agonyaunt | Ask a Manager: Men's Group At Work

[editorial comment: oh here we go]

1. My organization has a “Men’s Forum” My organization recently sent out an email announcing its annual “Men’s Forum” and I immediately felt icky about it. To me, it feels different than a women’s forum or an ERG for minorities because it focuses on a group that, historically, is not marginalized. For context, I work in finance which has a history of “the good old boys club.” The email even mentions “men and their allies” which also feels wrong to me.

Ick, yes. What is the event’s mission? Unless it’s to be an ally to women and other marginalized groups in your field or office, what exactly is the need it’s responding to? Affinity groups exist to help demographics that have been systemically marginalized and kept out of spaces controlled by the dominant group. The point is to level the playing field in places where it’s unbalanced and good lord, that’s not men in finance.

If this “Men’s Forum” exists to provide special networking or development opportunities to men, it’s hard to see it as anything other than a hostile response to similar efforts for women and people of color.

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The discussion is of course wild. There's the "Men's Group? That sounds like the old boy's network repackaged, and/or a swipe at Women's Groups etc" side and the "Men's Groups could have legitimate uses/ it's UNFAIIIIIIR for women to have a group and men to not, you're so MEAAANNNNNNNNN and SEXIST if you disapprove in any way" side.

Annoyingly, I find myself interrogating my first response. I still think such a group needs to be considered in the context of wider society and of male-dominated industries BUT I can see possible beneficial uses people laid out BUT I am still very doubtful that those uses were either the impetus or the current practice.

Here's a comment from a commenter I had liked until now. I'm turning it over in my mind. There's a lot I disagree with, not least the "reaction against men having support" bit, but some of it does make sense to me. Is that due to past patriarchy or future potential?

Dinwar*
April 11, 2022 at 8:43 am
I disagree with Alison on #1.

First, let’s be precise in language: If you’re going to have groups based on race, sex, sexual orientation, and the like, it is discrimination to tell a group “Oh, but not you. You don’t get one.” The fact that many people are perfectly fine with such discrimination is one reason why some men feel the need to form such a group.

Second, there’s a lot of good this group could do. It’s pretty widely reported that there’s a mental health crisis among men, for example. White men account for more than 60% of all suicides, for another. There are also serious health issues that relate to men that are very under-discussed in our culture (there are a number of ways to get a lump on your testicles, for example, but the only one anyone who hasn’t gone through the experience knows of is cancer). It’s pretty widely known that we have no idea how often men suffer domestic abuse–about the only thing the data says is that it’s so under-reported that the data tell us nothing. There are also work-related issues that men face that deserve help, such as trying to find a work/life balance, dealing with toxic peers (“man up” is the only advice most of us have ever gotten), and the like.

I’m not saying men have it worse. What I am saying is that there are clear, well-documented, objective reasons for cis men to have a support group. The knee-jerk reaction against men having support is one of the causes of these issues, in fact. (Somewhat ironically, groups that are toxic offer very little in terms of actual support, causing far more damage to the men not at the top of the social ladder.)

To see an example of such an organization that’s not toxic, check out the website “Art of Manliness”. It’s more general-purpose than work-related, but it demonstrates that “group for men” and “toxic” are not synonyms. (I can’t whole-heartedly recommend it, as it leans pretty heavily Christian in ways I find obnoxious, but on the whole the good outweighs the bad.)

All that said, if this specific group is toxic, it’s toxic and that’s an issue.

I broadly agree with the points this commenter is making, but I think they're missing a big thing in the letter: LW isn't talking about a men's support group! This is a single annual event, which suggests to me that the purpose isn't social/emotional support.

Absolutely. My kid's school has been having affinity groups this spring (broadly, racially-based), and guess what - there's a white kids group, and that's fine. They don't talk about how the whites are oppressed, but how they can be better allies and understand the hurdles other groups face. Or, I have a friend of a friend whom I friended on FB specifically because he is a cis white male and kept making comments in friend's posts that were really thoughtful and insightful, and I said to myself, self, I need to see more people like this in my life, and it turns out he would host a monthly men's discussion night where the gathered men would discuss being allies, understand their privilege, understand viewpoints from outside the cisgender male perspective.

THESE ARE GOOD THINGS. This short letter is scanty on the details, but it really doesn't sound like that's what this is. In particular, if it's setting off alarm bells in other ERGs or affinity groups, that's something to pay attention to - usually minority affinity groups are like, hell yes, go and talk amongst yourselves and educate yourselves and figure this shit out so we don't have to do your 101 level work for you! If that's not their response now, that's telling.

Yeah, I feel like I mostly agree with that comment, while also agreeing with the commenters that say that in a field like finance, the odds that it's that sort of group rather than the toxic kind are fairly low (even if that was the original idea.)

I feel like the advice I'd give to the LW is something like "It's possible for a men's group to be useful, helpful, and highly beneficial to both men and the other people who have to interact with them. But if you have a strong feeling that this won't be like that, it's worth examining the reasons you have to believe this. Are there other things going on in your workplace that make it clear that it would be difficult to run a non-toxic men's group? Are there things about the way this program is designed and promoted that make it unlikely to be a group that aids with equity, diversity and the well-being of everyone in the workplace? What can you do to advocate for changing those particular things without having to come out against men in general having affinity groups?"

Yeah, there are definitely organizations that have men's groups – churches, community centers, etc. – that can be very good in a number of ways, but the benefits they have don't seem to me to be work-related (though I could be wrong – as a cis woman, I've never been in a "men's group"). It's also very much worth noting that this isn't a men's group, it's a men's event, and that seems ickier to me, since it (presumably) is less about social/emotional support and more about networking/work tips, and I don't see a benefit to excluding other genders from that.

That comment thread is quite a mix of very bad and very good.

Two things I am posting here so I am not tempted to post them there:

1. Pointing out that the workplace may be legally obligated to do this is not the same thing as agreeing that they should be legally obligated to do this! I feel like there's several thread sthere of one set of commenters saying "It may be legally required" and another set of commenters answering "You shouldn't do it" and set A replying "yes, but the company needs to obey the law" and set B replying "Why are you siding with patriarchal oppression?"

2. There are a lot of people saying that straight white men already have the equivalent of things like women's or POC or LGBT groups for the workplace, and it's things like golf days and sports teams and fraternity brothers, which is at the same time super true and super not true at all? Firstly because right now of all times, a lot of that kind of "informal" networking has been shut down; people who relied on it are suddenly shut out - this is part of *why* a certain class of powerful men say remote working is bad and needs to end. Work-sponsored things like ERGs aren't at all the same but they were more able to transition to things like Zoom because they were already more formalized, and if a company/industry structure is moving to a model where informal socializing is happening differently, they need to account for that.

And secondly, those "informal" power-brokering spaces were always designed not just to filter out people who weren't straight white men, but also to filter out people who weren't *the right sort* of straight white men. In spaces that rely on that kind of thing, being a straight white man who doesn't have the passcodes to let himself into those (due to disability, class, inability to pass as straight even if you are, whatever) while also being shut out of all the systems meant to help people who don't have that access, does in fact suck. (Is it the same as being Black or trans or whatever? No, but it still sucks.)

I don't think that having a men's group is the fix for this problem, but claiming that all men always have equal access to those spaces doesn't help anything.

(I work in an industry where men are about 10% of employees and 75% of c-suite-level management. Figuring out ways to retain and support male employees while simultaneously figuring out ways to counteract male privilege in the workplace is certainly a thing.)

Ask a Manager: Men's Group At Work

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