Episode 2 - The Liberated Man - 1970's and Men's Lib

About 5 years ago or so, I don’t remember the exact date, I was messing around on the internet and I stumbled upon a Vox article talking about a reddit sub group called Men’s Liberation. It was and still is one of the dominant places where you can discuss pro feminist men’s topics on the internet. The more I got involved with the subreddit , I started to learn that the title Men’s Liberation which was already pretty easy to understand, came from somewhere else. In the 1970’s, there was a steady wave of progressive movements happening. And a lot of different ideas around norms were being questioned, and of course this came the question of male norms as well. Men, as the idea was, needed to be liberated from those norms. And they took a lot of ideas from the second wave of feminism happening at this time. Even though this movement seemed like a small dip in the pool of the progressive movement happening at the time. This specific movement will shape the discourse around men’s gender roles for decades to come. The people involved, the ideas that were shaped, and the momentum that happened will still be felt today. This is the story of the 1970’s Men’s Liberation movement