3rd-wave feminism, and you can see some beginning ambiguities about the term “feminism.”
But on the whole, there’s still an “anti-man” or “man dismissive” thrust.
Obviously, this does not include men.
So, now, let me go back to talking about the future.
I think legal changes for men will play out in the 2010’s that were really initiated in the 2000’s. I don’t think it’ll play out in dramatic court battles, so much as it will play out through a change in popular perspective. The men fighting right now in courts and so on are very real, and need our support, but I think it will primarily by a change in public opinion that will really fuel key courts and law makers to go, “Okay, well, let’s change this.” I suspect it will be very non-dramatic, which is quite different from when feminists won rights in their 1st wave (right to vote,) and when the 2nd wave made their essential and important victories.
I’d like for men to focus on Spirituality. The mythopoetics (2nd wave mens) made the starting motions. The 3rd wave is busy gearing for war, but I sense an element of Spirituality underneath – RichZubaty has done really strong work here: the establishment of a uniquely male spiritual voice. A cross between Robert Bly and Rich Zubaty combined with something new would be an extraordinary accomplishment. Churches, too, (including the Catholic church,) have been doing a lot of work here.
“Spirituality” may sound like a loopy airy-fairy thing to focus on, but it is really, at the end of the day, what everything is founded in. If “men’s rights” are important, it’s because people are important, and men are a class of people. Everyone realizes this, but we rarely talk about people as people except in the frame work of religion, spirituality, life, philosophy, and so on.
I’d like for men to focus on masculine sexuality. SexIsFoundationalToMe, but I don’t think it’s just me; – and I think that reclaiming the sexuality of men (see: TheProblemOfMaleSexuality) is key to developing the Spirituality of men. I intuit that there is an extremely deep link between men’s sexual lives, their personal identity, and thus their Spirit, (see: SexAndSpiritInMen,) and I don’t think you can reach men’s Spirit without a reconciliation, both public & personal, between men and their sexuality.
It would be nice if the men’s movement somehow worked across race and culture, similar to how the women’s movement has done in their 3rd wave, but I do not believe it will happen. I believe that this has something to do with men’s nature.
For more on that, see this paper: Evolving Men's Work: And the Seattle Men's Evolvement Network
Obviously there is no literal crossover from the metaphor to reality, but the basic idea is essentially correct: The Men’s Movement is “organized” totally different. It exists, but it is completely different, and I am skeptical that it will ever be anything like the women’s movement: organized, a lifetime commitment, hierarchical, a fundamental part of men everywhere’s existence. Perhaps I am wrong, but my life as a man suggests to me that this is the proper conclusion.
More likely, like he writes at the end of his paper:
This seems true to me. Men just don’t talk much; We’re not really people of many words.
Will we talk across lines of race and class? Given the right forum, we will.
It may be wrong, but I’m mentally “leaning on” the 3rd wave feminists here. I believe that the extraordinarily powerful work coming from 3rd wave feminists is the work that will connect men with their brothers across race and class and culture lines.
Men have always valued men in other races, classes, and cultures, but in all honesty: There needs to be actual conversation. It’s not sufficient to just admire and nod from afar. Who’s going to do the work of establishing such conversation? Surely it’s not men, who live by few words. No, it’s going to be women: specifically, the mature women and their institutions inspired by 3rd wave feminists. I have already witnessed the beginnings of such things first-hand.
Men and women really are different, and we really do need each other; This, I firmly believe. (This necessity goes out to Queers as well.)
Note that everything written above is basically written with MiddleClassWhiteSociety in mind. I have a vague sense of a “grand conjunction” playing out across the whole of the 21st century; The world really is very huge. I mean, we’re talking about a story within a story within a story here – 6 billion, 7 billion people – that’s just amazingly large. We are awakening within a living Matrioshka doll here. The 20th century of feminism awakening is just – it’s a footnote in this larger story. By the time men & women have figured things out, we’ll be in a totally different global society, and be figuring out global integration – culture and high technology. Very deep issues will play out there.
One thing that hardly anyone talks about, but which appears to me like an obvious and bizarre creature in the very center of the room, is TransHumanism, twin to the emerging EvolutionarySpirituality. 3rd-wave feminism gives us some initial glimpses at this, because it sees everything through post-modern lenses of abstraction, information, language, and so on. There’s only one way this can go: “Up.”
As TeilhardDeChardin said: “Everything that rises, must converge.”
I hesitate to say anything about feminist in the 2010’s – honestly, I’ve spent most of my time going through men’s stuff, and have lost track of where 3rd wave feminists are in detail. I see only the surface of their movement.
But here’s what I hope is happening in their midst, and here’s where I hope they go, not really knowing whether what I hope for is the right thing or not.
