FROM THE EDITOR
Letting Go of Privilege By Rob Okun
T
o listen to the vitriol coming from a chorus of men whose voices regularly clog the airwaves, it’s easy to conclude there’s an epidemic of foul mouth disease threatening to overrun the country. The harsh voices warning of Armageddon during the health care debate, and the bitter diatribes directed at President Obama, as well as civil rights veteran John Lewis and liberal Barney Frank (both members of Congress, one an African-American, the other gay), have primarily been male. (Okay; there is also Sarah Palin, a pit bull with lipstick.) While the media highlights mean-spirited expressions of manhood, there is another side of the story—men around the world working for gender equality. Under the umbrella of MenEngage (www. menengage.org), there are hundreds of groups and organizations that understand the crucial need for men and women to question conventional attitudes and expectations about gender roles in achieving gender equality. Among their efforts is a men and gender equality policy project under way in Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, China, Croatia, Mexico, South Africa and Tanzania. Founded in 2004, MenEngage is dedicated to involving men and boys in working to end violence against women and in redefining old-style notions of manhood. As a member, Voice Male shares the alliance’s core beliefs that manhood is not defined by how many sexual partners men have, or by using violence against women or men. It’s also not defined by how much pain men can endure, or by how much power we can exert over others. It certainly isn’t defined by whether we’re gay or straight. Rather, manhood is defined by building relationships based on respect and equality; by speaking out against violence in society; by having the strength to ask for help; by sharing decision-making and power; and by how much we as men are able to respect the diversity and rights of those around us. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Sounds achievable. So what gets in our way? The power, privilege, and sense of entitlement we enjoy as men. Taking a hard look at privilege we’ve long enjoyed is a “manly” thing to do, if by manly we mean courageous, thoughtful, and caring. What happens for men when we question the entitlement we inherited simply by being born in male bodies? What shifts
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So tightly have men been holding on to what we perceive as our birthright, few of us have considered what treasures await us if we let go. for us when we no longer assume that social conditions favoring us are right, or just, or “normal”? A transformation begins. A door opens, an invitation to explore our inner lives is extended, and it’s suddenly not quite as scary to spend time exploring our feelings. We become more available to ourselves and to women, men, children—everyone in our lives. So tightly have we been holding on to what we perceive as our birthright, few have considered what treasures await us if we let go. How to compare discovering one’s heart opening versus needing open heart surgery? How to equate surrounding ourselves with symbols of wealth versus surrounding ourselves with circles of friends? A new Men and Gender Equality Policy Project report by MenEngage members notes, “In far different ways than women and girls, boys are also made vulnerable by rigid notions of gender and masculinities.” Conventional expressions of dominant masculinity, ample research confirms, drive dangerous rates of alcohol, tobacco, and substance abuse, car accidents, occupational illness, and suicide. In such a world, everyone loses, not just the men. “For the most part,” the report says, “programs and policies have not fully tapped into men’s and boys’ self-interest for change,” particularly in the positive experiences many men report as they become more involved in caregiving and family relationships. Careful not to pit the needs of men against the needs of women, the report promotes forging alliances among “women’s rights activists, civil society groups working with men (and male leaders), the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender [communities] and other social justice movements.” Noting the common interests all these groups have in ending gender inequalities, the report advocates taking up gender equity as a cause not only for women and girls “but also to reduce the pressures on men and boys to conform to harmful, rigid, and violent forms of manhood.”
That pressure to conform—combined with a sense of privilege—is a dangerous combination. While Voice Male has long reported on both, we cultivate the middle ground where men are exploring life after letting go of the pressure and giving up the privilege. This issue is a good example of that exploration. We are previewing two new books on fatherhood, Don Unger’s Men Can: The Changing Image & Reality of Fatherhood in America (page 14) and John Badalament’s The Modern Dad’s Dilemma: How to Stay Connected to Your Kids in a Rapidly Changing World (page 16), due out later this spring. Longtime important voices in the profeminist men’s movement—Voice Male national advisory board members and contributing editors Michael Kimmel, Jackson Katz, and Michael Kaufman—expose the Dockers “Wear the Pants” campaign in responses to a story beginning on page 10. Lillian Hsu’s imaginative reaction to degrading images of women on magazine covers—BEAUTIFUL Just the Way You Are”—is another side of the story of how consumer culture seeks to portray the genders (page 18). And Imani Perry’s insightful critique of the issues neglected in the film Precious (page 8) suggests much to consider in our understanding of the social conditions women and men endure. Filmmaker Tom Keith’s provocative “When Men Challenge Sexism” (page 20) is a thermometer gauging the temperature in a not yet “post-sexist” society; and therapist Charlie Donaldson offers a hopeful account of men growing emotionally in unexpected places (page 24). Finally, in a story on “Boys to Men” (page 27), Richie Davis looks at young men on the journey to healthy manhood, a journey MenEngage members are following closely around the world. The director of the Equal Justice Institute, Bryan Stevenson, has famously said, “The opposite of poverty isn’t wealth. The opposite of poverty is justice.” If a corollary exists about men and privilege it might read, “The opposite of men giving up privilege isn’t powerlessness; the opposite of men giving up privilege is liberation.” May this spring be a liberating one for us all.
Rob Okun can be reached at rob@voicemalemagazine.org.
Spring 2010
Volume 14 No. 49
Changing Men in Changing Times www.voicemalemagazine.org
7
Features 7 We Can Change the Culture of Rape By Patrick McGann and Neil Irvin
10 Who Wears the Pants? The Dockers Man-festo
18 Women’s Bodies, Men’s Minds 8
By Lillian Hsu
20 Men, Misogyny and the Future When Men Challenge Sexism By Thomas Keith
23 A Call to Men and Boys Masculinity and Peacemaking
27 Young Men’s Journey to Healthy Manhood From Boys to Men By Richie Davis
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Columns & Opinion 2 4 5 8 14 16 24 31 32 34
From the Editor Letters Men @ Work ColorLines Fathering Fathering Men and Health
A “Precious” Paradox By Imani Perry Fathering in the 21st Century By Donald N.S. Unger From Dilemma to Deliverance By John Badalament Men Coming in From the Cold By Charlie Donaldson
Books and Film
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Resources Poetry
Atonement By Michael Burke
ON THE COVER:
Voice Male contributing editor Byron Hurt and his wife, Kenya Crumel, became parents for the first time on August 4, 2009. He is pictured with his daughter Maasai Amor Crumel Hurt Photo: Devin Kirschner - www.devinphoto.com
Spring 2010
Mail Bonding Stop Feminizing Men!
Rob A. Okun Editor
Lahri Bond
Art Director
Michael Burke Copy Editor
Mary Kate Schermund Zazie Tobey Elizabeth Tuttle Interns
National Advisory Board Juan Carlos Areán
Family Violence Prevention Fund
John Badalament All Men Are Sons
Eve Ensler V-Day
Byron Hurt
God Bless the Child Productions
Robert Jensen
Prof. of Journalism Univ. of Texas
Sut Jhally
Media Education Foundation
Bill T. Jones
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co.
Jackson Katz
Mentors in Violence Prevention Strategies
Michael Kaufman
White Ribbon Campaign
Joe Kelly
The Dad Man
Michael Kimmel
Prof. of Sociology SUNY Stony Brook
Charles Knight
Other & Beyond Real Men
Don McPherson
Mentors in Violence Prevention
Mike Messner
Prof. of Sociology Univ. of So. California
Craig Norberg-Bohm
Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe
Chris Rabb
Afro-Netizen
Haji Shearer
Massachusetts Children’s Trust Fund
Shira Tarrant
Prof. of Gender Studies Cal State Long Beach
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Editor’s Note: In response to a column by Voice Male editor Rob Okun in support of the White Ribbon Campaign—which invites men not to condone, commit, or remain silent about violence against women—the following correspondence arrived in the editor’s email inbox. I read with interest about the work you’re doing concerning male violence against women. I do not condone violence against women. My concern is that you’re turning men into guilty sissies. Those men who took a [White Ribbon Campaign] pledge [at halftime during a University of Massachusetts basketball game] should be embarrassed. Women want strong men who can protect them. They do not want wimpy pansies who pour their feelings out in front of audiences. Violence against women is wrong. But taking a public pledge? Should they also pledge that they will not molest children? Kill people? How about a public pledge against public urination in parking lots? Enough of your grandstanding! Let men be men and stop feminizing our male population. Marc S (via email)
Growing Up with Voice Male
A few years ago I was browsing the net looking for feminist resources and after following several links I stumbled on a link to Voice Male. Needless to say, I was thrilled that there is a magazine like this. Thank you so much for your wonderful magazine and the message you send to all men and women. I have recently given birth to a little boy and I want him to grow up with Voice Male in his home. Thank you for making it possible for us. Marzena Buzanowska Woodmere, Ohio
Men’s Social Terror
I was moved by the Brendan Tapley article, “The Male Straitjacket” (Winter 2010). How deeply, sadly true, the social terror that we men carry about our great capacity to love others of our own gender, and how profoundly influential that fear is in just about our every human interaction, not just around hate crimes and the like. And how under-examined, except, I suppose, in the few small forums like Voice Male and the occasional counseling session. When I felt how strongly I reacted—powerfully both drawn and repelled—by the idea of physically, non-sexually expressing love for, and being loved by, a fellow man without fear of committing masculine suicide, I realized how much I grieve for not having it. I wanted it, originally, from my father. I expect my sons want it more readily from me. I continue to want it with friends. With them and with my sons, I will try to be much more conscious of the straitjacket operating in us. John Sheldon’s piece also spoke to me—threw a beam of light down there in similarly dark areas of my psyche where I actually recall constricting my spirit, sacrificing my up reaching nature, to protect my father’s ego and position. A child has a lot of power, chi, spirit, maybe even wisdom, that a parent has to feel big enough to nurture. Seems like, given this sort of cultural conditioning, we should all undergo counseling before even thinking of having kids. Jonathan von Ranson Wendell, Mass.
Letters may be sent via email to www.voicemalemagazine.org or mailed to Editors: Voice Male, 33 Gray Street, Amherst, MA 01002.
VOICE MALE is published quarterly by the Alliance for Changing Men, an affiliate of Family Diversity Projects, 33 Gray St., Amherst, MA 01002. It is mailed to subscribers in the U.S., Canada, and overseas and is distributed at select locations around the country and to conferences, universities, colleges and secondary schools, and among non-profit and non-governmental organizations. The opinions expressed in Voice Male are those of its writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the advisors or staff of the magazine, or its sponsor, Family Diversity Projects. Copyright © 2010 Alliance for Changing Men/Voice Male magazine. Subscriptions: 4 issues-$24. 8 issues-$40. For bulk orders, go to voicemalemagazine.org or call Voice Male at 413.687-8171. Advertising: For advertising rates and deadlines, go to voicemalemagazine.org or call at Voice Male 413.687-8171. Submissions: The editors welcome letters, articles, news items, reviews, story ideas and queries, and information about events of interest. Unsolicited manuscripts are welcomed but the editors cannot be responsible for their loss or return. Manuscripts and queries may be sent via email to www.voicemalemagazine.org or mailed to Editors: Voice Male, 33 Gray St., Amherst, MA 01002.
Men @ Work A Safer World for Women
Kevin McCullough and Stephen Baldwin promoters of “true masculinity.
Űber Masculinity on the Rise?
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ctor Stephen Baldwin has a message for the millennial generation: Jesus is cool, Jesus is rad, Jesus will kick your butt, Jesus will help you kick the butts of secular liberals. Yet while Baldwin seeks to be the hip new face of evangelicalism, promoting the Jesus of skateboarders and cool kids, beneath his radical chic is the ideology of the old men behind the Cold War–era John Birch Society and Christian Crusade. So wrote Sarah Posner in an article posted on Alternet. Together with Christian activist and radio host Kevin McCullough, Baldwin has launched a youth-targeted forprofit Christian media company, Xtreme Media, LLC, and the radio program Xtreme Radio with Stephen Baldwin and Kevin McCullough. The aim of Xtreme Media, according to Baldwin, is to create “a content reality we want to utilize to fire up the conservative movement to stand up and push back louder and more ferociously.” Addressing a 2008 religious-right conference, the annual Values Voter Summit sponsored by FRC Action, Baldwin explained that he uses “extreme sports” to recruit young evangelicals “because I believe the way to ensure a better America in the future is make more Christians.” At religious right conferences across the nation, Baldwin struts before young and not-so-young audiences, deploying his über-masculine Christianity as a rebuke to the Hollywood liberals he claims are ruining America. Kevin McCullough is the brains behind Xtreme Media, a point Baldwin readily admits. A prolific writer and soughtafter speaker on the Tea Party and Christian right circuits, McCullough is the author of two books, The Kind of Man Every Man Should Be: Taking a Stand for True Masculinity, and MuscleHead Revolution: Overturning Liberalism with Commonsense Thinking. Their radio show is syndicated by Fox News Radio, the American Family Association and Christian media giant Salem Communications. “We are the hands of the Lord Jesus in this realm,” Baldwin told the Values Voters. “And I don’t know about you…I’m puttin’ some boxing gloves on mine.” To read a longer version of Sarah Posner’s article go to Alternet.org.
