Women's and Gender Studies Newsletter

The College of New Jersey November 1997

Is Men's Studies Necessary?

by Jon Landreau, Department of Modern Languages

About a year ago I began to do some research for the purpose of developing a course on men and masculinity within the Women's Studies program here at TCNJ. Almost immediately, as I began to navigate through library card catalogs and the internet, I became aware of something called men's studies. Two questions emerged: what is men's studies?, and, who does men's studies? Here are some thoughts based on what I've discovered over the last year: First, what is men's studies? On the one hand, it is something brand new. The earliest arguments for men's studies are only 10 years old, and the American Men's Studies Association - this is the only academic men's studies organization - is in its sixth year. On the other hand, from the new-born) perspective of men's studies, it has a much longer scholarly tradition. In effect, once men's studies is conceived, everything ever written about men and masculinity becomes a part of its intellectual history. Much of this previous scholarship, of course, does not conceive of itself as men's studies at all, but rather emerges from the institutional and intellectual contexts of women's studies and feminism. So, why create a separate filed of study? Why now? I don't know. It is interesting, however, that men's studies is created and promoted at the same time that women's studies increasingly expands its agenda to include issues of men and masculinity, something evident in the recent name debates over "women's" vs "gender" studies. In any event, the fundamental argument of men's studies goes like this. Feminism has taught us that gender (conceived of as socially constructed) is central to our lives and experience. BUT, women's studies focuses almost exclusively on women's lives, and therefore a connected but separate field called men's studies is needed to investigate and debate the specifically gendered character of men's lives and experience. Harry Brod (The Making of masculinities: the New men's Studies 1987) is one of the earliest, and most important scholars to articulate this rationale for men's studies. my (opinionated) suspicion is that this rationale for men's studies boils down to a "it takes one to know one" argument (and we might as well throw out most of the humanities and social sciences if this is the case) that serves to justify a separation from the female-dominated domain of women's/gender studies. I say this because the simplest answer to my second question - who does men's studies - is men. While there are many female scholars working on issues of men and masculinity, to my knowledge none of them conceive of what they are doing as men's studies. So, the question become who, specifically, are these guys that want their own filed of inquiry? To answer this question adequately would probably require an historical analysis of men's responses to feminism from the 1960's to now, from pro-feminist men's organization to men's rights groups to the Promise Keepers. Then, one would have to try to sort out the confluence of those perspectives in the current attempts to institutionalize something called men's studies. Of course, I'm not going to do that here. Instead, I'll offer something more impressionistic, based on my experience at the 5th annual conference of the Men's Studies Association that I attended last March.

When I found out that something existed called the American Men's Studies Association, and that they held an annual conference, I thought, great, I'll go! What better way to get a quick take on "men's studies" than to go to the conference and saturate myself? Besides, it was march, and the conference was being held in the south. So I went. The conference was, well, weird. It was characterized by hot exchanges between representatives of contradictory - and often mutually unintelligible - points of view. The following four perspectives were most prominent: 1) men from the mythopoetic men's movement (these are the guys that beat their chests in the woods). Generally, these were not writers or academics, but rather activists, or simply interested individuals. 2) Men's rights activists - very vocal and militant, some scholars and some not. These guys express a tremendous amount of personal pain, and tend to see themselves as victims of a system that is biased against men. A lot f divorced men here, it seemed to me, and a lot of talk about child custody issues, false abuse charges, and so forth. 3) Psychologists interested in men's issues - generally not scholars but rather practitioners who work with men. The emphasis of this group is to affirm and reappropriate men's emotions and perspectives by way of a reaction to feminism that, according to their perspective, leaves men with nowhere to go emotionally except to feel guilty about their own natural (male) feelings of anger, aggression, sexuality and so on. Interestingly, I found among them a disproportinate interest in Jungian psychology and its universal mythic categories (male, female, etc...) This links them to the mythopoetic group, who they tend to view with some condescension. 4) the creators of the organization who I would describe as scholars - mostly sociologists - with a political consciousness informed by feminism. This group is clearly still the dominant group. I should add here, that AMSA was created as an alternative to NOMAS (National Association of Men against Sexism) which was seen as overly politicized and not scholarly enough. Ironically, then, AMSA is originally conceived as a place of calm reflection somewhat removed from the storm of the political militancy of NOMAS. This unlikely cast of characters returns me to my suspicion that the arguments for men's studies emerge from a "it takes on to know one" kind of position. It is just on this point that profeminst proponents of men's studies and , say men's rights folks have a place of agreement, however uncomfortable, and however differently they may articulate it. All of these groups seem to share a commitment to defining and legitimizing a male academic space in contrast to the female dominated space of women's/gender studies. What else could bring them together under the same roof? So, what men's studies is, then, is a matter of tremendous dispute Within the filed, what is at stake is which group of guys will gain the authority to define and articulate a "male perspective," and what language will be appropriate to tell the story of men's lives. Will it be the men's rights groups with their apocalyptic tales of male suffering and injustice, or the psychologists of masculinity with their strange mix of touchy-feely emotionalism and the re-affirmation of male dominance, or the pro-feminists who conceive of men's studies as separate but solidarious with women's studies? What everyone here seems to agree on is the necessity of having something called men's studies. I'm not so sure.