In an earlier article here I wrote about words, tracing the history of the well-known “studies†of women, gender and men and their correlates, womanhood and femininity, manhood and masculinity. I suggested that talk of these euphemisms for the male and female sexes has produced a straw body of pseudoscience. Understand, then, that the terms I use in what follows constitute a problem in itself, but one which I have addressed elsewhere.
Thinking about the teleconference sponsored by the Foundation for Male Studies that launched Male Studies: A New Academic Discipline at Wagner College on April 7, I want to say something in response to the claim that nothing of the kind is needed since for thirty years “men’s studies†has with notable results already accomplished what Male Studies is presumably setting out to do. Simply put, “men’s studies†has had little effect on the lives of most males and that, in fact, their lives have worsened in well-documented ways during the heyday of “men’s studies.â€Â
As I write, a few dozen full-length books and a number of popular anthologies widely used in gender studies courses, and nearly 900 articles in five journals (the Journal of Men’s Studies, Men and Masculinities, Fathering, and the International Journal of Men’s Health) have been published. To date, seventeen annual conferences of the American Men’s Studies Association (AMSA) have convened, the most recent this past March. I have been told by one of its founding members that during the two decades of its existence, AMSA’s membership has never exceeded 150 men and a few women.
A related organization, the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS), also exists. It began as a group by declaring its independence from AMSA. Early divisiveness is part of the curious history of men’s studies. For a history of the two organizations, see AMSA and NOMAS. The Men’s Studies Association (MSA) connected with NOMAS will convene its 22nd meeting in August 2010 and its National Conference on Men and Masculinity (NCMM) will have its 35th annual meeting a few weeks earlier in the summer. By the end of this year, hundreds of papers, panels and workshops, and a few dozen full-length address will have been presented at roughly 75 meetings of the three organizations.
The NOMAS banner describes its organization as “pro-feminist, gay-affirmative, anti-racist, [and] enhancing men’s lives.†Its goal, mentioned at the end, seems an afterthought; its political agenda, given first, is clear. AMSA represents itself as “advancing the critical study of men and masculinities.†But what have these “critical studies†produced that has made a positive difference in the lives of boys and older males?
The bulk of NOMAS-related journal articles in Men and Masculinities are sociological studies. The Journal of Men’s Studies represents a wider range of disciplines, including psychology and religious studies. Perhaps 40 of the articles in all five journals take a psychological perspective. For that, one might go to the Psychology of Men and Masculinities, published by the American Psychological Association. The reader can easily sample the titles of the texts using database searches. An informal content analysis suggests that most of the material is of interest to those concerned with advocacy and selected subgroups of males. Precious little has to do with most males.
Forty years of men’s studies, then, is quite a long time and reflects many thousands of hours of discussions, panels and conferences, as well as the publications mentioned.
And yet there are now:
- more men in prison than ever before (most are Black men) and, as the New Zealander, Celia Lashlie, has pointed out in The Journey to Prison, going to prison may have become for many boys the only meaningful rite of passage available to them.
- Boys are committing suicide at five times the rate of girls and at an earlier age.
- Boys regularly fail academically, repeat grades and are punished more often than girls in elementary and secondary schools.
- Boys are expelled from high school in record numbers.
- While overall there are more people going to college, young males are now a minority (40%) on college campuses and the trend points to a further decrease over the next 20 years, unless the hemorrhage is stopped.
- Unemployment is now for the first time higher for men than for women, grossly exacerbated during the recent recession. especially for blue-collar workers.
- Government grant monies at all levels devoted to the study of health problems (physical and emotional) unique to boys and older males is minimal compared to that allotted for female-unique health issues and general health problems both males and females suffer from.
- Violence against men by men remains epidemic and exceeds that of violence against women.
- international politics continue to require the service of American males in the military, yet this is taken for granted at home and those who die or are maimed are disregarded and sometimes even derided, even as the tendency to engage in war is naively declared to be evidence of a innate greater tendency toward aggressiveness in males.
- Drug abuse is rampant among young males, much of it iatrogenic, with Ritalin and related drugs being used to quash the kineticism of boys in schools which are now geared to the learning styles of girls.
- The spiritual life of young men has dimmed down as encounter with the meaning is associated with the feminine, despite the fact that the world religions have been founded by males;
- The virtues of friendship between males have been forgotten and are read one-dimensionally by men and women . . .
…andâ€â€by nowâ€â€Ã‚ if you are not aghast, I would wonder why.
In short, the lives of most males are increasingly toxic and unsatisfying, especially the very young and those who as baby-boomers, now in the fifth or sixth decade of their life, are heading toward retirement, if they can afford it, and if they have not died the standard six to seven years earlier than their female counterparts (in some countries males die 15 years earlier than females on average).
If you are reading this article, you already knew the data and trends catalogued. You have read about them regularly for years. Here I raise a related question: Why haven’t forty years of men’s studies informed policymakers to prevent the condition of boys and men from deteriorating as it has?
The question is meaningful since we study something because it concerns us and in order to understand it. Being pragmatic creatures, we usually hope that what we understand will be applied to improve our lot as a species. If an area of studyâ€â€let us say one relating to physical healthâ€â€had not in four decades produced gains for the health of its target population, we would rightly wonder whether the right questions directing the research had been asked.
This was the case with the psychoanalytic study of the psychoses in the middle of the 20th century. We now know these conditions to be the province of neuroscience. At this point, then, I think it is fair to ask a similar question about the area of research called “men’s studies.†What have these researchers been studying? Have they asked useful and meaningful questions?
