Voice Male Magazine Winter 2007

N e w Vi s i o n s o f M a n h o o d

Voice Male The Magazine of The Men’s Resource Center for change

Winter  2007

Can Filmmaker Byron Hurt

Recast Hip-Hop's View of Manhood?

I N S ID E Believing in (Young) Men l Fathers, Sons, Loss and Redemption l My Gay San Francisco Men and Abortion After South Dakota l Memo to the Media: It's Men's Violence

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F rom T he E ditor

Filling the Glass of Hope

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Believing in (Young) Men

By Rob Okun

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n the trade I ply—encouraging men to explore options outside the constraining box of conventional masculinity—there’s certainly no shortageofbadnews.Men’sviolence against women (and other men) remains at catastrophiclevels;there’slittlechanceVoice Male, or its publisher, the Men’s Resource Center for Change, is going to be short of problems to address anytime soon.

Nevertheless, my family and friends will tell you I’m a glass-half-full person—upbeat, optimistic. Even in the face of gloom and doom—the senseless war in Iraq, the criminal neglect plaguing the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, the indifference to the tragedy in Darfur—I always seem to look for ways to connect the dots of possibility, the signs of hope trumping despair.

So where is the good news? Not long ago, I talked into the night around a fire pit in New Orleans with young men volunteering to help with the city’s renewal, shared Chinese food with an inspiring group of male college students challenging sexism and violence on an elite New England campus,andmetinaclassroomafterschoolwith local male high school juniors and seniors, members of a “women’s rights club.”

It was hard to retain my glass-half-full demeanor when I arrived in New Orleans before the holidays. My wife and I came to visit one of our daughters, part of the legion of twenty-somethings who’ve moved to town to help with the relief effort. The mix of women and men, many volunteering with the Common Ground Collective, representsthebestofourtroubled,creative country. Since Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing floods overwhelmed the region, thousands of volunteers have passed throughCommonGround,headquartered in a three-story brick school where floodwaters peaked above the second floor.

Sitting around a fire pit in the backyard of a funky, colorful house in the Seventh Ward, I talked one night with male vol-

“ In the faces of young men sitting around a fire pit in a New Orleans backyard I saw compassion, soft and understated.” unteers. I saw in their faces and heard in their words a sensitivity to, and awareness of, the class and racial issues plaguing the city (issues predating Katrina) that stirred in me a sense of hope. We talked for a while, then played some music (guitar, banjo, harmonica)—it was N’awlins after all—then resumed wrestling with how to reconcile the enormity of the calamity with the limitations of volunteer, underfunded grassrootsefforts.Theircompassioncaught my attention—soft, understated, not an attribute necessarily associated with men.

I think the scope of the devastation and the shameful neglect, plain for all to see, helped crack open their hearts. On the plane home, I thought about that night and my eyes welled up. I had been witness to a quiet, powerful expression of courage.

Despite the struggle New Orleans faces, these young men filled my glass with more than just dregs of hope.

Back home, I went to dinner with filmmaker Byron Hurt (see story page 8) and most of the members of The Men’s Project of Amherst College. Founded on principles similar to those of the Men’s Resource Center for Change, adapted to a college community, their goal is to sustain a male-initiated, profeminist, antiviolence/ anti–sexual assault presence at Amherst College, even when prevailing attitudes objectify women and pressure men to strike a tough guise.

They’d invited the filmmaker to screen his new film, Hip Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes.

At dinner, one young man asked Hurt how he had gotten involved in “men’s work.”

Byron responded by asking each of us to answer, too. As we passed around steaming platters of food, one by one we shared the spark—a teacher, parent, sister, friend,

girlfriend, a training, becoming a father—a cascading series of experiences that had resulted in each of us reaching a similar conclusion: there’s a better way to be a man.

As we headed over to see the film, I could feel my glass of hope filling up.

A few days later, in a classroom at Amherst High School, I met with the male members of the Women’s Rights Club, a 60-member group, a quarter of whom are guys, 16 to 18. With little prompting, they sharedwhythey’djoined:becomingaware of the sexual harassment female students experience; wanting to support a Vagina Monologues performance; not wanting to have to pretend they were a certain kind of guy. A starting member of a varsity sports team told how, at a team meeting, he’d announced he had to leave early to attend the Women’s Rights Club. He was met with a string of derisive comments, all questioning his manhood. His response? “I don’t care what you say. Being in this group is important to me.”Others then shared how theirmalefriendshadteasedthem,too.But they’d all withstood the criticism. It was an hour after school had ended, and there they all were, a young men’s group. Their voices may not be as deep as those of the men around the fire in New Orleans; their mission not yet as broad as the Amherst College students’. Nevertheless they, too, had connected the dots clearly enough to know that there are other ways for men to be. For someone who likes to see his glass half full, I left the high school that day with my cup overflowing. VM

VoiceMaleeditorRobOkuncanbereachedat raokun@mrcforchange.org.

Table of Contents Features Byron Hurt’s Crusade to Save . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Hip-Hop from Itself

By Rob Okun The High Cost of Manliness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

By Robert Jensen Memo to the Media: It’s Men’s Violence . . 13

By Jackson Katz Time for Men to Champion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Reproductive Rights

By Rob Okun How Can We Stop the Violence? . . . . . . . . 17

By Rus Funk

Voice Male

Columns & Opinion From the Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Mail Bonding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Men @ Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Fathering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Fathers, Sons, and the Ripples of Loss

By Jonathan Diamond Voices of Youth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Leaving the Team, Becoming a Man

By Nathan Einschlag GBQ Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 OutLines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 My Gay San Francisco, Then and Now

By Les K. Wright Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Thank You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 MRC Programs & Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

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VOICE MALE is published quarterly by the Men’s Resource Center for Change, 236 North Pleasant St., Amherst, MA 01002. It is mailed to donors and subscribers in the U.S., Canada, and overseas and distributed at select locations around New England.

The opinions expressed in VOICE MALE may not represent the views of all staff, board, volunteers, or members of the Men’s Resource Center for Change.

Copyright © 2007 Voice Male Magazine.

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Mail Bonding Texas Inmate Asks: Tell My Story I’m writing to tell you how much I enjoy y’alls magazine, which my brother introduced me to. I am currently an inmate at the Travis State Jail in Austin, Texas. I also am a victim of abuse—sexual, physical and mental. My father sexually abused me when I was a child.

National Advisory Board Voice Male Magazine Men’s Resource Center For Change John Badalament, Boston Juan Carlos Areán, Boston Byron Hurt, New York City Robert Jensen, Austin Sut Jhally, Northampton, Mass.

Jackson Katz, Long Beach, Calif.

Joe Kelly, Duluth, Minn.

Michael Kimmel, Brooklyn Bill T. Jones, New York City Michael Messner, Los Angeles Don McPherson, Long Island, N.Y. Craig Norberg-Bohm, Boston Haji Shearer, Boston

My stepfathers physically abused me and it’s all been really mentally abusing if you know what I mean. By the grace of God and a really loving, caringandsupportivemother,Ihavemanaged to make it through it all. I now have a family of my own who I love with all my heart. I would like one day to maybe have my story told in your magazine. Also, there are many males here who can benefit from y’alls magazine.

Maybe you can send a bundle to the chaplain hereattheunitandhecoulddistributethemto inmates that want them. Thanks, and keep up the good work. Without an organization like the Men’s Resource Center and a magazine like Voice Male, I and many other men would have no place to turn for guidance and support!

Luis Aquino Austin, Texas

High School Males Join Women’s Rights Club I’m one of the male members of a club started at our high school for raising awareness about violence against women. I’m looking forward to what we, as a combined group of males and females, can accomplish

You’re never far from Voice Male!

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Look for the magazine at these distribution points throughout the U.S.:

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California: Black Oak Books, Berkeley; Center for Women and Men, USC, Los Angeles; Modern TImes, San Franscisco • Colorado: Boulder Cooperative Market, Boulder; Page Two, Boulder • Florida: Goering’s Bookstore, Gainesville • Illinois: Box Car Books, Bloomington; New World Resource Center, Chicago • Maine: Boys to Men, Portland • (Eastern) Massachusetts: Family Violence Prevention Fund, Boston; Jane Doe, Boston; Men’s Resource Center of Central Mass., Worcester; NOMAS-Boston, Westford • New Hampshire: Monadnock Men’s Resource Center, Keene • New Mexico: Community Against Violence, Taos; El Refugio, Silver City • North Carolina: Downtown Books and News, Asheville • Oregon: Breaking Free, Eugene • Texas: Men’s Resource Center of South Texas, Harlingen • Vermont: Everyone’s Books, Brattleboro; Healthy Living Market, South Burlington; Lake Champlain Men’s Resource Center, Burlington • Washington: Elliot Bay Café, Seattle; Twice Sold Tales, Seattle Write to voicemale@mrcforchange.org for more information on distributing VOICE MALE in your area.

in the name of raising awareness of violence against women. Our club meets every week.

I’d like our group to visit your magazine and the Men’s Resource Center but our group now has about 60 members, a quarter male!

Could you come to the high school to talk to usaboutworkingtopreventviolenceagainst women? I know it’s a broad topic, but most of the guys in the group are new and unfamiliar with this topic. Some expressed how surprised they were to find out that it happens to females in our school. We’re looking forward to learning about ideas beneficial for guys.

David Katwiwa Women’s Rights Club, Amherst, Mass.

We Want to Hear from You! Write us at: Voice Male, MRC, 236 North Pleasant St. Amherst, MA 01002 or Fax (413) 253-4801 voicemale@mrcforchange.org Please include address and phone.

Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

Deadline for Spring issue: March 15, 2007

M en @ W ork Gender, Bullying, and “School Shootings”

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ullying caused by gender stereotypes appears to be at issue in a school shooting by 17-year-old Joshua Minks, his mother believes. Amanda Minks began speaking publicly about the incident last August, according to the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition’s (GenderPAC) GenderYOUTH Network, a collaboration of more than 200 student leaders on 45 campuses in two dozen states working to ensure that school is a

safe place for all students. Minks said her son had complained of being subjected to daily taunting and homophobic slurs by classmates because of his appearance.

Minks is 6’5” and weighs 400 pounds.

Minks, who attended high school in Farmington, Missouri, pleaded guilty to assault on school property and unlawful use of a weapon last summer after firing a hole into the school ceiling with a shotgun when he was confronted by three students. A principal and teacher subdued him before anyone was hurt.

“Research shows that school violence against boys who are seen as unmanly—public humiliation, ridicule, beatings and other attacks—is closely linked to school shootings,” said Tyrone Hanley, the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition Youth Program Coordinator in Washington. “This incident seems to follow that pattern.”

In a 2003 study of school violence, SUNY–Stony Brook sociology professor Michael Kimmel, a member of the continued on page 6

Engaging Men in Nigeria

Top: MRI's James Arana, second from right, at a Women's Day Celebration. Middle: DOVENET founder and director Ugo Nnachi. Bottom: MRI's James Arana and Steven Botkin.

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Photos courtesy of Men’s Resources International

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ast November, James Arana and Steven Botkin of Men’s Resources International (MRI) traveled to Ebonyi State in Nigeria to provide 10 days of training and consultations for the development of the Ebonyi Men’s Resource Center. The event, called “Engaging Men in Eliminating Gender-Based Violence,” was hosted

by DOVENET, a women’s safety and empowerment organization, directed by Chief Ugo Nnachi.

The 36 men and women attending the training included doctors, lawyers, nurses, social workers, police, a traditional ruler, military, clergy, and other members of the community. Representatives from the Zambia Men’s Network and the Rwanda Men’s Centre (both formed with assistance from MRI) were enthusiastic participants who provided a pan-African perspective.

“James and I were blessed by the gracious hospitality of the people of Ebonyi State, Nigeria,” said MRI executive director Steven Botkin.

“Welcomed deeply into their lives, we came to understand how they are blending tradition with a commitment to empowerment into a significant force for social transformation. Our approach to engaging men in violence prevention and positive masculinity has been enthusiastically received by both men and women as part of this process.”

Men’s Resources International has now conducted consultations and trainings in Zambia, Nigeria, and Liberia, assisting in the creation of men’s initiatives in each of these countries as well as in Rwanda.

