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N e w Vi s i o n s o f M a n h o o d
Voice Male
The Magazine of The Men’s Resource Center for change
Winter 2007
Can Filmmaker Byron Hurt
Recast Hip-Hop's
View of Manhood?
I N S ID E
Believing in (Young) Men l Fathers, Sons, Loss and Redemption l My Gay San Francisco
Men and Abortion After South Dakota l Memo to the Media: It's Men's Violence
• V oice M ale
F rom T he E ditor
Filling the Glass of Hope
2
Believing in (Young) Men
By Rob Okun
I
n the trade I ply—encouraging
men to explore options outside the
constraining box of conventional
masculinity—there’s certainly no
shortageofbadnews.Men’sviolence
against women (and other men) remains at
catastrophiclevels;there’slittlechanceVoice
Male, or its publisher, 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 war in Iraq, the criminal neglect plaguing the Gulf Coast and
New Orleans, the indifference to the tragedy 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? 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,andmetinaclassroomafterschoolwith
local male high school juniors and seniors,
members of a “women’s rights club.”
It was hard to retain my glass-half-full
demeanor when I arrived 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’ve moved to
town to help with the relief effort. The
mix of women and men, many volunteering with the Common Ground Collective,
representsthebestofourtroubled,creative
country. Since Hurricane Katrina and the
ensuing floods overwhelmed the region,
thousands of volunteers have passed
throughCommonGround,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 vol-
“ In the faces of young men sitting around a fire pit in a New
Orleans backyard I saw compassion, soft and understated.”
unteers. 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
grassrootsefforts.Theircompassioncaught
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 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 filmmaker Byron Hurt (see story page 8)
and most of the members of The Men’s
Project of Amherst College. 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 the filmmaker to screen his
new film, Hip Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes.
At dinner, one young man asked Hurt 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 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
sharedwhythey’djoined:becomingaware
of the sexual harassment female students
experience; wanting to support a Vagina
Monologues performance; not wanting to
have to pretend they were a certain kind of
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. 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.”Others then shared how
theirmalefriendshadteasedthem,too.But
they’d 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. For someone who likes to see his glass
half full, I left the high school that day with
my cup overflowing. VM
VoiceMaleeditorRobOkuncanbereachedat
[email protected].
Table of Contents
Features
Byron Hurt’s Crusade to Save . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Hip-Hop from Itself
By Rob Okun
The High Cost of Manliness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
By Robert Jensen
Memo to the Media: It’s Men’s Violence . . 13
By Jackson Katz
Time for Men to Champion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Reproductive Rights
By Rob Okun
How Can We Stop the Violence? . . . . . . . . 17
By Rus Funk
Voice Male
Columns & Opinion
From the Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Mail Bonding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Men @ Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Fathering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Fathers, Sons, and the Ripples of Loss
By Jonathan Diamond
Voices of Youth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Leaving the Team, Becoming a Man
By Nathan Einschlag
GBQ Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
OutLines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
My Gay San Francisco, Then and Now
By Les K. Wright
Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Thank You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
MRC Programs & Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Masculinity redefined...New visions of manhood...
Men overcoming isolation...
No matter how you describe it,
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understand contemporary men and masculinity.
Ride the waves of changing ideas about men
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W inter 2007 •
VOICE MALE is published quarterly by the Men’s
Resource Center for Change, 236 North Pleasant
St., Amherst, MA 01002. It is mailed to donors and
subscribers in the U.S., Canada, and overseas and
distributed at select locations around New England.
The opinions expressed in VOICE MALE may not
represent the views of all staff, board, volunteers, or
members of the Men’s Resource Center for Change.
Copyright © 2007 Voice Male Magazine.
Subscriptions:Forsubscriptioninformation,call(413)
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3
Mail Bonding
Texas Inmate Asks: Tell My Story
I’m writing to tell you how much I enjoy
y’alls magazine, which my brother introduced
me to. I am currently an inmate at the Travis
State Jail in Austin, Texas. I also am a victim
of abuse—sexual, physical and mental. My
father sexually abused me when I was a child.
National Advisory Board
Voice Male Magazine
Men’s Resource Center For Change
John Badalament, Boston
Juan Carlos Areán, Boston
Byron Hurt, New York City
Robert Jensen, Austin
Sut Jhally, Northampton, Mass.
Jackson Katz, Long Beach, Calif.
Joe Kelly, Duluth, Minn.
Michael Kimmel, Brooklyn
Bill T. Jones, New York City
Michael Messner, Los Angeles
Don McPherson, Long Island, N.Y.
Craig Norberg-Bohm, Boston
Haji Shearer, Boston
My stepfathers physically abused me and it’s all
been really mentally abusing if you know what
I mean. By the grace of God and a really loving,
caringandsupportivemother,Ihavemanaged
to make it through it all. I now have a family of
my own who I love with all my heart. I would
like one day to maybe have my story told in
your magazine. Also, there are many males
here who can benefit from y’alls magazine.
Maybe you can send a bundle to the chaplain
hereattheunitandhecoulddistributethemto
inmates that want them. Thanks, and keep up
the good work. Without an organization like
the Men’s Resource Center and a magazine like
Voice Male, I and many other men would have
no place to turn for guidance and support!
Luis Aquino
Austin, Texas
High School Males Join
Women’s Rights Club
I’m one of the male members of a club
started at our high school for raising awareness about violence against women. I’m
looking forward to what we, as a combined
group of males and females, can accomplish
You’re never far from Voice Male!
