Backlash.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So, we get the backlash against feminism, much of it detailed in Susan Faludi's book Backlash. Many men feel threatened by the new assertiveness of women. They fear losing the privilege they've enjoyed for so long. After all, if you can set aside the basic unfairness of it all, the domination of women by men has been a cozy existence for males.

There are others who deny that men oppress women; one of these is Dr. Warren Farrell. In his book The Myth of Male Power (1993), he writes that men are the disposable gender in our society - they die earlier by seven years, commit suicide more frequently (four to one), most people (94%) killed in on-the-job accidents are men, most of the homeless (85%) are men, and three men are murdered for every woman. He emphasizes that men suffer psychological pain without denying women their pain too.

In 1990, Robert Bly wrote a book that started a movement. In Iron John Mr. Bly says that men forgot how to be men around the late 1700s. Until then, men had raised their sons at their sides, says Mr. Bly, as they cut down trees, grew crops, or killed animals for food. With the industrial Revolution, men were absent, working in factories, and boys were now raised by women. Deprived of the example of what it meant to be a man, males became unfeeling, angry, violent, alcoholic, and competitive.

The feminist movement (Mr. Bly supports it) caused some men to change from He-Man into Soft Man. The Sensitive New Age Man, in Mr. Bly's view, is nothing more than a man determined to turn himself into a woman. So, the need for a new way of teaching men about themselves. Mr. Bly goes back to the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale of a hairy wild man who instructs a golden-haired boy in the arts of discipline, courage, sacrifice, and adventure. "Through the Wild Man's initiation, men learn to worship the animal soul ... to call up from the busy adult man the sorrow of animal life, the grief of all nature..."

All women working for greater equality have been the target of hostility and nasty comments. Marilou McPhedran, a feminist lawyer, is philosophical about the unpleasantness though: "If we weren't making a difference, having an impact, there would be no backlash. So, in a way, it's a good sign."