Voice Male Winter 2009

FROM THE EDITOR

A Beginning Again

by Rob Okun

fter 25 years, beginning as a newsletter for the groundbreaking Men’s Resource Center for Change, Voice Male is now on its own, an independent magazine with a fierce commitment to articulating a new way for men to be. While it’s an economically perilous time to relaunch a magazine, it is also exactly the right moment to begin again. To coin a phrase, our time has come.

In my writing, speaking, and working with men I am inspired by what I see.

The positive vision of men remaking ourselves—in our families, workplaces, and communities—is unprecedented. More fathers are stepping up; more college-age men, too. Men and women are collaborating more than ever before. Sexism, and abuse perpetrated by men, are still, sadly, all too common, but the number of younger and older men engaged in challenging violence—and each other—is steadily growing. I feel encouraged.

Getting men to take a good hard look at ourselves isn’t easy. I know; I grew up socialized in this society, carrying much of the same baggage as other men. Yet in reading and editing the range of articles and story ideas that come across my desk, I see more men willing to take that hard look.

At the birth of the Obama-Biden administration, the possibility for growing new men is greater than ever before. Not that they have it all figured out—far from it—but our new president’s sense of calm and sensitivity and his vice president’s ability to access tears model an emotionally present way for men to be that bodes well for the nation. It certainly signals a radical departure from their predecessors.

Now is a key moment to move the national conversation about men and masculinity several critical steps forward—a conversation, I’m happy to report, that is also advancing internationally. Voice Male has much to contribute to the dialogue.

And it’s a dialogue of the heart as well as the head. (Please check out cover artist Ray

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Coming of age in the fertile sixties—when advocacy journalism was flourishing—I know Voice Male can be more than a magazine. It can play a key part in a powerful, new social justice stimulus package, recounting stories of men’s transformation and articulating the language of healthy manhood.

DiCapua’s emotionally rich portraits on pages 20 and 21.)

Voice Male contributing editors and advisory board members include a number of the leading writers and activists in the nation and Canada addressing profeminist men’s issues—Michael Kimmel, Jackson Katz, Michael Kaufman, Bob Jensen, Byron Hurt—to name just those who have articles in this issue. Voice Male board members have stepped forward more than just as writers, though—they are also financial contributors to the magazine, who recognize how critical Voice Male is at this historic moment.

Michael Kimmel, whose latest book, Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men, is excerpted starting on page 12, sent out a note of support not long ago on behalf of Voice Male. Here’s an excerpt: I was among the original editors of Changing Men magazine, the first magazine for profeminist men, back in the 1980s. Not long after CM folded, Voice Male stepped into that void, transforming

itself over the years from a tiny newsletter into an important magazine now read around the country. So many people have directly benefited from having Voice Male as a much-needed voice in our movement, a place to learn about edgy new ideas, challenging books, vital films and powerful social change campaigns. I think it’s time for those of us who recognize the importance of the magazine to pony up—or to “man up” as Rob’s Red Sox might say. Now, as Voice Male begins a new chapter, please join me in becoming among the first to answer that call, to help the magazine to grow.

Helping Voice Male to grow need not just be the job of men. I am gratified to count among our most loyal supporters many, many women. The magazine—and men— owe much to women and the women’s movement. The language we’ve learned to describe healthy manhood and recount stories of men’s personal transformation, “Emotionalese,” is a language women speak fluently. We’re glad to be conversing with them.

Coming of age in the fertile sixties— when advocacy journalism was flourishing—I know Voice Male can be more than a magazine. It can play a key part in a powerful, new social justice stimulus package educating about, and advocating for, a new masculinity to help ease many of the pressing social problems we face.

Voice Male holds a vision of men as peacemakers who can express the full range of emotions indispensable to living a good life. We champion a manhood that respects women and girls, supports men’s authenticity, encourages responsible fatherhood, mentors our youth, and insists men be accountable to ensure our homes, communities and society are places of harmony and reconciliation. Central to the Voice Male vision—and mine—is men growing, changing and healing. Please help us realize that vision. We’d love for you to join us as we begin again.

Winter 2009

Changing Men in Changing Times Rob A. Okun Editor

Lahri Bond

Features 8 Porn’s Dirty, Dangerous Secret How Far will Gonzo Brutality Go?

Art Director

Michael Burke Copy Editor

Dan O'Neill

By Robert Jensen

10 A New Masculinity Comes to Washington Manhood in Obama’s America

By Rob Okun

Contributing Photographer

On the Cover: President Barack Obama

By Ray DiCapua

National Advisory Board

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12 Welcome to “Guyland” The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men

By Michael Kimmel

19 This Year, Listen to the Women Mother Time’s Turn

By Michael Kaufman

Juan Carlos Areán Family Violence Prevention Fund

20 Ray DiCapua’s Portraits of New Masculinity Transformation Through Art

By Rob Okun

John Badalament All Men Are Sons

Byron Hurt God Bless the Child Productions

Robert Jensen Prof. of Journalism Univ. of Texas

Sut Jhally Media Education Foundation

24 We Need Men to Support Women’s Safety Wake Up, Guys!

By Heidi Schnakenberg

26 Why Doesn’t She Just Leave?

Women’s Stories, Women’s Lives

By Heather Stark and Emilee Watturs

28 The Key to the Men’s Room What Men Talk About When Women Aren’t Around

By Ken Solin

Jackson Katz Mentors in Violence Prevention Strategies

Michael Kaufman

32 Right Living in the Obama Era The Black Male Handbook

By Lasana Omar Hotep

White Ribbon Campaign

Joe Kelly The Dad Man

Bill T. Jones Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Dance Co.

Mike Messner Prof. of Sociology Univ. of So. California

Don McPherson The Hopewell Group

Craig Norberg-Bohm Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe

Chris Rabb Afro-Netizen

Haji Shearer Massachusetts Children’s Trust Fund Affiliations for identification purposes only

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36 The “Burdens” of White Privilege Between Barack and a Hard Place

By Tim Wise

Michael Kimmel Prof. of Sociology SUNY Stony Brook, N.Y.

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Columns & Opinion 2 4 14 15 17 22 30 35 37

From the Editor

A Begining Again by Rob Okun

Men @ Work Poem Halftime Outlines Colorlines Fathering

The After Hours Crowd by Patrick D. Higgins Sports Metaphors in Politics By Jackson Katz Beyond Proposition Hate By Rob Okun A New Future for Black Masculinity By Byron Hurt Big Shoes to Fill By Byron Hurt

Books Resources

VOICE MALE is published quarterly by the Alliance for Changing Men, 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 nongovernmental 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 © 2009 Alliance for Changing Men/Voice Male magazine.

Subscriptions: For subscription information, go to voicemalemagazine.org (beginning February 15, 2009) or write or call Voice Male 413.687-8171.

Advertising: For advertising rates and deadlines, write or call www.voicemalemagazine.org; 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

Winter 2009

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Men@ Work Ending Sexual Terrorism in the Congo r. Denis Mukwege of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—and featured on the cover of Voice Male’s Summer 2008 issue—has been named winner of the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights for 2008. Previous recipients of the award include Nelson Mandela, Amnesty International, Jimmy Carter, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. Mukwege is the director and founder of the groundbreaking Panzi General Referral Hospital in Bukavu, South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) where he performs life-saving fistula surgeries on girls and women who have been brutally raped and mutilated in the Congolese war.

Dr. Mukwege is the godfather of the growing V-Men’s movement. In public presentations he addresses what motivates men to commit such crimes, and what men need to do and who they need to become to stop it. By sharing firsthand accounts and a psychological and physical understanding of sexual violence, Dr. Mukwege sheds light on what he calls “sexual terrorism.” Through his work at Panzi, Mukwege models another way of being a man. By illustrating that it is not the majority of men who are raping in the Congo, but that the majority are silent there and everywhere, he encourages both men and women to be bold and stand up for the women of Congo.

To get the word out about violence

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against women and girls in the DRC and efforts to end it, Ensler’s Spotlight on the Women and Girls of the Congo tour, “Turning Pain into Power,” will feature Vagina Monologues playwright and activist Eve Ensler and Dr. Mukwege, in dialogues in February visiting five major U.S. cities: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, Ensler’s organization, V-Day and UNICEF have partnered with the Panzi Hospital to build the City of Joy, a safe house project as a refuge for healed women, survivors of rape and torture who have been left without family and community. City of Joy will offer a safe haven, providing educational and income-generating opportunities, and support women in becoming the next leaders of the DRC. The tour will comprise of a series of educational and fundraising events. In each city, Eve will conduct a public interview with Dr. Mukwege about how to stop the ongoing femicide, what causes this level of violence and what life is like for women in the Congo.

For a schedule of the tour or more information, visit www.vday.org.

Dr. Denis Mukwege and V-Day’s Eve Emsler

Pints for Prostates Microbrewers are tackling a macro problem—prostate cancer. Pints for Prostates, a campaign sponsored by the awarding-winning Oregonbased Rogue Ales, is using “the universal language of beer” to reach men with information about PSA testing and prostate health screening.

Pints for Prostates was created to raise the awareness of men about prostate cancer and the need for regular health check ups. The campaign supports the efforts of Us TOO International Prostate Cancer Education and Support Network, a not for profit group founded and governed by prostate cancer survivors that works to support, educate and advocate for men with prostate cancer.

“We hope every man in Rogue Nation…asks their doctor for a PSA test,” said Brett Joyce, President of Rogue Ales.

“Having a brand like Rogue involved in the campaign will help us reach more men in their late 30s and early 40s, when statistics show they often skip regular physicals and avoid doctor’s offices,” said Rick Lyke of Charlotte, N.C., a 47-year-old cancer survivor who founded Pints for Prostates earlier this year after successful prostate surgery.

One in six men is at risk of developing prostate cancer during his lifetime. Approximately 200,000 new cases of prostate cancer will likely be diagnosed in the U.S. this year. All funds raised through Pints for Prostates go

directly to Us TOO International, a Chicago-area non-profit organization founded in 1990 which today boasts 325 local chapters.

“The idea of reaching men about health issues through beer sounded a little strange at first,” said Thomas Kirk, president and CEO of Us TOO International, “but it fits perfectly with our mission to educate and empower men and their family members so they can take an active role in their health care.”

To get more information about the campaign go to www.ustoo. org/pints.

Raising Hope For Congo's Women Calling Eastern Congo “the most dangerous place on earth for women,” the Enough Project has launched a new campaign – RAISE Hope for Congo: Protect and Empower Congo’s Women.

According to the Family Violence Prevention Fund, the campaign is designed to raise awareness about the conflict and the widespread sexual violence against women and girls in Eastern Congo, educate activists about the causes of and solutions to this conflict, and influence international policy by promoting peace, punishment and prevention. Visit www.raisehopeforcongo.org/node/petition to add your name to the petition asking the president to announce his administration’s initial plan to end the scourge of violence against women and girls in eastern Congo on next International Women’s Day, March 8, 2009, and then report back on progress one year later. The campaign also offers a petition to urge Congress to pass the International Violence Against Women Act. Enough is a project of the Center for American Progress. Read more about the campaign at www.raisehopeforcongo.org/.

Men@ Work A Promise to Whose Self?

Domestic violence victim advocacy organizations are challenging actor Alec Baldwin’s new memoir, A Promise to Ourselves, which details his divorce and legal battle over custody. Speaking Up, the newsletter of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, reports B a l d w i n claims he was a victim of parental alienation syndrome ( PA S ) . T h e syndrome is a controversial theory that argues that one parent, usually the father, is demonized at the hands of another parent, usually the mother, most often through false allegations of abuse.

The actor’s bitter custody battle with Kim Basinger became public knowledge in 2007 when someone leaked a voicemail Baldwin left for his then eleven-year-old daughter in which he called her a “rude, thoughtless little pig.”

Baldwin received considerable criticism for the message, and now says he was emotionally and financially drained by the court system and had “snapped.”

The media attention for Baldwin’s book has thrust the controversial PAS theory into the spotlight, and victim advocates are speaking out. “PAS was invented to defeat child abuse claims — and it has been remarkably successful in misleading family courts into believing that women who are sincerely trying to protect their children and themselves from abuse, are just seeking to end the children’s relationship with their noncustodial father,” said Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project executive director Joan Meier.

Advocates say that victims of violence tend to be the ones

silenced when PAS is invoked, and that courts handling custody cases often do not understand the dynamics of domestic violence.

“The most important factor judges should be weighing in making custody decisions is the safety of the mother and child, and the introduction of PAS overshadows this critical need for safety,” National Coalition Against Domestic Violence executive director Rita Smith said.

Parental alienation syndrome is not recognized by any professional association and has been rejected by the Presidential Task Force of the American Psychological Association and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.

Younger Men, Dating Violence A new study of young men who commit intimate partner violence finds that more than half faced challenges early in their lives, according to a study published in the September issue of the American Journal of Men’s Health. Problems for young men age 17 to 21 included growing up in troubled families, having little or no support when they began to fail at school, and witnessing violence in their homes and communities. Researchers titled their study the “Social and Environmental Contexts of Adolescent and Young Adult Male Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence: A Qualitative Study.”

“Until now, we did not have much information on young men who hurt their partners,” said the study’s senior author, Elizabeth Miller, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California, Davis Children’s Hospital.

“This is a critically important piece of the puzzle in terms of designing meaningful prevention and intervention programs to prevent adolescent relationship violence.”

“We need to conduct research that considers aspects of envi-

ronments—such as family life, school, peer environment and communities—that might promote such behaviors among boys,” said the study’s lead author, Elizabeth Reed, ScD. “Perpetration of violence in dating relationships occurs among certain groups of boys more than others. We need to look beyond individuals to see how environments play a role in this important public health problem, and address the issue in a way that considers factors much larger than individual choices and behaviors.”

Miller and Reed note that the study is among an urban sample of boys in programs for dating violence perpetration and, therefore, does not represent all boys who perpetrate abusive behaviors towards girlfriends. However, it offers some important, initial insight into the potential factors across the life contexts of these boys that may contribute to dating violence.