• V oice M ale
Look for the magazine at these distribution points
throughout the U.S.:
4
California: Black Oak Books, Berkeley; Center for
Women and Men, USC, Los Angeles; Modern TImes,
San Franscisco • Colorado: Boulder Cooperative
Market, Boulder; Page Two, Boulder • Florida: Goering’s
Bookstore, Gainesville • Illinois: Box Car Books,
Bloomington; New World Resource Center, Chicago
• Maine: Boys to Men, Portland • (Eastern) Massachusetts: Family Violence Prevention Fund, Boston;
Jane Doe, Boston; Men’s Resource Center of Central
Mass., Worcester; NOMAS-Boston, Westford
• New Hampshire: Monadnock Men’s Resource Center,
Keene • New Mexico: Community Against Violence,
Taos; El Refugio, Silver City • North Carolina: Downtown Books and News, Asheville • Oregon: Breaking Free,
Eugene • Texas: Men’s Resource Center of South Texas,
Harlingen • Vermont: Everyone’s Books, Brattleboro;
Healthy Living Market, South Burlington; Lake Champlain
Men’s Resource Center, Burlington • Washington:
Elliot Bay Café, Seattle; Twice Sold Tales, Seattle
Write to [email protected] for more
information on distributing VOICE MALE in your area.
in the name of raising awareness of violence
against women. Our club meets every week.
I’d like our group to visit your magazine and
the Men’s Resource Center but our group
now has about 60 members, a quarter male!
Could you come to the high school to talk to
usaboutworkingtopreventviolenceagainst
women? I know it’s a broad topic, but most
of the guys in the group are new and unfamiliar with this topic. Some expressed how
surprised they were to find out that it happens to females in our school. We’re looking
forward to learning about ideas beneficial
for guys.
David Katwiwa
Women’s Rights Club, Amherst, Mass.
We Want to Hear from You!
Write us at:
Voice Male, MRC, 236 North Pleasant St.
Amherst, MA 01002 or Fax (413) 253-4801
[email protected]
Please include address and phone.
Letters may be edited for clarity and length.
Deadline for Spring issue: March 15, 2007
M en @ W ork
Gender, Bullying, and
“School Shootings”
B
ullying caused by gender stereotypes appears to be at issue in a
school shooting by 17-year-old Joshua
Minks, his mother believes. Amanda
Minks began speaking publicly about
the incident last August, according to
the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition’s
(GenderPAC) GenderYOUTH Network,
a collaboration of more than 200 student
leaders on 45 campuses in two dozen
states working to ensure that school is a
safe place for all students. Minks said her
son had complained of being subjected
to daily taunting and homophobic slurs
by classmates because of his appearance.
Minks is 6’5” and weighs 400 pounds.
Minks, who attended high school in
Farmington, Missouri, pleaded guilty to
assault on school property and unlawful
use of a weapon last summer after firing a hole into the school ceiling with
a shotgun when he was confronted by
three students. A principal and teacher
subdued him before anyone was hurt.
“Research shows that school violence against boys who are seen as
unmanly—public humiliation, ridicule,
beatings and other attacks—is closely
linked to school shootings,” said Tyrone
Hanley, the Gender Public Advocacy
Coalition Youth Program Coordinator
in Washington. “This incident seems to
follow that pattern.”
In a 2003 study of school violence,
SUNY–Stony Brook sociology professor Michael Kimmel, a member of the
continued on page 6
Engaging Men in Nigeria
Top: MRI's James Arana, second from right, at a Women's
Day Celebration. Middle: DOVENET founder and director
Ugo Nnachi. Bottom: MRI's James Arana and Steven Botkin.
W inter 2007 •
Photos courtesy of Men’s Resources International
L
ast November, James Arana and Steven Botkin of Men’s
Resources International (MRI) traveled to Ebonyi State in
Nigeria to provide 10 days of training and consultations for the
development of the Ebonyi Men’s Resource Center. The event, called
“Engaging Men in Eliminating Gender-Based Violence,” was hosted
by DOVENET, a women’s safety and empowerment organization,
directed by Chief Ugo Nnachi.
The 36 men and women attending the training included doctors,
lawyers, nurses, social workers, police, a traditional ruler, military,
clergy, and other members of the community. Representatives from
the Zambia Men’s Network and the Rwanda Men’s Centre (both
formed with assistance from MRI) were enthusiastic participants who
provided a pan-African perspective.
“James and I were blessed by the gracious hospitality of the people
of Ebonyi State, Nigeria,” said MRI executive director Steven Botkin.
“Welcomed deeply into their lives, we came to understand how they
are blending tradition with a commitment to empowerment into a
significant force for social transformation. Our approach to engaging
men in violence prevention and positive masculinity has been enthusiastically received by both men and women as part of this process.”
Men’s Resources International has now conducted consultations
and trainings in Zambia, Nigeria, and Liberia, assisting in the creation
of men’s initiatives in each of these countries as well as in Rwanda.
Along with requests for assistance from Niger and the Democratic
Republic of Congo, these experiences reflect a blossoming interest
among many African men and women in working together to end
gender-basedviolence.Byfacilitatingcommunicationsandnetworking among these initiatives, MRI has been working to support the
emergence of an African men’s network.
For more information on MRI and its work, visit www.mensresourcesinternational.org.
5
Men’s Resource Center’s and Voice Male’s
advisory board, found that nearly all 29
school shootings that occurred between
1992 and 2001 involved shotguns or
assault rifles and were carried out by
heterosexual white male teenagers in
rural communities who had been mercilessly bullied for being unmasculine or
unathletic.
And gender bullying is apparently
widespread: 27 percent of students
reported harassment for not being masculine or feminine enough and over half
said that school was unsafe for boys
who weren’t as masculine as other boys
in a 2004 study by the California Safe
Schools Coalition.
Added Hanley, “We’re not going to
stop school shootings until we address
violent codes of masculinity among
rural, white, teenage males.”
In an interview with KFVS television
in August, Minks’s mother claimed the
school promised to examine its safety
and harassment guidelines to address
the bullying directed at her son, but
never followed through.
GenderPAC can be reached at www.
gpac.org, 1743 Connecticut Ave. NW,
Washington, D.C. 20009.
