It is almost three years now since Fine Gael T D Brian Hayes called for a Commission to examine the problems Irish men are experiencing in relation to rising suicide, unemployment, crime, relationship breakdown and fatherhood. While the idea essentially went nowhere, it did generate some discussion about men which for the most part merely revealed just how painfully awkward men tend to be in such debates. This was exemplified by Michael Ring, the Mayo Fine Gael TD, who when asked on Questions and Answers what he thought of the idea of such a Commission replied that "I never thought I'd see the day when men would be walking down the streets of Westport with a handbag over their shoulder!"
There is nothing new then about the notion of a crisis in masculinity or in just how difficult it is to get men, especially those in power, to string together a coherent sentence about it, never mind address it. In the past 15 years, social scientists have produced over 500 books on men in which "crisis" has been a central motif, and the same theme has become a staple of media reporting. Despite this familiarity, Anthony Clare has managed to produce a powerful and original book. Brilliantly researched and written, On Men assembles a huge amount of information which shows the current troubled state of men in the Western world and the rapidity with which men's lives have changed. The march of women and feminism has been such that there is now nothing that men can do that women cannot. While traditionally it was femininity which was seen as inherently weak and pathological, today it is masculinity which is the troubled gender.
In deconstructing what men essentially are, Clare puts his medical training to good use, providing the best analysis yet of the influence of testosterone - that primal symbol of Western masculine ideology - arguing that it is not the cause of aggression in men but aggravates the aggression that is already there. What then needs to be understood and changed is why this rampant aggression is there in the first place. His basic answer is that men fear women, seek to dominate and control them, as well as other men, and while they still have the social power to do so, the patriarchy is crumbling, and men know it.
A repudiation of the feminine leads men to deny their vulnerability and needs for intimacy. This results in an often tragic incompetence with their own and other men's physical and emotional distress. It doesn't get much worse than the way in which male physicians have been found to respond to cancer patients who have lost a testicle with the use of military and sporting metaphors, referring to their enforced infertility as "shooting blanks", the loss of a testicle following surgery as "a plane flying on one engine and landing safely" or "one cylinder is a good as two".
In her recent interview with Clare in this newspaper, Kathryn Holmquist regretted that he gives so little of himself to the book and remains an enigma. I disagree. This is a deeply engaged, emotionally charged book in which Clare admits to having invested too little time in friendships, is open about his own fear of - and love for - women; how he has shared in men's obsessive need to be in control and the grandiosity of placing work and career above all else.
This is a courageous, deeply intelligent book, a tour de force of such unrelenting power that it will become a key reference point in debates about men and gender politics for years to come. Clare rejects the fashionable notion that women are equally as violent as men in intimate relationships, and presents the reality of just how violent men still are to women, and children. For him the evidence suggests that divorce damages children and that parents should work harder to keep relationships intact. One consequence of increased relationship breakdown, and the rise of reproductive technologies which require men to be little more than sperm donors, is that fatherhood has been progressively diminished. Clare argues passionately that fathers do make a positive difference to child development and that men need to take, and be taken seriously enough to be given, a much more active role in nurturing. Clare regards such an active fathering role as a key civilising influence on men and a way of saving us from ourselves.
Clare's actual proposals for advancing such change are, however, disappointingly thin, with just eight pages explicitly devoted to ways "out of the crisis". What Clare wants for men is that we "become more capable of expressing the vulnerability and the tenderness and the affection we feel, that we place a greater value on love, family and personal relationships and less on power, possessions and achievement".
So do I. But the question is how can this be done? Clare's approach is essentially geared to raising consciousness and shocking us into the need for change. The big danger is that this highly critical in-yourface approach alienates the very men it should be reaching. Another (more compassionate) approach is to learn from the ways in which men have already made changes. Gay men provide an invaluable example. Clare makes the extraordinary decision to exclude them from his analysis because their manhood is so problematised that their lives are characterised by "siege", a state beyond the "crisis" he is concerned with. Homo phobia and violence certainly remain painful realities in gay men's lives, but there is now a substantial body of research which shows how many gay men have negotiated such adversities and managed to build truly meaningful lives and communities.
In our current research into Irish men's lives, Sean Reynolds and I have identified a number of creative ways in which men from different social backgrounds are meeting the challenges of change. This includes joining men's groups which provide arenas where men can overcome isolation, get support, be challenged to take responsibility for caring for their health and for others and assisted to develop the very capacity for practising intimacy that Clare desires. Some of the best "men's work" of this kind in the entire Western world is being developed here in Ireland through initiatives such as the South-East Men's Network, based in Waterford, and it is a shame that a book such as this does not give it the attention it deserves.
Such men's work is the very embodiment of Anthony Clare's vision of men taking responsibility for debating and deciding what kinds of lives we want while ensuring equality for women and children too.
Harry Ferguson is professor of Social Pol- icy and Social Work at University College, Dublin, and the author (with Kieran McKeown and Dermot Rooney) of Changing Fathers? Fatherhood and Family Life in Modern Ireland, Collins Press