Best Man

Foreward

by Lyman Grant

Being the editor and publisher of a magazine is not all it is cracked up to be. And it is much, much more. When my wife, Sharon, my friend John Lee and I decided to create a journal for men, we had already turned the four-page newsletter of the Austin Men’s Center into a 24-page newsletter. Although all three of us had writing experience, no one had any real, practical knowledge or experience in how to run the business of a magazine. We were scared, but our dream of producing a beautiful, thoughtful, helpful, and inspiring magazine about men was stronger.

And right there —for me, at least —is the meaning and importance of this magazine called MAN! and the importance of the men’s movement and the recovery movement, from which we draw our inspiration. Dare to dream, these movements tell us. Dare to act upon that dream. And when the dream does not come true in six weeks, dare to live the nightmares that accompany the dream. Don’t be stupid, we learn. Always examine the truth about what you are committed to; always examine your reasons for pursuing the dream; always listen to your detractors; but always listen to your heart, too.

In understanding and pursuing this dream, MAN! has been blessed both by the patience and provocations of its readers. Although our readers have been overwhelmingly supportive, we have occasionally angered them. The most rageful of these readers are provoked by the fact that we have women on our staff. The fact is that many men have been abused by women and feel vulnerable by their mere presence. These men need to be recognized and supported. And the women who abuse people —whatever gender —must stop. However, sometimes these angry men wish to generalize and say something like “All women are abusers.” a statement we cannot support.

Ironically, we owe our greatest thanks to these two or three men who persistently harangued us for about six months. They forced us to develop a stronger, clearer editorial position. We had known that MAN! would not be always politically correct, and that MAN! would avoid partisian politics, because we viewed the us/them system a symptom of our overall malaise. Still until then we had maintained a Field of Dreams philosophy —“build it and they will come.” Well, they came, and these men forced us to examine what statements the magazine would support, which it would tolerate, and which it would denounce.

The following essay, originally titled “What is MAN?,” is my response to those men who wrote to us complaining about the women on our staff. Published in the Summer 1991 issue, we include it here because it is the most complete statement about the guiding philosophy behind MAN! and the work that we print.

What is MAN!?

For the First time in history, we can have a human story, not a tribal story.
—Robert Moore

I suppose every so often it is good for the soul to search it —to take the scalpel to one’s psyche; to probe into the cartilage of one’s spirit wings; to grasp and squeeze, bloody-handed, one’s soul organs.

Every so often someone writes a letter to us or calls with a question or concern that forces the knife into my hands and commands incision. Why MAN!? What are the values that I impart into MAN!? To what does MAN! say the Everlasting Yea and to what the Everlasting Nay? These are big questions, and every time I consider them I am thrown back into the ashes. As Robert Bly has pointed out in Iron John, these questions send one back into the kitchen, back into one’s grief, into the rot and scraps of one’s life.

So what do I find there in the trail of trash I leave behind me? I find a father who talked about “good niggers” and “bad niggers.” I find a mother who whipped me with her father’s razor strop and who, more than my father, accepted me only when I behaved like a “good young soldier.” I find a high school girlfriend who broke up with me two times so she could date a football player. I find two women I treated cruelly 15 years ago, but who still remain my friends. I find a sister who, during one of the lowest periods of my life, gave me a silly gift that renewed my faith in myself. I find a college professor who gave me an F to teach me a lesson about punctuality. I find a gay professor who, because I liked Shakespeare, made me a gift of his father’s 40-volume set, published in the 19^thcentury. I find another gay man from Big Sandy, Texas, who cooked the best spoon bread I’ve ever eaten, who quoted reams of Tennessee Williams to me and called me the “Plumed Hat Cavalier,” and who never once made a sexual overture to me.

I find two dead parents, an abortion I walked away from, my hopes of being a poet deferred for decades, a marriage that rocks back and forth. I find students I have been unavailable to, a son I have occasionally whipped, a black schoolmate I insulted 25 years ago, and a score of women who should hate me. I find… You get the point.

So when I receive letters that “get under my skin,” I really gel irritated. There are a lot of tender places for them to rub against. But the letters that sting me the most are those that criticize our practice of including women and gays in the circle of MAN!, including them as friends and supporters, including them as people who can teach us about manhood, including them as victims and as perpetrators.

