Men Freeing Men

Edited by Francis Baumli, Ph.D.
ISBN : 0-9615480-0-2 (in case you want to borrow it from the library or buy it)

Men Freeing Men is about emotion, rawness, hurt, anger, and repression. It relays actual accounts of persons who identify as male or a man. It discusses the perversion of what it 'means' to be a man and how it is instilled in young boys. And I'm not just talking gendered color here. I mean attitude, demeanor, bottled feelings, and action (or inaction) toward women (lovers, mothers, sisters).

"My emotions are the most authentic expression of who I am" (19).

Men Freeing Men is poetry, self-reflection, mistaken identity and self-actualization. It's consciousness, rebirth, reconciliation and perseverance. It's ranting and raving just like us girls.

"Playing the part of the 'real man,' I expended considerable energy in shielding myself from being like a woman" (19).

Within its pages, men write about what feels good, what feels bad, what they claim, reclaim, and rebuke. To succeed, to write, to have been included means men have had to take some pretty big steps in dady's wonky shoes. They've had to accept and reject pieces of themselves, turn the tables, WANT to change and WANT to learn.

"Am I still a man?" (20).

Men Freeing Men is self-definition and understanding 'manhood' and changing it if they damn well please. It is paramount to the feminist cause, attempting to ameliorate the gendered inequality of sexual- and self-expression. I'm ecstatic to have discovered this insanely informative compilation from a point of view I desperately needed to consider (and now fully appreciate and respect).

"I doubt that I'll ever totally get rid of my double standards or occasional jealousies. I do think I can learn to keep such feelings from crippling my relationships, and instead use them as an index to what I'm feeling" (43).

This book is about men's double standard, their struggles, the lifelong fight with ones penis size, prostitution as male humiliation, relationships, isolation. It's witty, it's serious, it's downright empowering, yes, even for a reader of the female persuasion.

"I've come to the conclusion that I have a right to my feelings. I didn't consider learning about my feelings 'liberation.' I see it as a reconciliation with my humanity, which my forbears must have bartered long ago for 'manhood'" (21).