Along with requests for assistance from Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, these experiences reflect a blossoming interest among many African men and women in working together to end gender-basedviolence.Byfacilitatingcommunicationsandnetworking among these initiatives, MRI has been working to support the emergence of an African men’s network.

For more information on MRI and its work, visit www.mensresourcesinternational.org.

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Men’s Resource Center’s and Voice Male’s advisory board, found that nearly all 29 school shootings that occurred between 1992 and 2001 involved shotguns or assault rifles and were carried out by heterosexual white male teenagers in rural communities who had been mercilessly bullied for being unmasculine or unathletic.

And gender bullying is apparently widespread: 27 percent of students reported harassment for not being masculine or feminine enough and over half said that school was unsafe for boys who weren’t as masculine as other boys in a 2004 study by the California Safe Schools Coalition.

Added Hanley, “We’re not going to stop school shootings until we address violent codes of masculinity among rural, white, teenage males.”

In an interview with KFVS television in August, Minks’s mother claimed the school promised to examine its safety and harassment guidelines to address the bullying directed at her son, but never followed through.

GenderPAC can be reached at www. gpac.org, 1743 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20009.

Texas Men’s Center Launches Newspaper Column

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he executive director of the Men’s Resource Center of SouthTexas has begun writing a newspaper column for the San Benito News, a twiceEmiliano Diaz de Leon weeklypublishedinthe major neighboring city east of Harlingen, Texas, where the center is based. In his inaugural column, “Good Will Towards Men...And Especially Women,” Emiliano Diaz de Leon challenged the men in his “community to break free from…the typical [New Year’s] resolutions of weight loss and financial gain… invit[ing] men to reflect on the issue of domestic violence and resolve to be a part of the solution rather than the problem.”

His first column was published in the widely distributed paper just after New Year’s. Citing grim violence and abuse statistics from the Department of Justice, he also reported on an increase in domestic violence murders in Texas from 114 in 2004 to 143 in 2005 (figures for 2006 have not been yet calculated).

After remembering by name seven women murdered in 2005 in his home region of the Rio Grande Valley, he called on men to make“a personal pledge never

to commit, condone, or remain silent about violence against women and children.” He challenged men “to make this pledge your resolution not just for 2007 but for each day of your life. This is one resolution that is too important to give up on after just one week.”

Diaz de Leon’s column, which will appear the first week of each month, will also be posted on the Men’s Resource Center of South Texas’ website: www. mrcofsouthtexas.org. VM

Kapler Speaking Out Against Gender Violence

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neofthebiggestimpediments topreventingviolenceagainst women, many advocates believe, is men’s silence. The Boston-based Center for the Study of Sport in Society hopes to change that through a new campaign called “Leaders Act.” The campaign,designedtodrawattentionto men’s violence against women, enlisted as its first spokesperson former Boston Red Sox outfielder Gabe Kapler. (Kapler, a supporter of the Men’s Resource Center for Change, was recently named manager of the Sox minor league team in South Carolina. He was featured in Lisa and Gabe Kapler Voice Male Fall 2005).

“Every person, man or woman, has the power to stand up for victims of violence,” says Kapler, who three years ago joined his wife, Lisa, a victim of dating violence, in speaking out against gender violence. Kapler says working with Sport in Society’s Leaders Act program (based at Northeastern University) “is tremendously important for me as an athlete to set an example”to challenge men’s violence against women.

DevelopedbyManasianInc.,amarketingcommunicationsagency,theLeaders Act campaign uses the appeal of professional athletes to help create awareness about gender violence. It features Sport in Society’s flagship program, Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), as a key training tool. Kapler is the first in a series of athletes to support the cause. MVP motivates men and women to play a central role in solving problems historically deemed “women’s issues”: rape, battering, and sexual abuse, viewing men and women not as potential perpetrators or victims, but as empowered bystanders who can confront abusive peers.

“Gabe [Kapler] is taking the leadership responsibility seriously by stepping up, using …his personal story to get the message out,” said director of Sport in Society Peter Roby. He also praised the Red Sox for being the first major league baseball team to use the MVP program to educate its minor league players about gender violence.

For more information visit www.leadersact.org.

Photo by Julie Cordeiro

M en @ W ork

Men @ Work continued from page 5

Thanks!

The Men’s Resource Center for Change thanks everyone who contributed to the success of the Light at the Dark of the Year concert with Steven Schoenberg.

J.F. Conlon & Associates Daily Hampshire Gazette Eastworks • Florence Savings Bank Freedom Credit Union Integrity Development & Construction Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House • Smith College WFCR • WGBY Big Y Foods • Loose Goose Café Osaka Japanese Restaurant Paul & Elizabeth’s • Spirit Haus Woodstar Café

Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker

Psychotherapy for Individuals and Relationships Northampton office

413-586-7454 reedschim@yahoo.com

Robert Mazer ~ Psychotherapist For men looking to let go of patterns that don’t work and create a more purposeful, fulfilling life.

Staff member at the Synthesis Center in Amherst Free initial consultation/flexible fees 256 - 0772

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Athol Savings Bank • Lisa Baskin Blair, Cutting & Smith Insurance Downtown Sounds • Meg Kelsey-Wright Klondike Sound Company Marisa Labozzetta & Martin Wohl Robert K. Ostberg, CLU, ChFC R. Michelson Galleries

REED SCHIMMELFING, MSW

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and more by increasingly violent music and videos that sexually degrade women and lionize the gangsta and the pimp.

New York Times reporter Doug Mills, writing about the film in December of last year, cited social critics who say hiphop’s ascendancy “has coincided with the growth of the white audience for rap and the growing role of large corporations in marketing the music.”

“In the past 20 years, hip-hop has become a critically acclaimed, billion-dollar industry,” Hurt notes. “How do black menfeelabouttherepresentationsofmanhood in hip-hop? How do black women and men feel about the pervasive images

H

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By Rob Okun

film, Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, shines an unwavering bright light on the shadowy side of a music that has captivated millions of young people worldwide but has done so by demeaning women and men.

In the film, conceived as a “loving critique” from a self-proclaimed “Hip-Hop Head,” Hurt focuses on issues of masculinity, sexism, violence and homophobia in today’s hip-hop culture, by talking with rappers, music moguls, and fans. Hurt, a member of the advisory board of Voice Male and the Men’s Resource Center for Change, makes it clear from the film’s first frame that he loves hip-hop. Looking straight at the viewer, he declares hip-hop has been a style of music he’s loved since he first heard it as a teenager two decades ago. But now, he says, he is “very conflicted about the music I love.”

Growing up in a black neighborhood in Central Islip, N.Y., Hurt was attracted to a music “created by people your age who looked like you, talked like you, dressed like you and weren’t apologetic about it.”

Today he is concerned about how the hip-hop market is being dominated more

feel about the representations of manhood in hip-hop, and the pervasive images of sexually objectified women? schools, for community groups and antiviolence men’s initiatives. “I made this film specifically to get people to talk” about what’s going on with a music that detractors claim “glorif[ies] swagger and luxury, portray[s] women as sex objects, and impl[ies], critics suggest, that education and hard work are for suckers and sissies.”

It features revealing interviews with rappers including Mos Def, Fat Joe, Chuck D, Jadakiss, and Busta Rhymes and hiphop moguls Russell Simmons, Chris Lighty, and Corey Smyth, along with commentary from Michael Eric Dyson, Jackson Katz, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Kevin Powell, and Sarah Jones and interviews with young women at prestigious black Spelman College.

One of the stops on his cross-country tour was Amherst College, the elite New England school which prides itself on having a much higher enrollment of stu-

Byron Hurt’s Crusade to Save

HIP -HOP from Itself

of scantily clad and sexually objectified women in rap music and videos? What do today’s rap lyrics tell us about the collective consciousness of black men and women from the hip-hop generation?”

Since he completed the film last summer, Hurt has been barnstorming the country, screening it at colleges and high

© Copyright, 2006, ITVS, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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e’s sof t spoken and articulate, passionate and determined. With an engaging smile and an easy personal style thatpeopleboth15yearsyounger and 15 years older feel at ease with, when Byron Hurt starts talking people listen. And what he’s got to say could help challenge the role hip-hop plays in promoting violence, denigrating women,perpetuating homophobia, and stereotyping men.

The36-year-oldactivist-filmmaker’snew

How do black women and men

Three generations of hip-hopheads:producer/ director Byron Hurt, Joaquin Stephens, and Jamal Jackson

© Copyright, 2006, ITVS, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Can Hip-Hop Move Beyond the Stereotypes?

An Interview with Byron Hurt

By Erin Trahan

Erin Trahan: In Beyond Beats and Rhymes, you quickly introduce yourself as a football player, showing footage of you throwing a touchdown pass. How important is it to establish your “manhood” before you question masculinity in hip-hop?

Hurt talks to rap artists and fans in New York City.

continued on page 10

ET: Isn’t that the approach used by Northeastern’s Mentors inViolence Prevention program, where you spent five years as one of their lead facilitators, educating college students about men’s violence against women? You responded to a call for former athletes?

Hurt: Yes, being a part of Mentors in Violence Prevention [MVP] prepared me for this film. It gave me all of the tools that I needed to have conversations with everybody from professors in academic settings to guys on the street. I wouldn’t have had the language to ask the proper questions.... I wouldn’t have been able to form my thesis without MVP. But I almost didn’t do it. I was scared of what other guys would think of me. Then I saw an exercise and it raised my awareness about the magnitude of the problem.

ET: What was the exercise?

Hurt: Jackson Katz [founder of MVP] asked a group of men to raise their hands if they do things on a daily basis to protect themselves from sexual assault. Nobody, [not even] I, raised his hand. Then he asked the women, and all their hands went up. I was moved and saw it as an opportunity to make a difference.

ET:The work of MVP and similar advocates redefines terms in a way that puts men back into theequation,likecallingit“men’sviolenceagainstwomen.”Howimportantislanguagetoyou?

Hurt: I was taught and I believe that language is extremely important. Using language that places the emphasis on men as the active agent in violence is very political. When you frame it that way, it names the oppressor. But it also makes people feel like you are targeting the oppressor, which can make them uncomfortable.

I struggle with language over and over again. What words to use, how to write the narration of this film, how to talk on camera. It was painstaking to come up with the most appropriate language to reach the broadest audience. I wanted the respect of scholars and feminists, people who know and understand gender issues. But I also wanted to be common and accessible and to talk the way normal people talk.

ET: Did you go through the same painstaking process to choose your language for race?

Hurt: Not as much. But one of the things I am really trying to do is make racial analogies that are easy to understand. I wanted to illustrate how problematic and normalized sexism and misogyny are, and one way is to draw parallels to racism. The most effective conversations I’ve had with black men make them see how women feel when they are sexually harassed. I make the analogy that when black men are harassed by police or in stores or they’re walking down the street and get looked at in a certain way just because they’re wearing baggy pants or hoodies, attire that is considered criminal, doesn’t mean they’re a criminal.

ET: I can’t tell you how many times I have heard people, usually white people, say things like, “Oh, I like all kinds of music, except for rap.”Did you struggle with that narrow way of thinking in the film, not wanting to add fuel to the fire for people who too easily (or even unjustly) write hip-hop off?

Hurt: I struggled with that and I still do. I wanted to have nuance. That’s one of the reasons why I start and end the film by saying that I love hip-hop. I think there are brilcontinued on page 10

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dents of color than many colleges and universities. Some two thirds of the several hundred people who came to see the film were people of color, a mix of men and women including half the members of a high school young men of color leadership group. Hurt told the audience it took him five years to complete the film, which he first conceived of a decade ago. His hard work is paying off. Beyond Beats and Rhymes, which premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, will air nationally on the Emmy Award–winning PBS series Independent Lens, on Tuesday, February 20.

A quar ter back on Nor theaster n University’s football team in the late 1980s, Hurt described himself as “a typical man.”

