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READI
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eal Men J
veme t
Michael Kimmel
Cory Shere didn't go to Duke University to become
a profeminist man. He was going to be a doctor, cov­
ering his bets with a double major in engineering
and premed. But his experiences with both organic
chemistry and feminist women conspired to lead
this affable and earnest 20-year-old Detroit native
in a different direction. Now in his junior year, he
still has a double major-women's studies and psy­
chology. And he works with a group of men to raise
awareness about sexual assault and date rape.
Eric Freedman wasn't pro feminist either, when
he arrived at Swarthmore College three years ago. A
20-year-old junior literature major from Syracuse,
New York, he became involved in a campus anti­
racism project, and began to see the connections
among different struggles for equality. At an anti­
racism workshop he helped organize, he suddenly
found himself speaking about male privilege as well
as white privilege. This fall, he's starting a men's group
to focus on race and gender issues.
Who are these guys? And what are they doing in
the women's movement?
They are among a growing number of profemi­
nist men around the country. These aren't the an­
gry divorces who whine about how men are the new
victims of reverse discrimination, nor are they the
weekend warriors trooping off to a mythopoetic re­
treat. They're neither Promise Keepers nor Million
Man Marchers vowing to be responsible domestic
patriarchs on a nineteenth -century model.
You might think of profeminist men as the
"other" men's movement, but I prefer to consider it
the "real" men's movement, because by actively sup­
porting women's equality on the job or on the streets
and by quietly changing their lives to create that
equality at home, profeminist men are also trans­
MICHAEL KIMMEL
arming the definition of masculinity. Perhaps this is
he movement about which Gloria Steinem rhap­
;odized when she wrote how women "want a men's
novement. We are literally dying for it."
Profeminist men staff the centers where con­
ficted batterers get counseling, organize therapy for
'apists and sex offenders in prison, do the work­
;hops on preventing sexual harassment in the work­
)lace, or on confronting the impact of pornography
n men's lives. On campus, they're organizing men's
:vents during Take Back the Night marches; pre­
ienting programs on sexual assault to fraternities,
:lorms, and athletic teams; taking courses on mas­
:ulinity; and founding campus groups with acro­
lymS like [v'lAC (Men Acting for Change), MOST
:Men Opposed to Sexist Tradition), MASH ([vIen
'\gainst Sexual Harassment), MASA (Men Against
3exual Assault), and, my current favorite, MARS
:Men Against Rape and Sexism). Maybe John Gray
~vas right after all-real men are from Mars!
Fem; ism and
en's Lives
[ first met Cory, Eric, and about a dozen other young
profeminist men in April at the Young Feminist Sum­
mit, organized by NOW, in Washington, D.C. They
were pretty easy to spot among the nearly one thou­
sand young women from colleges all over the coun­
try. As we talked during an impromptu workshop, I
heard them describe both the exhilaration and isola­
tion of becoming part of the struggle for women's
equality, the frustrations of dealing with other men,
the active suspicions and passive indifference of
other students.
It felt painfully familiar. I've spent nearly two de­
cades in feminist politics, first as an activist in anti­
rape and antibattery groups, and later helping to
0Iganize the National Organization for Men Against
Sexism (NOlVLAS), a network of profeminist men and
"Iomen around the country. More recently, I've tried
o apply the insights of academic feminist theory to
nen's lives, developing courses on men, debating
,vi.th Robert Bly and his followers, and writing a his­
.ory of the idea of manhood in the United States.
Of course, men like Cory and Eric are a distinct
ninority on campus. They compete with the an­
I Real Men Join the Movement
569
gry voice of backlash, those shrill interruptions that
scream "Don't blame me, I never raped anyone!
Leave me alone!" They compete with that now fa­
miliar men-as-victims whine. Men, we hear, are
terrified of going to work or on a date, lest they be
falsely accused of sexual harassment or date rape;
they're unable to support their scheming careerist
wives, yet are viJified as bad fathers if they don't pro­
vide enough child support to keep their ex-wives in
Gucci and Donna Karan after the divorce.
