She Says, He Says : Issues: Feminist Marianne Walters thinks the men’s movement is a backlash against women. But Robert (‘Iron John’) Bly says there’s more to it than chest-beating. Can anyone win this war of words?

Allan Decker was more than sad. He felt abandoned and afraid. “I feel like a child whose parents are arguing and are thinking of splitting up,” he wrote in the current issue of the Family Therapy Networker.

But rather than his parents, the 60-year-old Jacksonville, Fla., social worker was referring to Robert Bly, father of the mythopoetic men’s movement and author of the bestseller “Iron John,” and Marianne Walters, mother of feminist-oriented family therapy and director of the Family Therapy Practice Center in Washington, D.C. The two leaders have been battling in print since Walters published an article criticizing the men’s movement in the March/April issue of the Networker.

In “The Codependent Cinderella and Iron John,” Walters wrote that the men’s movement constitutes a backlash to feminism, blames women for “every sort of social and emotional malaise” and is “deeply embedded in the conservative politics of the Reagan-Bush years.”

(Bly’s version--”the father-son movement deals with mentors and grief and exploring men’s minds through myth and poetry”--and is distinguished from other types of men’s movements, which, Walters wrote, include: “the right-wing movement, which often is antifeminist; feminist men, who are often anti-Bly; the men’s rights movement, mostly concerned with issues of divorce and custody; the Marxist men’s movement, concerned with class issues; the gay men’s movement and the black men’s movement. . . .”)

In the next issue, Bly wrote in to deny that the men’s movement is about power at women’s expense.

“The emotion that comes up most in the men’s conferences is shame,” he wrote. “A shame at abandonment by their fathers, a shame for the aggression practiced by so many men against so many women, a shame inculcated early in the church or by sexual or physical abuse. . . .

“What I protest in articles of this sort is their tremendous defensiveness in the face of a new idea. Thirty years ago when feminism brought forward lively ideas, many men wanted to cling to the old ideas. Now some women are doing the same.”

He called Walters’ linking of his writings to Bush and Reagan slanderous, noting his own anti-war writings and activity. If Walters had wanted to know the facts regarding what he said were other erroneous details in the article, “she could have called me on the phone,” he wrote.

Answering his answer in the Networker, Walters stated that in a patriarchal culture, the men’s and women’s movements cannot be compared, “just as in a racist culture the NAACP cannot be considered in the same terms as David Duke’s National Assn. for the Advancement of White People. . . . While individual men may find solace in the men’s movement, the struggle to get in touch with one’s inner life or tender self is not the same as the struggle to build a world where one might never need to fear sexual harassment.”

She wrote that he could equally have called her if he disputed her sources.

“His reaction (to the article) and personalizing it in such a way is exactly what I meant by my critique,” she said by phone from her home in Washington, D.C. “The movement is not a movement at all. It’s all about ‘me.’ ”

She said she found his letter petulant.

Bly said in an interview from his home in Minneapolis that he found Walters’ note “symbolic of the extreme paranoia that anything men do will be evil. It’s not helpful at all.

“The basis of her argument is, if women join a movement, it will be toward justice; if men join a movement, it will be to increase oppression. That’s absolutely outrageous. . . .

“Marianne is confusing what we stand for with men’s rights, which often has an edge against women, especially those who talk about custody in court.”

Bly said Walters, like his previous feminist critics, misunderstands the men’s movement as a result of simplistic media reports of men running naked through the woods and beating drums. He said he has usually ignored the criticism, thinking the images, like the “bra-burner” labels on early feminists, would eventually fade away. But since they haven’t, he decided to join the fray.

He noted that some feminist writers, such as Naomi Wolf, now say they are tired of hearing men demonized. Said Bly: “I think it’s very important that men and women try to be fair to each other so that the younger ones are not polarized by the extreme statements of the older women.”

Walters is 64. Bly is 66.

He also pointed out: “She is the one that began it. I haven’t said a word.”

The dispute was too much for Decker, a believer in both leaders’ points of view.

“The letter Marianne had written was pretty scathing,” he said in an interview. On the other hand, he agreed that Bly might be more sensitive sometimes. “Some stuff he’s written about the Indians where the 13- or 14-year-old boy is taken away from his mother and initiated by the men, and Bly says the women go off and play canasta or have a kaffeeklatsch, is not too cool.”

He has met both leaders and found them equally charismatic and forceful. If only, he said, they could sit down and listen to each other’s points of view face to face.

He might be advised not to hold his breath.

A mutual friend has proposed a meeting when Walters visits Bly’s home state of Minnesota for a scheduled teaching stint. But “no such thing is planned and doesn’t seem to be particularly interesting,” Walters said. “What is exactly the purpose?”

If Walters comes to Minnesota, Bly said he would be glad to meet with her. So far, neither has placed a call to the other.

But Decker’s mentors agreed on at least one point. Neither wants to be a parent to Decker.

“I wish he had real parents,” Walters said.

“Adults have fights,” Bly said. “That’s the way it goes.”