[BlackFly]

Well, I don't think it is an indictment so much as the typical indication of how we humans swing to extremes. I find it somewhat lamentable (although perhaps more enviable) how gay men are able to more openly discuss with one another what it means to be a man (because the biggest thing they need to grapple with is this gender norm that to "be a man" means having sex with women), but even they risk charges of misogyny and a heterosexual man would have to be quite lucky to be invited to such a men's group to be part of the discussions which I certainly feel is much more about grappling with the gender norm.

The problem here is that I can imagine Dr Blackie here might actually welcome with honest interest such an analysis by men. She certainly had only fair words for Robert Bly. But others would appear out of the woodwork to call such analysis some misogynistic manifesto. In some sense that should be expected, any good work should have breathless fans and seething critics. But the potential charge of misogyny is felt to carry too heavy a risk for most men nowadays.

I do not think the problem is that men are not women. Instead, there are some genuine jerks out there beating a war drum on the male identity. They create another nasty problem for the man who wants to honestly look at what it means to be a man because they create noise. The problem is that with this fear that men have, the only ones courageous enough to stand up and speak seem to be the jerks that don't really offer much insight, or at least the men with insight get buried under that noise and the noise of charges of misogyny when their insight is misappropriated by actual misogynists.

There needs to be fear before there can be courage is how I see it.

[wwwwwwwwwww]

I think this just as big of a problem among women. The loudest voices talking about both women's issues and men's issues tend to be quite sexist and obnoxious. Feminism has a misandry problem just as much as the men's rights movement has a misogyny problem. In both cases, it deters non-hateful people from participating, and that contributes further to the problem.

[mcphage]

> But the potential charge of misogyny is felt to carry too heavy a risk for most men nowadays.

Is it, actually, a risk? Or do we instead see misogynist men in many high positions?

[BlackFly]

This is a pretty good example actually of what makes entering these conversations so difficult.

It can logically be both and I would personally say it is both but your reply demands polarization. It is either one or the other because people like Harvey Weinstein exist. Don't get me wrong, it took way too long for Harvey to see justice and arguably he never did.

But here now I don't want to talk about Harvey Weinstein, I want to talk about male archetypes in fairy tales, yet here we are. Of course that isn't entirely true, since actually I was mentioning the meta-difficulty faced by people like Robert Bly and the controversy of the father's rights movement. So yeah, your comment is fair but a good example of the drive towards polarization faced by anyone trying to discuss being male and using that as a lens. Life has nuance and most of us want to express nuanced views but don't want to post manifestos.