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This is the transcription of an interview that is the basis for an article that appeared in the June 1989 issue of Uptown Express, a Houston urban monthly. Click here to go to the text of the published article.

Text in red is my comments and was not a part of the original interview. Indented text is the interviewer; flush left text is Mr. Feit.

I was very impressed with what Mr. Feit had to say during this interview, impressed enough to join his organization. After a year or so of reading the organization's newsletter, I found it becoming increasingly silly and difficult to take seriously. Though he was eloquent and convincing in our telephone interview, the written material circulated by his organization focused on trivial matters at a time when father's rights and reverse discrimination were becoming important issues. I believe there is a place (and a need) for men's advocacy groups, and I cautiously honor Mel Feit's efforts to fill the void and hope that his organization is fulfilling a more serious role than they did at their inception.

Interviewer: Did you change your name? [Mel Feit is pronounced Male Fight, not even to mention his initials.]

MF: No, I was born with it.

When and why did you start the National Center for Men?

We started it in November of 1987. It's a year and a half old. I've been active in this movement since about 1983-84. I've been involved in other men's rights organizations, but the point is I feel now as I have all my life—I mean, as a child. This is a sort of gradual evolution. I've always felt that men have been badly discriminated against in a whole lot of ways, and I knew that early on. One reason we started the National Center for Men, as opposed to other groups that existed, is that there wasn't any other men's organization that was dealing with some provocative issues. It tended to be a situation where the other men's rights leaders were timid and ashamed of their beliefs, and there were several of us who just were not ashamed, were not embarrassed to believe in what we believe, feel confident in our beliefs and wanted to have an organization that could express those beliefs without embarrassment. People wouldn't be constantly looking over their shoulders and seeing who was disapproving of what they were saying. That's what separates us from other organizations of this kind—a commitment to sort of tell the truth as we see it and let the chips fall where they may.

You never did suffer from the male guilt a lot of people experienced when the feminist issues were brought to the front?

Well, male guilt at having treated women badly or— ?

I suppose that's the basis of it: "Oh, gee, that's true. This has been done, that has been done. Yes, I do call my secretary honey, and gee whiz she is a smart girl, and I did block her promotion because I don't like women in that position." Like a friend of mine was told when she worked in hospital administration, "If you just wore brogans I could really do things with you in this organization."

I always felt that what feminists were saying—at least a lot of what they were saying—was obvious. To me, it just didn't even need to be said. It was sort of given that women were as capable as men in anything. I didn't understand why anyone would think otherwise. It seemed to me that what feminists were saying was pretty obvious. I didn't have anything to be guilty about. What characterizes a lot of the men— We have women in our organization, too, but I'll speak of the men. What characterizes a lot of the men is that many of them started out being supportive of the women's movement. I don't think we really fully appreciated what it was, and I think a lot of us have come to be opposed now because we see feminism in a different light. It doesn't seem to be the same kind of movement that it started out to be, in our view. A lot of us were early supporters. We said sure, that makes sense. Women should be absolutely equal with men, and men should be equal with women, but we've changed our opinion of the feminist now in the last several years.

You started it on the basis of a belief that you've had since childhood, then? Who did you picture as your male model as a child?

I don't know. I had the normal kind of heroes that a young boy has growing up. I was a New York Yankee baseball fan, and Roger Maris hit 61 home runs in 1961. That was sort of a normal hero to have. What happened for me was that, as a small child, I discovered that simply because of my sex, when I got to be eighteen years old, my government was going to treat me as canon fodder, that the society I lived in could deprive me of my civil liberties and strip me of my dignity and civil rights and force me to kill other human beings, put myself in the position where I would be mutilated or maimed or disfigured for life, and that females had no obligation whatsoever to serve the country. And to me, no other sexist issue comes close. I don't think any other example of sex discrimination against men or women is in the same league with taking human beings and enslaving them and forcing them to fight war. I was a kid eight years old when I discovered this, and I was angry about it. I thought it was really unfair. And I've been angry every since. The question I ask myself is why do other young males seem to accept that. Why are they also not angry the way I've been. It doesn't make any sense. If somebody were to single you out for some accident of birth and force you into slavery and take away your freedom and put you in a very dangerous situation, you would probably be very upset about that. But men have sort of accepted this as the normal male role, and I didn't. I was very angry about that. And then from there on I was able to see other kinds of injustices.

My own sons had the same views at that age. I guess they're about your age then. How old are you?

