Against Men in Power

by Shaker John, a University of Chicago alumnus.

I graduated from the University of Chicago a year ago, and I've been working here since then. In the last five years, I've never been able to decide whether this university, as an institution and as a community, has given me more reasons to feel grateful or to feel ashamed. And in the last few weeks in particular—just as I've been preparing to leave Chicago for graduate school elsewhere; just as I've been wanting to feel sentimental about the University of Chicago, and thinking of all the people and conversations and objects and spaces I'll dearly miss—the scales have been tipping the other way, dramatically, toward shame.

Last month, amid strong community opposition, the university announced the upcoming closure of the Women's Health Center on 47th Street. Around the same time, our official student newspaper published a "satirical" column by a male student who used words like "tramp" and "skank" in order to tell female students that they ought to be more careful about what they wore around the campus. And the same paper, two months earlier, had published a "satirical" manifesto by Steve Saltarelli, proposing the creation of a student group called Men in Power (dedicated to giving "undergraduate males at the University of Chicago […] the skills they will need to become future leaders of the world," and to exploring "issues involved with reverse sexism").

After that, as many Shakers already know, Saltarelli apparently heard from a large number of interested students, and the group was formed in earnest. The decision as to whether they'll receive formal recognition and funding as a campus group may have been postponed, but, after a student meeting last week with one of the college deans, we expect the answer to be yes. In the meantime, Saltarelli has received national media attention, showing up on MSNBC, Good Morning America, and NPR. (The story has also been covered at other blogs, including Feministing and Jezebel.) Saltarelli and the other organizers of Men in Power have made clear their intention to inspire a national campus movement. And they've been endorsed, in the same student newspaper, by the National Coalition for Men.

I'm writing this post primarily to draw attention to a Facebook group created two weeks ago by some friends and myself, in opposition to Men in Power, and to encourage anyone who's on Facebook to join. I'll get to the details about that in a moment. First, I ought to emphasize that the opinions expressed here, though they were formed in large part through discussions with my friends over the last few weeks, are my own; I'm not writing on behalf of our group or trying to provide a collective sense of exactly what troubles us about Men in Power or what should be done about it. Second—as Melissa wrote in her initial post on this topic—I don't think I want "to expend an enormous amount of energy explaining everything that's problematic with this idea." (Nor could I.) Instead, I want to say something about why this situation makes me feel—as a white, cisgender, male University of Chicago alumnus—the emotions that I feel, which are, above all, anger and shame. Moreover, while I'm one of many people who believe there would be a place at the University of Chicago (or anywhere else) for a group in which questions relating to masculinity and male experience could be productively discussed, I want to indicate why I believe Men in Power is not, and can't be, such a group.

It's tempting to view this whole situation the way we're told it began—as a joke. In the NPR interview, Saltarelli is asked about the seriousness of his belief that we live in a culture in which men, as men, need aggressive advocacy; he replies that his initial "article itself is satirical, but, as with any satire—[like] Swift's 'Modest Proposal'—there's obviously ideas behind it." It isn't just that I'm bothered by this comparison as a student of literature (although there's that). It's also that the comparison brings to mind something like the following scenario: Agents of the British Empire contact Jonathan Swift in 1729 to let him know that they're intrigued and excited by his plan to solve the problem of Irish poverty by implementing the systematic consumption of the flesh of Irish children. Swift thanks the English agents for getting in touch, and, after some consideration, decides that he was sincere all along. Conveniently enough, he's already done much of the planning. Of course!

Satire whose actual, polemical, essentially non-satirical intent turns out to have been almost identical with its ironically stated satirical goal: I would say that Saltarelli has invented a new literary genre, except that I'm afraid he probably hasn't. Maybe this kind of discursive move happens all the time. Maybe it happens whenever cisgender men like me—or, dare I say it, whenever men in power—make satirical, ironic, unserious, serious jokes about the virtues of patriarchy, or about male supremacy. And that happens a lot.

Comments of that kind appear, and without even any pretense of sarcasm or irony, in the online space created by Men in Power. Recently, as the media coverage was getting underway, the MiP Facebook group was opened to the general public, and was almost immediately joined by hundreds of people from across the country, many of whom clearly understood the name "Men in Power" to imply just what it does imply—a group whose mission is the maintenance of (white, straight, cisgender) male dominance—and who appreciated the opportunity to express (white, straight, cisgender) male "grievances."

