Kansas City Star

The Kansas City Star

February 6, 1993

Column: GEORGE GURLEY

Finally, men get their day

Author: GEORGE GURLEY

Edition: METROPOLITAN

Section: METROPOLITAN

Tom Oaster got the idea for an International Men's Day when he and some others were sitting around after a men's group meeting, nursing male grievances.

Prominent was the feeling that men are unappreciated. We ought to go on strike, someone said. Then maybe people would take notice of the work men do.

Oaster softened the strike concept to a men's day off.

Eventually he dropped that word, but the idea germinated. It came to fruition with the Men's Day celebration that began Friday at the Westin Crown Center hotel.

An associate professor at UMKC, Oaster was first attracted to the men's movement by an intellectual interest. But he soon felt persecuted for his association with a subject that's politically incorrect.

"I got beat up, slammed," he said. "People said, `What - do you hate women? ' The more I got beat up, the more I got drawn in. My Teutonic background took over. " Oaster dug in. He becam! e a male advocate with polemical, provocative views.

Men and women have been involved in a warlike "dance" since the beginning of time, he said. He concedes that women have legitimate grievances. But men are "bleeding in their boots, too. " Oaster turns the idea of "male domination" on its head.

"I personally believe we live in a world where the dangerous jobs are foisted upon men," he said. "Women aren't really trying to dig down to the mud floor jobs. My experience is that they won't change the tire, even if your back is hurt. They will not go downstairs and check to see what's going on. " Men change the tires and then get called "bums" because they don't get all the grease off their fingers in time for supper, he said.

Some statistics suggest that men aren't significantly more violent than women in domestic situations, according to Oaster. He gets his worst beatings when he tries to point out that there are two sides to these is! sues, he said.

"Guys are changing," he said. "They're ! learning to sit down in groups and talk about what it means to be a man and a father. What some men were getting from the Elks, the Eagles and all that kind of jazz isn't happening any more. " In contrast to the women's movement, which he sees as outwardly directed to the world of affairs, men need to journey inward and get in touch with themselves.

But there also are "tons of problems involved with the lack of a clearly defined and appropriately reinforced male role in society," Oaster said.

Pieces of the men's movement pie include father's rights, men's rights, recovery and personal growth groups, mythopoetic activities. The International Men's Day Celebration offers lectures and discussions about men's health, male myths, men in literature and subjects like man bashing.

"You don't get points in men's groups for flexing your ego," Oaster said. "But I'd like it to be known that Kansas City has become the hometown of International Men's Day becau! se a hometown boy got that thing rolling. " The event was thinly attended, perhaps suggesting that large numbers of men were embarrassed to show up or that men's problems aren't so great.

Women who change diapers and get beat up during the Super Bowl may find some of Oaster's arguments unpersuasive. My wife, who was at her ironing board, was less than dazzled when I put my own masculine stature to the test.

"Unless someone starts showing me some respect around here, I'm walking out," I announced. She gestured at the trash.

"Take that out with you when you go. "

Copyright 1993, 1996 The Kansas City Star Co.

Record Number: 145112

The Kansas City Star

1993-02-06

Section: METROPOLITAN

Edition: METROPOLITAN

Page: C3

Men have their say at weekend forum `We want the bashing to stop,' speakers say, insisting masculinity deserves equal respect.

JAMES A. FUSSELL Staff Writer

The men's movement swept into Kansas City on Friday, invading the Westin Crown Center hotel like a small, self-actualized army. About 40 men (and a few women) from as far away as England and Australia attended the event, titled - take a breath - the First International Men's and Gender Conference, Education Forum and Culture Exchange and International Men's Day Celebration.

They came to listen, learn, talk, share, grow, whine, dine and bond. They paid $95 to hear speakers beat the drums on topics ranging from the "silent tragedy of men's health" to "man bashing. " Why?

Ask Tom Oaster, University of Missouri-Kansas City associate professor of education and coordinator of the conference, which concludes Sunday. "Because we want a serious response to what men are saying," Oaster said. "We want the bashing to stop. It's not a request. It's a statement. We want it to stop! To give you an example, a woman walked through here and saw the material and said, `You've got to be kidding. You're not seriously going to have a men's day, are you? ' " No joke. These guys were serious.

Move over feminism. Here comes "masculism. " Want to talk about "Iron John" and getting in touch with your inner feelings about your own masculinity by beating drums in the wilderness? Right this way to Edward R. Barton, adjunct curator of the Changing Men Collection at Michigan State University. Want to talk about the trials of divorced fathers in American courts? Over here to Bennett Stark of Madison, Wis. Concerned about the declining state of men's health? Give a listen to Ian Wilson, Australian chronicler of such statistics. (Men die much earlier from heart attacks than women, and researchers spend eight times as much on breast cancer as they do on prostate cancer.) Roy Schenk, a member of the National Coalition of Free Men from Madison, Wis., wanted to talk about the different ways society treats boys and girls. "Girls are sugar and spice and everything nice. So what are boys? They're all the un-nice gunky stuff! " Schenk said.