Thirty-eight.

No, they're much younger, but the war was raging when they were eight or ten years old, and somewhere in there gaining their hormones, just anything that society said was male they began to champion. They just stopped thinking that way. But at that time, they told me that that's just something they weren't going to do because it didn't make any sense.

It doesn't make any sense, but somewhere along the line society puts a lot of pressure on men to behave like men, and one of the things that means is not to complain about your role—just sort of take it, deal with it inside. A real man doesn't complain. In some ways the credo of masculinity in this country is that if you have a problem, solve it. Don't go whining about it. So part of what happens when men grow up is that they learn to deal with these things. And I think a significant number of men deal with the burdens that were placed upon them by figuring that there were rewards. They would have to fight wars, but they would also get to be the bosses later in life. I think a lot of women didn't understand that, in many men's minds, even subconsciously, there was a sort of tradeoff, that guys figured that they had certain obligations and responsibilities unique to their gender, but that they should have certain privileges and benefits that would correspond to that. Women seemed to object to the privileges men wanted without understanding that one of the reasons that men wanted those privileges was that that was the way they dealt with having the obligations. If you were going off to fight a war and maybe you were going to die and you were going to have to kill other people, at least you could tell yourself that when you got back home you could be the boss in your own family, and that there was some sort of trade off there. I think that what happens is that the feminist woman in particular has lost sight of the obligations that have been imposed on men, the pain of the traditional male role. They have, I think, become insensitive to the burdens that men have borne.

You never went through a period of trying to adapt to that male role of making your attempt at being the male that society expected?

I don't know. I don't reject everything about the male role. The men's movement isn't about saying everything about the traditional male role is bad. There is something to be said for standing up for what you believe in and having the courage of your convictions and being assertive and being tough at times and caring for other people, providing for them. There are certain things about the male role that are good qualities both for men and women. I would think that a woman would want to be all those things as well. I never said I'm not going to do any of those things. I think of myself as a pretty tough person, but I wasn't going to be limited by that. I wasn't going to be limited, and I wasn't going to accept the injustices I perceived as a result of that role. I never tried to. I've been angry about this all my life.

I remember thinking when I was very young that I was glad I was a girl because when I grew up I could either go to work or stay home, and I sure felt sorry for all the guys because they didn't have any choice.

That's another example. To me—

I felt it was an okay trade-off to take a lower paying job if my option was not to work at all if I didn't want to. Even as a young married person, if my neighbors who were male decided they wanted to stay home and wash diapers and tend babies and not go to work, they would have been horribly ostracized. Not so much now, but they certainly would have twenty years ago.

They certainly would have. Women have had the greater choice to work or not to work. But I think still— I mean, what we say in the men's movement is that when a woman gets married, she basically has three choices: She can work full time, or she can stay home part time and work part time, or she can stay home and be a full-time homemaker. We say a man also has three choices: He can work full time, or he can work full time, or he can work full time. Or maybe he can work overtime, maybe that's another choice he has. But the point is that I don't think men still have those choices, because even if— I've never met a woman who would want to bear the greater financial burden in a relationship. Maybe it's unique to New York women, I don't know. But New York women certainly size men up by the amount of money that they can make, and most women here still expect to "marry up." They expect to somehow improve their financial circumstances when they enter into a relationship with a man. So it's a serious problem for men who don't make a lot of money still.

I know a number of people who do it, that do take the equality position, but not the woman taking the full burden, but rather they've reached a point of equality. And I've known couples who have taken turns. I knew a couple that the first ten years they were married was devoted to promoting his education and career and what not, and the agreement at the outset of the marriage was that they would go in ten-year cycles, and since he had the greater earning power, he would go first. And they stayed married long enough for the cycle to change. And he was a house husband. They didn't deal with their neighbors very much. They didn't have anything in common with them.

Sure, of course. There are obviously examples of this. I think those people deserve a lot of credit because they are going against the social values and trying to do what is right. But I just think on balance still a man when he enters the world out there doesn't have the same range of choices that a woman has to either stay home or to pursue a career. Now of course there is a price that they pay for that and that is that they somehow get expected to be the one to stay home with their children, and you can argue reasonably that a woman doesn't have the same choice to just simply go out there and pursue a career full time and not take time off to— Most men will sort of expect that the woman will— There is a trade-off, and I'm not— None of what I have to say should mean that— I don't see this as black and white. I don't see that women have perfect lives, but I do think that for twenty years we haven't noticed the way that men have suffered too much in the media. That's what we're doing, trying to point it out.