Texas Men’s Center Launches
Newspaper Column
• V oice M ale
T
6
he executive director of the Men’s
Resource Center of
SouthTexas has begun
writing a newspaper
column for the San
Benito News, a twiceEmiliano Diaz de Leon
weeklypublishedinthe
major neighboring city east of Harlingen,
Texas, where the center is based. In his
inaugural column, “Good Will Towards
Men...And Especially Women,” Emiliano
Diaz de Leon challenged the men in his
“community to break free from…the typical [New Year’s] resolutions of weight loss
and financial gain… invit[ing] men to
reflect on the issue of domestic violence
and resolve to be a part of the solution
rather than the problem.”
His first column was published in the
widely distributed paper just after New
Year’s. Citing grim violence and abuse statistics from the Department of Justice, he
also reported on an increase in domestic
violence murders in Texas from 114 in
2004 to 143 in 2005 (figures for 2006
have not been yet calculated).
After remembering by name seven
women murdered in 2005 in his home
region of the Rio Grande Valley, he called
on men to make“a personal pledge never
to commit, condone, or remain silent
about violence against women and children.” He challenged men “to make this
pledge your resolution not just for 2007
but for each day of your life. This is one
resolution that is too important to give up
on after just one week.”
Diaz de Leon’s column, which will
appear the first week of each month, will
also be posted on the Men’s Resource
Center of South Texas’ website: www.
mrcofsouthtexas.org. VM
Kapler Speaking Out
Against Gender Violence
O
neofthebiggestimpediments
topreventingviolenceagainst
women, many advocates believe, is men’s silence. The Boston-based
Center for the Study of Sport in Society
hopes to change that through a new
campaign called “Leaders Act.” The
campaign,designedtodrawattentionto
men’s violence against women, enlisted
as its first spokesperson former Boston
Red Sox outfielder Gabe Kapler. (Kapler,
a supporter of the Men’s Resource
Center for Change, was recently named
manager of the Sox minor league team
in South Carolina. He was featured in
Lisa and Gabe Kapler
Voice Male Fall 2005).
“Every person, man or woman, has the power to stand up for victims of
violence,” says Kapler, who three years ago joined his wife, Lisa, a victim of
dating violence, in speaking out against gender violence. Kapler says working
with Sport in Society’s Leaders Act program (based at Northeastern University)
“is tremendously important for me as an athlete to set an example”to challenge
men’s violence against women.
DevelopedbyManasianInc.,amarketingcommunicationsagency,theLeaders
Act campaign uses the appeal of professional athletes to help create awareness
about gender violence. It features Sport in Society’s flagship program, Mentors in
Violence Prevention (MVP), as a key training tool. Kapler is the first in a series of
athletes to support the cause. MVP motivates men and women to play a central
role in solving problems historically deemed “women’s issues”: rape, battering,
and sexual abuse, viewing men and women not as potential perpetrators or
victims, but as empowered bystanders who can confront abusive peers.
“Gabe [Kapler] is taking the leadership responsibility seriously by stepping
up, using …his personal story to get the message out,” said director of Sport in
Society Peter Roby. He also praised the Red Sox for being the first major league
baseball team to use the MVP program to educate its minor league players about
gender violence.
For more information visit www.leadersact.org.
Photo by Julie Cordeiro
M en @ W ork
Men @ Work continued from page 5
Thanks!
The Men’s Resource Center for
Change thanks everyone who
contributed to the success of the
Light at the Dark of the Year
concert with Steven Schoenberg.
J.F. Conlon & Associates
Daily Hampshire Gazette
Eastworks • Florence Savings Bank
Freedom Credit Union
Integrity Development &
Construction
Log Cabin Banquet &
Meeting House • Smith College
WFCR • WGBY
Big Y Foods • Loose Goose Café
Osaka Japanese Restaurant
Paul & Elizabeth’s • Spirit Haus
Woodstar Café
Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker
Psychotherapy
for Individuals and Relationships
Northampton office
413-586-7454
[email protected]
Robert Mazer ~ Psychotherapist
For men looking to let go of patterns that don’t work
and create a more purposeful, fulfilling life.
Staff member at the Synthesis Center in Amherst
Free initial consultation/flexible fees
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W inter 2007 •
Athol Savings Bank • Lisa Baskin
Blair, Cutting & Smith Insurance
Downtown Sounds • Meg Kelsey-Wright
Klondike Sound Company
Marisa Labozzetta & Martin Wohl
Robert K. Ostberg, CLU, ChFC
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REED SCHIMMELFING, MSW
7
and more by increasingly violent music
and videos that sexually degrade women
and lionize the gangsta and the pimp.
New York Times reporter Doug Mills, writing about the film in December of last
year, cited social critics who say hiphop’s ascendancy “has coincided with the
growth of the white audience for rap and
the growing role of large corporations in
marketing the music.”
“In the past 20 years, hip-hop has
become a critically acclaimed, billion-dollar industry,” Hurt notes. “How do black
menfeelabouttherepresentationsofmanhood in hip-hop? How do black women
and men feel about the pervasive images
H
8
By Rob Okun
film, Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes,
shines an unwavering bright light on the
shadowy side of a music that has captivated millions of young people worldwide
but has done so by demeaning women
and men.
In the film, conceived as a “loving critique” from a self-proclaimed “Hip-Hop
Head,” Hurt focuses on issues of masculinity, sexism, violence and homophobia
in today’s hip-hop culture, by talking with
rappers, music moguls, and fans. Hurt,
a member of the advisory board of Voice
Male and the Men’s Resource Center for
Change, makes it clear from the film’s
first frame that he loves hip-hop. Looking
straight at the viewer, he declares hip-hop
has been a style of music he’s loved since
he first heard it as a teenager two decades
ago. But now, he says, he is “very conflicted about the music I love.”
Growing up in a black neighborhood in
Central Islip, N.Y., Hurt was attracted to
a music “created by people your age who
looked like you, talked like you, dressed
like you and weren’t apologetic about it.”
