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Written November 20, 1998
NOBODY'S BODY BUT MINE
MUCH HAS BEEN SAID AND WRITTEN ABOUT THE MEN'S MOVEMENT AS "BACKLASH"against
the drive for women's equality which began in the seventies. The conventional
wisdom is that men's organizing on their own behalf is an all-new, late-model,
up-to-the-minute phenomenon, a reaction to "unfair advantages" gained by
women in the last twenty-odd years. The truth is more complicated.
At its web site, National Coalition of Free Men provides analysis and opinion on the history of gender relations in the United States. On page 2 is the statement by Warren Farrell, a leading spokesman for Men's Rights groups, that "Women have three choices: stay home and raise a family, work full time or work part time. Men have three choices: Work full time, work full time or work full time".
How new are the woman-as-self-indulgent-leech, man-as-overworked-provider images? Not new at all. It was a major theme of the original, very successful, wave of the men's liberation movement which began in the fifties.
After World War II, men by the hundreds of thousands returned home, found jobs, married and had children. A few years down the road, some of these men became discontented. Their complaints: work was boring, their lives un-fulfilling. Remember the books of that era? William F. Whyte"s The Organization Man, David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd, Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road? These and others with similar themes all examined the frustration of the "gray flannel rebels". Resentful of the regimentation of the corporate structure into which they had to fit, bored with their suburban wives and family routines, many of these men looked around for someone to blame for their dissatisfaction.
Unable to criticize their employers -- the people who created the unsatisfying conditions of their work lives -- these bored and restless men "found" their oppressors in their own homes. Far less dangerous for an unhappy man to blame his wife than to blame his boss. Besides wasn't it her fault he had to work so hard at a job he had come to dislike while she enjoyed an easy life at home in the suburbs?
And hasn't woman been a convenient scapegoat for at least the last 5,000 years?
Magazines, including such mainstream publications as Look, spotted a popular trend and began to feature somber articles on the plight of the beleaguered male, the man who was sacrificing himself to provide a comfortable lifestyle for the wife and kids. Playboy magazine, which burst upon the national scene in 1953, soon became the unofficial voice of a growing men's movement. In a 1963 Playboy article, the image of wife-as-parasite was dramatized by including a mock ad for a job which read in part, "...an Assured Lifetime Income can be yours....in an easy, low-pressure, part-time job that will permit you to spend...each and every day as you please! ...watching TV, playing cards, socializing with friends..." The job described was, of course, that of homemaker.
Once he had finished trashing the American wife, Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner went on to use the magazine's pages to promote a new vision of possibility for men: no longer that of over-worked, self-sacrificing husband but one of a single guy in a well-furnished bachelor pad into which a woman might be invited as an overnight guest but not as a permanent resident. No responsibility, no commitment, just pure male fun and freedom.
Much of the era's picture of man-as-victim was painted by the medical profession. In the fifties and early sixties, doctors began to speak of cardiovascular disease as an epidemic. Medical opinion and the conventional wisdom held that heart disease was primarily a threat to successful, upper class and upper-middle class men, especially family men. As the physicians of the day put it, "leadership has its price".
Was there any evidence that heart attacks were more prevalent in "successful" (read "privileged") American males? No, there was not. All the data showed that working class men were every bit as likely to be victims. Why wouldn't they be? Their work was hard and demanding. These men poured cement, loaded lumber onto trucks, lifted heavy packages, drove big rigs, dug coal out of the mines, built houses -- the list goes on.
Yet the impression persisted that it was society's white male professionals and managers who were most at risk. How did the medical establishment explain their theory that it was the men of this particular class who were endangered? The explanation found and offered for the supposed tendency of the upper-middle class white male -- was -- ready for this? stress. Even if he never picked up anything heavier than a golf club, even if he sat at a desk all day in an office that was heated in winter and air-conditioned in summer, the "successful" man was burdened with so much responsibility. He was under so much stress.
Ignored by doctors, corporate leaders, university professors, media pundits and other members of the "successful" white male class, was the possibility that the blue-collar worker might be under some stress himself. Members of the working class had their own sources of strain and tension: excessive, sometimes dangerous work, requiring not only speed but skill and concentration; unrealistic schedules to keep; demanding, sometimes abusive supervisors and managers; and the bitter taste of his own justified resentment at a boss's unfair criticism, resentment he had to swallow. Not to mention anxiety about being laid off or fired, worry about whether his paycheck would cover the monthly bills, and what would happen to his family if that chest pain he kept having turned out to be something more than indigestion.
The party line of the men's liberation movement holds that all men, regardless of social or economic status, are oppressed by the same cultural expectations and imprisoned by the same onerous male sex roles. But a close look at attitudes of the movement's leading spokesmen reveals that they have always held a far less democratic view of working class men. More about that in Part Two: The Seventies: Arrival of the Not So Sensitive New Age Guy.
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