You say that there have been other men's groups. I frankly have never heard of any of them.

Well one of the reasons that you probably haven't heard of them is they haven't done very much because, you see, there is this fear. I mean I go out on these television programs and I wear skirts, and we can talk about that, but there are other guys that want to do that but won't. There are other guys who want to talk about control— I talk about very provocative issues regarding sexuality, rape, and abortion and a whole range of issues that some people hate me for. What happened with other men's groups is that men were just too ashamed. They were too afraid to even talk about what they thought or felt. Behind closed doors, we would talk about these things, but you couldn't get any of these other guys from men's groups to actually go forward and say these things. Now I think that's a disservice to women as well, because somehow we are expecting women to read our minds and kind of like know why we have these feelings without really ever getting out there and saying it. The reason that you heard about our group and not others is that the television talk shows, in particular, welcomed this approach that we had. This is the guiding approach—the main principle of our organization is we will tell the truth as we see it, no matter what. If there are people who don't like it, well we're sorry, but we're not going to get up there and say something that is practical just to avoid controversy. The result of that is just the opposite of what some men in the men's movement thought. These guys who were afraid thought that if we went out there and, you know, if I walked out there in a skirt that I would be booed off the stage and no one would take me seriously. The result was just the opposite. In some way, people respect integrity and courage even if they disagree with you. Even if they think you are full of it, they can see you as a person who is standing up for what you believe and respect that. And that's why our group has got the attention. People are willing to watch our representatives because they know they are getting something that's honest.

In your day-to-day life, do you prefer a traditional male dress, and wearing a dress is not particularly a comfort thing but rather something to get you the attention you need?

No, no, no, no, no. I don't think— I want to say this very carefully. I don't think it was the skirt that got me the attention. I think it was the commitment to stand up for what I believe in that got me the attention. And one of the things I do believe in is that men should have the same range of choices that women have in their lives and that means being able to make sensual and soft and colorful and artistic and festive and creative choices in how they dress. I see women have an incredible range of choices that are denied men routinely. In my own life I wear skirts. Not all the time. I wear pants, too. If it's January in New York, I'm going to wear a pair of pants, but if it's July and August, it's hot and sticky; I'm more likely to wear a skirt than a pair of pants, and I think that men should have the right to express this sensuality. There is something about softer clothing that brings out something about elegance and grace in a person and I don't think men experience that. What I'm saying to you is that I do it in my own personal life sometimes—I don't always do it—and I'm not afraid to show that to people publicly. It wasn't so much the skirt that got the attention I don't think, because I wouldn't have been able to sustain the attention. People would have seen it as freaky. They would have watched once and then I would have never been invited back on the show. But they didn't see it as freaky. I think what people saw was that, hey, here's a man who believes in real equality, and he's not afraid to show it to people. He's not afraid to stand up for what he believes in even if he's going to get ridiculed. And it was that commitment to idealism that I think got most of the attention.

As a child, were your expectations that you were going to have to play some traditional male roles, or did you make that decision that you were going to fight it then?

I knew that I hated the narrowness of the male role and I knew I wanted to fight it, but I didn't really start actively fighting it until I got into my thirties, because you know changing society isn't such an easy thing to do, and it takes building of character and courage. It was sort of eating away inside of me, but I didn't do anything about it until I got into my thirties.

Were you carrying on a traditional role in society? You had a corporate job, or —

No, I never did have a corporate job. I worked as a social worker. I've been an actor and a writer, and so forth. So I've never really conformed in that role. In my relationships with women they were always as non-sexist as possible. Dating relationships — I would not court women in the usual way. We would go out and we would split expenses or whatever and my relationships with women were always based on a kind of real equality, or an attempt to be completely equal. So when I say— You know, I always believed in a very non-traditional life in terms of male roles; it's just that I wasn't actively out there fighting it politically until I got into my thirties. But personally, I always tried to be as— I have long hair, for example. I've had long hair since I was in college.

And you reserve the right to cut it.

