ACROSS THE UNITED STAT ESANDCAN ADA, men have been gathering in search of their manhood. Inspired and led by poet Robert Bly, theeminence griseof this new men’s movement — and whose book,Iron John,topped the best-seller lists for more than 35 weeks in 1991 — dozens oftherapists and “mythopoetic” journeymen currently offer workshops, retreats and seminars to facilitate their “gender journey,” to “heal their father wounds” so that they may retrieve the “inner king,” the “warrior within,” or the “wildman."² And hundreds of thousands of men have heeded the call of the wildman, embraced this new masculinity, and become...

The poet Robert Bly has fired a salvo in what has been called “the longest war.”¹ Some think he may even have started a small war of his own with the publication ofIron Johnand the innumerable men’s gatherings he has hosted. Bly’s ideas are almost universally rejected by feminist women and their male allies as patriarchal or at least as patriarchy friendly.² Bly himself acknowledges this hostility but seems to believe that he is contributing to rather than detracting from the long-term goals of the women’s movement. “I want to make clear that this book [Iron John] does...

SOMEONE ONCE SAID THAT, “The fish are the last ones to discover the ocean.” And so it is with men and patriarchy. Despite patriarchy’s historical longevity and societal pervasiveness, men have failed to reckon with the fundamental realities of male dominance and social grouping by sex. Women have been trying to get our attention for more than a century. Lately, however, some men are beginning to hear the din of women’s heady protests, anger, political and cultural dreams, and messages from the heart. Indeed, some men have begun to think about, feel about, and talk about themselves in new ways....

BOOKS ABOUT MASCULINITY on the best-seller lists. Satirical cartoon strips in the newspapers. Hundreds of men heading off into the woods to thump drums and wave spears. Primitive masculine rituals revived. Talk show appearances. Strong men weeping about their fathers, their love lives, their lost sense of self . . .

Something is going on here; something odd, but possibly important. The underlying issues certainly do matter.

The ‘men’s movement’ and its Books About Men (a distinct genre of publishing now) are basically a response to the new feminism. To understand them one must start with what feminists have been...

ROBERT BLY,SIron Johnwas on the syllabus of a course I taught recently on “Men and Masculinities.” In my most cynical mood I found myself telling my students that reading this felt to me like reading one’s daily horoscope in the newspaper. It was written insuchabstract terms, with such leaping poetic imagery, that everyone can project so much of their own experience into it that, after reading it, they leave with the feeling, “My God, this is talkingexactlyabout me.”

I know this is unfair to Bly. I am both by professional training and personal temperament...

IN RECENT YEARS, U.S. MEN HAVE RESPONDED To—and at times initiated—changes in the personal and social relations of gender. There is an increasing cultural preoccupation with men’s roles as fathers.¹ Gay liberationists and anti-sexist men are confronting heterosexism and male domination in society,² while some academic men contribute to the feminist challenge to phallocentric curricula.³ Meanwhile, born-again Christians are subtly re-defining women’s and men’s “god-given roles,”⁴ while conservative ministers hold popular seminars on “the meaning of man hood’s”⁵ and angry men (mostly divorced fathers) organize for “men’s rights.”⁶ And as I write, Robert Bly’s book,Iron John: A...

IN THE LAST LINES OF THE NOVEL that bears his name, Huckleberry Finn anxiously plans his escape. “I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sailly she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.” Since the early nineteenth century, the quest for manhood has revolved around a flight from women. The search for manhood has come to mean a relentless effort to avoid all behaviors that might remotely hint of the feminine. Women signified constraints on manhood—temperance, Christian piety, sober responsibility, sexual...

The later writings of Michel Foucault offer an unsettling perception: increasingly, it is through seeking a deep, presumptively liberating truth about ourselves—formulated and established by authority—that we are likely to cast aside our freedom. Power works less as an external force which constrains us, and more by giving us a self-interpretation which implicitly, even urgently, dictates action within the context of institutions under the guise of liberation.

I want to apply this notion to Robert Bly’sIron Johnand the contemporary mythopoetic men’s movement’s search for the “deep masculine.” I am less concerned with the accuracy of my...

IN DECEMBER OF 1991, I AND HUNDREDS of other men attended a retreat in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, led principally by Robert Bly and Robert Moore, entitled “Making a Small Hole in Denial: Grief, Courage and Beauty in Male Soul.” Among the remarkable assertions made by Bly and Moore was the following statement by Robert Bly. Bly is discussing images of women in the 1950S and the impossibility of women merging completely with a man “a la Doris Day.” Wondering what options are available to women, Bly declares:

Well one thing you can do is to go to the opposite...

