His Story/Her Story: A Dialogue About Including Men
and Masculinities in the Women's Studies Curriculum

by Beth Berila, Jean Keller, Camilla Krone, Jason Laker, and Ozzie Mayers

In "Feminist Phase Theory: An Experience- Derived Evaluation Model," Mary Kay Thompson Tetreault proposes that Women's Studies programs evolve through five stages: the familiar absence of women at stage one; noting the absence of women at stage two; complementary but equal conceptualization of men's and women's spheres and personal qualities at stage three; reclaiming women at stage four by using women's activities, not men's, as the "measure of significance"; and the fifth stage, "multifocal, relational scholarship" that provides a "gender-balanced perspective [ . . . ] which serves to fuse women's and men's experiences into a holistic view of human experience" (372). Given that feminist scholarship is entering its fourth decade and that more Women's Studies programs are including the term "gender" in their program names, it is imperative that such programs take a step back and ask: has the field of Women's Studies developed to the point that we should move to stage five and explicitly embrace Men's Studies as an essential part of our programs?