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By Rob Okun

If learning the truth about what had been going on for years at Penn State University won’t move men to challenge rape culture, what will? For men, it’s long past time to leave the sidelines of indifference in the face of grievous acts of troubled men.

The facts: Jerry Sandusky, former defensive coordinator under legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, was arrested on 40 counts related to charges he raped eight boys beginning in1998. Well loved Paterno, the winningest coach in college football history, and Penn State’s president, Graham Spanier, were summarily fired. And, the university’s athletic director, Tim Curley, and a vice president, Gary Schultz, were indicted for not calling police following a grad student’s eyewitness account of Sandusky anally raping a 10 year-old boy in a campus shower. Heard enough?

Paterno did the bare minimum, reporting what he heard about his longtime assistant only one rung up the chain of command. While legally in the clear, morally Paterno missed the goal by a wide margin. No points scored and a lifetime penalty. His silence was deafening. But because of how university trustees dealt with Coach Paterno, perhaps a first was achieved: a bystander who didn’t intervene was harshly punished.

Out of the scandal at Penn State may come some good: the sexual abuse of boys hopefully will no longer remain invisible as it mostly now is—“kept under the tight cloak of domination, stigma and internalized masculinity,” as Men’s Resources International’s Steven Botkin reminds us (www.mensreourcesinternational.org). “The impact of this reality feeds the male violence machine in ways we may not yet fully understand. Our collective silence about this part of the system means many of its victims go unrecognized and limits our capacity for intervention and prevention.” Botkin believes it is when men recognize their relationship with the experiences of perpetrator, bystander, and/or victim, that we can become most effective as change agents.

So now is the moment for men to pick up the remote and change the channel. The message on a popular New England sports talk radio station was this isn’t a sports scandal but a men’s scandal. It’s about time the language was accurate. Time, too, for us as men to stop watching from the sidelines. There’s the whistle. Ready or not, we have to get in the game.

Here’s a simultaneous truth: Most men are good guys who don’t abuse women, girls, boys, or other men. Still, the overwhelming majority of perpetrators of abuse against women, girls and boys are male. So while the minority abuse, assault, rape, sometimes murder, we look away mouthing our sorry excuse, “That’s not me.” While it may be true about any of us personally, it ignores our responsibility collectively to insist we work to end rape and abuse.

Women, girls, boys, men should be free both from actual harm and the threat of abuse. Women have long been on the front lines of efforts to end domestic and sexual violence. For more than a quarter century, many men have joined them, challenging the masculine culture of aggression even as it tries to bully us. We need more men to mobilize now—from tiny hamlets to urban centers.

With the culture of sports at the center of this sordid story of men behaving inhumanely—criminally—can we finally change direction? Can we uncover what it is about men’s training that produces Jerry Sanduskys? These questions can no longer be ignored.

In this national manhood emergency, football is the perfect cultural symbol, one that can serve as a catalyst for masculinity teach-ins on campuses and in communities nationwide. Right now groups like Coaching Boys into Men (www.CoachesCorner.org); Mentors in Violence Prevention (www.sportsinsociety.org/vpd/mvp./php); and the Waitt Institute (www.wivp.waittinstitute.org/), to name a few, are poised to lead trainings. And, in every state, sexual and domestic violence prevention coalitions are working night and day to stop the violence.

Let’s reach out first to the riled up students at Penn State. Let’s get ESPN andSports Illustrated to broadcast and cover the teach-ins. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, the NCAA, can finance not just semester long teach-ins but a sustained national educational campaign. They certainly have deep enough pockets, having turned college sports into a megabusiness.

“The bottom line,” says activist-writer Kevin Powell, “is that our notions of manhood are totally and embarrassingly out of control…[S]ome of us have got to stand up and say enough, that we’ve got to redefine what it is to be a man… But to get to that new kind of manhood means we’ve got to really dig into our souls and admit the old ways are not only not working, but are painfully hurtful to women, to children, to communities, businesses, institutions, and government, to sport and play, and to ourselves.” As he says, “Looking in the mirror is never easy but if not now, when?”

Voice Male editor Rob Okun is former executive director of an antiviolence men’s center, and maintains a psychotherapy practice in Amherst, Massachusetts. He can be reached at rob@voicemalemagazine.org.

