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Originally published in Spring 2007.

It’s happened again. Another male has shot up a campus, killing 32 people and himself. We are heartsick, angry, outraged–and strangely numb. Many of us are suffering from post-Columbinitis, a malaise that desensitizes people to violence. We distance ourselves from our feelings, passively consume television’s carefully packaged new infotainment program, “Tragedy at Virginia Tech.” Numbly, we watch the same footage, interviews with students, families and expert talking heads, or we tune out, overwhelmed by a culture that feeds on violence. All that temporarily awakens us from our torpor are touching photos and testimonials about the victims.

At the men’s center I direct, we’ve worked with males for 25 years, including abusive court-mandated men. Our work both supports men and challenges men’s violence. The horrifying tape Cho Seung-Hui sent to NBC revealed a gruesome level of life-crushing violence. While he was an extreme case, a severely disturbed man who slipped through the cracks of a social net riddled with holes, there are way too many other men walking around stuffing their anger, ready to explode.

Violence sells, renowned culture critic the late George Gerbner succinctly said. It’s an international commodity. Spoken language is almost irrelevant in the wake of so many brutal images, cascading from every nook and cranny of U.S. popular culture and hungrily rebroadcast worldwide. Not just Hollywood, the music biz, video games, and media spinmeisters, but briefing room culture at the White House, Defense and State departments. War sells, too. Just ask the profiteers at Blackwater and Halliburton. From the glitzy TV graphics broadcast when we first invaded Iraq, through the start of this fifth season of the reality series “War in the Middle East,” we keep refining our most profitable export: the culture of violence. Posturing tough guys–from the president on down–keep articulating the wanted dead-or-alive paradigm. It can no longer go unchallenged.

Among the host of emotional triggers that ignited Cho Seung-Hui’s killing spree, our contemporary U.S. culture provided plenty of matches. This dead man walking had opportunities daily to tune in to talk radio for a dose of vitriol to get the juices flowing. Just as we do. He had access to the latest shoot-’em-up-blow-’em-up playing at the local cineplex. Us, too. We are so saturated with the stench of violence, is it any wonder many have felt too full to come to the table for a 33-course killing fields feast?

By now, eight years after Columbine and eight months after the Amish murders, we know the profile: angry loners, alienated and insecure, diagnosed with mental illness. They think it’s manly to kill people, often women. How many more men like them across America must explode before we create programs that teach men that getting counseling makes you more, not less, of a man? That it is a sign of strength, not weakness, to ask for help? Mental health treatment for troubled men must rise to the top of our national agenda if we’re to have any hope of preventing another Virginia Tech. A concurrent campaign to teach our children that strong men are nonviolent needs to be launched in concert with a national effort to change men’s attitudes about guns, one on a scale that changed our national attitude about smoking.

Some claim that media violence is the cause of real-world violence. Gerbner, who was a leading researcher on the social effects of television, encouraged citizens to consider the issue more broadly. He urged critical thinking “about the psychological, political, social and developmental impacts of growing up and living within a cultural environment of pervasive, ritualized violent images.” That is our current predicament and may explain why so many of us are numbed by this latest horrific rampage rather than stirred to action. But it is not too late.

Our children, especially the younger ones who must, at all costs, be shielded from the details of what happened in Virginia, need us to get this right and get it right now. In my work helping men to overcome the damaging effects of tough-talking, conventional masculinity, I know that abusive and violent men can change if they want to. I’ve seen them do it, even in the face of a society that keeps dishing out super-sized portions of violent pop culture. Still, I wonder if we have the collective will to walk away from the table where such poison continues to be served. Are we ready for a new dinner menu, replacing the burnt offerings of violence with fruit from the tree of peace?

Originally published in the Hampshire Daily Gazette in March 2007.

Among the many men who walk through the doors of the Men’s Resource Center for Change are soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of these men have been ordered to attend one of the many batterers’ intervention groups we run for men who act abusively in their intimate relationships. We’ve been teaching men in these groups that there is never any excuse to abuse another person—and a lot more — since 1989. We give men tools to stop perpetuating domestic violence in their families. The truth is, many of these returning vets are haunted by much more, by deep and complex problems associated with being at war.

