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Discussion About the Cover

Can a Man be a Human Being?
Boys, Porn, and Raising Good Men
Understanding Transgender Lives
The Racial-Sexism Black Males Face

Features

Can a Man be a Human Being?
by Allan Johnson
If “man” cannot be reduced to “male,” then what’s left are the requirements of manhood, which is not known for encouraging sensitivity and insight into the lives of others.

Domestic Violence Survivors Targeted
by ‘Nuisance’ Evictions” by Eleanor J. Bader
To an outsider looking in, Alice and James would have seemed like a typical Manhattan couple, both professionals and parents of one college-age son. They had lived in their rent-regulated apartment for 25 years and, while James’s name was the only one on the lease, it had never occurred to Alice to ask the landlord to add her name to the contract.

Abusive Men Describe the Benefits of Violence
by Chuck Derry
For many years, I facilitated courtmandated groups for men who batter. In the early 1980s we were concentrating on healthy relationship skills building, emotional identification and selfcontrol, and anger management, among other related issues. Then battered women in Duluth, Minnesota, began gathering to discuss the impact of the violence on their lives.

Boys, Porn, and Raising Good Men
by Kathleen Kempke
I’ve worked in the antiviolence field since 1980—in rape crisis centers as an educator, advocate, director and board member of two state sexual assault coalitions/ councils. As a committed feminist who raised sons, I know the work I do did not always make their lives easy.

Respecting Identity and the Right to be Real
by Damon Hastings
Reading Zoe Dolan’s memoir, There Is Room for You (see sidebar), prompted Voice Male’s Damon Hastings to muse on the language we use to talk about transgenderism and sexuality more broadly.

A Gay Husband’s Open Letter to Kim Davis
by Jim Obergefell
Jim Obergefell, plaintiff in the U.S. Supreme Court case that established nationwide marriage equality recently, wrote an open letter to defiant Rowan County, Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to all eligible couples.

God Responds to Kim Davis
by God
Voice Male magazine, a publication chronicling the profeminist men’s movement, reports that it has come into possession of a memo from God to Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk who has refused to issue marriage licenses to any couples since the Supreme Court ruling affirming gay marriage more than two months ago.

What is Nonviolence Anyhow?
by Tom Hastings
What is it, this nonviolence? Who gets to define it?

When Are Men’s Threats Threatening?
by Rus Ervin Funk
The Supreme Court ruled in June that a man who used social media to make explicit violent comments directed at his exwife, coworkers, a neighborhood school—and the FBI—was not “threatening” because he didn’t intend his comments to be threatening.

Joe Ehrmann: Courageous Enough to be Vulnerable
by various contributors
When Joe Ehrmann, coach, pastor, activist, and retired NFL lineman, received a lifetime achievement award at a national conference on sports culture and domestic and sexual violence recently, he cried. Not a surprise for a man known for being courageous enough to be vulnerable, even in front of several hundred people. In the tributes below from colleagues who have collaborated with Joe for decades—and in his own words—it is easy to understand who this kindhearted soul is: a man who believes that expressing love and being of service to others are among the highest acts men can aspire to achieve in their lives, actions that celebrate their full humanity.

The Three Scariest Words a Boy Will Ever Hear
by Joe Ehrmann
t’s rare that a man makes it through life without being told, at least once, “Be a man.” To Joe Ehrmann, a former NFL defensive lineman, a pastor, and an activist-educator working on the transformation of notions of manhood, those are among the most frightening words a boy can hear.

World Leaders Pledge to Close Gender Gap
Voice Male staff
Some 80 world leaders made a commitment on behalf of their governments to end discrimination against women by 2030 and announced they would take concrete action to accelerate change in their countries.

Columns & Opinion

From the Editor
A Campaign to Raise Healthy Sons
by Rob Okun
n the days after the shootings at Umpqua Community College, if you watched television, listened to the radio, or read news online or in a newspaper, you heard nothing about 26-year-old shooter Chris Harper-Mercer’s gender being among the most important aspects of the story. Why?

Letters

Fall 2015: Men @ Work

Color Lines
Why Black Males Need to Identify Racial-Sexism Against Them
by Dr. T. Hasan Johnson
Racial-sexism against Black males takes place at every age. It’s institutional. Black male toddlers and boys often experience racial-sexism in school, where they are targeted as Black males based on conduct, learning styles, and productivity. And although many of us are familiar with how Black kids are discriminated against, we often don’t think of it as sexism (especially against boys). Black girls and boys are both discriminated against, but rates of common class verbal “punishments”—detention, sent to the principal, expulsions, even arrests, are inordinately highest among Black males (I also consider graduation rates, alternative education enrollment rates, and access to gifted programs as inverse forms of “punishment” when low or high).

Books
Voice Male’s Damon Hastings Reviews Four Books

Poetry
Keeping Quiet
By Robert Bly

Resources

Poetry
In the Cave of the Teenagers
By Freya Manfred