Looks Back on 20 Years of Involvement : NOW’s Male Leader Battles Inequality

Robert Seidenberg is a man who has made fighting sexual inequality and sexual discrimination a large part of his life. Robert Seidenberg is also a sexist.

“There is no question about it. I don’t think any man in my generation or this one can free himself of sexism,” said the 66-year-old psychoanalyst, who was the first man to be a member of the National Organization for Women and who is president of NOW’s Syracuse chapter.

“We have been the beneficiaries of male advantage right from the beginning, without even asking for it,” he said. “It is built into the system. If you are a male certain things are open to you.

“By the time you grow up, inadvertently, without malice, you’ve sinned. You’ve taken from the system at the expense of other people--women.”

That is one of a complex web of reasons that Seidenberg has sought to improve the world--for both sexes--through his profession, through the five books and hundreds of articles he has written, and through his 20-year involvement with NOW. His wife, Faith, a lawyer, served as a national vice president of NOW during the early ‘70s. She is a member of the Syracuse chapter.

Called ‘Creative Thinker’

“He is not just an ivory-tower person,” said Karen DeCrow, former NOW national president. “He works to get his ideas done. His major contribution is the composite collection he has written, said and inspired in others. He is one of the most creative thinkers on the issue of gender that I’ve ever encountered and one of the key thinkers nationally and internationally.”

DeCrow’s words are more than passing observance. She has spent several years with Seidenberg, researching and writing a book on women who fear entering the male-dominated marketplace, traveling the country speaking to groups and holding office in the Syracuse Chapter of NOW.

Raised in a traditional Polish household, Seidenberg recalled that his father had great respect for his mother and was very devoted to her. It wasn’t until he began pursuing psychoanalysis, first at Syracuse University then at the Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis, that the gender imbalance of society first began to sink in.

“I think I remember one woman in a class of about 60. Then later, when I started my practice, I realized that 60% to 70% of my patients were women, and for many the only problem was repression,” Seidenberg said.

He began to question the Freudian principles of his mentors that portrayed women as lesser beings, and became discontent with modern psychological theories and the male-oriented tone of society.

“What was going on was sexism,” he said. “And I didn’t want to become part of that system.”

That’s when he had his first encounter with NOW founder Betty Friedan, “whose words made sense to me,” Seidenberg said.

The smoky-haired Seidenberg eventually wrote to Friedan inquiring about membership in NOW.

Second Term

Since then Seidenberg has helped put together the 200-member Syracuse branch and is serving his second term as president. He’s one of only a handful of men in NOW’s more than 800 local chapters who hold that position.

“There are always suspicions (about) why I did it,” said Seidenberg, who occasionally must endure snide remarks from extremists of both genders.

Even a local newspaper took a jab at him last year when he first was elected president of the local NOW group. In an editorial cartoon, Seidenberg was portrayed wearing a dress.

“I didn’t get upset. It showed I had attained a modicum of importance,” he said, adding that men set themselves apart in other prestigious occupations, such as priest and judge, by donning women’s clothes.

“It’s just another part of sexism that a man should get upset about being identified with women.”

For the most part, he said, NOW members cheered his election.

“It would be hypocritical of an organization that fights sexism to discriminate against a man. Hiring a male president is very consistent with the ideas the organization is striving for,” he said.

Pushed for Progress

Seidenberg has pushed for progress for women on other fronts as well. He has challenged the assumption that depressed women should routinely be given pills and has spoken in favor of treating premenstrual syndrome as a physical ailment rather than a mental disorder. He has also worked on behalf of battered women.

Much has been accomplished since Seidenberg joined the movement, but there have been minor setbacks in the years of the Reagan Administration, and there remains much to be done, he said:

“People think of the feminist movement as failing, but really the opposite is true. It has become second nature. Inexorable. It’s a tidal wave now that can’t be stopped.

“Like in the battle for racial equality, there are institutional obstacles and the resistance of human nature that will never be completely overcome. But sexual equality will mean a better life for both men and women.”