oh! BROTHER

EE {xposing the phallacies of the pro-feminist men's movement

Overview, Original Website Index, and Document Guide

UDCM-00 | Nikki Craft Archival Project Prepared August 2026

About this guide. This expanded UDCM-O0 introduces the surviving oh! BROTHER materials, explains the disputes they document, provides a concise chronology and a detailed file-by-file index, and reproduces the original website welcome page as a facsimile appendix. The source files themselves remain unchanged.

What the oh! BROTHER Series Documents

The oh! BROTHER series preserves Nikki Craft's website-based record of conflicts inside the pro-feminist men’s movement, particularly around Changing Men magazine and the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS). The documents ask a direct question: what happens when men and organizations that publicly identify themselves as feminist or anti-sexist are confronted with evidence that their editorial choices, internal practices, or political decisions contradict those claims?

The central group of records concerns Changing Men’s Summer/Fall 1992 “Sex & Sexuality” issue. As described in the preserved writings and correspondence, that issue contained a classified advertisement for the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), Jeff Beane’s first-person essay “First Loves,” and Duane Allen’s “An Invitation to Transgressive Sex.” Craft and several other feminist and pro-feminist activists argued that these materials treated power, age, consent, pornography, and sexual exploitation in ways fundamentally incompatible with pro-feminist politics. The resulting dispute moved quickly from criticism of a magazine issue to a broader struggle over editorial control, organizational responsibility, censorship, accountability to women and children, and the meaning of “pro-feminism” in practice.

A second group of records concerns NOMAS'’s decision to hold its 1991 conference in Tucson during a national boycott of Arizona after the state refused to recognize the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The preserved documents describe opposition from John Stoltenberg, Vernon McClean, and others; criticism of how NOMAS handled anti-racist dissent; and later reflections on the organization’s leadership and accountability. The final records extend the critique into 1997, when John Stoltenberg revisited the Arizona controversy and Adam Thorburn resigned from NOMAS after a later conference.

Taken together, the series is not simply a collection of accusations about one publication or one organization. It is a record of people attempting—sometimes from inside the organizations themselves—to force stated principles into contact with actual conduct. The documents preserve disagreements over whether criticism would be heard or edited away, whether institutional reputation would take priority over accountability, and whether men who called themselves pro-feminist would accept direction and criticism from feminist women and from people challenging racism within their own organizations.

How the Documents Fit Together

UDCM-02 and UDCM-03 contain Craft's two-part “So Much Slime, So Little Time,” the central analysis around which much of the 1992 correspondence revolves. UDCM-05 through UDCM-08 preserve

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contemporaneous responses and the editorial struggle over whether Craft's analysis would be published in substantially the form she had negotiated with editor Rick Cote. UDCM-06 is especially significant because Chuck Niessen-Derry wrote from within the NOMAS leadership structure and demanded organizational action. UDCM-07 and UDCM-08 then show the dispute over editorial authority from three different positions: Michael Biernbaum’s proposed restructuring, Craft's refusal to undergo a second major editing process, and Sally Roesch-Wagner’s independent defense of the negotiated article.

UDCM-09 and UDCM-10 document the Arizona-boycott controversy from two later vantage points. Craft's 1993 commentary focuses on the reported failure to publish Vernon McClean’s memorandum and on the marginalization of anti-racist dissent. Stoltenberg’s 1997 message confirms his opposition to the Tucson decision, explains why he withdrew public identification with NOMAS, and reflects on what he saw as a collapse of moral leadership. UDCM-11 and UDCM-12 broaden the record beyond the original Changing Men controversy by preserving later resignations and statements from men who concluded that NOMAS had failed to meet its own claims.

UDCM-04, Craft's 1981 “Open Letter to Men Who Say They Believe in Freedom and Equality,” provides the earlier political framework. It predates the Changing Men controversy by more than a decade and makes clear that the later conflict did not arise from a sudden or isolated objection. The letter challenges liberal and leftist men to examine the distance between their public commitments to equality and their unwillingness to confront pornography, violence against women, and male privilege in their own political communities.

Recurring Issues Across the Series

Accountability versus affiliation: The records repeatedly distinguish between identifying as feminist or pro-feminist and accepting concrete responsibility when one’s publication, organization, or colleague causes harm.

Power and consent: The 1992 documents insist that discussions of sexuality cannot be separated from age, power, social inequality, and the capacity to consent.

Editorial control: The correspondence shows how disputes over length, tone, structure, legal risk, and “usefulness” can become disputes over whether the critic’s evidence, history, and political voice remain intact.