The contemporary search for a male soul by religious conservatives and mythopoetics appears to have a certain affinity with Christian spirituality. Perhaps this explains a recent proliferation of articles on the men’s movement within Christian journals. But there are other reasons for the mainstream Christian embrace of the concept of a male soul that derive from resistance to the political struggles of women, gays and people of color. Although the men’s movement is politically diverse, the perspectives of religious conservatives and mythopoetics on masculinity dominate Christian journals. Significant differences exist between religious conservatives and mythopoetics but their interests converge in...

IN THE LATE 1980S AND EARLY 1990S, the commercial media discovered the mythopoetic men’s movement. Newspapers, magazines, and television reported that thousands of middle-aged, middle-class white men were retreating to rustic settings to share their feelings, to cry, hug, drum, dance, tell poems and fairy tales, and enact primitive rituals. The men were supposedly trying to get in touch with the inner “wildman” and other masculine archetypes, as urged by movement leader Robert Bly, a famous poet and author of the 1991 bestsellerIron John.¹ Mythopoetic activity was covered because it was offbeat and so, not surprisingly, most stories played...

I WANT TO START WITH A STORY. I’m deep in a redwood forest on the Mendocino coast with a hundred men. Night has fallen. We take off our clothes by the light of stars. Men lift large smooth river rocks from a bonfire and put them in the pit of a small round sweat-lodge built of branches and tarps. Naked, 6 of us file into the pitch black lodge, close the door, sit in a tight circle, and begin to heat up. It is an unusual way for me to get to know a group of men. We name men...

ROBERT BLY’S BOOKIron Johnhas cast a long shadow over contemporary ideas concerning men and masculinity and the practice and shape of ‘Menswork’ generally, whether therapeutic, antisexist etc. It clearly struck a chord in many men, particularly in the United States where it remained on the best sellers lists for over a year. In this country, although its influence seems to have been more peripheral there are few men involved in ‘Menswork’ who do not know of it.

At a time when the issues of men and masculinity seem to be becoming more prominent in the public sphere it...

ONE MUST CERTAINLY ACKNOWLEDGE ROBERT BLY’S contribution to the evolving men’s movement. He has helped bring men together to share their stories and their feelings, to explore their “shadows,” to reawaken their vitality, their respect for elders, their need for spirituality and so forth. These are important contributions. And clearly, judging from the popularity of his appearances and tapes and the sales ofIron John,his message has struck a deep chord within a large number of (mostly white, middle class and middle aged) men.¹

Some of Bly’s formulations are quite useful. For instance, when he instructs men on the...

THERE ARE SIGNS OF DECLINE in the men’s movement. In my local alternative newspaper, the section that used to contain at least a full page of men’s events now has barely two or three listings. My friends in other cities tell me the same story: declining numbers of men’s groups, great difficulty in raising money for anything to do with men’s projects. (Canada’s White Ribbon campaign, a high profile men’s movement against violence towards women, recently announced a major funding crisis.)

Probably the biggest sigh of relief will come from those happy to see the demise of the mythopoetic men’s...

THIS ESSAY HAD ITS GENESIS AT 2 A.M. near the beginning of a cold April a couple of years ago. A week earlier, my wife had brought home a library copy of Robert Bly’sIron John: A Book About Men.¹ I had opened the book a few times at random and had become more troubled each time at Bly’s notions of masculinity. Then one evening I read the Preface before going to bed, which was, I suppose, rather like eating a mental pepperoni pizza: I woke up a few hours later thinking about it-and feeling angry. I was just then...

IN HIS BOOKIron John(1990), a Jungian mythopoetic allegory-with-commentary extravaganza based on the Brothers Grimm fairytale ‘Iron Hans’, the poet and self-styled spiritual leader of the US men’s movement Robert Bly has argued that the problem facing men today is that they have become too soft, too concerned about their ‘feminine’ side. They are, he says, too eager to please women, with the result that they are out of touch with the ‘deep masculine’, the ‘warrior’ who is an essential part of their psyche, making them miserable, passive and unsure of their identity. The story of Iron John of...