In the public imagination, pro feminist men also
compete with the mythopoetic vision of the men's
movement as a kind of summer-camp retreat, and
the earnest evangelical Promise Keepers with their
men-only sports-themed rallies, and the Million
Man March's solemn yet celebratory atonement. All
offer men solace and soul-w'ork, and promise to heal
men's pain and enable them to become more nur­
turing and loving. All noble goals, to be sure. But to
profeminist men, you don't build responsibility and
democracy by exclusion- of women, or of gays and
lesbians.
And profeminist men compete with the most
deafening sound coming from the mouths of Amer­
ican men when the subject is feminism: silence.
Most men, on campus and off, exude an aura of
studied indifference to feminism. Like the irreverent
second child at the Passover seder, they ask, "What
has this to do with me?"
A lot. Sure, feminism is the struggle of more than
one half of the population for equal rights. But it's
also about rethinking identities, our relationships,
the meanings of our lives. For men, feminism is not
only about what we can't do-like commit violence,
harassment, or rape-or shouldn't do, like leave all
the child care and housework to our wives. It's also
about what we can do, what we should do, and even
what we want to do-like be a better father, friend,
or partner. "Most men know that it is to all of our
advantage-women and men alike-for women to
be equal," noted NOW President Patricia Ireland, in
her Summit keynote address. Far from being only
about the loss of power, feminism will also enable
men to live the lives we say we want to live.
This isn't the gender cavalry, arriving in the nick
of time to save the damsels from distress. "Thanks
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Chapter Thirteen I Activism, Change, and Feminist Futures
for bringing this sexism stuff to our attention, la­
dies," one might imagine them saying. "We'll take it
from here." And it's true that some men declare
themselves feminists just a bit too effortlessly, espe­
cially if they think it's going to help them get a date.
(A friend calls it "premature self-congratulation,"
and it's just as likely to leave women feeling short­
changed.)
In part, this explains why I call them "profeminist
men" and not "feminist men" or "male feminists."
As an idea, it seems to me, feminism involves an em­
pirical observation-that women are not equal­
and the moral position that declares they should be.
Of course, men may share this empirical observation
and take this moral stance. And to that extent men
support feminism as an ideal. But feminism as an
identity also involves the felt experience of that in­
equality. And this men do not have, because men are
privileged by sexism. To be sure, men may be op­
pressed-by race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, age,
physical ability-but men are not oppressed as men.
Since only women have that felt experience of op­
pression about gender, it seems sensible to make a
distinction in how we identify ourselves. Men can
support feminism, and can call ourselves "anti­
sexist" or "profeminist." I've chosen pro feminist
because, like feminism, it stresses the positive and
forward -looking.
In a sense, I think of pro feminist men as the
Gentlemen's Auxiliary of Feminism. This honorable
position acknowledges that we play a part in this
social transformation, but not the most significant
part. It's the task of the Gentlemen's Auxiliary to
make feminism comprehensible to men, not as a
loss of power-which has thus far failed to "trickle
down" to most individual men anyw-ay-but as a
challenge to the false sense of entitlement we have to
that power in the first place. Profeminism is about
supporting both women's equality and other men's
efforts to live more ethically consistent and more
emotional1y resonant lives.
The routes taken by today's pro feminist men are as
varied as the men themselves. But most do seem to
have some personal experience that made gender in­
equality more concrete. For some, it involved their
mother. (Remember President Clinton describing
how he developed his commitment to women's
equality when he tried to stop his stepfather from
hitting his mother? Of course, one wishes that com­
mitment had facilitated more supportive policy ini­
tiatives.) Max Sadler, a 17-year-old senior at Trinity
High School in New York City, watched his pro­
fessional mother hit her head on the glass ceiling at
her high-powered corporate job-a job she eventu­
ally quit to join a company with more women in
high-level positions. Maxshared her frustration, and
also felt ashamed at the casual attitudes of her male
colleagues.
