Crossing into Manhood: A Men’s Studies Curriculum By Christopher ...

The modern gay liberation movement began in 1969 with the four-day Stonewall Inn Rebellion in Greenwich Village. The result was the formation of a number of politically active gay liberation organizations such as the Mattachine Action Committee, the Gay Liberation Front, and the Gay Activist Alliance. Later, in the 1990s, Queer Nation and ACT-UP emerged as prominent activist pro-gay organizations. The early gay agenda undertook the re-visioning of traditional male role ideals in order to advocate other alternative masculinities. Another group called the “effeminists” were some of the first to espouse a clear feminist gay vision in their publication, Double F: A Magazine of Effeminism, which stated:

The effeminists renounced the use of the term “gay” as a self-descriptor and criticized other men’s liberation movements as alternate forms of patriarchal domination because of their lack of support of the radical feminist agenda (Clatterbaugh, p. 139). Later, the Radical Fairies advocated a gay spirituality and an independent gay culture in which men resided in “nonmonogamous collective living [arrangements] with nonhierarchical social structures and community spaces apart from heterosexist institutions and women” (Clatterbaugh, p. 139).

Despite its heterosexual bias, the profeminist men’s movement attracted many gay men, who participated in many of the Men and Masculinity conferences because the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS) identifies with the gay liberation agenda, which states that “homophobia contributes directly to the many injustices experienced by gay … persons, and is a debilitating restriction for heterosexual men. We call for an end to all forms of discrimination based on sexual-affectional orientation, and the creation of a gay-affirmative society” (National Organization for Changing Men. Quoted from Clatterbaugh, p. 140). The gay men’s movement also has a continuing involvement with the men’s rights movements because both groups share a common concern about divorce and child custody reform.