During the last presidential campaign, Barack Obama represented a break from conventional manhood; John McCain was its standard bearer. A year and half into his presidency, Mr. Obama is still seen as a sensitive and thoughtful man, a caring husband and devoted father, even as many of his policy decisions come under fire from progressive quarters. But the debate about a new direction for manhood is largely absent.

For as far as many men have come over the last generation in accepting—if not embracing—the historic world-changing gains women have made, there are others yearning for the bad old days when men were the kings of their castles. Rather than seeing in feminism a portal to our own personal growth, many men narrowly see it as a threat to the status quo. Many show great disdain for women’s rights. Sadly, it’s those men’s shrill voices that are getting much play, clogging the airwaves and the blogosphere.

Men’s were among the harshest voices warning of Armageddon during the health care debate, and in the bitter diatribes directed at President Obama as well as civil rights veteran John Lewis and liberal Barney Frank—both members of Congress (The great exception was Sarah Palin, a self-described pit bull with lipstick.) But while the media highlights mean-spirited men, there is another side of the story— men around the world working for gender equality.

Under the umbrella of MenEngage (www.menengage.org), there are hundreds of groups and organizations which understand the crucial need for men and women to question conventional attitudes and expectations about gender roles in reaching gender equality. Among their efforts is a men and gender equality policy project underway in Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, China, Croatia, Mexico, South Africa and Tanzania. Other countries are expected to participate in the coming years.

Founded in 2004, MenEngage members are dedicated to involving men and boys in working to end violence against women and in redefining old-style notions of manhood. Among its core beliefs? Manhood is /not /defined by how many sexual partners men have, or by using violence against women or men. It’s also not defined by how much pain men can endure, or by how much power we can exert over others. It certainly isn’t defined by whether we’re gay, straight or trans.

Rather, manhood is defined by building relationships based on respect and equality; by speaking out against violence in society; by having the strength to ask for help; by sharing decision-making and power; and by how much we as men are able to respect the diversity and rights of those around us. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Sounds achievable. So what gets in our way? The power, privilege and sense of entitlement we enjoy as men.

Taking a hard look at privileges we’ve long held is a “manly” thing to do if, by manly we mean courageous, thoughtful, and caring. What happens for men when we question the entitlement we inherited simply by being born in male bodies? What shifts for us when we no longer assume social conditions favoring us are right, or just, or “normal?” A transformation begins. A door opens, an invitation to explore our inner lives is extended and it’s suddenly not quite as scary to spend time exploring our feelings. We become more available to ourselves and to women, men, and children—to everyone in our lives. So tightly have we been holding on to what we’ve perceived as our birthright, few have considered what treasures await us if we let go. How to compare discovering one’s heart opening vs. needing open heart surgery? How to equate surrounding ourselves with symbols of wealth vs. surrounding ourselves with circles of friends?

A new report by the Men and Gender Equality Policy Project, notes, “In far different ways than women and girls, boys are also made vulnerable by rigid notions of gender and masculinities.” Conventional expressions of dominant masculinity, ample research confirms, drive dangerous rates of alcohol, tobacco, and substance abuse, car accidents, occupational illness, and suicide. In such a world, everyone loses, not just the men. “For the most part,” the report says, “programs and policies have not fully tapped into men’s and boys’ self-interest for change,” particularly in the positive experiences many men report as they become more involved in caregiving and family relationships.

Careful not to pit the needs of men against the needs of women, the report promotes forging alliances among “women’s rights activists, civil society groups working with men (and male leaders), the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender [communities] and other social justice movements.” Noting the common interests all these groups share in ending gender inequalities, the report advocates taking up gender equity as a cause not only for women and girls “but also to reduce the pressures on men and boys to conform to harmful, rigid, and violent forms of manhood.”

That pressure to conform—combined with a sense of privilege—is a dangerous mix. I favor cultivating the middle ground where men explore our lives after letting go of the pressure, after giving up the privilege. I see plenty of examples that give me hope and inspiration.