The organization A Safe World for Women is inviting participation in an international campaign aimed at getting a million people to call for worldwide justice for women. The campaign is focusing on March 8, 2011, the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. The organization will present a petition with signatures to the United Nations calling on the UN and all world governments to enact or enforce laws against violence towards women. A Safe World for Women says its aim is to end violence in the world, with a particular emphasis on sexual violence. To learn more, contact mistymiller4asafeworld@yahoo. com; (607) 241-2750, or visit http://asafeworldforwomen.org/ endorsement/sw_endorseform. html.
The Testosterone Election Effect Researchers at Duke University and the University of Michigan examined the testosterone levels of students following the 2008 presidential election. Men who voted for John McCain exhibited significant decreases in testosterone upon learning that he lost, whereas the testosterone levels of men who supported Barack Obama were stable. These were among the findings of the study “Dominance, Politics, and Physiology: Voters’ Testosterone Changes on the Night of the 2008 United States Presidential Election,” as reported in the Boston Globe. This effect remained even
after controlling for political values, intensity of support, alcohol consumption, and social environment. Meanwhile, despite having political feelings similar to men, women exhibited no significant difference in testosterone levels regardless of which candidate they supported. The findings are consistent with earlier research showing that male testosterone fluctuates in response to winning or losing dominance contests. What researchers would have learned from testing male Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees fans after the Sox won the 2004 American League Championship sadly remains a mystery.
“Rhymes” on iTunes Byron Hurt’s masterful film, HipHop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes is now live on iTunes. The film, which deconstructs the misogyny and homophobia in hip-hop, is available for download from the movie/documentary section on iTunes. Hurt, a member of Voice Male’s national advisory board, is working on a new film, Soul Food. He still speaks frequently about issues related to masculinity and manhood. He is encouraging viewers of BB&R to help promote the film on iTunes. The link is: http://itunes.apple.com/ WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/ viewMovie?id=350088022&s=1 43441.
Women, Work and Families “Our Working Nation: How Women Are Reshaping America’s Families and Economy and What It Means for Policymakers” is a new report offering a comprehensive look at the American woman and how her work has transformed today’s workplace. “Our Working Nation” grew out of a collaboration between the Center for American Progress and The (Maria) Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation. It explores key transformations in families, workplaces, and society, noting: [continued on page 6] Spring 2010
Men @ Work Visit our new website voicemalemagazine.org for the latest news and updates
New Orleans hotel owner offered to pay for the students to come to New Orleans and use one of his hotel facilities for their prom.
Congo Men Create New Peace Alliance
• For the first time in American history, women now make up half of U.S. workers. • Mothers are now the primary breadwinners—making as much as or more than their spouse or doing it all on their own—in nearly four in 10 families. • Nearly half of families with children consisted of a male breadwinner and a female homemaker in 1975. Today, that number is just one in five. • In 1975, single parents made up only 10 percent of U.S. families with children. Today, the number of single-parent households has doubled to one in five. Written by Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Center, and Ann O’Leary, a senior fellow there and executive director of the Berkeley Center for Health, Economic & Family Security, the new report is described as a roadmap offering practical suggestions to help American workers and families meet the dual demands of work and family. The recommendations in the report are designed, the authors believe, “to help families by strengthening our economy and enhancing the well-being of our parents and their children… [B]y laying out specific, tangible action items for lawmakers and businesses, this report gives policymakers and business leaders the tools they need to update today’s workplace.” The Center for American Progress is a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to an America that ensures oppor
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tunity for all by working to find progressive and pragmatic solutions to significant domestic and international problems.
Mississippi Misguided A Mississippi school district canceled this year’s prom at Itawamba Agricultural High School following the Mississippi American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) request that the school allow a lesbian couple to attend. The school cited “distractions to the educational process caused by recent events” as reason for canceling the event, but 18-yearold Constance McMillen, a Constance lesbian who McMillen wanted to bring her girlfriend to the prom, said the decision was based on “retaliation” for speaking out. The ACLU sued the high school in U.S. district court for northern Mississippi. “All I wanted was the same chance to enjoy my prom night like any other student,” Constance McMillen said. “But my school would rather hurt all the students than treat everyone fairly. This isn’t just about me and my rights anymore—I’m fighting for the right of all the students at my school to have our prom.” If the school refused to reinstate its prom, which was scheduled for April 2, the students had another option. After hearing about the students’ predicament, a
In the midst of the horrific violence visited on women there, a new network of Congolese men has formed to combat gender injustice. “Our vision is to have a peaceful Congo where anyone finds joy in life without discrimination,” said Ilot Alphonse Muthaka, a spokesperson for the group. The Congo Men’s Network, COMEN, was one outcome of a training of men from 17 countries held in the Netherlands last December. Officially launched on March 8, International Women’s Day, COMEN said that approximately “1100 cases of sexual violations are recorded each month” in the Congo “with the majority of victims…girls between 10 and 17.” What that means, Ilot Alphonse said, is an average of 36 women are raped every day. In acknowledging that Congolese women live in a state of
“prolonged terror” —and are victims of violence in many forms—COMEN is urging men “to reflect, meditate and pray for our daughters, sisters, mothers and wives who continue to suffer the most shameful abuse and cruelty ever known to humankind.” And they are urging the international community to support ending the immunity perpetrators have long enjoyed. “We suggest that women’s and human rights organizations, and those who work to promote equality are supported—both technically and financially—to continue their outreach and awareness of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325.1820 on women, peace and conflict,” as well as CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.” COMEN pledged its commitment to promoting “gender equality in our communities while providing support to women in general in the fight against injustice and gender-based violence” because they believe without gender equality “peace and development will be impossible.”
We Can Change the Culture of Rape
Phil Date
By Patrick McGann and Neil Irvin
E
veryone would agree that the gang rape outside Richmond (Virginia) High School last fall was horrific. While this criminal act is particularly troubling because of the large number of perpetrators and witnesses, the incident should not be viewed in isolation. According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN), a sexual assault occurs every two minutes in the United States. In Men Can Stop Rape’s view, rape happens because we as a country have not committed to creating cultures of prevention focused on sexual and dating violence in our schools and communities. If we pay attention to who commits rape, we see that the majority of assaults are perpetrated by men attacking women and other men. The majority of men do not commit sexual violence and therefore are potential allies with women. By providing a blueprint for transforming bystanders into active agents of social change, we mobilize young men across the country to create cultures of rape prevention in their schools and communities. What gets in the way of prioritizing creating these cultures nationwide? Victimblaming, for one. We worry that people will hold the young woman in Richmond accountable for her assault, especially since there were reports in the media that she had been drinking alcohol. No rape survivors are ever at fault for their assault, whatever the circumstances. To place responsibility on her is a way of
diverting responsibility from the young men who committed the rape. Outsiders typecasting sexual assault as occurring in communities with troubled youth serves as another way of not addressing rape as a social issue. In an article in the Contra Costa Times last October, one student was described as being deeply disturbed that all Richmond High students were described as animals in response to the assault. There were 400 students at the prom who did not commit rape. And there were female and male students who took steps to call the police. What enabled them to act in a humane manner? These students should be part of the story. So, what can we do? First, we need to understand that preventing rape is broader in scope than currently believed, that it involves females and males, and that it is based on respecting our cultures and ourselves. Historically, preventing sexual assault has been thought of in terms of females engaging in risk reduction, such as walking in pairs or dressing conservatively. For lasting change to occur, however, men and women can prevent sexual violence by challenging the attitudes and assumptions that dehumanize women. In the Contra Costa Times article, recent Richmond High graduate Atianna Gibbs was quoted as saying, “That could easily have been [the assailants’] sister, their mom. Nobody deserves that.” She’s right. Her comment suggests it is easier to hurt someone who is of no importance to us than someone who is. This act of dehumanization
is an attitude connected to rape and other forms of violence. Rape clearly shares this dynamic with racist violence and gay bashing, among other abusive acts. Fathers can serve as role models of healthy masculinity for their sons and daughters by treating everyone with respect and empathy. Mothers and fathers can discuss with their children what consent and healthy relationships look like. They can become involved with groups like PTAs to work to ensure there are multiple approaches schools can engage in to create rape prevention cultures, including: classroom curricula, after-school groups, teacher trainings, and public education campaigns. Parents should support their sons’ involvement with youth programs that encourage healthy masculinity and relationships, like Men Can Stop Rape’s middle school and high school Men of Strength Clubs. Through the clubs, young men choose to define their own masculinity by evaluating whether messages about manhood, like “Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” play a role in creating unhealthy and unsafe relationships. They learn skills to speak out effectively when they see attitudes and behaviors that degrade women and girls. Club members translate their curriculum lessons into public education and peer education, uniting a wide cross-section of the community—students, parents, educators, administrators, and business leaders. The young men in the club pledge to be men whose strength is used for respect, not for hurting. Men and women can prevent rape by sharing responsibility and by recognizing that if our cultures are going to be healthy, everyone must play a part in caring to make them so. If we want healthy cultures, empathy must occupy the center of a culture’s core, nonviolence must be a shared value, and everyone must matter. Patrick McGann, PhD, is vice president of communications for Men Can Stop Rape in Washington, D.C. Neil Irvin is Men Can Stop Rape vice president of programs and a member of the Forrest Knolls PTA of Silver Spring, Maryland. A version of this article appears on PTA magazine’s website, http://www.pta. org/3675.htm. To learn more about Men Can Stop Rape, go to http://www.mencanstoprape. org or write, info@mencanstoprape.org Spring 2010
ColorLines
A “Precious” Paradox By Imani Perry hese are rising unemployment strange days and imprisonment. indeed. We are That was troubling. But firmly into the then again, it is easier 2 1 s t c e n t u r y, to fire off a blog post or and yet the 1980s provide a commentary are haunting us. For about a movie than it African Americans it is to write a concise is yet again a decade of response to a complidream and deferral. cated web of policy, Back in the eighties, law, and economics. for the young Black However, I believe the and college educated, film elicited so much the doors of corporate engaged response America and other precisely because it professions opened highlighted the chalup and broadened the lenge of this moment spectrum of the Black when it comes to race middle class like never in America. before. But also, back The film tells an in the eighties, crack individual story, a cocaine and the afterpoignant one, about math of deindustrialan abused young ization crippled areas woman in Harlem in of concentrated blackthe 1980s. If we attend ness in major urban to the individual story, centers. fictional though it may Now in the 21st be, our hearts go out “We are tired of the story of century, a new Black to Precious. We see elite floods the popular in her story personal pathology we see yet again in imagination as Capitol resilience, possibility, Precious. We want a story that Hill, the president and healing. Those are his administration good things. The film reveals the laws and policies and become more and more also tells a collective economic conditions that produce colorful. But also now, story. The story it tells in the 21st century, the is about the devastaconcentrated poverty and recession hits Black tion that the eighties its violence.” communities hardest, wrought on Black and at the intersection communities, and the of devastating rates of failure of the public imprisonment, joblessschool system to ness, and inadequate provide a path out for education lies a critical, “the underclass.” hurting, mass of Black In both the collecAmericans. tive story and the indiThen came the vidual story, there is movie Precious. truth. There is a real The film, released in Precious out there. The the fall of 2009, elicited story is fictional, but it a flurry of responses. is human. The problem The debates over the film is that fictional stories, were complex, nuanced, impassioned. In fact, among the Black intel- especially ones on film, don’t just stand as individual stories, but they ligentsia there seemed to be more discussion about Precious than there do “representative work.” They become part of the way we make sense was about President Obama’s education agenda, the stimulus package, or of the world in which we live. The story of one novelist or filmmaker’s
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imagination becomes the story of entire groups of people or “types” of people. This is especially true when the kind of social location depicted in the story is remote from the experience of the majority of the viewers. On the one hand, many of us who are familiar with the way the story of Black America in the eighties was told, and the way the story of the rise of imprisonment in contemporary Black America is being told, are frustrated with the spectacle of Black violence, deviance, and dysfunction that appears over and over again. We are tired of this story of pathology that we see yet again in Precious. Instead we want a story that reveals the laws and policies and economic conditions that produce concentrated poverty and its violence. We also yearn for the stories of those who sustain humanity and decency in the face of devastating poverty and marginalization. We would prefer for those stories to be told because they are, after all, far more representative of Black life than the wreck that is Precious’s life. And so, we balk at a film like Precious, rhetorically asking: Doesn’t it just recycle those old images of Black pathology? And isn’t it reviving those stories just when we are beginning to suffer so much again, just when we don’t need a convenient explanation of “they are pathological” to facilitate the nation turning its back on the responsibility to provide conditions for all citizens to lead productive lives as participants in the democracy and economy? On the other hand, some of us want to embrace a film like Precious because it highlights a kind of suffering that our society fails to respond to. Children who are poor and of color are inadequately protected in our society. They are more vulnerable to predators, more likely to be victimized on the street and in school, and less likely to have families that are able to marshal resources to deal with trauma, mental illness, and addiction. At the same time, poor, emotionally scarred parents who become abusers have virtually no resources to repair themselves. So when we see a movie like Precious, we applaud it for encouraging sympathy and
investment in young women like Precious. We think, “Yes, the reality of her life deserves to be depicted; maybe it will inspire action.” The film does both kinds of work on the audience at once. Strange indeed. When it comes to race the challenge of this moment is for critically thinking members of this society to consider the implications of symbolism (like the Black president, or the Oscar-worthy dysfunctional, sexual abusing welfare mother played by Mo’nique) at the same time as we consider the messy, complicated content of our society, without assuming that these things have a clear or consistent relationship to each other. Precious demands we bring more to the table than just an analysis of it as a piece of art. If the film stands alone, it gets deployed and interpreted every which way. But if we use the film to open the door to conversations about society, ones that are filled with knowledge, data, and careful analysis, rather than mere anecdote and fiction, then it can do some useful work in our social and political lives. Perhaps it can inspire solutions to problems of representation and policy challenges.