Today he is concerned about how the
hip-hop market is being dominated more
feel about the representations
of manhood in hip-hop,
and the pervasive images of
sexually objectified women?
schools, for community groups and antiviolence men’s initiatives. “I made this film
specifically to get people to talk” about
what’s going on with a music that detractors claim “glorif[ies] swagger and luxury,
portray[s] women
as sex objects, and
impl[ies], critics suggest, that education
and hard work are for
suckers and sissies.”
It features revealing
interviews with rappers including Mos
Def, Fat Joe, Chuck
D, Jadakiss, and Busta
Rhymes and hiphop moguls Russell
Simmons, Chris
Lighty, and Corey
Smyth, along with
commentary from
Michael Eric Dyson, Jackson Katz, Beverly
Guy-Sheftall, Kevin Powell, and Sarah
Jones and interviews with young women
at prestigious black Spelman College.
One of the stops on his cross-country
tour was Amherst College, the elite New
England school which prides itself on
having a much higher enrollment of stu-
Byron Hurt’s
Crusade to Save
HIP -HOP
from Itself
of scantily clad and sexually objectified
women in rap music and videos? What do
today’s rap lyrics tell us about the collective
consciousness of black men and women
from the hip-hop generation?”
Since he completed the film last summer, Hurt has been barnstorming the
country, screening it at colleges and high
© Copyright, 2006, ITVS, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
• V oice M ale
e’s sof t spoken and
articulate, passionate
and determined. With
an engaging smile and
an easy personal style
thatpeopleboth15yearsyounger
and 15 years older feel at ease
with, when Byron Hurt starts talking people listen. And what he’s
got to say could help challenge
the role hip-hop plays in promoting violence, denigrating women,perpetuating homophobia,
and stereotyping men.
The36-year-oldactivist-filmmaker’snew
How do black women and men
Three generations of
hip-hopheads:producer/
director Byron Hurt,
Joaquin Stephens, and
Jamal Jackson
© Copyright, 2006, ITVS, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Can Hip-Hop Move Beyond the Stereotypes?
An Interview with Byron Hurt
By Erin Trahan
Erin Trahan: In Beyond Beats and Rhymes, you quickly introduce yourself as a football player, showing footage of you throwing a touchdown pass. How important is it to establish your
“manhood” before you question masculinity in hip-hop?
Hurt talks to rap artists and fans in New York City.
continued on page 10
ET: Isn’t that the approach used by Northeastern’s Mentors inViolence Prevention program,
where you spent five years as one of their lead facilitators, educating college students about
men’s violence against women? You responded to a call for former athletes?
Hurt: Yes, being a part of Mentors in Violence Prevention [MVP] prepared me for this
film. It gave me all of the tools that I needed to have conversations with everybody from
professors in academic settings to guys on the street. I wouldn’t have had the language
to ask the proper questions.... I wouldn’t have been able to form my thesis without
MVP. But I almost didn’t do it. I was scared of what other guys would think of me. Then
I saw an exercise and it raised my awareness about the magnitude of the problem.
ET: What was the exercise?
Hurt: Jackson Katz [founder of MVP] asked a group of men to raise their hands if they
do things on a daily basis to protect themselves from sexual assault. Nobody, [not even]
I, raised his hand. Then he asked the women, and all their hands went up. I was moved
and saw it as an opportunity to make a difference.
ET:The work of MVP and similar advocates redefines terms in a way that puts men back into
theequation,likecallingit“men’sviolenceagainstwomen.”Howimportantislanguagetoyou?
Hurt: I was taught and I believe that language is extremely important. Using language
that places the emphasis on men as the active agent in violence is very political. When
you frame it that way, it names the oppressor. But it also makes people feel like you are
targeting the oppressor, which can make them uncomfortable.
I struggle with language over and over again. What words to use, how to write
the narration of this film, how to talk on camera. It was painstaking to come up with
the most appropriate language to reach the broadest audience. I wanted the respect
of scholars and feminists, people who know and understand gender issues. But I also
wanted to be common and accessible and to talk the way normal people talk.
ET: Did you go through the same painstaking process to choose your language for race?
Hurt: Not as much. But one of the things I am really trying to do is make racial analogies that are easy to understand. I wanted to illustrate how problematic and normalized
sexism and misogyny are, and one way is to draw parallels to racism. The most effective
conversations I’ve had with black men make them see how women feel when they are
sexually harassed. I make the analogy that when black men are harassed by police or in
stores or they’re walking down the street and get looked at in a certain way just because
they’re wearing baggy pants or hoodies, attire that is considered criminal, doesn’t mean
they’re a criminal.
ET: I can’t tell you how many times I have heard people, usually white people, say things like,
“Oh, I like all kinds of music, except for rap.”Did you struggle with that narrow way of thinking in the film, not wanting to add fuel to the fire for people who too easily (or even unjustly)
write hip-hop off?
Hurt: I struggled with that and I still do. I wanted to have nuance. That’s one of the
reasons why I start and end the film by saying that I love hip-hop. I think there are brilcontinued on page 10
W inter 2007 •
dents of color than many colleges and
universities. Some two thirds of the several hundred people who came to see the
film were people of color, a mix of men
and women including half the members
of a high school young men of color
leadership group. Hurt told the audience
it took him five years to complete the
film, which he first conceived of a decade
ago. His hard work is paying off. Beyond
Beats and Rhymes, which premiered at
the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, will air
nationally on the Emmy Award–winning
PBS series Independent Lens, on Tuesday,
February 20.
A quar ter back on Nor theaster n
University’s football team in the late 1980s,
Hurt described himself as “a typical man.”
Early scenes in the film include footage
of him on the football field and at a hiphop party. Everything began to change for
Hurt in 1993 when, at 21, he was hired
as a trainer with Mentors in Violence
Prevention (MVP), an innovative education program operated by Northeastern
University’s Center for the Study of Sport
in Society. “I couldn’t have made this film
without having first learned about men
and masculinity while working as a trainer
with MVP,” Hurt acknowledges. The program’s purpose is to raise awareness about
“men’sviolenceagainstwomen, challenge
the thinking of mainstream society, open
dialogue between men and women, and
inspire leadership by empowering people
with concrete options to effect change.”