The study in the is the first qualitative study to document the social and environmental factors experienced by adolescent males who have abused dating partners.

network and major newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and abroad. DADs created The Dads & Daughters Togetherness Guide and saw an anthology of articles from their newsletter, Daughters: For Parents of Girls, published in Japan. DADs won high praise from the most regarded experts on girls’ healthy development.

“Despite our success, we have not raised the funds needed for our work,” according to Kelly.

“People and organizations that we’ve had the privilege to work with at Dads & Daughters will continue to carry its message in their own ways.”

DADs’ Kelly has launched a new website (thedadman.com) and also recommends Future of Fatherhood (www.futureoffatherhood. com/dads/dadslanding.html): online and in-person resources for dads, daughters, and professionals working with families.

Farewell to Dads and Daughters The pioneering non-profit Dads & Daughters (DADs) has shut down due to a lack of funds to continue operations, according to an announcement from founding president Joe Kelly.

DADs worked to help dads and stepdads makes the most of their special relationship with their daughters, and in the process DADs improved the lives of thousands of families. “Men told us that they were better fathers and stepfathers for having learned from DADs, and that our work is especially important in this day and age of major, complex challenges that girls face,” Kelly wrote. DADs generated media stories about the father-daughter relationship on every major TV

Joe Kelly, the Dad man

A Federal Office of Men’s Health?

A survey of 50 state departments of health and the District of Columbia makes the case for establishing a federal office of men’s health.

That conclusion grew out of findings presented by the Washington-based Men’s Health Network (MHN) at the American Public Health Association annual Winter 2009

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meeting in San Diego at the end of October.

Of the states responding, 42 indicated that they’ve established an office or coordinator for women’s health. Twelve have an office or coordinator for men’s health. All 50 and D.C. have a website with information specifically related to women’s health.

Fourteen (including D.C.) have a website with information specifically covering men’s health.

Thirty-three have a commission to study and make recommendations regarding the health or general status of women. Four have a comparable entity for the health or general status of men.

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All states have women’s health coordinators and representatives organized through the federal Office of Women’s Health within DHHS. There is no federal Office of Men’s Health.

Prospects exist to address the gender gap within state departments of health relating to education, outreach, services, and access to care. Men’s Health Network believes it is imperative to perform a comprehensive environmental scan of current women’ s and men’s health tools, resources, and infrastructure by state.

MHN (www.menshealthnetwork.org) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to reach men and their families where they live, work, play, and pray with health prevention messages and tools, screening programs, educational materials, advocacy, and patient

navigation. For more information contact Theresa Morrow of Men’s Health Network at 202-543-6461 Ext. 101.

“The Man Files” A new monthly column, “The Man Files,” is up on the website Girl With Pen (www.girlwithpen. com). Written, or penned, by Shira Tarrant, California State Long Beach women’s studies professor and editor of Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex and Power (Routledge, 2008) and Men and Feminism (forthcoming from Seal Press), the column will cover sex, culture, work, parenting, and progressive change, in addition to masculinity. Why “The Man Files”? Because, Tarrant says, “gender isn’t just about women.

Our goal is to engage scholars, bloggers, and readers in a popular

online forum about what it means these days to ‘be a man.’ Check it out.

Series Combats Sexual Assault Online, On Campus All recordings and presenters’ slides from an innovative four-part online series held in December, “Sexual Assault on College Campuses,” are now available, thanks to the National Institute of Justice and the Government Innovators Network. To access the materials from this cutting edge series—all of which are free—go to the Government Innovators Network website at www. innovations.harvard.edu/xchattranscript.html?chid=281. Those interested must first register at the site.

Dear Reader, What’s happening with men and masculinity? That’s the question Voice Male tries to answer as it chronicles manhood in transition. The changes men have undergone the past 25 years, our efforts following women in challenging men’s violence, our explorations of our interior lives, are part of the story Voice Male investigates. From my vantage editing this magazine today, I see greater possibility than ever before for more men to join in the work of redefining masculinity.

The magazine you’re holding today began a quarter century ago as a typewritten newsletter of the pioneering Men’s Resource Center for Change. Now an independent publication, Voice Male’s roots are deep in the male positive, profeminist men’s movement, a movement that simultaneously supports men’s growth and healing and challenges men’s violence and isolation. It draws inspiration from the world-changing acts of social transformation women have long advanced. In the magazine world, Voice Male is indebted to many publications—off our backs and Ms. from the seventies, Changing Men from the eighties and Bitch magazine today, to name just a few.

Voice Male has a vital role to play at this momentous time in our history.

How can you help Voice Male? Subscribe. Get a gift subscription. Get a library, faith community or university to order copies in bulk. Identify people, businesses and philanthropies who can offer support to Voice Male.

Getting men to take a hard look at ourselves isn’t easy. But Voice Male can help. It offers men a handhold to take that hard look. It can provoke our awareness and stir our hearts.

I hope you’ll join me as a Voice Male reader. We’ll report what the mainstream media misses about real men’s lives—where we’re going and what we’re learning. Please help by letting us know how we’re doing. We’d love to hear from you.

If you’re subscribing, consider making a contribution. If you’re writing a letter to the editor, consider sending a story idea. Voice Male isn’t a solitary proposition. We need you. Please join us.

With gratitude,

Rob Okun Editor

P.S. To subscribe, make a contribution or offer a suggestion, please use the envelope provided, or go to voicemalemagazine.org. Thanks.

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How Far Will Gonzo Brutality Go?

Porn’s Dirty, Dangerous Secret

By Robert Jensen

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“sexual gymnastics.” Lexington Steele, one of the most successful contemporary pornography performers and producers, put it bluntly: “A lot of gonzo is becoming circus acts.”

“Gonzo” is the pornographic genre that rejects plot, character, or dialogue, offering straightforward explicit sex. Gonzo films are distinguished from “features,” which to some degree mimic the structure of a traditional Hollywood film. According to an August 2005 article in the top trade magazine, Adult Video News: “Gonzo, non-feature fare is the overwhelmingly dominant porn genre since it’s less expensive to produce than plot-oriented features, but just as importantly, is the fare of choice for the solo stroking consumer who merely wants to cut to the chase, get off on the good stuff, then, if they really wanna catch some acting, plot and dialog, pop in the latest Netflix disc.”

In that description is considerable insight into why pornography (1) has always been boring and (2) will continue to become more brutal.

The industry works from the assumption that the men who consume the vast majority of commercial heterosexual pornography are not really human beings with hearts, minds and souls. In the porn world, a man is a kind of sexual robot in search of nothing more than the stimulation of pleasure circuits. In that world, the goal is to reduce human sexuality to the production of an erection and orgasm as quickly as possible—get it up and get it off, efficiently. Pornography assumes not that a man has a penis but that a man is nothing more than a penis.

The pornographer faces one serious obstacle in all this: Men are human beings. No matter how emotionally deformed by the toxic conception of masculinity that is dominant in a patriarchal culture

Dan O'Neill / www.zenoptics.net

here are a finite number of ways that human bodies can be placed together sexually, and as one pornography industry veteran lamented to me at their annual trade show, “they’ve all been shot.” He sighed, pondering the challenge of creating a sexually explicit film that is unique, and mused, “After all, how many dicks can you stick in a girl at one time?”

His question was offered rhetorically, but I asked: How many?

Probably four, he said; simultaneous oral, vaginal, and double-anal penetration was realistic. Another producer later in the day told me he had once worked on a film that included a double-anal/double-vag scene—a woman being penetrated by four men at once. He said the director had a special harness made to hold the woman for that scene.

In contemporary mass-marketed heterosexual pornography, it’s unexceptional to see a standard DP (industry slang for “double penetration,” with two men entering a woman vaginally and anally at the same time) with oral penetration.

Whatever the number, theoretical or routine, the discussion reminds us that pornography is relentlessly intense, pushing our sexual boundaries both physically and psychically. And, pornography also is incredibly repetitive and boring.

Pornographers know all this, of course, and it keeps them on edge.

These days there are about 13,000 pornographic films released each year, compared with about 600 from Hollywood. Not surprisingly, a common concern at the Adult Entertainment Expo each time I attended (in 2005, 2006, and 2008) was that the desperate struggle by directors to distinguish their films from all the others was leading to a kind of

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such as the United States, we are human beings with hearts, minds and souls.

No matter how much men try to cut themselves off from the emotional component of sex, that component never withers completely, and therein lies the potential problem for pornographers. When all emotion is drained from sex it becomes repetitive and uninteresting —in a word, boring, even to men who are watching solely to facilitate masturbation. Because the novelty of seeing sex on the screen eventually wears off, pornographers who want to expand (or even just maintain) market share and profit need to give their products an emotional edge of some kind.

But pornography doesn’t draw on the emotions most commonly connected with sex—love and affection—because men typically consume pornography specifically to avoid love and affection. So, the pornographers offer men sexual gymnastics and circus acts that are saturated with cruelty toward women; they sexualize the degradation of women. While most of us would agree those are negative emotions, they are powerful emotions. And in a patriarchal society in which men are conditioned to see themselves as dominant over women, such cruelty and degradation fit easily into men’s notions about sex and gender.

When I offer this critique to men who are avid consumers of pornography, they often tell me that I’m wrong, that they watch gonzo and don’t see the kind of cruelty and degradation that I am describing. They tell me that there’s no cruelty in a woman being penetrated in aggressive fashion by three men who call her a whore throughout the sex. They tell me that when five men thrust into a woman’s mouth to the point she gags, slap a woman in the face with their penises, and ejaculate into her mouth and demand that she swallow it all, there’s no degradation.

In some sense, they are telling the truth—they aren’t seeing the cruelty and degradation because they are too caught up in the sexual arousal, and in such a state their critical faculties are derailed. They don’t see it because they are men in a patriarchal culture focused on their own pleasure. To see the woman as a person deserving of respect—to see her as fully human—would interfere with getting it up and getting it off.

When I was a young adult who used pornography, I didn’t see it either, because I had a stake in not seeing it. That’s why after an orgasm I would quickly leave the theater or adult bookstore. That dates me, I know; my pornography use came before the VCR brought pornographic films into the home. But the pattern endures; many men I talk to today tell me that after masturbating they quickly take out the DVD or shut off the computer to avoid really seeing what is taking place on the screen.

To slightly revise a cultural cliché, when the little head’s work is done, the big head re-engages. When the sexual experience is over, men can think, and when men can see the reality of pornography’s contempt for women most don’t want to watch.

Heterosexual men tend to consume pornography to achieve sexual satisfaction without the complications of dealing with a real woman.

Pornographers deliver graphic sexually explicit material that does the job, but to do so they must continuously increase the cruelty and degradation to maintain profits.

Gonzo producers test the limits with new practices that eroticize men’s domination of women. Less intense forms of those sexual practices migrate into the tamer feature pornography, and from there in muted form into mainstream pop culture. Pornography gets more openly misogynist, and pop culture becomes more pornographic—many Hollywood movies and cable TV shows today look much like soft-core pornography of a few decades ago, and the common objectification of women in advertising has become more overtly sexualized.

Where will all this lead? How far will pornographers go to ensure their profits, especially as the proliferation of free pornography on the

Internet adds a new competition? How much eroticized misogyny will the culture be willing to tolerate?

When I ask that question of pornography producers, most say they don’t know. An industry leader such as Lexington Steele acknowledged he has no crystal ball: “Gonzo really always pushes the envelope. The thing about it is, there’s only but so many holes, only but so many different types of penetration that can be executed upon a woman. So it’s really hard to say what’s next within gonzo.”

What’s next? What comes after DPs and double anals? What is beyond a “10 Man Cum Slam” and “50 Guy Cream Pie”? I can’t claim to know either. But after 20 years of researching the pornography industry as a scholar and critiquing it as part of the feminist anti-pornography movement, I know that we should be concerned. We should be afraid that there may be no limit on men’s cruelty toward women. In a patriarchal society driven by the predatory values of capitalism, we should be very afraid.

For further reading: Strange Bedfellows: Can Feminism and Porn Coexist?

By Nikko Snyder, Bitch magazine Is Pornography Really Harmful?

By Michael Bader, AlterNet Art and Porn: An Interview with Editor Dian Hanson

By Liz Langley, AlterNet Voice Male contributing editor Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His latest book, All My Bones Shake: Radical Politics in the Prophetic Voice, will be published later this year

by Soft Skull Press. He also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007). His articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html.

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Manhood in Obama’s America

mong the back stories played out in the 2008 presidential election was a powerful drama about masculinity.

Barack Obama and John McCain played the leads and Joe Biden and Sarah Palin were key supporting actors.

Sen. McCain replaced George Bush as the standard bearer for conventional manhood: stubborn, controlling, shootfrom-the-hip, inflexible. John Wayne would have been proud of his performance, from his angry attacks on Obama’s character (labeling him either a Marxist or a socialist, and the enemy of every Joe the Plumber) to his Marlboro Man response to the perilous financial calamity (his flailing “suspension” of his campaign to rush back to Washington to handle the economic crisis).

But while his handlers tried to spin this behavior as a sign of decisive, manly

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leadership, his following only fractured.

Remember how powerful it was when former secretary of state Colin Powell, a loyal Republican and retired general (now disenchanted with the Bush administration), crossed party lines to endorse Obama?

Despite McCain’s throwing the kitchen sink—and the bathroom toilet—at Obama, the Arizona senator’s attempts to tear his opponent down rather than build up his own candidacy never gained traction. Conventional masculine bluster, manifested by sneers and bullying, was a colossal failure.

Voters were having none of it. Not this time.

While certainly no cross dresser—and with a $150,000 GOP-financed power wardrobe to prove it—Gov. Sarah Palin, meanwhile, acted in a way that would make that symbol of unalloyed masculinity, the late

Charlton Heston, proud. The man who played Moses in The Ten Commandments and onetime president of the National Rifle Association would no doubt have appreciated Palin—a lifetime member of the NRA—as a take-no-prisoners new-generation Republican pit bull for slamming Obama’s “palling around” with “domestic terrorist Bill Ayres.” Now, she’s back in Wasilla facing the long Alaskan winter contemplating her political future.