By Rob Okun

For those men who still don’t understand how other men can describe themselves as “male positive and pro-feminist” (as this magazine and a movement of men here and abroad do), look no further than what’s happened in the 20 years since Anita Hill testified that Clarence Thomas sexually harassed her when he was her boss at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The stakes couldn’t have been higher: it was October 1991 and Thomas, an African American, had been selected by George H.W. Bush to be a Supreme Court justice. For her part, though not auditioning for it, Hill was about to become the Fannie Lou Hamer of the gender justice movement. Her credentials? She had the audacity to claim that Thomas had repeatedly sexually harassed her and testified to that effect in vivid and graphic detail. If the hearings had been held, say 10 years ago instead of 20, it is highly unlikely he would have been confirmed.

After a rushed three-day hearing over the Columbus Day weekend, the Senate confirmed Thomas by a vote of 52–48, the narrowest margin in a century. In the end, Hill won the larger victory—bringing the long sordid history of sexual harassment out of the closet and onto a televised, national stage. By speaking truth to power, Anita Hill put a crack in the wall of male privilege rivaling the one in the Liberty Bell.

Legions of women resigned to the idea that being sexually harassed was just the way life is found in Hill a dignified, graceful champion who in breaking her silence gave permission for other women to break theirs. In the weeks, months, and years that followed their stories came pouring out. Don’t believe me? Ask your grandmother, your aunt, your mother.

While a tiny number of women before Anita Hill had challenged their harassment, the overwhelming majority said nothing. If they reported the perpetrator they put their jobs, housing, and friendships at risk. Then came Anita Hill. Of course women are still being harassed—ask your sister or your daughter. But things have changed. Because of Anita Hill. There are now strong laws against sexual harassment. Even though most of society does not—like a brightly lighted mall parking lot—continuously illuminate the dangers women and girls regularly face, it nonetheless no longer turns a blind eye.

When Anita Hill looked across the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room at the beginning of her testimony, 14 white male senators looked back. It’s painful to recall the way many of them treated Hill, then a University of Oklahoma law professor (now a highly regarded professor at Brandeis University and an accomplished author). Rude. Demeaning. Hostile. The way the bosses on Mad Men treat the women who are their secretaries. That there are still men who “just don’t get it”—the rallying cry of women outraged at the obtuseness of the senators—and who think that it’s all better now, that men bear scant responsibility for how other men treat women, is a painful reminder of how much farther men have to go. (And that begins with us, with me, in our own relationships, acknowledging the vestiges of privilege and entitlement that still hold sway.)

Maybe their journey to understanding would have been accelerated had they been in New York in mid-October to attend a conference called “Sex, Power and Speaking Truth: Anita Hill 20 Years Later.” They would have been in an audience of several hundred people when the memories came flooding back—made vivid as they watched a seven-minute clip from Julian Schlossberg’s documentary film about the hearings, Sex & Justice. They would have recalled—or learned about—the national conversation about sexual harassment that began then, about the audacity of out of touch middle-aged senators unsuccessfully trying to ask questions without revealing their heterosexual male sexual fantasies.

Ask a woman who trusts you about her story of harassment and see if you don’t feel humbled, sad, and inspired by what women have had to carry, and still carry, ever vigilant for their safety from sexual harassment and sexual violence.

Watching the hearings women looked at the 14 white men on the Judiciary Committee and saw a boys’ club that “too easily dismissed Ms. Hill’s accusations and did not allow the testimony of other women who might have corroborated or helped buttress her account to prove a case of sexual harassment,” as The New York Times wrote in a 2008 story about the hearings. What might have happened if those witnesses had been allowed to testify?

At the center of the hearings, was Joe Biden, then chair of the Judiciary Committee.
Mr. Biden was accused of treating “Mr. Thomas too even-handedly” because of the racially charged nature of the hearings and not intervening forcefully enough when Ms. Hill was being, well, manhandled. Remember Thomas’s complaint that he was the victim of a “high-tech lynching”? The counterargument—which never got as much airtime—was Ms. Hill as victim of a modern-day witch hunt.

Now the vice president, in the ensuing two decades Biden has put women’s safety—from domestic violence to sexual assault—at the top of his list of political priorities. Among the strongest of advocates working to enact the Violence Against Women Act in 1994, earlier this year he took the lead in passionately urging America’s schools—from secondary through university—to do more to prevent sexual assault.

Joe Biden isn’t the only man to have grown over the past 20 years. His notoriety, though, can be an inspiration to others. He now better understands the truth of women’s lives than he did in 1991. Here’s the question for the rest of us: Do we?