Early scenes in the film include footage of him on the football field and at a hiphop party. Everything began to change for Hurt in 1993 when, at 21, he was hired as a trainer with Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), an innovative education program operated by Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society. “I couldn’t have made this film without having first learned about men and masculinity while working as a trainer with MVP,” Hurt acknowledges. The program’s purpose is to raise awareness about “men’sviolenceagainstwomen, challenge the thinking of mainstream society, open dialogue between men and women, and inspire leadership by empowering people with concrete options to effect change.”

One of Hurt’s mentors at MVP was Jackson Katz, MVP founder and nationally acclaimed antiviolence educator and activist (see Voice Male Spring 2006). Hurt was among the first student-athletes to join MVP, playing a central role in learning to address problems that historically have been considered “women’s issues”: rape,

Byron Hurt: It was definitely a strategy to legitimize my heterosexual male identity up front. I want boys and men to identify me as someone they can relate to, so that they’ll think, “If he can be exploring these issues, maybe this guy is worth listening to.”

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Byron Hurt’s Crusade continued from page 9

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battering, and sexual harassment. The MVP approach emphasizes the role of the bystander in the work of preventing violence. It sees student-athletes and student leaders not as potential perpetrators or victims, but as empowered bystanders who can confront abusive peers. Hurt believes this approach reduces the defensiveness menoftenexperienceandthehelplessness women often feel when discussing issues of men’s violence against women.

As more and more people are connecting the dots between men’s violence against women and depictions of both in popular culture, the potential audience for Beyond Beats and Rhymes is broadening.

It’s not just young fans who are interested.

The film, which balances its stark critique of hip-hop with insightful comments from positive hip-hop artists like Public Enemy’s Chuck D, is a skillful exploration that leaves plenty of room for viewers to suggest solutions without the filmmaker problem solving for them.

In hip-hop culture, Hurt says at the beginning of the film, “You have to be strong, you have to have girls, you have to have money…you have to dominate other men.” He spends much of the rest of the film allowing the viewer a chance to see not just how confining such a definition of manhood is, but how dangerous and deadening, too. The message of hip-hop doesn’t discriminate by race.

White males may be major consumers, Hurt says, “but it influences black kids the most. ‘What are they saying? What is the image of manhood?’”

Writer Erin Trahan, who conducted an interview with Hurt (see sidebar), appreciates how Hurt unflinchingly answered that question, weaving “personal testimony...interviews with famous rappers, street rhymers, hip-hop fans, producers, scholars, and clips from video after video...” By the film’s end, Trahan says, Hurt has connected that inflated ideal to his own experience—“how critical thinking led him to a broader, more realistic view of manhood—and how he believes in the day when hip-hop will loosen its narrow hold on men, boys, and anyone listening.” VM

An Interview with Byron Hurt

continued from page 9

liant, smart dudes out there but they haven’t been educated about gender issues. That’s the only thing that separates me from them, my awareness of gender issues, which I only began to learn about in my early twenties. I am hoping and waiting for the emergence of a broader sense of manhood in hip-hop. I do have concerns about my film being used or co-opted but I know Bill O’Reilly doesn’t love hip-hop the way I do.

ET:The film suggests that for a time hip-hop was moving beyond the stereotypes, both racially andgender-based,buthasnowslidbackintoimageryandlyricsthataremoremarketable,even formulaic. Is this purely related to corporate ownership, or is it a reaction to something bigger?

Do you see the same thing happening in other genres of music?

Hurt: Corporate control is the major reason American culture is being dumbed down, if you want my opinion. American popular culture serves a base audience. It force feeds an audience that doesn’t want to think, that doesn’t want to be challenged. Much of the mainstream hip-hop you hear today is clearly in a cesspool filled with other wide-ranging genres of art. When I was just out of high school, hip-hop was about something different.

ET: What is your biggest hope for Beyond Beats and Rhymes?

Hurt: That it will be seen by the largest audience possible all over the world. That it makes a difference in the lives of the people who watch it. I want people to use it as a catalyst to create social change in the way they see fit or most effective. I know that sounds really big. But it’s all possible.

Erin Trahan is a Boston-based freelance writer. Her interview with Byron Hurt originally appeared on www.NEFilm.com.

Resources Beyond Beats & Rhymes: www.pbs.org/independentlens/hiphop Byron Hurt: www.bhurt.com Chuck D’s Rapstation: www.rapstation.org Communities Against Violence: www.cavnet2.org End Violence Against Women: www.endvaw.org Faith Trust Institute (formerly Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence): www.faithtrustinstitute.org Family Violence Prevention Fund: www.endabuse.org Fundación Mujeres: www.fundacionmujeres.es Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community: www.dvinstitute.org Jackson Katz: www.jacksonkatz.com Men’s Resource Center for Change: www.mrcforchange.org Men’s Resources International: www.mensresourcesinternational.org Men Stopping Violence: www.menstoppingviolence.org Mentors in Violence Prevention: www.sportinsociety.org/vpd/mvp.php Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe, Inc.: www.mijd.org National Sexual Violence Resource Center: www.nsvrc.org 100 Black Men, Inc.: www.100blackmen.org Safe Horizon: www.safehorizon.org Voice Male magazine: www.mrcforchange.org/voicemale White Ribbon Campaign: www.whiteribbon.com

Toxic Masculinity

The High Cost of Manliness

By Robert Jensen

I

“We need to get rid of the whole idea of masculinity— abandon the claim that there are psychological or social traits that inherently come with being male. If we can get past that, we have a chance to create a better world for men and women.” ture’s male heroes reflect those characteristics: they most often are men who take charge rather than seek consensus, seize power rather than look for ways to share it, and are willing to be violent to achieve their goals.

That view of masculinity is dangerous for women. It leads men to seek to control “their” women and define their own pleasure in that control, which leads to epidemic levels of rape and battery. But this view of masculinity is toxic for men as well.

If masculinity is defined as conquest,

it means that men will always struggle with each other for dominance. In a system premised on hierarchy and power, there can be only one king of the hill.

Every other man must in some way be subordinated to the king, and the king always has to be nervous about who is coming up that hill to get him. A friend who once worked on Wall Street—one of the preeminent sites of masculine competition—described coming to work as like walking into a knife fight when all the good spots along the wall were taken. Masculinity like this is life lived as endless competition and threat.

No one man created this system, and perhaps none of us, given a choice, would choose it. But we live our lives in that system, and it deforms men, narrowing our emotional range and depth. It keeps us from the rich connections with others—not just with women and children, but with other men—that make life meaningful but require vulnerability.

This doesn’t mean that the negative consequences of this toxic masculinity are equally hazardous for men and women. As feminists have long pointed out, there’s a big difference between women dealing with the possibility of being raped, beaten, and killed by the men in their lives, and men not being able to cry. But we can see that the short-term material gains we men get are not adequate compensation for what we give up in the long run—which is to surrender part of our humanity to the project of dominance.

Of course there are obvious physical differences between men and women— average body size, hormones, reproductive organs. There may be other differences rooted in our biology that we don’t yet understand. Yet it’s also true that men and women are more similar continued on page 20

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t’s hard to be a man; hard to live up to the demands that come with the dominant conception of masculinity: the tough guy.

So, guys, I have an idea—maybe it’s time we stop trying. Maybe this masculinity thing is a bad deal, not just for women but for us.

We need to get rid of the whole idea of masculinity. It’s time to abandon the claim that there are certain psychological or social traits that inherently come with being biologically male. If we can get past that, we have a chance to create a better world for men and women.

The dominant conception of masculinity in U.S. culture is easily summarized: Men are assumed to be naturally competitive and aggressive, and being a real man is therefore marked by the struggle for control, conquest, and domination.

A man looks at the world, sees what he wants and takes it. Men who don’t measure up are wimps, sissies, fags, girls.

The worst insult one man can hurl at another—whether it’s boys on the playground or CEOs in the boardroom—is the accusation that a man is like a woman. Although the culture acknowledges that men can in some situations have traits traditionally associated with women (caring, compassion, tenderness), in the end it is men’s strengthexpressed-as-toughness that defines us and must trump any female-like softness. Those aspects of masculinity must prevail for a man to be a “real man.”

That’s not to suggest, of course, that every man adopts this view of masculinity. But it is endorsed in key institutions and activities—most notably in business, the military, and athletics—and is reinforced through the mass media.

It is particularly expressed in the way men—straight and gay alike—talk about sexuality and act sexually. And our cul-

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F athering

Fathers, Sons, and the Ripples of Loss

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By Jonathan Diamond

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hen my father died, some friends could notunderstandhow I could miss someone in death who had been the source of so much pain and anguish when he was alive. They had witnessedhowthecontrastbetweenmyfather’s rageful and loving sides created more than an emotional crisis in my life—it was a spiritual state of emergency.They were the ones whohelpedmeputmyselftogetherafteryet another caustic, if not violent, run-in with the old man. However, it wasn’t until he was diagnosedwithcancerthatrealhealingtook place and the connection between my dad and me was transformed.

During one of my last visits with my father, I was sitting next to him while he held his grandson in his lap. After a few moments, Dad very tenderly put his hand on my head and left it there. “Does that mean I’ve done good?”I asked.“That means a lot of things,” he replied.

Many friends called to ask me how I was and offered to help in any way possible.

Three months after he died, people still asked how I was doing, but there was a hint of impatience in their voices—they were ready for me to start feeling better. After six months, they stopped asking altogether.

Afterayear,mosthadprettymuchforgotten about my loss.

It’s been more than five years since my father died, and my relationship with him still has a hold on me. If time heals, it works in much larger increments: five years is a heartbeat.

Although my own clan and circle of friends grew tired of my mourning, people outside my circle shared their stories with me. Sometimes complete strangers would approach me at gatherings: “I heard you just lost your father. My dad passed away six months ago.” “I was with my father when he died. It was the hardest thing

“I want to help men understand how their past experiences continue to affect their relationships, and to illuminate the possibility for a second chance—an opportunity for men to feel compassion and forgiveness for their fathers.”

I’ve ever done.” When we dive beneath theparticulars—cancer,abandonment,suicide, one year, two years, ten, twenty—we find our experiences are uncannily similar.

Sometimes we even use the same language to describe them: “Our father was the glue that held the family together.”“The old man was like a rock—he was always there with a hand when you needed it most.”“My father was dead five years before I discovered how much I loved him.”“I never knew my father, but when news of his death arrived it felt like a part of me had died too.” “No one understood me like my father.”

Losing a father is one of the most profound events in a man’s life, and like the waves a stone causes when thrown into still water, the ripples of loss continue on and on.IwrotemybookFatherlessSonsbecause I wanted to help men understand how their past experiences continue to affect their relationships with family and friends, lovers and coworkers, and themselves. To those whose fathers are already gone, I hope the book illuminates the possibility

for a second chance—an opportunity for rediscovery—for men to feel compassion andforgivenessfortheirfathersandthereby free themselves from the emotional bonds that keep their present tied in knots, their future out of reach, and their past chained to a wounded soul.

Many of the stories I collected in my research are a tribute to men’s survival of abandonment,abuse,andneglect.However, even sons with mostly positive memories of their fathers must, as another writer observed, “endure the separation of death, the affliction of mourning.”

Facing death takes great courage. No matter how confusing or painful a man’s relationship with his father may have been, experiencing grief is heroic and sacred work. While the path you embarked on initially was about grieving, the journey is about healing.

David’s Story David was an emotional survivor and a relatively successful one, until his son approached the same age David was when his father killed himself. At that point, instead of working from the inside out, David began using alcohol to heal himself from the outside in. By turning away from his grief, David wasn’t just avoiding pain, he wasavoidingrecoveryandtheopportunities for healing that mourning provides.

For David, the catastrophe of his father’s suicide was not only the loss of his dad but the loss of a chance to persuade his father to act differently, the loss of the chance to connect. Perhaps the single most difficult thing for David to accept was how much help and good information he was benefiting from that his father didn’t have access to or chose not to take advantage of; and the constant wondering whether it would have been enough to make a difference if he had.

While acknowledging that his father’s continued on page 25

Eight Years After Columbine

Memo to the Media: It’s Men’s Violence

By Jackson Katz

I

“ Incredibly, few prominent voices in the media called the incidents what they were: hate crimes perpetrated by angry white men against defenseless young girls.

Most of the media chatter about the murders was notably devoid of any honest discussion of gender politics.”