One of Hurt’s mentors at MVP was
Jackson Katz, MVP founder and nationally acclaimed antiviolence educator and
activist (see Voice Male Spring 2006). Hurt
was among the first student-athletes to
join MVP, playing a central role in learning
to address problems that historically have
been considered “women’s issues”: rape,
Byron Hurt: It was definitely a strategy to legitimize my heterosexual male identity up
front. I want boys and men to identify me as someone they can relate to, so that they’ll
think, “If he can be exploring these issues, maybe this guy is worth listening to.”
9
• V oice M ale
Byron Hurt’s Crusade continued from page 9
10
battering, and sexual harassment. The
MVP approach emphasizes the role of the
bystander in the work of preventing violence. It sees student-athletes and student
leaders not as potential perpetrators or victims, but as empowered bystanders who
can confront abusive peers. Hurt believes
this approach reduces the defensiveness
menoftenexperienceandthehelplessness
women often feel when discussing issues
of men’s violence against women.
As more and more people are connecting the dots between men’s violence
against women and depictions of both in
popular culture, the potential audience for
Beyond Beats and Rhymes is broadening.
It’s not just young fans who are interested.
The film, which balances its stark critique of hip-hop with insightful comments
from positive hip-hop artists like Public
Enemy’s Chuck D, is a skillful exploration
that leaves plenty of room for viewers to
suggest solutions without the filmmaker
problem solving for them.
In hip-hop culture, Hurt says at the
beginning of the film, “You have to be
strong, you have to have girls, you have
to have money…you have to dominate
other men.” He spends much of the rest
of the film allowing the viewer a chance
to see not just how confining such a
definition of manhood is, but how dangerous and deadening, too. The message
of hip-hop doesn’t discriminate by race.
White males may be major consumers,
Hurt says, “but it influences black kids
the most. ‘What are they saying? What is
the image of manhood?’”
Writer Erin Trahan, who conducted an
interview with Hurt (see sidebar), appreciates how Hurt unflinchingly answered
that question, weaving “personal testimony...interviews with famous rappers,
street rhymers, hip-hop fans, producers, scholars, and clips from video after
video...” By the film’s end, Trahan says,
Hurt has connected that inflated ideal to
his own experience—“how critical thinking led him to a broader, more realistic
view of manhood—and how he believes
in the day when hip-hop will loosen its
narrow hold on men, boys, and anyone
listening.” VM
An Interview with Byron Hurt
continued from page 9
liant, smart dudes out there but they haven’t been educated about gender issues. That’s
the only thing that separates me from them, my awareness of gender issues, which I only
began to learn about in my early twenties. I am hoping and waiting for the emergence of
a broader sense of manhood in hip-hop. I do have concerns about my film being used or
co-opted but I know Bill O’Reilly doesn’t love hip-hop the way I do.
ET:The film suggests that for a time hip-hop was moving beyond the stereotypes, both racially
andgender-based,buthasnowslidbackintoimageryandlyricsthataremoremarketable,even
formulaic. Is this purely related to corporate ownership, or is it a reaction to something bigger?
Do you see the same thing happening in other genres of music?
Hurt: Corporate control is the major reason American culture is being dumbed down, if
you want my opinion. American popular culture serves a base audience. It force feeds
an audience that doesn’t want to think, that doesn’t want to be challenged. Much of the
mainstream hip-hop you hear today is clearly in a cesspool filled with other wide-ranging
genres of art. When I was just out of high school, hip-hop was about something different.
ET: What is your biggest hope for Beyond Beats and Rhymes?
Hurt: That it will be seen by the largest audience possible all over the world. That it
makes a difference in the lives of the people who watch it. I want people to use it as
a catalyst to create social change in the way they see fit or most effective. I know that
sounds really big. But it’s all possible.
Erin Trahan is a Boston-based freelance writer. Her interview with Byron Hurt originally
appeared on www.NEFilm.com.
Resources
Beyond Beats & Rhymes: www.pbs.org/independentlens/hiphop
Byron Hurt: www.bhurt.com
Chuck D’s Rapstation: www.rapstation.org
Communities Against Violence: www.cavnet2.org
End Violence Against Women: www.endvaw.org
Faith Trust Institute (formerly Center for the Prevention of
Sexual and Domestic Violence): www.faithtrustinstitute.org
Family Violence Prevention Fund: www.endabuse.org
Fundación Mujeres: www.fundacionmujeres.es
Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community:
www.dvinstitute.org
Jackson Katz: www.jacksonkatz.com
Men’s Resource Center for Change: www.mrcforchange.org
Men’s Resources International: www.mensresourcesinternational.org
Men Stopping Violence: www.menstoppingviolence.org
Mentors in Violence Prevention: www.sportinsociety.org/vpd/mvp.php
Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe, Inc.: www.mijd.org
National Sexual Violence Resource Center: www.nsvrc.org
100 Black Men, Inc.: www.100blackmen.org
Safe Horizon: www.safehorizon.org
Voice Male magazine: www.mrcforchange.org/voicemale
White Ribbon Campaign: www.whiteribbon.com
Toxic Masculinity
The High Cost of Manliness
By Robert Jensen
I
“We need to get rid of the
whole idea of masculinity—
abandon the claim that there
are psychological or social
traits that inherently come
with being male. If we can
get past that, we have a
chance to create a better
world for men and women.”
ture’s male heroes reflect those characteristics: they most often are men who
take charge rather than seek consensus,
seize power rather than look for ways to
share it, and are willing to be violent to
achieve their goals.
That view of masculinity is dangerous
for women. It leads men to seek to control “their” women and define their own
pleasure in that control, which leads to
epidemic levels of rape and battery. But
this view of masculinity is toxic for men
as well.
If masculinity is defined as conquest,
it means that men will always struggle
with each other for dominance. In a system premised on hierarchy and power,
there can be only one king of the hill.