Institutional self-protection: Several documents argue that NOMAS and Changing Men responded to criticism by defending process, reputation, or internal authority rather than first addressing the substance of the criticism.

Racism and selective solidarity: The Arizona-boycott records ask why an organization claiming to oppose racism declined to honor a boycott called by civil-rights organizations and how dissenting voices were treated afterward.

The limits of symbolic pro-feminism: The later resignations and activist statements describe an organization that, in their view, increasingly substituted conferences, rhetoric, academic discussion, and internal status for accountable political work.

Concise Chronology

Event documented in the series

Nikki Craft writes “Open Letter to Men Who Say They Believe in Freedom and Equality” (UDCM-04).

1987 As recounted in UDCM-02, a Changing Men editor gives Craft the premiere issue of Uncommon Desires; Craft later begins undercover correspondence after an advertisement for the publication appears in Changing Men.

1989 As recounted in UDCM-03, Craft confronts George Lakey at a Pittsburgh NOMAS conference about his participation on a NAMBLA conference panel.

Late 1990-1991 | The Arizona tourism boycott and NOMAS's decision to hold its 1991

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Event documented in the series

conference in Tucson produce internal opposition. Vernon McClean writes a memorandum supporting the boycott; John Stoltenberg opposes the Tucson decision and later resigns a task-group position.

Summer/Fall Changing Men issue 24 publishes the materials that trigger the central

1992 controversy, including a NAMBLA advertisement, Jeff Beane’s “First Loves,” and Duane Allen’s “An Invitation to Transgressive Sex.”

September- Melissa Farley, Chuck Niessen-Derry, Nikki Craft, Michael Biernbaum, Rick

November 1992 | Cote, and Sally Roesch-Wagner participate in the criticism and publication dispute documented in UDCM-05 through UDCM-08.

1992-1993 Craft’s “So Much Slime, So Little Time” is identified in the preserved version as reprinted from the ICONoclast and Changing Men issue 25; the text also states that it appeared in off our backs. In January 1993, Craft publishes commentary on the McClean memorandum and the Arizona controversy (UDCM-09).

March 1997 John Stoltenberg writes a retrospective message about NOMAS, the Arizona boycott, and the organization’s later handling of the Changing Men controversy (UDCM-10).

October 1997 Adam Thorburn resigns from NOMAS after the Portland M&M conference (UDCM-11).

Later website The oh! BROTHER website gathers these writings, letters, and statements

record into a public documentary record. The exact launch date of the website is not established by the files in this package.

Detailed File-by-File Guide

The descriptions below explain the specific role of each item without substituting for the original documents. Each entry includes the corresponding page on the original nostatusquo.com oh! BROTHER website.

UDCM-00: Welcome to the oh! BROTHER Website

The preserved two-page website welcome page is the original entry point to the series. It displays the oh! BROTHER banner, identifies the site as “Exposing the phallacies of the pro-feminist men’s movement,” and links the principal articles, letters, and later NOMAS records. Its closing text conveys the frustration that shaped the project: the conflict appeared unlikely to end while a small group could continue to speak publicly in the name of a much larger movement.

This expanded guide incorporates the original page’s organizing function while adding the context and descriptions an unfamiliar reader needs. A facsimile of the original two-page capture appears at the end of this document.

Original website page: https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/index.html

UDCM-01: oh! BROTHER - Exposing the Phallacies of the Pro-Feminist Men’s Movement - Site Banner

The original website banner is a compact political graphic as well as a title device. The deliberate “phallacies/fallacies” pun signals that the project is not a general history of the men’s movement but a feminist challenge to contradictions within organizations and publications calling themselves pro-feminist. Preserving the banner separately documents the visual identity of the website and the tone in which the series was presented.

Original website page: https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/index.html

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UDCM-02: So Much Slime, So Little Time, Part | - The Transgression of Pro-Feminism

Part | is the central investigative and political essay in the series. It begins with Changing Men issue 24 and argues that the magazine’s treatment of sexuality violated the anti-sexist principles it claimed to represent. Craft examines the placement of a NAMBLA classified advertisement, Jeff Beane’s “First Loves,” Duane Allen's “An Invitation to Transgressive Sex,” and a Libido advertisement that she describes as dehumanizing and grotesquely juxtaposed with material for sexual-abuse survivors.

The article then traces an earlier connection between Changing Men and Uncommon Desires, a publication advocating adult male sexual access to girls. Craft recounts being given its premiere issue by a Changing Men editor in 1987, copying and sending it to law-enforcement officials, later seeing an advertisement for it in Changing Men, and conducting undercover correspondence with its editor. Part | uses that history to argue that the NAMBLA advertisement was not an isolated mistake but part of a larger failure to recognize and confront pedophile organizing and its use of progressive language.