Forensic psychologists and criminal profilers filled the airwaves with talk about how difficult it is to predict when a “person” will snap. And countless commentators—from fundamentalist preachers to secular social critics—rushed to weigh in with metaphysical musings on the incomprehensibility of “evil.”

Incredibly, few prominent voices in the broadcast or print media called the incidents what they were: hate crimes perpetrated by angry white men against defenseless young girls, who—whatever the twisted motives of the shooters— were targeted for sexual assault and murder precisely because they were girls.

More than a week after the second shooting, the Dallas Morning News published an op/ed I wrote that made this very point, and a few days later, The New York Times ran a widely circulated column about the shootings by Bob Herbert, “Why Aren’t We Shocked?,” that catalogued widespread misogyny in our culture. But these articles were rare exceptions; most of the media chatter about the murders was notably devoid of any honest discussion of gender politics.

What is it going to take for our society to deal honestly with the extent and depth of this problem? How many more young girls and women have to die before decision-makers in media

and other influential institutions stop averting their eyes from the lethal mix of deep misogyny and violent masculinity at work here?

In response to the Colorado and Pennsylvania shootings, the White House hastily organized a gathering of experts in education and law enforcement. The goal of the conference was to discuss “the nature of the problem” and federal action that could assist communities with violence prevention. This approach was—and remains—misdirected. Instead of convening a group of experts on “school safety,” the president should catalyze a long-overdue national conversation about sexism, masculinity, and men’s violence against women.

For us to have any hope of truly preventing not only extreme acts of gender violence, but also the incidents of rape, sexual abuse, and domestic violence that are a daily part of millions of women’s and girls’ lives, we need to have this conversation. And we need many more men to participate. Men from every level of society need to recognize that violence against women is a men’s issue.

A similar incident to the Amish schoolhouse massacre took place in Canada in 1989. A 25-year-old man walked into a classroom at the University of Montreal. continued on page 22

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n the many hours devoted to analyzing last fall’s school shootings, one of the most notable features of the national media conversation was that as a society we were yet again unable—or unwilling—to acknowledge a simple but disturbing fact: the shootings were an extreme manifestation of one of contemporary American society’s biggest problems—the ongoing crisis of men’s violence against women.

Let’s take another look at those horrific cases. On September 27, 2006, a heavily armed 53-year-old man walked into a Colorado high school classroom, forced male students to leave, and took a group of girls hostage. He then proceeded to terrorize the girls for several hours, killing one and allegedly sexually assaulting some or all of the others before killing himself.

Less than a week later, a 32-year-old man walked into an Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, and at gunpoint ordered about 15 boys to leave the room, along with a pregnant woman and three women with infants. He forced the remaining girls, aged 6 to 13, to line up against a blackboard, where he tied their feet together. He then methodically executed five of the girls with shots to the head and critically wounded several others before taking his own life.

Just after the Amish schoolhouse massacre, Pennsylvania police commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said in an emotional press conference, “It seems as though (the perpetrator) wanted to attack young, female victims.”

How did mainstream media cover these unspeakable acts of gender violence?The New York Times ran an editorial that identified the “most important” cause as the easy access to guns in our society.

National Public Radio aired a program focusing on problems in rural America.

13

Y outh

Leaving the Team, Becoming a Man

V oices

of

By Nathan Einschlag

GrowingupinNewYorkCityintheimmigrant neighborhoodofJacksonHeights,Queens,21year-oldNathanEinschlaghaswitnessedthings manyyoungpeoplehaveonlyreadaboutor seen on television.“I saw young abused girlfriendspushingstrollersonthewaytothelocal elementaryschooltopickuptheirkids.Itwas routine to pass prostitutes on my way to the subwaylateatnight.Iknewwhathappened to the drug and alcohol abusers in the hood: theydied.IwasfromaneighborhoodwhereI’d trained my senses to be aware, to stay out of harm’s way. I always watched a block ahead, spottingshadows,keepingmydistancefrom menonthecorners.Iwalkedwithmyheadup andaswaggerthatcanonlybelearnedinNew York City.”

Nathan says he made a decision when he wasyoungtobefocused,tonotbedraggedinto the street life. “I put my heart and soul into basketball,andthesensesIhadhonedwalking those late-night blocks all my life would not fail me. It was love. Basketball embraced me and I embraced it.” Sophomore year he made the varsity basketball team at Fiorello H. LaGuardia’s High School of Music, Art and Performing Arts. As a junior and senior he was a starter. His senior year the team won thedivisionchampionship.Itwasahighpoint inhislife,rightthere,attheendofhighschool.

Whatwouldleavingthecityandgoingtocollege bring?

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was going to a small liberal arts college in Baltimore, where I expected to walk onto the men’s Division III basketball team. I thought I was ready. I had no idea that college would be so much different from high school. Things changed drastically for me my freshman year.

Girls approached me all the time. Drunk girls. Eyeliner girls with eyes half shut, balancing red plastic cups full of beer. Those same girls would be all over the lacrosse players who would call them sluts later that

“ Had I known what a shock I was going to be in for when I started college, I would not have stayed quiet around my teammates’ obnoxious behavior.

Had I understood the hypermasculine jock culture that existed, I would have been more vocal.” week. Girls didn’t see the guy I was, just a freshman trying to get to know people.

They saw the basketball logo and didn’t need to know anything more about me.

They thought I must be like all the other guys who pushed up the girls’skirts as they walked by or pretended to trip while grabbing girls’ breasts. “Dude, get a drink, stop being so uptight,” they’d say. I didn’t want a fucking drink. Where were the kids who wanted to listen to music and get on the dance floor?

I once came back to my room and stepped over two girls lying on the floor in the hallway. They could have been waiting for me, or for anyone who walked by and was interested in quick, easy sex. College was nothing like I had expected.

The kids on my high school team were among the most creative and talented teenagers in New York City. We didn’t pound 40s on a Monday night. We didn’t drive drunk for fun. All we needed was a ball and a court. Nothing made us happier.

Off the court we argued about who had the flyest sneakers or who was a better rapper, Nas or Jay-Z. We didn’t buy 16-ounce Miller Lites instead of 8-ounce cans, thinking that the girls would get drunker because they have twice as much alcohol. “The girls don’t notice,”my college teammates assured me.

It wasn’t fun for me to hear male dancers at my school called fags. I wasn’t enjoying

being affiliated with the team. To outsiders looking in, I was only seen as a freshman on the basketball team who needed to be broken in. When I turned down drinks, girls would ask my teammates what was wrong with me, why was I such a weirdo.

They called me that because I would not objectify them. The gender roles at my school were like nothing I’d experienced.

Girls were doing male athletes’ laundry while the players poured beer on them and called them names. Bitch. Slut. Weirdo.

One day it just hit me; I understood.

Everything I had questions about, everything I had stressed about for a year and a half of my life, finally seemed to have an answer. I simply wasn’t like them. I stuck out like a weed in concrete. In the locker room, on the basketball court, in the words I spoke, by my actions. Everything about me was different. I saw things differently.

I was from a different place. Mama done raised me different.

To make matters worse, my coach was not playing me. He hadn’t seemed to take a liking to me either. At practice I was serious and I listened, two qualities I had learned from playing on other teams. The other freshmen were rowdy and rude. Some upperclassmenwerehotheadedanddidn’t look Coach in the eye when he talked to them. It was weird for me to watch this happen, but he seemed to respond well to their bad behavior. He took my silence

I teased a few girls that night, cursed and yelled, tried to be like one of the guys, maybe I’d finally get some playing time. If Coach saw that the guys liked me more, maybe he’d take notice of my game and play me more.

Not only was I slow in practice the next day, but Coach laid into me extra hard. The guys didn’t see me in any new light, and I still felt like the odd man out. Nothing was going to change the situation I was in.

My teammates were sexist and ignorant. It would be so easy to be like them. I could just kick back, get wasted, and blame my actions on intoxication. But I wasn’t about to let that happen. I would make a decision that would have important consequences, and it would cost me one of the things I held closest to my heart.

I quit the basketball team after a year and a half. Feeling more comfortable at school now, I shed the basketball reputation. I am no longer the cute, weirdo athlete on campus, but Nate, “the quiet kid who I see in the library who is gonna be in the play next week.”The girls are a little shyer when they approach me now, especially the ones from the parties I used to go to. I’m not like the other guys and they feel embarrassed and a little ashamed. I still hear them whispering about when I was on the team and what they thought I was like, but I also hear the truth now. “That’s Nate. He’s such a man.”

Had I known what a shock I was going to be in for when I started college, had I known it was going to be so much different from what I was used to at home, in high school, I would not have stayed quiet around my teammates’ unruliness and

obnoxious behavior. Had I understood the hypermasculine jock culture that existed in Division III sports before I joined the team, I would have promised myself that I’d be more vocal, challenging the things my teammates thought were fun.

But I was silent; I let people categorize me, let them think I had the same beliefs and interests as the guys on my team. I never told my coach how I felt until the day I quit the team. He’d had the wrong impression about me, about how to approach me.

I will always look back and wish I had been more honest with my teammates and the staff about how I was feeling.

Still, I will also look back at my college basketball career as one of the most influential times of my life. I learned more about myself during that year-and-a-half of struggle than I did during my entire life before that. By turning my time on the team into a learning experience, and growing from that experience, I know I made the right decision to leave college basketball. Have the athletes at my school stopped their sexist behavior? No. But by sticking to my principlesandnotlettingpeoplecategorize me I was able to succeed in fighting gender stereotypes with my words and my actions, and to show that there is another way for men to be.

NathanEinschlagwillgraduatefromGoucher CollegeinBaltimoreinDecemberandplansto becomeanelementaryschoolteacherinNew YorkCity.Sincestoppingplayingbasketball, hehasperformedincollegetheaterproductions,includingShakespeare’sTheTempest,in which he played Caliban.

W inter 2007 •

as a sign that I was lethargic, unmotivated.

I had such desire to play, but my coach would decide instead to question my masculinity. “I need to HEAR you NATE! TALK LOUDER!” he’d yell. “GODDAMNIT! SCREAM!… SOMETHING!” Off the court people treated me differently, too. “Dude, if you weren’t on the team I’d probably make fun of you too.

Fuck it, though. You’re cool. Bitches seem to like you.” Thankfully, girls did show me attention. At least I was a cute weirdo, on the basketball team, and not some freak fag like a theater major. I couldn’t tell my teammates that I was minoring in theater. I didn’t need to give them any more ammunition.

I loved basketball, but it was ruining my life. At the time my desire to play was overwhelming. I wanted to show Coach that basketball was my priority. I stopped telling him I’d have to miss practice for tutoring sessions or class requirements. Often I would show up at study groups late, still sweaty from practice. I’d convince the ushers at the theater to let me in late. I feared missing practice.

Coach seemed to love most of his players’ attitudes. They were rich kids who didn’t think about their parents’ money or care too much about education. Their father’s business would hire them, so what did a C- or a D+ here or there matter? My priorities were different. I didn’t have time to stay and bullshit about “bitches and beer” in the locker room. I didn’t care if Susan was wearing a low-cut shirt today in Philosophy, or that she almost fell down the stairs last night at the soccer party. It wasn’t theirfaultthattheygaveherthebeer.Noone told her to drink so much.This is college, not kindergarten. I had reading to get done; I had papers to write. I always felt like the odd man out, but now I started not to care.

This isn’t what I wanted from a basketball team. I didn’t feel a part of a team, even if the school saw and treated me like I was.

Something was changing; it was me.

I’d talk to old friends on the phone about school. I’d lie and tell them things were going well, I was adjusting fine. The next party I went to, I bought in for a red plastic cup. It was soon full of beer. Maybe they’re right, and I do need to loosen up, I thought. I had practice late the next day, and wouldn’t have to worry about being hung over. If

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After the South Dakota Victory

Time for Men to Champion Reproductive Rights

By Rob Okun

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haveason,18,andthreedaughters,all in their twenties. Imagine if even one parentinSouthDakotahadadaughter who’dbeenrapedandbecamepregnant.Mustthatfamilyhavetofollowa statelawthatforbadetheyoungwomanfrom abortingtherapist’schildbutinsteadcompelled her to bear her assailant’s baby as the state’s wayofrespondingtoherassault?That’salawI knew I had to challenge.”