Every other man must in some way be
subordinated to the king, and the king
always has to be nervous about who is
coming up that hill to get him. A friend
who once worked on Wall Street—one
of the preeminent sites of masculine
competition—described coming to work
as like walking into a knife fight when
all the good spots along the wall were
taken. Masculinity like this is life lived as
endless competition and threat.
No one man created this system, and
perhaps none of us, given a choice,
would choose it. But we live our lives
in that system, and it deforms men, narrowing our emotional range and depth. It
keeps us from the rich connections with
others—not just with women and children, but with other men—that make
life meaningful but require vulnerability.
This doesn’t mean that the negative
consequences of this toxic masculinity are equally hazardous for men and
women. As feminists have long pointed
out, there’s a big difference between
women dealing with the possibility of
being raped, beaten, and killed by the
men in their lives, and men not being
able to cry. But we can see that the
short-term material gains we men get
are not adequate compensation for what
we give up in the long run—which is to
surrender part of our humanity to the
project of dominance.
Of course there are obvious physical
differences between men and women—
average body size, hormones, reproductive organs. There may be other
differences rooted in our biology that we
don’t yet understand. Yet it’s also true
that men and women are more similar
W inter 2007 •
t’s hard to be a man; hard to live
up to the demands that come with
the dominant conception of masculinity: the tough guy.
So, guys, I have an idea—maybe
it’s time we stop trying. Maybe this masculinity thing is a bad deal, not just for
women but for us.
We need to get rid of the whole idea
of masculinity. It’s time to abandon the
claim that there are certain psychological
or social traits that inherently come with
being biologically male. If we can get
past that, we have a chance to create a
better world for men and women.
The dominant conception of masculinity in U.S. culture is easily summarized:
Men are assumed to be naturally competitive and aggressive, and being a real
man is therefore marked by the struggle
for control, conquest, and domination.
A man looks at the world, sees what he
wants and takes it. Men who don’t measure up are wimps, sissies, fags, girls.
The worst insult one man can hurl at
another—whether it’s boys on the playground or CEOs in the boardroom—is
the accusation that a man is like a
woman. Although the culture acknowledges that men can in some situations
have traits traditionally associated with
women (caring, compassion, tenderness), in the end it is men’s strengthexpressed-as-toughness that defines us
and must trump any female-like softness. Those aspects of masculinity must
prevail for a man to be a “real man.”
That’s not to suggest, of course, that
every man adopts this view of masculinity. But it is endorsed in key institutions
and activities—most notably in business, the military, and athletics—and
is reinforced through the mass media.
It is particularly expressed in the way
men—straight and gay alike—talk about
sexuality and act sexually. And our cul-
11
• V oice M ale
F athering
Fathers, Sons, and the Ripples of Loss
12
By Jonathan Diamond
W
hen my father died,
some friends could
notunderstandhow
I could miss someone in death who
had been the source of so much pain and
anguish when he was alive. They had witnessedhowthecontrastbetweenmyfather’s
rageful and loving sides created more than
an emotional crisis in my life—it was a spiritual state of emergency.They were the ones
whohelpedmeputmyselftogetherafteryet
another caustic, if not violent, run-in with
the old man. However, it wasn’t until he was
diagnosedwithcancerthatrealhealingtook
place and the connection between my dad
and me was transformed.
During one of my last visits with my
father, I was sitting next to him while he
held his grandson in his lap. After a few
moments, Dad very tenderly put his hand
on my head and left it there. “Does that
mean I’ve done good?”I asked.“That means
a lot of things,” he replied.
Many friends called to ask me how I was
and offered to help in any way possible.
Three months after he died, people still
asked how I was doing, but there was a hint
of impatience in their voices—they were
ready for me to start feeling better. After
six months, they stopped asking altogether.
Afterayear,mosthadprettymuchforgotten
about my loss.
It’s been more than five years since my
father died, and my relationship with
him still has a hold on me. If time heals,
it works in much larger increments: five
years is a heartbeat.
Although my own clan and circle of
friends grew tired of my mourning, people
outside my circle shared their stories with
me. Sometimes complete strangers would
approach me at gatherings: “I heard you
just lost your father. My dad passed away
six months ago.” “I was with my father
when he died. It was the hardest thing
“I want to help men understand
how their past experiences continue
to affect their relationships,
and to illuminate the possibility for
a second chance—an opportunity
for men to feel compassion and
forgiveness for their fathers.”
I’ve ever done.” When we dive beneath
theparticulars—cancer,abandonment,suicide, one year, two years, ten, twenty—we
find our experiences are uncannily similar.
Sometimes we even use the same language
to describe them: “Our father was the glue
that held the family together.”“The old man
was like a rock—he was always there with a
hand when you needed it most.”“My father
was dead five years before I discovered how
much I loved him.”“I never knew my father,
but when news of his death arrived it felt
like a part of me had died too.” “No one
understood me like my father.”
Losing a father is one of the most profound events in a man’s life, and like the
waves a stone causes when thrown into still
water, the ripples of loss continue on and
on.IwrotemybookFatherlessSonsbecause
I wanted to help men understand how
their past experiences continue to affect
their relationships with family and friends,
lovers and coworkers, and themselves. To
those whose fathers are already gone, I
hope the book illuminates the possibility
for a second chance—an opportunity for
rediscovery—for men to feel compassion
andforgivenessfortheirfathersandthereby
free themselves from the emotional bonds
that keep their present tied in knots, their
future out of reach, and their past chained
to a wounded soul.
Many of the stories I collected in my
research are a tribute to men’s survival of
abandonment,abuse,andneglect.However,
even sons with mostly positive memories
of their fathers must, as another writer
observed, “endure the separation of death,
the affliction of mourning.”
Facing death takes great courage. No
matter how confusing or painful a man’s
relationship with his father may have been,
experiencing grief is heroic and sacred
work. While the path you embarked on
initially was about grieving, the journey is
about healing.