A NEW MALE PARADIGM President-elect Obama offered quite a contrast. His sensitive election night victory speech and his inspirational augural address, set a tone of inclusion and reconciliation. And, remember the stirring words in scores of pre-election newspaper endorsements? Editors described him as sensitive,

thoughtful, composed and collaborative, reflecting a brand of masculinity Voice Male has long chronicled.

A less strident brand of American masculinity as practiced by an Obama-Biden administration has the potential to polish our tarnished reputation internationally.

Remember the reception Obama received to his stirring speech in Berlin in August when he sounded themes of collaboration and reconciliation internationally?

Obama resisted campaign supporters’ calls to find his “killer instinct” and “go for the jugular” in responding to McCain-Palin smears. They missed the point. It’s clear to me Obama really does want to do things differently. He seems to understand that oldschool manhood—marked by suspicion and isolation—translates into old-style politics and vice versa. Trust and collaboration, by contrast, so far seem the hallmarks of the Obama style.

FAMILY MAN IMAGE Hillary Clinton may not have been on the Democratic ticket, but as the role of gender as a force in the campaign unfolded, she and her legions of female supporters no doubt helped make the political culture more receptive to “kinder, gentler” expressions of masculinity. Rather than emphasize the tough-talking aspects of their leadership style, both Obama and Sen. Joe Biden let voters see them as fathers and family men in ways that to me, as a father and family man, ring true.

Palin, by contrast, the only woman in the race, by emphasizing a snarly, aggressive style (a pit bull with lipstick) never won too many admirers beyond the ubiquitous “Republican base.” Even the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska’s largest newspaper, endorsed the Obama-Biden ticket. Those who seemed to get the biggest kick out of her candidacy, comedian Tina Fey and her writers at Saturday Night Live, will now have to search elsewhere for new material.

Like Obama, Biden offers quite a contrast to old-style masculinity. In an exchange I had with him in September, he told me the passage of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994 is the accomplishment of which he's most proud. While he can be fiery and talk tough, remember that emotional moment at his debate against Palin? In case you’ve forgotten, our new vice president choked

up while recalling his life as a single father 35 years ago in the aftermath of an automobile accident that killed his wife and baby daughter and also seriously injured his two young sons.

TEARS NO LONGER A WEAKNESS There was a time—think about the teary Sen. Edmund Muskie in New Hampshire 40 years ago—when a display of such feeling from a man was seen as a game-changing moment of weakness. Biden’s moment only made him seem more human and, when commented on at all, elicited positive responses, a phenomenon cited by cable news television commentators. Clearly, ideas about manhood are changing. It’s about time.

All of the vital issues facing the nation— from civil liberties to global warming, from finding a way out of the financial morass to ending two wars—have been directly impacted these past eight years by the oldstyle masculinity practiced by George W. Bush and many of the senior members of

his administration. We have to be willing to admit our mistakes and our weaknesses—not a stance most men are willing to take easily—if we are really going to do something about the threat of terrorism, a biosphere threatened by the burning of fossil fuels, and housing and health-care crises so far ignored these last eight years.

The now laughable image of George “Mission Accomplished” W. triumphantly striding in his flight suit across the aircraft carrier deck may have been one McCain wanted to reprise, but it is the polar opposite of the brand of manhood Obama and Biden symbolize.

Women have long asked the question: “Is it possible for more men to grow and change?” For them, and for all voters, the 2008 presidential election offered a simple, clear answer: “Yes, we can.”

Rob Okun is editor of Voice Male magazine. Versions of this article appeared in Women’s eNews (www.womensenews.org ) and Alternet (Alternet.org).

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The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men

Welcome to “Guyland”

By Michael Kimmel “Jason” graduated from Dartmouth five years ago. Now 26, he works in finance in Boston and shares a Back Bay apartment with five other guys he went to school with. He runs and works out, stays fit, and dates lots of different women—all in their early 20s.

At night, he hangs out at Beacon Hill Pub or Cleary’s, the “Dartmouth bars” of Boston.

“Hey, college was supposed to be the best years of your life, right?” he explains, with only a trace of defensiveness in his voice. “So where is it written that it has to end when you graduate? College is forever, man. That’s what the admissions guys say—that these will be your friends forever. Well, forever is now.”

Jason (not his real name) is one of the young men you will meet in Michael Kimmel’s new book, Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (HarperCollins, 2008).

He is one among the nearly 400 guys Kimmel, for decades a leading figure in the profeminist men’s movement, insightful author, and distinguished sociology professor at the State University of New York’s Stony Brook, Long Island campus, interviewed over a four-year period—on college campuses, in neighborhood bars and coffee shops, in Internet chat rooms, and at sports events.

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“Most of them,” Kimmel writes, “are middle class and college-educated, from good homes in reasonably affluent suburbs and urban areas. Most are white, but I talked with plenty of Latino, African-American and Asian-American guys. Most are middle class, but I also made sure to talk with high school grads who never went to college but instead worked in auto body shops, served in the military, and opened small businesses. Most were straight, but I spoke with quite a few gay and bisexual guys as well.” (Of course, there are many young people of this age group who are highly motivated, focused, with a clear vision and direction in their lives. Their stories of resilience and motivation will provide a telling rejoinder to many of the dominant patterns of Guyland.) In another era, the guys Kimmel writes about “would undoubtedly be poised to take their place in the adult world, taking the first steps towards becoming the nation’s future professionals, entrepreneurs and business leaders. They would be engaged to be married, thinking about settling down with a family, preparing for futures as civic leaders and Little League dads. Not today.” What follows is an excerpt from Guyland.

oday, many young men, poised between adolescence and adulthood, feel anxious and uncertain. In college, they party hard but are soft on studying. They slip through the academic cracks, another face in a large lecture hall, getting by with little effort and less commitment. After graduation, they drift aimlessly from one dead-end job to another, spend more time on-line playing video games and gambling than they do on dates (and probably spend more money too), “hook-up” occasionally with a “friend with benefits,” go out with their buddies, drink too much and save too little. After college, they perpetuate that experience and move home or live in group apartments in major cities, with several other guys from their dorm or fraternity. They watch a lot of sports. They have grandiose visions for their futures and not a clue how to get from here to there. When they do try and articulate this amorphous uncertainty, they’re likely to paper over it with a simple “it’s all good.”

You can find them in New York’s Murray Hill district, or Silver Lake and Echo Park in Los Angeles, Houston’s Midtown, or Atlanta’s Buckhead district, sipping their mocha lattes

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Males between 16 and 26 number well over 22 million—more than 15 percent of the total male population in the United States.

The “guy” age bracket represents the front end of the single most desirable consumer market, according to advertisers. It’s the group constantly targeted by major Hollywood studios, in part because this group sees the same shoot-em-up action film so many times on initial release. They’re targeted in several of the most successful magazine launches in recent memory, magazines like Men’s Health, Maxim, FHM, Details, and Stuff. Guys in this age bracket are the primary viewers of the countless sports channels on television.

They consume the overwhelming majority of recorded music, video games and computer technology, and they are the majority of firsttime car buyers.

Yet aside from assiduous market research, Guyland is a terra incognita; it has never been adequately mapped. Many of us only know we’ve landed there when we feel distraught about our children, anxious that they have entered, or will be entering, a world that we barely know. We sense them moving away from us, developing allegiances and attitudes we neither understand nor support. Parents often feel we no longer know them—the young guys in our lives. Just what are they doing in their rooms at all hours of the night?

And what are they doing in college? And why are they so aimless and directionless when they graduate that they take dead end jobs and move back home? When they come home for college vacations, we wonder: just who is this new person who talks about ledge parties

and power hours—and what happened to the motivated young man who left for college with such high hopes and a keen sense of purpose.

And guys themselves often wonder where they left their dreams.

Every time we read about vicious gaybaiting and bullying in a high school, every time the nightly news depicts the grim horror of a school shooting, every time we hear about teen binge drinking, random sexual hook-ups, or a hazing death at a college fraternity, we feel that anxiety, that dread. And we ask ourselves, “Could that be my son?” Or, “Could that be my friend, or even my boyfriend?” Or, even “Could that be me?”

Well, to be honest, probably not. Most guys are not predators, not criminals, and neither so consumed with adolescent rage nor so caught in the thrall of masculine entitlement that they are likely to end up with a rap sheet instead of a college transcript. But virtually all guys know other guys who are chronic substance abusers, who have sexually assaulted their classmates.

They swim in the same water, breathe the same air. Those appalling headlines are only the furthest extremes of a continuum of attitudes and behaviors that stretches back to embrace so many young men, and that so circumscribes their lives that even if they don’t want to participate, they still must contend with it.

Guyland is not some esoteric planet inhabited only by alien creatures—despite how alien our teenage and 20-something sons might seem at times. It’s the world of everyday “guys.” Nor is it a state of arrested development, a case of prolonged adolescence among a cadre of slackers. It has become a stage of

Dan O'Neill / www.zenoptics.net

in the local Starbucks and crowding upmarket pool halls; some are banker boys in cargo shorts, untucked striped Oxford shirts and baseball caps, and others still sport the T-shirts or flannel shirts of their college days. They are the “friendsters” with their wi-fi computers looking for love, friendship, or hook-ups, or “Monsters” looking for next month’s job.

At night, they’ll all troop off to bars that are branded as collegiate alumni bars, such as Beacon Hill Pub or Cleary’s, known as Boston’s “Dartmouth bars” because there are so many recent Dartmouth grads in the city who congregate there. High school may be over at 18, college at 22, but the same social life often continues for another several years. Bars advertise “Spring Break 52 weeks a year!” and others promote college party atmospheres for the post-college party set.

Many post-grads move in a languorous mass, a collection of anomic nomads looking for someplace to go.

Welcome to Guyland.

Guyland is the world in which young men live. It is both a stage of life, a liminal undefined time span between adolescence and adulthood that can often stretch for a decade or more, and a place, or, rather, a bunch of places where guys gather to be guys with each other, unhassled by the demands of parents, girlfriends, jobs, kids, and the other nuisances of adult life. In this topsy-turvy, Peter Pan mindset, young men shirk the responsibilities of adulthood and remain fixated on the trappings of boyhood, while the boys they still are struggle heroically to prove that they are real men despite all evidence to the contrary.

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life, a “demographic,” that is now pretty much the norm. Without fixed age boundaries, young men typically enter Guyland before they turn 16, and they begin to leave in their mid to late 20s. This period now has a definable shape and texture, a topography that can be mapped and explored. A kind of suspended animation between boyhood and manhood, Guyland lies between the dependency and lack of autonomy of boyhood and the sacrifice and responsibility of manhood. Wherever they are living, and whatever they are doing, and whomever they are hooking up with, Guyland is a dramatically new stage of development with its own rules and limitations. It is a period of life that demands examination—and not just because of the appalling headlines that greet us on such a regular basis. As urgent as it may seem to explore and expose Guyland because of the egregious behaviors of the few, it may be more urgent to examine the ubiquity of Guyland in the lives of almost everyone else.

It’s easy to observe “guys” virtually everywhere in America—in every high school and college campus in America, with their baseball caps on frontways or backwards, their easy smiles or anxious darting eyes, huddled around tiny electronic gadgets or laptops, or relaxing in front of massive wide screen hi-def TVs, in basements, dorms, and frat houses. But it would be a mistake to assume that each conforms fully to a regime

of peer-influenced and enforced behaviors that I call “The Guy Code,” or shares all traits and attitudes with everyone else. It’s important to remember that individual guys are not the same as “Guyland.”

In fact, my point is precisely the opposite.

Though Guyland is pervasive—it is the air guys breathe, the water they drink—each guy cuts his own deal with it as he tries to navigate the passage from adolescence to adulthood without succumbing to the most soul-numbing, spirit-crushing elements that surround him every day.

There are some parts of Guyland that are quite positive. The advancing age of marriage, for example, benefits both women and men, who have more time to explore career opportunities, not to mention establishing their identities, before committing to home and family. And much of what qualifies as fun in Guyland is relatively harmless. Guys grow out of a lot of the sophomoric humor—if not

after their “sophomore” year, then at least by their mid-20s.

Yet, there is a disturbing undercurrent to much of it as well. Teenage boys spend countless hours blowing up the galaxy, graphically splattering their computer screens in violent video games. College guys post pornography everywhere in their dorm rooms; indeed, pornographic pictures are the most popular screen savers on male college students’ computers. In fraternities and dorms on virtually every campus, plenty of guys are getting drunk almost every night, prowling for women with whom they can “hook up,” and chalking it all up to harmless fun. White suburban boys don do-rags and gangsta tattoos appropriating inner-city African–American styles to be cool.

Homophobia is ubiquitous; indeed, “that’s so gay” is probably the most frequently used put down in middle schools, high schools and college today. And sometimes gay-baiting takes an ugly turn and becomes gay-bashing.

All the while, these young people are listening to shock jocks on the radio, laughing at cable-rated T&A on the current generation’s spinoffs of The Man Show and watching Spike TV, the “man’s network,” guffawing to the sophomoric body-fluid humor of college circuit comedians who make Beavis and Butthead sound quaint. They’re laughing at clueless henpecked husbands on TV sitcoms; snorting [continued to page 38]

The After Hours Crowd

By Patrick D. Higgins American boys walk in packs playing dress up in small towns, boulevard walking along panels illuminated of glass.

American boys get violent scared straight sending vibes like small atom bombs fallout smells of musk, fear, Old Spice, Boy Scouts.

American boys and mall-metal podcast haircuts get the better of me, an American boy, hapless in fashion’s prison culturebound to ignoramus brethren, fatuous fumbling for cigarette taunting nervous girl as she walks by alone.