I shared those sentiments, if not those exact words, numerous times last fall on the frontstepsofSouthDakotans’homes,where I spent several days before the November 7 midterm elections. I traveled around the state, working to overturn the most restrictive abortion ban in the nation. Happily, we won, 55 percent to 45 percent. Even in a state often described as very conservative and anti-choice, South Dakota voters apparently decided, “enough is enough.”

The celebrations are over; much work remains, in South Dakota and beyond.

Thosewhofavorupholdingtheprotections the Supreme Court afforded women in Roe v.Wade nearly three and a half decades ago would be well advised to pay close attention to the strategic and well-organized state-by-state battle currently being waged to restrict women’s reproductive rights and freedoms.The campaign is being coordinated and financed by a coalition of far-right political and religious institutions with close ties to the Republican Party and the Bush administration. To thwart the opposition’s efforts—currently being organized in a dozen states—many organizers are considering ways to better engage men in the struggle.

Beyond the size of the victory, what was heartening about it was the energy the scores of volunteers from around the country brought to the Campaign for Healthy Families, the statewide organizers. Arriving by plane, bus, van and car, volunteers fanned out across key South Dakota cities

One South Dakota man said he was afraid to display a lawn sign announcing his opposition to the restrictive abortion law—his neighbors would do more than ostracize him; he feared they would threaten him personally or vandalize his property.

The author and Sara Slumskie, president of the Sioux Falls chapter of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), hold signs advocating overturning the state's abortion law on Election Day.

and towns to help get out the vote to repeal the law. College students—many able to attend thanks to the generosity of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)— outnumberedmiddle-agedveteranactivists, but everyone felt a spirit of enthusiasm and energy. Savvy, gritty, native South Dakotan men and women in their late twenties and early thirties were in key leadership positions, orienting out-of-state volunteers to the conservative political opinions of many of the state’s residents, while underscoring that those very residents also had a strong aversiontogovernmentalmeddlingintheir personal lives.

On my first day, another volunteer and I hopped into one of a legion of rental cars organizers provided, and split up to canvass a well-to-do neighborhood in Sioux Falls, the state’s largest city (pop. 130,000). We had lists of houses to visit, urging residents to vote to repeal the ban the Republicancontrolled state legislature had passed last winter and Republican governor Mike Rounds had signed into law March 6.

Opponents’signs outnumbered“our”signs by four or five to one, I estimated, raising concerns about our chances for success.

I soon learned why the final vote and the public show of support would be so out of alignment. I spoke with a doctor in his fifties, an arthritis specialist, who was initially wary when he opened his wide, ornate front door. After determining which side I represented, he shared some disturbing observations: He was afraid to display a lawn sign announcing his opposition to the restrictive abortion law—his neighbors would do more than ostracize him, he said; he feared they would threaten him personally or vandalize his property.

From the pulpit of his church, he said, he was being told to vote to uphold the ban; leaflets were handed out in church, he went on, and were being mailed from the church through the U.S. Postal Service (all violations of the law). He said he felt afraid to complain since he couldn’t be assured of his anonymity. He felt encouraged, he said, continued on page 23

New Book Urges Engaging Men

How Can We Stop the Violence?

By Rus Funk

Rape,domesticviolence,sexualharassment,andstalkingareeverydayoccurrencesthatRusErvin Funkhasbeenchallengingformanyyears.Whilewomenhavebeeneducatingotherwomenabout theseissuesfordecades,Funk,authorofthenewbookReachingMen:StrategiesforPreventing SexistAttitudes,BehaviorsandViolence,believesthattosuccessfullycombattheseproblems societymustbettereducatemen.Funkhaswrittenanaccessiblevolumedesignedtodojustthat.

AccordingtotheMenStoppingViolencewebsite,oneinthreewomenarephysicallyorsexually assaultedbyamanatsomepointintheirlifetime;onaverage,threewomenaremurderedbya partnerorex-partnerdailyintheUnitedStates;andmorethanhalfamillionwomenarebeing stalkedrightnowbyaman.Sadly,amajorityofcasesofsexismandviolenceagainstwomenand mengounreported.Funk,alongtimesexualviolencepreventioneducatorandactivist,saysthatif menareunskillfullyapproachedonthesubject,theyoftenwillchallenge,disagree,confront,tune out, or dismiss any talk of men’s violence.

“Menhaveadifferentrelationshipto,andunderstandingof,sexism,violenceandtherelationshipbetweensexismandviolence,”Funksays.“Thewaythatadvocateseducatemenneedstobe somewhatdifferentthanhowweeducatewomen.”Inhisbook,andintrainingsandpresentations heoffersaroundthecountry,Funksaysthefirststeptoapproachingmenaboutsexismisestablishingaframeworkformentounderstandthatsexismandviolenceare“theirissue.”Without inculcatingthatbaselinebelief,advocatesareunlikelytobesuccessfulintalkingwithmenabout whattheycandoaboutit:bettersupportthepeopletheyknowwhoarevictimized;challenge peopletheyknowwhoactinsexistorabusiveways;not“standby”whenwitnessingsexismor abusiveness;becomealliesforwomenandothermen;developintoactivistsinthemovementto stop sexism and violence.

AcofounderofD.C.MenAgainstRape,thePeople’sCoalitionforJustice,theBaltimoreAlliance Against Child Sexual Abuse, and M.E.N.—Mobilizing to EndViolence, Funk is a professor at boththeKentSchoolofSocialWorkattheUniversityofLouisvilleandtheSpaldingUniversity SchoolofSocialWork.ReachingMenispublishedbyIndianapolis-basedJISTPublishing,which publishes and distributes support materials for children and their families (www.jist.com).

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the efforts to respond to and combat sexist violence.

Those of us who have worked as activists around these issues know that educating men about sexism and violence can be a daunting task. How do we phrase the issues so that men can (and will) hear the message? How do we respond to men’s defensiveness? How can we convey the messages without inciting men’s anger?

Having men sit politely in a room and merely listen to a presentation is decidedly not the goal. Creating a space where men can choose to move is an improvement.

But men are unlikely to make any movement as long as they remain comfortable.

and violence can be a daunting task. How do we phrase the issues so men can hear the message, without defensiveness and anger?

The topics of sexism and violence (rape, domestic violence, sexual harassment, pornography and prostitution) are inherently uncomfortable. These forms of violence are gendered because they are used to maintain a particular system of power and control—sexism. Educating men requires using the inherent discomfort of these topics to engage, challenge, and motivate men.

Men have an enormous ability (as yet, largelyuntapped)torespondtosexismand violence, both individually and collectively.

Focusing on men’s abilities to respond is an effective tool in overcoming men’s sense of continued on page 26

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exism and violence are widely understood and defined as “women’s issues.” When men do talk about these issues, it is generally in a defensive manner (“not all men are bad…”), or one in which they sympathize with the women or men who have been victimized (“those poor victims” or “if that were me, I’d kill somebody”). Neither of these responses, men’s defensiveness or men’s sympathy, is an appropriate response to women or men who have been victimized, nor have they proven effective as tactics for motivating men to become more actively involved in

Educating men about sexism

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GBQ R esources

For more info or to submit new entries for GBQ Resources contact us at (413) 253-9887 Ext. 33 or gbq@mrcforchange.org AIDS CARE/Hampshire County Contact: (413) 586-8288. Buddy Program, transportation, support groups and much more free of charge to people living with HIV. AIDS Project of Southern Vermont Contact: (802) 254-8263. Free, confidential HIV/AIDS services, including support, prevention counseling and volunteer opportunities. T.H.E. Men’s Program (Total HIV Education) Contact: Alex Potter (802) 254-8263, Brattleboro, VT. Weekly/monthly social gatherings, workshops, and volunteer opportunities.

Email: men@sover.net Bereavement Group for Those Who Have Lost Same-Sex Partners For individuals who have lost a same-sex partner. 2nd Thursday of each month from 7-9 pm at the Forastiere Funeral Home, 220 N. Main St, E. Longmeadow, MA 01028; year-round, walk-in group with no fee or pre-registration; bereavement newsletter also available. For more information, call (413) 525-2800.

East Coast Female-to-Male Group Contact: Bet Powers (413) 584-7616, P.O. Box 60585 Florence, Northampton, MA 01062, betpower@yahoo.com. Peer support group open to all masculine-identified, female-born persons – FTMs, transmen of all sexual orientations/identities, crossdressers, stone butches, transgendered, transsexuals, non-op, pre-op, post-op, genderqueer, bi-gendered, questioning – and our significant others, family, and allies.Meetings 2nd Sundays in Northampton, 3-6 p.m.

Free Boyz Northampton Social/support meetings for people labeled female at birth who feel that’s not an accurate description of who they are.

Meet 1st and 3rd Mondays, 7 p.m. at Third Wave Feminist Booksellers, 90 King St., Northampton.

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Gay, Bisexual & Questioning Men’s Support Group Drop-in, peer-facilitated. Monday, 7-9 p.m. Men’s Resource Center, 236 No. Pleasant St., Amherst, MA. For information: Allan Arnaboldi, (413) 253-9887, ext. 33.

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Gay Men’s Domestic Violence Project Provides community education and direct services to gay, bisexual, and transgendered male victims and survivors of domestic violence. Business: (617) 354-6056. 24hour crisis line provides emotional support,

safety planning, crisis counseling, referrals, and emergency housing: (800) 832-1901. www.gmdvp.orgoremail:support@gmdvp.org Generation Q (formerly Pride Zone) A Program for GBQ youth. Open Thursdays, 4-9, for drop-in and a support group. Open Fridays, 4-9, for drop-in and pizza. Contact info: 413-582-7861 Email: apangborn@communityaction.us GLAD (Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders) Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders is New England’s leading legal rights organization dedicated to ending discrimination based on sexual orientation, HIV status and gender identity and expression.

Contact: 30 Winter St., Suite 800, Boston, MA 02108. Tel: (617) 426-1350, Fax: (617) 426-3594, gladlaw@glad.org, www.glad.org. Legal Information Hotline: (800) 455-GLAD (4523). GLAD’s Legal Information Hotline is completely confidential.

Trained volunteers work one-on-one with callers to provide legal information, support and referrals within New England.

Weekday afternoons, 1:30-4:30; English and Spanish.

GLASS (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Society) GLBT Youth Group of Franklin County Meets every Wednesday evening in Greenfield. Info: (413) 774-7028.

HIV Testing Hotline AIDS Action Committee in Boston provides referral to anonymous, free or low-cost HIV testing/counseling sites: (413) 235-2331.

For Hepatitis C information and referral: (888) 443-4372. Both lines are staffed M-F 9am-9pm and often have bi- and tri-lingual staff available.

Men’s Health Project Contact: Bob (413) 747-5144.

Education, prevention services, and counseling for men’s health issues, especially HIV/AIDS. Springfield, Northampton, Greenfield. Tapestry Health Services. www.tapestryhealth.org or email rainbowmsm@aol.com Monadnock Gay Men A website that provides a social support system for gay men of Keene and the entire Monadnock Region of Southwestern NH. www.monadnockgaymen.com or email monadgay@aol.com

PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) of Springfield/ Greater Springfield Educational information and support for the parents, families, and friends of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Transgendered People. Contact info: MssEnn@aol.com, Judy Nardacci, 413-243-2382 or Elizabeth Simon, 413-732-3240 Safe Homes: the Bridge of Central Massachusetts Providing support and services to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender youth via a weekly Drop-In Center, community outreach system and peer leadership program. Based in Worcester, serving all towns in region. 4 Mann Street Worcester, Massachusetts 01602 Phone: 508.755.0333 Fax: 508.755.2191 Web: www.thebridgecm.org/programs.htm Email: info@thebridgecm.org SafeSpace SafeSpace provides information, support, referrals, and advocacy to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQQ) survivors of violence and offers education and outreach programs in the wider community. P.O. Box 158, Burlington, VT 05402.

Phone: 1-802-863-0003; toll-free 1-866-869-7341.

