Ed Barton has heard it all-the cracks, the jokes, the snickers and snide remarks:
“Hey, Ed, where’s your drum?”
“Hey, Ed, found your inner wild man yet?”
Jest if you must. The Michigan State University professor says the men’s movement, with its drum-beating and “mythopoetic” symbolism, has helped him find “inner peace.”
Barton was one of 40 men and women who attended a recent international men’s and gender conference in Kansas City. Some came from as far away as England and France.
For some it was a way to connect with soulmates who shared their belief that men are “devalued” and wrongly demonized. For others it was part of a journey to understand themselves or the opposite sex better.
For Barton it was a chance to heal his wounds with friends who he knew would understand his pain.
Barton became involved with the men’s movement after a difficult separation from his wife.
“It left me feeling lost, depressed and alone,” he said. “And that led me to start searching for some answers. I didn’t know what I was searching for. All I knew was I needed help. These groups gave me an opportunity to share my pains in a group of men who would not be judgmental and condemning in my need to share or ask for support.”
The men’s movement-at least the branch of it he embraces-is totally misunderstood, Barton said.
“People make fun of it. That’s because most men don’t want to ask for support. It’s just not macho.
“My involvement is what is called `mythopoetic,’ represented by the popular books `Iron John’ by Robert Bly and `Fire in the Belly’ by Sam Keen,” he said. “It’s more of an introspective search into ourselves to find our true identities-what it means to be a man.”
Those books, especially Bly’s, started a movement devoted to men and their feelings. In it Bly combined lessons of mythology with discussions of the “wild man.” Bly has conducted “wild man’ retreats in the woods for more than 10 years.
Barton found those retreats helpful.
“There’s something about that drumming, that percussion that gets a man in touch with his emotional core so he can let down some of that armor,” Barton said.
But the men’s movement of Bly and Barton was only one component of the diverse conference, which was conceived and organized by Tom Oaster, a University of Missouri-Kansas City associate professor of education.
A woman who ridiculed the very idea of a men’s conference is a reason one is needed, Oaster said. “We want the bashing to stop,” he said. “We’re tired of it. It’s not a request. It’s a statement.”
Ian Wilson, an Australian astronomer now working in Baltimore, came to the conference to speak about the silent tragedy in men’s health. During his talk he presented charts showing that the rate of premature death among men was dramatically higher than that of women, and that the statistics were getting worse. People usually pooh-pooh such statistics, believing men have been privileged.
“My grandfather died of war wounds,” Wilson said. “My father spent most of his life in the Army and Navy and Air Force, my uncle died prematurely as a prisoner of war, my other uncle was crushed to death in an industrial accident, and another uncle dropped dead of a heart attack at 40. I look at the male side of my family and I see devastation. And yet society tells me these men were privileged. Well, how were they privileged? All the female relatives are still alive. And I don’t think my story is all that unusual.”
Wilson said the men’s movement is in its infancy and soon will take root as the woman’s movement did decades ago.
“Most men know they are hurting badly,” Wilson said. “And they know that contrary to popular belief society devalues them in a number of ways. It puts unbelievable pressure on them, it expects them to succeed and to define themselves in terms of their job. It excludes them from bonding to their children and leads to such inner tension that it has gotten to crisis proportions.”
Further testament to the diversity of the conference came from the presence of Peter Bresnick of Madison, Wis.
Bresnick, publisher of Changing Men magazine, is a “pro-feminist,” which he defines as being “committed to ending sexism, violence and creating a new vision for masculinity.”
“There is a strain of anti-feminism here,” Bresnick said. “It’s an anger at women and to some extent a blaming of women, which I chose not to engage in.”
Why did he come?
“I think we’re all here to understand how men are going to help each other out of this,” he said. “The key to all of this is men’s isolation from other men. You see that in discussions of the importance of a father in the family, which is something we all agree on.”