American boys atomic and atomizing walk strong in tough

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group same shirt bent brim hat to Señor Frog shooter night for to make get drunk, get pussy, get real stupid drunk like television drunk.

We too Americans, boys caught somewhere nomadic in packs snapping fingers giggling in 7/4 rearrangers of names becoming sounds blasts of rhythm without territory or time, We too are America(n), boys, despite it all, laugh it out have it out have a drink have a smoke have a conversation

interrupted by cell phone new conversation text message on virtual co-planar getting co-planar getting sick.

Let’s start a fire, America.

Let’s do away with Boys Who Will Be Boys.

Let’s become something else.

Patrick Higgins is an author and musician living in Brooklyn, N.Y. “The After Hours Crowd” is from Some America and appears courtesy of the author. © 2009 Patrick D. Higgins.

Halftime

By Jackson Katz

Lahri Bond

Sports Metaphors in Politics: Time to Punt?

ports metaphors in politics are not merely figures of speech. They are intimately involved in the construction of presidential masculinity in U.S. political and media discourse. According to the cognitive scientists and philosophers George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, human thought processes themselves are largely metaphorical: our brains use them to organize and make sense of the world. Thus it is crucial to examine what effect it has on our political system that mainstream commentary about politics is infused with the kind of language one hears every day on ESPN, in sports bars and locker rooms.

From former Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet’s infamous assertion that the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a “slam dunk,” to the criticism that some journalists are known to ask “softball” questions during presidential press conferences, to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’assertion during his confirmation hearings that “Judges are like umpires…They make sure everybody plays by the rules,” to new president Barack Obama’s statement that “A nuclear Iran would be a game-changing

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situation not just in the Middle East but around the world,” everyday speech by and about politics and politicians routinely contains sports terminology whose meaning resonates with a large number of voters.

But while metaphors from sports such as basketball and baseball regularly surface in political speech, arguably the two most metaphorically influential sports in presidential campaign rhetoric are boxing and football. Not coincidentally, they are both violent sports, and they attract a disproportionate percentage of male participants and fans. It is difficult to quantify how much of the white male vote is determined by impressions about the relative “manliness” or “toughness” of candidates or political parties. But there is no doubt that for several decades violence—both our individual and collective vulnerability to it, and questions about when and how to use the violent power of the state to protect the “national interest”— has been an ominous and omnipresent factor in numerous foreign policy and domestic political issues (e.g. the Cold War, Vietnam, the “War on Terror,” and the invasion of Iraq, as well as gun control, and

executive, legislative and judicial responses to violent crime).

The frequent use of boxing and football metaphors in political discourse did not cause violence to become an important force in our politics, but this usage is one measure of how presidential campaigns in the mass media era are less about policy differences and complex political agendas than they are about the selling of a certain kind of executive masculinity, embodied until the historic 2008 election in a particular white man whom the public comes to know largely through television and other technologies of mass communication.

(For some observations on Barack Obama’s brand of masculinity see Voice Male editor Rob Okun’s article on page 10.)

Boxing metaphors help to construct presidential campaigns as the ultimate site for masculine competition. Boxing is a prototypical working-class or poor man’s (or more recently, woman’s) sport that strips the notion of physical combat to its barest essence: man against man in a fight to the finish. Until Obama’s election, the (almost exclusively) white male candidates who have vied at the Winter 2009

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highest level for the presidency have in effect been competing to be their party’s champion, who if victorious becomes the champion of the entire country, the man who stands in for the home team in international political competition against the champions of other countries (e.g. Saddam Hussein, Hugo Chavez, etc).

For many decades, newspapers have covered presidential debates with language taken directly from coverage of title bouts, complete with “Tale of the Tape” features that quantify a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses. The Los Angeles Times, during the 2000 presidential primary, ran an article about a dramatic speech by Sen. John McCain headlined “McCain Delivers Hard Left to Christian Right.” To this day, the political fortunes of various candidates are in part determined by whether or not political and media elites describe them as “heavyweights.”

The 2008 political primaries and election broke new linguistic ground, in part because the presence of a woman in the ranks of political “heavyweights” served to complicate the boxing metaphors. When the historic 2008 campaign is analyzed in coming years, it will be particularly interesting to see how voters responded to language about Hillary Clinton throwing—or receiving—“body blows” and “jabs.” Did this help to masculinize her and thus make her more credible as a potential commander in chief? Did it turn off other voters by furthering an image of her as a woman who was “too aggressive” ?

The entry of Republican Sarah Palin into the race as the second-ever woman vice-presidential candidate provided another watershed cultural moment. One of Palin’s most oftquoted lines on the campaign trail was “The heels are on, the gloves are off,” which she typically delivered to wild cheers of approval.

In coming years, it will be interesting to see how male and female voters respond to that sort of language from a woman. Among the many questions to ask: what are the differences between how the sexes view a woman “throwing punches” if she’s a conservative (like Palin) or a liberal feminist (like Hillary Clinton)? More generally, how does political discourse infused with boxing metaphors influence the electoral chances of women candidates?

Football is a hugely popular sport across the United States, and it provides a wealth of metaphors in contemporary American politics. Journalists wonder whether a politician will do an “end run” around his/her opposition in the legislature. TV pundits preface their remarks about a candidate’s debate performance by apologizing for doing a little “Monday-morning quarterbacking.”

Newly energized campaign volunteers claim to have been inspired to “get off the sidelines” and join the political battle. An op-ed in USA Today runs under the headline “Don’t punt on Iran: U.S. shouldn’t throw bombs or play a soft defense.”

Interestingly, the general election campaign season—when political ads increase exponentially and political talk fills the airwaves— corresponds to the main part of the football season. Election Day, always the first Tuesday in November, falls right in the heart of the football schedule. Men and women tuning into football on television may at one moment be watching a game, then watching a political ad during a commercial break, followed by a panel of experts analyzing the game, and perhaps moments later watching a panel of experts analyzing the political ad, with much of the rhetoric about football and politics overlapping and interchangeable. Football metaphors with military analogues that are used commonly by sportscasters and sportswriters, such as “throwing the bomb,” “penetrating the zone,” and “air game vs. ground game,” ensure that the language of football and the language of war cross-reference each other.

It is certainly not difficult to find examples of football metaphors in the speech of contemporary government officials. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was famously quoted as saying “It’s important to defend this country on the extremists’ 10-yard line, and not on our 10-yard line.” Republican senator Richard Lugar compared the Bush plan for a “surge” in Iraq to “a draw play on third down with 20 yards to go in the first quarter. The play does have a chance of working if everything goes perfectly, but it is more likely to gain a few yards and set up a punt on the next down.”

The 2008 campaign was itself rich in football metaphors. One of Obama’s right-wing critics, talk radio host Hugh Hewitt, managed to combine football and boxing metaphors in this caustic dismissal: “Rolling the dice with an untried rookie might be something a desperate NFL franchise might try with a quarterback, but the world cannot afford to have its only superpower turned over to a completely unqualified and wholly inexperienced lightweight.”

Now that the basketball-playing, “inexperienced lightweight” is president, it will be interesting to see how many basketball metaphors will enter the political lexicon. But there is one thing we already know about Obama, and it is something that resonates both in sports and in the far more consequential “arena” of politics: he is cool under pressure. Now as much as ever, that is a quality we need in our political leadership.

Voice Male contributing editor Jackson Katz is writing a book about media and presidential masculinities. He speaks frequently about challenging men’s violence at colleges and universities around the country.

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Outlines Civil Rights Means More Than Civil Unions

Beyond Proposition Hate

Dan O'Neill / www.zenoptics.net

By Rob Okun

“Rosa sat so Martin could march so Barack could run so our children could fly”— and so we might dance at gay and lesbian weddings.

y tradition, Jewish weddings end with one or both of the betrothed breaking a glass—a symbolic reminder that even at a moment of great joy wedding celebrants should remember that there is still suffering, still work to be done to repair the world.

Gays and lesbians and their allies needed no symbolic reminders on Election Night 2008. As a majority of the country—and the world—cheered Barack Obama’s remarkable election as the nation’s first African-American president, the passage of California’s Proposition Eight outlawing gay marriage (along with similar bans in Arkansas and Arizona) sent shards of shattered dreams coursing from the Baja Peninsula to the Oregon border, along the way dampening hopes of full citizenship for millions around the country.

Bittersweet. The good with the bad.

However you describe it, a pall had fallen over a time of great hope. And its shadow has only lengthened in the months since the election.

Now, the 18,000 marriages California gays and lesbians celebrated in 2008 are being legally challenged by the same folks who orchestrated Prop Hate. Massachusetts has been through all this but efforts to strip gays and lesbians of the marriage right failed there. Today, approaching the fifth anniversary of marriage

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for all in Massachusetts, leaves still turn a riot of brilliant color each October, maple sap still flows into buckets in the hilltowns every March, and the Red Sox continue heading for the post season. Doomsday predictions about the end of heterosexual marriage have never been borne out. (And, Connecticut has now joined Massachusetts as a state extending marriage rights to all.)

How can we maintain the hope and inspiration stirred by Barack Obama’s election when a cold bucket of unholy water has dashed gay and lesbian dreams of full citizenship? By remembering that as the civil rights issue of our time, it may be slowed but it can’t be stopped.

President Obama describes himself as “a fierce advocate for equality” for gays and lesbians yet defines marriage as between one man and one woman. Those close to the new president believe his administration will actively aid efforts to move gay rights forward.

Political reality, his allies say—getting elected in a homophobic society, for instance—demand she take a position he’d reject if he were sitting around a dining room table at the home of most open-minded Americans. But he did take that position and he did invite Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his historic

inauguration. What was he thinking, betrayed progressives wondered with alarm.

Obama’s reply: “It is no secret that I am a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans. It is something that I have been consistent on and something that I intend to continue to be consistent on during my presidency,” he said, defending his decision during a press conference weeks before his inauguration. “What I’ve also said is that it is important for America to come together, even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues. And I would note that a couple of years ago, I was invited to Rick Warren’s church to speak, despite his awareness that I held views that were entirely contrary to his when it came to gay and lesbian rights, when it came to issues like abortion. Nevertheless, I had an opportunity to speak. And that dialogue, I think, is part of what my campaign’s been all about.” Dialogue is certainly a vast improvement over our last president, who liked to choose diatribe and dynamite over dialogue.

But, Mr. President, engaging in dialogue is one thing; offering a prized role at your inauguration another.

The author of “Rick Warren’s Hypocritical Double Life,” an article posted in December on the dailybeast.com, investigative jourWinter 2009

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nalist Max Blumenthal noted, “Warren openly backed Proposition 8…essentially saying that two percent of the homosexual population was trying to dictate to the rest us…He told that to his congregation. And he’s backed every anti-gay proposition that’s come down the pike in California in the last 10 years…” A Puffin Foundation Fellow at the Nation Institute who is writing a book on the U.S. evangelical movement, Blumenthal believes “the real Rick Warren is someone who fights the culture war with a velvet glove. He’s a religious right figure who’s figured out a new strategy to move into a Democratic post-Bush era and still hold influence. He…freely admitted to a reporter from the Wall Street Journal that the principal difference, the only difference, between him and [Rev.] James Dobson [of Focus on the Family] is a matter of tone.”

Of course the civil rights of gays and lesbians totally eclipse any one individual opponent, even one as influential as Rev. Warren. President Obama’s symbol-laden invitation to those who voted against him does not mean he won’t strongly support efforts in his administration to further gay rights. No one need remind him of the popular pre-election rallying cry “Rosa sat so Martin could march so Barack could run so our children could fly.”

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“I’m a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans. It is something I intend to continue during my presidency. I’ve also said it’s important for America to come together, even though we may have disagreements. Dialogue is what my campaign’s been all about.”

—President Barack Obama

And, I’d add, so we might dance at gay and lesbian weddings.

As a justice of the peace in Massachusetts I’ve had the privilege of officiating at a number of such weddings over the past four and a half years and have witnessed up

close and very personally the joy of feeling love being celebrated by the sweetest of all celebrants—a couple on their wedding day and the loving family and friends surrounding them. To California couples who want to get married—or others elsewhere for that matter—come to Massachusetts; I will gladly officiate at your weddings. And I’ll join with millions of others standing for—and working towards—the possibility that the right to marry will be extended in our lifetimes to all adults in all 50 states. Perhaps because of the dialogue the new president sought with Warren and his disciples, there will be a time when the civil rights of gays and lesbians will be no longer in question. What issue will we then be debating? How many more years will we argue about the oppression of one group rather than working to end oppression against all?

And when, finally, will we deliver ourselves from intolerance, hate and injustice?

Rob Okun is editor of Voice Male.

California couples and others interested in marrying in Massachusetts, where he is a justice of the peace, should contact him at rob@voicemalemagazine.org.

Mother Time’s Turn

This Year, Listen to the Women

By Michael Kaufman t New Year’s each year, we are treated to variations of the familiar newspaper cartoon: Father Time, rumpled and wrinkled, emaciated and exhausted from his year on planet earth. We know he’s been done in not by a natural process of aging, but by the human processes of our age. We know he has suffered greatly: through wars, genocide, human-produced environmental disasters, starvation, horrible working conditions or no work at all, violence in our homes and communities, homelessness, the denial of a range of fundamental human rights, and vicious, hateful fundamentalism of every religious stripe.

But, just on time, in comes the new, represented as a cheerful, wide-eyed, plump baby. We know, of course, that in twelve months, this delightful child will be the grizzled Father Time, prematurely weary and wasted from his one year amidst the humans of the world.

I don’t think this baby is ever explicitly portrayed as a male; that is, there’s no obvious sign of the one thing that every male has to offer the planet. But since at the end of the year he’ll be represented as Father Time, the facts are clear even if the cartoonists are not entirely frank with us.

And here lies the problem.

And here is my question.

Might it be that the reason for this poor baby’s fate is that only males are seen as embodying the human journey? From baby to oldbeyond-belief, it still seems to be males whom we use to represent the human spirit. Might this happen to reflect the disproportionate control by males over the institutions of humanity: our governments, corporations, militaries, media, religions, educational institutions, and, in many parts of the world, our families?