Fax: 1-802-863-0004. www.safespacevt.orgoremail:safespace@ru12.org The Stonewall Center University of Mass., Amherst. A lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgender educational resource center. Contact: (413) 545-4824, www.umass.edu/stonewall.

Straight Spouse Network Monthly support group meets in Northampton, MA, the first Tuesday from 6-8 p.m. For spouses, past and present, of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered partners. Contact: Jane Harris for support and location, (413) 625-6636; janenrosie@hotmail.com.

Confidentiality is assured.

The Sunshine Club Support and educational activities for transgendered persons. Info: (413) 586-5004.

P.O. Box 564, Hadley, MA 01305. www.thesunshineclub.orgoremail:rsteel@att.net VT M4M.net Dedicated to promoting the overall good health of Vermont’s gay and bisexual men, as well as those who are transgender, by providing information, resources, and a calendar of events for gay, bisexual, questioning, and transgendered men. www.vtm4m.net

My Gay San Francisco, Then and Now

Part One: Life in the ’80s

I

gains for legal recognition of gays and lesbians had opened the floodgate of endless, exuberant celebration.

On the ground, life as I experienced it in those years, before and during AIDS, was larger than life. Every day I got up I felt, as many of us did, that I was participating in making history. This was the time when Armistead Maupin, then a local columnist, was writing twice-weekly columns, called “Tales of the City.”We read his installments as a kind of open collective journal.

In retrospect, it all seems heartbreakingly innocent and naïve. Even at the time, many of us were saying to each other,“This is too good to be true; something is going to happen.” Even as “everyone” was being embraced, many people were feeling left out, invisible or shunned. “Gay” began looking very white, male, and comfortably middle-class. And, just as sexual identity politics shifted focus to queer and multicultural, AIDS hit, and hit catastrophically hard. Castro Street was ground zero. An entire generation of gay men were fodder for a precision-pinpointed genocide.

Because San Francisco is a city of dense neighborhoods, and much smaller than L.A. or New York, the AIDS epidemic was inexorably palpable and ubiquitous.

Castro Street became a ghost town— many businesses and most bars folded overnight. I remember thinking that this is what the Black Death must have felt like.

And for five years, Ronald Reagan could not even say a word about AIDS. We in gay San Francisco lived with an acute awarenessthatthepresident’sRepublicanregime clearly was waiting for all the fags to die.

What had we been celebrating?

Togiveamoreaccuratepersonalaccount, I have to admit that I arrived in San Francisco a full-blown, raging alcoholic. I got sober two years later, initially through the assistance of Eighteenth Services, one of the first-ever alcohol and drug treatment

Castro Street overflowed with young gay men, mostly buff, white twenty-somethings in 501 jeans and flannel shirts. Gay bars, bathhouse culture, and the leather scene were thriving.

Then AIDS hit, and Castro Street became ground zero.

The author in San Francisco, 1980.

facilities for gay men. I learned to appreciate much more keenly the vast scope of the gay community in San Francisco, as well as in the Bay Area and northern California more broadly. I even escaped a ghettoized existence of my own making.

In 1981 I got sober, became infected with HIV, and returned to graduate school, never expecting to survive to the end of my studies. In 1993, Ph.D. in hand, I accepted a teaching post in Boston, still not expecting to live much longer. When I moved back to San Francisco in 2005, after 12 years in Massachusetts, I discovered my crazy, wild, maddening,belovedcitymuchchanged.In fact, I had completely missed the dotcom boom-and-bust, one of the defining events of recent times here. And there were more ghosts waiting to haunt me than I could shake a stick at.

Les Wright is currently a freelance writer, filmreviewer,andindependentscholar,living in a cushy garret in San Francisco’s bourgeois-bohemianNoeValley;heisalsoa formermen’ssupportgroupfacilitatoratthe Men’sResourceCenterforChange.Part2of his column on San Francisco will appear in the Spring 2007 issue.

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swearRichardNixonwentonnationwide television to resign the presidency on the very day I was flying back to Germany, an avowed out-ofthe-closetexpatriate.Fiveyearslater, in 1979, when I found myself repatriating to the States, I had become radicalized by the gay left in Germany. So when I arrived (by Greyhound from Boston, hung over) in San Francisco, I came looking for the grand experiment in gay community known as Castro Street. Like many gay pilgrims before and after, once I got here, I abandoned myself to the city, and jumped into the never-ending party.

The gay activist upstarts populating the Castro and led by Harvey Milk represented a very different kind of gay political vision from the one I had carried with me from Germany. They were mavericks even in 1970s gay boomtown San Francisco; a solidly established, if very quiet gay and lesbian community already had a long tradition of working within the political culture of the city.

By the time I arrived in August 1979, San Francisco was still in shock from the Jonestown mass suicide in Guyana (Jim Jones had moved his People’sTemple there from San Francisco’s poor black Fillmore neighborhood) and recovering from the double assassination of city supervisor Harvey Milk (representing the gay Castro district) and Mayor George Moscone. That summer Castro Street overflowed with young gay men, mostly buff, white twentysomethings in 501 jeans and flannel shirts.

Gaybarshadsproutedlikemushroomsafter a hard rain, all across the city. Bathhouse culture was in full swing. The leather scene centered around Folsom Street was thriving. The old gay commercial heart on Polk Street still thrummed. Hippie-bohemian Haight-Ashbury had plenty of gay commercial life as well. Discos and designer drugs were all the rage. Recent reformist

O utlines • G ay & B isexual V oices

By Les Wright

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The High Cost of Manliness continued from page 11

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than we are different, and that given the pernicious effects of centuries of patriarchy and its relentless devaluing of things female, we should be skeptical of the perceived differences.

What we know is simple: In any human population, there is wide individual variation. While there’s no doubt that a large part of our behavior is rooted in our DNA, there’s also no doubt that our genetic endowment is highly influenced by culture. Beyond that, it’s difficult to say much with any certainty. It’s true that only women can bear children and breastfeed. That fact likely has some bearing on aspects of men’s and women’s personalities. But we don’t know much about what the overall effect is, and given the limits of our tools for understanding human behavior, it’s possible we may never know much.

At the moment, the culture seems obsessed with gender differences, in the context of a recurring intellectual fad (called “evolutionary psychology” this time around, and “sociobiology” in a previous incarnation) that wants to explain all complex behaviors as simple evolutionary adaptations—if a pattern of human behavior exists, it must be because it’s adaptive in some ways. Over long stretches of evolutionary time, that’s true by definition. But in the short term it’s hardly a convincing argument to say, “Look at how men and women behave so differently; it must be because men and women are fundamentally different”—when clearly a political system has been creating differences between men and women.

From there, the argument that we need to scrap masculinity is fairly simple.

To illustrate it, remember back to right after 9/11. A number of commentators argued that criticisms of masculinity should be rethought. Cannot we now see—recognizing that male firefighters raced into burning buildings, risking and sometimes sacrificing their lives to save others—that masculinity can encompass a kind of strength that is rooted in caring and sacrifice? Of course men often exhibit such strength, just as do women.

So, the obvious question arises: What

makes these distinctly masculine characteristics? Are they not simply human characteristics?

We identify masculine tendencies toward competition, domination, and violence because we see patterns of differential behavior; men are more prone to such behavior in our culture. We can go on to observe and analyze how men are socialized to behave in those ways, toward the goal of changing such destructive behaviors. That analysis is different from saying that admirable human qualities present in both men and women are somehow primarily the domain of one gender. To assign them to one gender only is misguided and demeaning to the other, which is then assumed not to possess these qualities to the same degree. Once we start saying that strength and courage are“masculine traits,” it leads to the conclusion that woman are not as strong or courageous.

Of course, if we are going to jettison masculinity, we have to scrap femininity along with it. We have to stop trying to

define what men and women are going to be in the world based on extrapolations from physical sex differences. That doesn’t mean we ignore those differences when they matter, but we have to stop assuming they matter everywhere.

I don’t think the planet can long survive if the current conception of masculinity endures. We face political and ecological challenges that can’t be met with this old model of what it means to be a man. At the more intimate level, the stakes are just as high. For those of us who are biologically male, we have a simple choice: We can settle for being men, or we can strive to be human beings. VM Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the Men’s Resource Center for Change advisory board. He is the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity. He can be reached at rjensen@ uts.cc.utexas.edu.

A Call to Men has created some tools to help address men’s violence against women. Our educational CDs and DVDs and inspiring shirts (sizes M - XXXL) are available for those well-meaning individuals who are now ready to act.

· CDs · DVDs · T-Shirts · Polo Shirts

- order online at www.acalltomen.com -

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R esources Men’s Resources (Resources for Gay, Bisexual & Questioning Men, see page 18) International Society for Men’s Health and Gender P.O. Box 144, A-1097, Vienna, Austria/ EUROPE Phone: +43 1 4096010, Fax: +43 1 4096011 www.ismh.org or office@ismh.org

Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe, Inc. www.mijd.org Men’s Resource Center for Change www.mrcforchange.org Men’s Resources International www.mensresourcesinternational.org

Sex & Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) (800) 749-6879 Referrals available for 12-step groups throughout New England.

Mentors in Violence Prevention http://www.sportinsociety.org/mvp

Fathers with Divorce and Custody Concerns Looking for a lawyer? Call your state bar association lawyer referral agency. In Mass. the number is (800) 392-6164. Here are some websites that may be of use to you: www.dadsdivorce.com www.dadsrights.org (not www.dadsrights.com) www.deltabravo.net 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 Dads and Daughters www.dadsanddaughters.org The Fathers Resource Center www.slowlane.com National Fatherhood Initiative www.cyfc.umn.edu/Fathernet Internet Resources Brother Peace http://www.eurowrc.org/01.eurowrc/04.eurowrc_ en/36.en_ewrc.htm EuroPRO-Fem: European Menprofemist Network www.europrofem.orgorcity.shelter@skynet.beor traboules@traboules.org Men Against Violence http://www.unesco.org/cpp/uk/projects/wcpmenaga.htm

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Men’s Health Network http://www.menshealthnetwork.org/

Montreal Men Against Sexism c/o Martin Dufresne 913 de Bienville Montreal, Quebec H2J 1V2 CANADA 514-563-4428, 526-6576, 282-3966

Fathers

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The Men’s Bibliography A comprehensive bibliography of writing on men, masculinities, gender, and sexualities, listing over 14,000 works. It’s free at: http://mensbiblio.xyonline.net/

Men Can Stop Rape www.mencanstoprape.org Men for HAWC http://www.danverspolice.com/domviol9.htm

Men Stopping Violence http://www.menstoppingviolence.org/index.php

National Men’s Resource Center www.menstuff.org National Organization for Men Against Sexism www.nomas.org;Bostonchapterwww.nomasboston.org National Association of Men and Women Committed to Ending Violence Against Women www.acalltomen.org 100 Black Men, Inc. www.100blackmen.org White Ribbon Campaign www.whiteribbon.com;www.theribbonlady.com XY Magazine www.xyonline.net Pro-feminist men’s web links (over 500 links) www. xyonline.net/links.shtml Pro-feministmen’spolitics,frequentlyaskedquestions www.xyonline.net/misc/pffaq.html Pro-feministe-maillist(1997–)www.xyonline.net/ misc/profem.html Homophobiaandmasculinitiesamongyoungmen www.xyonline.net/misc/homophobia.html Magazines Achilles Heel (from Great Britain) www.achillesheel.freeuk.com

Save the Date

Memo to the Media continued from page 13

He forced the men out of the classroom at gunpoint, then opened fire on the women. He killed 14 women and injured many more before committing suicide.

In response to this atrocity, in 1991 a number of Canadian men created the White Ribbon Campaign. The idea was for men to wear a white ribbon as a way of making a visible and public pledge “never to commit, condone, nor remain silent about violence against women.”

The White Ribbon Campaign has since become a part of Canadian culture, and has been adopted in dozens of countries.

Will men respond to

“

these tragedies by averting our eyes?”

After last fall’s schoolhouse horrors, the challenge for American men is clear: will we respond to these tragedies by averting our eyes and pretending that none of this happened? Or will we at long last break our complicit silence and work together with women to turn these tragedies into a transformative cultural moment?