These men need a lot more attention than a weekly two-hour, narrowly focused domestic violence prevention group can provide. Often husbands and fathers, these returning vets, along with demonstrating reprehensible behavior toward their wives or girlfriends, are also military men who, in too many cases, have been deeply traumatized by their time at war. Many are suffering from post-traumatic stress brought on by their wartime experience. Even if some were previously abusive before heading overseas, how futile, and shameful, that their plight is now being left, in many cases, to a weekly batterers’ intervention group. Where is the range of federal veterans’ services to be doing the heavy lifting? These men need in- and out-patient services, group therapy and individual counseling—along with support services for their families, employers, and coworkers—to assist them on the arduous journey of healing. Batterer intervention groups like ours can only play a small role.

Not long ago a longtime facilitator in several of our batterer intervention groups described for me the pain he is seeing every week in these suffering vets. They feel duty-bound, he shared, not to talk about what they did – or saw – in Iraq and Afghanistan, adhering to an oath of silence. They may be in a numbed silence in group, but before they got there their pain, feelings of helplessness, and stomach-burning anger had boiled over, scalding the safest person they could direct their rage at: their partner, often the mother of their children. While their abuse must be confronted—and it is—it also must be understood as a symptom of the stress and strain they brought back with them from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Does the Department of Veterans Affairs even know of the incidence of vets’ in batterers’ programs like ours? It would be a big step forward if the VA began coordinating its services with organizations like ours that work with men. They would better understand the work we do and how it could enhance their efforts. We know these men need more help than we can provide. And certainly returning women serving in the wars need help, too; they’re experiencing stress and emotional wounding the same as their male counterparts. They also deserve complete and comprehensive services.

Meanwhile, this heartbreaking war, now in its fifth year, grinds on, and too many returning vets feel ground down. Many citizens are working to end the madness; still more are needed sound the call of a farewell to arms. Of course, it is to expect a batterers’ program could care for the complicated, wide-ranging emotional needs of our vets; it is also naïve to expect the Democratic majority in Congress to strengthen its backbone enough to end the war on its own. But it isn’t hard to connect the dots from the Bush administration’s bankrupt war policy to its bankrupt veterans policy for our psychically wounded military brothers. One only need look at the scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to get an idea of the depth of the failure.

From our perspective, any rallying cry to end the war must also include a demand that we help our returning vets begin to heal. Isn’t it time we proclaim more than just “Bring Our Troops Home”? Shouldn’t we also add, “...and tend to their inner wounds”?

Originally published in February 2007

In the trade I ply–encouraging men to explore options outside the constraining box of conventional masculinity–there’s certainly no shortage of bad news. Men’s violence against women (and other men) remains at catastrophic levels; there’s little chance 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, tragic war in Iraq, the criminal neglect plaguing the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, the indifference to the suffering 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?

Let me cite three examples.

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, and met in a classroom after school with male high school juniors and seniors, all members of a “women’s rights club.”

It was hard to retain my glass-half-full demeanor after spending time 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 have moved to town to help with the relief effort. The mix of women and men, many volunteering with the Common Ground Collective (www.commongroundrelief.org), represents some of the best our troubled, creative country has to offer. Since Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing floods overwhelmed the region, thousands of volunteers have passed through Common Ground, 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 volunteers. 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 grassroots efforts. Their compassion caught 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 men’s 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 most of the members of The Men’s Project of Amherst College and filmmaker Byron Hurt (his important new film, Beyond Beats and Rhymes is scheduled to air nationally on PBS on Tuesday evening, February 20 and is the subject of a cover story in our magazine, Voice Male,) The college men’s group was 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 filmmaker Hurt to screen his new film. At dinner, one young man asked Byron 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 (Mass.) Regional 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 shared why they’d joined: becoming aware of the sexual harassment female students experience; wanting to support an upcoming Vagina Monologues performance; not wanting to have to pretend they were a “certain kind of (tough, strong and silent) 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 meeting. 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.” Other group members then shared how their male friends had teased them, too. But they had 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, possibilities much richer and more personally fulfilling than the old “tough, strong and silent” model. For someone who likes to see his glass half full, I left the high school that day with my cup overflowing.

Originally published in December 2006.

“I have a son, 18, and three daughters, all in their twenties. The thought that even one parent in South Dakota might face the news that his or her daughter was not only the victim of rape but was also pregnant and would be forced–by state law–to deliver the rapist’s baby, well, that was something I knew I had to challenge.”