Imani Perry is a professor in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop (Duke University Press, 2004) and the forthcoming More Terrible and More Beautiful: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the U.S. (New York University Press, 2010) www. imaniperry.com. A version of this article first appeared on Afronetizen, which provides substantive news and information on and of relevance to people of African descent. www.afronetizen.com.
Spring 2010
The Dockers Man-ifesto
Who Wears the Pants?
D
ockers khakis had become synonymous with the “soulless office cubicle and suburban capitulation.” So says Jennifer Sey, Dockers, senior vice president of global marketing, responding to criticism for its ad campaign, “Wear the Pants.” Introduced before the holidays last year, the ads struck a nerve. According to company research, Sey wrote, “Men have suffered 80 percent of the layoffs in the last year. Women outnumber men in the workforce for the first time... Women also outnumber men in higher education.” The culture, Sey says, “heralds the ‘manbaby’—best represented by the leads in beer commercials (he always chooses beer over his girlfriend)…who does his own thing, which is apparently nothing. He loves video games and bongs and he shuns obligations. These pop culture man-babies are unkempt, unfit, have no direction and seemingly no pride. Sure they are funny. I laugh as much as anyone. But our culture has elevated this type of immaturity amongst men to unconscionable heights. Aren’t men insulted by this man-baby phenomenon?” The corporate antidote? The “Wear the Pants” campaign. What follows is an excerpt from Sey’s article, posted on mommytracked.com. Is it a lot to ask a company to be at the forefront of social change? Maybe. But I’d venture to say that companies have an obligation to be a part of it. Levi Strauss and Company (which owns Dockers) has done so for many years: first company to integrate factories in the south in the 1960s before it was legally mandated, the first Fortune 500 company to offer benefits to same sex partners in the early 1990s and the only company in California to file an amicus brief with the courts against Proposition 8. The men’s movement is underway. There are academics that study it (“Gender Studies,” formerly the domain of feminist theory, seems to have shifted to include Male Studies)… all focused on what is driving the epidemic of underachieving young men and what we can do about it. It’s not absurd to think that Dockers, a brand with a predominantly male constituency, could participate in heralding positive change. The [Wear the Pants] campaign has generated heated and profound talk amongst consumers. 10
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The general factions are: 1. Feminists. Some are angry, claiming that by asking men to wear the pants we are asking women to step back in time to when women couldn’t literally or figuratively wear pants. 2. LGBT community. Some have interpreted the efforts as promoting very traditional and damaging notions of masculinity, a retro ideal… 3. Christians. Some are interpreting our statement as championing traditional gender roles. They like this. 4. Lots of other people who are straight, gay, male, female who interpret it as a little bit true. A little bit funny. Something to think about. As a mother, wife, professional woman, writer, feminist, former N.O.W. intern and longtime LGBT friend, here’s what I think… Men have been at the center of practically every scandal of the last decade. From sports (Tiger Woods, Barry Bonds) to politics (John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford) to the economy (it was men, after all, at the helms of the banks, the hedge funds, the car companies), to corporate malfeasance (Enron). Boys, our future men, are struggling in school. Dropping out at alarming rates, suffering from ADHD at several times the rate of girls. We all have a lot to gain from men getting on track and standing up with authority to say: We’re going to embody a new masculine ideal built around integrity, accountability and ethical behavior. We denounce
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frivolity and excess in favor of utility and purpose. We’re taking care of our families and the people we love. We are great dads and husbands and friends and boyfriends. We embrace sensitivity and empathy and behave chivalrously towards men and women alike. We will maintain our collective sense of humor, but we’re going to be serious human beings that contribute to the world in a positive manner. Women aren’t perfect. Just ask my husband. I can be impatient, petty, humorless, demanding, unforgiving. But, speaking in overt generalities, men have just fallen off the wagon of late. The way it works in my house is pretty non-traditional—I work full time, my husband does most of the kid caring-for while taking on part time gigs. It is an equal albeit unconventional partnership. I certainly don’t want to go back to the days of yore when men ruled the roost. But I wouldn’t mind if rude young men stopped pretending they didn’t see pregnant women on the bus and maybe offered up a seat to a tired lady with sore feet. And I wouldn’t mind if men in leadership positions took their responsibilities on with integrity. And I for sure wouldn’t mind if my own two boys grew up to be strong and loving and polite and able to clean up their own rooms. Yep, I want them to wear the pants. Just like a lot of the women I know seem to be doing in today’s world. —Jennifer Sey [FOR MORE DOCKERS COMMENTARY BY MICHAEL KAUFMAN AND JACKSON KATZ, GO TO PAGES 12 AND 13]
What Do Real Men Wear?
retty much every day someone sends me some link to some YouTube video, a new commercial, or a blog post that lowers the bar even further for men. During the Super Bowl, we were imagined as such henpecked weenies that we went shopping with our partner instead of watching “the” game (which is, really, any game), or so downtroddenly politically correctified that our only recompense for being nice to her friends and her mother, recycling and putting the toilet seat down is an utterly retrograde “muscle car” straight out of Miami Vice. Clearly Madison Avenue believes we need help in retrieving our manhood from the dustbin of emasculation. And they have just the restorative products for us! Ordinarily, I see such cultural effluvia as signs of progress. Advertising is often a rear-guard action trying to recapture something that has already changed. There’s an old axiom that what we lose in reality we re-create in fantasy. So as our world is becoming more gender equal, and as we, men, are—for the most part, and with some noisy exceptions—increasingly, quietly, accommodating ourselves to it, we’re fed a steady stream of sexist and homophobic images as a sort of running commentary on how far we’ve come—and how far we have yet to go. The latest version is the Dockers khaki ads. Here, too, guys are depicted as emasculated wimps who have lost their manhood. But the article by Dockers’ Jennifer Sey reproduces this problem, while actually compounding it. Of course there are also feminists who want men to “man up,” but they aren’t nostalgic about it. The whole ad has a “Once upon a time” feel to it—men once were “better” than they are now. Little old ladies crossed the street unmolested. In other words,
the ad effaces all the gains for women. It is without doubt better for women now than it was back in those khaki days of Mad Men. Or doesn’t the author of the piece remember expressing her womanhood through bunny slippers and fixing the perfect martini for her man? In other words, the nostalgia is for a pre[Betty] Friedan world where everyone “knew their place.” I hate that sort of nostalgia. Yes, Scarlett, once upon a time, blacks and whites got along, cared for each other at Tara, and were equally fulfilled, in their respective stations. But now, sadly, that world is gone with the wind. In other words, bullshit. But has anyone also pointed out the hilarious irony that the whole campaign is for, of all things, khakis! Has anyone mentioned to Levi Strauss that khakis are viewed as “gay”? Real men don’t wear them! Have you ever seen Ah-nold in khakis? Not bloody likely. It’s likely they did surveys that found men consider khakis sort of wimpy and preppy—which they are. So ultimately, the ad is not about manning up men, it’s about “manning up” their pants! It’s not that they think khakis will make you a real man—it’s more that they think that if real men wear their preppy clothes, the clothes will suddenly appear more butch. Which, frankly, sounds like a repeat of 501s on Christopher Street to me! —Michael Kimmel Voice Male national advisory board member and contributing editor Michael Kimmel is the author or editor of several books on manhood and masculinity including Manhood in America, Men’s Lives, and Guyland. He is professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. www.michaelkimmel.com Spring 2010
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Walking Dockers Tall, Pard’ner
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world of business. I don’t mean I wear them to work. They’re for in between, but I can tell you, when the old lady sees them, she has no doubt who wears the pants in the family. You might think I had her buy them for me because I needed some new slacks. I’ve got a million pairs. No, it was to show her who’s in charge. I like telling her what to do and I like knowing she’s scared of what will happen if she doesn’t. I liked the thought of her seeing those new ads talking about the days when men were real men and women knew their place. I want her to know I’m not the type of soft-hands, pussy-whipped, talk-abouthis-feelings, limp-wristed guy you see too much of these days. I don’t care if you’re a Tea Party type on the lunatic fringe, or a middle-of-the-road guy like me who doesn’t worry much about politics. What I do know is that it’s about time that we show the gals who is the boss. Besides, these slacks have got those nice big loops where you can hold your belt between uses. Princess Sparkle Pony’s Photo Blog sparklepony.blogspot.com
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’d just lit up my Marlboro, saddled my horse, and was heading out to cut a few steaks off one of our steers when I noticed I had a tear in my jeans. Ever since the wife decided she wanted to earn a bit of dough (“my own money” she calls it!) she’s been in a bit of a flap and tells me I should fix my own pants. Yeah, right. So I go inside and strip down to my Calvin Kleins. Although I’m spending more time at the ranch these days, I still get a lot of phone calls trying to get me to model their underwear for magazine ads and billboards. I’ve always said no because Dad taught me what it meant to be a man. Showing off wasn’t part of it. (And when I say taught me, that man didn’t overlook a chance to pull out his trusty belt. No sir. I didn’t like it much at the time, but I can tell you now, I’m glad he did. I’ve been able to teach my own son and I’m sure, someday, he’ll do the same to his.) I’m not going to show off, but I don’t mind telling you if you’re not ripped like me, you don’t qualify in anyone’s book. I glance over at the Mattel Mad Men dolls we’ve just bought for a friend’s daughter. Teach her the way things go before she starts to pick up any feminist ideas. I change into my new pair of Dockers. Once I look after the cattle, I’ve got to helicopter back to the office. The Dockers take me nicely from the rough-and-tumble world of the ranch to the rough-and-tumble
—Michael Kaufman Voice Male contributing editor Michael Kaufman is cofounder of the White Ribbon Campaign. www.michaelkaufman.com © Michael Kaufman, 2010.
Campaigning by the Seat of Whose Pants?
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s Dockers’ marketing director, Jennifer Sey has certainly done her job: drawing attention to her product. But those of us in the reality-based community see through Dockers’ “Men Wear the Pants” campaign, especially troubling at a time when the right wing is finding new energy—and potentially millions of white male votes—in their opposition to the Obama presidency, including even the mildest progressive legislation. Ms. Sey calls herself a feminist and makes some insightful observations about what a more progressive men’s movement would do for our culture. But does anyone really believe the “Men Wear the Pants” campaign is promoting progressive masculinity? The ad copy could have been written by James Dobson or Phyllis Schlafly. When I first read the ads, I thought immediately of Rush Limbaugh, who has been ranting for years against the “feminizing effects” on men of the women’s movement. Listen to Limbaugh, the country’s leading conservative polemicist, in 2008: “Who do liberals consider real men? Michael Kinsley, Alan Alda, the guy that played…Frank Burns on M*A*S*H, you know… this guy was practically a pet on a leash for ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan. And I think they’ve become Democrats. Some Republicans, too. But I think they’ve run for office, and they have become Democrats. Tom Daschle, Harry Reid, soft-spoken, concerned about everything. They’re little wusses and they’re constantly voicing their concern over every little thing that fits their template into a Democrat
America. Why do you think I’m so hated by the feminists? Cause I am not feminized.” Passage of the historic health insurance reform bill—which, however watereddown and corporate-friendly it might seem to many of us—generated immense anger, catalyzing a white-male-led backlash that threatens to derail any further progressive developments come the mid-term elections in the fall. Ms. Sey says that the Levi Strauss company embraces “sensitivity and empathy” in men, the very same qualities that conservatives like Dick Cheney have bitterly attacked Barack Obama for displaying. Yes, as she says, it would be great if men would be willing to “embody a new masculine ideal built around integrity, accountability and ethical behavior.” But many people continue to be confused about what it means to be a strong man. Profeminist men and other progressives need to say firmly and frequently: Men who stand up for justice and against violence are strong men. Men who support gender and sexual equality are strong men. Whether or not we feel like wearing pants. Even if, after this unfortunate and reactionary advertising gimmick, we still choose to buy Dockers. —Jackson Katz Jackson Katz, a Voice Male contributing editor, is author of The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help and co-founder of Mentors in Violence Prevention. www.jacksonkatz.com.
