Large numbers of American men are talking with each other these days about a common concern:
They`re not exactly sure what it means to be a man. Society, they complain, sends mixed messages. They`re pretty certain they`re supposed to be both tough and tender, but it`s not easy to get a handle on how to pull this off.
Men are confused, angry, guilty, isolated, unhappy. Inside their suits and workshirts, under their facial hair and apparent self-assurance, they`re merely boys, many say, pretending to be adults and messing up big time.
Their swagger conceals an ambivalence about accusations by some feminists that males are inherently oppressive, abusive and violent and pretty much the root of all global ills: bad marriages and bad governments, dysfunctional families and dysfunctional nations.
The problem is that ”be a man,” whether a plea or a command, doesn`t necessarily mean the same thing to everyone who hears it.
Do real men wear red, shun quiche and, after a disciplined regimen of weightlifting, stand up to bullies who have kicked sand on their previously weak bodies at the beach?
Do they fight wars and pitch in with the household chores? Are they breadwinners who change diapers, play poker, golf with the guys and share their dreams, hopes, insecurities and tears with women and each other?
The questions, complaints and cries for help are emanating from within the men`s movement, a grass-roots phenomenon that in the last decade has developed its own programs, leaders, literature and jargon.
The movement`s goals include:
(1) Addressing the reasons for the hurt and confusion.
(2) Developing a definition of masculinity that supplants a patriarchal system injurious to women and destructive to the planet.
(3) Finding ways to impart this definition to adolescent males.
Despite such lofty aims, some women are suspicious of and hostile toward the movement, seeing it as a conspiracy by men to re-establish total control of women`s lives.
Others, male and female, simply find the movement foolish.
To evoke a sense of ancient times when men are presumed to have had no doubts about their identity, members of the movement are coming together for all-male retreats in desert and forest. These assemblages often feature drumming, mask-making, dancing, hugging, weeping, and communal sessions in sweat lodges made of saplings and tarpaulins and heated to 150 degrees by hot stones.
The news media are paying increasing attention, drawn in no small measure by these exotic props and practices, which make compelling pictures and irresistible headlines.
Witness the current issue of Newsweek, whose cover story about the movement is titled ”Drums, Sweat and Tears.”
”I think the Newsweek article was fair and, on the whole, positive. But it emphasizes the personal and the emotive and fails to look at the public-responsibility aspects of mature masculinity,” says Chicagoan Robert Moore, professor of psychology and religion at Chicago Theological Seminary, a Jungian psychotherapist and a leading theoretician of the men`s movement.
”You go out in the woods to get in touch with yourself, but that`s just the beginning,” Moore says. ”When you come back, you must act to make your community a livable, humane place. You can`t be a mature man without a commitment to the public good.”
Absentee fathers
Moore, 48, is co-author of ”King, Warrior, Magician, Lover”
(HarperCollins, $16.95) which, in the words of the book`s dust jacket, has
”broken the code” to the four archetypes ”of the mature masculine personality.”
His collaborator is Douglas Gillette, 42, another Chicagoan, a Protestant pastor, student of mythology and graduate of Chicago Theological Seminary, where he met Moore.
Their work is regularly quoted by Robert Bly, the 64-year-old poet from Minnesota and patriarch of the men`s movement, who is himself the author of an influential volume in the movement library, ”Iron John,” which has been high on best-seller lists for more than seven months.
Bly also was the focus of ”A Gathering of Men,” a 90-minute TV documentary produced and hosted by Bill Moyers for the Public Broadcasting System in 1990.
During the telecast, which Moore believes was immensely successful in introducing the movement to a wider public, Bly offered this bleak assessment: ”I would say the primary experience of the American man now is the experience of being inadequate in your work (because) you can`t achieve what you want to. You feel inadequate . . . because you don`t have any close male friends, and you don`t know why. You feel inadequate as a husband because your wife is always saying that you don`t talk about your feelings enough. And you don`t know what your feelings are.”
The consensus is that men`s bewilderment is caused by absentee fathers and a loss of rituals conducted by older male mentors, whose duty in centuries past was to guide boys into manhood.
According to this view, fathers worked at home for thousands of years, providing a model to sons. These tribal societies also devised initiations that instructed boys about what was expected of them as adults.
When the Industrial Revolution arrived a century and a half ago, men left home to work in factories, which left boys to be reared and taught by women.
”This movement is about discovering the wounds men received from fathers who were absent physically and emotionally,” Gillette says. ”Men now are caught in a sphere of the feminine. We`ve been wandering in a twilight zone of gender confusion with a cultural ideal of androgyny. Not to romanticize the past, because I don`t think there was ever a golden age, but the men`s movement is about the recovery of the ritual process we`ve lost and about getting in touch with the mythic consciousness-with our deep selves-in a postmodern way.”
A return to ritual
The retreats try to instill a healing awareness of these lost paths through discussions of myths, re-creation of past ceremonies and an interaction with nature.
”The movement`s also about reclaiming masculine pride and searching for the essence of masculinity,” Gillette says. ”While thoughtful men can certainly embrace much of the feminist critique of history, we don`t have to put up with the slandering of masculinity.”
Moore traces today`s problems to the attack on ritual by the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century and the Enlightenment two centuries later.