Less than two weeks after the Amish schoolhouse murders, the town’s leaders had the schoolhouse demolished.

While the community continued to mourn, the demolition was a symbolic attempt to move past the tragedy. This was an understandable response from a small, grief-stricken community. But what about the response from the rest of our society? How long can we continue to lurch from one tragic moment to the next, each time wiping the slate clean and pretending that these are all just a series of “unrelated incidents”? VM

Men’s Resource Center for Change

11th

Challenge&Change AwardsCelebration Sunday, April 22nd 5 p.m.

Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House Holyoke, Mass.

JacksonKatzisaleadingadvocateingender violence education and a member of the advisoryboardoftheMen’sResourceCenter for Change and Voice Male magazine.

He is a cofounder of Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), and cocreator of the video Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity. His book The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help was published in 2006.

Reproductive Rights continued from page 16

The South Dakota abortion rights story is just one of today’s human rights stories I hope more men will pay attention to in the days ahead. Abortion is a highly personal decision that women must freely make, without governmental interference.

Still, men’s voices—as allies, as partners, as brothers, as fathers—can be a great asset in the chorus of support.

Looking back on my journey, I felt buoyed,witnessingmen’scapacitytodothe right thing, especially when the stakes are high. For the daughters of South Dakota, the stakes couldn’t have been any higher.

In the days ahead, when similar abortion bans in Arkansas, Mississippi, Ohio, and elsewhere are being debated, men will have increased opportunities to engage in the conversation. Will we see a growing number of men who feel the same way men who worked in South Dakota felt? I hope so. I urge men in other states across the country—fathers and sons, brothers and uncles, cousins and neighbors—to stand up for all women and girls, not just their own wives, partners and daughters. To do so will demonstrate a kind of courage men of conscience are ready to take. VM Rob Okun is the editor of Voice Male. He can bereachedatRAOkun@mrcforchange.org.

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that the Campaign for Healthy Families had people out canvassing, but then stopped short; we’d spoken long enough. He didn’t want to draw any undo attention from his neighbors for chatting too long.

A couple of days later I was walking through neighborhoods in Watertown, about 100 miles from Sioux Falls. It was late afternoon, I’d been out for more than four hours, the temperature was dropping and I was tired. A man who resembled a scary character from a children’s story—wart on a knobby, misshapen nose, shiny bald head, dark hair sprouting from large ears, lines creasing his forehead—opened the door to his brick corner house. I was wearing a colorful Campaign for Healthy Families T-shirt that made plain where I stood on the state’s abortion ban. I felt tense as he sized me up, reading theT-shirt, studying my face. Should I turn on my heel before he blasts me? I asked myself. Before I could answer my own question, he thrust out a callused, meaty hand and began pumping mine up and down.

Parting his lips wide to reveal a mouthful of misshapen teeth, he gripped my hand even tighter, leaned into my face, and bellowed, “I’M WITH YA!! I’M WITH YA!!” I jumped back and would have lost my balance had he not been squeezing my hand so tightly.

Before I could fully recover, he let go, gave me thumbs up and said, “Good for you.”

In Madison, a day later, a woman in her thirties was chatting with a neighbor, leaning against an old sedan, smoking. She was on the other side of the debate and wanted me to know I was in the wrong.

Even though we had been advised not to debate those whose votes we were unlikely to receive, it was difficult not to hear her out, or to share a thought or two of my own. Had she considered, I asked in a quiet voice, the psychological and emotional ramifications for a teenage girl who became pregnant after being the victim of incest from a relative (in addition to rape, there was no exception in the law for incest or the physical health of the mother). “God will take care of her” was her simple reply.

“God will give her whatever strength she needs to bear the baby and to love the child.” While some young women might be able to do so, I allowed, what about those whose emotional or physical states

were too fragile? “The Lord will take care of everything, and everyone,” she answered, extinguishing her cigarette in the driveway by the old car. Case closed. I knew it was time to move on.

The journey the other volunteers and I took into the heartland of our country underscored the deep divisions that exist in the United States, but also connected a networkofalliesreadytoexpandourmovement for reproductive justice. I was impressed that amongtheSouthDakotanvolunteers—and staff—were a number of younger men. Men who shared with me how their parents had impressed upon them the importance of responsible sexual behavior and, in some cases, had imbued in them a genuine concern for the cause of reproductive rights. I was grateful for these conversations and felt encouraged by them.

Tired and hungry after a weekend of canvassing, 120 of us crammed into one of the Campaign for Healthy Families offices for hot food and a debriefing. In the past two days, organizers told us, we had collectively visited nearly 14,000 households! A roar of astonished approval rang out; people put down their food to whoop and cheer.

We felt a kinship in that moment, a shared sense of accomplishment. We felt what we had done had really mattered.

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C alendar Please send all Calendar Listings for events from April 1, 2007 (and beyond) to:

V oice M ale C alendar voicemale@mrcforchange.org or mail to : 236 N. Pleasant St., Amherst, MA 01002 Fax (413) 253-4801 Deadline for Spring issue: March 15, 2007 February 16 – Brookline, MA Understanding Emotional Regression: An Evening with John Lee John Lee is the author of Facing the Fire: Experiencing and Expressing Anger Appropriately, The Flying Boy, and The Missing Peace. Instrumental in men’s work, he has been featured on Oprah, 20/20, in Newsweek magazine and The New York Times.

Cost: $8 Location: Brookline High School Info: www.brooklineadulted.org, 617-730-2700

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February 16-17 – Storrs, CT Situating Gendered Violence Within a Global Context: The 19th Annual Conference on Women and Gender This conference examines the global intersections of gender and violence.

Hosted by the Women’s Studies Program at the University of Connecticut, it deals with issues including domestic violence, sexual violence, violence in the media, and gendered violence in schools.

Cost: unknown Location: University of Connecticut Info: www.womens.studies.uconn.edu, (860) 486-3970

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March 2-4 – Rowe, MA Gender-osity: Diving into the Kaleidoscope of Gender Whatever your gender identity or sexual orientation, Gender-osity will use role-play, inner work, guided ritual, and spirited discussion to tease out and explore our personal beliefs about the role of gender in our lives. Together, we will seek ways to free ourselves from the confines of antiquated notions of gender, learning to revel in the spectrum of gender identities actually available to us in the human experience.

Cost: program: $175 - $275, room/board: $65 - $250 Location: Rowe Camp & Conference Center Info: www.rowecenter.org, retreat@rowecenter.org, 413-339-4954

March 5 - April 2 - Goshen, MA The Spirit of Men An opportunity to meet with a small group of men to explore and deepen our own spiritual quest within the safety and support of like-minded men. Experience the growth and power of the Spirit of Men. Facilitated by Jimmy Nelson, Spiritually Based Counselor.

Meets 5 Mondays, 7-9 PM. Cost: $150 Location: Goshen, MA Info: jimmynelson@localnet.com, 413-268-7090 March 23 – East Windsor, NJ It Takes Everyone to Prevent Sexual Violence A conference for those interested in learning how to help stop sexual violence in their communities. Emphasizes teaching youth the importance of respecting and empowering others to prevent sexual violence.

Cost: $40 - $65 Location: Holiday Inn Info: www.njcasa.org/conference1.htm, 609-631-4450 ext. 207 March 23-25 – Boston, MA Pornography and Pop Culture: Reframing Theory, Re-thinking Activism In the world of the Internet, cell phone porn, Howard Stern and Girls Gone Wild, the central insights of the critical feminist perspective are more important than ever. What do the “porn wars” mean for feminist theory and activism, and how can we rebuild a vibrant feminist movement that addresses the harms of misogynist images that help define our culture, our visual landscape and our sexuality?

These issues will be addressed at a national conference at Wheelock College. This conference will (1) feature recent feminist theory and research on pornography, prostitution and pop culture, and (2) provide space for collaborative discussion on how we can prepare the ground for building a broadbased, energized and vibrant feminist movement that can address the harms of pornographic images in the context of a more general political and cultural crisis.

Cost: unknown Location: Wheelock College Info: http://www.wheelock.edu/ppc/ March 30 - April 1 – Kansas City, MO Engaging Boys and Men: How Are We Doing? — 15th Annual Conference on Men and Masculinities Sponsored by the American Men’s Studies Association, this conference will address the question: What does our work tell us about ways males can become fully engaged in healthy ways and healthy relationships, and

reduce the risk of problems faced by boys and men? Such problems include low reading rates of boys, high dropout rates in schools and colleges, high rates of men in prison, males experiencing depression and suicide, high rates of homophobia, and greater levels of violence perpetrated by males at every age.

Cost: $195 Location: unknown Info: www.mensstudies.org April 22 – Holyoke, MA 11th Annual Challenge & Change Celebration This annual banquet brings together hundreds of guests to celebrate the community work of three individuals in western Massachusetts. Past award recipients include: Robert Meeropol, Wally Nelson, Sen. Stan Rosenberg, Greg Speeter, and Felice Yeskel.

Cost: free (guests are invited to make a personally meaningful gift to the MRC) Location: Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House Info: www.mrcforchange.org, mrc@mrcforchange.org, 413-253-9887 April 26-28 – Watertown, MA The Power of Dialogue This workshop is designed to help people work through“chronic polarized conflict” as it arises in work, social, or political contexts. Through experiential exercises, an extensive dialogue simulation, presentations and demonstrations, participants will learn how to apply the key elements of Public Conversations Project dialogue facilitation.

CE credits available.

Cost: $375-$600 (sliding scale - includes catered lunch and snacks for 3 days) Location: Family Institute of Cambridge Info: www.publicconversations.org, 888-727-8326 x13 May 23-25 – Atlanta, GA Achieving Successful Outcomes with Male Students The Institute on Achieving Successful Outcomes with Male Students will bring together professionals and scholars to discuss, deliberate, explore, and plan to increase our capacitytoengagemalestudentsoncampuses.

Topics will include: Men’s Development Theory; Social Justice, Multiculturalism, Diversity, and Male Students; Men’s Health and Wellness; Assessment of Men’s Programs.

Cost: $125 - $375, plus housing Location: Morehouse College Info: www.naspa.org/events, jdesanto@naspa.org, 202-265-7500

Fathers, Sons continued from page 12

Not every son who has had to endure his father’ssuicidesharesDavid’sfeelingsabout the experience. Nonetheless, his remarks made me realize just how ridiculous it is to try to create a hierarchy of loss within the realm of fathers.

Who suffered more? Such a question is absurd. The simple truth might be to say that every loss is unique. “When it comes to our societal understanding of grief,� writes Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn in The EmptyRoom,“theimportantquestionisnot whose loss is the worst but what does this loss, your loss mean to you? The truth is the worst loss is the one that is happening to you, the one that has picked you up and thrown you down and left you struggling to put your life back together.� VM JonathanDiamond,Ph.D.,isapsychotherapist, speaker,andworkshoppresenter,andauthorof Narrative Means to Sober Ends: Treating Addiction and Its Aftermath. He lives in Heath, Mass., and his website is jonathandiamondphd.com.Thiscolumnwasexcerpted from his new book, Fatherless Sons: Healing the Legacy of Loss (JohnWiley & Sons). Used by permission.

“The course gave me hope for a new way to be in a relationship.” “It’s radically transforming.”

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depression could have been worse than his, David said that what he misses most is not having his dad to talk about it with. In one of our therapy sessions, David said he felt he had inherited all his father’s “unfinished business.� When I asked him to say what that meant to him, David responded, “I think he thought it would make things easier on us if he wasn’t around, but he was wrong. I know it would devastate him to know that I struggle with the same feelings of despair and self-loathing. I’m sure he thought he took them with him.

But the problems didn’t leave or go away.

Only he did.�

In our therapy together, I tried to bridge the gap between David’s father’s world and his. I saw this as part of a larger project to recruit his father as an ally in David’s battle with his own depressive moods. Toward this end, I asked David to think about an activity he missed doing with his own father that he might invite his son to join him in. “I used to love to do woodworking with him,� he responded.

David still possessed his father’s table saw, but since his divorce had no place to put it or any of the other tools he had inherited from his father. He described a small outbuilding on the property he was renting, which would make a nice shop. His landlord said he could do as he pleased with it. I suggested David not put this project off any longer.