David’s Story
David was an emotional survivor and
a relatively successful one, until his son
approached the same age David was when
his father killed himself. At that point,
instead of working from the inside out,
David began using alcohol to heal himself
from the outside in. By turning away from
his grief, David wasn’t just avoiding pain, he
wasavoidingrecoveryandtheopportunities
for healing that mourning provides.
For David, the catastrophe of his father’s
suicide was not only the loss of his dad but
the loss of a chance to persuade his father to
act differently, the loss of the chance to connect. Perhaps the single most difficult thing
for David to accept was how much help and
good information he was benefiting from
that his father didn’t have access to or chose
not to take advantage of; and the constant
wondering whether it would have been
enough to make a difference if he had.
While acknowledging that his father’s
Eight Years After Columbine
Memo to the Media: It’s Men’s Violence
By Jackson Katz
I
“ Incredibly, few prominent voices in the media called
the incidents what they were: hate crimes perpetrated
by angry white men against defenseless young girls.
Most of the media chatter about the murders was notably devoid of any honest discussion of gender politics.”
Forensic psychologists and criminal profilers filled the airwaves with talk about
how difficult it is to predict when a “person” will snap. And countless commentators—from fundamentalist preachers
to secular social critics—rushed to weigh
in with metaphysical musings on the
incomprehensibility of “evil.”
Incredibly, few prominent voices in
the broadcast or print media called the
incidents what they were: hate crimes
perpetrated by angry white men against
defenseless young girls, who—whatever
the twisted motives of the shooters—
were targeted for sexual assault and murder precisely because they were girls.
More than a week after the second
shooting, the Dallas Morning News published an op/ed I wrote that made this
very point, and a few days later, The
New York Times ran a widely circulated
column about the shootings by Bob
Herbert, “Why Aren’t We Shocked?,”
that catalogued widespread misogyny in
our culture. But these articles were rare
exceptions; most of the media chatter
about the murders was notably devoid of
any honest discussion of gender politics.
What is it going to take for our society to deal honestly with the extent
and depth of this problem? How many
more young girls and women have to
die before decision-makers in media
and other influential institutions stop
averting their eyes from the lethal mix of
deep misogyny and violent masculinity
at work here?
In response to the Colorado and
Pennsylvania shootings, the White
House hastily organized a gathering of
experts in education and law enforcement. The goal of the conference was
to discuss “the nature of the problem”
and federal action that could assist communities with violence prevention. This
approach was—and remains—misdirected. Instead of convening a group of
experts on “school safety,” the president
should catalyze a long-overdue national
conversation about sexism, masculinity,
and men’s violence against women.
For us to have any hope of truly preventing not only extreme acts of gender
violence, but also the incidents of rape,
sexual abuse, and domestic violence that
are a daily part of millions of women’s
and girls’ lives, we need to have this
conversation. And we need many more
men to participate. Men from every level
of society need to recognize that violence
against women is a men’s issue.
A similar incident to the Amish schoolhouse massacre took place in Canada in
1989. A 25-year-old man walked into a
classroom at the University of Montreal.
W inter 2007 •
n the many hours devoted to analyzing last fall’s school shootings,
one of the most notable features
of the national media conversation was that as a society we
were yet again unable—or unwilling—to
acknowledge a simple but disturbing fact:
the shootings were an extreme manifestation of one of contemporary American
society’s biggest problems—the ongoing
crisis of men’s violence against women.
Let’s take another look at those horrific cases. On September 27, 2006, a
heavily armed 53-year-old man walked
into a Colorado high school classroom,
forced male students to leave, and took
a group of girls hostage. He then proceeded to terrorize the girls for several
hours, killing one and allegedly sexually assaulting some or all of the others
before killing himself.
Less than a week later, a 32-year-old
man walked into an Amish schoolhouse
in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, and at
gunpoint ordered about 15 boys to leave
the room, along with a pregnant woman
and three women with infants. He forced
the remaining girls, aged 6 to 13, to line
up against a blackboard, where he tied
their feet together. He then methodically
executed five of the girls with shots to
the head and critically wounded several
others before taking his own life.
Just after the Amish schoolhouse massacre, Pennsylvania police commissioner
Jeffrey B. Miller said in an emotional
press conference, “It seems as though
(the perpetrator) wanted to attack young,
female victims.”
How did mainstream media cover these
unspeakable acts of gender violence?The
New York Times ran an editorial that
identified the “most important” cause
as the easy access to guns in our society.
National Public Radio aired a program
focusing on problems in rural America.
13
Y outh
Leaving the Team, Becoming a Man
V oices
of
By Nathan Einschlag
GrowingupinNewYorkCityintheimmigrant
neighborhoodofJacksonHeights,Queens,21year-oldNathanEinschlaghaswitnessedthings
manyyoungpeoplehaveonlyreadaboutor
seen on television.“I saw young abused girlfriendspushingstrollersonthewaytothelocal
elementaryschooltopickuptheirkids.Itwas
routine to pass prostitutes on my way to the
subwaylateatnight.Iknewwhathappened
to the drug and alcohol abusers in the hood:
theydied.IwasfromaneighborhoodwhereI’d
trained my senses to be aware, to stay out of
harm’s way. I always watched a block ahead,
spottingshadows,keepingmydistancefrom
menonthecorners.Iwalkedwithmyheadup
andaswaggerthatcanonlybelearnedinNew
York City.”
Nathan says he made a decision when he
wasyoungtobefocused,tonotbedraggedinto
the street life. “I put my heart and soul into
basketball,andthesensesIhadhonedwalking those late-night blocks all my life would
not fail me. It was love. Basketball embraced
me and I embraced it.” Sophomore year he
made the varsity basketball team at Fiorello
H. LaGuardia’s High School of Music, Art and
Performing Arts. As a junior and senior he
was a starter. His senior year the team won
thedivisionchampionship.Itwasahighpoint
inhislife,rightthere,attheendofhighschool.