I shared those words with a lot of people last month when I spent the final five days before the November 7th elections campaigning in South Dakota to overturn the most restrictive abortion ban in the nation. As the director of a pro-feminist men’s center, as well as a father, I knew I had to go to South Dakota. Happily, by a more than 55% to 45% margin, we were successful and the law was overturned.

I went to South Dakota because I couldn’t remain silent. I went to support those South Dakotans who worked tirelessly for months to protect women’s rights. In Sioux Falls, the state’s largest city (population 130,000), in Watertown, Madison, and in Brookings, smaller communities between 50 and 100 miles away, I met with voters as part of a massive canvassing effort. I talked to allies and opponents, fence sitters and those fearful to share their opposition to the ban with neighbors, let alone a stranger.

I heard from a doctor, an arthritis specialist, who said he couldn’t abide by a law that would compel a woman to deliver a baby even if it would jeopardize her health. He said he was afraid to speak out in his church or on his street. Walking around in a sea of lawn signs that supported the restrictive law, I could understand his concern. I saw how well organized those who supported the restrictive ban were. But the Campaign for Healthy Families, the coalition that coordinated efforts to reverse the ban, was well organized, too. I was heartened by the native South Dakotans who were at the center of the struggle, many in their late 20s, savvy, effective, funny, big-hearted.

When I first learned of the ban last March, after the South Dakota legislature overwhelmingly passed the restriction, and Gov. Mike Rounds signed it into law, I had an epiphany: There are lots of men involved in the reproductive rights struggle but they are almost all on the side that would deny women their right to self-determination. Where are the progressive men in this struggle? Where are the fathers, I wanted to know. Over a summer of searching, I was unable to locate an organized pro-feminist men’s response. At the Men’s Resource Center for Change, in the months ahead we hope to play a role in changing that reality.

We work with all kinds of men at the MRC, from farmers to teachers, truck drivers to managers. Our programs teach men who abuse their wives or partners how to choose alternatives to violence. We offer support for divorced or separated men, for men who themselves were neglected or abused growing up. We have groups for gay, bisexual a’nd questioning men. And we offer help for any man trying to figure out whats going on in his life and who needs a safe place to talk. We also work with boys and young men in middle schools and high schools. Helping men to be better fathers is also critical to our mission.

Those of us who are dads think a lot about our children, the next generation. Who is going to carry on after us, maintain the family’s connection to their community, keep the family farm or business up and running? We care deeply about passing the torch to them. A common thread we hold is not wanting to see our children hurt and not wanting our daughters scarred. As men we need to educate ourselves about reproductive health, not just our daughters’ but our sons’, too. Fathers and sons could do themselves, and their relationships, a world of good by talking about the responsibilities that come with adult sexual activity. With George Bush’s recent controversial appointment of an outspoken opponent of contraception to oversee federal family planning policy, men have an opportunity to speak out in the community as well as in the family.

Whatever one thinks about the abortion issue, that opponents of abortion would propose laws with no provisions for rape or incest of our daughters, sisters, nieces, cousins, neighbors, members of our faith communities, not to mention the health of the mother, is a signal of how serious this struggle is. Indeed, had the ban not been overturned in South Dakota, doctors who defied it and performed abortions anyway would have faced imprisonment and a $5,000 fine. All this in 2006. In the United States of America.

I know I am not alone in understanding the dangers. Just as I refused to sit back and let go unchallenged the South Dakota abortion ban, a lot of other men feel the same way. I believe in men’s capacity to do the right thing, especially when the stakes are high. For the daughters of South Dakota, the stakes couldn’t have been any higher. There were a number of states around the country looking to South Dakota to see how far they could go with their proposed abortion bans. On November 7th the answer they got was not as far as they thought. That’s good.

With that campaign over, there is more to be done. It is time for more and more men–fathers and sons, brothers and uncles, cousins and neighbors–to stand up for women and girls, and not just those they know–their partners or wives or daughters. Doing so will demonstrate an awakening of men’s hearts and minds to step off of the sidelines and to enter the debate on reproductive rights. With awakened hearts and minds can come, I believe, the kind of courage men of conscience are ready to put into action in their lives, their homes, and their communities.

Originally published in June 2006.

Amid the barbecues and neckties that will mark Father’s Day on June 18, some dads are offering a gift of their own to their families–teaching peace.

A growing number of fathers, father figures, and other male mentors are joining a national campaign aimed at increasing awareness, transforming attitudes, and encouraging men to teach the next generation that violence is wrong.