It seems to me that generations of newspaper cartoonists (who, I assume, are primarily male) have captured in their usual clever way a fundamental truth that some women have enunciated even more clearly over the past 150 years: That if we have a world where one half of the species has disproportionate power—over the other half, over social resources, over ideas, over nature, and, in elaborate structures of hierarchy, over each other—then we’re in for big problems.

Perhaps it’s time that we whisper a hint into the plump baby’s ear: “This year, listen to the women.”

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This year, embrace equality. Embrace an ethos that prizes the arrival of each new child on the planet, that sees none of them as expendable in war, none of them who doesn’t deserve safe water, healthy food, education, and health care. Embrace an ethos that tells us we must work together, as women and men, to end all forms of violence: violence by men against women, violence by men and women against children, violence among men and, yes, to the extent that it occurs, violence among women. Embrace an ethos that tells us that if we’re normally able to risk so much for wars that bring such misery, mightn’t we start risking more for peace?

Embrace an ethos that tells us that this is the only planet we’ve got and that the quest, likely less than ten thousand years old, of men to dominate and control Mother Nature (in the same manner those men were busy trying to dominate and control women) is quickly leading us to ruin.

I’m not saying that all women embrace such values or that the substitution of women for men in positions of power would save Father (or Mother) Time from his (or her) premature fate. We only need to remember to the miserable rule of Margaret Thatcher to remind us of that. I don’t believe that women are inherently better than men or that each woman embodies wisdom and truth. After all, part of Father Time’s 2008 weariness came from having to listen to the nasty blather of Sarah Palin.

But I do believe, as feminist scholars and activists have been teaching us, that the social and economic and political models of the past millennia that are predicated on the power, ability, and necessity of small numbers of men to rule the world and great numbers of men to rule their families have led not only to some forms of tremendous achievement, but also to tremendous misery. It now threatens the very planet we, and all forms of life, depend on. It has led us to the brink.

Don’t forget to whisper: “Listen to the women.”

Voice Male contributing editor Michael Kaufman, a cofounder of the White Ribbon campaign, is an internationally-recognized speaker, writer, and consultant on gender issues based in Toronto, Canada. www. michaelkaufman.com. © Michael Kaufman, 2009

Winter 2009

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Transformation through Art

By Rob Okun

Ray DiCapua’s Portraits of New Masculinity Drawing begins with an interrogation of appearances.

—Peter Berger “What does the new form of masculinity look like? Imagine a man who knows he is not his wound, but the caretaker of it; a man who has developed the capacity to be both receptive and assertive; a man who has learned how to listen from both within and without and develops his voice from this knowing; a man who is becoming aware of his place in society; a man who knows some truth about his relationship with his parents; a man who knows when to act and when to sit steady; a man who understands the natural capacity and limits of the ego; a man who is aware that he is a process unfolding, that he will make mistakes and is willing to own them; a man who is becoming, in the deepest sense of the word, a leader. What would it be like to sit in the presence of such a man?”

Some might say Ray DiCapua, who wrote those words, was describing Barack Obama.

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He’s not. He’s describing men like you and me. He’s describing men at a new stage in our evolution—what some of us could become and what some of us are becoming. Not a political figure or a social theorist, DiCapua is an artist, an artist who sees—with the burning heat of a visionary—what lies ahead for men as we heal, grow, change. Viewing the larger than life charcoal portraits DiCapua created for his exhibit “Ten Connecticut Men” is a testament to the new direction men are taking.

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rom late February to early May 2008, Ray DiCapua, a professor of art at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, conducted 14 portrait photography sittings and interview sessions with 10 members of a men’s group of which he is a part. “For the past seven years, I’ve met weekly with these 10 men for a conscious exchange about our personal experiences. As an artist, I became interested in how the context of these meetings provokes exploration and experimentation with old and new forms of masculinity. As both a participant and

observer, my rapport with this diverse group of men—diverse in terms of race, class, age and sexual orientation—was an essential feature of this project.”

DiCapua has long been interested in exploring themes of masculinity, authority, strength, and power as a personal, social, and political construct. One question DiCapua says intrigues him is how “masculinity is negotiated in order for an intimacy with self and other to emerge.” As part of a larger body of work delving into iconic images of human gesture, cultural and social objects and most recently animals, the artist’s research led him to create the series of 10 portraits and body drawings of the men in the group.

The individuals featured in the massive portraits—each is five by seven feet—have spent “years together in an investigation of the social constructions of manhood and its relationship to gender, sexuality, myth, vulnerability, care and strength,” DiCapua says. “The project grew out of observing these men at certain moments of interaction. What I began noticing was the subtle and sometimes not so subtle way in which the postures, gestures and expressions between these men as they interacted with one another is often unlike common portrayals of how men in this culture act, nor was it consistent with the way that I observe men behaving in everyday life.” By rendering moments of intimacy between and with these men, DiCapua believed he might “produce images that disrupt social narratives about masculinity, authority, strength, and power.”

Men’s groups, DiCapua believes, often attract males with experience and/or “a capacity for self-awareness—physical, psychological, cultural, and, though I am looking for another word, spiritual. ‘Soul work,’ is how our mentor refers to what we’re doing.”

That mentor is longtime men’s group leader and psychotherapist Paul Dunion (www. pauldunion.com), a founder and guiding light of COMEGA, the twice annual, long held Connecticut Men’s Gathering (www.comega. org), and founder of Boys to Men, a mentoring program for younger males. DiCapua says Dunion invites men “to dig as deep into the depth of ourselves as possible. It gets dark in those depths before the process itself calls up some light, some clarity, and some awareness of the story of ‘self,’ how this story was constructed and how the patterned, identified, unconscious way each man has continued the story.” The result? An ongoing awareness of “the relationship between the world within, as well as the world ‘out there’ that men walk through…”

Up until the early 1990s, DiCapua was actively exhibiting his work and receiving national attention. At that time he made the

conscious decision to retreat from his activities as an exhibiting artist and to devote a period of time to disciplined contemplative practice. This unorthodox shift in his career was grounded in a deep-seated curiosity to explore the relationship between our perceptual lenses and creative processes. He has been active in developing cutting edge curriculum that is informed with aspects of contemplative traditions and their importance to creative and artistic practices, an aspect of the field in the visual arts that is growing quickly while gaining important and timely recognition.

The subject matter in his work stems from a vision of human potential, social justice and political and civic responsibility. Another strong influence is his interest in the story of the constructed image of self and other, and how the unconscious patterned identity of this construct creates and recreates our world(s).

For DiCapua, masculinity’s new form incorporates “the way each man begins to walk in the world with a ripening awareness that he may carry a wound but he is not that wound;

or is he only the story of himself that he has lived through. This man begins to walk in the world with more of himself…learning how not to splinter himself, not to throw off and discard aspects of his psyche, his ego, his heart and his body. He learns how to hold himself. This man develops the capacity to intelligently and carefully step into some darkness, cultivate some self awareness, and gather himself. He can become whole. Through this process both wisdom and compassion develop—wisdom and compassion that aren’t passive, but quite active and full. Wisdom and compassion that provide fire when it is needed.”

Ray DiCapua has jarred our awareness about more than masculinity. He invites us to notice “how we see, respond to…create and recreate our world(s).”As his body of work continues to evolve, DiCapua will no doubt continue exploring what he calls “the interplay between interpretation, recognition, meaning and experience.” And as he interprets his personal and social world, he invites us to interpret ours.

y drawing of Barack Obama is a composite image made from among the scores the media has flooded the globe with. While I wanted to draw an image of President Obama that was strong, intelligent and regal, I did not want to perpetuate a cultural propensity to idealize this man more than his story and position already naturally have. When I started to carefully study images of him in the media, it was not hard to see his concern and sadness, as well as his vulnerability. Humanizing leaders in a democracy is a complex endeavor. What interested me in making

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“Ten Connecticut Men,” which was exhibited last fall at the William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, is currently scheduled to go on a multi-city tour. For more information see DiCapua’s website: www.raydicapua.com.

Two-time McDowell Colony resident Ray DiCapua’s work has been further supported by awards, grants and fellowships. Among the venues that have exhibited his work are: The Sculpture Center, New York; Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; Spaces, Cleveland; Mobious Gallery, Boston; New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT; Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, Il; Springfield Museum, Springfield, MA; Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow, Poland; University Gallery, Boston University, Boston; and the Benton Museum, University of Connecticut, Storrs. He is a professor of art at the University of Connecticut.

this drawing was tuning into this complexity. Halfway through the piece I became aware of how intimate it was for me to be drawing the skin, facial features and graying hair of a mixed race African American man who may have the most difficult set of tasks of any leader in modern history. The closeness I felt was almost overwhelming. How can I help? was the question that came to me. How can we help? was the question that came next.

Ray DiCapua Storrs, Connecticut

Barack Obama Charcoal on paper 60” x 84” (2008) Winter 2009

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Color Lines

A New Future for Black Masculinity

By Byron Hurt ven though Barack Obama was decisively elected as the first black male president of the United States, black men continue to be easy scapegoats, mistrusted, dehumanized, controlled, assailed, and stereotyped.

Before and since the election, a series of events have taken place that demonstrate how far we still must travel if we are ever to reach a post-racial America. A notice was posted in a general store in Maine for an “Obama Osama” contest encouraging customers to bet on the day the new president would be killed. An African American voter in New York received a threatening note the morning after the election implying his safety was in jeopardy for voting for Obama. Days before the election, a young woman named Ashley Todd blamed a black man for her own self-mutilation. Troy Davis, a black man that many believe is deserving of a new trial, has been on death row and may die if ongoing intervention efforts are not maintained. New York City police officers shot Kayshawn Forde and his brother Dwayne David in the back, killing both. The Secret Service has acknowledged that John McCain’s surrogates and supporters who spewed death threats at the new president put candidate Obama at increased risk of harm. Right-wing media and conservative political pundits employed last-ditch scare tactics to try and reduce Obama to a radical anti-American “socialist” with “dangerous” terrorist connections in an attempt to make voters fearful and uncertain about voting for a black man for president.

But black men—from the politician to the athlete, from the rap artist to the average black man in America—are varied, complex, and far more human than we are ever given credit for.

As the face of American presidential masculinity has changed, there are other opportunities to sustain interest and nurture new thinking about black manhood.

What follows are five books and five films (including my own) that I recommend to people in order to better appreciate the full range of masculinity. They are:

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BOOKS

FILMS

• Be a Father to Your Child: Real Talk from Black Men on Family, Love, and Fatherhood, an anthology, edited by April R. Silver (Soft Skull Press, 2008)

• Generation M: Misogyny in Media & Culture, by Thomas Keith (Media Education Foundation, 2008)

• Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power, edited by Shira Tarrant (Routledge, 2008)

• New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity, by Mark Anthony Neal (Routledge, 2006)

•The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life, by Kevin Powell (Atria, division of Simon & Schuster, 2008)

• The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, by bell hooks (Washington Square Press, 2004)

• Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes, by Byron Hurt (God Bless the Child Productions, 2006; distributed by Media Education Foundation)

• I am A Man: Black Masculinity in America, by Byron Hurt (God Bless the Child Productions, 1998; distributed by Media Education Foundation)

• Tongues Untied: Black Men Loving Black Men,

by Marlon Riggs (Signifyin’ Works/Vivian Kleiman, 1989)

• Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis of Violent Masculinity,

by Jackson Katz, Jeremy Earp and Sut Jhally (Media Education Foundation, 1999)

Barack & Curtis and the Future of Black Masculinity

Film

Byron Hurt (featured in a Voice Male cover story, Winter 2007) has a new film, Barack & Curtis, a rich and provocative 10-minute documentary that highlights the contrasting styles of manhood exhibited by Barack Obama and rapper/mogul Curtis Jackson, aka 50 Cent. “My goal with this film,” Hurt says, “is to prod viewers to counter the simplistic stereotypes of black manhood. Barack & Curtis is an introduction to a much more complex topic.”

The film is a part of The Masculinity Project: Black Community in Focus, an interactive multimedia and community engagement project that asks the question, “What does it mean to be a man?” A joint partnership of the National Black Programming Consortium and Independent Television Service, with support from the Ford Foundation, Barack & Curtis was seen by more than 60,000 people in less than a month, by word of mouth alone.

The project’s official website is live so viewers can watch the film and, and equally important, explore all its resources. There readers will find a range of videos and resources all dedicated to black masculinity and its relation to the black community at large.

To learn more about Byron Hurt’s work visit www.bhurt.com; for more on The Masculinity Project, go to www.masculinityproject.org.

Winter 2009

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Wake Up, Guys!

We Need Men to Support Women’s Safety

By Heidi Schnakenberg

© MEN CAN STOP RAPE, INC.

Wrong Focus

three-year-old girl was raped and sexually assaulted by an adult male and the act was recorded on a videotape discovered in Nevada.

Authorities investigating the case at the time seemed traumatized by what they saw and made the unusual decision to show the girl’s face on television in a nationwide call for help.

A haunting image of the girl dressed in leopard print lingerie appeared all over the news.

As we watched, my husband was mortified in a way that I had not seen before. “I can’t take it. I feel sick,” he said. That was more than a year ago.

At the time I was interviewing an inmate at a New York correctional facility for a separate project and asked him what he thought about it. He coldly replied, “The man who did that

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should receive the death penalty. No, send him to jail and let the inmates kill him. Because after that, they will.”

My husband, this inmate, and other men I know displayed the same kind of instant and visceral reaction to this story that most women show when they so much as hear about rapes and other types of gender-based violence. The knowledge that there was a video seemed to make it more real.

Most domestic and sex crimes occur in private and it’s rare to witness the violence.

It’ even rarer to have indisputable evidence of the crime. Ever since I was a kid and witnessed my mother suffer domestic abuse, I have wondered at men’s lack of direct involvement in preventing violence against women and girls in the first place.