The surviving PDF is a print capture of a very long single webpage. It ends by directing readers to Part Il. Original website page: https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/somuchslime1.html UDCM-03: So Much Slime, So Little Time, Part II - The Progressive Connection to Pedophilia

Part Il expands the argument from Changing Men’s editorial decisions to the political strategy of pedophile organizations seeking legitimacy through association with feminist, gay, pacifist, civil-libertarian, and other progressive movements. Craft recalls confronting pacifist George Lakey at a 1989 NOMAS conference about his appearance on a NAMBLA conference panel and argues that progressive credentials could be used to give abusive politics a respectable front.

The essay uses the satirical inventions NAMBLAH and REPKA to expose what Craft identifies as a free- speech double standard: institutions willing to defend pedophile advocacy as discussion or imagination would be far less tolerant of equally hypothetical retaliatory speech from survivors and their allies. The satire is followed by specific demands for Changing Men: exclude pedophile organizations from its pages, establish accountable editorial standards, publish feminist analyses of power and consent, document offenders and networks, and confront sexual exploitation directly.

The final sections highlight activist responses by Melissa Farley and Mike Echols, including Farley's signs opposing NAMBLA at the 1992 San Francisco Gay Pride Parade and Echols’s undercover exposure of a NAMBLA chapter. The piece closes by defining real pro-feminist action as opposition to male sexual entitlement rather than the performance of transgression.

Original website page: https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/somuchslime2.html

UDCM-04: Open Letter to Men Who Say They Believe in Freedom and Equality

Written in 1981 and inspired by Andrea Dworkin, this open letter establishes the political foundation for the later oh! BROTHER materials. Craft addresses liberal, leftist, and activist men who support struggles against war, racism, and state repression but do not bring the same urgency to pornography, rape, battering, and the sexual killing of women.

The letter challenges civil-libertarian defenses of pornography, compares men’s acceptance of feminist direct action with earlier antiwar tactics, and asks men not to work for, write for, advertise in, distribute, or financially support pornographic corporations. Its presence in this series shows that Craft's later criticism of Changing Men and NOMAS came from a long-standing demand that male allies apply their stated principles to women’s lives and to their own institutions.

Original website page: https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/openlettereng.html

UDCM-05: Melissa Farley Speaks Out About Changing Men Magazine

This file contains two letters by Melissa Farley. In the September 29, 1992 letter, Farley critiques Duane Allen’s “An Invitation to Transgressive Sex” for separating pleasure from power and for treating sexual

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violation as though a “transgressive consciousness” could transform oppressive practices into feminist ones. She argues that the article ignores the realities of exploitation and the unequal social position of women and disempowered gay men.

In the November 6 letter, Farley responds to the possibility that Changing Men might print her criticism while refusing Craft's article. She states that publishing her letter alone could falsely suggest openness to feminist criticism, asks that her letter be withdrawn if Craft's analysis is censored, and proposes self- publishing Craft’s article together with her own and Chuck Niessen-Derry’s letters. The two letters document both the substantive feminist criticism of issue 24 and the collective resistance to an editorial solution that would isolate less threatening criticism from the more comprehensive account.

Original website page: https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/farley.html

UDCM-06: Chuck Niessen-Derry on Jeff Beane, the NAMBLA Advertisement, and Changing Men

Chuck Niessen-Derry’s October 14, 1992 letter is an internal pro-feminist challenge addressed to the NOMAS Leadership Collective, Changing Men, and other concerned readers. Writing as a member of the collective and as someone who worked with men who abused women and children, he analyzes Jeff Beane’s “First Loves” in detail. He focuses on Beane’s description of sexual encounters with younger boys, the imbalance between a seventeen-year-old and a twelve-year-old, and the romanticized presentation of conduct Niessen-Derry regarded as exploitative and abusive.

Niessen-Derry argues that NOMAS could not distance itself from Beane because Beane was a prominent organizational figure and that the publication of Beane’s essay beside a NAMBLA advertisement implicated both Changing Men and NOMAS. He calls for editorial resignations or accountability, a public response from Beane, financial support for organizations working against child sexual abuse, and NOMAS disassociation from Changing Men unless the magazine addressed the harm.

The letter ends with a structural proposal: NOMAS should create a paid committee of feminist women with authority to provide guidance and hold the organization accountable. It also connects the controversy to the organization’s earlier handling of the Tucson conference, showing that the writer understood both episodes as tests of whether NOMAS would “clean its own house.”