Shehzad Nadeem, a 19-year-old student at James
Madison University in Virginia, remembered the way
his older sister described her experiences. "I could
barely believe the stories she told me, yet something
deep inside told me that they were not only true, but
common. I realized that we men are actively or pas­
sively complicit in women's oppression, and that we
have to take an active role in challenging other men."
Shehzad joined MOST (Men Opposed to Sexist Tra­
dition), which has presented workshops on violence
and sexual assault at Madison dorms.
Or perhaps it was having a feminist girlfriend, or
even just having women friends, that brought these
issues to the fore for men. "I grew up with female
friends who were as ambitious, smart, achieving,
and confident as I thought I was-on a good day,"
recalls Jason Schultz, a founder of MAC at Duke,
who now organizes men's programs to combat cam­
pus sexual assault. "vVhen I got to college, these same
women began calling themselves feminists. When I
heard men call women 'dumb chicks' I knew some­
thing was wrong."
T e Profeminist NClick!"
But there has to be more than the presence of femi­
nist role models, challenges from girlfriends, bril­
liant assignments, or challenging support from pro­
fessors. After all, we all have women in our lives, and
virtually all of those women have had some trau­
matic encounter with sexism. There has to be some­
thing else.
MICHAEL KIMMEL
Feminists call it the "click!"-that moment when
they realize that their pain, fears, confusion, and
anger are not theirs alone, but are shared with other
women. Do profeminist men have "clicks!"? Yes, but
they don't typically come from righteous indigna­
tion or fear, but rather from guilt and shame, a
gnawing sense of implication in something larger
and more pervasive than individual intention. It's
that awful moment when you hear women complain
about "men" in general and realize, even just a little
bit, that you are what they're talking about. (Much of
men's reactive defensiveness seems to be a hedge
against these feelings of shame.)
Suddenly, it's not those "bad" men "out there"
who are the problem-it's aU men. Call it the Pogo
revelation: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
That's certainly the way it felt for Jeff Wolf (not his
real name). A sexually naive coHege sophomore, he
found himself growing closer and closer to a woman
friend, Annie, during a study date. They talked long
into the night, and eventualIy kissed. One thing be­
gan to lead to another, and both seemed eager and
pleased to be with the other. Just before penetration,
though, Jeff felt Annie go limp. "Her eyes glazed
over, and she went kind of numb," he recalled, still
wincing at the memory.
This is the moment that many a college guy
dreams of-her apparent surrender to his desire,
even if it was induced by roofies or alcohol. It's a
moment when men often space out, preferring to
navigate the actual encounter on automatic pilot,
fearing that emotional connection will lead to an
early climax.
As Annie slipped into this mental coma, though,
Jeff stayed alert, as engaged emotionally as he was
physically. ""'What had been so arousing was the way
we had been connecting intellectually and emotion­
ally," he said. After some patient prodding, she fi­
nally confessed that she'd been raped as a high
school sophomore, and ever since, had llsed this
sdf-protective strategy to get through a sexual en­
counter without reliving her adolescent trauma. Jeff,
it seemed, was the first guy who noticed.
Others say their "click!" experience happened rater
in life. In the 1970s, psychologist David Greene was
I Real Men Join the Movement
571
deeply involved in political activism, when he and
his wife had a baby. "Not that much changed for me;
I still went around doing my thing, but now there
was a baby in it." On the other hand, his wife's life
was totally transformed by the realities of round­
the-clock child care. She'd become a mother. "At:ter
several weeks of this, she sat me down and con­
fronted me," he recalls. "The bankruptcy of my pol­
itics quickly became clear to me. I was an oppressor,
an abuser of privilege-I'd become the enemy I
thought I was fighting against." The couple meticu­
lously divided housework and child care, and David
learned that revolutions are fought Ollt in people's
kitchen as well as in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
Terry Kupers, a 54-year-old psychiatrist, and author
of Revisioning j'v1en's Lives, remembers his first wife
initiating some serious talks about the "unstated as­
sumptions we were making about housework, cook­
ing, and whose time was more valuable." Not only
did Kupers realize that his wife was right, "but I also
realized I liked things better the new way."
