I enjoyed this blog. Especially this part: "I think we all recognise this as the last resort of people being asked to confront their privilege. Like the racist complaining about "political correctness", any man complaining about how oppressed he is by women is trying to fight the realities of equality by framing them as an invasion."
I also can't believe they are saying that having nature (flowers and ferns) in a church makes something less masculine and threatening. Seriously?!
I'm also really tired of the argument "boys will be boys," or as you nicely put it, "god-given inability to control themselves," claiming those those "male" traits (esp the violent or sexist ones) are normal, natural, or even should be accepted as such.
I think that you are taking some of their bravado more seriously then they intend. While they do talk about ritalin and helmets, the very next paragraph says-
"We also recognize that we live in a fallen world where our maleness gets out of control and is out of synch with God's perfect design. We challenge and encourage men to transform these areas of their lives. But this instruction is most effective when it is done by men for men."
So they don't believe in a "god-given inability to control themselves."
They go on to say-
"Our experience has been that most women want their men to become more assertive, proactive, protective and loving since GodMen are truly good men. Any man coming to this experience believing it is going to give him permission to control or not be accountable to his wife is in for a rude awakening. GodMen see their wives as gifts from God and treat them accordingly."
So I would also doubt that they want women to be "Well fucked and badly shod."
If you have been involved in a church for the last decade or so you have doubtlessly seen the myriad of women's groups, ministries, outreaches, etc. Without knowing anything more about GodMen than what is on their website, I would say that they are just a similarly gender focused ministry that is trying to meet men where they are. As Paul said " I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some."
As for the "Boys will be boys" I think that they are just trying to say that boys shouldn't have to be girls.
Have you been to a GodMen event?
As someone who has worked in an academmic environment, it is niave and brain dead to ignore the impact of women's issues and their impact on how we interpret life. And to some degree, rightly so. It is the "to some degreee" that Godmen is attempting to address. I am so sick of the capitulated language of young bucks who have had thier balls removed years ago and still think porn makes them a man. Point...there has arisen a serious confusion in the last 30 years as to what a male is about and anyone reading Robert Bly, Richard Rohr, or Sam Keen will have to admit that young men have not been properly given rites of passaage into manhood. Granted, patriarchy has its a long litany of sins much like the Church and most recently liberal feminism but to denigrate the attempt to address the issue of confusion about what it means to be a man by using the language of inverted repression ( i.e the nomenclature of victimhood in reverse) only makes real issues like war, economy & family seem like figment of some out of control father figure who has not yet understood that he is not in control. To cut to the chase, I am just sick and tired of of all the blgging crap that comes off so "above" the fray of life and especially the stuggle to name and articulate one's gender appropriately in a world that has skewed the nature of sexuality big time. To use the historic sin of parituarch for the millionth time is to go back to an old dead argument kind of like blaming Bush for wacked out Muslim extremists like he thought this up just to piss of liberals. I'm not even a republican. I am just sick of men who are not part of a community ( assumptions I make dangersouly so based on their rhetoric), not part of a group of men, working through their spirituality attemtping to comment on something they have not attended, have not expreienced and love to castigate out of some ( could it be repressed waring instinct? ha-who knows)
Bunker with his undies in a bunch
Kyle, I didn't accuse GodMen of the "pregnant and barefoot" attitude. I said it was something being preached, albeit covertly, in some parts of the Christian church. I do not wish to misrepresent anyone.
I don't think that the caveat they add really changes the whole "boys will be boys" monstrousness. They define "masculinity" in terms of violence and social inability. This is bad. I am a male man, and I'm not violent or loud. Writing "sometimes a little bit too unable due to fallen nature" doesn't change this essentially limiting view.
And I don't have an issue with gender based faith groups. You'll see in my opening paragraphs that I actually think they have an important part in transforming the church. What I have an issue with is the narrow limits these groups place on masculinity and the meaning of maleness. That they blame women for their inability to express themselves is also a bit of a bugbear.
And why shouldn't boys have to be girls? We force girls to do it all the time.
Mike, no. I'm commenting solely on the information I've got from other people's eye witness reports and the information that's been put out by the GodMen themselves.
David, I'm not ignoring "women's issues". I think GodMen is a women's issue.
The difference seems to be that I'm writing from a feminist position. Subtly, your post and GodMen literature frame feminist thought as an outside position that affects normal ways of being. To me, feminism is a normal way of being.