I’m hoping that in the 2010s, women talk with men.
They should be accustomed to all the outreach strategies that they’re mastering in the 2000’s: how to talk with people of other races, classes, cultures, and with different priorities, and so on.
So it makes sense that they would apply these things to talking with men. Not talking exclusively to men, like the 2nd did vigorously, and like the 3rd still shows some traces of doing, but talking with men.
If feminist organizations started seriously treating men as equal-in-value, rather than “the same as us,” (to be “reprogrammed” or “reconstituted,” – see: RetrainingMen,) and putting the study of men into “feminist studies,” that’d be awesome amazing super-good for everybody and society.
It’d be amazing to see “Feminism Studies” or “Women’s Studies” turned to Gender studies.
I think with better brain science, informatic work, statistics work, computers, so on – we could really see it come together.
Women are doing a lot of work with sex workers these days, and feminists are open to porn voices and so on. They’re not completely dismissing them. If women can appreciate male sexuality (TheProblemOfMaleSexuality,) then I could see some loosening and transformation of prostitution, sex care, sexual therapy, and so on; See: SexualWorld; Turning these into institutions of psychological strength and compassion, rather than fear and degregation for both men and women.
That doesn’t mean that sexual desire will be “cleaned up” or “reconstituted” – it just means, … Oh, well, it’s very complicated, and I can’t go into it right now. Some other day.
I don’t know how long the vision for the 2010’s will require, maybe 1 decade, maybe 2, maybe 3.
Wave 5 is a dream. Maybe it’ll play out in the 2020’s.
The vision of wave 5 is high spiritual vision.
Spirituality really is the grand integration point of all things: race / culture, class, sexuality, attitude, technology, and so on.
Men and Women are different but we embrace the gifts that these differences bring; Culture is a similar blessing, may we preserve and also mix across cultures, bringing about new stories while preserving the old ones. Structure over property is required for our lives dramas to go on, but we can support each other across class lines in the performance of our respective dramas. The environment requires effort from all walks of life, and it is an honor and a blessing to attend to mother & father Earth. The conscious development of lively attitudes is important and essential.
The FederationOfDamanhur’s Androgen can be born.
Around the time of wave 5, we will be alive with fundamentally new problems.
For example, many of us will be blending with computers, and the machines will start becoming alive, and have some things to tell us, to explain to us, and request from us.
High level concepts such as “values,” “population,” and “voting rights” will have to be re-understood, when AIs start reproducing themselves like mad just to make a point (“How many “people” do you need to pass a vote?”)
And how much is a desire worth, anyways? Should we just genetically engineer out sexual need? Is it “more trouble than it’s worth?” What about the Buddhist idea – just engineer out all desire? What is the architecture of competing desires, and so on?
But those are different stories and quest(ion)s. And I have no insight into them; Only into their existence.
note to self: rename this to TheStoryOfGenders
A very interesting question emerges:
As we move from the genetic to the memetic, the basis of valuing women (reproduction) and children (future population) over men (brute force laborers and warriors) becomes less and less significant.
It’s been argued that second wave feminism, which freed women in powerful ways, stemmed from the invention of The Pill.
Men, if they wish to free themselves, then needs to invent a way of birthing children without wombs. That way, they will be treated fairly on the titanic. This seems to be a request, a desire, that I see on sites such as AngryHarry! (I may be wrong.) That is, this is evidence of a significant difference between modern conservative masculinists, and the conservative masculinists of the past..! That is, they do not seem to be arguing that freedoms should be taken away from women, rather they seem to be a logical progression from the same impetus, and simply want to be equal participants in freedom.
Realize this: When we have artificial womb technology, men are no longer demanded to sacrifice.
The first society that does this will have a military advantage, but that will be dwarfed by the emerging global conundrum.
I see more clearly that TransHumanism and the Social Change / activist and the Military communities cannot avoid each other, and it is just as PierreTeilhard? spoke, all that rises must converge.
The emerging global conundrum is this: “How shall we govern our population levels?”
I seek TheTranscendenceOption?. But I believe it will thrust itself at us and make itself into The Transcendence Inevitability.
I simply do not see computer technology going backwards. I simply do not see women’s freedoms going backwards, in reverse. I simply do not see the arrow of freedom wavering, and going back the other direction.
These issues are shoving themselves at us. However long the MensMovement is not met by society, it will only strengthen, because the underlying motives are continuing to push themselves at us. Should it come to a crescendo, men will invent artificial wombs. Should falling populations in developing countries come to a crescendo, nations will invent artificial wombs, and pay people to raise children.
We are increasingly identifying ourselves as processors within a gigantic computer. Men will not be valued for their disposability, but rather for the direction of their minds, for their source code.