TEN WAYS TO BE A MAN
Rob Okun
Join Voice Male magazine editor Rob Okun and Mark Matousek, author of When You’re Falling, Dive and Ethical Wisdom (forthcoming) for a workshop on May 14-16 at the Rowe Conference Center entitled “Ten Ways to Be a Man.” Rob and Mark are part of V-Men, an arm of Eve Ensler’s V-Day organization, inviting men to integrate their own personal growth work with a sense of caring and responsibility to address the epidemic of violence against women.
Nestled in the Berkshire Hills of northwestern Massachusetts, Rowe is a comfortable, relaxed center with great food, beautiful surroundings and a powerful sense of community. To learn more about this important weekend exploring men’s lives go to: http://rowecenter.org/schedule/current/20100514_ MarkMatousek&RobOkun.html
Mark Matousek
May 14-16
Kings Highway Road Rowe, Massachusetts 01367 (413) 339.4974,
www.rowecenter.org Spring 2010
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Fathering
By Donald N.S. Unger
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hen we examine change, we often look as well at why things often don’t change. I am particularly interested in the not uncommon resistance to the notion that the quantity and the quality of the time American fathers spend with their children have changed meaningfully. Ironically, I see this resistance coming from both the right and the left. Philosophically, resistance on the right is easier to explain. Both men and women in more politically or culturally conservative families are apt to have a traditional view of gender: men are the breadwinners; women stay home and take care of the children. To publicly admit to sharing domestic labor would amount to an admission of emasculation on two counts for the husband: for his failure to earn sufficient money “as he should” in order to permit his wife to stay home with the children, and for his own taking up of “women’s work.” For the wife, it would amount to a public admission of her failure to take care of home and children “as she should” and her inappropriate usurpation of the prerogatives of the “proper head of the household.” Women work outside the home. That’s no less true in conservative families than in progressive families. The economic pressures are the same; the economic lifeline—a second salary—is the same. What is often different is what happens with child care and, of particular importance to what I am arguing, how this matter is discussed publicly. We have a national ambivalence about preschool day care, but this is closer to hardcore resistance in blue-collar or lower-middleclass conservative households. Day care, entrusting one’s children to strangers—the financial costs aside—is more often viewed by such families as a shamefully unacceptable betrayal of family values and 14
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Ratnakar Krothapalli
Fathering in the 21st Century a potential venue for exposing children to a variety of dangers, both cultural and physical. As a result, evidence shows a large and vastly underreported increase in the number of conservative households in which men and women are sharing parenting to some degree, as a matter of necessity, both real and perceived. Most often this is true in families where both parents do shift work: nurses, utility workers, police officers, firefighters. On the left, I believe people resist acknowledging progress, in part, for fear that doing so will blunt the drive for further and more comprehensive change. I understand that concern; it is not my contention that we have reached some sort of postgender, egalitarian Promised Land where all are “Free to Be You and Me,” but it is simply counterfactual to claim that we have not made substantial progress toward equality, along a variety of axes, in the past 35 years or so. This resistance, which I would characterize as essentially tactical, is buttressed by an emotional reaction—on the part of at least some women and men of egalitarian bent—that might be summed up as: “You want me to listen to men’s problems and complaints now? Puh-lease!” In examining the cultural impact of Kramer vs. Kramer, the 1979 Dustin Hoffman/Meryl Streep movie, New York Times film critic Molly Haskell, writing three years after the movie’s release, was both irritated by and dismissive of the movie in significant part because of this perceived inequity. “The supreme irony of Kramer vs. Kramer,” she fumes, “was that here at last was a film that took on the crisis central to the modern woman’s life, that is, the three-ring circus of having to hold
down a job, bring up a child and manage Writer Donald a house simultaneously, and who gets Unger and his daughter the role? Dustin Hoffman.” I understand the emotion; I under- Rebecca stand its basis. But I don’t believe that what she wrote was useful to fathers or mothers. A medical analogy might help illuminate this. In the 1980s, AIDS activists began to reshape medical care, from the drug testing and approval process, to hospital visiting regulations, to end-of-life care. AIDS was then almost exclusively a terminal illness; the patients were, as a group, younger than most other people in that situation, sometimes radical to begin with, sometimes radicalized by their experience with the illness; they fought to change the terms of their treatment and the terms of their deaths. Some cancer patients and their families resented the changes the AIDS patients and their allies were able to initiate. Why should they get privileged access to drugs still in clinical trials? Why should they have liberalized visiting policies? What gives them the right to challenge their physicians when the culture of medical care says we can’t challenge ours? Some of those plaints—not often voiced publicly—were doubtless colored by homophobia. But they embody an obvious and powerful emotional logic untainted by that consideration: I’m dying too! Don’t I deserve the same attention? Ultimately, that’s the narrative that won out, not a competition, not a zero-sum game in which the gains of one set of patients were construed to be the losses of another: The AIDS patients’ rights movement birthed a broader patients’ rights movement, rather than remaining at the level of “sectarian warfare” between patients suffering from different illnesses. Attention to the issues around fathers—married or divorced; custodial or noncustodial; working as primary parents, sharing child care, or working outside the home—should not be taken to be competition for attention to the issues faced by mothers. Indeed, while there may be
some short-term, emotional benefit to guarding the territory of child care as a “women’s issue,” doing so also contributes to the ongoing marginalization of what I would instead call “parents’ issues” in our political discourse. I understand Haskell’s irritation. She brings up an issue, and an irony, that bears discussion. To launch that discussion as a public attack, however, amounts to parents arranging themselves in a circular firing squad. Sometimes gender matters. Sometimes mothers and fathers have different concerns in terms of what makes our home lives or our professional lives either easier or more difficult (men don’t get pregnant, for example). More often, however, our concerns overlap: We are more powerful when we stand together as parents than when we set ourselves up as fathers against mothers or vice versa. So where are we now? We may be on the cusp of fundamentally—and to my mind positively—shifting to a much more open definition of family and of caregiving generally, opening up and broadening what it is possible, or perhaps more accurately what it is acceptable, for a man to do with his life. A shorthand way of looking at this would be that in the next decade we may see the home open up to men in the same way that the workplace began to open up to women in the 1970s. I believe this would be good—for men, for women, for children— though I would never assume that change is always easy or that it is ever neat. Writer Donald N.S. Unger, a longtime contributor to Voice Male, is a lecturer in the program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This article is excerpted from his book Men Can: The Changing Image & Reality of Fatherhood in America, forthcoming from Temple University Press, May 2010, and reprinted with their permission. www.temple.edu/tempress. The author can be reached at donunger@mit.edu.
Can Fathers “Mother?” “It’s not easy being a mother, is it?” the librarian says, smiling over my shoulder, as I change my six-month-old daughter’s diaper on a desk in the back room. I close my eyes very briefly, try not to grit my teeth, remember to breathe. “I’m not being a mother,” I tell her, as softly as I can manage. “I’m being a parent.” “You’re doing what mothers usually do,” she tells me. And I think it best to let the conversation die there. I don’t have the time, the energy, or the tact to respond. Situations like that were almost a daily occurrence when I was out and around with my daughter when she was an infant, and often it was as if I’d lost my voice; I am by nature a combative person, but if parenthood does nothing else it tests the limits of your energy and endurance. Even your outrage has to be carefully rationed. On that particular day, I had been “invited” to work, to score entrance exams for the freshman writing course I was teaching; I was taking care of Rebecca four days per week that term, but, in a fit of the kind of flexibility that I realize is rarely extended to working mothers, my department chair had simply suggested that I bring the baby with me for the morning rather than miss all the fun.
So I came in early, folding playpen in tow, took my daughter into the back offices in the library, where we were going to be working, stripped her, fed her, cleaned her up, changed her, and got her dressed again, while the librarians buzzed in and out, doing their work. But there’s always commentary. Does it sound lighthearted, a slightly cynical, but essentially harmless, observation about statistical reality—perhaps even well meant, an honor accorded an exceptional man? Does complaining about this make me seem thin skinned? Try this if you’re a woman who works outside the home, particularly in one of the professions, a doctor, a lawyer: Someone observes you at work and says, “It’s not easy being a man, is it?” Lighthearted? Well meant? Essentially harmless? In today’s atmosphere, a statement like that is closer to legally actionable. What irritated me about what the librarian said didn’t have to do with law or even etiquette, although both of those lurked in the background—was she creating a hostile work environment for me? I’m sure that wasn’t her intent, yet the language she used certainly felt inflammatory to me. —Don Unger
Spring 2010
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Fathering How to Be a Modern Dad
From Dilemma to Deliverance
Kenya Crumel
By John Badalament
t the age of 25, not yet a dad myself, I walked into my father’s office to reconcile our past — he thought we were going out for lunch. Up until that point I had not yet discovered the courage to speak honestly and directly with my father about the past. All that would change in just ten short minutes. I told my father that we weren’t actually going to lunch, that he should stay seated and not respond to anything he was about to hear. He had been given plenty of time to speak over the years; now it was my turn to talk. Barely able to breathe, I said, “You’ve done a lot of great things for me as a dad.” After describing a few, such as how he had supported my love of baseball and patiently taught me how to drive, I said, “And . . . I want you to know that growing up with you was also very, very difficult. You were irresponsible, alcoholic and abusive. As a consequence, I have struggled, and still struggle to this day, to feel good about myself. I don’t want you to do anything. I’m an adult, and these are my issues to deal with now.” He opened his mouth to speak, and for the first time ever, I raised my hand and without a word, motioned for him to stop. I knew that if I allowed him to talk, he would almost certainly try to explain, minimize, or deny what I was saying, and like most loyal sons, I 16
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would back down from speaking the truth of my experience. Confronting my father at the age of 25 was the single most difficult, emotionally raw moment of my life. As a kid, I was taught that vulnerability got you nothing but trouble and thus learned to hate it. The currency of my upper-middle-class boyhood was as follows: being tough, “getting” the girls, and holding your own in sports. If you had no currency, you were at risk of verbal or physical reprisals. I spent a great deal of time and energy avoiding situations in which I could be taken advantage of, proved wrong, or made to look like a “wimp.” Implicitly, discussing feelings and relationships with or around other boys was forbidden. When I left my dad’s office that day, I assumed my departure would mark the end of our relationship, that he would want nothing more to do with me. Paradoxically, once I found my voice and spoke up—as uncomfortable and frightening as it was—our relationship actually grew stronger. While we didn’t necessarily spend more time together, speak more often, or agree on everything (past or present), a more honest dialogue developed between us. There was no longer one voice, one truth, or one authority. We became two adults, not a father and a child. Don’t get me wrong;
my dad didn’t enjoy the experience of being confronted with his past, but the effect of that one conversation was deep and long-lasting. Four years ago my father became ill from years of neglecting his diabetes. As his condition worsened, it became clear he wouldn’t be leaving the hospital. I remember looking him in the eye one afternoon and saying, “You can go now, Dad. There’s nothing left to do here.” He looked back at me, smiled, teared up, and nodded. Our peace was made. A few days later he quietly passed away. I feel fortunate for having had the chance to reconcile with him—by holding my father lovingly accountable, as each new generation must do—but sad that so much of his story was shrouded in mystery. I knew very little about his life as a husband and a dad: What did he love about being a husband and a father? What did he worry about as a father? What brought him joy? When did he feel like he was doing a great job as a father? What did marriage and fatherhood mean to him? It’s never too late for the truth. This is why I remind dads—myself included—of that all-too-common movie scene in which the dad is on his deathbed and finally tries to talk to his adult child (usually a son) to admit his mistakes, to reveal his humanity, thereby giving the purest possible expression of love. Finally, in the fading light, his vulnerability opens the door for the child to have a voice, to reconcile a lifetime of distance, conflict, absence, or emotional silence. As modern dads, we must rewrite this scene for our children. They need not wait so long. In my educational consulting work, I do an activity with students in which they anonymously write down two questions they’ve always wanted to ask their dad. No matter what their ethnic, cultural, racial, or socioeconomic background is, the students’ two most common questions are almost always: “What was your relationship like with your father?” and “What was your childhood like?”—sometimes worded as, “What were you like at my age?” Though they may not ask, children want and need their dad’s stories, even if they never knew who their dad was. I call it the elephant in the living room of child development: the missing stories of men’s lives, particularly men’s emotional lives. Like many dads, growing up I did not have the kind of close, emotionally connected relationship with my father that I want with my children today. Are there aspects of his
legacy I want to keep or pass on to my children? Yes. Are there mistakes I’m determined not to repeat? Of course. This is not, however, a matter of intention only—what dad doesn’t want to be close with his children? The question is how: How can I give what I didn’t get? In my workshops for parents, I often ask dads to describe the kind of relationship they are trying to build with their children. Whether I’m at an elite private school, a prison, or a public library, the responses are similar. Most dads and dad figures want to have a strong, close bond with their children, to always be a trustworthy and vital presence, and to be someone to turn to for advice, support, or just to talk with. Most dads want their sons and daughters to feel secure in knowing that they can always come to them and share what’s going on in their lives, good and bad. In the past decade of working with dads of all backgrounds, I have heard this chorus grow louder: modern dads want connection, closeness, and intimacy. Unlike fathers of generations past, whose lives were so often cloaked in silence and mystery, dads today are increasingly vocal about this vision. Modern dads want to be the competent, caring, and supportive parents and partners that deep down we know we are capable of becoming. This is my cause for hope. It starts with modern dads speaking the truth about what fatherhood means to us—how it challenges our beliefs about manhood, raises fears about repeating mistakes of the past, and ultimately reveals our capacity to love another human being unconditionally. It starts with also making space in our relationships to truly listen to our loved ones. Our children and families not only want but need us to deliver on this new vision of fatherhood.