The focus is usually on women not doing enough to protect themselves or their children, while far less attention is paid to the perpetrators. Why aren’t more men outraged at their fellow males’ actions and motivated to end them, once and for all? Why are women left to pick up the pieces? Isn’t this a man’s problem?

I believe many men feel out of touch with normally well-hidden violence against women and girls and have a hard time absorbing the reality of their plight. Fortunately, a shift on this seems under way.

The new vice president, Joe Biden, proudly acknowledged his authorship of the groundbreaking 1994 Violence Against Women Act throughout the campaign. As the U.S. economy continues its rough times, the need for more of this kind of male advocacy couldn’t be more urgent.

Across the country, reports of violence against women are on the rise. The souring economy has been blamed for dramatic spikes in domestic violence in recent headlines in California, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Rhode Island and West Virginia. Pennsylvania has had a devastating increase in domestic violence fatalities.

Violence Rises with Job Loss An extensive 2004 report by the National Institute of Justice found that the rate of violence against women increases as male unemployment increases. When a woman’s male partner is employed, the rate of violence is 4.7 percent. It’s 7.5 percent when the male experiences one period of unemployment. It’s 12.3 percent when the male experiences two or more periods of unemployment.

A female victim’s lack of money, meanwhile, is a common reason why she may refuse to leave an abusive partner, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

As domestic violence support groups and state and local authorities brace for a possible recession, some male activists are working hard

to make their voices heard in the fight to stop violence against women in any circumstance.

I’d like to hand a megaphone to Patrick Partida, outgoing president of the University of Texas organization Men Against Violence, which treats violence against women as a male problem.

“The problem is not women not protecting themselves but men attacking women,” says Partida. “The blame must be put in the correct place. If all men dedicated themselves to stopping men’s violence against women, then complete eradication can become a reality.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, an estimated one in four women in the U.S.—and one in three worldwide—will be a victim of male violence in her lifetime, making these crimes some of the most widespread in the world.

Teaching Anti-Female Behavior Partida says men are taught from a young age to be anti-female in their thoughts and actions. “They learn this behavior from the media, peers, parents and even teachers. Many men find methods of fulfilling their perceived

Why aren’t more men outraged at their fellow males’ actions and motivated to end them, once and for all? Why are women left to pick up the pieces? Isn’t this a man’s problem?

need for power through external means, which often include being violent and instilling fear in women.”

He adds that men suffer a great amount of fear, especially of each other and of not living up to the image of masculinity in our culture.

“The greatest thing for men to do now is to

question their own beliefs, those of their male friends and family.”

Dick Bathrick, co-founder of the Atlantabased Men Stopping Violence, agrees. “In a patriarchal society, the notion that certain groups are entitled to dominate other groups is normalized,” he says. “We hold women responsible for the problem and the solution.

Men are socialized to control and dominate, and to stop violence against women men have to look at themselves. We must create safe spaces for women, listen to them and open our eyes.”

Men can and will be receptive to this discussion if we make it a priority to include them. There’s no excuse for domestic and sexual violence to continue in a tough economy or in prosperous times. Elimination of the problem is possible, but until men become an equal part of the solution, we will not win the battle against it.

Heidi Schnakenberg is a screenwriter, journalist, author and activist. This article originally appeared in Women’s eNews (www. womensenews.org), the groundbreaking New York City–based online publication.

Winter 2009

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Women’s Stories, Women’s Lives

Why Doesn’t She Just Leave?

Dan O'Neill / www.zenoptics.net

By Heather Stark and Emilee Watturs

oo many victims of domestic violence have been asked the question, “Why don’t you just leave?” While asking it reveals the questioner’s naïveté about a survivor’s plight, the question deserves to be addressed in all its complexity. A new book, Why Doesn’t She Just Leave? Real Women, Real Stories: A New Perspective on Domestic Violence (MidPacifik Publishing, 2008), does that, offering a chorus of women’s voices telling their stories of the wide-ranging social, economic and legal reasons for not just leaving. Compiled and edited by Heather Stark, MPA, and Emilee Watturs, MPA, the book grew out of many classes, meetings and informal get-togethers the editors shared with women from a range of backgrounds and experiences. In the book, and the excerpts below, readers will meet women in the throes of domestic abuse. They are, Stark and Watturs contend, like animals caught on shifting ice— needing to navigate in an unsteady world, trying to determine whether they will be able to run, hobbled, across the slippery surface and actually be able to jump the chasm onto solid ground.

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Editor’s Note: The book’s editors acknowledge that men experience domestic abuse and they deplore that fact. They write: “Men can be and are the victims of domestic violence.

This book focuses solely on stories about women because although men can be victims of domestic violence, women represent the majority of victims” (eight in ten, according to the U.S. Department of Justice).

Patricia’s Story Why didn’t I leave? I did. I left as soon as I understood the danger in staying was greater than the danger in leaving. It was the most terrifying thing I have ever done.

My husband and I married when we were still in school. We’d met at a party and he took me out for something to eat. I wasn’t particularly interested in him. He seemed nice enough but not so good-looking I was wowed, not so generous I was impressed. Just a nice enough guy who’d been in the Army and now was going back to college. What stood out was his self-confidence; his quiet strength.

He took me on a ride on his motorcycle.

We went to the zoo in the rain, got soaked and

chilled and, when we went back to his place we stripped to dry clothes, poured glasses of Courvoisier…Soon we were in his bed; he was making love to me. I was a virgin; then I wasn’t. Was it good? Not particularly, but I had no basis for comparison.

We began spending more time together.

He told his mother he was bringing home a goddess. At the end of three months, he proposed. With tears in his eyes, he gave me a tiny diamond and told me, very sincerely, that someday he would have more money and he would be able to get me the large diamond that I deserved. Twenty-five years later, he screamed at the police officer who was putting him in handcuffs that he had a diamond in his car for our upcoming anniversary.

The thing most people don’t realize about abusive men is that they know what they are doing. A lot of people think the only abuse is hitting, but the emotional abuse is much more insidious. It starts with a look, a comment that the victim can toss off as just a result of pressure or a bad day on the part of the perpetrator.

The uneasy feelings are just that—there isn’t a slap or a hit that a woman can point to and say, “He did that and that is unacceptable.”

There is no blatant act to hold up for friends and counselors and family members to look at and say, “Whoa! That’s not good.” Most times the comments are not that bad when taken out of context of the look, the uneasy implied threats, so when a woman tries to tell someone else what was said or done, the other person is left saying, “Well, that certainly isn’t so bad. Why is she so upset?” And all too often the woman is left with the message that the problem is her. Of course, that’s what her abuser is saying, too.

So over the course of the weeks, the months, the gradual escalation erodes a woman’s confidence, her strength, her foundation. She is left questioning herself, whether it really is just her problem, and left as bereft, miserable and hopeless as any victim with bruises and broken bones to show. And, she is left with self-doubt that takes enormous strength to surpass. As her uncertainty grows, the abuse grows, too, and she is left with fear, never ending fear.

Just what will he do, how far will he go? Life becomes a slippery balancing act, just trying to stay upright and functioning.

Reasons Not to Leave • I didn’t leave because I knew in my heart he would change for the good. I thought I was a good person and if he saw this he would try harder and do better.

• I didn’t leave because he tried to convince me I was the one who started the fights.

• I didn’t leave because I have a daughter by this man and if I left he wouldn’t have anything to do with her anymore. Now he has very little time for her. I didn’t leave because he said this was the best it’s going to get because I didn’t deserve any better.

• I didn’t leave because he said that if I weren’t such a bitch, he wouldn’t do the things he did.

So, I tried harder not to complain and to do more.

• I didn’t leave because I had 14 years invested in my marriage and I didn’t want to throw it all away and feel like a loser. I didn’t leave because where was I going to go? This was my house. I took care of things, cleaned house, paid the bills, washed the clothes and fixed the meals.

• I didn’t leave because I didn’t want to be embarrassed by all the legal stuff and fighting over who gets the sofa, the bath towels, the pots and pans.

• I didn’t leave because I was afraid of the unknown. I never knew what was going to happen. At least while I’m here, I know what to expect.

• I didn’t leave because I knew he would win again. He always told me I was weak and leaving would show him I couldn’t handle the problems at home. I didn’t leave because I didn’t want people to look at me like I couldn’t keep my family together, like I was a failure.

• I didn’t leave because he always told me that I made a mountain out of a molehill and that I always made too much of nothing.

• I didn’t want to leave because my heart belonged to my husband. I remembered my marriage vows and no matter what, I was very much in love with my husband.

• I left three years ago and every day I’m sorting through my feelings and working on healing my heart.

Alicia’s Story “Why didn’t you just leave?” That’s always the first question. It’s never, “Why was he abusive?”

There was always the threat that my daughter and I would be harmed if we left. The years of emotional abuse breaks your heart, your spirit, your ability to make decisions. I was alone. I felt unworthy, and when I did ask for help from my family, there wasn’t any…

I finally left after 11 years…I have not been in a relationship since. I choose to be single as I have trust issues. I battle myself every day with the lasting effects of “staying” and I hear the blame in the question, “Why did you stay?”

Heather Stark, co-editor of Why Doesn’t She Just Leave, is a Seattle radio broadcaster and freelance writer. A founding board member of HEALEverywhere, an organization dedicated to helping survivors of abuse become powerful members of their communities, she is working on a PhD in organizational psychology. She is a survivor. Emilee Watturs remains private because of fear of her abuser.

Copies of the book can be ordered at www.

WhyDoesntSheJustLeave.com.

Winter 2009

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What Men Talk About When Women Aren’t Around

By Ken Solin

Our culture perpetuates many false myths about men that often hinder women and men from understanding each other and achieving true intimacy. In The Key to the Men’s Room: What Men Talk About When Women Aren’t Around, a longtime member of a men’s group in Marin County, California, says that in addition to writing a guide for men, he wanted to let “women in on the truth behind those myths that often force men to decry their boyhood, deny their manhood, and remain a mystery to themselves and their partners.”

Author Ken Solin says those truths “gradually became clear to me over 16 years of honest—and often painful—interactions in a men’s group.” For a long time, Solin says, women had asked if they could “listen in.” Solin found a way to honor that request, creating the book as “a woman’s key to that private men’s room where we tell our own stories in our own voices.”

While written with a heterosexual audience in mind, Solin’s book is both a primer for men beginning the journey of self-discovery and also a useful handbook for men further along the path of healing and growth.

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ur first meeting was held in an apartment where nine nervous men in their late 30s and early 40s showed up ready to do battle with themselves, one another, and anyone else who got in the line of fire. Ours was a volatile mix of men who were angry, painfully shy, aggressive, meek, depressed, well educated and not so educated; married, in relationships, dating, and uninvolved; fat, skinny, tall, and short; Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, and atheist; businessmen, medical professionals, psychology professors, computer whizzes, construction contractors, and men who earned a living with their hands.

These were men whose lives had been hobbled by the ponderous weight of their emotional baggage: lone wolves who were stuck on their isolated planets, mamas’ boys unable to pick out shoelaces by themselves, predators who targeted weak and lonely women, control freaks who even felt compelled to select their partners’ underwear, and others who had major issues with women and other men as well. All, however, had a genuine desire to become better men, partners, fathers, and sons. Few, if any, had any inkling about what intimacy meant beyond its sexual connotation; and the notion of vulnerability was virtually nonexistent. Few had ever talked

about their emotions or even knew how to begin such a dialogue.

The issues we dealt with ran the gamut from our fathers and mothers to our children, from sex and sexuality to aging, from dating and marriage to divorce and male friendships, from trust and intimacy to personal power and boundaries, from anger to vulnerability and emotional pain. Women may be surprised by what these men genuinely think about women and will likely have a far greater understanding of men—or the man in their life—after hearing them speak at length about their notions of relationships. While we helped bury a few marriages over the years, we also helped create new relationships that embraced emotional intimacy and made it part of an ongoing dialogue. The partners of the men who shared in this dialogue couldn’t help but notice the enormous change in their partners’ communication skills.

Confidentiality was our only hard-andfast rule, and this policy enabled us to maintain a high level of honesty and openness.

A majority of men have trouble facing painful issues in their past. For many of us, that difficulty goes back to our childhoods, when we were told to “act like a man” whenever we were sad or injured. Those boys become men who stuff their pain. Emotional pain is a beast that

can’t be hidden from indefinitely, though: it can be kept at bay for a while—even a long while— but it never disappears by itself. Becoming a better man requires facing that pain. It’s hard work, and a woman’s understanding, respect, and support can help make it happen.

The work I struggled to accomplish in the group literally changed my life. My business career skyrocketed when I no longer considered the men I was doing business with to be threatening or untrustworthy. My relationship with my sons deepened once I finally put my issues with my own father to rest. I doubt I ever would have married again had it not been for the collective wisdom I gleaned from men who had already done the relationship work.

With profound humility, I thank the men in my group for making me a better man, father, husband, and friend.

Men’s Bridge to Somewhere

Getting us to talk about our fathers was like trying to get the first olive out of a tightly packed jar: no one was ready to budge. The room that moments ago had been buzzing with loud voices was now like a tomb. I wondered if the others were trying to remember their fathers but simply couldn’t. I hadn’t thought about mine in years, but all of a sudden there he was, big as life, right in front of my mind’s eye. Seeing him so clearly made me remember a seminal event in our relationship—a moment frozen in time that still stuck in my craw 30 years later. I had the disturbing sense that I was going to experience it again, whether I wanted to or not. I heard the pounding on the bathroom door in the drafty old house of my childhood as that afternoon rushed over me like a roaring river. It drowned out everything I was now feeling and thinking.

Not Trusting Men: Kenny’s Story

“My old man was a brute who showed no interest in who I really was and seemed concerned only about making me into the man he thought I should be, mostly through violence and intimidation. Throughout my entire childhood it seemed like my old man was raging about something or other, and he was never reluctant to smack me around.