One effort is being championed through a collaboration between the Men’s Resource Center for Change and the Northwestern (Massachusetts) District Attorney’s office, a public education campaign called “Coaching Boys into Men.” The brainchild of the Family Violence Prevention Fund of San Francisco, Coaching Boys into Men calls on fathers and other male mentors to contradict men’s heretofore mostly minimal involvement in challenging violence against women, children and other men. Since men play such a pivotal role in shaping the attitudes and social norms that other men conform to, a goal of the campaign is to invite men to take an active stand in opposing violence against women.

The centerpiece of the Coaching Boys into Men campaign is a series of public service announcements (PSAs) aimed at encouraging men to carefully consider their attitudes about family violence and women’s safety. The Family Violence Prevention Fund produced the PSAs with the Ad Council. They are being widely disseminated in radio, print and television formats, all organized around a single concept: vignettes of fathers and sons playing a variety of sports. As they play, the narrator says: “You’ve taught him to hit the strike zone, a nine-iron, the net, the open man. But how much time have you spent teaching him what not to hit?” The tagline that follows ends with: “All violence against women is wrong. Teach Early” and has contact information for reaching the Men’s Resource Center for Change and the District Attorney’s office. The PSA is being read, seen or heard throughout June.

For many men, becoming a father is the pivotal moment in developing a consciousness about women living free from violence. For others, it is becoming a husband, coach or mentor. Whatever the entry point, what is most important is men considering how to transform themselves from silent bystanders to vocal proponents (if not outright activists) promoting peace in the home.

Most men want to do the right thing. Indeed, in a survey the Family Violence Prevention Fund conducted prior to launching the Coaching Boys into Men campaign, researchers discovered that a fifth of the men interviewed (21%) admitted “they didn’t actively support community efforts to stop domestic violence because no one asked me to get involved.” A majority of those surveyed also said “they were willing to talk to children about the importance of healthy, violence-free relationships.”

These are encouraging signs, but there is still more to be done to engage men. Along with campaigns like Coaching Boys into Men, supporting organizations like the Men’s Resource Center for Change and developing similar and allied groups is a critical part of efforts to encourage men to move from passive bystander to active participant in transforming a longing for harmony in the home into reality.

One way to engage fathers, father figures and male mentors all at the same time is to hold celebrations, and the Men’s Resource Center for Change is doing just that. The Men’s Resource Center has set Saturday, June 17, the day before Father’s Day, as a time to acknowledge the positive role fathers and father figures can and do play in children’s lives. “Fathers and Families Field Day” (to be held from noon to 3 p.m. at Groff Park in Amherst, Mass.) was conceived of as a time for all families–moms and mentors, grandparents and single parents, same sex headed households, everyone–to come together for an afternoon of games, music and connection. (Click here for more information about the event.)

The good news is that there are men in many communities already involved in working to promote peace in the home. But there are still not enough. As we celebrate Father’s Day this year, let’s do more than fire up the grill and hand out presents. Let’s celebrate a new–or renewed–commitment from more and more dads and other men who are ready to say out loud that they will teach peace to the children in their lives.

Originally published in April 2006.

You know how in some movies there’s a scene with a split screen where two characters are shown simultaneously? An image like that came to mind not long ago when I heard in the same evening two distinct stories, one about men’s stubbornness and one about men’s tenderness.

Imagine on one side of the screen the captain of a U.S. Navy vessel standing in the ship’s radio room; on the other side, a man about his age, a spiritual seeker from the United States, visiting with children in a crowded Indian orphanage. Here are their stories:

More than a decade ago, the following radio exchange occurred between the captain of a U.S. ship and Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland. The U.S. chief of naval operations released the transcript of the conversation.

Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the north to avoid a collision.

Canadians: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.

Americans: This is the captain of a U.S. Navy ship. I say again, divert your course.

Canadians: No. I say again, you divert your course.

Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States’ Atlantic Fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels. I demand you change your course 15 degrees to the north. That’s one-five degrees to the north–or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

Imagine the relief, and then the laughter, that must have erupted among the crew 0f the USS Lincoln. How embarrassing–and funny–to discover that you were puffing up your chest to threaten a lighthouse! Upon learning the truth I can also imagine the captain feeling silly, stupid, exposed, vulnerable. Getting hotter under his starched collar by the minute.