One commenter wrote: "I'm glad to see that there are enough people not afraid to be called sexist to stand up for being a man in today's world where white men are portrayed as villains for no reason." Another member created a discussion board with the title "Would you rather be raped or accused of rape?" The first post contained these sentences: "False accusation of rape is among the most troubling issues for men today. [...] Which is the worse scenario? Being a true victim or a false criminal?" My friends and I publicly brought some of these comments to the attention of the group officers, and that discussion board was eventually taken down. We were assured that such conversations didn't fit with the group's goals—and also, a little paradoxically, that "[p]eople have a wide range of opinions on these matters, some more valid than others, but these opinions can be heard." As I write, the member who started the discussion board I've mentioned is still in the group. As far as I know, no one has been removed.

Two weeks ago, we decided that there was an urgent need to create an inclusive online space countering this one. Our original name was "Men in Power Makes Us Ashamed." We soon became concerned, though, that this suggested a group mostly for cisgender males with a connection to the university (given that such persons arguably had the most obvious reasons to feel shame); and so the name was changed to "Against Men in Power." A day later it was changed a second time, to "Against 'Men in Power,'" following suggestions that we should clarify the group's opposition, not to all men who occupy positions of power, but to the new student group in particular.

I'm sure that making this change was the best thing to do; at the same time, though, I'd like to admit that I was fond of the ambiguity in the second name. I'd like to stress that I oppose Men in Power because their aim is to put men in power. Their stated purpose is explicitly and necessarily and undeniably antifeminist, in the sense that (as Melissa has noted) they seek to compensate for, to balance out, the progress that feminists and their allies have made in this country over the last half-century. This problem, I think, will not disappear if Men in Power change their name, continually clean up their Facebook page, or keep insisting (as they have done) that they aren't against women in power. Traces of this group's oppressive intentions, even if those intentions were ignorantly oppressive, are going to remain, no matter what.

I don't think you have to see their Facebook group, or to know about the comments that were posted there by people from outside the university community, to recognize immediately what's disturbing about Men in Power. You could just visit the official website that the students themselves have set up. The front page features a photograph of two professional-looking men shaking hands in, I guess, a courtroom—wherever it is, it's a room that stands for Power—next to a bright red box containing a quotation from Teddy Roosevelt. Actually, I'm going to reproduce these images here, because I have a suspicion that they may be erased from the site before long. As friends of mine have pointed out, there are several senses in which the key objective of Men in Power is erasure. In saying that they're concerned about a future absence of men in power, they erase patriarchy and cis/male privilege from the historical present. In saying that questions of contemporary masculinity aren't being discussed, or that it's "easy to overlook" them, they erase feminist, queer, and gender studies, and all the crucial, transformative work that these fields have been producing for decades. Men in Power erase. So here are Teddy Roosevelt and the two men:


The last point. They mean business. The same text currently appears on the main page of the Facebook group, as it has from the beginning. If these words are here as a joke, who's laughing? Whether it's a joke or not, what are they thinking? This quotation, if you'd care to know, comes from an address that Roosevelt delivered to U.S. Army recruits in 1898, and a fuller version runs as follows:

Gentlemen: you have now reached the last point. If anyone of you doesn't mean business let him say so now. An hour from now will be too late to back out. Once in, you've got to see it through. You've got to perform without flinching whatever duty is assigned you, regardless of the difficulty or the danger attending it. [...] If it is the closest kind of fighting, [you must be] anxious for it. [...] Absolute obedience to every command is your first lesson. No matter what comes you mustn't squeal. Think it over—all of you. If any man wishes to withdraw he will be gladly excused, for others are ready to take his place.

Can it be denied that what's suggested here is an apocalyptic moment? Or that the implicit function of this quoted speech, in the context of the Men in Power website, is to call for some sort of uprising of American men, as an oppressed class, against their oppressors, who are women? I already thought I was uncomfortable whenever anyone talked about "the battle of the sexes." On a certain level, though, I'm glad I know that some men at my school actually regard gender politics as a battle like this, a desperate one, the last point of which has been reached. I say I'm glad to know; more than that, I'm repulsed, frightened, angry, and ashamed. And at this moment, as a man at the University of Chicago, I don't know what to do with my anger or my shame, other than to say that I oppose the establishment and the acceptance of Men in Power.

I'm still hoping the university can be convinced, at the very least, that there's no place here for a registered student organization with this name or these goals. The conversation about Men in Power is going to continue when the fall quarter begins in September, at which point some of the people who've been involved in it, myself included, will have left Chicago. In the meantime, my friends and I would like the opposition to be as strong and as widespread as possible. Whether or not you have any connections to this university—whether or not you share the specific reasons that I have to feel anger and to feel shame—please consider joining our group and telling your friends.