The men of the future

Is the fourth wave of feminism going to bemen’s liberation?

The story begins in November last year,when Germany’s best goalkeeper, 32-year-old Robert Enke, threw himself under theHamburg to Essen express. Hisgrieving wife Teresa revealed that Enke had been battling depressionfor six years. Although Enke’s death shocked football-mad Germans, it’s acommon enough story. A high-achieving man harbours hidden insecurities andtormenting anxieties. They spiral out of control and explode in violence orsuicide.

But this tragedy triggered the Young Greensto add a radical plank to their already radical electoral platform – the needfor a new masculinity. They have issued a “Green Men’sManifesto” which calls for men’s liberation:

The suicide of goalkeeper Robert Enke has finally prompted a Republic-wide debate about men’s health, about weakness, about depression, about fear of failure… The crisis we face is a male one. The climate crisis, the financial and economic crisis, the hunger and justice crisis: all these are the direct result of a particularly male way of living, working and doing business which has driven the planet to the brink of ruin.

The Green Men’s Manifesto is not just a bitof boilerplate from German radicals. It was signed by one member of theEuropean Parliament, three members of the Federal Parliament and three membersof state Parliaments, along with 14 other Green politicians – all men. It showsthat Germany’s most avant-garde politicians sense that men’s liberation hasfinally reached its tipping-point.

Feminism, they suggest, is no longer ademand from an oppressed minority, but a dominant ideology. “A woman [AngelaMerkel] is chancellor. Women have better educational qualifications, can becomebishops, do Rap and Hip-Hop, are more successful at soccer than their malecolleagues,” says the manifesto. Women have thrown off the shackles ofstereotyped gender roles. But men? They are still rattling their chains. “Genderroles are a corset that does more harm than good.”

And just as feminists did -– or do— the GreenMen play the victim card. German men die six years earlier than German women. Womenhave work-life balance programs, but not men. Fathers are shut out of the livesof their children because of work, and so on.

What is going on in Germany? The youngTurks of the party which turned tree-hugging into a potent political force,which campaigned against nuclear power, against global warming and acid rain, againstNATO, and against the war in Afghanistan, believe that feminism no longerspeaks for the underprivileged. The “wretched of the earth” are no longerstarving Africans foraging for water in the Sahara, but Hans and Fritz who needaffirmative action programs. “We want more gender-sensitive men in‘traditional’ female occupations: more teachers, more primary school teachers,more social workers.” On it goes: they want a “boys’ day” and “gender-sensitivecareer guidance”, and greater attention to men’s health.

If these demands had come from disgruntled unemployedtruck drivers or bitter fathers battling for access to their children, no onewould pay the slightest attention. But the slogan for the manifesto is “greenmen fight together with feminists”. The authors use the utmost tact in praisingthe achievement of feminism. Indeed, they endorse the feminist critique that halfof society is oppressed because of its gender. But it’s not the conventionalgender.

Feminism was been described as the mostpowerful revolution of the 20th century. Could the Green men’s manifesto be the firstglimmer of a new politics of masculinism for the 21st? After all, it’s a pretty seductive program:“We want less pressure to perform, better health care, and more quality time.We don’t want to be heroes of work; we want to live. We want to share power,responsibility and duties and to tear off the corset of gender roles. We wantnew horizons for men in the 21st century!”

If only their wives, girlfriends andmothers will let them. Viel Glück!

MichaelCook is editor of MercatorNet

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