How many men can relate to that feeling of humiliation? I know I can. Becoming the butt of a joke, even an innocent one, leaves a sting that can raise our hackles. We’re not “supposed” to feel betrayed; we’re “supposed” to be in control. Even though, deep down, we know it’s not always possible, or not necessarily in our best interest, to be so tightly wound.

As men become willing to struggle with our stubbornness–admitting we’ve made a mistake or a bad decision–we are accepting a rare gift. I know in my family–as a son, brother, father, husband–I have come up against my stubbornness on more than one occasion. That’s probably why I could so easily conjure up the image of the red-faced captain. I wonder: Would he ever be able to join in with the laughter? It is precisely there, in that place of taking responsibility for his actions, that his growth–and ours–as fully human men is most palpable, ready to burst forth. His is a story worth remembering.

Meanwhile, a world away, the other scene in the split-screen portrays the spiritual-seeking Westerner visiting an orphanage in Calcutta operated by Mother Teresa. Because cultural taboos strongly discourage men from working with very young children, there is a buzz of excitement as he enters the large common area. “Uncle! Uncle!” the orphans cry, hungry for contact with a man. He looks at them, hundreds of dark eyes glistening, and feels his heart stir. As he walks through a room nearly the size of a gymnasium, he sees dozens and dozens of children, and even a larger number of babies lined up in row after row of cribs. Now it’s his eyes that are glistening, soon accompanied by wet tears running down his cheeks. His heart beating fast, a thought comes to him: “I could spend my whole life in this room and my life would be fulfilled.” He walks over to the cribs and begins picking up the babies, one after another after another, holding them to his chest, cooing into their ears. He keeps this up for quite a while before it is time for him to reluctantly leave. As he does a quote from Mother Teresa comes to mind: “We cannot expect to do great things; we can only expect to do small things with great love.”

The navy captain and the spiritual seeker may seem so different from one another. Is there a bridge to connect their lives? Is there common ground upon which they–we–can meet? By paying attention to both men’s stubbornness and men’s tenderness we can see the arc of possibility men are capable of traveling. In a world where the U.S. commander-in-chief stubbornly refuses to ask for directions–as in “Can you show me the road that leads out of Iraq?”–we are thirsting for the voices of men who are humbly moving from stubbornness to tenderness. Synonyms for “nurturing” in the thesaurus I checked include feminine, female, gentle, tender, and womanly. As they should. But it’s time for men to demonstrate that they also should include masculine, male, and manly.

Originally published in March 2006.

For a society long noted for its simplistic characterizations of men, the film Brokeback Mountain may mark the beginning of a new awareness about the depth and complexity of men’s emotional lives. This stirring story of love unfulfilled, tenderly evoking Ennis Del Mar’s and Jack Twist’s relationship over a 20-year span is so artfully layered that it cannot be dismissed simply as a story about “gay cowboys.” Ennis and Jack are not so easily pigeonholed. Nor are the rest of us. Characterizations of any man as simply “the silent type,” “tough guy,” or “emotionally unavailable” are too shortsighted.

Men’s yearning to connect, to not feel alone, to be visible for all of who we are, too long has been obscured by a guise of inscrutability, stoicism, isolation. Sadly, among those who have perpetuated that myth the longest are men ourselves, and often with the loudest voice. What’s behind our actions? Fear. Fear of being seen as vulnerable. Fear of being seen as weak. Fear of being seen as overwhelmed by the curves life throws us.

If we choose to listen to its message, Brokeback Mountain will likely be remembered as a cultural milestone, a major work of art that triggered a shift in consciousness, the moment when countless men began lifting off our shoulders the burdens conventional masculinity would have us carry: being the sole breadwinner, the infallible family leader, the ready-for-action stud–tough, strong, and almost always silent. What viewers of Brokeback Mountain–as well as readers of the Annie Proulx short story the film is based on–are invited to come to terms with are fresh ideas about what it means to be a man. The Ennis and Jack of 1963 that America has been introduced to were men–western cowboys no less–much more complicated than the Marlboro man stereotype many expected to meet. They were tough and tender, capable and caring, closed-mouthed and open-hearted.

Ennis, in many ways, really is Everyman. Just as he had to come to grips with all of who he was–well beyond questions about his sexual identity–like him, all men have to try and understand our own interior lives. For contemporary men, the inner struggle Ennis waged was emblematic of our own yearning for wholeness. While he struggled to reconcile powerful feelings of love for and love from Jack, like him, most men–straight, bi, gay or questioning–struggle with an equally powerful old-style masculinity that tries to hold us in its grip.