Original website page: https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/Niessen-Derry.html

UDCM-07: Michael Biernbaum and Nikki Craft Editorial Exchange

This file preserves two letters from the decisive stage of the publication dispute. On November 1, 1992, Michael Biernbaum tells Craft that her submission should be divided into a critical letter and a separate article. He describes his editorial goals as clarity, usefulness, non-redundancy, and avoidance of insinuation, slander, character assassination, and threat. He also characterizes some of the pressure surrounding publication as bullying and proposes continued communication by mail, fax, or through Sally Roesch-Wagner.

On November 3, Craft replies to editor Rick Cote that she had already completed a grueling negotiation and complied with the conditions attached to the version they jointly approved. She rejects Biernbaum’s extensive restructuring and refuses a second major editing process after the first agreement, calling it “editing by double jeopardy.” The exchange makes visible the conflict between an institution’s claimed editorial process and an author's insistence that successive editors not erase the history, voice, and political structure of a negotiated article.

Original website page: https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/biernbaumcraft.html

UDCM-08: Sally Roesch-Wagner Responds to NOMAS

Sally Roesch-Wagner’s November 9, 1992 letter provides an independent contemporaneous assessment requested by Rick Cote. After reviewing Biernbaum’s proposed changes, Craft’s cover letter, the version negotiated by Craft and Cote, and Changing Men issue 24, Roesch-Wagner argues that the negotiated

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article must be respected because it emerged from unusually difficult circumstances: the editors criticized by the article were also editing the criticism.

She describes Craft's essay as historically significant and potentially transformational, compares its importance to major feminist writings by Robin Morgan and Andrea Dworkin, and says that removing the earlier Uncommon Desires history would destroy the article’s integrity. Roesch-Wagner directly rejects the description of Craft’s piece as a witch hunt or libelous conspiracy-building, argues that Biernbaum’s revision gutted its voice and political power, and asks that disagreements be answered publicly rather than resolved by silencing the contested material.

The letter is crucial because it is neither Craft's original accusation nor an editor’s defense. It records a third party’s close reading of the documents and her conclusion that the strongest parts of the essay were precisely the parts most at risk of removal.

Original website page: https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/Roesch-Wagner.html UDCM-09: Vernon McClean Memorandum to NOMAS Council, with Nikki Craft Commentary

This January 12, 1993 item is Craft's commentary on a memorandum Vernon McClean reportedly wrote to NOMAS Council members in early 1991. According to Craft's account, McClean—identified as chair of the Committee on Eliminating Racism—supported the Arizona boycott and declined to attend the Tucson conference. Craft focuses on the pressure he reportedly received, including the claim that his absence would place NOMAS in an “embarrassing position,” and on the reported failure of Brother magazine to publish his memorandum while printing multiple responses attacking John Stoltenberg’s boycott position.

Craft argues that withholding McClean’s position made it easier to portray the boycott criticism as detached from the views of people of color and marginalized both McClean and Stoltenberg. She calls for an inquiry, explanation, and apology, and treats the episode as evidence of a broader pattern in which demands for accountability were reframed as intimidation while organizational leaders used their own power to contain dissent.

Archival note: The webpage states that McClean’s memorandum was attached, but the surviving three- page PDF contains Craft’s commentary only; the memorandum itself is not reproduced in this file. The source materials also use both “McClean” and “McLean” spellings.

Original website page: https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/McLeanNOMAS. html

UDCM-10: John Stoltenberg on NOMAS and the Arizona Boycott

In this March 2, 1997 message to the profem-| mailing list, John Stoltenberg confirms the outline of the 1991 Arizona controversy. He explains that after learning of the tourism boycott he asked why NOMAS would hold its conference in Tucson when even the National Football League planned to honor the boycott. He says he removed NOMAS references from his public biography, resigned a task-group position, and was personally discredited by council leaders for his opposition.

Stoltenberg later submitted a memorandum comparing NOMAS'’s willingness to break the Arizona boycott with its presumed unwillingness to break a boycott of Colorado over anti-gay legislation. He says he believed some version of a resolution acknowledging the Arizona decision as a grave mistake may have passed, but that council leadership never informed him. Looking back, he identifies the boycott controversy and the later Changing Men publications as part of a larger vacuum of moral leadership and concludes that NOMAS no longer spoke for him.

Original website page: https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/stoltenberg.html

UDCM-11: Adam Thorburn Letter of Resignation from NOMAS

Adam Thorburn’s October 8, 1997 resignation letter follows the M&M conference in Portland. He objects first to an opening ritual that he regarded as a compulsory religious ceremony, arguing that participants were neither informed in advance nor given a genuine choice. He then objects to NOMAS providing Robert Bly a platform despite views Thorburn considered contrary to pro-feminism and gender justice.