Proleminism Today­
and Tomorrow
And just as sisterhood is global, so too are profemi­
nist men active around the world. Men from nearly
50 countries-from Mexico to Japan-regularly
contribute to a newsletter of international profemi­
nist scholars and activists, according to its editor,
Oystein Holter, a Norwegian researcher. Scandina­
vian men are working to implement a gender eq­
uity mandated by law. Liisa Husu, a senior advisor to
Finland's gender equity commission, has developed
a parliamentary subcommittee of concerned men.
(When I met with them last fall, we spent our day
discussing our mutual activities, after which they
whisked me off to an all-male sauna resort on the
shore of an icy Baltic Sea for a bit of male-bonding as
a follow-up to all that equity work.) Scandinavian
men routinely take parental leave; in fact, in Sweden
and Norway they've introduced "Daddy days," an
additional month of paid paternity leave for the men
to have some time with their newborns after the
mothers have returned to work. About half of Swed­
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Chapter Thirteen I Activism, Change, and Feminist Futures
ish men take paternal leave, according to fatherhood
expert Lars Jalmert at the University of Stockholm.
The world's most successful profeminist organi­
zation must be Canada's White Ribbon Campaign.
Begun in 1991 to coincide with the second anniver­
sary of the Montreal Massacre-when a young man
killed 14 women engineering students at the Univer­
sity of Montreal on December 6, 1989-its goal was
to publicly and visibly declare opposition to men's
violence against women by encouraging men to wear
a white ribbon as a public pledge. "'Within days, hun­
dreds of thousands of men and boys across Canada
wore a ribbon," noted Michael Kaufman, one of the
campaign's founders. "It exceeded our wildest ex­
pectations-even the prime minister wore a rib­
bon." This year, WRC events are also planned for
Norway, Australia, and several U.S. colleges; in Can­
ada, events include an Alberta hockey team planning
a skating competition to raise money for a local
women's shelter. WRC organizers have also devel­
oped curricula for secondary schools to raise the is­
sue for boys.
But just as surely, some of the most important
and effective profeminist men's activities are taking
place in American homes every day, as men increas­
ingly share housework and child care, reorganize
their schedules to be more responsive to the needs of
their families, and even downsize their ambitions to
develop a family strategy that does not revolve exclu­
sively around his career path. "Housework remains
the last frontier" for men to tame, argues sociologist
Kathleen Gerson in her book No 1\![an's Land. ...
But the payoff is significant. If power were a
scarce commodity or a zero-sum game, we might
think that women's increased power would mean a
decrease in men's. And since most men don't feel
very powerful anyway, the possibilities of further
loss are rather unappealing. But for most men, all the
power in the world does not seem to have trickled
down to enable individual men to live the lives we
say we want to live-lives of intimacy, integrity, and
individual expression. By demanding the redistribu­
tion of power along more equitable lines, feminism
also seeks a dramatic shift in our social priorities, our
choices about how we live, and what we consider im­
portant. Feminism is also a blueprint for men about
how to become the men we want to be, and profem­
inist men believe that men will live happier, health­
ier, and more emotionally enriched lives by support­
ing women's equality.
Part of profeminist men's poEtics is to visibly and
vocally support women's equality, and part of it is to
quietly and laboriously struggle to implement that
public stance into our own lives. And part of it must
be to learn to confront and challenge other men,
with care and commitment. "This cause is not alto­
gether and exclusively woman's cause," wrote Fred­
erick Douglass in 1848. "It is the cause of human
brotherhood as well as human sisterhood, and both
must rise and fall together."