Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 28, 1994 TAG: 9409010032
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: D6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BARBARA VOBEJDA THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
``I'm just worried for the men,'' says DeMarco, an affable 50-year-old with graying hair. ``Somebody's got to talk up for them, or they're going to get castrated en masse. And that's something I don't want to see.''
Men are DeMarco's new cause. Men, he said, have been unfairly tarnished by a woman's movement gone too far. And so earlier this summer, encouraged by a couple of guys in his downtown office complex, DeMarco formed an advocacy group, ``The Voice of Men.''
With that, DeMarco joined a social movement of men, organizing, politicizing and searching for the meaning of masculinity in American society.
The men's movement includes fathers' rights groups, arguing for more equitable custody and child support rulings; ``mytho-poetic'' groups, whose members explore their inner masculinity; men promoting responsible fatherhood and men's rights groups, now joined by DeMarco's The Voice of Men.
Unlike the women's movement, which was guided by the National Organization for Women and other visible leaders, this movement is an amorphous collection brought together almost solely by the theme of gender.
There is no accurate count of membership, which ranges from activists on the fringes of society to silent supporters who do little more than share feelings with co-workers. But some of its elements are thriving. The National Organization for Men, which was founded a decade ago to promote equal rights for men, claims more than 13,000 members.
The popularity of the cause can also be gauged through the exploding sales of men's books. ``Iron John,'' the 1990 book by poet Robert Bly that launched the celebrated mytho-poetic sessions, sold more than a million copies, making it one of the best-selling nonfiction works of 1991. Warren Farrell's 1986 book, ``Why Men Are the Way They Are,'' sold more than 100,000 copies.
While women's groups and sociologists argue that men still hold the balance of power in American society, they also agree that men have watched their power diminish. That has energized these late-20th century fraternities. And in recent years, the groups have become much more vocal and politically sophisticated.
``After a quarter century of the women's movement and the obvious growing power of women, men are feeling threatened,'' said Neil Chethik, who writes ``VoiceMale,'' a syndicated column about men that has been picked up by 25 papers in less than two years.
``In some ways, that threat is bringing men together. ... We are struggling as men to discover masculinity and rediscover ourselves. We're more open than we've been in the past and we're willing to talk, to come to the peace table in what's been called the gender war.''
Farrell, the San Diego-based author who also wrote ``The Myth of Male Power,'' said that the men's movement has been motivated largely by recent events, beginning with Anita F. Hill's charges of sexual harassment against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. ``That made men feel they are walking on eggshells in the workplace,'' he said.
Men also were horrified and pushed into action, Farrell said, when Lorena Bobbitt, who cut off her husband John's penis, was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Finally, there has been a cumulative effect, Farrell said, of thousands of men who have been denied access to their children after divorce.
DeMarco created The Voice of Men, aiming the conversation as much at policy-makers as at women.
``If the pending Violence Against Women legislation gets passed in its present form,'' reads a recent news release from the group, ``men are going to be afraid to say Boo! ... To give women a blank check on this legislation is tantamount to creating a police state with only female police chiefs.''
This part of President Clinton's controversial crime bill is The Voice of Men's prime worry at the moment. DeMarco argued that the Violence Against Women Act not only ignores men who are abused by their wives, but also gives women the benefit of the doubt even when violence goes both ways.
``It's almost like we're going to give women a license to have free expression of any feeling and we've taken it from men,'' he said.
It is too early to know if The Voice of Men will be heard but its sentiments are tapping into a growing social movement.
At one extreme is a current of male anger captured in ``The Backlash!'' a publication based in Bellevue, Wash., that rails against the dangers of ``feminist extremism'' and bills itself as ``promoting the backlash against negative male stereotypes.''
Much more accepting of feminism is the line of thinking promoted by Farrell, who praised the accomplishments of women's organizations but argued that ``feminism has deviated from its original desire for equality.''
Farrell predicted that the men's agenda will move away from fathers' rights toward other issues of importance, including development of a men's birth control pill and a new emphasis on men's health issues.
David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values and chairman of the National Fatherhood Initiative, contends that the universal element in each segment of the men's movement is fatherhood and its place in defining masculinity.
``Masculinity is almost always viewed as a problem to be overcome, and (men's groups) are struggling for a way to reaffirm masculinity,'' he said. ``This is not just something a few feminists thought up. The entire society is fundamentally ambivalent about what it means to be a man.''
by CNB