It’s true that while not all men are romantically attracted to other men, not all men are uncomfortable being close with each other. Sadly, though, we have been encouraged to keep our emotional distance from other men by a society that relentlessly inflicts on us a virulent form of homophobia. It is that fear and devaluing of men’s loving connection with other men that, for most of us, remains the primary impediment to our feeling safe enough to develop intimate, long-term friendships with one another.

Like many of us, Ennis and Jack struggled with their identities as men, including as husbands and fathers. But through their struggle, or in spite of it, they revealed a multi-faceted, textured, loving connection, one that exposed the big lie that would have men expressing a very limited range of emotional literacy.

Just as the institution of heterosexual marriage has not eroded in the nearly two years since Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to declare all adults were free to marry, society’s definition of “real manhood” will not unravel if we allow the Jacks and Ennises of today inside the tent of contemporary masculinity. All we have to lose is our fear of growing close with our brothers.

Originally published in December 2005.

Never has the voice and message of the Men’s Resource Center for Change (MRC) been more needed than it is today. With the drumbeat of war still a loud and persistent part of each of our lives, the relationship between how boys and young men are socialized and the narrow, dangerous effect that training has on us cannot be overstated. From the misogyny and violence in some hip hop lyrics to key male government officials sanctioning torture, it is clear that work with men needs as many friends and supporters as ever before.

In November, I was privileged to join six staff from the MRC in Detroit where 550 other men and women–leaders in domestic violence prevention work in 40 states and several countries–gathered for the first national conference on batterer intervention in more than a decade. MRC staff presented two key workshops. I was so proud, and moved, to hear their presentations. It was clear to those present just how powerful the MRC model of working with men truly is.

“A Partners’ Program” and “After the 40 Week Group–Now What?”
I wish you could have been among the hundred people each who crowded into our two workshops. Sara Elinoff Acker and Jan Eidelson detailed the quiet strength of our partners’ program, which sensitively and comprehensively supports women dealing with the reality of their partner’s abuse. Then Russell Bradbury-Carlin and Scott Girard recounted how we created and continue to run a pioneering program of follow-up groups for men who have gone through the basic 40-week program we began offering in 1989.

Our approach, which we call “compassionate confrontation,” is powerful because of one simple, profound truth: we believe in men. That might sound like a colossal contradiction considering the crisis in masculinity we now face. But that belief actually offers a way to open the door to change for any man willing to turn the handle. Let me explain.

There are two undeniable, stark and simultaneous truths that are key to our understanding of working with men: Most men are not violent and Most violence is perpetrated by men. It is in the exquisite tension that exists between these twin realities that you’ll find the Men’s Resource Center for Change. It is where we work the fertile ground of possibility, of personal and social transformation–ground we’ve been cultivating for nearly a quarter century.

We believe in men’s potential to change. We believe in men’s ability to grow. We believe in men’s desire to heal. We believe in men’s capacity to do the right thing. Simply put, we believe in men. Holding these beliefs doesn’t mean we hesitate, even for a minute, from holding men accountable for their behavior. We must and we do. But our compassionate confrontation model offers a portal through which motivated men can enter. If they choose to, they can then begin the arduous work of self-inquiry, personal inventory-taking and, ultimately, reparative actions–trying to make right what they have made terribly wrong. It is challenging work.

As proud as we are of the work we do in our Moving Forward domestic abuse prevention program, that is only part of what we are all about. Believing in men is the key to everything we do.

At this dark time of the year, we are buoyed by our connection with people like you and we appreciate our connection as we turn toward the light. In the coming year we will redouble our efforts to collaborate with women working to create harmony in the home and in our world. We will continue to look at ways to sharpen a new vision of manhood. At the same time we will continue to develop ways for younger males to make the journey to manhood a healthy one. We welcome you to join us. Please consider supporting the Men’s Resource Center for Change with a gift before the end of the year. To make a tax-deductible, contribution online, just click here, or you can send a contribution to the MRC for Change at 236 North Pleasant Street, Amherst, MA 01002. Thank you.

May the new year be peace filled for you and yours.

Originally published in September 2005.