E x c e r p t e d f ro m T h e M o d e r n D a d ’s Dilemma: How to Stay Connected to Your Kids in a Rapidly Changing World, ©2010 by John Badalament. Printed with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com. Voice Male contributing editor John Badalament is director of the acclaimed PBS documentary All Men are Sons: Exploring the Legacy of Fatherhood. His work has been featured on National Public Radio, in Men’s Health, and the Los Angeles Times. A graduate of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, John consults with schools, parent groups, and organizations about modern fatherhood. To learn more, go to www.moderndads.net.
The Modern Dad’s Relationship Checkup Having what I call an “ongoing heartto-heart” is a great way to bring two key elements of emotional connection — knowing and being known — together. It is a practical way for you and your children (adult children included) to communicate consistently and honestly about daily happenings and, most important, about the quality of your relationship. It also provides you both with a built-in mechanism for handling difficult conversations, whether the subject is unresolved from the past, currently happening, or in the future. Specifically, the Relationship Checkup is a series of questions designed and sequenced to initiate and encourage ongoing dialogue. There is a version for children aged five to ten, and another version for children aged eleven and above. Below is an excerpt from a Relationship Checkup completed by a divorced dad, Jonah, and his daughter, Hannah. The Modern Dad’s Relationship Checkup: Excerpts from Jonah and Hannah (age nine) Jonah and Hannah first found a quiet place where they wouldn’t be interrupted (his apartment), reviewed the list of questions together, separated and each wrote their individual responses to all the questions, and finally came back together and shared their responses to each question aloud. Hannah’s Responses 1. Positive qualities I bring to our relationship are: That even though I don’t get to see you as often as I see Mom, when I do get to I make sure we have fun and try not to get in arguments, which we hardly do. 2. Positive qualities you bring to our relationship are: That you know when to be serious and when to joke around and be funny. 3. Ways that I sometimes make our relationship difficult are: I sometimes disagree with you, even though I know you are saying the right thing. Sometimes I just do it to get my way, even
though what you are saying is the better thing to do. 4. Ways that you sometimes make our relationship difficult are: I don’t think you make anything difficult. It is just kind of hard to see you be all nice and funny and then turn into the firm dad. 5. One way I can strengthen our relationship is: To focus and listen more to what you’re telling me, because it’s usually important. 6. One way that you can strengthen our relationship is: To not be on the phone as much, even though you have gotten way better at that. Jonah’s Responses 1. Positive qualities I bring to our relationship are: That I am encouraging and supportive and that I maintain a good balance between having fun and being responsible. I listen to you and try to let you make up your own mind. 2. Positive qualities you bring to our relationship are: You’re honest with me and very caring. You listen to my advice, but you still think for yourself. 3. Ways that I sometimes make our relationship difficult are: Being scattered or in a hurry, not managing my time well, being on the cell phone and the computer too much. Being too firm sometimes when I just need to be patient or gentler. 4. Ways that you sometimes make our relationship difficult are: Asking for things too much when I’ve already given an answer. Not saying or asking for things directly (asking questions leading up to what you really want to ask). 5. One way that I can strengthen our relationship is: By being clearer about my schedule and managing my time better, so that when we’re together, we can make the most of our time and have as much fun (and get as much done as we need to) as possible. 6. One way that you can strengthen our relationship is: By being more direct with me about your feelings and being more patient when you can’t have what you want right away.
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Women’s Bodies, Men’s Minds By Lillian Hsu
I
grew up with boys—two doting brothers, a father who loved me unconditionally, and seven boy cousins. My aunt told me there was rejoicing when I was born—finally a girl! I remember wanting to be a boy. At 17 I went to college at an all-female institution. It was during the women’s movement of the 1970s. I married and had children—a boy and a girl. I saw how our culture shuts down whole swaths of a boy’s humanity by the time he reaches third grade. I saw how our culture teaches girls to be pretty objects as soon as they can walk. I saw that my children’s preschool lessons about Rosa Parks and Sally Ride and Amelia Earhart were not enough to combat the later lessons of “wife beater” tank tops, pornography normalized and glorified, and the parade of women in movies and media who are used, prostituted, hypersexualized, and consumed. I continued to listen to men. I wondered what definitions of masculinity my late brother had believed when he left heterosexuality for homosexuality. I read books about hidden male depression and the inner life of boys. I saw the cultural landscape of gender roles change and stay the same. I saw the definitions of masculinity and femininity expand and contract. The women’s movement of the 1970s offered a vision of equality for women and, for those men tuning in, an invitation to men to leave behind the constraints of the “man box.” Of course it was not so simple. Being groomed for masculinity meant most men were unlikely to take up the invitation. Still, I kept seeing men in pain, men addicted, burdened by the pressure to perform and provide, and saddened but too paralyzed by the messages of conventional masculinity to weep. A woman I know says, “If I didn’t drink I would cry all the time.” A man I know says, “If I didn’t drink, I would turn into a monster.” I think the man would not be a monster. I think the man would cry, too—if he did not think he had to “be a man.” My frustration grew. While some men began challenging and examining how they had been socialized and, as a consequence, began to change, far too many men remained complicit with everyday sexism. I heard people say there were no longer barriers for girls—they could go where they dreamed to go. At the same time, misogyny intensified. I observed a relentless objectification of women colored by implicit and explicit violence. The notion of what was “beautiful” grew ever more 18
Voice Male
Beautiful Just The Way You Are? disturbing, and the discomfort and self-denial women endured in order to be “attractive” felt desperate. The predatory quality of the male gaze over women’s bodies grew more intolerable even though the catcalls had decreased and we got more jobs. Protest had shrunk to a whisper. Girls were making themselves into cartoons of sexual prey and calling it empowerment. I heard women say they did not need feminism. I heard men who were addicted to pornography say they were feminists. I thought men and women shared a human desire for connection, mutual respect, and understanding. I felt deep sadness and anger at how important I saw it was for men to assess, rate, and consume girls and women, how easily men deny the connection between their behavior and the continuation of violence against women, how perniciously the demand for girls and women to serve up their bodies seeps into our culture, how urgently men align themselves with their gender to affirm the righteousness of their entitlement. I was incredulous at the ordinariness of verbal and visual cruelty. I felt ill at the eroticizing of torture and humiliation of women and girls. I wanted to weep. I wanted to tell men to leave our bodies alone. There is a good speech in the movie The Devil Wears Prada, where Meryl Streep, the “high priestess” reigning over the staff of a major fashion magazine, attempts to teach a new hire a cold truth about the world of fashion. A woman selects a cerulean blue
sweater she sees in a department store and thinks she is making a personal choice that reflects her individuality. She does not think of the fact that the particular cerulean blue of the sweater was determined by someone nine months ago, made it through manufacturing, and ended up in thousands of department stores, where it will be selected by thousands of women, each thinking she has made a personal choice. I think of this speech when I hear men or women speak about what they think is the most universally “attractive” body type. We are fed thousands of images a day through advertising and media that tell us we want bodies, not people, and exactly what that body should look like, and then individuals will say their personal favorite is that body type. What we think of as “beauty” is culturally determined and changes over time. We have been robbed of the ability to see beauty in everyone. And yet we choose to be robbed if we allow such tyranny to distort our humanity and determine how we think. We try to teach our children this lesson. We tell them they only want that Jumping Jubilee party because the media has taught them to want it, but we fail to see how the same media dictates what we as adults value in human experience. Advertising works. The car ads on television tell men they will get a woman who looks like the hired model if they buy that car; you’ll get a woman like this if you stay in our hotel; you’ll get that woman if you buy these socket wrenches. You’ll get a woman like this receptionist if you buy our plumbing supplies. You’ll get women if you attain political power. You’ll get women if you win. And for all of these women, what is the cost? Men have mothers, sisters, daughters, granddaughters, aunts, nieces, and female friends and loved ones. I want men to understand that all of these loved ones are seen as objects of sexism and male violence in every one of its forms—insults, predatory behavior, demeaning comments, threats, domination, rape, assault, and humiliation—all based on the simple fact that they are female. All women will experience some of these behaviors in their lifetime. Does it matter that your daughter has to consider whether to cross the street when she sees a line of men seated ahead of her, while your son does not? Would it be okay if your friend and her friend were tortured, filmed, and used by millions of men to get off? Does it matter that one of the reasons she might have found herself there
was because she learned as a child that she should degrade herself to serve men? Does it matter that your wife has to swallow insults and predatory glares every day but does not think it is significant enough to tell you when she comes home? Does it matter that your girlfriend has learned that her value goes up if she makes herself more of a sexual object, while your value goes up proportionate to your accomplishments? Is it okay that your niece was raped at 14 and hasn’t talked about it in 20 years because she suspects no one will care to listen or will believe her? Does it matter your daughter will pay a man to carve up her body and alter its shape so she can please more men? Would you carve up your body to please more women?
Does it matter that the women in your life are compared to a piece of meat, and men laugh? There are voices telling me, “Don’t be too hard on the men; don’t make them feel badly, don’t hurt their feelings; don’t shut them down.” I wonder: Why do I have to be so delicate with men’s feelings when so many men have violated and disregarded the feelings of women? Even though I am furious, I want men to listen and know that I am treading gently. I will take care because I want a conversation, not a battle. But I want men to hear that women are outraged, hurt, saddened, and silenced. Despite my anger, I will not let go of my connection to men. I will not quit searching for positive change. I will not stop inviting
men to walk with women and change our lives together. I will keep listening to men and asking, challenging, stubbornly assuming (I think sometimes unreasonably) that men want to have freedom to be fully human and would like to have relationships of mutual respect, love, and intimacy with women. How many men would say I am wrong?
Lillian Hsu is an artist living in Watertown, Massachusetts.
A “Beautiful” Magazine Cover Protest Campaign
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n the spring of 2009 I began a protest campaign I dubbed “BEAUTIFUL Just the Way You Are.” I designed a BJTWYA poster to mimic a magazine format but it only carries the common phrase, a kind of mantra—“BEAUTIFUL Just the Way You Are.” People use it when they mean we all have beauty and need not fuss over our appearance to conform to a false notion of “beautiful.” BEAUTIFUL Just the Way You Are invites anyone to participate wherever magazines are displayed. All you have to do is place one of the 8½ x 11 BJTWYA posters over every magazine that uses a woman’s body to sell a product, a lifestyle—or the magazine itself. The magazine racks assault us with the message women are flawed, our bodies need fixing, commanding we become “better” objects for male consumption. BEAUTIFUL Just the Way You Are offers a simple, subversive counterpoint to protest this tyranny. Although the project focuses on magazine covers, the voice of advertising is the voice of the culture, the voice of the “Other,” telling us our body parts are being measured against a checklist and, no surprise, we are seen as lacking. Take the woman who wrote me to request posters because her daughter is in a residential program for eating disorders—a symptom of a deep cultural sickness. How toxic is our culture to create such anguish? I wish every man would see in that girl his responsibility for her well-being, for the demands imposed on women and girls to make our bodies into a consumer product, not for ourselves but for men. Turning a person into a thing is the first step toward condoning all forms of violence—visual, verbal, psychological, or physical.
