Breaking the Silence on Sex Abuse
Manhood After Penn State
White Ribbon’s Culture of Peace
Living and Loving with E.D.
What Kind of Man Am I?
Still Afraid of Feminism?

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Now that the public outcry has died down over the Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s ill-advised decision to defund Planned Parenthood (within days they reversed themselves after a blistering protest) there’s time to consider men’s role in the controversy. As a group, caring men were silent, ceding public discourse to the same intrusive men who have long tried to control women’s reproductive lives; men who, in seeking to destroy Planned Parenthood, politicized breast health. Yes, women were major actors in this story, especially including senior management at the Komen Foundation. But men’s fingerprints have long been all over women’s health issues.

To me it’s manly to speak out on behalf of our sisters and mothers, wives and daughters. Too much is at stake for men to stand mute while sideline blowhards go after the women in our lives—first their ovaries, then their mammary glands.

Consider the politics of the situation—right, left, center, who isn’t in favor of breast health? In case anyone thinks men are immune: we get breast cancer, too. My wife’s cousin, David, was diagnosed three years ago. (See “My Father’s Breast Cancer, Fall 2011.) It’s in men’s interest to acknowledge these are community issues, not women’s issues.

Last summer my wife and I joined our cousin for seven of the 60 miles he walked into Boston to raise money for the Komen foundation. It was a classic New England August Sunday morning and there was a festive buzz among the throng of walkers. Survivors, families of those who’d died, young and old—a rainbow of citizens strolling under an azure sky, all with a common purpose: to cure breast cancer. The most heated conversation I heard all afternoon concerned baseball: would the Red Sox make it back to the World Series in the fall.

At the end of our leg of the walk, after we’d sauntered through Cambridge neighborhoods and down Boston thoroughfares, slaked our thirst with orange wedges and our hunger with granola bars, we wrote a check to the foundation in honor of our cousin. We were delighted he was two years cancer-free. And I said a prayer of gratitude for my wife—healthy and strong 21 years after her own bout with breast cancer.

Despite reversing its decision to sever ties with Planned Parenthood, I am still angry the foundation inserted politics into a nonpartisan issue—publicly working on behalf of one aspect of woman’s health while privately working against another.

Meanwhile, unfathomable as it may be to many citizens at the start of the second decade of the 21st century, another heated debate is underway; this time it’s birth control as it applies to the 2010 health insurance law (aka Obamacare.) On one side is the White House wanting to ensure that women who  work at or seek services from Catholic health care facilities have access to birth control. On the other side are employees at those institutions who, for religious reasons, insist they shouldn’t be compelled to dispense birth control. Another community issue where men’s voices are too few and too soft.

What if it were men’s health on the line instead of women’s? I can’t imagine caring men standing silently by as other controlling men clog the public airwaves and the blogosphere. Too often, though, instead of speaking out on behalf of women’s rights, we remain bystanders. Are we too timid to speak out, fearful we’ll be put down, castigated as a mangina instead of celebrated as a mangina warrior?

Remember the bumper sticker, “Keep Your Laws Off of My Body?” It’s not just a slogan for women. Deep down, men know that an assault on women is an assault on us, too. But unless more of us are willing to raise our voices on behalf of our mothers and sisters, our wives and daughters, we risk ending up like the boys who were banished to the back row of middle school chorus. You know, the ones who were ordered to mouth the words, the ones who sometimes grew up to be tough guys with hardened hearts and scowls on their faces. The risks are too great to be silent. It’s time to open up our mouths. It’s time to sing.

Joe Paterno, the Penn State football coach who died in January just three months after a child rape scandal had stained his reputation, left behind more than a flock of adoring fans and a growing band of critics. His legacy now includes inadvertently energizing the movement to stop the sexual abuse of children. There’s more. That the heinous actions that came to light took place in the athletic world also offers a rare, national opportunity to raise questions about the culture of sports and the silence of men.