I am a member of V-Men, the male arm of V-Day (www.vday.org), the antiviolence organization playwright-activist Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) founded that works to prevent violence against women and girls and, more recently, to advance healthy masculinity as a key to a world where all are safe and free. The writer Mark Matousek is interviewing men for a book exploring men’s lives as they really are—filled with disappointments as well as successes, fear and vulnerability as well as confidence and strength, love lost and love found. To me it’s a critical component of a strategy to encourage men to move from being bystanders to allies (if not activists) in the struggle to end violence against women, girls and men. And in overcoming the damaging effects of conventional masculinity. (Editor’s Note: Mark and I are leading a workshop, “Ten Ways to be a Man: Men’s Voices in the 21st Century” at the Rowe Conference Center in northwestern Massachusetts May-14-16).

What will it take for us as men to face our full humanity? What will it take for us to wake up to the healing the world is crying out for? Men relinquishing our privilege, willing to investigate our inner lives, doing the work of integration so that the personal becomes the global. Men engaged in /that /work are the ones the media would be well advised to report on if they truly want to be fair and balanced. But whether they do or not, it’s up to us as men to take a long, hard look at how we’ve been socialized—from boyhood on—and to decide what to keep, what to transform.

This is the moment to ask the deepest questions of ourselves, to wake up to our potential as full human beings. The urgency of these times—environmentally, politically, spiritually demands we take our place with women in the work of global transformation. The world is waiting.

The stipulation doesn’t address federally-funded abortions—those were outlawed long ago through the (Henry) Hyde Amendment. Stupak objected because the bill didn’t prohibit private insurance programs—set up for those whose employers don’t provide it—from providing abortion coverage if they get any federal funding, even to an individual woman paying without any government help.

While it was no small feat to have moved the U.S. deplorable health care system forward, to have done so at the expense of women ’s rights seriously dims any celebration passing the new law invites.

The Massachusetts State House in Boston was the scene of a gathering of several hundred men, young men and women allies on March 2 commemorating White Ribbon Day. Part of the international White Ribbon Campaign where men pledge not to commit, condone, or remain silent about violence against women, the Massachusetts effort brought together men from government, sports, law enforcements, business, and the activist world in a remarkable show of solidarity. At the reception that followed, while I didn’t take a scientific poll, nearly as many copies of Voice Male were scooped up as were coffee and cupcakes. Kudos to event organizer, the tireless Craig Norberg-Bohm, coordinator of the Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe, Inc, the Massachusetts umbrella organization for the several dozen domestic violence and sexual assault prevention organizations across the Commonwealth. A highlight of the event was the number of high school age young men at the gathering.

Two days later I was in a hotel ballroom next to Grand Central Station in New York City listening to a powerful panel discussing some of the ideas in “What Men Have to Do with It”, a new publication of the Men & Gender Equality Policy Project, examining public policies to promote gender equality in Mexico, South Africa, Chile, India and Brazil. The gathering, hosted by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, included a luncheon panel moderated by Klas Hyllander of Men for Gender Equality in Sweden. Publication of the new report was coordinated by the International Center for Research on Women in Washington and Delhi, and Instituto Promundo in Rio de Janeiro. Panelists Edford Mutama of Planned Parenthood in Zambia, and Saghir Bukhari of Partners for Prevention and UNIFEM, Asia and Pacific region, joined Gary Barker of International Center for Research on Women, and Dean Peacock of the Sonke Gender Justice Network in South Africa, in a hopeful exchange about challenges, progress and possibility. There’s a long way to go in achieving true gender equality and the gap between language and legislation and action and implementation still needs to be spanned. If the work is to be accomplished, we’ll need the keen strategic thinking and the big brave hearts of the men and women who indeed are moving the wheel of positive change forward.

On March 8th, I sat with old friends and colleagues at an annual International Women’s Day breakfast, hosted by the Greenfield, Mass.-based New England Learning Center for Women in Transition (NELCWIT), a foremother in the battered women’s shelter movement. The room was alive with energy as Kathy Alexander, former education director for the Northwestern District Attorney’s office, a passionate advocate for gender justice and women’s safety spoke truth to power in a cadence inviting comparisons to an electrifying preacher. The room of veteran activists was moved.

Serving women and children in a rural county just below Vermont and New Hampshire, NELCWIT offers hope, safety and inspiration–key ingredients as we continue the walk toward justice. Men supporting battered women’s shelters is a key part of our responsibility in taking steps from the sidelines of inaction to the playing fields of change.