On the BJTWYA blog I have begun to address the moments in our daily lives when objectification can be resisted. These moments occur often—when we are buying eggs and milk, having dinner with friends, or on the job. Violence against women is not just for police stations, shelters, and the evening news. The large majority of men, and many women, share the values that make rape, pornography, and other violent expressions of misogyny possible. We are all indoctrinated in the same culture, so it is no surprise that women and men alike devalue women. Some women do not. Some men do not. But we are all responsible. My father often said to me, “Hope for the best; prepare for the worst.” I don’t have high expectations that many men will become stealth agents covering over sexist magazine covers with BEAUTIFUL Just the Way You Are posters. I do hope the campaign gives men reason to pause, to reflect on how women in this society are treated. (And how men are, too.) I know not all men, or all women, think or act alike. But the painful stories of women, girls, men, and boys, the statistics on violence against women, relationship problems, body image disorders, and cosmetic surgery suggest to me we need a national conversation about these issues. Am I wrong in thinking that too few men want to have this conversation? To learn more about the BJTWYA campaign, go to www.bjtwya.com. To comment or ask a question, write bjtwya@yahoo.com —Lillian Hsu
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Men, Misogyny and the Future
When Men Challenge Sexism By Thomas Keith
Tom Keith’s film Generation M: Misogyny in Media and Culture, is a searching examination of the media’s sexist depictions of women. In an industry largely controlled by men, Keith critically explored images of women that permeate popular culture in music, television, news media, film, games, and radio. He says he wanted to better understand the culture he inhabits and examine what those depictions of women say about us as a society, how our thinking is affected—from early childhood on—both as males and females. Since its release in September 2008, Generation M: Misogyny in Media and Culture, which is distributed by the Media Education Foundation (www.mediaed.org), has become a staple in college and university classrooms around the world. What he wasn’t prepared for, he says, was the response some people had to the film. 20
Voice Male
fter Generation M was released, I traveled the country screening the film, listening to what audiences had to say. Across age and gender lines, people were overwhelmingly supportive. Many teaching at colleges and universities told me they use the film in their classrooms, seeing it as a great resource for creating class discussion and raising a host of issues about sexism in popular culture. Still, I didn’t realize how powerful a nerve I had struck. I was not prepared for the backlash that came from men and women alike who felt strongly that a man should not be making a film about what is traditionally thought to be a “women’s issue.” The ad hominem style of the attacks was particularly unexpected. Comments included: “The only reason a man would make such a film is to get laid,” or “A man cannot know what women go through,” or “Men, just keep your opinions to yourselves.” I also heard the obligatory comment from some males: “This guy must be a faggot.” It is troubling to think there must be a barrier between the sexes when discussing gender issues, a divide that is not supposed to be crossed. In fact, the exclusionary tone of the criticism I received reminded me of the hackneyed notion that there is an alleged “battle between the sexes.” That we were waging a war where men and women should consider one another enemy combatants rather than allies, and where those who cross gender lines are traitors. It was a rude awakening. In my critics’ minds, my view was naïve—believing men and women are interconnected, are people who need each other, who laugh and cry, live and die, together. Let me be clear. Throughout all the amazing progress the women’s movement made—a movement spearheaded and carried out almost exclusively by women—they did not need men to help them, and they certainly do not now need any men telling them how they should be as women. If anything, that attitude has been the central problem of the history of gender: men telling women how to act, dress, think, and live. Because of this history, women have rightly met male, pro-feminist support with suspicion. Similar suspicion was cast on Caucasians who lent their support to African-Americans’ struggle for rights and recognition during the civil rights movement. The same might be said today for heterosexuals who support gay rights. It is understandable why some members of historically oppressed groups would look at support from members of the oppressor group with trepidation. Against this background, in screening Generation M around the country, the number one question I hear, from both women and men, is “Why did you make this film—what was your motivation?” In introducing it, I tell audiences how I am frequently challenged by people, including colleagues, about why
“Simply put, men do not benefit from being sexist. There are men who don’t believe this, who fear giving up their privilege. They are the men who often have distant relationships with women, whose children aren’t close to them, who work and drink too much, whose health is compromised, whose friendships are superficial and few.”
Thomas Keith, Director of Generation M
I, as a man, would make such a film. Questions almost always focus on my gender. The more I heard this question, the more I began to realize that the question itself highlights a problem in discussing gender issues. Consider the literature in gender studies: the lion’s share of books written about masculinity are written by male authors, while the vast majority of published materials on women are written by women. Sure, gender-specific authorship is largely due to men’s and women’s knowledge of and interest in our own genders. Yet I can’t help thinking that lurking in this dichotomous separation is an unaddressed problem. When authors do cross gender lines (consider, for example, Shira Tarrant’s book Men and Feminism, see Voice Male, Spring 2009), a rare opportunity opens allowing readers to escape the linear box of homogenous thinking, to foster new ways of approaching issues, perceive and solve problems, and create a richer and more satisfying dialogue. Sadly, those who believe in gender inequality and gender dissension often reinforce their beliefs by raising children to believe as they do. Yet when I think of my mother, my daughter, my wife, my aunt, my niece, my female friends, I don’t think of alien people— opposites—rather, I simply think of people I love. I think of the men and boys in my life in the same way. I have a teenage son and I have rhetorically asked audiences many times, What kind of world do I want my son growing up in? A sexist world? To those who suggest, “Why not? If it’s a man’s world, your son will benefit,” I reply, You’re wrong! Men do not benefit from living in a sexist world where men dominate and women are subordinate. Men do not benefit by training their sons to think primarily of women as objects of sexual gratification. Men do not benefit from teaching their sons to use aggression, intimidation, and violence to settle their differences with others, including differences they may have with the women in their lives. Men do not benefit by
placing glass ceilings between women and career opportunities. Simply put, men do not benefit from being sexist. Of course there are men who don’t believe this characterization, who fear giving up their privilege, their sense of entitlement. They are the men who often have distant relationships with the females in their lives, devoid of real intimacy, whose children aren’t close to them. These are men who usually work too much, drink too often; whose health is compromised, and whose friendships are superficial and few. Yes, I am a man who made a film about sexism in contemporary media and society. I don’t apologize for that. I am not a gender traitor as much as an ally in the movement for gender equality. I am glad to be part of a movement with many voices, many points of view. I believe in a community where people care about one another; support one another; work together, lean on each other, share ideas, constructively lend criticism, and respect each other. I view the plurality of thought around shared goals as strength. I stand for a community peopled by diverse thinkers who share the dream of creating a more progressive society. Some might characterize me as unsophisticated for believing in the idea that we are first and foremost a community of sisters and brothers who care about each other. To them I say, I plan to hold on to my naïve view that all who care about social justice are part of a family. Why not join us? Writer, director and producer of Generation M: Misogyny in Media and Culture, Thomas Keith teaches philosophy at California State University, Long Beach. His new film about contemporary masculinity, The Manual For Building Dysfunctional Men, is due out next year. He works with “Schools on Wheels,” an organization mentoring and tutoring children living in homeless shelters and domestic violence shelters throughout greater Los Angeles. He can be reached at americanphilos@aol.com. Spring 2010
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I celebrate you for standing with women in the struggle to end violence against women and girls. Your brave magazine is bringing forward the new vision and voices of manhood which will inevitably shift this paradigm and create a world where we are all safe and free. Bless you for it.
Voice Male gives us fuel and fresh ideas for the work of ending male-dominated societies and supporting new roles for men and new relations between the sexes. —Michael Kaufman, co-founder, White Ribbon Campaign
—Eve Ensler,
award-winning playwright (The Vagina Monologues)
What’s happening with men and masculinity? That’s the question Voice Male tries to answer each issue as it chronicles manhood in transition. The changes men have undergone the past 30 years, our efforts following women in challenging men’s violence, and our ongoing exploration of our interior lives, are central to our vision. The magazine’s roots are deep in the male positive, profeminist, anti-violence men’s movement. We draw inspiration from the world-changing acts of social transformation women have long advanced and the growing legion of men agitating and advocating for a new expression of masculinity. At this key moment in the national conversation about men, Voice Male has much to contribute. Join us!
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voicemalemagazine.org 22
Voice Male
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Masculinity and Peacemaking
A Call to Men and Boys
Nineteen men from 17 countries participated in a groundbreaking training in the Netherlands last December,“Overcoming Violence: Exploring Masculinities, Violence & Peace”, a program of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation’s Women Peacemakers Program (WPP). Co-facilitators were Steven Botkin, front row, on left, and Patricia Ackerman, front row, second from right. WPP program manager Isabelle Geuskens is seated at left, second row; WPP information officer José de Vries is in front row, far right.
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onvinced that in order to transform cultures of war and violence to ones of peace and justice, women peace activists have begun to work with male allies. Nineteen men from 17 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, America, the Middle East and the Pacific gathered in the Netherlands at the end of 2009 for a training of trainers on gender-sensitive active nonviolence. The two-week training, “Overcoming Violence: Exploring Masculinities, Violence and Peace” was organized by the International Fellowship of Reconciliation’s Women Peacemakers Program (www.ifor.org/ WPP.) At the end of their time together, the group drafted a document to express their commitments in a call to men and boys issued last International Human Rights Day. According to one of the trainers, Men’s Resources International’s Steven Botkin, participants at the historic gathering intend to implement initiatives in each of their home communities. A follow-up training is scheduled for July. A Call to Men and Boys We understand that men and women are socialized in a patriarchal system that legitimizes the use of different forms of violence to gain, restore, and control power affecting powerless and marginalized sections of society. We fully acknowledge that women suffer far more than men from gender oppression.
We understand and recognize that women have always been a agent of change . Women worldwide are standing up against all forms of discrimination and violence to bring social and gender justice and peace to the world. Some men are now standing as allies with women’s struggles but notions of dominant masculinities across cultures have posed challenges for gender equality and social justice. Both men and women are suffering in this system and they need to join hands to bring about transformative change. Men also have much to gain in health, general well being and safety through this change. We
believe that all individuals have equal human rights irrespective of their
gender, origin, nationality, age, religion, caste, class, race, color, occupation, physical and mental abilities, and sexualities. All human beings have the right to a dignified life free of threats of discrimination. We assert our commitments to all international conventions and declarations, especially the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, UN Security Council Resolutions 1325, 1820, 1888 and 1889. These need to be fully implemented in their true spirit
and further steps need to be taken to improve policies and programs pertaining to women and gender justice. We
strongly speak out against gender inequality and discrimination towards
women in all forms and show our deep commitment towards gender-sensitive active nonviolence as a way of life. We are inspired by and committed to this work and the prospect of change in our lives and in our societies. We believe in people’s capacity to bring transformative change in nonviolent ways. Therefore to:
we call on all men and boys
• Adopt gender-sensitive active nonviolence as a way of solving problems • End violence against women in any form • Engage in constructive dialogue with women • Provide space for equal and meaningful participation of women in private and public spheres including peace-building processes •Stop militarizing resistance and peace processes • Promote policies that bring dignity to all people We call on men and boys to join us on this journey. Spring 2010
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Men and Health
Men Coming in from the Cold By Charlie Donaldson To writer-therapist Charlie Donaldson, the dioramas depicting family life many of us viewed on school field trips to natural history museums offer a window into a contemporary understanding of masculinity. In the dioramas he remembers, mothers and children are central, situated close together in rustic huts, the women cooking over an open fire. A single man, the father, is seen in the distance, squatting at the edge of a shallow cave, club in hand. “Such scenes,” Donaldson believes, “represent a homey Fifties mentality. They represent gender role characteristics that still challenge us as a society, particularly those of us who are educators, therapists, and especially including those aspiring to be liberated men.” Donaldson believes that all dioramas over the last several thousand years, right up to the end of the 20th century, would look remarkably the same. “Other than electronic trinkets, acrylic surfaces, and vinyl siding, scenes depicting individual roles and family life haven’t significantly changed. Women and children remain at center stage, engaged and lively; father is distant and removed, guarded and guarding.” But, Donaldson believes, things are changing.