Paterno did the bare minimum, reporting only one rung up the chain of command what was reported to him about his longtime assistant, Jerry Sandusky—seen raping a 10-year-old boy in a university athletic department shower. 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. How much more did that eat at him than did the lung cancer officially cited as the cause of his death?

Although officials could have done much more, by firing Coach “JoePa” (who, it was reported, planned to retire at the end of the season), the university changed the rules of the game: No longer would hush-hush trump sound the alarm. Going forward, the precedent now is: a bystander who doesn’t try to intervene, who doesn’t try to stop an act of abuse, will be held accountable.

Programs and organizations like Coaching Boys into Men, Mentors in Violence Prevention and the Waitt Institute, among others, are poised to lead trainings on this lesson. They have long facilitated workshops for students and staff on bystander intervention—learning the how and why of speaking up.

The college football season ended without the general public hearing much from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). That was a lost opportunity for the NCAA to exercise leadership in tackling the issue of sexual abuse. There still is time. Well before college players return to training camps this summer, the NCAA should announce they are financing—not just a one-shot teach-in at Penn State—ongoing trainings at colleges and universities across the country. What is needed is a sustained, national campaign addressing sexual assault, male socialization, and the masculine culture of violence. Money for such an effort is not an issue since the NCAA long ago turned college sports into a megabusiness.

In every state, sexual and domestic violence prevention coalitions are working night and day to stop the violence; they also can and should be tapped. And men’s antiviolence organizations including Men Can Stop Rape, A Call to Men, and Men Stopping Violence, among others, can play a role in an all out effort.

Starting at Penn State, let’s get ESPN and Sports Illustrated to broadcast and cover the teach-ins nationwide—so students especially can see this is a national crisis, not just a campus scandal.

“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?”

The truth is, most men are good guys who don’t abuse women, girls, boys, or other men. A simultaneous truth is 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.”

Men have a long history of colluding with other men in codes of silence, said Ted Bunch and Tony Porter in a statement posted on their A Call to Men website (acalltomen.com), not long after the Penn State revelations came to light. “This pervasive silence among men in our culture to protect the status quo, to win at any cost, and never tell on your brother is a glaring example of how destructive the current model…of manhood operates to demean, diminish and oppress anyone… not considered a ‘real man’ in our society. Our fear of being perceived as less than a man or weak, keeps us in line with these codes, regardless of right and wrong.” To too many, being a whistleblower is out of the question, especially after our boyhoods reinforced the message of never being a tattletale.

Only when men recognize our relationship to perpetrator, bystander, and-or victim, can we become most effective as change agents. Wherever the silence comes from, it ignores our collective responsibility to insist more men join women in working to end rape and abuse.

Out of the scandal at Penn State may come some good: the sexual abuse of boys may no longer remain invisible, “kept under the tight cloak of domination, stigma and internalized masculinity,” as Men’s Resources International’s Steven Botkin reminds us. “The impact of this reality feeds the male violence machine in ways we may not yet fully understand,” Botkin says. “Our collective silence about this part of the system means many of its victims go unrecognized and limits our capacity for intervention and prevention.”

Women have long been on the front lines of efforts to end domestic and sexual violence. They and girls, boys, and men should be free both from actual harm and the threat of abuse. For more than a quarter century, more and more men have joined them, challenging the masculine culture of aggression even as it digs in, continuing its efforts to bully us. Beyond all the trainings and teach-ins, we need individual men to mobilize right now—from isolated rural outbacks to teeming urban centers; from high up in the grandstands to the sidelines at midfield. There’s the whistle; what are we waiting for?

A version of editor Rob Okun’s commentary appeared Thanksgiving Day at Women’s eNews (www.womensenews.org). He can be reached at rob@voicemalemagazine.org.

It’s happened again. Another domestic violence death has rocked the Valley. We weep for Jessica Ann Pripstein, found slain in her apartment Feb. 20; her boyfriend charged with killing her.