By Rob Okun

In the drive to end violence against women, even well meaning allies can take a wrong turn. Such was the case with a recent editorial in a small city newspaper in the progressive community of Northampton, Massachusetts, two towns over from where I live. Northampton has a rich history of working to prevent domestic violence, including longstanding collaborations among a variety of stakeholders from battered women’s shelters and the police, the district attorney’s office and, at 22 years, Men Overcoming Violence, one of the oldest batterer intervention programs in the country.

“Seeking safety for women,” was the headline of the August 1st editorial published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette (www.gazettenet.com) in response to the life sentence domestic violence murderer David W. Vincent III received. The brutal 2009 beating Vincent inflicted on his girlfriend, Rebecca Moulton in Pittsfield, Mass. (including never calling for medical assistance between the nearly eight hours following his assault and his own brother’s intervention), undoubtedly left many hearts aching and minds enraged. Unequivocally, the responsibility for what happened rests with Vincent.

“When their partners turn violent,” the editorial reminded readers “women are at tremendous risk.” Fair enough. What missed the mark—by a wide margin—was the final sentence placing an onus on women that rightly belong with men. “Unless we all help women understand the danger they face from violent partners and insist they seek safety (emphasis added), these tragedies will continue unchecked,” the editorial concluded.

Huh? It makes little sense to place the burden of preventing violence on the woman. Why “insist” she seek safety instead of emphatically and unambiguously demanding violent men stop abusing?

Becky Moulton, a “funny, creative, smart and sweet” woman, as the editorial described her, is more than a symbol of the domestic violence epidemic that continues to plague society. Her senseless murder presents us with an opportunity to commit (or recommit) ourselves to preventing such acts. That opportunity will be a compromised, though, if nonviolent men are not part of the effort.

It’s time to shift the paradigm from women seeking shelter from men’s violence to insisting angry men stop abusing their partners. And, we need that shift everywhere—our educational system, media, sports culture, government, the courts, faith communities—so we can collectively lay to rest a damaging, outmoded view of men and masculinity. That shift also means teaching boys and girls (and men and women) to look at relationships through the lens of equality. The old-school belief of men dominating women—that sanctions misogynistic music videos, produces television shows that objectify women and denigrate fathers, and fails to confront privileged men (most often, white) flouting their entitlement—all must be loudly and relentlessly challenged.

We’ve come a long way from the days of police turning a blind eye to family violence perpetrated behind closed doors. Still, we have to do more than just arrest and jail perpetrators, or order them into batterer intervention programs. We have to begin educating elementary school boys and girls about respect in relationships before their ideas about gender solidify.

Imagine besides clergy, policymakers, coaches, parents and teachers articulating a vision of a better world, a healed society, and a cooperative community, that the final sentence of a newspaper’s domestic violence editorial read: “Unless we educate boys and men about healthy relationships—including teaching nonviolent, conscious communication—some men will continue to believe dominating and abusing women is acceptable behavior and domestic violence tragedies will continue unchecked.”
Women have a right to expect that they no longer have to work to prevent domestic violence alone. Since the majority of men are not violent it is time for them to speak out about the abuse a minority of men perpetrate. Doing so is one way to honor the memory of Rebecca Moulton and offer a small measure of consolation to her family. To repair a culture of violence where domestic abuse murders too often still occur, can we do anything less?

By Rob Okun

To follow the news the last few weeks suggests there’s been a virulent outbreak of MBBS—Men Behaving Badly Syndrome. But behind the lurid stories of privileged men acting with an audacious sense of entitlement is another story—men who do the right thing. Father’s Day is a good time to engage in a more nuanced discussion of manhood.

We don’t hear much about the good guys thanks to the media’s maxim: dog bites man no story, man bites dog, big story. What broadcast outlet, newspaper, or Internet blog would highlight a father who stays home to raise his children when they can cover a sex scandal?

Fatherhood, like manhood, is in transition as more men reject conventional ideas of both roles. That’s the bigger story. For more than three decades, a slow, but steadily growing movement of men—fathers featured prominently among them—has been charting a new course for manhood. Rather than being threatened by feminism, these men recognized that women taking action to redefine their role in society presented an opportunity for men to do the same.

Sure, initially most men were confused and angry when they realized women were serious about no longer accepting a playing field tilted in men’s favor. Slowly, though, some men got it: women rejecting their confining gender box meant men also could bust out of ours.

