For thousands of years men as a gender have dominated this world, because for the most part men are physically stronger than women. Unfortunately, science and its statistics have proved man to be inferior to women. For example, men have a shorter lifespan than women, men are more likely to have a car accident, and women are safer drivers; some studies have gone as far as to prove that women are smarter than men. Since the 1960s women’s rights have expanded broadly in the United States and around the world, narrowing the gap of inequality. Since then, men as a gender have undergone many changes putting their manhood in question. Robert Bly, an award winning poet and writer, became a leader of the men’s movement because of his writings focused on the modern male. He illuminated masculine consciousness and men's need to reconnect with themselves and their essential masculinity. In the essay “The Community of Men,” Bly effectively communicates the evolution of the male gender through the decades, and what the ideal male should be. Many people disagree with Bly, and the standards he has set for men, but this essay will argue the positive reinforcements that Bly provides in his literature, demonstrating the reason behind his writing. In “The Community of Men,” the controlling idea that Bly argues is that contemporary men are out of touch with their own masculinity, an estrangement that causes tremendous grief and alienation. His categorization by decades of the male evolution, give the reader an accurate timetable of the deconstruction of manhood. Starting with the male model of the fifties who “was suppose to like football, be aggressive, stick up for the United States, never cry, and always provide”(Bly 339) to the current “soft” male of the nineties. Bly also attributes the decomposing of the American man to events that occurred throughout history, these events support his claim...