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amily dioramas featuring aloof and distant men remind us of a history we know all too well: a chronicle of anger and aggression in which the suffering of victims is ignored and the spoils of war go to the bully. I’ve given some thought to what the diorama of the first decade of the 21st century would look like. There are certainly male diehards (there’s a hypermasculine word for you) among us, clinging to the old description of men as the strong and silent type. There remain male diehards for whom manhood is measured in self-control, invulnerability, and intimidation. But it is a hopeful sign, remarkable actually, how many men are moving to the other end of the continuum—wearing their role as men more loosely, embodying qualities such as self-examination, accountability, sensitivity, patience, respect. No longer represented by the Marlboro Man on the edge of our field of vision, these are 24
Voice Male
men who’ve come in from the cold and, in a contemporary diorama, can be found inside the hut with their partner and children. The ongoing transition from conventional masculinity to a new definition of manhood tells part of the story. Men are speaking out at workshops and conferences decrying violence against women; others are mentoring boys and teaching fathering skills; collaborating with women in social service and social justice organizations; and making films and writing books critiquing the old ways and championing the new. Beyond these more visible instances, unseen powerful forces are contributing to the creation of the new man. They include organizations and activities with specific missions other than male liberation. Nevertheless, their work contributes to developing attributes of the new man. Consider these examples: Court-mandated treatment There’s a quiet revolution going on in the court system. Financial exigencies and high rates of recidivism have pressured courts to decrease incarceration and increase treatment. Courts are sending men to therapists like me for many reasons—domestic violence, assault, drunk driving— and the men are attending programs lasting up to six months. Consider: John was very angry. In his first group therapy session, he shifted restlessly in his chair at the back of the room, apart from the group, staring out the window. It was obvious that he was not actually looking at anything through the glass; his goal was to keep his eyes off the other group members, the room he was forced to be in, and, especially, me. He spoke tersely and only when required to do so. At his second or third session, I asked John to tell the group what he did that resulted in his conviction for domestic violence. He said that his best friend was having an affair with his ex-wife, and that got him arrested. I asked him what he had done that led to his arrest. He denied doing anything. Three months later, after
repeated confrontations with group members, John finally admitted that he was intoxicated on the night of his arrest and was stalking his ex-wife outside a motel room. As the weeks passed and he was able to think more clearly, he recognized he had been controlling and abusing his wife through all the years of their marriage. Through the group, John learned to examine his destructive core beliefs, to replace anger with the underlying feelings of hurt, fear, and shame, to empathize, and to find a new level of intimacy with both men and women. Groups can be effective because elders pass mores to initiates just as they have for thousands of years. If someone calls his wife a bitch, an elder says, “We don’t talk that way here.” Men resocialize other men, who in turn resocialize newer guys. Many men leave feeling different from when they first came to group. They stop seeing women as prey. They admit their wrongs. They come to value, both in principle and pragmatically, egalitarianism. Sometimes they say to me, “You know we never talk like this anywhere else.” The objective of court-mandated groups is to reduce recidivism. The criminal justice system doesn’t want these men to hurt their wives again, get into bar fights, or wipe out a family driving drunk. But the group process often produces so much more: a man who not only avoids antisocial behavior but goes deep enough inside that he tells the truth about himself, makes room for feelings without letting them run his life, recognizes the dangers of power and control, and lives with sensitivity and respect. Twelve-step groups Lionel’s been drunk most every night for almost a decade. Over the years, three wives have left him, and he’s had four arrests for drunk driving. It’s a Friday night, and he parks his car outside the Congregational church a half-hour early for the eight o’clock meeting. He keeps the car running because it’s January and cold, but mostly in case he decides to run. A few minutes before eight, other people park their cars and go in. He counts them—16, 17, 18—and then finds himself getting out of the car—19. People tell their stories. Getting into a fight with a friend and waking up with broken ribs. Trying to commit suicide. Spending a year in jail after a fifth drunk driving arrest. Getting divorced by a spouse who was sick of their drinking. Promising to see a son in the playoffs and getting drunk at the bar instead. Then they talk about how much better things have gotten since they stopped drinking. How they appreciate their family. How they’re less competitive. How they go out of their way to help others, especially other alcoholics. Lionel is stunned. Not so much by their stories as by how they tell them. He’s never heard people admit what they’ve done so openly, in such detail, with so much honesty. Lionel doesn’t know it, but this is his introduction to intimacy. When his turn comes, he says he knows he drinks too much and that he’s gotten in trouble with the law. That’s all he can bring himself to say on this first night. If Lionel keeps attending AA, he’ll learn to disclose, shed some tears, find empathy for others, and feel a sense of camaraderie without the aid of a bottle of gin. The purpose of AA and other twelve-step groups is not to emancipate men from traditional manhood. Nevertheless, many a man started out on his own road to liberation at a meeting in a church basement. Couples counseling Women often demand their partners agree to couples counseling if they want to avoid divorce. Women usually articulate their concerns and disclose their feelings more clearly than men, who may not exhibit the same psychological insight. The way males are socialized undervalues a relational approach, putting men at a disadvantage. Still, men can be surprisingly quick learners—there’s a lot at stake in couples counseling— and they often morph into more empathic and gentler men.
Gerry and Lynn had been married 25 years. Their daughter had left for college and the house now seemed empty. Gerry was an engineer, and he used his not inconsiderable planning skills to lay out the schedule of Lynn’s days. When I initially interviewed him, he sat at the edge of the couch looking at the wall. I made an observation about the relationship, to which he raised his finger and said, “I don’t agree with that.” When the session ended, he commented, “Well, it doesn’t seem like we accomplished much today.” I wondered what it would be like to be married to a man who censured one’s best efforts so sharply and probably so often. But Gerry wanted to stay married, and in our couples counseling sessions he worked hard to add a new dimension to himself—the feeling one. He entered a men’s therapy group and quickly became an insightful group leader. One day, the men had a discussion: How to know when it was time to leave the group. Gerry said, “It’s when you’ve gotten enough in touch with your feelings that you notice you can be intimate with the ones you love.” Individual therapy Men usually come to treatment in crisis. Bill reported that he and Marla, his partner of two years, had a good relationship. Last Thursday, they argued and, when she said she wanted to end the relationship, he pushed Marla into the wall. Scared by his behavior, he showed up in my office the next day. Crisis is not the best motivator for treatment, but he nonetheless attended 16 sessions, where he came to understand he didn’t trust people, seeing the world as essentially unsafe because of his childhood history, with a wayward mother, and alcoholic father. At points in counseling, he had tears in his eyes. He learned to talk more openly with Marla about his fears, making the prospect of further violence less likely. All things considered, Bill became a considerably more open man over the course of counseling. Other influences Traditional churches spoke with authority, in terms of moral absolutes. The new church is personal. The pastor speaks of his private life, and after the service, people head off to their Bible study or addiction recovery groups, which are often less study and more therapy. Conventional pastors were upright men of God who bore no apparent human blemishes. Today they are failed people in recovery. When I went to one of these churches with a friend, she pointed to the pastor and said proudly, “He used to be a cocaine addict.” EMS personnel are taught to provide empathy; human resource staffs are trained in personality inventory and relationship skills; the military provides grief counseling. Public schools teach about respectful relationships, including anti-bullying. In medical school, physicians learn how to tell patients about terminal illness. State programs offer counseling to judges and attorneys for substance abuse and burn out. So what about a diorama for the 21st century? You’ve probably concluded you’d need several, if not many. One might still depict the man away from the family; another might find him in the center with his partner and children. Another might show him with children alone. Still another, with another man. In a time of transition, roles are in flux as men grow in new directions. But one thing is clear: the influences at play in creating new definitions of manhood are powerful, and they’re coming from many sources. Charlie Donaldson is a therapist, writer, and former codirector of the Men’s Resource Center of West Michigan. He is coauthor (with Randy Flood) of Stop Hurting the Woman You Love: Breaking the Cycle of Domestic Abuse (Hazelden, 2006). Spring 2010
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From Boys to Men
Young Men’s Journey to Healthy Manhood
Kai Chiang
By Richie Davis
ike his fellow Journeymen, Noah Koester says he looks forward to hanging out together with the guys for four hours of biking, hiking, disc golf, wrestling … and heart-to-heart talking. The five teenagers from around Franklin County, Massachusetts, just south of Vermont and New Hampshire, have been meeting the past several months with their four mentors. They are part of Boys to Men, an international organization that tries to support and encourage boys on the journey to healthy manhood— navigating the challenges of adolescence in the absence of communal bonds that once were common in a more family-oriented, villagecentered time. “People always say there’s a ‘road of life,’ but it’s more like a field,” said Koester, a 14year-old high school student from Warwick, Mass. “You choose your own path, you follow who you choose.” Last August, Koester took part in a weekend-long Rite-of-Passage Adventure Weekend at a camp near Brattleboro, Vt., along with two dozen other boys from around the Northeast. Koester’s father, David, also took part and remains one of five adult mentors for
the Journeymen, or “j-group,” in the year that follows. The rite-of-passage initiation is for teenage boys, a part of the 12-year-old Boys to Men program that began in California as a way to help young men through what can often be a difficult transition into adulthood. The younger males are guided by adult mentors, who also volunteer to help the Journeymen John Berkowitz of Shelburne, Mass., a former human service worker, who coordinates the Boys to Men Network in the southern Vermont, northwestern Massachusetts area, says, “We believe that today’s boys have lost what boys have had in every culture throughout history: a support network of elders, fathers, uncles and other males who initiate and mentor them into young manhood. “Along with a nearly 50 percent divorce rate, this has led so many boys to fill the void by joining gangs, abusing alcohol and drugs, perpetrating violence toward themselves and others, becoming addicted to the video screen, engaging in unhealthy sexuality, experiencing declining academic performance, and distracting themselves by increasing consumerism and materialism.”
Boys to Men, with groups operating in Germany and South Africa, supports boys and encourages them to trust in one another and open up. The “boy code,” as defined by William Pollack in his book Real Boys, trains males to be tough and independent, to dominate others, distrust other males, and to suffer in private without ever crying, never examining or expressing feelings other than anger. The effects can include bullying, domestic violence and suicide, say Pollack, Berkowitz and members of the j-group themselves. “I think it leads to pent-up emotions that sort of overflow when you reach a certain age, and that can lead to all sorts of confusion,” says 13-year-old Jonah Ferdman-Hayden of South Hadley, Mass., a participant in the less than year-old group. “Society tells all the males to just ‘man up,’ don’t let your emotions out, just keep them in.” David Koester, 53, recalls that when he was growing up, there wasn’t any similar organization, other than a church group that “conceivably could have done a little of that role, but I don’t think it did. For me, there wasn’t really an opportunity. I was getting Spring 2010
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the wrong messages: A boy was supposed to learn to handle things, mostly on their own, (to) cowboy up and tough it out and not pay attention to your feelings. That’s the reason I really wanted to get involved in this, to change that.” Koester signed up for the rite-of-passage with his son and became a mentor after first trying a 24-hour men’s workshop, “Finding Your Teenage Fire,” that also serves as a mentor training and includes j-men teens in the reverse role of mentors to their elders. Boys to men, has trained more than 3000 youths, and “helps not only the boys but the men,” Berkowitz said, “in healing some of those old wounds from their teenage years, making sure boys today get the support they didn’t have.” Berkowitz, who had worked with adolescents at a Vermont-based community mental health agency and other programs, became interested after seeing a documentary film about it three years ago. “I think most of the men who get involved with this feel that this is something we missed as teenagers,” he said. “We’re trying to get back and understand ourselves, to things we think teenage boys really ought to get in terms of supporting and understanding in themselves, being able to express what they feel in a way that isn’t going to hurt somebody else. “Every man here, we all struggled in our adolescence. It was painful stuff, with wounds, hurt that somehow gets in the way of our adult
selves and prevents us from fulfilling our best dreams and mission in life.” All Boys to Men gatherings—rites-ofpassage weekends, mentor training and biweekly j-men sessions—provide an opportunity for participants, young and old, to share together through play and heartfelt discussions. Unlike scouting and other youth activities that are activity driven, the group emphasizes
The organization helps not only boys but men, who heal wounds from their teenage years. sharing feelings, and unlike programs like Big Brothers Big Sisters, doesn’t try to match a single mentor with a single teen. “I feel a lot of times like I’m the only one with a problem, that no one understands,” said Noah Koester. “But in j-group, with all the experience of the mentors, if they’ve been through the same thing, they can tell you how they got through it and that can help you choose the right path.” A different youth group he’s part of includes group discussions, as well as similar fun activities, but the sharing isn’t nearly as deep. “If I say I felt very stressed this past week,
someone will say, ‘I’m sorry’ and move on to the next one. In this group, if you say that, the mentors and others would say, ‘What stressed you?’ ‘How did it stress you?’ ‘How do you think you can deal with it?’ ‘Do you need suggestions about how you can deal with the stuff stressing you?’ Here, we’re all out playing a game, if something’s bothering you, you can just pull one (mentor) aside and say, ‘Can I talk to you?’” The j-group remains together throughout the year and ideally for three or four years, through its members’ adolescence, teaching the young men how to resolve conflicts without having to hurt the people around them. Cost of the weekend initiation and the year’s program is $450; most teens receive some kind of financial aid and no one’s ever turned away because of lack of funds. The program tries to help young men learn to be comfortable with themselves and with each other, Berkowitz said, “to learn to speak your truth, to speak your feelings. And as men we’re learning that ourselves. We just want to make it so that it doesn’t take so long for the men of tomorrow to get there.” For more information, visit www.boystomen.org or, boystomennewengland.org. Richie Davis is senior writer for The Recorder, a daily newspaper in Greenfield, Mass., where a version of this article originally appeared. He can be reached at rdavis@recorder.com.
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Books and Film
Books Awakening Joy: Ten Steps That Will Put You on the Road to Happiness
By James Baraz and Shoshana Alexander Hardcover: 336 pages, Bantam Books, 2010
H
ere’s a book that works like a locksmith’s tool opening a door; in this case it’s into a more fulfilling life. An outgrowth of James Baraz’s successful online course of the same name, Awakening Joy: Ten Steps That Will Put You on the Road to Happiness is an accessible, anecdote-rich guide filled with valuable tips to understanding both the roadblocks that pose challenges in our lives and the open road we can reach to drive on the highway of our own personal happiness. As a longtime meditation teacher, Baraz distills three decades of inquiry into the mind into this down-to-earth primer. Co-written with longtime colleague and student, the gifted editor Shoshana Alexander, the book evokes the warmth of a satisfying conversation—actually a series of conversations—with a wise friend. And make no mistake: Baraz is wise. And compassionate, giving and optimistic. He’s also a gifted teacher. Among his gifts? Promoting joy as a gateway to pass through on the journey to self-awareness. To those whose upbringing emphasized a narrow-minded, “should” oriented approach to living, awakening a sense of joy as a means of achieving personal growth might seem contraindicated. How can we “jump ahead” of struggle, pain and suffering—the trinity of stages of personal growth many believe people must first pass through to reach higher states of happiness? Such an approach misses the mark—by a wide margin. Baraz is not so much advocating an “eat dessert first” approach to living as much as saying “dessert” is available all the time in succulent, small bites. Rooted in mindfulness meditation practice, which Baraz has been practicing and teaching since the seventies (he is one of the founding teachers of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California), the book is peppered with quotes from a range of teachers, as well as participants in the Awakening Joy course. The book also draws on paths to happiness found in a range of spiritual traditions. Another of its strengths is the accessible, open-minded and open-hearted way Baraz introduces readers to Buddhism. While dealing with life’s adversity is certainly addressed in the book—we appreciate Baraz all the more for being open and vulnerable in sharing
many painful episodes in his own life—time and again he brings readers back to an appreciation for wholesome states of living. After an eye operation left him with seriously compromised vision—“the world looked like a Jacques Cousteau underwater documentary filmed on a cloudy day”—Baraz relied on his meditation practice to see him through. When a risky operation eventually restored his vision, he felt a surge of gratitude that just never subsided. “… [T]he gratitude I felt at my good fortune became a continuous backdrop to everything else in my life,” he wrote. Baraz says that over a long period of time he has trained himself to examine his experiences carefully, “not only for my own spiritual growth but also to share my findings with students.” As a result of the appreciation he felt at his clear vision, he became fascinated with the question, “What is gratitude?” In many ways, this book answers that question—a first hand account of his experiences as “an explorer of the landscape of the grateful heart.”
the book addresses are substance abuse and addiction, emotions, sexuality, work, money, fatherhood, and barriers to personal fulfillment. Like much about contemporary expressions of masculinity, men’s resistance to reading books about their inner lives is changing, too. Men’s Healing is part of that transition, a welcome course correction on the journey to wholeness.