While Casey Sheehan, the 24 year-old soldier who was killed a year and a half ago in Iraq, isn’t the only deceased member of the military to put a human face on the Iraq War, the futility of the U.S. occupation there is now in sharper relief because of the efforts of his grieving, emboldened mother, Cindy. Throughout August, Cindy Sheehan took up residence outside of George Bush’s vacation ranch in Crawford, Texas imploring Mr. Bush to meet with her to explain what exactly her son died for. Mr. Bush refused. Now Casey’s mom is on a 25-state peace tour in her quest for answers about the continuing bloodbath that has taken the lives of nearly 1,900 U.S. military and uncounted thousands of Iraqis. Cindy Sheehan’s maternal voice awakened in MRC Executive Director Rob Okun, a father of four, thoughts about Casey. Rob found himself wondering recently what Casey would have to say if he were alive today.

I looked up from the table where my family and I were eating supper on our cozy deck and spied Casey looking healthy and relaxed. He had on a t-shirt bearing the legend “Camp Casey: Where We Patrol for Truth.” On his chest he wore a button featuring a smiling photo of his mother. On its inner edge were the words “Stop Hijacking Our Democracy!”

He ambled over to where my wife and our 17-year-old son, and three daughters, age 20, 24, and 27 were seated around the table. Without introduction, Casey began talking. “I wish those high and mighty commentators would stop talking trash about my mother,” he said, eyeing us with a familiarity I couldn’t explain. “They don’t understand her a whit!”

“What do you mean?” I asked, motioning for him to pull up a chair and join us for supper.

“When a parent loses a child when they’re young like I was, something happens to them. It’s a test of their spirit and it’s a torment to their heart. But it can also focus their energy, their commitment. They want to keep the memory of their loved one alive, so they will themselves to find meaning in their dead child’s life.

“For my mother,” he continued, serving himself salad, “it’s about more than that. Of course it started out about my memory, but now it’s about a much bigger truth than me or my life–it’s about the lives of all the soldiers who’ve died and the ones still living who she wants to see come home safely. And it’s about the Iraqis caught in the middle.” He stopped for a moment, summoning up his next words.

“I died for nothing,” he spat out bitterly, looking from face to face to face around the table, lingering on our son, a senior in high school. “Not for a cache of weapons never found, not for terrorist cells never in the country. I died defending fear!”

We all had put down our forks and stopped eating. Six pairs of eyes were on this earnest young man.

“We couldn’t admit after 9/11 that we were afraid, that we felt vulnerable. That we were scared about what might happen. A lot of guys like me joined the military after 9/11 but nobody ever talked to us about how we felt, just that we going to get revenge–that ‘no punk terrorists were going to pull a stunt like that and get way with it.’

“From my vantage now I can see a lot clearer. It’s amazing what you begin to feel when you are together with 1900 guys who were killed. You know we all live together, don’t you?” He sensed that the idea that all the U.S. war dead were together was new information for us.

“It’s funny that the gathering that grew up around my mother was called “Camp Casey” because where I live now the name changes every day so that everybody gets a turn: ‘Camp Francisco, Camp Ethan, Camp Louie, Camp Jesus…’ With 365 days in a year it’ll take five, six years for everybody to get a turn. If no more were to die.”

Casey sighed and he was quiet. When he spoke it was in a hoarse whisper. The previously poised young man began to look ashen, as if the weight of his words, like the deaths of so many of his fallen comrades, was bearing down on him.

“I wish I could cry,” he said. “I wish George Bush could cry. I wish the generals and the colonels could cry and the majors and the captains and the lieutenants. I wish the sergeants and the corporals and the privates could all cry. I wish we could stand across the road from Iraqi families with their dead all around them and cry together. I wish we could cry and cry and cry and that our tears would grow into a river that could wash us all clean. I wish this river of tears could wash through dusty roads in Texas and from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other, and to the roads leading to the Pentagon in Virginia. I wish that everyone in this country and in Iraq, and the other countries in the Middle East, and in Africa and Asia, Europe and South America–everywhere could wash their hands in those salty tears, dunk their heads in them, immerse their whole bodies in them. Like a baptism.”

Casey’s own tears came then, building from quiet sobs, growing stronger, until his whole body began to heave and his cries were shrieks punctuated by gasps for air. Gently helping him to his feet we encircled him, taking turns holding him, tenderly stroking his soft hair. After several moments he grew calmer, began to compose himself. He drank a glass of water and color returned to his face. He looked at each of us with warm, accepting eyes. After a few more minutes of silence, he began readying to leave.

