Man Troubles

Making sense of the men's movement.

Cathy Young from the July 1994 issue

(Page 4 of 4)

The men's advocates clearly have issues, but do they have a movement? Many men and women who are sympathetic to men's issues don't think so. It is difficult for most men, especially if they are not in the midst of a custody battle, to see any of their problems as gender issues. The movement's image can also be a handicap. Armin Brott, a Berkeley marketing consultant and writer who got involved in men's issues after becoming a father four years ago, says, "If you get labeled as being part of the men's movement, you're either out there dancing with wolves, or you're a woman hater. There's really no place to go if you're a progressive-thinking man."

One way to escape what can become a vicious cycle of masculism and feminism trying to outshout and out-whine each other is for men's activists to focus on specific issues, particularly disparities in the legal or social treatment of women and men. Divorce is a good example. The traditional paternal role may not have been such a bad deal in the past, with unique satisfactions that were not necessarily inferior to those of maternal nurturing. But high divorce rates mean that many men bear the burden of providing without the rewards of any kind of real fatherhood--old or new.

Whether or not pro-maternal bias exists in the courts is the subject of intense debate, with men's advocates (and many divorce lawyers of both sexes) on one side and many feminists on the other (claiming that, on the contrary, men with more money to pay for legal services can ride roughshod over their ex- wives). But it seems that many judges still take the view that the father's main post-divorce function is to provide financial support--what Al Lebow, founder of Fathers for Equal Rights of America, sums up as the "men as wallets" attitude. To many, the fact that non-custodial fathers' child-support obligations are enforced far more vigorously than are their visitation rights is a bitter symbol of the low regard in which fatherhood is held.

"The availability of the father is a crucial issue, and it's also one of the key issues around which a political men's movement can organize," says Laurie Ingraham, a family therapist in Milwaukee who was drawn to men's activism as a result of her relationship work, in which she "noticed that men were always being painted as the bad guys." And indeed, disenfranchised fathers are the political vanguard of the men's movement. Lebow, a Michigan salesman who lost custody of his two daughters and spent six years in courts battling for visitation enforcement, started his organization in 1979. Today, he says, there are about 275 fathers' rights groups in 47 states.

These groups have been pushing for joint custody laws, with varying degrees of success, and for better treatment of non-custodial parents. They complain that divorced fathers are unfairly stigmatized as "deadbeat dads" and viewed as targets for punitive action, even though studies find that support non-compliance is related to many factors, from insolvency to denial of contact with children.

As the example of Ingraham shows, the issue of how parents are treated after divorce has attracted interest from women as well as men. The Children's Rights Council, founded by David Levy in 1985, advocates shared custody and has often addressed fathers' concerns. But it is also affiliated with Mothers Without Custody and Grandparents United for Children's Rights. About 40 percent of its members and state chapter coordinators are women. Palo Alto, California, attorney Anne Mitchell is the founder and executive director of the Fathers' Rights and Equality Exchange (FREE) electronic net; in Michigan, lawyer Kay Schwarzberg works with Fathers for Equal Rights of America.

Basic fairness is not the only reason for women to work on behalf of men's issues. Perhaps the ultimate lesson we have still to learn is that most gender issues are women's and men's issues. As Brott says, "You can't achieve the goals of sexual equality without getting men involved." The most obvious example of this is the issue of parenthood: Greater male involvement in child rearing is essential if women's opportunities in the workplace are to be expanded.

Men and women of good will working together is a theme Playboy's Asa Baber frequently emphasizes. "What is needed is an equal rights movement, not a men's movement and a women's movement," he told the Chicago Men's Conference, which had a record number of women this year (about 30 out of 200 attendees). "Not men's rights, not women's rights--equal rights. That should be our goal."

Baber is encouraged by signs that "victim feminism" is waning, and he is confident that "victim masculism" will not prevail either: "As the complaints build, we're going to get tired of it, both sides, and then both men and women are going to ask, OK, now what are we gonna do? And so the culture of complaint will eventually burn itself out."

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