I WAS FASCINATED IN READING THIS BOOK to see how clearly and passionately most writers here state their point of view: for example, “There is no such thing as deep masculinity because there is no such thing as masculinity.” But we have to be careful. No one could see subatomic particles, but physicists finally agreed that they exist. Moreover, physicists now agree that matter can take the form of particles or waves, and not in some either-or manner, but matter can be both at once. Just as there are mysteries that even well-trained physicists could not see for a long...

INITIALLY, I WAS DELIGHTED TO BE INVITED to contribute to this book. In recent years, I have had several fine discussions with profeminist men. They seemed both interested in reconciling their ideas with our postfeminist views and desirous of taking the good will toward men they experienced in our mythopoetic gatherings into their own communities of men. I was hopeful that this would be the beginning of a vigorous dialog that might start building bridges between our disparate camps. Instead, what I have read is more of a polemic, which sadly has little grasp of the essential arguments which it...

AS AN AFRICAN AMERICAN WHO HAS SURVIVED fifty years in a Eurocentric and racist society, I have developed a pessimistic and cynical view of any process—whether political, therapeutic, economic, or spiritual which emanates from the predominant European American culture. It was with this attitude that I cautiously approached the various activities that collectivelyare defined as the Men’s Movement.

My initial experience was to attend a six-day Multicultural event sponsored by MOSAIC, a nonprofit organization formed by Michael Meade to promote cross-cultural events for men and women. It was held in Buffalo Gap, West Virginia, and was attended by over...

NOTE: RATHER THAN RESPOND DIRECTLY TO THE ATTACKS, misunderstandings, and ill-informed judgments on men and mythopoetic men’s movements by the majority of this book’s essays, my response will be indirect. I have edited and expanded my comments from a debate with Michael Kimmel on April 22, 1992, at a Symposium on Men and Masculinity at the University of California, Berkeley. A multicultural, mythopoetic team of musicians and poets from the Kokopelli Lodge accompanied me. However, I do want to say a few direct words of response, trying to contain some of the sadness, anger, and other feelings I had upon...

I FIND IT DISTRESSING THAT FEMINISM and the media have given such rapt attention to the enigmatic, mythological aspects of the men’s movement while ignoring the more grounded and psychologically efficacious elements. A movement rich with diversity, leaders, and goals has been, in the eyes of the media and feminism, reduced to a cult of white-collar drum bangers with visions of kings, warriors, and wild, hairy men dancing in their heads. According to countless newspaper and magazine articles, these seekers of the “deep masculine” were followers of the poet Robert Bly. Whatever Bly said, whether it made sense or not,...

I AGREE WITH MICHAEL KIMMEL that the articles titledProfeminist Men Respond to the Men’s Movement“leave(s) the dialogue incomplete” and am pleased to accept his invitation to offer my own thoughts and feelings.

I have been actively involved in men’s work since 1969 when my first son, Jemal, was born. Holding him for the first time, moments after his birth, I made a vow to have a different kind of relationship with him than the one I experienced growing up. To do that, I knew I would have to help create a different kind of world for us all...

IN SEPTEMBER I990 I BEGAN TO STUDY a group of men engaged in mythopoetic activity. From then until June 1993 I attended 128 meetings and gatherings of various kinds; observed and participated in all manner of mythopoetic activities; read the movement’s guiding texts; read small mythopoetic publications from around the country; and listened to audio tapes of talks by movement leaders. I also interviewed twenty-one of the local men at length.¹

Any sociologist who has studied a group from the inside will tell you that there is always more diversity within the group than most outsiders see. This is true...

Think about something tender. Think about something sacred. Think about something that makes you cry. Think about a romance that made you love every living creature, a loss you didn’t think you could bear, a death that opened the bottomless pit of mortality below you.

Now imagine talking about it to someone you barely know standing in a noisy bar in Grand Central Station at rush hour.

That’s what it’s like trying to discuss what’s called “the men’s movement” in the media.

But a crowded bar in Grand Central Station is not the right place to talk publicly about love...

Of the many branches of the “men’s movement,” two branches in particular are like oil and water. These are the mythopoetic and the profeminist. They rarely mix and are often contemptuous of each other, though both are valuable. As if I had friends who couldn’t stand each other, I find myself in between; I would like to build a bridge.

My own experience is rooted in activist, profeminist politics. Thus, there is clearly much in mythopoetry that I find problematic. But I think we can have both, we need both, and the two movements need each other.

Mythopoetry focuses on...