“What are you going to do now?” I asked him, as he stood up.

“I’m going to join my mother. She needs me. She needs to know I can cry now.”

It was dusk, the last light of an early September evening growing faint. We stood together as his figure cross the yard–an American family watching and waiting, well after the image of Casey Sheehan had faded into the night.

Originally published in Summer 2005.

A headline in The Boston Globe on Father’s Day, “Daddy, What Did You Do in the Men’s Movement?” caught my eye with its catchy if cynical play on the phrase, “Daddy, what did you do in the war?” Expectantly, I began reading, eager to see how New England’s largest newspaper would report on the “personal growth, challenging violence” component of the movement that the Men’s Resource Center for Change has been championing for nearly 25 years. What a letdown the article turned out to be.

The cover story of the Sunday Globe’s “Ideas” section, the piece was written by a Boston writer-editor named Paul Zakrzewski. Inexplicably, instead of shining a spotlight on what is really happening in the many men’s movements active in the United States today, Mr. Zakrzewski recycled outdated information about Robert Bly’s Iron John, which he termed “a cultural exegesis on wounded masculinity”–published a decade and a half ago–along with references to the Promise Keepers, the evangelical Christian group advocating a kinder, gentler patriarchy whose heyday also passed years ago.

A growing number of men in the United States and around the world subscribe to the twin aims of “supporting men” and “challenging violence,” values the MRC has chrampioned for more than two decades. We’ve long followed men walking that talk, chronicling the rise of community-based men’s resource centers in Taos, N.M.; Harlingen, Tex.; Keene, N.H.; Burlington, Vt., and Worcester, Mass.; the budding Men’s Resource Center of Boston and Boys to Men in Portland, Me.; and the Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe, a project of the statewide Massachusetts coalition of battered women’s shelters and rape crisis centers. None of their rich, inspiring stories were told in the Globe article.

Absent, too, was any mention of the vibrant collaborations men’s organizations are having with women and women’s organizations, a hallmark of this diverse movement.

What also might have added some freshness to the article would have been a description of the emergence in the last several years of men’s work on dozens of college and university campuses, where male-run student groups with names like Men Against Violence Against Women and Male Dissent are engaged in taking the journey to healthy manhood on the twin tracks of inner work and outer action.

After reading the Globe article, Steven Botkin, director emeritus of the Men’s Resource Center for Change, sent the newspaper a letter to the editor, writing in part: “As someone who has been educating and organizing men for the past 25 years, I continue to be intrigued by how the media has played the ‘men’s movement.’” He noted that what he called “media hype about men’s personal growth retreats in the early 1990s made one expression of this movement a highly visible, and often ridiculed, fad. This, however, was, and still is, only a small part of the real story.”

Now founder of the education and consulting organization Men’s Resources International, Botkin continued, “In communities throughout the United States, organizations for supporting men and challenging the culture of violence are growing. A recent United Nations Institute on working with men and boys highlighted men’s organizations from many different countries and demonstrated an eagerness of women from around the world to work with men. While it may not have the media appeal of drumming in the woods, or football stadium gatherings, men for the past three decades, in partnership with women, have been patiently and persistently building a movement.”

In New England, the Globe’s primary community of readers, men’s work is alive and well, from the Monadnock Men’s Resource Center in Keene, N.H., to the Central Massachusetts Men’s Resource Center in Worcester, Mass., and the Lake Champlain Men’s Resource Center in Burlington, Vt.–three organizations that, as it happens, are working with the Men’s Resource Center for Change, and also distributing Voice Male magazine. The men who are part of this growing movement that supports men and challenges violence are also learning to better navigate their own complex, interior lives while finding their voices to take a stand as activists challenging the minority of men who perpetrate violence in society. That is a key characteristic distinguishing the older men’s movement the Globe article rehashed from the rich, many-faceted contemporary one the MRC is at the forefront of and which Voice Male reports on each issue.

Sadly, like many mainstream-media depictions of “the men’s movement,” the Globe article left readers under-served, ill informed, and hungry. The MRC and Voice Male’s mission continues to be one working to make sure its community receives a generous helping of ideas, programs, news, opinion, and inspirational reports on the journey to healthy manhood and the evolution of contemporary masculinity.