The queer theorists have the right idea: digging at the essential nature of gender, the genetic and memetic encodings. I would not be shocked if we were identifying and inventing new “genders,” which would melt into concepts of new brain architectures, as we get closer to and then reach post-material stages.
I see the Men’s movement through the spectacles of the HiveMind; I see the motion of spirits.
Feminism in 3 waves; First, votes for women. Then the total deconstruction of the 60s and 70s. Now a third wave awakens from feminism; I see the present day mens movement as a shockwave from the second wave feminism. The values and the things wanted are reminiscent of an egalitarian spirit; And the men are speaking for their feelings from the masculine heart.
When I look into the Transhuman future, I see the Borganism; The society alive and self aware; Of the currents moving through us all, between and within and escaping from our forms. Enumerations of values and programmatically portraid, Indras Net come manifest in a distorted but living mirror.
I see this as our sacred journey; Developing articulations and holding spirits for the values and lives of the eternal mind.
There have been brief flickers of “Men’s Movement,” but my understanding through research and brief conversations with people who have participated in it, is that it’s weak, or dead.
I suspect that some of the reasons are:
I want women (and some men) to know: DrumBeating? isn’t what a lot of men are about; Men are about authenticity. DrumBeating? strikes me more of a woman’s idealized fantasy of Kales (KalesAndKekales,) and of PlayingIndian?. Women often profess, “I don’t know what men would like to do with each other, then,” and there is a deafening silence. From both men and women. When I envision into that space, in the action arena, I see more: Urban spelunking, parachuting, sharing porn, playing violent video games, collaborative thinking – exploration of danger and intensity. Our society is so terribly sue-happy and risk-averse, that it’s not even conceivable to most men to arrange to do these things. I have a hard time imagining it playing out.
It is important to realize, I believe that MenCantTalk? isn’t a moral distinction; It’s not: “Oh, those men are bad, not talking.” Rather, it is the case for structural reasons, having to do with the acquisition of sex, by proving the self before the society (being a contributor, rather than a taker / whiner / complainer.) This is intrinsic to HowCultureUsesMen?. It is my belief that women as just as “culpable” to the behaviors of men, as men are, because they are the holders of genetic sequences determining the rewards for men who succeed in the view of the common man. (The wealthy live in a different world entirely, but are not the subject of day-to-day existence for most men, and thus the Men’s Movement. Or are they? Perhaps they have a secret role to play…)
Ultimately, I believe that we need a Gender Movement, itself playing as a part of a Human Movement, and then more importantly, a Life Movement. (That is, I believe we should all consider ourselves participants within an unnamed EvolutionarySpirituality.)
If I could query the men’s movement, I would ask questions including:
Issues I’m not rephrasing into questions:
Note that, most of this is presently localized to North American middle class white culture (regardless of actual skin color) of the Liberal tradition (whether Republican or Democrat.) That said, I suspect that some aspects of this culture are globalized and in some ways inevitabilities (think of ConvergentEvolution? – how eyes evolve repeatedly in many different lines of organisms that are not genetically related.) Thus, the conversation covers a certain memetic space. That is, I still think it’s worth asking these questions, even though it’s not “the whole world.” It is at least several hundred million people, if not a billion or more, I believe, and I think that many other of the 5 billion people will be asking these questions (subconsciously,) soon, if they are not already.
I do earnestly consider the possibility that men are obsolete, and should no longer exist; See FutureOfSexScenarios? (“LesbianUtopia?,”) and ScumManifesto, both of which I am SelectivelyOpenMinded to. If men are genuinely aggressive and competitive by nature, made to be the corporate (“group with a body”) skins, as in HowCultureUsesMen?, … and if our evolved ethical understanding focuses more on cooperation and holistic health, then it’s entirely plausible that there should not be men any more, or men in greatly reduced numbers; A surprising conclusion that has also been reached by the NoMarriage website author. I have also heard that societies with more men than women are more likely to go to war, something to be researched and understood. What happens with more women than men? Perhaps global peace. Another possibility is fundamental genetic rewiring within both women and men. Still another possibility is robotic women, though I don’t know if society could stomach that. Still another is brains in vats. But I need to save these for the FutureOfSexScenarios? page, when it is written. Regardless, it seems possible to me that men are “fundamentally broken,” and need to either evolve, be remade, or destroyed. Then again, … maybe we’re not, and it’s just that our cultural patterns need to evolve.
See also:
Many men and women reading this page will, no doubt, say, “This is pretty radical, Lion, what you’re saying here – Everything is fine; Why does anything need to change anything at all?” This is a more general question, and I hope to write on this some day. (Perhaps: PayingAttentionToTheNoosphere?, or BeInvolved?, or something like that.)