Many found in fatherhood a chance to rediscover our capacity to nurture—an ability drummed out of us early, beginning when we first heard the words, “big boys don’t cry.”

Why not cry? It is in our tears and fears that men rediscover our full humanity. It takes courage for men to express our vulnerability rather than our anger. But doing so opens us up to being labeled a mama’s boy or gay. So we go the other way—dominating others, often women, to try and nourish our sad inner lives.  The result? Operating from below our waists rather than from within our hearts.

Most people empathized with the betrayal Maria Shriver felt when former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted he fathered a child a decade ago. We identified with the wife of former New York Congressmember Anthony Weiner, who finally confessed he’d sent those photographs over Twitter.

What does it say about some men that they risk their careers, reputations, and marriages for a roll in the hay, real or virtual? What insecurities are at play? What pressures are they experiencing?  What feelings are they trying to keep at bay? We can season our outrage with a dollop of compassion and invite men who feel—and act—differently to stop being bystanders, to clearly articulate a different definition of manhood, demanding it have its day in the national conversation about men.

For eons society has condoned Men Behaving Badly Syndrome. But for the men who have rejected its main ingredients—privilege and entitlement—it is time to end our silence.  A society that celebrates the stud more than the dad reaps what it sows. Fatherhood may not be sexy but it sure is real, awakening in men a capacity to access our highest angels—from cultivating empathy and patience to practicing sacrifice and humility. Not every man has to become a father to personally dig deep, but for many it has proven to be the doorway to growing up.

For too long, Father’s Day has been a caricature of a holiday. So sure, fire up the barbecue if you like but let’s use it to ignite a campaign to reclaim manhood. That’s the best legacy the child Anthony Weiner’s wife is carrying can receive from its father. And from the rest of us.

Rob Okun is editor of Voice Male magazine in Amherst, Mass. He can be reached at rob@voicemalemagazine.org

In response to a horrific gang rape of an 11-year-old girl in Texas this winter, a collaboration among antiviolence men’s organizations and individuals long associated with the profeminist men’s movement came together to speak with one voice. The campaign challenges the media to rethink what has been characterized as “victim blaming” coverage of rape and sexual assault, urging instead coverage which focuses on the perpetrators. Voice Male helped to draft the statement, reprinted below, which was sent out nationally at the beginning of April, Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

In the struggle o stop rape and all forms of men’s violence against women, it is time for men to leave the sidelines and get in the game. One important step we can take is to raise our voices and insist that the spotlight in media coverage of rape turns away from a fixation on victims and their behavior and instead focuses on abusive men and boys—and the culture that produces and makes excuses for them.  We make this demand not only as concerned citizens and responsible members of our communities—but as men from virtually every cultural/racial/ethnic/religious background.

There is some progress to report, albeit progress in response to yet another depressing reminder of how far we still have to come.  Consider this: reaction to the victim-blaming in a recent New York Times story about a brutal gang rape in East Texas has been fast and furious.  Over the past several weeks, columnists, bloggers, victim advocates and anti-rape activists—women and men—have criticized the March 8 Times story for the way its use of selective quotes suggested that an 11-year-old girl in effect contributed to the assault against her by “wearing make-up and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her twenties.”  In addition, critics have responded to the perception conveyed in the article that among the residents of Cleveland, Texas, there is greater concern for the nineteen men and boys facing allegations of rape than for the young girl.

The Times’ public editor Arthur Brisbane agreed with much of the criticism of the piece: “My assessment,” he wrote just a few days later, “is that the outrage is understandable. The story dealt with a hideous crime but addressed concerns about the ruined lives of the perpetrators without acknowledging the obvious: concern for the victim.” (The Times, front-page follow-up story on March 28 did a lot better, offering an extended portrait of the girl, whom they described as having been “an honor roll student, brimming with enthusiasm.”)

This tragic case will provide lessons for future news writing classes and journalistic ethics seminars. Clearly, news operations need guidance about how to cover sex crimes without perpetuating misogynous cultural attitudes.

But for those of us who work to end men’s violence against women, this incident is less about the specific details of one horrific act of rape in a distressed community in Texas, and more about the broader themes of power,  privilege, misogyny, class and race that the act itself—and the coverage it generated—so poignantly exemplify.

We have to ask some difficult questions: why would a group of men and boys sexually violate a vulnerable 11-year-old girl?  What does this say not only about them or the small community where they live, but about the society—our society—that raised them?  What are we teaching men and boys about their attitudes and behavior toward girls? and even further… What are we teaching men and boys about themselves?

