Hugo Schwyzer

This is the first of what I hope will be a successful three-part series. Part two to come next week.

This past week in my “men and masculinity” course, we began discussing Robert Bly’s Iron John. Nearly two decades after it was written, Bly’s alternately captivating and exasperating call for a return to the “deep masculine” still resonates. Many people who know nothing else about the men’s movement (not to be confused with the men’s RIGHTS movement, a different beast altogether) have heard of Bly and “Iron John”. I make sure that my students read Bly in conjunction with very different figures in the movement, like the pro-feminist Michael Kimmel. But as confounding and opaque as Bly’s writing can be, my students seem to enjoy “Iron John” more than any other book I assign in this course.

Re-reading the book in preparation for this week’s lecture, I found myself thinking about the much discussed “Nice Guy” phenomenon. “Nice Guys” often cloak their misogyny behind a facade of sensitivity. “Nice Guys” often talk garrulously about gender issues, and often establish their bona fides by bemoaning the way in which “other guys” treat women. About every ten minutes, a Nice Guy will drop an “But I’m not like other men!” into the conversation. The Nice Guy becomes less nice when he realizes that despite all he obviously has to offer, women are remarkably uninterested in dating or sleeping with him. Nice Guys often lose their temper when rejected, launching into embittered, “slut-bashing” diatribes about how foolish women are for choosing “bad boys” (or traditional men). Most Nice Guys alternate between stunningly low self-esteem and staggering hubris, secretly believing that their “sensitivity” makes them the answer to every maiden’s prayer. A great many feminist women have their share of “Nice Guy” stories, and if you spend much time in the feminist blogosphere, you’ll read your share of ‘em.

Nice Guys are, in a few respects, similar to the famous SNAG (”Sensitive New-Age Guy”) who first made his appearance some four decades ago. SNAGs, I suggest, aren’t automatically as passive-aggressive as Nice Guys; SNAGness is about much more than a tactic to get sex from women. Becoming a male feminist isn’t easy, and most men who start down this road do so with the best of intentions, often with a profound and genuine desire to create a more just world for both sexes. The stereotype that many SNAGs are the sons of single-mothers doesn’t always hold true — but a great many pro-feminist men did grow up acutely aware of their mother’s feelings.

I was raised the first-born son of a single mom; from age six (when my parents separated) on, I was a “student of my mother’s emotions.” My grandmother and aunt told me that I needed to “take care of my mother” after the divorce, as she’d been through a “hard time.” And so, of course, I did my best. While I did often annoy and exasperate my mother (not least when I would torment my little brother), I did become very, very good at taking her emotional temperature. My mother is hardly mercurial (though she is a Gemini), and she was generally on an even keel. But she was anxious about many things, and I picked up on that anxiety very early on. She and I talked a great deal together, and in some ways — especially in the period between the divorce and the onset of my interest in girls about seven years later — my mother was my best friend.

I’ve talked to many other men active in the feminist movement, and a very high number of us have similar stories about our mothers. Let me clear that this isn’t the only reason we remain committed to the feminist movement today. It’s easy to play armchair psychologist and pathologize every activist. An adult commitment to justice is always rooted in more than childhood experience. But one thing I learned about myself a long time ago applies to a great many other men in the movement, including the “SNAGs”: we often confuse verbal dexterity for authentic insight. Our commitment to women’s rights is sincere, but we’re often incapacitated by a surprising lack of self-awareness.

Bly, who is often wrong about the remedy but rarely wrong about the diagnosis, writes of men like this:

Part of their grief rose out of remoteness from their fathers, which they felt keenly, but partly, too, grief flowed from trouble in their marriages or relationships. They had learned to be receptive, but receptivity wasn’t enough to carry their marriages through troubled times. In every relationship something fierce is needed once in a while: both the man and the woman need to have it. But at the point when it was needed, often the young man came up short. He was nurturing, but something else was required — for his relationship, and for his life.

The “soft” male was able to say “I can feel your pain, and I consider your life as important as mine, and I will take care of you and comfort you.” But he could not say what he wanted, and stick by it. Resolve of that kind was a different matter.

Emphasis in the original.

Living a feminist life as a man is about more than sensitivity to women. It’s about more than ideological assent to egalitarian principles, and it’s even about more than putting those principles into practice in one’s public and private life. Part of being a true feminist is acknowledging the enduring reality of male privilege. For men in this society, that means doing the best one can to renounce that privilege. But the danger in that renunciation is that it can destroy the capacity to act. Too many aspiring feminist men, too many nice guys, are incapacitated. They are incapacitated by a fear of doing the wrong thing — and, as Bly points out, deep down they aren’t really sure what they want. These good guys have spent much of their lives focusing on women’s concerns, and have developed the vocabulary of sympathy and solidarity. They have not developed genuine self-awareness in the process.

And this self-awareness is a prerequisite for continued growth. It is the prerequisite for the sort of resolve that Bly mentions. And righteous action, predicated on both empathy for others and upon deep self-awareness, is something far too few men comprehend.

More to come.