John Stoltenberg (born 1944) is a radical feminist activist, scholar, author, and magazine editor.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1989 book, “This book is about … the possibility of an emerging selfhood rooted in one’s capacity for fairness… what does it mean to ‘refuse to be a man’?... [Males] learn … an ethic that leaves out specific others. In order to distinguish themselves as real ‘men,’ they learn not to know what can be known about the values in what they do to others, specifically anyone who is ‘less a man.’ So to begin with, refusing to be a man means learning a radical new ethic: determining to learn as much as one can know about the values in the acts one has done and the acts one chooses to do and their full consequences for other people---as if everyone else is absolutely real as oneself.” (Pg. 4-5)
He states, “Under father right, the first fact of every human life is that one is birthed by human flesh that belongs to someone barren. Every human life comes forth from a woman whose body at no moment in her life is not defined as the actual or potential personal property of men.” (Pg. 67)
He asserts, “The post-Vietnam War era reverberated with a betrayal of women by ‘progressive’ men---a betrayal that may be said to be the very essence of whatever political progressivism in this country has ever meant. At no time has an objection to tyranny been couched in terms that even hinted at an objection to men’s tyranny over women.” (Pg. 80)
He observes, “In fact, throughout history, men as a class have always expressed their feelings, eloquently and extensively: … Men have institutionalized their feelings, so that whether or not a particular man is feeling the feeling at a particular time, the feeling is being expressed through the institutions men have made.” (Pg. 91-92)
He suggests, “So long as we continue to try to act in ways that keep us still ‘men,’ we are doomed to paralysis, guilt, self-hatred, inertia. So long as we try to act AS MEN, in order to continue to BE men, in order to do our bit in the social construction of the entity that is … men, we doom women to injustice.” (Pg. 185)
Stoltenberg’s books are “must reading” for anyone interested in the profeminist men’s movement, gender studies, and feminism.
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