Because of the class, ethnicity, and race of those involved, some people will predictably attribute this atrocity to the effects of poverty and fatherlessness, which is a coded reference to family dysfunction in communities of color.  But gang rapes and the attitudes behind them are perpetrated by wealthy and middle-class white men and boys, too, including boys from “intact” families with present fathers.  Just last October at Yale University, DKE pledges marched on Old Campus—home to the majority of Yale’s first-year female students—chanting “No means yes” along with graphic sexual slurs that both demeaned women and glorified sexual violence.  White men with privilege routinely perpetrate unspeakable sexual crimes against women in their own families, as well as other women and girls. What’s the explanation for their sexist violence?

It seems to us that while questions of class and race are germane in this and many other cases, they are far less relevant than questions of gender.  In particular, unless we believe that males across the board are born genetically deficient, we need to ask some fundamental questions, i.e.: How do we socialize our boys?  How do we assign certain attitudes and behaviors as “normal”? And, ultimately: What does it mean to be a man in 21st century America?

For too many young men, communal rituals of sexism perpetuate negative notions of manhood. Most of us are rightly horrified when we read about gang rape.  But group sexual assault is best understood as being at the extreme end of a continuum of behaviors that normalize men’s sexist treatment of women.  What about college guys hiring strippers for private parties and openly calling those women “bitches and hoes”?  And let’s not forget—an entire genre in pornography is devoted to simulated scenes of gang rape which in many quarters is considered socially acceptable entertainment for men, who sometimes watch it in groups.

One of the most disturbing aspects of this gang rape (as in others) is how often the alleged perpetrators videotape the event.  In the Cleveland, Texas, assault, the police investigation was prompted, according to the Times, when an elementary school student alerted a teacher to a cell phone video that included one of her classmates. Why would men videotape an incident that literally documents their commission of a first-degree felony unless they thought 1) there was absolutely no chance of their being caught or 2) they weren’t doing anything wrong?

It is this last possibility that is most disturbing, because it implicates not just the men and boys who have been charged with the crime, but all of us.  What role does each of us play in defining and perpetuating social norms? Moreover, what is the responsibility of adult men not only to girls, but to boys?  What is the responsibility that each of us has to teach, mentor and model for younger men and boys non-sexist attitudes and behaviors toward women?

It is important to emphasize that we can primarily be concerned about the actual victim in this case and be empathetic with the boys and young men who are charged with this awful crime.  How many of them were coerced to participate by older adolescents and young adults?  How many of the younger boys acquiesced because they wanted to fit in and be respected as “one of the guys”?

Like other gang rapes, the East Texas case furnishes a powerful metaphor about silence and complicity, because gang rapes can often be prevented if just one guy takes a stand.  Can it really be true that there wasn’t one guy—or more—in the group who knew this was terribly wrong?  If so, then what were the internal dynamics of the group that prevented anyone from interrupting or stopping the process? Are men (and boys) so scared of each other that no one will speak out for fear that other men will think less of them, or worse, turn the violence on them?

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.  But while awareness about sexual assault is a crucial first step, it is not enough. For men in particular, we need more of a willingness to act—both locally and globally. When men speak out about rape and other forms of violence against women, we make it clear to other men that we do not tolerate or condone the mistreatment of women.  We also send the message that men who mistreat women will face seriously negative social consequences for doing so—not just legal consequences. Join us and the women who have been doing this work for years.

Stand up and speak out for an end to sexual violence.