To all you men —and I don’t think there are very many —who want MAN! to blame all men’s troubles on feminism, I tell you once and for all, NO! To all you men—and again there are a few of you—who want MAN! to denounce gays as some sort of sick aberration of the male gender. I tell you NO!

My experience as a man tells me there is enough blame and hatred to devastate us all. My experience of feminism has taught me much. One of the most important lessons is how much it hurts to be blamed as a man for all the troubles that women have. I do not wish to return the favor.

My experience of healing old wounds, however, tells me that hate and blame are wonderful tonics when they are named and attached to deserving individuals. I hate my mother for whipping me. To the extent I allow myself to admit that hate, the less likely I am to hit my son and the less likely I am to accept false blame from my wife.

My experience of joy tells me that it is delivered in unlikely hands. If I were to hate all gays, I would have one less way to understand myself, as a “Plumed Hat Cavalier.” Nor would I own the 40 volumes of Shakespeare that sit across from me now as I write. If I were to fear the touch of another man, I would… I can’t imagine the sorrow in that.

So if MAN! says NO to generalized hate and blame, what do we say YES to? Like Walt Whitman, Henry Thoreau, D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Dionysus, Zorba the Greek, MAN! says YES to the experience and to the feelings. We say YES to joy and anger, to grief and ecstasy. We say YES to the man who feels hatred because his ex-wife denies him contact with his children. We say YES to the man who wants to discard his coat and tie to drum and dance. We say YES to the soft, naive man who strives to becomes a warrior for a noble cause. We say YES to the Vietnam veterans and the humiliation they felt when the protesters spat on them. We say YES to those who lost sons, brothers and fathers in the war. We say YES to the man who grieves the loss of a father who could not love him. We say YES to the man who celebrates the renewed relationship with his lost father.

My experience in saying YES to each experience and feeling, to the ugly and the good, is that the ugly passes away and the good remains. When the anger and the grief, the humiliation and the shame, are fully acknowledged and felt, they fall away and give rise to joy.

It seems to me that the world cries desperately for unity. As Robert Moore says, the time and tribalism is over. The world’s healing and salvation lie not in a narrow, tribal, or single-sex mythology, but in a larger mythology that awaits creation. Alone, men cannot heal the world nor even themselves. There are things that we need to do in the company of men, but our work always serves a greater healing. Yes, I say YES to the anger I sometimes feel toward my mother and father. I say YES to the thousand sorrows of my life as a man. I say YES to the pain probing and poking of my soul that leads to my healing. And I say YES to the ecstasy of the great reunion, of which, because of the courage of our readers and writers, I sometimes glimpse in the pages of MAN! Peace.

As this book is published, MAN! will be completing its fourth year. Like the men’s movement — like men in general — MAN! is a work in progress, and The Best Man represents a stage in that progress. In an early issue, Robert Bly warned us against being naive. Later, Randolf Severson praised for us the courage of men. Even later, James Sniechowski told us that men were daring to create a new definition for masculinity. These are the positive voices, among many others, that John, Sharon, and I listen to as we continue to follow our dream.

Nowadays, we dream about a world where each man can become what he desires to be, about a world where each woman can become what she desires to be, about a world where each child feels fully loved and totally safe, where each parent feels completely supported, and where each citizen feels a commitment to and a commitment from his or her community and its institutions. Dare we dream of anything less?

With this celebratory volume, I want to say thank you to all the people who have helped make the MAN! dream survive. To Bill Jeffers, Forrest Taftyn, Jodi Roberts, Jean Barnett, Allen Maurer, Tom Sandlin, Kitty Kirkpatrick, David Kramer, and Jeff King, we owe great thanks. I also need to bow to Frank and Jan King. Dan Jones, Bill Stott, Claud Payne, Tim Grear, and John Hunger. I particularly thank my partners. John Lee is a spiritual partner, the older brother I never had. Sharon is a true life-partner, my missing half that I am reunited on earth with. Her knowledge is broad; her eye is sharp; her insights are deep; her love is strong. Without her, MAN! would have folded long ago. She works when everyone else is tired, and she gives me courage to find the light when the dream turns dark. I am not insulting her or men when I say she is the woman behind The Best MAN.