”The leaders of those movements saw ritual as regressive. The positive aspect of those movements was in trying to move beyond the narrow tribal visions of `us versus them.` The premise of the men`s movement is that when we moved away from premodern cultures we lost our ritual knowledge, which includes knowing how to help people grow up.”
According to Moore and Gillette, the world`s troubles-everything from street gangs to wars-are caused by immature men. The authors tag them as
”monster boys in big bodies with big guns” who haven`t grown up and don`t know how.
”If I`m right,” Moore says, ”then the problems we face are far simpler but far more frightening. We have a planetary `Lord of the Flies` situation.” Patriarchy, he continues, is another expression of boy psychology.
”Patriarchy and masculinity are not the same thing. Patriarchy does not understand the concept of sharing power.”
The movement, he says, is trying to help men think about mature masculinity and its responsibilities in a new way. ”No one talked about this when we were in colleges and universities. This is not a legitimate concept in our value-free educational systems.
”So in my view and the view of many of us in this movement, we have crippled generation after generation of men by not asking them to think about that as a part of growing up.”
Nothing against women
Rob Clarke, 38, an Episcopal priest, psychotherapist and Vietnam veteran, estimates that 50 to 60 men`s groups meet regularly in the Chicago area, each drawing 5 to 100 participants. Clarke belongs to three groups. One meets monthly at his church, one gathers biweekly in his home and the third is a veterans group whose occasional meetings he leads.
Asked how members of these groups learn to be mature men, he replies,
”With great effort and struggle. But being in the men`s movement means forming and joining men`s groups.”
If some women are troubled by all this, Clarke says he`s sympathetic.
”But there is validity in separating to understand our uniqueness and differences. We won`t be able to be unified unless we understand ourselves. And though this may sound chauvinistic, you must take the opportunity to enjoy the quality of being male with other males.”
Moore says the men`s movement is a grateful response to the women`s movement, not a defensive reaction: ”The feminist movement pioneered in raising the questions about what it means for women to be consciously feminine and to assume private and public responsibilities.”
Men and women alike possess the four archetypes that form the title of his and Gillette`s book (the ruling archetype for women is Queen).
What Moore describes as the ”decoding” of these basic human archetypes began when he was studying religious cults and believers in the occult.
”All these groups were into initiation, and I tried to understand why. I began to realize this preoccupation with initiation was related to a kind of structure in the deep psyche.”
Guided by the work of psychiatrist Carl Jung and mythologist Joseph Campbell, Moore studied ancient stories in his search for the origins of the initiations.
”Jung believed there are deep structures-behavioral patternings-in our species that are species-wide,” he says. ”I began to realize that what you`re seeing in these mythical stories are repeated patterns throughout world mythology reflective of deep structures.”
The legend of King Arthur is an example, he says. ”You get a Magician-Merlin-and the King-Arthur. You also get Lancelot, who spends his time as a Warrior and Lover. The King and Queen archetypes integrate the aggression of the Warrior, the cognitive energy of the Magician and the emotional, life-affirming drive of the Lover.”
The aggression of the male Warrior archetype, Moore says, is misunderstood. The mature Warrior positively channels instinctual male aggression and is protective rather than violent, setting boundaries and standing up to aberrant behavior.
”Intellectuals make fun of the tradition of chivalry, but it brought violence under control. To ridicule it is to give up on the male`s ability to direct his aggression in responsible ways. But you won`t get liberation and empowerment of women by disempowering males.”
Modern failures
Moore urges men and women to study martial arts. In addition to following his own advice, Moore is a gun hobbyist who enjoys target shooting, a product, he says, of his boyhood in rural Arkansas.
”I`m an old Southern shootist, and I`m not ashamed of it,” he says. ”I grew up learning to shoot.”
He expects disapproval from academic colleagues. ”Most people in the intellectual world have not had Warrior initiation,” he says. ”If they had, they would be more assertive and involved in public concerns and issues than they are.
”But intellectuals tend to deconstruct what everybody else does and not come up with any constructive, aggressive actions for our cities. I see this as sort of a `shadow` (immature) Magician stance that a lot of
psychotherapists and professors get into.
”That`s why the problems of the world won`t be solved in the classrooms of the universities or the consulting rooms of psychoanalysts.”
Kingship attains its fullest realization, he says, in a man`s 50s,
”which is about the time society decides it`s time for retirement.
”It`s only after you get to be 55 that you really have the emotional resources to understand masculine maturity in the most vital way. These are the men-and women-who should be stewarding this planet, which is what happened for most of recorded history.
”Now we decide these people should retire and play golf for the rest of their lives. We send our most mature and our wisest to Sun City on permanent vacation.”
Our society, Moore says, has several organizations that conduct ”pseudo- initiations” for males. These include the military, which, he says, is more interested in protecting a young man`s life than saving his soul, the purpose of initiations.
Another is the street gang, which attracts boys Moore views as desperately trying-and failing-to be men.
Mature men-”real men”-are those who give their time to the community and to young males, Moore says.
”The men`s movement, if it`s successful, must change lives. This isn`t a liberal or conservative issue. It`s a masculine maturity issue. It doesn`t matter who we elect president. If the man in the street has no sense of what maturation as a man is, we do not have a chance.”
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For more information about the men`s movement in the Chicago area, write EarthMen Resources, P.O. Box 1034, Evanston, Ill. 60204, or dial 312-927-7467.