How can we comfort her family and friends? For all the vitally important work that’s been done to prevent violence in our community for decades – first by women, later joined by men – we know we can’t stop every abusive act of malice.

The work Safe Passage, the YWCA, NELCWIT, Womanshelter/Companeras, and the Everywoman’s Center do to support survivors of violence; the efforts Moving Forward makes with perpetrators in its batterers’ intervention program; the broad reach of the domestic violence task forces of the region’s District Attorney’s offices, all have greatly improved the lives of women and have helped men and boys live lives based on a culture of peace. And yet, it’s happened again.

In these raw early days of grieving for Jessica Pripstein, it may be small comfort to know there is an international movement of men and young men saying no to all acts of abuse against women, including murder, the act Ryan D. Welch is accused of committing.

But the story of the White Ribbon Campaign, founded more than two decades ago in Canada, is exactly the kind we need to hear at a moment like this– when our hearts are heavy, when hope for harmony in the home may seem a distant dream.

Across Massachusetts this week, including at a gathering at the State House on Thursday, hundreds of men and young men will don white ribbons and sign pledges stating, “From this day forward, I promise to be part of the solution in ending violence against women.”

It was Dec. 6, 1989. Angry that he’d failed to get into engineering school, a lone gunman strode into a lecture hall at the University of Montréal and murdered 14 women whom he blamed for his academic failure. A shock wave pulsed through every segment of Canadian society – from the classroom to the barroom.

Two years later, challenged by the women in their lives to respond to all forms of men’s violence against women, three men—the late Jack Layton, Michael Kaufman, and Ron Sluser (with others)—launched the White Ribbon Campaign (WRC) as a way for men to begin to take a stand against men’s violence against women. That first year, 1991, 100,000 wore ribbons across Canada. Today, the campaign has spread to at least 70 countries and several million men have signed pledges not to commit, condone, or remain silent in the face of domestic or sexual violence.

At its heart an educational campaign, WRC is politically nonpartisan, seeking to reach a wide swath of men and young men. Some serve as informal ambassadors spreading the word. In the U.S., the campaign has been growing in recent years in, particularly here in Massachusetts. It is spearheaded by the Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe Inc., the Boston-based statewide coalition against sexual assault and domestic violence. It coordinates 60 local member programs around Massachusetts working with allies on, what Jane Doe organizers say, are “lasting solutions that promote safety, liberty, and dignity for victims and survivors of sexual and domestic violence.” The 2012 Massachusetts White Ribbon Day, the fifth such commemoration, will be marked by a gathering on Thursday at the State House, as well as a separate first-ever White Ribbon Campaign incorporating members of the military.

The 2012 campaign has added a new component, a tool kit to help male high school athletic teams across the Commonwealth. “Young Men 4 Change” encourages male youth to demonstrate leadership in addressing violence against females in the school community.

“Since many coaches and student athletes are leaders in their wider communities,” Norberg-Bohm said, “emphasizing working with male athletic teams is a powerful way to both invite and inspire other men and boys to make a public and private commitment to promote respectful, safe, and healthy relationships.” Coaches can be instrumental in helping athletes they are training to become involved in White Ribbon Day and to assist them to be responsible people on the field and off. What could the impact be of hundreds of male coaches and student athletes across the state declaring their commitment to this principle of non-violence?

We’ll never know if Ryan Welch, charged with Jessica Pripstein’s murder, would have turned out to be a different kind of man if he had gone to a high school “promoting values of safety and respect in all relationships and situations.” What we can know is some young men will listen, are listening.

To honor Jessica Pripstein’s memory – along with all the women who have been killed in domestic violence murders in Western Massachusetts, the Commonwealth, across the country and around the world – let’s dedicate this year’s White Ribbon Campaign to each of them. Let’s take the pledge to remember that harmony in our world begins with peace in our homes.

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.