I’ve got good news to share. I’ve come across a superb – yet virtually unknown – book, written by a professional historian, which traces in detail the complex development of the “men’s movement” (a category which includes the men’s rights movement) in the United States from 1970 to 2000. The author, Edward L. Gambill, was professor of history at St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota. He wrote the book after retirement and passed away at the age of 77 in 2010, five years after its publication.
I’m going to cut to the chase: If you are a serious Men’s Human Rights activist or advocate, you need this book.
Edward L. Gambill
Uneasy Males: The American Men’s Movement 1970-2000
2005, iUniverse publisher
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History is one of the most important weapons of tyrants and propagandists – fake history, half-truths history, cherry-picked history, and censored history (or to be specific, the Orwellian false narrative called “herstory”). The only weapon that can undo the damage done by fake history is real history. The only way to become a truly successful activist is to be informed about the efforts, successes, failures, struggles and mistakes of those who have previously traversed the same (or similar) difficult path. Gambill’s book, Uneasy Males, is the product of years of research and years of meditation on the subject. The book provides the only convenient way to get a rich and full picture of the struggle to mobilize a men’s movement in any nation in any period. It deals only with post-1960s America, but many of the experiences and ideas of those who worked in the movement in the U.S. will apply to MHRAs in other parts of the world.
Not surprisingly, though the book is written by a professional scholar, with a full biography, containing rare documentation and bearing a nuanced analysis of its subject, the book was not picked up by any publisher. Uneasy Males is a self-published book that would have been published by a university press had the subject matter been other than it is, or had it been an attack on men’s rights. Instead it is a sober and balanced treatment of an ongoing movement that the intellectual and policy establishment wants to pretend is marginal and unimportant.
The book is available as print-on-demand so there is no problem of the supply drying up. It can be ordered on amazon.com and abe.com and other outlets. Amazon also offers a Kindle edition.
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The promotional text from the book’s back cover is presented here:
“During the last three decades of the twentieth century there has been widespread controversy over, and alteration of, gender roles in the United States. To a large extent the ferment originated in, and was influenced by, the general social upheaval of the sixties. A major result has been a well-publicized transformation in the options, social status, and perception of American women. But what affected women also affected men, and a similar movement among American males therefore accompanied the feminist movement.
“In Uneasy Males, Edward Gambill provides an historical overview of the American “men’s movement”. The book covers pro-feminist and anti-feminist responses, and the organization and activities of men’s rights, father’s rights, ‘mythopoetic’, religious, and black male groups. While much of the focus is on the development and operation of formal organizations, there is also coverage of changes apart from these structures. Uneasy Males thus provides readers with an understanding of, and thought-provoking question about, gender roles in the United States.”
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Here is the first paragraph of the preface to Uneasy Males:
“Intellectual inquiry often begins as the result of problems we face in our personal lives. This is especially the case when the problems are related to sex and gender. In my own instance, it was the direct result of the death of two parents and two divorces within a six-year period. Until that time, genders were inseparable, immutable, and therefore a given. Personal crisis, combined with growing social controversy over gender issues, wrenched me from my myopia. While my first exposure to gender analysis was through women, I finally found their point of view harsh, threatening and not necessarily addressed to my concerns as a male. I then stumbled across the men’s movement, at the time mainly confined to metropolitan areas and virtually unheard of out in the heartland. I began readings on the movement probably as much out of a need for therapy as a scholarly endeavor. Eventually, however, the inquiry took on a life of its own and deemed worthy of doing on its own merits.”
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Professor Gambill seems to have been one of the few professors to date who have seriously considered the radical notion that Men’s Rights Are Human Rights. The times they are a changin’ and Prof. Gambill’s efforts to give us our history will – despite the passive censorship undertaken by publishers that typically undermines such efforts – most surely have a beneficial on many men and women – for a great many years to come. Uneasy Males is destined to become a standard reference.