David asked his son to help him with his project, and when they finished, he was astonished to discover that the room they had built was almost an exact replica of his father’s work space. David found this activity an incredibly gratifying and healing experience.

More rewarding than the project itself, which lifted David’s spirits immensely, was the time spent working side by side with his son. In the course of putting the shop together, David said, he and his son talked more about the circumstances surrounding his father’s death than the two of them ever had. His son was genuinely interested in hearing stories about his grandfatherandwasevenmoreinterested in learning about the kind of connection David enjoyed with him.

During one of our sessions, David asked

me about my own father and whether he was still alive. I’m not sure why, but I found myself disclosing more details about that relationship to David than I had to any client prior. The harsh circumstances surrounding his own loss may have had something to do with it. I suppose I felt there was little I could say that would shock him.

DavidseemedamusedwhenIsuggested that it must have been harder for him to live with his loss. “I don’t know, Jonathan,� he said, gazing out the window at the maple tree outside my office. “Your dad sounds like a pretty complicated guy. In some ways, I imagine the memories of the man are much easier to live with than was the person. In my case, it was my father’s death rather than his life I found traumatizing. He was one of the most gentle people I’ve ever known.�

I was moved and humbled by David’s insight. I felt embarrassed by my earlier thoughts about the horror of his grief and my focus on what separated us. When I looked at David, suddenly, in that moment I felt we were just two sad, lonely sons missing their dads.

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T hank Y ou !

TheMen’sResourceCenterforChange,publisher ofVoiceMale,receivescommunitysupportfrom near and far. Voice Male allows us a public forum in which to thank the hundreds of people whohavesharedourinspirationandcommitment, andcontributedtheirtime,services,andmoneytowardavisionofpersonalandsocialtransformation.Wearefilledwithdeepgratitudeatthe generosityoftheseindividualsandbusinesses: Building and Grounds Will Greenleaf/ Whole Foods; Integrity Development and Construction; Bob Mazer, Bill Patten Donated Space Network Chiropractic, Greenfield; Northampton Council on Aging In-Kind Donations Henion Bakery, Amherst Interns Rob Brezinsky, Sarah Deguzman MRC/Voice Male Volunteers Cathryn Brubaker, Sarah De Guzman, Sam Girard, Joel Kaye, Joe Leslie, Dan Schwartz, Claude Tellier Men’s Walk to End Abuse Volunteers: David Abrami, Allan Arnaboldi, Jan Eidelson, Joe Leslie, Bob Mazer. Performers: The Alchemystics, DJ Dave Lash, DJ Hush, DJ Mmello, DJ Theory; Sponsors: Integrity Development & Construction, Greenfield Savings Bank. In-Kind Supporters: Amanouz Café, Andiamo, Atkin’s Farms, Big Y Foods, Bruegger’s Bagels, Haymarket Café, Henion Bakery, Mimmo’s Pizza, People’s Market, Starbuck’s, La Veracruzana

• V oice M ale

Steven Schoenberg Concert Volunteers: Adi Bemak, Amber Bemak, Deb Berigow, Rob Brezinsky, Jan Eidelson, Karen Fogliatti, Peter Jessop, Yoko Kato, Jonathan Klate, Joe Leslie, Bob Mazer, Carlyn Saltman, Tom Schuyt. Sponsors: Athol Savings Bank, Lisa Baskin, Blair, Cutting & Smith Insurance, J.F. Conlon & Associates, Daily Hampshire Gazette, Downtown Sounds, Eastworks, Florence Savings Bank, Freedom Credit Union, Integrity Development & Construction, Meg Kelsey-Wright, Klondike Sound Company, Marisa Labozzetta & Martin Wohl, Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House, Robert K. Ostberg & Associates, R. Michelson Galleries, Smith College, WFCR, WGBY. InKind Supporters: Big Y Foods, Loose Goose Café, Osaka Japanese Restaurant, Paul & Elizabeth’s, Spirit Haus, Woodstar Café

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Asalways,weextendourgratitudetotheMRC BoardofDirectorsfortheongoingguidanceand support they give to this organization and all who are a part of it. We are also grateful for all ofourstaff,whoregularlygoaboveandbeyond the call of duty, and to our team of volunteer supportgroupfacilitators,whoeveryweekprovideasafespaceformentocomeandtalkabout their lives.

How Can We Stop the Violence? continued from page 17

being blamed, guilt-tripped, or shamed for sexist violence. This discussion also lays the foundation for a deeper discussion of what men can do to act as allies with women, to end sexism and violence.

Educating with the goal of motivating men to be allies is, for many, the main point of educating men. For the entire history of this movement, every step forward is the result of women’s efforts; developing local centers and resources for people who have been victimized, creating hotlines, writing new laws and working to get those laws passed, organizing marches and pickets, training professionals, creating an entirely new arena for professional development, organizing communities, etc. Rarely have men been integrally involved in these efforts. It is time for men to become part of the solution.

Men as Allies, Not Bystanders Women have a right to walk down a street and not be accosted, to sleep in their own beds and be safe, to live in their own homes and not be beaten, to walk into convenience stores and not see images of themselves displayed as sexual objects, to spend a day at work or in school and not be harassed. These are rights—rights that men have taken from women. Men have an obligation to work alongside women so that women can once again experience these rights.

One of the clearest ways for men to act as allies of women is to change the role of “bystander.” A bystander is someone who stands by while sexism or violence occurs.

Bystanders are those men in a bar who are silent when one man harasses a waitress

or who listen to other men tell pro-rape jokes. The role of bystander is a powerful role and creates a unique opportunity for men to take action as allies for women.

By remaining silent when acts of sexism occur, men offer their tacit consent and support for these attitudes and the behaviors that follow. The person who is acting in sexist ways “reads” the silence of other men as encouragement to continue, and in some cases, to escalate. By speaking out in these situations, men provide a powerful challenge to men’s sexism and abuse.

This is true not only because they do not remain silent in the face of sexism, but also because it is men challenging other men, as well as men challenging other men in a setting that has traditionally been a place where men have felt comfortable in talking in sexist or abusive ways about women.

Creatinggenderjusticerequiresthatmen be involved, and the first step for getting men involved is educating men about gender injustice. Ending sexism and violence is not solely about individual men treating women with more respect and care, nor is it solely about men working collectively to expose and undermine institutional sexism. Education can work, as is demonstrated by the thousands of men who are now involved in this effort—each of whom became educated at some point. VM Rus Ervin Funk, MSW, is a longtime activist and advocate for racial, sexual, and gender justice. He is the co-founder of D.C. Men Against Rape (now Men Can Stop Rape, Inc.), Men’s Work: Eliminating Violence AgainstWomen, and other organizations.

He lives and works in Louisville, Kentucky, andcanbereachedatwww.rusfunk.comor rus@rusfunk.com.

Men’s Resource Center for Change Programs & Services

Administrative Staff Executive Director – Rob Okun Executive Assistant – David Gillham Office Manager – Allan Arnaboldi Financial Manager – Paula Chadis Moving Forward Director – Sara Elinoff-Acker Intake Coordinator/Court Liaison – Steve Trudel Administrative Director – Jan Eidelson Partner Services Outreach Counselor – Barbara Russell Anger Management Coordinator – Joy Kaubin Hampden County Coordinator – Scott Girard Group Leaders – Sara Elinoff-Acker, Karen Fogliatti, Scott Girard, Steve Jefferson, Joy Kaubin, Dot LaFratta, Susan Omilian, Bill Patten, Tom Sullivan, Steve Trudel Support Services Coordinator –Tom Schuyt Support Group Facilitators – Allan Arnaboldi, Michael Burke,JimDevlin,Michael Dover, Carl Erikson, Tim Gordon, Jerry Levinsky, Gábor Lukács, Bob Mazer, Tom Schuyt, Frank Shea, Sheldon Snodgrass, Roger Stawasz, Bob Sternberg, Gary Stone, Claude Tellier Youth Programs Supervisor – Allan Arnaboldi Group Leaders – Aaron Buford, Malcolm Chu Board of Directors Chair – Peter Jessop Clerk/Treasurer – Tom Schuyt Members – Charles Bodhi,Tom Gardner, Yoko Kato, Gail Kielson, Jonathan Klate, Bob Mazer Executive Director Emeritus – Steven Botkin

Main Office: 236 North Pleasant St. • Amherst, MA 01002 • 413.253.9887 • Fax: 413.253.4801 Springfield Office: 29 Howard St. • Springfield, MA 01105 • 413.734.3438 E-mail: mrc@mrcforchange.org Website: www.mrcforchange.org

Fathering Programs ■ A variety of resources are available — Fathers and Family Network programs, lawyer referrals, parenting resources, workshops, presentations and conferences.

Contact: (413) 253-9887 ext.10 Youth Programs ■ Young Men of Color Leadership Project Amherst ■ShortTermGroups,Workshops,Presentations and Consultations for Young Men and YouthServing Organizations Contact: (413) 253-9887 ext.33 Moving forward Anger Management, domestic violence intervention, youth violence prevention ■ Anger Management Various times for 15-week groups for men, women and young men at the MRC. For more information, call (413) 253-9887 ext. 23 ■ Domestic Violence Intervention A state-certified batterer intervention prog ram serves both voluntary and courtmandated men who have been physically violent or verbally/emotionally abusive.

Fee subsidies available.

■ Basic Groups Groups for self-referred and court-mandated men (40 weeks) are held in Amherst, Athol, Belchertown, Springfield, North Adams, and Greenfield.

■ Follow-up Groups for men who have completed the basic program and want to continue working on these issues. Call (413) 253-9588 ext 12.

■ Partner Services Free phone support, resources, referrals and weekly support groups are available for partners of men in the MOVE program.

■ Prison Groups A weekly MOVE group is held at the Hampshire County Jail and House of Corrections.

■ Community Education and Training Workshops and training on domestic violence and clinical issues in batterer intervention are available.

■ Speakers’ Bureau Formerly abusive men who want to share their experiences with others to help prevent family violence are available to speak at schools and human service programs.

■ Youth Violence Prevention Services for teenage males who have been abusive with their families, peers, or dating partners. Contact: (413) 253-9588 ext.18 Workshops & training ■ Workshops available to colleges, schools, human service organizations, and businesses on topics such as “Sexual Harassment Prevention and Response,” “Strategies and Skills for Educating Men,” “Building Men’s Community,” and “Challenging Homophobia,” among other topics. Specific trainings and consultations also available.

Publications ■ Voice Male Published quarterly, the MRC magazine includesarticles,essays,reviewsandresources, and services related to men and masculinity.

■Children,LesbiansandMen:Men’sExperiences as Known and Anonymous Sperm Donors A 60-page manual which answers the questions men have, with first-person accounts by men and women “who have been there.”

Contact: (413) 253-9887 ext.16 Resource & Referral Services ■ Information about events, counselors, groups, local, regional and national activities, and support programs for men.

Contact: (413) 253-9887 ext.10 Speakers and Presentations ■ Invite new visions of manhood into your university, faith community, community organization. Many topics including: “Manhood in a Time of War,” “Fathering,” and “Men’s Lives, Men’s Lies.” Contact: (413) 253-9887 Ext. 20

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The mission of the Men’s Resource Center for Change is to support men, challenge men’s violence, and develop men’s leadership in ending oppression in our lives, our families, and our communities.

Support Group Programs ■ Open Men’s Group Sundays 7-9 p.m. at the MRC Amherst office Tuesdays 6:45-8:45 p.m. at the Council on Aging, 240 Main St., Northampton.

Wednesdays 7-9 p.m. in Greenfield at Network Chiropractic, 21 Mohawk Trail (lower Main St.).

A facilitated drop-in group for men to talk about their lives and to support each other.

■ Men Who Have Experienced Childhood Abuse /Neglect Specifically for men who have experienced any kind of childhood abuse or neglect.

Fridays 7 - 8:30 p.m. at the MRC. ■ Gay, Bisexual & Questioning Mondays 7 - 9 p.m. at the MRC. A facilitated drop-in group for gay, bisexual and questioning men to talk about their lives and support each other (not a discussion group).

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