Organizers had hoped for 200 persons at the conference. In the end, it drew precious few not involved in the men's movement already. Count Bobby Turner, a Cincinnati electrical contractor, among those who wanted no part of the conference. "It's not that I don't care about all that men stuff," he said as he walked past the registration table. "It's just that, all in all, I'd rather be bowling. "

The Kansas City Star

1993-02-09

Section: STYLE

Edition: METROPOLITAN

Page: E1

Men, not monsters Conference participants discuss ways to reverse a 'demonizing' trend

JAMES A. FUSSELL Staff Writer

Ed Barton has heard it all before - the cracks, the jokes, the snickers and snide remarks: "Hey, Ed, where's your drum? " "Hey, Ed, found your inner wild man yet? " Jest if you must. The Michigan State University professor says the men's movement, with its drum beating and "mythopoetic" symbolism, has helped him find "inner peace. " Barton was one of 40 men and women who attended an international men's and gender conference in Kansas City over the weekend. Some came from as far as England and France. Why did they come?

For some it was a way to connect with soul mates who shared their belief that men are "devalued" and wrongly demonized. For others it was part of a journey to better understand themselves or the opposite sex. For Barton it was another chance to heal his wounds with friends who he knew would understand his pain.

Barton became involved with the men's movement after a difficult separation from his wife. "It left me feeling lost, depressed and alone," he said. "And that led me to start searching for some answers. I didn't know what I was searching for. All I knew was I needed help. These groups gave me an opportunity to share my pains in a group of men who would not be judgmental and condemning in my need to share or ask for support. " The men's movement - at least the branch of it he embraces - is totally misunderstood, Barton said. "People make fun of it. That's because most men don't want to ask for support. It's just not macho. A macho man grins and bears it - then he gets a gun and goes out and shoots someone.

"My involvement is what is called `mythopoetic,' represented by the popular books Iron John by Robert Bly and Fire in the Belly by Sam Keen," he said. "It's more of an introspective search into ourselves to find our true identities - what it means to be a man. " Those books, especially Iron John: A Book About Men, lit the fuse on an explosive movement devoted to men and their feelings. In it Bly combined lessons of mythology with discussions of the "wild man. " Bly has conducted "wild man' retreats in the woods for more than 10 years. Barton found those retreats helpful. "There's something about that drumming, that percussion that gets a man in touch with his emotional core so he can let down some of that armor," Barton said.

But the men's movement of Bly and Barton was only one component of the diverse conference, which was conceived and organized by Tom Oaster, a University of Missouri-Kansas City associate professor of education. Oaster organized the men's conference to coincide with an International Men's Day celebration. A woman who ridiculed the very idea of a men's conference is reason why one is needed, Oaster said. "We want the bashing to stop," he said. "We're tired of it. It's not a request. It's a statement. " Ian Wilson, an Australian astronomer now working in Baltimore with the Hubble Space Telescope, came to the conference to speak about the silent tragedy in men's health. During his talk he presented charts showing that the death rate of men (dying prematurely) was dramatically higher than that of women, and that, furthermore, the statistics were getting worse. People usually pooh-pooh such statistics, believing men have been privileged.

"My grandfather died of war wounds," Wilson said. "My father spent most of his life in the Army and Navy and Air Force, my uncle died prematurely as a prisoner of war, my other uncle was crushed to death in an industrial accident, and another uncle dropped dead of a heart attack at 40. I look at the male side of my family and I see devastation. And yet society tells me these men were privileged. Well, how were they privileged? All the female relatives are still alive. And I don't think my story is all that unusual. " Wilson said the men's movement is in its infancy and will soon take root as the woman's movement did decades ago.

"Most men know they are hurting badly," Wilson said. "And they know that (contrary to popular belief) that society devalues them in a number of ways. It puts unbelievable pressure on them, it expects them to succeed and to define themselves in terms of their job. It excludes them from bonding to their children and leads to such inner tension that it has gotten to crisis proportions. "Men got their status in society by being providers and protectors, but now they are living at the end of a century where at least 200 million men have been killed in wars - the point being that their role as protector has been devastating. And now their role as provider is being destroyed because half of all marriages end in divorce and more than 95 percent of the children end up in the custody of women. We don't deny that women, too, are hurting in this society. You'd have to be a blithering idiot not to see that. All we're asking is men and women each understand that each of our genders is hurting, just in different ways. " In fact, he said, men today are being demonized as monsters.

Why? Blame the stereotypical gender roles that we place on children from birth. Wilson cited a California study of 450 men and women. Participants were asked to watch a film of a one-year-old child throwing a tantrum. "Most of the men and women interpreted the emotion as anger when told it was a boy and as fear when told it was a girl," Wilson said. "When they told them it was a boy, they were actually showing them a girl, and (vice versa). " To Wilson, a member of the National Coalition of Free Men, a "masculist" organization, it demonstrates society's inclination to treat women automatically as victims and men as victimizers.

Further testament to the diversity of the conference came from the presence of Peter Bresnick of Madison, Wis. Bresnick, publisher of Changing Men magazine, is a "pro-feminist. " A pro-feminist is a man who is "committed to ending sexism, violence and creating a new vision for masculinity." "There is a strain of anti-feminism here," Bresnick said. "It's an anger at women and to some extent a blaming of women, which I chose not to engage in. "

Why did he come? "I think we're all here to understand how men are going to help each other out of this," he said. "The key to all of this is men's isolation from other men. You see that in discussions of the importance of a father in the family, which is something we all agree on. "

CAPTION: Tom Oaster, organizer of the international men's and gender conference in Kansas City last weekend, addresses a session.

Men from as far away as Europe attended the conference.