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Thorburn’s strongest objection concerns Michael Kimmel’s conference remarks dismissing anti- pornography arguments and saying pornography usually causes masturbation rather than rape. He argues that the statement trivialized feminist scholarship and contradicted the work of NOMAS’s own Ending Men’s Violence Network. Concluding that the problems were not isolated incidents but reflected the organization’s direction, he resigns as co-chair of the Pornography and Prostitution Task Group and as an alternate to the NOMAS Council.

Original website page: https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/adamthorn.html UDCM-12: U.S. Activists Speak Out About NOMAS

This file gathers short statements from Chuck Niessen-Derry, John MacDonald, Steven Hill, Billy Warters, Dexter Guerrieri, and Dick Bathrick. Although the speakers differ in emphasis, the statements converge on several criticisms: NOMAS functioned too much like an old-boy network or social club; its national structure consumed energy without producing sufficient grassroots work; it had difficulty recognizing male privilege and practicing accountability; and its handling of the Arizona boycott damaged confidence in the organization.

The statements also document different forms of withdrawal. Some contributors say they never joined, allowed membership to lapse, redirected their work to other anti-sexist organizations, or declined to support NOMAS financially. The file is valuable as a collective record because it shows that criticism did not come from one individual or one controversy alone.

Archival note: The captured webpage header says “John Stoltenberg on NOMAS,” but the actual page contains statements by multiple U.S. activists. The cleaned UDCM-12 filename reflects the content rather than the repeated webpage header.

Original website page: https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/nomasquotes.html

Scope, Source, and Preservation Notes

e The UDCM package consists primarily of PDF captures of pages from the original nostatusquo.com oh! BROTHER website, together with the original GIF banner. These are historical web records, not newly typeset editions of the underlying correspondence.

e The source pages contain occasional typographical errors, spelling variations, inconsistent capitalization, and webpage titles that do not always match the actual content. This guide follows the clean UDCM filenames while noting discrepancies that affect identification.

e The guide summarizes what the files themselves support. It does not attempt to resolve every disputed claim, reconstruct missing attachments, or supply dates that are not present in the surviving records.

e Some materials discuss child sexual abuse, pornography, racism, and other disturbing subjects and use explicit language. They are preserved and presented for feminist critique, historical documentation, research, and public accountability—not endorsement.

Related Resources Original oh! BROTHER website index: https://nostatusqguo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/index.html

No Status Quo home page: hitps://nostatusquo.com/index.html Nikki Craft page at No Status Quo: hitps://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/Nikki/index.htm!

Léo Thiers-Vidal, “From Masculinity to Anti-Masculinism” (listed on the original index but not included as UDCM-01 through UDCM-12): https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHERYThiers-Vidal.html

REPKA companion page linked from “So Much Slime, So Little Time, Part II”: https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/REPKA.html

Nikki Craft uploads at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/@nikki_craft/uploads

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Appendix: Facsimile of the Original UDCM-00 Website Capture

The following two pages reproduce the original “Welcome to the oh! BROTHER Website!” PDF capture without altering its content. Welcome to the oh! BROTHER Website! https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/index.html

Exposing the phallacies of the pro-feminist men's movement

PROFEMINIST ARTICLES

FROM MASCULINITY TO ANTI-MASCULINISM: Analysing the social relations of sex from an oppressive social position. Léo Thiers-Vidal

OPEN LETTER TO MEN WHO SAY THEY BELIEVE IN FREEDOM AND EQUALITY by Nikki Craft

Changing Men SO MUCH SLIME, SO LITTLE TIME

The Transgression of Pro-Feminism by Nikki Craft

Melissa Farley Sally Roesch-Wagner Biernbaum/Craft Exchange

Letter to Changing Men and NOMAS Leadership by Chuck Niessen-Derry

Adam Thorburn's October 1997 Letter to the NOMAS Council Adam Thorburn

NOMAS, Vernon McClean, Racism & the Arizona Boycott by Nikki Craft

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Welcome to the oh! BROTHER Website! https://nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/index.html

John Stoltenberg on National Organization for Men Against Sexism

U.S. Activists Speak Out About National Organization for Men Against Sexism

The short answer to your (perhaps rhetorical) question is: no, it will never end. (at least not until NOMAS disbands --and at this point I'm not sure *what* that would take, since some of these clowns seem to think that as long as they can muster three allies in a room they're entitled to speak for half the population of North America.) --

Nikki Craft This page brought to you by NOMUS & Always Causing Little Unrest

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