Better Off?

From Menletter September 2008

By Tim Baehr

"Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

It was the final debate between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, a week before the 1980 presidential election. With this question, Ronald Reagan virtually sewed up the election.

President Reagan's question came up for me after Amazon.com sent me an automated e-mail offering a book, Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture. Since I've ordered other male-oriented books from Amazon in the past, the company occasionally suggests a new one for my consideration.

I usually follow up on Amazon's e-mail and at least take a look. This time, the write-up seemed like it might break some new ground, codifying and laying out the ways the mass media denigrates men. Interesting - until I saw the publication date: 2001.

And I thought of Ronald Reagan: "Are you better off . . . ?"

Then I thought of some of the books I know about male empowerment. I haven't read all of the pro-male literature, but I'm familiar with some of it, from the mythology-and-poetry-based tomes like Bly's Iron John, Sam Keen's Fire in the Belly, and Michael Mead's Men and the Water of Life, to the social analyses and diatribes of Warren Farrell's The Myth of Male Power and Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (among several by this prolific author) and Rich Zubaty's What Men Know that Women Don't.

And I thought again of Ronald Reagan.

Books promoting men, men's rights, fathers' rights, male emotional and spiritual development, and so on, have been around at least since I became dimly aware (in about 1989) of a budding "men's movement."

To What End?

Book after book after book. To what end? Are we better off than we were two decades ago? In a few ways, yes. We now die five years earlier than women, down from seven (though this may be because women are adopting our bad habits). Many of us are more family-centered, because our consciousness has been raised and because our spouses are working longer hours outside the home. We now have paid paternity leave similar to that of our wives. And - uh - I'm running out of ideas.

There remain some questions: Can many of us stay home with a sick child and not be seen as lacking commitment to our work? Can our children watch network TV and not see sitcoms and ads making fun of fathers and husbands? Can we expect an increase in prostate cancer research funding so that it will equal funding for breast cancer research? (Incidence and death rates are about the same.) Is joint physical custody of children the default in divorce cases? Do we have strong protection against false claims of child abuse by divorcing partners? Do we have protection against false claims of sexual harassment? Has there been any lessening of prison rape among men? Are large numbers of women joining men in the so-called death professions, from soldiering and police work and firefighting to commercial fishing and construction work - jobs seen as natural and ordinary male territory?

Oh, and have we seen any noticeable upsurge in male spirituality or appreciation of masculine ideals?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, and no.

Back to the Beginning

Here's the original question again, to summarize all of the above: Are we better off today than we were twenty years ago?

Unlike the seminal books - household names in their time - that fired up the women's movement (The Feminine Mystique, The Second Sex, The Female Eunuch, among others), all the books of hand-wringing about and advocacy for men by even the most eloquent authors have yielded very little.

And what are we going to do about it? Some men, directly affected by some of these issues, are fighting back with mutual help and advocacy, especially in the legal morass created by divorce.

I realize that I'm doing some hand-wringing of my own, and have done so several times already in previous essays. And my advocacy is mostly the stuff I write - preaching to the choir, mostly. But someone, somewhere might get mobilized - demanding better safety for dangerous jobs; going to bat for unfairly accused fathers (maybe lawyers on a pro bono basis); working with management to write and enforce standards of evidence for harassment claims; writing to funding agencies for more prostate cancer research, or making donations of our own; working with supervisors to ensure that sick-child care isn't a career killer; boycotting products with male-bashing ads (and telling the companies why).

The Least We Can Do

The least we can do is to start dialogs with other men, our spouses, our kids, and our co-workers. This is something we can all do, even if we don't have the resources or stomach for confrontational advocacy. Let's look for opportunities to provide a reality check and perhaps to teach.

Also, we can commit to taking better care of our physical and spiritual selves. No confrontation, no advocacy, no hand-wringing. Just benefits to ourselves and those who love us and depend on us.

The women's movement, it can be argued, benefited everyone - women, men, and children. This notion should be expanded to all kinds of gender equity. Nearly anything that benefits men benefits everyone. The goal should be a compassionate and humane approach to living our lives as partners.