I was active in the men's movement since 1975 with time off for good behavior until the Mid 1980s, with sporatic subsequesnt forrays of interest. My observation and participation in the men's movent has let me see several different perspectives. In the men's movement I observe are in three current forms; the male feminist, the male liberationists (and/or the masculinist), and the mythopoetic background.

My experience with the men's movement begins with the male-feminists. My first exposure to the men's movement came through Warren Farrell's book Liberated Man. Warren had organized a "Masculine Mystique" conference as part of his role on the NOW board and chairman of the "Masculine Mystique Taskforce." It was a fun and crazy set of events even for this person who was then an old social movement activist. It was where I think my mind which often defined reality in fairly simplistic marxism became open to the questions the Feminists were asking.

In the next couple of years men's groups, often started by Warren Farrell, participated in the beginning of the Men and Masculinity conferences which became the Men's Awareness Network and which continues today as the National Organization of Changing Men. At their fifth conference, in December 1978, I chaired a panel on Masculinist Theory. The panel members included Michael Diamond, Bob Brannon, Herb Goldberg, and Warren Farrell, all of who commented. The focus of my use of the term "masculinist" was as an intentional corollary of feminist. So much of a corollary that my meaning intent was to use the same methodology as the feminist had to approach to how society used women, female gender and imagery to shape and to control women but to apply the approach to men, the male gender and imagery.

The Men's Awareness Movement remained and continues today, as the National Organization of Changing Men, what is sometimes called male-feminist. I don't see that term as pejorative. The male feminist perspective takes a hard core Marcusian (Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, 1964) approach. They hold that straight white males are unable to develop an objective view of the male role in North American society. They accept the Marcusian idea that, the dominate group, here straight white males are culpable and unlikely to support the feminist critique. The problem for me is the assumption that only an elite of some initiated sort could see the truth and lead men out of the current false consciousness. And then only if this ruling class of all straight white men were in enough pain. I do mean it when I said the term is not pejoratively used here, it is an ineffectual perspective to recruit members. Yet it must be added that it is the activists, who have much less stringent positions, among male-feminist have created much of the men's studies literature. It is in that literature I often see the term masculist.

My earlier masculinist perspective became a small part of the Male Liberationist or sometimes called masculinist perspective. What has developed is an application of the feminist social analysis techniques to the male role. The male liberationist and men's rights group, loosely within the National Congress for Men, grew out of the strongest of rage based groups; Fathers United. Their public pronouncements are also some of the most misunderstood. These are men who were hurt, ignored and often abused in divorce proceedings that often mandated their second class parenthood. Out of these painful personal experiences they perceive a double standard. They see society's support for the lifeboat rules of "women and children first" yet at the same time demands full occupational and social equality for women. The law assumes a role specific moral superiority for women while expecting women and men to be occupational and legal equals in other aspects.

The men's rights ideological perspective is expressed beginning with Herb Goldberg's seminal work The Hazards of Being Male: Surviving the Myth of Masculine Privilege, 1976. His books discuss how men are an emotionally closed down, overworked and guilt ridden in the face of women. The contradiction, of being open and playful yet successful and be taken seriously as a professional, leave men in an emotional knot. This double bind creates the frustrated energy that powers a major segment of the men's movement.

The Mythopoetic men's movement is the current new entity in the men's movement. Created in the mid 1980s the Mythopoetic men's movement emanates from the works of Robert Bly. His view is that the male role has lost its direction. This is because there hasn't been any male role initiation or direct male role modeling since the beginning of the industrial era. It was with the industrial era that fathers went out into factories and left sons to mothers and their peer groups. The men's gatherings in local councils are to reconstruct a valid male initiation and role model. The new role model is to come from earlier times.

Mythopoetic men's moment assumptions about the male role in pre-industrial society is an idealized perfection. Was it? They present the male role with no awareness of social institutions and structure. The story has a caged wildman that the prince frees who becomes the prince's mentor as symbolically the "real man" within all men. This true inner man must be challenged, coached and tested into manhood, to be true to the wildman within. This fairy tale of tests does not contact the major male struggles of modern men. Bly's assumption of no male role initiation ignores both institutions and media as active participants. It also ignores the social and economic history of the preindustrial society. There were very few princes, a maximum of 5 percent of the population. The ruling elite who could play with a golden ball of their life choices not the experience of most men (or women) in feudalism or earlier hunter gatherer societies. To idealize the male role path on training of a young elite male, a prince, has the effect of trying the male role to an aristocratic social stratification. Yet the mythopoetic groups are very active in as men's communities and in creating men's supporting group networks.

The hard part, from my experience, is for a men's movement to get beyond the rage of first gender awareness; to do more than make an accommodation but to transform itself. The danger of the rage is confounded by the potential for elitism. This danger was also reflected in the men's movement groups I have participated and gatherings attended. I have been to the national conferences of both the male- feminist and the Male Liberationist and through the New Warrior Training of Mythopoetic. Most of the men present did have considerable social power in the economic and institution parts of their lives. All were and continue to be mostly white males between 30 and 50 years old. They are a mostly heterosexual men who have encountered the women's movement personally. They are searching for compatibility strategies to deal with changes in gender expectation.

From a male perspective the movements' personal goals were looking for what is fair and reciprocally just as new set of sex roles. The Free Men, and the men's rights movement in general, began, I think, the male anger phase. Men were challenging the characterizations of them by the feminist as portrayed in the press and by the more activist feminist and their piercing comments. The Mythopoetic perspective also builds on the male anger momentum.

The perpetually new men's movement status tends to be a stuck in these three ideological positions. I sure wish it wasn't. But there is a continuous supply of men who know, feel or experience their male role as absurd or destructive. The anger and victimhood phase lasts for a couple of years. Then there is no where to go. Life outside the men's movement, unlike that outside the women's moment, has not budged. After a while one of these movements fades as the activist leave to do other things. After they move through their anger work they make their individualistic accommodation with the expected gender roles. Then later a new men's movement appears. From my jaundiced view, this is how these have blended into the gatherings with mythopoetic men's movement. The men's movement rolls on. The mythopoetic may move on with its quest for authenticity into accommodation and transformation. Or it may become this generation's Moose or Elks lodge serving the specialized needs of a particular strata of men. For me after many decades of men's moment participation I want to participate in the building a movement beyond the anger and even accommodation; a movement of transformation.

By the way the dictionary OED uses masculine. Random house DEL divides it into three parts; mas, cul, -ine. Mas is from the latin pertaining to male. The -cule (also spelled in other usage as -cle) is suffix relating to all genders. the -ine refers to "...affixed to nominal and some other stems with sense 'of or pertinent to', 'of the nature of', and sometimes in combination with another suffix. For me masculist looks like it is derived from emasculate. The -ine with its implied pertaining to the root mas- seems to create a more appropriate emphasis in masculinist.

In 1994 I finished a Ph D in the area of Social Science with a concentration in Men's Studies at Union Institute an external degree program accredited by Commision of Higher Education of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. This is one of the major accredition groups in the country. The accreditation detail is included as at least one women's studies faculty member stated that no accredited institution has given a doctorate in anything like men's studies. I think mine was the fouth or fifth at Union Institute.