Film
Menstruation, Culture & the Politics of Gender
—Rob Okun
Men’s Healing:
A Toolbox for Life
By Alan Lyme, David J. Powell, and Stephen Andrew Hanley Hope, 185 pages
A
powerful aid for men to not just locate the map to their inner lives but also know what to do once they’ve arrived, Men’s Healing: A Toolbox for Life is an essential book in any male traveler’s carry-on or backpack. Using the metaphor of the toolbox, the authors cover a lot of ground with sections from growing up male to psychological and emotional treatments for issues men uniquely face. A section with resources, homework, activities, and a questionnaire makes the book a useful manual and includes case studies and exercises which, the authors recommend, are best completed in a separate journal. According to the authors, Men’s Healing is designed as a self-help book to be used by men and the therapists and counselors who treat them, and they urge doing more than just reading through the stories. To grow and transform oneself, they believe, requires more than a change in mental activity; it calls for a shift in attitude. For the book to be helpful means making a serious commitment to using the tools and doing the recommended exercises. “Ultimately,” the authors write, Men’s Healing: A Toolbox for Life “is a spiritual book, asking questions not only about how to live but also about why we live.” Among the key topics in men’s lives that
Red Moon:
W
Directed by Diana Fabianova 2009, 53 minutes Distributed by Media Education Foundation (www. mediaed.org)
hen filmmaker Diana Fabianova reached puberty, she found herself irremediably trapped in menstrual etiquette. She carefully hid the evidence from her father and brother first, and later on, from most of the other men in her life. And no matter how bad she felt, she pretended she was fine. The taboo far exceeded the scope of her family: it was all around her. Periods were a “girl thing.” Periods were shameful. Periods were inappropriate for public discussion. End of the story? Not quite. Something in her was reluctant to accept and suffer in silence. Why did the sign of what all societies consider a blessing—women’s ability to give birth—happen to be described with names and expressions like “The curse” (in England), the “English war debarquement” (France), and “to be on the rags” (U.S.)? With humor and refreshing candor, Fabianova’s Red Moon provides a fascinating, often ironic, take on the absurd and frequently dangerous cultural stigmas and superstitions surrounding women’s menstruation. As educational as it is liberating, the film functions as both a mythbusting overview of the realities of menstruation, and a piercing cultural analysis of the ways in which struggles over meaning and power have played out through history on the terrain of women’s bodies. While ideal for women’s studies and health courses, as well as anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies, the film may prove to be important for young men on the journey to healthy manhood in understanding young women’s journey to healthy womanhood.
Visit us on the web at Voicemalemagazine.org Spring 2010
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Resources for Changing Men Family Violence Prevention Fund Working to end violence against women globally; programs for boys, men and fathers www.endabuse.org Healthy Dating, Sexual Assault Prevention http://www.canikissyou.com International Society for Men’s Health Prevention campaigns and health initiatives promoting men’s health www.ismh.org Paul Kivel Violence prevention educator http://www.paulkivel.com A wide-ranging (but by no means exhaustive) listing of organizations engaged in profeminist men’s work. Know of an organization that should be listed here? E-mail relevant information to us at info@voicemalemagazine.org 100 Black Men of America, Inc. Chapters around the U.S. working on youth development and economic empowerment in the African American community www.100blackmen.org A Call to Men Trainings and conferences on ending violence against women www.acalltomen.org American Men’s Studies Association Advancing the critical study of men and masculinities www.mensstudies.org Boys to Men International Initation weekends and follow-up mentoring for boys 12-17 www.boystomen.org Boys to Men New England www.boystomennewengland.org Dad Man Consulting, training, speaking about fathers and father figures as a vital family resource www.thedadman.com EMERGE Counseling and education to stop domestic violence. Comprehensive batterers’ services www.emergedv.com European Men Pro-feminist Network Promoting equal opportunities between men and women www.europrofem.org
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Lake Champlain Men’s Resource Center Burlington, Vt., center with groups and services challenging men’s violence on both individual and societal levels www.lcmrc.org Males Advocating Change Worcester, Mass., center with groups and services supporting men and challenging men’s violence www.centralmassmrc.org ManKind Project New Warrior training weekends www.mkp.org MANSCENTRUM Swedish men’s centers addressing men in crisis www.manscentrum.se Masculinity Project The Masculinity Project addresses the complexities of masculinity in the African American community www.masculinityproject.com MASV—Men Against Sexual Violence Men working in the struggle to end sexual violence www.menagainstsexualviolence.org Men Against Violence UNESCO program believing education, social and natural science, culture and communication are the means toward building peace www.unesco.org/cpp/uk/projects/ wcpmenaga.htm Men Against Violence (Yahoo e-mail list) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/menagainstviolence/ Men Against Violence Against Women (Trinidad) Caribbean island anti-violence campaign www.mavaw.com.
Men Can Stop Rape Washington, D.C.-based national advocacy and training organization mobilizing male youth to prevent violence against women. www. mencanstoprape.org MenEngage Alliance An international alliance promoting boys’ and men’s support for gender equality www.menengage.org Men for HAWC Gloucester, Mass., volunteer advocacy group of men’s voices against domestic abuse and sexual assault www.strongmendontbully.com Men’s Health Network National organization promoting men‘s health www.menshealthnetwork.org Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe, Inc. Statewide Massachusetts effort coordinating men’s anti-violence activities www.mijd.org Men’s Nonviolence Project, Texas Council on Family Violence http://www.tcfv.org/education/mnp. html Men’s Resource Center for Change Model men’s center offering support groups for all men www.mrcforchange.org Men’s Resource Center of South Texas Based on Massachusetts MRC model, support groups and services for men mrcofsouthtexas@yahoo.com Men’s Resources International Trainings and consulting on positive masculinity on the African continent www.mensresourcesinternational.org Men Stopping Violence Atlanta-based organization working to end violence against women, focusing on stopping battering, and ending rape and incest www.menstoppingviolence.org Men’s Violence Prevention http://www.olywa.net/tdenny/ Mentors in Violence Prevention—MVP Trainings and workshops in raising awareness about men’s violence against women www.sportsinsociety.org/vpd/mvp./php Monadnock Men’s Resource Center Southern New Hampshire men’s center supporting men and challenging men’s violence mmrconline.org
MVP Strategies Gender violence prevention education and training www.jacksonkatz.com National Association for Children of Domestic Violence Provides education and public awareness of the effects of domestic violence, especially on children. www. nafcodv.org National Coalition Against Domestic Violence Provides a coordinated community www.ncadv.org National Men’s Resource Center National clearinghouse of information and resources for men www.menstuff.org National Organization for Men Against Sexism Annual conference, newsletter, profeminist activities www.nomas.org Boston chapter: www.nomasboston. org One in Four An all-male sexual assault peer education group dedicated to preventing rape www.oneinfourusa.org Promundo NGO working in Brazil and other developing countries with youth and children to promote equality between men and women and the prevention of interpersonal violence www.promundo.org RAINN—Rape Abuse and Incest National Network A national anti-sexual assault organization www.rainn.org Renaissance Male Project A midwest, multicultural and multiissue men‘s organization www.renaissancemaleproject The Men’s Bibliography Comprehensive bibliography of writing on men, masculinities, gender, and sexualities listing 14,000 works www.mensbiblio.xyonline.net/ UNIFEM United Nations Development Fund for Women www.unifem.org VDay Global movement to end violence against women and girls, including Vmen, male activists in the movement www.newsite.vday.org
Resources for Changing Men Voices of Men An Educational Comedy by Ben Atherton-Zeman http://www.voicesofmen.org Walk a Mile in Her Shoes Men’s March to Stop Rape, Sexual Assault & Gender Violence http:// www.walkamileinhershoes.org
Collaborative Divorce www.collaborativealternatives.com www.collaborativedivorce.com www.collaborativepractice.com www.nocourtdivorce.com The Fathers Resource Center Online resource, reference, and network for stay-at-home dads www.slowlane.com
White Ribbon Campaign International men’s campaign decrying violence against women www.whiteribbon.ca
National Center for Fathering Strategies and programs for positive fathering. www.fathers.com
XY Magazine www.xyonline.net Profeminist men’s web links (over 500 links) www.xyonline.net/links.shtml
National Fatherhood Initiative Organization to improve the well-being of children through the promotion of responsible, engaged fatherhood www.fatherhood.org
Profeminist men’s politics, frequently asked questions www.xyonline.net/misc/ pffaq.html Profeminist e-mail list (1997–) www.xyonline.net/misc/profem.html Homophobia and masculinities among young men www.xyonline.net/misc/ homophobia.html
Fathering Fatherhood Initiative Massachusetts Children’s Trust Fund Supporting fathers, their families and theprofessionals who work with them www.mctf.org Fathers and Daughters Alliance (FADA) Helping girls in targeted countries to return to and complete primary school fatheranddaughter.org Fathers with Divorce and Custody Concerns Looking for a lawyer? Call your state bar association lawyer referral agency. Useful websites include: www.dadsrights.org (not www.dadsrights.com) www.directlex.com/main/law/divorce/ www.divorce.com www.divorcecentral.com www.divorcehq.com www.divorcenet.com www.divorce-resource-center.com www.divorcesupport.com
Gay Rights Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Works to combat homophobia and discrimination in television, film, music and all media outlets www.glaad.org Human Rights Campaign Largest GLBT political group in the country. www.hrc.org Interpride Clearing-house for information on pride events worldwide www.interpride.net LGBT Health Channel Provides medically accurate information to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and allied communities. Safer sex, STDs, insemination, transgender health, cancer, and more www.lgbthealthchannel.com. National Gay and Lesbian Task Force National progressive political and advocacy group www.ngltf.org Outproud - Website for GLBT and questioning youth www.outproud.org Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays www.pflag.org
Have an idea how to spread the Voice Male message? Contact editor Rob Okun at: rob@voicemalemagazine.org. www.Voicemalemagazine.org Spring 2010
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Atonement
by Michael Burke
The dreams we had burned
then closed the stars behind them?
but the house came true today.
*
*
*
Doors barked fierce and wild
I thought to look for you, went outside and waited for you to come:
before curling up to sleep through flames.
willow, tornado, dish of olives.
Children were born, bright in the sky like strangers.
black swan gliding.
Who let them in,
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Hanging garden by the waters of,
We have no need of it: it will always
be with us. * * * If it rains in the east go fishing in the west: trees exchange apparel; the wind still comes and goes. We live out a series of hard bargains, and we take home what we pay for. Voice Male copy editor Michael Burke is a poet and writer who lives in Belchertown, Massachusetts.
General Support Groups: Open to any man who wants to experience a men’s group. Topics of discussion reflect the needs and interests of the participants. Groups are held in these Western Massachusetts communities: Hadley, at North Star, 135 Russell Street, 2nd Floor: Tuesday evenings (7:00 – 9:00 PM). Entrance on Route 47 opposite the Hadley Town Hall. Greenfield, at Network Chiropractic, 21 Mohawk Trail: Wednesday evenings (7:00 – 9:00 PM). Group for Men Who Have Experienced Childhood Neglect, Abuse, or Trauma: Open to men who were subjected to neglect and/or abuse growing up, this group is designed specifically to ensure a sense of safety for participants. It is a facilitated peer support group and is not a therapy group. Group meetings are held on Fridays (7:00 – 9:00 PM) at the Synthesis Center in Amherst, 274 N. Pleasant Street (just a few doors north of the former MRC building). Group for Gay, Bisexual, and Questioning Men: Specifically for men who identify as gay or bisexual, or who are questioning their sexual orientation, this group is designed to provide a safe and supportive setting to share experiences and concerns. Gay or bi-identified transgendered men are welcome! In addition to providing personal support, the group offers an opportunity for creating and strengthening local networks. Group meetings are held on Mondays (7:00 – 9:00 PM) at the Synthesis Center in Amherst, 274 N. Pleasant Street (just a few doors north of the former MRC building).