I have no idea what he was angry about, because he never shared the reasons for it with me—and probably didn’t understand them himself. I raised two sons, mostly as a single dad, and with the exception of an occasional spanking, I couldn’t imagine beating them.

But my father just didn’t control his temper.

“Maybe it was our consistent lack of money that ground him down and set him off.

I always knew we were broke. It was freezing in Boston in the winter, and I remember

coming home a few times to find our house cold and dark because the utility bill hadn’t been paid, and the gas and electricity had been turned off. I remember watching my father sitting at the dining room table with his checkbook the first of each month in front of a huge stack of bills, trying to decide who to pay and who not to pay based on who could hurt us the most. Standing in the dark with no heat in January meant he’d guessed wrong.

“One Saturday afternoon when I was about 10, my father was pissed off about something or other. Usually I ran outside and up the street or to a friend’s until he calmed down, but this time he had me cornered. The bathroom was the only room with a lock, so I ran in and locked it just before he grabbed the handle and tried to yank it open. He pounded furiously and relentlessly while I sat on the black-and-white tile floor, a small, skinny kid trembling with my hands over my ears.

I noticed pieces of paint flaking off the door and plumes of dust exploding from the hinges as they began to give way under my father’s onslaught. I knew that he probably would kill me if he succeeded in breaking down the door, but I was afraid to jump from the second-story window. There was no escape.

“I finally asked him, through the locked door, if he would promise not to hit me if I let him in. He promised that he wouldn’t and finally stopped banging. I remember turning the old-fashioned, heart-shaped key handle in the deadbolt lock and watching the cut-glass doorknob revolving. Then he roared in like a hurricane, knocking me to the floor as if I were a Joe Palooka blowup toy. I crouched into my well-practiced, balled-up defensive posture as he came at me with blood in his eyes—a bellowing, barrel-chested, red-faced, wildeyed, snorting bull, yelling horrible things and swinging at me with his fists and a black leather belt.”

Recalling all this [in the group that night], I was choking back tears and beginning to hyperventilate. I hadn’t even come to the most painful part of the story and thought about stopping there and maybe picking it up some other evening. The rest involved my mother, to whom I had tried to get close after my father died 20 years ago. I never succeeded, though, probably because I hadn’t been willing to face the reality that, in her allowing him to abuse me, she’d become a participant. Here with the group, I’d already opened up the floodgates too far to close them again, so I plodded on.

“After my father wore himself out, he walked away, leaving me bruised and dazed.

My mother came to the side of the bathtub where I’d propped myself up. Sitting on the edge of the tub and looking down at me, she said matter-of-factly, ‘You know your

father didn’t really want you.’ Then she got up and walked out of the bathroom, leaving me to wonder for the next 30 years how that explained my father’s violent behavior and where it left me with her.”

As the emotions I experienced that day came rushing back, I couldn’t believe that something so horrible could possibly have happened; or, if it did, not to me. But the story is absolutely true, and there’s no question that it was mine. I’d been staring above the others’ heads while telling my story, but looked down and now saw eight pairs of eyes boring into mine. Their sad faces all said, “We’re so sorry, you poor bastard. How could anyone treat their kid like that?” Their sympathy and support gave me the courage to go on, connecting the dots that had never seemed to form a coherent picture.

“The lesson I came away with from this…and similar horrific experiences with my father—the man who was supposed to teach me about being a man—was to fear and mistrust men. I became a lone wolf who approached other men with caution and suspicion, and I remained a lone wolf until I decided…to do something about it. I started this group mostly because I’m really tired of being alone in the world. Actually, exhausted is a better word. I think I’m ready to try and trust you guys, at least I hope I am. I admit I’m scared about what you’ll all think about me now, but I hope you’ll at least understand me better.”

No one spoke for a while, either out of respect or shock. I realized that I’d just told each man that I didn’t trust him and, even worse, that I feared him. I’d hung my dirty laundry out without any idea how it would affect their feelings about me. My heart was pounding, and the sour taste in my mouth was fear. I knew, because I’d tasted it many times as a boy. This was in some way worse than those early experiences, because, in addition to the fear, I was embarrassed about sharing this dirty secret—which I’d managed to hide from everyone, including myself, for three decades.

But I also felt relief. I felt I may have unlocked the door that had shut me off from friendships with men. Being with eight men whom I barely knew had given me this opportunity to unburden myself, and I could see by looking around the room that they realized that such an opportunity existed for them as well.

Author Ken Solin raised two sons as a single father and has had a successful 25year career as an entrepreneur, financing high-tech companies and wineries. He has devoted the last 16 years to men’s groups and men’s work.

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Fathering

BIG SHOES TO FILL

Lahri Bond

By Byron Hurt

“I knew the second you were born that I was committed to you,” my father said to me, standing in a driving rainstorm on Cone Avenue, a block away from our Acorn Avenue home on Long Island. It was a Sunday evening, and with nighttime quickly falling, I sat in the driver’s seat of my stalled car, humbled by my father’s grace.

My teammate Chad, a defensive lineman and my road dog for the weekend, sat on the passenger’s side, and observed a father unconditionally loving his son.

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ne week earlier, my pops, who for nearly 30 years worked two jobs —one as a contractor, the other, the night shift at a nearby mental hospital —bought me a red 1988 Ford Mustang. He bought it because I convinced him that I needed a car to commute 30 minutes each way to my new job as a student beat reporter for The Patriot Ledger, a Quincy, Massachusetts, newspaper. With no hesitation, he searched for a used car his young, ambitious son could drive.

At $500, the Mustang was a bargain.

But on this windy, chilly, rainy evening, as my father dug into his toolbox looking for a screwdriver to fix the stalled car, it was his

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calming presence in the midst of a torrential downpour that, to me, was priceless.

Dressed in an army green raincoat and a rain hat to match, my father, Jackie Hurt, pulled out his trusty screwdriver from his silver steel toolbox, stuck it into the car’s carburetor, and told me to turn the ignition.

The car started with ease.

Just like that, he fixed the flooded engine.

Earlier that weekend, my pops implored me to test drive the car at least once before heading back up I-95 to Boston’s Northeastern University. His solid advice fell on deaf ears. I was too busy hanging out and partying in New York City to try the car out for size, or to even look under the car’s

hood. Besides, I trusted that my father had bought nothing less than a road-worthy vehicle for my trip back to Beantown. So, as I had done many times before, I played my father’s forewarnings to the left, and waited to the very last minute to take the car for a spin.

My pops quietly watched his son run the streets of New York all weekend—coming home periodically to eat, sleep, and change clothes. He saw that I was not heeding his advice; spending little to no time getting to know the used car he had bought at my request. But fathers know best. And he knew that experience, by far, was the best teacher.

The flooded engine, which led me to shamefully call him for assistance that Sunday evening as I was on my way back to Boston, was evidence that he indeed was the old wise one, and that I was still young and immature. I thought about the many times he had been right before. The time when, too small to carry the Sunday newspaper all by myself, he told me to carry it one section at a time, and I, too stubborn and ambitious for my own good at age four, tried to carry

it all, spilling pages all over the driveway.

The time, at age 14, when teaching me how to paint a customer’s room, he warned me to cover every square inch of the carpet with drop-cloth because the square inch that I didn’t cover would be the very square inch that I would inevitably spill paint on —which, of course, I did. There was also the time when he told me never to drive a car on empty, only to come rescue me on the shoulder of the road, stranded with no gas.

And all the times he told me to pay myself first every payday by putting money into my savings account before buying sneakers and clothes, yet I’d still find myself short by the next payday.

As my intrepid father walked around the corner in the rain, with toolbox in hand, all of those long forgotten moments flashed through my mind. My father has always given me his best advice. Only I didn’t always listen.

Full of shame and embarrassment, I revved up the Ford Mustang’s engine. I rolled down the window and asked my pops how he could be so patient with me, especially in this horrible weather, and in light of the fact that I did not listen to his advice.

“I knew the second that you were born that I was committed to you—through the good times, and the bad,” he said. “Have a safe trip to Boston, and call me if you need anything.”

Filmmaker, Voice Male contributing editor, lecturer and activist Byron Hurt directed the award-winning film Hip-Hop and Manhood: Beyond Beats & Rhymes.

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The Black Male Handbook

Right Living in the Obama Era

By Lasana Omar Hotep The election of Barack Obama as president has created a new portal through which citizens in the U.S. and around the world can enter and explore their feelings about and relations with people of color. From watching the film version of Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees before or after the election, to heightened awareness of hip-hop’s dark side, a shift in thinking is under way. Writer and activist Kevin Powell didn’t need to wait for it. A longtime advocate of a healthy approach to African American male development, Powell organized the acclaimed 10-city national “State of Black Men” tour in 2004, and also produced 2007’s “Black and Male in America” a three-day national conference attended by 3,000 men and boys.

(Black male empowerment monthly workshops grew out of these gatherings.) The author of previous books on issues affecting African American males, he unsuccessfully ran for Congress in New York City last fall.

Now Powell has edited a new book, the Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life (Atria Books, 2008), described as a “a life survival guide” for African American boys and men. With a foreword by actor and author Hill Harper, the book features essays by a range of contributors including author-educator Dr. William Jelani Cobb; Andraé L. Brown, an assistant professor at Hunter College; Jeff Johnson; a political correspondent on television, and educator and hip-hop historian Lasana Omar Hotep, among others. In addition to the essays, The Black Male Handbook also features an appendix containing recommendations including reading, music, film and documentary lists, suggestions for African American males when stopped by the police, and tips on hygiene, grooming, and dress, among other suggestions. The book belongs on Barack Obama’s night 32

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table. What follows is an excerpt from Hotep’s essay on creating a spiritual foundation in your life. mong the running jokes in the Black community is the amusement and amazement we share watching a recording artist who makes music about violence, sex, and drugs receiving an award on television and saying, “I want to thank God.” The contradiction seems glaringly obvious. How could a person who glamorizes greed, misogyny, and violence be religious or spiritual? We are all sitting there at home wondering, “How can the same person whose lifestyle and artistic expression emphasizes hatred, materialism, and raw intimidation, be standing there on stage wearing a diamond-encrusted crucifix?”

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Actually, this phenomenon provides an important insight into the complexity of Black male spirituality. The disconnection between what this individual practices and what he preaches (or believes) is not difficult to recognize.

But recognizing a man who, regardless of his flaws, yearns to experience the unconditional love that only a higher power can supply, may be more challenging. The source of this apparent contradiction can be traced to the way in which many of us are first introduced to religion and spirituality. Although it may be easy for us to detect the contradiction in what a musician on an awards show does and says, it is often difficult to recognize it in our own lives.

I first became aware of my personal contradictions at age fifteen. I was a fiery, up-and-coming Black Nationalist who thought he could change the conditions of Black life by overpowering people with Black facts. I remember recounting a ciphering (informal discussion) session that I had in the school cafeteria to one of my mentors. I was excited to explain to him how I had “blasted” all the brothers and sisters with my knowledge, and how stupid I made them look. He simply asked me, “What do we call each other?” I replied, “Brother and Sister.” My mentor then asked me whether my actions seemed truly “brotherly.” Without further discussion, I got the point. Just intellectualizing or articulating a concept wasn’t enough. I also had to demonstrate it in my behavior. There it was staring me in the face: I was talking about being a “brother” but living out the life of a sarcastic smart-ass.

But even as brothers seek this divine unconditional love, they who experience all the ugliness in the world still have issues with God. This is why so many Black males are absent from the church. Numerous articles, books, and community forums

are held to address this matter. Truth is, some of these brothers are angry with God. Some are wondering where God was when they suffered abuse as little boys, or when they were mistreated as teenagers, or even now, when they are dismissed as shiftless adults—regardless of their personal struggles and/or successes. Others wonder where God was when they were being racially profiled by police, discriminated against in the workplace, or even when they found out their lover was cheating on them.

We know this anger exists because of the way Black men murder one another without a second thought, the way Black males abuse girls and women, and the way we self-medicate with everything from alcohol to codeine-laced cough syrup, marijuana, and crack. The anger is manifest in our perpetual petty beefs, our judgmental attitudes toward other Black men, and our inability to constructively resolve conflicts among one another. The anger expresses itself in various other ways, too. Some Black men echo our oppressors and accuse fellow Black males of using racism as a crutch. Some may have enduring patience with other people who abuse and mistreat

Some brothers are angry with God, wondering where God was when they suffered abuse as little boys, were mistreated as teenagers, or dismissed as shiftless adults.

Others wonder where God was when they were being racially profiled by police. them, but have a short fuse when dealing with our Black brothers.

For the past four years, I have facilitated a monthly Black male study group that focuses on what it means to be Black and male in twenty-first-century America.

Divine self-awareness is developed in these

conversations, processing issues ranging from masculinity and sexuality to power and racism. The study group provides a context for these young brothers to engage the world both empowered and informed.

Nobody pays to participate. These sessions are volunteer efforts, an act of service.

Money is not a prerequisite for opening.

Dr. King stated that all one needs to serve is “a soul generated by love.� While performing acts of service, we are no longer on the sidelines of life, saddled with fear and impaired by individuality. In reaching out beyond ourselves, we express a deep sense of communion with all that we honor as divine.

Lasana Omar Hotep describes himself as a researcher, consultant and entrepreneur with a commitment to stirring critical thought about society, culture and politics. His areas of expertise include hip-hop history, leadership and African-American culture. He is coauthor (with Alonzo Jones) of a chapter in the guide African-American Men in College, edited by Michael J. Cuyjet, (Jossey-Bass, 2006).

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Books Especially poignant—and telling— is the story of how, as a deeply closeted father, Anderson watches and reacts as his eight-year-old daughter unselfconsciously acts out her own sexual ambivalence. With frankness and humor, the book depicts his struggle to break out of the maze of denial, his eventual recovery of a lost boy and submerged self, and the expansive adventure of coming out. This is a memoir about memory and its power to heal a fractured life. What Anderson sees in the pattern of his life, despite all the hurts and losses, the distortion and the damage done, is “an amazing generosity, a repeated invitation to step into the fullness of my being, whatever my resistance.”