Bernardo Villafane, New Start Services  Byron Hurt Charles Knight, Other & Beyond Real Men Craig Norberg-Bohm, Jane Doe Inc. Dasan Harrington David S. Lee, PreventConnect / California Coalition Against Sexual Assault  David J. Pate, Jr., Ph.D., Center on Family Policy and Practice/University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee  Dick Bathrick, Bathrick Consulting  Don McPherson Ed Gondolf, Ph.D. Emiliano Diaz de Leon, Texas Association Against Sexual Assault  Etiony Aldarondo, Ph.D.  Gary Barker, Ph.D., Promundo and MenEngage Alliance  Greg Jacob, Service Women’s Action Network  Horace Campbell Ivan Juzang, Mee Productions  Jackson Katz, Ph.D.  Jeff O’Brien & Daryl Fort, Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP)  Jeffrey L. Edleson, Ph.D., University of Minnesota  Joe Ehrmann, Coach for America  Joseph Maldonado, CONNECT Men’s Roundtable  Joshua Bee Alafia, Filmmaker  Juan Carlos Areán & Feroz Moideen, Family Violence Prevention Fund  Juan Ramos, North Brooklyn Coalition Against Family Violence  Kevin Powell Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele Michael Kimmel, Ph.D.  Michael A. Messner, University of Southern California   Michael Shaw, Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault Services, Waypoint   Neil Irvin & Pat McGann, Ph.D., Men Can Stop Rape  Paul Kivel Quentin Walcott & Marlon Walker, CONNECT NYC  Rob Okun, VOICE MALE Magazine  Rus Funk, MensWork  Dr. Stephen Jefferson, UMass, Amherst  Steven Botkin, Ed.D., Men’s Resources International  Sut Jhally, Media Education Foundation  Ted Bunch & Tony Porter, A CALL TO MEN  Ulester Douglas & Sulaiman Nuriddin, Men Stopping Violence  Victor Rivas Rivers, Actor, Author, Spokesperson/National Network to End Domestic Violence & Verizon Community Champion

Help the CALL TO ACTION go Viral

http://www.facebook.com/pages /MenSpeakforGenderJustice/194551133915620

As Voice Male went to press, media response to the call to action challenging how print and broadcast journalists cover rape and sexual assaults had been minimal, but interest in the new Facebook movement, MenSpeakforGenderJustice, continues to be gaining momentum. Virally, this new movement can create a moment of truth, spreading the word that victim-blaming coverage must be replaced with stories that hold perpetrators accountable. The 40 signatories of the Call to Action can mobilize others to get involved in a number of ways, but so can you. Consider what you can do, including:

• Share the Facebook link with colleagues in similar fields or advocates for the cause.

• Add a tag for this Facebook page to relevant documents you send out.

• Compile a list of businesses/government agencies/universities/health care systems engaged in anti-violence initiatives and “like” them. Become fans of organizations doing work in this arena—including Voice Male—and check the websites listed with all the signatories to the statement.

• Add a link to this Facebook movement in your  e-signature.  It is an effective way to reinforce the views on this important topic, and encourages dialogue among target audiences.

• Keep the content fresh and relevant – Facebook is about two-way conversations so continue the dialogue.

• Share photos of folks doing the work. Team/group meetings, lectures, newspaper clips, etc., because this will help illustrate activity.

• Post tips and bylines to relevant writers; offer information and statistics that drive an emotional response to promote additional coverage on other sites. Such insights may encourage a reporter to do a piece.

• Search other Facebook pages related to the cause, post on their wall and invite them to become involved with MenSpeakforGenderJustice.  Comment on their post and invite dialogue.

• Video an ally speaking on the topic and place the video on YouTube and link to the Facebook page.

There is a struggle underway to define manhood and masculinity. It’s playing out in the halls of Congress, in pop culture, and in desperate protests to maintain an outmoded view of what our country should look—and be—like. It’s a story not being covered much by mainstream media.

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.

In the midst of the celebrations that a historic key first step has been taken to fix the horrific profits-over-people U.S. health care system, men’s voices need to ring out in protest against any efforts to limit a woman’s right to make independent decisions about her reproductive health. Simply put, I urge men to join a chorus singing “No!” to the back room deal-making cut by Michigan Congress member Bart Stupak exchanging a “Yes” vote on the health insurance overhaul for a pledge from President Obama to issue an executive order prohibiting paying for abortions as part of the new law. As Michael Moore, the filmmaker who made Sicko and who lives in Stupak’s district, has pointed out: Stupak wants to ensure “no woman who buys her own insurance with her own money is able to have a medically-insured abortion (emphasis added).”

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.

March has already been a powerful month for men showing support for gender equality. As the temperature warmed and the snow drops and crocuses began peeking through the softening earth, I felt a lightness knowing how many men are putting their shoulders to the wheel of positive social change. Here’s a glimpse into the editor’s date book this first third of the month:

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.

By Rob Okun

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.

What an image. With tears in his eyes New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Blees held his son, Gaylen, aloft moments after the Saints stunned the Indianapolis Colts to win their first-ever Superbowl.
The boost to the city of New Orleans notwithstanding–even as the new energy that marvelous city feels can’t be overstated–there’s an important moment in the evolving definitions of masculinity that shouldn’t be overlooked in the midst of all the celebrating in the French Quarter and around the country.

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.