What Men Really Want

The setting is a corporate conference room, the walls lined with law books, in a New York skyscraper not far from Wall Street. A group of 15 men gather for a revolutionary meeting. They are the newest edition of an old American story: Lonely visionaries, ridiculed by society, persevere in efforts to break shackles of oppression for disadvantaged group. Only this time there’s a difference. This time the huddled mass yearning to breathe free is: the American male. The new revolutionaries come from all boroughs, all walks of life, all marital statuses to this plush room to be men together. No, it’s not a feminist’s nightmare, or a made-for-TV movie: It’s the monthly board meeting of the National Organization for Men.

“Men’s rights is the coming revolution,” insists Sid Siller, president of NOM and author of a column on men’s rights for Penthouse. There are a couple of hundred men’s-rights groups —most of them with just a handful of members—sprinkled throughout the country like yeast, waiting for men to rise up and throw off the shackles of female oppression. The National Organization for Men, which claims 3,300 members across America, is one of the largest and most ambitious.

About the Author

Maggie Gallagher

Maggie Gallagher is the author of four books on marriage and is a longtime contributor to National Review.

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The setting is a corporate conference room, the walls lined with law books, in a New York skyscraper not far from Wall Street. A group of 15 men gather for a revolutionary meeting. They are the newest edition of an old American story: Lonely visionaries, ridiculed by society, persevere in efforts to break shackles of oppression for disadvantaged group. Only this time there’s a difference. This time the huddled mass yearning to breathe free is: the American male. The new revolutionaries come from all boroughs, all walks of life, all marital statuses to this plush room to be men together. No, it’s not a feminist’s nightmare, or a made-for-TV movie: It’s the monthly board meeting of the National Organization for Men.

“Men’s rights is the coming revolution,” insists Sid Siller, president of NOM and author of a column on men’s rights for Penthouse. There are a couple of hundred men’s-rights groups —most of them with just a handful of members—sprinkled throughout the country like yeast, waiting for men to rise up and throw off the shackles of female oppression. The National Organization for Men, which claims 3,300 members across America, is one of the largest and most ambitious.