Abstract
The “new” men’s movement, signaled by the popularity of works by Robert Bly and Sam Keen, and the hundreds of weekend “mythopoetic” retreats, indicates a growing restlessness among American men. This essay examines the assumptions and political implications of the mythopoetic men’s movement and presents a feminist-inspired critique. First, we describe the movement’s essentialist assumptions about gender, stressing the ways these assumptions reproduce power inequalities between women and men. Second, we explore the psychoanalytic diagnosis of male malaise and argue that feminist psychoanalysis provides a more compelling case. Third, we explicate the celebration of anthropological initiation rituals and place these rituals within larger cultural contexts of male-female relationships. Fourth, we describe the historical antecedents for the current mythopoetic retreats, suggesting the structural conditions under which fears of feminization of manhood are likely to be expressed. Finally, we discuss the sociology of developmental regression contained within the mythopoetic vision, arguing that what is to be retrieved is not “deep manhood,” but “deep boyhood,” a playfully innocent and romanticized view of masculinity without adult responsibility of work and family. We claim that only by developing an explicitly pro-feminist politics can men’s lives be meaningfully changed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.
References
Benjamin, Jessica. 1985.The Bonds of Love. New York: Pantheon.
Bly, Robert. 1990.Iron John. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990.
Brenton, Myron. 1967.The American Male. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Caputi, Jane and Gordene O. MacKenzie. 1992. “Pumping Iron John,” inWomen Respond to the Men’s Movement (Kay Leigh Hagan, ed.). San Francisco: HarperCollins.
Carnes, Mark C. 1989.Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Chapple, Steve and David Talbot. 1990.Burning Desires. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Chodorow, Nancy. 1978.The Reproduction of Mothering. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Coltrane, Scott. 1988. “Father-Child Relationships and the Status of Women: A Cross Cultural Study,” inAmerican Journal of Sociology 93(5), March.
Coltrane, Scott. Forthcoming, 1994.Family Man. New York: Oxford University Press.
Connell, R.W. 1988.Gender and Power. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Conwell, Joseph Alfred. 1896.Manhood’s Morning; or, “Go it While You’re Young”: A Book for Young Men Between 14 and 28 Years of Age. Vineland, N.J.: The Hominis Book Company.
Dinnerstein, Dorothy. 1976.The Mermaid and the Minotaur. New York: Harper and Row.
Domhoff, G. William. 1974.The Bohemian Grove and Other Ruling Class Retreats. New York: Harper and Row.
Ehrenreich, Barbara. 1983.The Hearts of Men. New York: Anchor.
Eliade, Mircea. 1962.The Sacred and the Profane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fiedler, Leslie. 1966.Love and Death in the American Novel. New York: Stein and Day.
Gabriel, Trip. 1991. “In Touch with the Tool Belt Chromosome,” inThe New York Times, 22 September.
Gossett, Hattie. 1992. “min’s movement??? a page drama,” inWomen Respond to the Men’s Movement (Kay Leigh Hagan, ed). San Francisco: HarperCollins.
Gregor, Thomas. 1982. “No Girls Allowed” inScience 82, December.
Harwood, W.S. 1897. “Secret Societies in America,” inThe North American Review, 164, May (pp. 620–623).
James, Henry. [1885] 1966.The Bostonians. New York: Signet.
Kaufman, Michael. 1993.Cracking the Armour: Power, Pain and the Lives of Men. Toronto: Viking Canada.
Kimmel, Michael. 1987. “Men’s Responses to Feminism at the Turn of the Century.”Gender & Society 1(2).
_____. forthcoming, 1994.Manhood: The American Quest. New York: HarperCollins.
Macleod, David. 1983.Building Character in the American Boy. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
McLaughlin, William. 1955.Billy Sunday Was his Real Name. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Moore, Robert and Douglas Gillette. 1991.King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. San Francisco: HarperCollins.
_____. 1992.The King Within: Accessing the King in the Male Psyche. New York: William Morrow.
Raphael, Ray. 1988.The Men From the Boys: Rites of Passage in Male America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Spain, Daphne. 1992.Gendered Spaces. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Whyte, William. 1956.The Organization Man. New York: Anchor.
Author information
Affiliations
Corresponding author
Correspondence to Michael S. Kimmel.
Additional information
Michael Kaufman, resident fellow at the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) at York University in Toronto, is a founder and originator of the White Ribbon Campaign against violence against women in Canada. His books includeBeyond Patriarchy: Essays by Men on Pleasure, Power and Exchange (Oxford University Press, 1987) andCracking the Armour: Power Pain and the Lives of Men (Viking Canada, 1993).Michael S. Kimmel, associate professor of sociology at SUNY at Stony Brook, is the national spokesperson for the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS). His books includeChanging Men (Sage, 1987),Men’s Lives (Macmillan, 1989; 2nd ed. 1992),Men Confront Pornography (Crown, 1990), andAgainst the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1776–1990 (Beacon, 1992).
AUTHOR’S Note: This essay represents a summary of a larger work in progress.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kimmel, M.S., Kaufman, M. The new men’s movement: Retreat and regression with America’s weekend warriors. Feminist Issues 13, 3–21 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02685732
Issue Date:
Keywords
- Initiation Ritual
- Male Bonding
- Hostage Crisis
- Deep Manhood
- Large Cultural Context