From members of the baseball team at the University of Massachusetts to the state’s Lieutenant Governor, Tim Murray, men are taking a pledge not to commit, condone or stay silent about domestic violence or sexual abuse. They are part of a week of activities that get underway statewide March 1 in advance of International Women’s Day on March 8th. A proclamation day gathering at the statehouse in Boston is being celebrated on March 2.

Why should men get involved in what many have called a “women’s issue?” It’s simple: domestic abuse and sexual assault against women are community issues impacting wives and partners, mothers, daughters, sisters—everyone. As men, White Ribbon Day gives us an opportunity to proclaim, “From this day forward, I promise to be part of the solution in ending violence against women.”

Dozens of men came down from their seats at a UMass basketball game last month to take the pledge read by Lt. Gov. Murray, a longtime advocate of domestic violence prevention efforts. The Massachusetts undertaking is part of the White Ribbon Campaign (WRC), an international crusade to engage men and boys to help end violence against women. Besides the baseball team, members of fraternities said no to violence at the halftime event.

Spearheaded in the Bay state by Jane Doe, Inc., the statewide coalition working to prevent domestic and sexual abuse, WRC is a powerful symbol of a social movement aimed at transforming men from perpetrators of—or bystanders to—violence against women, into advocates on behalf of girls’ and women’s safety. It was founded in Canada in 1991, after the Montréal Massacre on December 6, 1989 in which 14 women students at a polytechnical institute were brutally killed and 13 students wounded by a lone gunman. The first year 100,000 men across Canada wore white ribbons. The campaign is now worldwide operating in nearly 60 countries, and has gathered more than five million signatures of support.

According to Craig Norberg-Bohm, coordinator of the Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe, in 2008 the organization first organized the Massachusetts component of what now is an “international effort for human rights, engaging men to help end violence against women, men and children.”

The campaign focuses on men’s violence against women because of its fundamental connection to all forms of personal, economic and structural violence and oppression throughout the world. Not all men are violent and the campaign is not about individual acts of violence. It focuses, Norberg-Bohm says on “a broader framework that confronts unhealthy behaviors and promotes positive masculinity.” It has adopted an international human rights perspective, because, he believes, it “challenges us to change the ways in which male authority has been equated with power and control over others’ individual freedoms and liberties and the world around them.”

In my work with men, I have witnessed a slow and steady openness among a range of men to speak up about the minority of males who perpetrate abuse. Events like White Ribbon Day are raising the profile of this work. Across Massachusetts, Norberg-Bohm says there are nearly 400 White Ribbon Campaign “ambassadors” promoting the campaign and its message of nonviolence in Massachusetts.

Despite the harrowing cases of domestic abuse and brutal sexual assaults occurring in communities from small towns and cities in the U.S. to the Congo in Africa, antiviolence efforts by men are gaining adherents. It’s especially encouraging to see the number of college-age men initiating campus campaigns to challenge male violence. I met scores of them at a first-ever conference of campus males committed to gender equality in Minnesota last November, and was heartened to learn they are developing campus cultures that promote respect and safety for women and girls. They are the future—emerging leaders in the work of ending gender-based violence.

Any campaign that has as goals “changing societal attitudes and beliefs that perpetuate and make excuses for violence against women; promoting safety and respect in all relationships and situations; fostering a positive image of masculinity, and inviting all men and boys to join in a celebration of personal peace and cooperation” are ones everyone should get behind. I know I can.

To take the pledge or to learn about more go to www.janedoe.org/whiteribbonday.

For several minutes it was a teary-eyed father looking into his son’s eyes, holding him, transmitting love and care before an audience of millions. The high fivin’ and shuckin’ and jivin’ with teammates was playing second fiddle to a father beaming love to his son. We need lots more of that expression of manhood seen and celebrated, affirmed and acknowledged.

For so many dads that moment prompted memories of their own teary moments with their children, moments that were never televised but are just as real. We see too many images of men behaving badly–bad news seems to take care of itself–so every opportunity to put the loving face of fatherhood and manhood before the public should be celebrated. I’m not so naive to believe that, among the revelers in N’awlins “who dattin’” all over town, there are a few saying “You go, Drew!” to the Saints quarterback, winner of the MVD–Most Valuable Dad award–at least on a glorious Sunday night in Miami.