As I crisscrossed the country this summer giving talks and reading from my new book, Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild, women in Birkenstocks, girls in flip flops, and ageless ladies with open faces asked me thoughtful questions about feminism, future and past. And in every audience, there he was, too. Often sitting alone, sometimes with his girlfriend, a brave young son of feminism invariably wanted to know what a new generation’s feminism had to say to a new generation of men.
It’s a question I’ve been asking myself of late. Because I’m gripped by the flipside of that question too: Women have changed so much over the course of the past four decades. Have men?
Not according to my mass culture consumption this summer. Remember August’s headlines? “Men Opt Out of Housework after Marriage.” “Men Prefer Younger Women.” Ah, yes, boys will be boys. Books I rea
d on planes—The Last American Man and The Dangerous Book for Boys—temper their nostalgia for that time when boys were boys with reflection on what it means for boys to lose that unmediated relationship with the great outdoors. On television, I noted a far less self-aware nostalgia for the traditional masculine ways of yore. An ad for AMC’s new series, Mad Men, glamorizes a time “when men were men, and women were skirts.” On ABC’s Men in Trees reruns, men are well, in trees. On NBC’s Age of Love and on the bazillionth season of ABC’s The Bachelor, men continue to paw their way (er, sensitively, now?) through a bevy of over-eager, sad-eyed beauties. The movies that most stayed in my mind—from the Hollywood blockbuster Knocked Up to the indie “mumblecore” Hannah Takes the Stairs—were, among other things, male fantasies in which the geek got the blonde.
Back from tour, the question of whether men in real life have changed has become
personal as I contemplate marriage and parenthood with my new mate. Late(ish) in life—I’m 38, he’s 46—we’ve decided to try for a child. As much as we can, we aspire to bring the egalitarianism that characterizes us now into this next stage of our relationship. But I’m keenly aware of just how hard this is to do.
I’ve had ample time to watch my friends—couples with the best of egalitarian intentions—struggle with the tensions
around gender roles and parental responsibilities that inevitably arise and know that we are not likely to be spared. My best girlfriends live lives that are vastly different from those of their mothers and grandmothers, and yet, when it comes to parenthood and partnership with male mates, certain norms die hard. The “old” feminism merges, once again, with all that is allegedly “new.”
But I am optimistic by nature. I want to believe that the young men who attended my readings and asked the question are pioneers, harbingers of the new breed yet to come. Like the women I wrote about in my book, they, too, are dealing with unresolved tensions in a culture only half (at best) transformed. Their questions keep me going. Just knowing that feminism’s sons, too, are occasionally climbing down from their trees to listen helps me believe in the ongoing possibility of change.
Their stories are waiting to be told.
Deborah Siegel, PhD, a Fellow at the Woodhull Institute and the girl behind the blog Girl with Pen, is looking for a few good men to interview for a project on men who find themselves grappling with “old” and “new” ideas about masculinity. Please email her at deborahsiege@gmail.com, or, to continue the conversation, visit http://GirlWithPen.blogspot.com.