I reserve the right to cut it, but here's one of the things I want to make— I think most people see these issues of hair length or skirts as being trivial, not up to the level of the kind of concerns that women face, let's say not being paid the same amount that men are— First of all, I think that when women make equal sacrifice they are paid the same, but that's another thing we can talk about. The point I want to mention here is that I don't believe this is trivial at all. I think we're talking about men being able to have the freedom to express the full range of their humanity—every aspect of their personality—and to have the same choices that women have. So equality and creative self-expression—you know, being able to be all you can possibly be—those are very important parts of life. Now the result of men not being able to do this, I believe, is that we die eight and a half years earlier than women. I think that this narrow role that limits and confines men that says don't be so emotionally expressive, this kills us. Not only do men die earlier than women, but they commit suicide about three to six times more frequently, depending upon what age range you look at. They are incarcerated 25 times more frequently. They suffer more in almost every major category of disease, including heart attack, cancer, stroke, alcoholism. They work in jobs with a 600% higher rate of injury. I mean when you look at statistics on how people are doing in life, men are not doing very well. I think that one of the reasons is that men don't have these kinds of creative outlets that women have. If you're a woman—I don't mean this to sound trivial, because it's not trivial—but if you're a woman and you're dealing with the frustrations of life, even something as simple as changing the color of your nail polish can make you feel better, can make you feel just a little bit better. Men don't have those kinds of creative options in their lives, and as a result of that, the cumulative effect of that over a lifetime is that it kills us. So you know when people might read this article and say, Gee these issues are kind of trivial. I don't think it's trivial that when I go for a job the employer will tell me that I have to mutilate myself, I have to cut off a part of my body in order to be gainfully employed. I mean I've gone for job interviews where there are women with long hair or short hair or medium length hair or blue hair in some cases and here I walk in with long hair and I'm told that I can't have a job, can't earn a living. So these issues are very serious I think and they're not trivial at all.

I hadn't thought of them as trivial. I was just thinking that anytime someone has something important to say and they're having difficulty getting the audience, to be able to wave a red flag and get someone's attention— Of course, holding their attention is, like you say, a different story.

You're right. I guess the question remains to be answered whether we will be able to hold attention over the long period. The fact is that when we do television programs—we've done lots of television talk shows—that the ratings are always high. The shows are always repeated. It's not because we're especially talented. It's because I think people know that something's wrong, that the man's side of this equation hasn't been heard, and that there is a real hunger, secretly on the part of men, and even women, to hear about it. So the reason that we might sustain the attention of the public is that we have some valid points and we're saying it courageously.

Have you read Herb Goldberg's books?

I have. All the other guys in the men's movement say some valid things. I know Herb and I've read his book and I've seen him talk, and my impression is that Herb tends to say that guys have to learn to be more open and more expressive. We men have to learn to be more sensitive and nurturing and so forth. And the different approach that I take is that I don't think it's men's fault.

[Apparently, I ran out of time to transcribe the entire interview verbatim. At this point, the document takes on the appearance of interview notes.]

. . . the pressures are imposed by society . . .

I don't think women want their men to be that liberated. I think women are pretty comfortable with the situation as it is now. I base that on my own experience with women who are turned off to my liberation.

. . . dated a lot of women over the last couple of years who are extremely liberated . . .

Goldberg says, Men, you have to be more mature.

I speak to women and say, You need to be more supportive of the man in your life who wants to be more open and vulnerable. Don't reject him if . . . A woman gets scared when a man gets vulnerable, and that's why men don't open up.

. . . not married . . . would like a woman in my life . . .

I'm attracted to a certain kind of feminist woman. By that I mean the kind who is liberated and isn't afraid to be all that she can be. And so I figured, innocently, that those kinds of women would like me . . . What I have found over the last several years is that that's exactly not the way it is.

When I decided to wear skirts, I was in a relationship with an incredibly liberated woman. She went to the gym and worked out and she had a good job. She was a professional woman, she owned her own home, she had an assertive personality, she demanded to be treated as a liberated woman. She wasn't going to put up with anybody treating her as any kind of second-class citizen, and I figured this is the one kind of a woman who would say . . . she rejected . . .

That's been the case with every woman that I've met over the years. I have never met a single woman, not one, who was willing to say that she wants to have a relationship with me based on a real mutual sharing of equal rights. So that accounts for some of the anger that I feel, and it's not like I'm going out with women who are in a more traditional role.

They feel their femininity is threatened with a man who says, I want to be sensual and softer. They haven't yet learned that to share those qualities with a man would enhance those so-called feminine qualities. Instead, they begin to feel that their territory is being threatened, is being encroached upon, and they react the same way that a lot of men used to react when women first went into the work place.

[Women say] this area of creative sensual expression is ours and we don't want to share that with men. . . . the same thing happening, only in reverse . . .