OUT OF DENIAL: PIECING TOGETHER A FRACTURED LIFE

By Robert K. Anderson Lulu.com (2007), 257 pages Review by John Pikala Coming-out books abound but few have probed the psychology of denial, healing and liberation as deeply as this one. Despite greater social acceptance, most gay men still get married, according to Dr. Eli Coleman, director of the Program in Human Sexuality at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

Whatever their reasons, the choice takes a toll on them and those they love. Robert Anderson, author of Out of Denial, writes that being married and being gay was “like living inside a glass jar. You saw everything that was happening to you, you went through the motions, but you didn’t connect, you weren’t fully present. You viewed yourself like a specimen under glass.”

Anderson’s memoir tells the story of a closeted gay married man who grew up in the conformist Fifties, took its values too readily to heart and got trapped in a maze of denial.

It shows the toll this takes on him and those he loved, and his struggle to break free. A celebration of the odyssey of coming out and the release of new energy for love and friendship, spirituality and creativity, Out of Denial is a guide for gays and straights alike.

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Now 67 and blind, Anderson says he “leaves the gay activism in the capable hands of my daughter, Rachel.” He lives with his partner John Schmidt in Minneapolis, where he facilitates anger management classes at the Twin Cities Men’s Center and does volunteer massage at the Aliveness Project, a center for people with HIV/AIDS. The University of Minnesota’s Coleman says Out of Denial is a must-read “for anyone who is married and conflicted with their sexual orientation, or for those in the never-ending process of coming out.”

John Pikala serves as a spiritual director in the Twin Cities. His “Keepers of the Feast: Traditions of My Slovak Family” recently appeared in the Slovak Catholic Falcon. A version of this review appeared in the Minnesota Literature newsletter.

BREAKING THE SILENCE: TOWARD A BLACK MALE FEMINIST CRITICISM

By David Ikard Louisiana State University Press (2008), 191 pages Review by Mark Anthony Neal Can black males offer useful insights on black women and patriarchy? Many black feminists are doubtful. Their skepticism derives in part from a history of explosive

encounters with black men who blamed feminism for stigmatizing black men and undermining racial solidarity and in part from a perception that black male feminists are opportunists capitalizing on the current popularity of black women's writing and criticism. In Breaking the Silence, David Ikard goes boldly to the crux of this debate through a series of provocative readings of key African American texts that demonstrate the possibility and value of a viable black male feminist perspective.

Seeking to advance the primary objectives of black feminism, Ikard, an assistant professor of English at the University of Tennessee, provides literary models from Chester Himes’ If He Hollers Let Him Go, James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, Toni Morrison’s Paradise, Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters, and Walter Mosley’'s Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and Walkin’ the Dog that consciously wrestle with the concept of victim status for black men and women. He looks at how complicity across gender lines, far from rooting out patriarchy in the black community, has allowed it to thrive. This complicity, Ikard explains, is a process by which victimized groups invest in victim status to the point that they unintentionally concede power to their victimizers and engage in patterns of behavior that are perceived as

revolutionary but actually reinforce the status quo.

While black feminism has fostered important and necessary discussions regarding the problems of patriarchy within the black community, little attention has been paid to the intersecting dynamics of complicity. By laying bare the nexus between victim status and complicity in oppression, Breaking the Silence charts a new direction for conceptualizing black women's complex humanity and provides the foundations for more expansive feminist approaches to resolving intraracial gender conflicts.

Mark Anthony Neal is a professor of black popular culture in the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke University and author of four books, including New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity.

BE A FATHER TO YOUR CHILD: REAL TALK FROM BLACK MEN ON FAMILY, LOVE AND FATHERHOOD Edited by April Silver Soft Skull Press (2008), 272 pages Review by Kam Williams “I will be completely candid here and say that I have carried around a great deal of resentment toward older Black men since my father disowned me when I was eight years old. Indeed, I have had little tolerance, little respect, and very little interest in what most of them have to say for themselves.

It is the worst form of cowardice to bring a child into the world and then abandon that child either because you cannot cope or because you and the child’s mother are not able to get along. How many Black boys and Black girls have had their emotional beings decimated by that father void?

How does one break the vicious cycle, begun on the plantations, of Black man as stud? [And] what of slavery… which lingers still in the collective bosom of Black men in America? So how could I really be mad at my father… that no-good

Books bound to find a little surprising. For instance, Bakari Kitwana, author of such seminal cultural touchstones as The Hip-Hop Generation and Why White Kids Like Hip-Hop, readily admits to being “oldfashioned” and that the bulk of the music he writes about is off-limits for his own eight—year—old son.

do-for-nothing, as my mother often referred to him?

I may never see the man again in my lifetime, don’t care to, really, but I know… he is wounded… like older Black men and like a lot of younger Black men in a state of arrested development.”

—Excerpted from the essay “What Is a Man?” by Kevin Powell (pages 34–35) How does the Hip-Hop Generation view fatherhood? Depending on whose statistics you believe, anywhere from 70 to 85 percent of Black kids are now being raised by single moms. This suggests that African-American males raised during the heyday of misogynistic gangsta rap might be unwilling to shoulder their fair share of the burden when it comes to parenting.

But before you jump to conclusions, you might want to read Be a

Father to Your Child: Real Talk from Black Men on Family, Love and Fatherhood. Edited by April Silver, the book is a collection of empowering essays by black men born between 1965 and 1989 who have not abandoned their children.

Each contributor shares his unique perspective, some of which you are

Then there’s hip-hop artist Talib Kweli, a father of two, who says, “Education is the key of a wonderful life.” He also acknowledges that rap has served as a surrogate father, filling in for absentee dads. But he warns that the music only “teaches you how to appear like a man.” Also among the two dozen young sages weighing in are professors William Jelani Cobb, James Peterson and Alford A. Young, Jr., filmmakers Aaron Lloyd and Byron Hurt, DJ Davey D, rapper Rhymfest and playwright Shaun Neblett.

Be a Father to Your Child amounts to a heartening mix of poetry, prose and pictures which combine to reassure skeptics about the prospects for the black family, the daily dire predictions of the mainstream media notwithstanding.

For if these dedicated brothers were able to overcome the odds and avoid the self-destructive paths glorified in the materialistic, violent and misanthropic music videos on which they were weaned during their formative years, there is indeed plenty of promise for this and future generations of AfricanAmerican dads.

Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for more than 100 publications around the U.S. and Canada. A member of the New York Film Critics Online and the African-American Film Critics Association, he lives in Princeton, N.J., with his wife and son.

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Between Barack and a Hard Place

The “Burdens” of White Privilege

By Tim Wise For anyone having difficulty grasping the concept of white privilege, or constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, noted anti-racist activist and author Tim Wise compiled the following examples.

A version of this essay traveled the Internet in the final weeks of the 2008 presidential campaign. hite privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin, daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin, and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s fiancé, Levi Johnston, did, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. senator, two-term state senator, and constitutional law scholar means you’re “untested.”

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good

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White privilege is being a b l e t o m a ke f u n o f community organizers and the work they do— like, among other things, fighting for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the eight– hour workday, or an end to child labor—and people think you’re being pithy and tough . . . enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office—since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s—while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school, requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska First,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you’re black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do—like, among other things, fighting for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the eight-hour workday, or an end to child labor—and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the expe-

rience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college—you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian.

But, if you’re black and have been friends with a black pastor who has noted (as did Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Tim Wise is a prominent anti-racist writer, activist and author of a number of books including White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White.

A collection of his essays, Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections from an Angry White Male, was published last fall, and his new book, Between Barack and a Hard Place: Race and Whiteness in the Age of Obama, will be released later this year.

Resources for Changing Men 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 voicemale.editor@mrcforchange.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 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

Masculinity Project The Masculinity Project addresses the complexities of masculinity in the African American community www.masculinityproject.com

Men Stopping Violence Atlanta-based organization working to end violence against women, focusing on stopping battering, and ending rape and incest www.menstoppingviolence.org

MASV - Men Against Sexual Violence Men working in the struggle to end sexual violence www.menagainstsexualviolence.org

Mentors in Violence Prevention - MVP Trainings and workshops in raising awareness about men’s violence against women www.sportsinsociety.org/vpd/mvp./php

MenEngage Alliance An international alliance promoting boys’ and men’s support for gender equality www.menengage.org

MVP Strategies Gender violence prevention education and training www.jacksonkatz.com

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

Monadnock Men’s Resource Center Southern New Hampshire men’s center supporting men and challenging men’s violence mmrconline.org

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

European Men Pro-feminist Network Promoting equal opportunities between men and women www.europrofem.org

Men for HAWC Gloucester, Mass., volunteer advocacy group of men’s voices against domestic abuse and sexual assault www.strongmendontbully.com

Family Violence Prevention Fund Working to end violence against women globally; programs for boys, men and fathers www.endabuse.org

Men’s Health Network National organization promoting men‘s health www.menshealthnetwork.org

International Society for Men’s Health Prevention campaigns and health initiatives promoting men’s health www.ismh.org

Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe, Inc. Statewide Massachusetts effort coordinating men’s anti-violence activities www.mijd.org

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

Men’s Resource Center for Change Model men’s center offering support groups for non-abusive men and batterers’ intervention groups, services, trainings and consulting for men overcoming violence www.mrcforchange.org

Males Advocating Change Worcester, Mass., center with groups and services supporting men and challenging men’s violence www.centralmassmrc.org

Men’s Resources International Trainings and consulting on positive masculinity on the African continent www.mensresourcesinternational.org

MANSCENTRUM Swedish men’s centers addressing men in crisis www.manscentrum.se

Men’s Resource Center of South Texas Based on Massachusetts MRC model, support groups and services for men mrcofsouthtexas@yahoo.com

National Organization for Men Against Sexism Annual conference, newsletter, profeminist activities www.nomas.org Boston chapter: www.nomasboston.org National Coalition Against Domestic Violence Provides a coordinated community response to domestic violence www.ncadv.org National Men’s Resource Center National clearinghouse of information and resources for men www.menstuff.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 multi-issue 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 V-men, male activists in the movement www.newsite.vday.org White Ribbon Campaign International men’s campaign decrying violence against women www.whiteribbon.ca XY Magazine www.xyonline.net Profeminist men’s web links (over 500 links) www.xyonline.net/links.shtml 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 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 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 National Fatherhood Initiative Organization to improve the well-being of children through the promotion of responsible, engaged fatherhood www.fatherhood.org

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derisively at guys who say the wrong thing on beer ads; snickering at duded-up metrosexuals prancing around major metropolitan centers drinking Cosmos and imported vodka. Unapologetically “politically incorrect” magazines, radio hosts and television shows abound, filled with macho bluster and bikini-clad women bouncing on trampolines.

And the soundtrack in these new boys’ clubhouses, the sonic wallpaper in every dorm room and every shared apartment, is some of the angriest music ever made. Nearly four out of every five gangsta rap CDs are bought by suburban white guys. It is not just the “boys in the hood” who are a “menace to society.” It’s the boys in the ’burbs.

And while the American college campus is Guyland Central, guys who don’t go to college have ample opportunities—in the military, in police stations and firehouses, on every construction site and in every factory, in every neighborhood bar—for the intimately crude malebonding that characterizes Guyland’s standard operating procedure.

Guys often feel they’re entirely on their own as they navigate the murky shallows and the dangerous eddies that compose Guyland’s swift current. They often stop talking to their parents, who “just don’t get it.” Other adults seem equally clueless. They can’t confide in one another lest they risk being exposed for the confused creatures they are. So they’re left alone, confused, trying to come to terms with a world they themselves barely understand. They couch their insecurity in bravado and bluster, a fearless strut barely concealing a tremulous anxiety. They test themselves in fantasy worlds, drinking contests, and enduring humiliation and pain at the hands of others.

All the while, so many suspect that something’s rotten in the state of Denmark. They struggle to conceal their own sense of fraudulence, and can smell it on others. But few can admit to it, lest all the emperors-tobe will be revealed as disrobed. They go along, in mime.

Just as one can support the troops but oppose the war, so too can one appreciate and support individual guys while engaging critically with the social and cultural world they inhabit. In fact, I believe that only by understanding this world can we truly be empathic to the guys in our lives. We need to enter this world, see the perilous field in

which boys become men in our society because we desperately need to start a conversation about that world. We do boys a great disservice by turning away, excusing the excesses of Guyland as just “boys being boys”—because we fail to see just how powerful its influence really is. Only when we begin to engage in these conversations, with open eyes and open hearts—as parents to children, as friends, as guys themselves—can we both reduce the risks and enable guys to navigate it more successfully.

Let me make it clear: Most of the guys I meet are good guys, searching earnestly for a way to carve out a life for themselves that has meaning and integrity. But far too many are easily influenced by the bullies and the big shots, the guys who think they are making up the rules and, in any event, are the most committed to enforcing them.

Many guys are simply too afraid of being taken for a wimp, and so they oblige, unwittingly perpetuating Guyland, and preventing themselves from breaking free.

Guyland sells most guys a bill of goods telling them that a constellation of behaviors are the distilled essence of manhood, which could not be further from the truth. We need, collectively and individually, in our relationships and families, schools and churches, shopping malls and freeways, to enable young guys to see through the façade and navigate a path towards adulthood. We need to turn the world back, right side up.

They’re counting on it. In order to love young men, to be compassionate about their world and their choices, we need, as a society, to look at it squarely, to no longer turn a blind eye to their world and resign ourselves to boys just being boys. They are counting on us being involved in that now-expanded transition from adolescence to adulthood.

Voice Male contributing editor Michael Kimmel is the author or editor of more than 20 volumes on men and masculinity, including the groundbreaking Manhood in America: A Cultural History. A professor of sociology and a leading scholar in the field of gender studies at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, he lectures extensively on college campuses in the United States and abroad. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.

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