Men’s studies have been carried out by men and women with doctorates who hold tenured positions in reputable departments at fine institutions of tertiary education in this country. These are certainly bright, highly educated, mostly male academics. Some are at the same time members of the faculties of gender studies programs and departments, some of which offer the terminal degree in this “field.†What is amiss and why is Male Studies compelling and necessary at this point?
For three years I have been a member of one of the organizations mentioned above (AMSA), where I have presented a paper or panel each year. This would seem to suggest that I am part of the problem, wouldn’t it? In a sense, that is a fair evaluation. But as a new kid on the block among those in the field, I plead innocent on the grounds that it has taken me a while to understand from the inside just what is going on in “men’s studies.â€Â
As the reader has guessed, I am disappointed at what I have discovered. I have detected what I sense is an unaccountable cryptomisandryâ€â€a hidden, unacknowledged ambivalence or even dislike for malesâ€â€in the field of “men’s studies.†It has been a stunning recognition to reckon with.
If I am right, what might this mean?
Before going further, I want to stress that almost to a man, the males I have met doing “men’s studies†are fine human beings and good men. They are decent, warm, welcoming, and serious about the issues the have focused on. Many began their careers in seminary or a religious vocation. Most have been keenly responsive to social causes such as racism and sexismâ€â€at least anti-female sexism. A great many are sociologists. They have been concerned with minority group rights and this is laudable. But what about most males?
Perhaps the most striking example of what I am calling cryptomisandry in “men’s studies†is the story of the most quoted authority in that field, Robert W. Connell, an Australian sociologist known for the book Masculinities.
Robert W. Connell is now Raewyn Connell.
I listened to Raewyn Connell speak at Wake Forest College two years ago at my first AMSA meeting.  He spoke on the global nature of questions of gender, but what was the message about the meaning of being (a) male to the predominantly male audience? There was no discussion about this remarkable and I would say courageous transformation, yet there should have been since it is intimately connected with the very idea of ‘men’s studies.’
A certain disavowal of the male was represented there before us. The symbolic interprets the real, we know, but in this case the real interpreted the symbolic.
Is a similar reaction to having a male body common to most male “men’s studies†researchers? That is not my impression. At that AMSA meeting, the masculinity worn by the members was conventional. These men speak lovingly of their wives and proudly of their sons and daughters. My last AMSA meeting could have been a meeting of the BPOE, the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks, with the unaccountable presence of a few females. There was much amiability, a few hugs and signs of affection. And yet the same emotional distance between males that “men’s studies†purports to examine and overcome was in evidence.
Recall that the field of “men’s studies†took root in the United States during a period that encompassed the surge of second-wave feminism in the late 1960s and the cruel final decade of the Viet Nam War, which ended in 1975. This, I suggest, has something to do with the attitude about being (a) male I sense in the voices of those who write the literature of men’s studies.
When I was in college, from 1964-68, there was a sharp division among males who were college-bound and those who were not. By 1966-67, those who were not college-bound were likely to have been drafted and sent off to Southeast Asia. I knew many of them. We had sat together on little wooden chairs in one of the eight classrooms in our ward’s elementary school in kindergarten during the early ‘50s. By 1964, when we graduated from the district high school, some of the boys went away, many of them never to be seen alive again.
When the boys I grew up with returned on leave or after a tour of duty, they saw those of us who had been exempted from military service as college students or seminarians as somehow less “a man†than they were. It is now forgotten that resentments were powerful within families and between former chums about this. “Men’s studies†originated during this time of conflicting versions of what it meant to be masculine originated, and I think this has as much to say about its mission and meaning as its relation to second-wave feminism.
Perhaps the most important group to think about in connection with my observations here are those who responded to unjustness of the war, as they had to areas of social injustice related first to race. Then came talk of injustice about one’s gender, particularly as it played out in a male’s self-identified sexual orientation. Would men’s studies have originated if the times had been different?
Early dissension in the field is another curious dimension of “men’s studies.†My assessment is that the more secular orientation of some members of the early group caused them to split off. Yet I think the same ambivalence or cryptomisandry I have suggested exists in that group of “men’s studies†researchers. This plays itself out in the form of a harsh indictment of male behavior, presumably derived exclusively from centuries of male privilege.
As someone who has been teaching at the college level since 1976, I wonder who the chief literary luminaries of secular “men’s studies†see out there? As college campuses lose more and more males, in another decade or two Professor Kimmel will not have “guys†to interview. Even now, though, I wonder about the sample he reports on that is said to represent most males. Most males, of course, are not in college.
They have not been privileged? Not at all. And this holds for older males, too, as Warren Farrell has been documenting for several decades now. He did this at first while he was the only male on the board of the National Organization of Women.
At the very least, “men’s studies†seems to be caught in a time warp. I wish those in the field well, but I suspect their research is out of focus. Pressing problems facing a vulnerable male population around the world require the rigor of the natural sciences, an understanding of history without the presumption of a conspiracy theory of male dominance, and an appreciation of what we must do, especially on behalf of our young males, without having first made them into yet another group of victims. Male Studies, a new academic discipline, will address the problems that face most males in a breathtakingly rapid time of social change.
Miles Groth is a professor of psychology at Wagner College, Editor of The International Journal of Men’s Health and Editor-in-Chief of Thymos: The Journal of Boyhood Studies.