Also, please don't use capitulation, youth or de-balling as an insult. This is a space for all of those people. I'm a natural bottom and a pacifist, capitulation is kinda my thing. I'm young, hence the pretty, and the prescence or nonprescence of testicles really shouldn't be a reason for insulting people. This is a blog by queer people, our readership more than likely include various deballed people. It's not nice to call names and you should probably think of the audience before you start telling me I'm too much of a girly boy.
Oh, and porn isn't what makes me a man. It's the anal sex and eyeshadow that do that.
I agree that a serious confusion has arisen. Slowly but surely, people are forgetting what a "man" is and having to actually look at the lives of male bodied people to find out. I'm glad of the confusion. I want to make more of it. I want to be the sand in the lubricant of heteronormativity.
You say that the literature doesn't try and "victimise" men for it's agenda. Until you can provide an argument I'm afriad I'm going to disagree. In the UK and America misogyny is still very powerful. I find it hard to believe any man who says he is being oppressed becasue of his gender.
You say:
"real issues like war, economy & family seem like figment of some out of control father figure who has not yet understood that he is not in control."
Worryingly, for you at least, that's almost exactly what I think. I think all of those frightening and oppressive systems grow directly out of the weird idea that MAN = POWER. Sure, we need have something like these sytems in place. But until these three get a major overhaul I want no part in them.
It worries me that you see my post as "above the frays of life" or at least attempting to be. What are you basing it on? I'm involved with life. The whole point of writing it was to get involved in conversation. The things I'm writing don't come from feelings of superiority. They come from frustration and hurt and having to deal with an ugly masculinist agenda every say of my life. Just because I'm engaging with different things in a different way doesn't mean I'm not engaging. I think you need to address what I've written, which you can see, rather than my motives, which you can't. So far you haven't actually referenced my article very much, just called me a young eunuch liberal.
Patriarchy isn't a historical sin. It is happening right now. Feminism is still fighting this crap right now. Patriarchy is a right now topic. I'm not calling up long dead ghosts, I'm expressing my frustrations of right this minute. I'm not doing it to be clever. I'm doing it because I think there is a very serious problem which causes me, my female allies and my queer peers a whole ton of shittiness.
Also, at no point do I criticise the people attending the conferences. I criticise the writing going on round it and the ideas that support it. I really respect anyone who trys to xplore their spirituality. My beef is with a framework that limits that exploration so severely.
One of the reasons there is so much back lash agianst PC rhetoric is that how can anyone engage "the ultimate victim?" This is the danger of words outside of community. They cannot be discerned. My visceral reponse has much more to do with the superior posture of feminisim and the gay communities attempt to place themselves under that rubric. As a man who deals with other men I do not regard sexuality nor its seeming preferences the ultimate ground of my being. Thus, although I am one of the first to stand up to any kind of "queer baiting" or even misogonistic langauge I also think that the victim position of many gays and women has run its course as a postion in which to engage groups that may have in the past sterotyped others. Point....I would assume based on stories and narratives of life that many of the men coming to Godmen have had some kind of homosexual encounter. Thye may even be pacifists as our Meenonite family is.What I struggle with is the tendency to do the very same thing to non gay men (an assumpiton) that they say has been done to them in the past. Because you have not attended you are unaware of the great care Godmen took in engaging all types of male experiences including the homosexual experience. But...to take that experience and expect everyone to now see all of life through that story or eperience to me is selfish, narrow minded, and even as dangerous as the bravado of patriarchy. To say that patriarchy still exist therefore is as dangeorus today as it was in the past is to throw that argument into the race argument as if great strides have not been accmomplished. My point once again? The rhetoric of victimhood places that person in a superior positon to "the other" forcing the other person to defend rather than respond. As someone who has marched on Washington, defended the rights of blacks and other monorities (including gays) I am saddened by the continued language of some who still want to demonize others when there is a hand reaching out. I know Godmen would welcome your life along with all the other men. Try it...you might be surprised.
I haven't said that GodMen excludes gay men. You are misrepresenting me.
I'm not playing "ultimate victim". I haven't actually written anything about women up there. I've written about how some people have represented them.
In fact, I'm finding it very hard to respond to a lot of your criticisms. I think you are responding to what you imagine I think rather than what I have actually written.
I also think it's worrying you think prejudice is a thing of the past. Patriarchy is now. Homophobia is now. These things are fucking up lives right now. I don't expect everyone to think like me. Diverse thought is important. Part of diversity is being allowed to critique other peoples choice.
Please read what I have written, respond to my sentences, not your imaginings.
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