Whatwouldleavingthecityandgoingtocollege bring?
• V oice M ale
I
14
was going to a small liberal arts college in Baltimore, where I expected
to walk onto the men’s Division III
basketball team. I thought I was
ready. I had no idea that college
would be so much different from high
school. Things changed drastically for me
my freshman year.
Girls approached me all the time. Drunk
girls. Eyeliner girls with eyes half shut, balancing red plastic cups full of beer. Those
same girls would be all over the lacrosse
players who would call them sluts later that
“ Had I known what a shock I was going to be in for
when I started college, I would not have stayed
quiet around my teammates’ obnoxious behavior.
Had I understood the hypermasculine jock culture
that existed, I would have been more vocal.”
week. Girls didn’t see the guy I was, just
a freshman trying to get to know people.
They saw the basketball logo and didn’t
need to know anything more about me.
They thought I must be like all the other
guys who pushed up the girls’skirts as they
walked by or pretended to trip while grabbing girls’ breasts. “Dude, get a drink, stop
being so uptight,” they’d say. I didn’t want
a fucking drink. Where were the kids who
wanted to listen to music and get on the
dance floor?
I once came back to my room and
stepped over two girls lying on the floor in
the hallway. They could have been waiting
for me, or for anyone who walked by and
was interested in quick, easy sex. College
was nothing like I had expected.
The kids on my high school team were
among the most creative and talented
teenagers in New York City. We didn’t
pound 40s on a Monday night. We didn’t
drive drunk for fun. All we needed was a
ball and a court. Nothing made us happier.
Off the court we argued about who had
the flyest sneakers or who was a better
rapper, Nas or Jay-Z.
We didn’t buy 16-ounce Miller Lites
instead of 8-ounce cans, thinking that the
girls would get drunker because they have
twice as much alcohol. “The girls don’t
notice,”my college teammates assured me.
It wasn’t fun for me to hear male dancers
at my school called fags. I wasn’t enjoying
being affiliated with the team. To outsiders
looking in, I was only seen as a freshman
on the basketball team who needed to be
broken in. When I turned down drinks,
girls would ask my teammates what was
wrong with me, why was I such a weirdo.
They called me that because I would not
objectify them. The gender roles at my
school were like nothing I’d experienced.
Girls were doing male athletes’ laundry
while the players poured beer on them and
called them names. Bitch. Slut. Weirdo.
One day it just hit me; I understood.
Everything I had questions about, everything I had stressed about for a year and
a half of my life, finally seemed to have an
answer. I simply wasn’t like them. I stuck
out like a weed in concrete. In the locker
room, on the basketball court, in the words
I spoke, by my actions. Everything about
me was different. I saw things differently.
I was from a different place. Mama done
raised me different.
To make matters worse, my coach was
not playing me. He hadn’t seemed to take a
liking to me either. At practice I was serious
and I listened, two qualities I had learned
from playing on other teams. The other
freshmen were rowdy and rude. Some
upperclassmenwerehotheadedanddidn’t
look Coach in the eye when he talked to
them. It was weird for me to watch this
happen, but he seemed to respond well
to their bad behavior. He took my silence
I teased a few girls that night, cursed and
yelled, tried to be like one of the guys,
maybe I’d finally get some playing time. If
Coach saw that the guys liked me more,
maybe he’d take notice of my game and
play me more.
Not only was I slow in practice the next
day, but Coach laid into me extra hard. The
guys didn’t see me in any new light, and
I still felt like the odd man out. Nothing
was going to change the situation I was in.
My teammates were sexist and ignorant. It
would be so easy to be like them. I could
just kick back, get wasted, and blame my
actions on intoxication. But I wasn’t about
to let that happen. I would make a decision
that would have important consequences,
and it would cost me one of the things I
held closest to my heart.
I quit the basketball team after a year and
a half. Feeling more comfortable at school
now, I shed the basketball reputation. I am
no longer the cute, weirdo athlete on campus, but Nate, “the quiet kid who I see in
the library who is gonna be in the play next
week.”The girls are a little shyer when they
approach me now, especially the ones from
the parties I used to go to. I’m not like the
other guys and they feel embarrassed and a
little ashamed. I still hear them whispering
about when I was on the team and what
they thought I was like, but I also hear the
truth now. “That’s Nate. He’s such a man.”
Had I known what a shock I was going
to be in for when I started college, had I
known it was going to be so much different from what I was used to at home, in
high school, I would not have stayed quiet
around my teammates’ unruliness and
obnoxious behavior. Had I understood the
hypermasculine jock culture that existed in
Division III sports before I joined the team,
I would have promised myself that I’d be
more vocal, challenging the things my
teammates thought were fun.
But I was silent; I let people categorize
me, let them think I had the same beliefs
and interests as the guys on my team. I
never told my coach how I felt until the day
I quit the team. He’d had the wrong impression about me, about how to approach me.
I will always look back and wish I had been
more honest with my teammates and the
staff about how I was feeling.
Still, I will also look back at my college
basketball career as one of the most influential times of my life. I learned more about
myself during that year-and-a-half of struggle than I did during my entire life before
that. By turning my time on the team into
a learning experience, and growing from
that experience, I know I made the right
decision to leave college basketball. Have
the athletes at my school stopped their
sexist behavior? No. But by sticking to my
principlesandnotlettingpeoplecategorize
me I was able to succeed in fighting gender
stereotypes with my words and my actions,
and to show that there is another way for
men to be.
NathanEinschlagwillgraduatefromGoucher
CollegeinBaltimoreinDecemberandplansto
becomeanelementaryschoolteacherinNew
YorkCity.Sincestoppingplayingbasketball,
hehasperformedincollegetheaterproductions,includingShakespeare’sTheTempest,in
which he played Caliban.
W inter 2007 •
as a sign that I was lethargic, unmotivated.
I had such desire to play, but my coach
would decide instead to question my masculinity. “I need to HEAR you NATE! TALK
LOUDER!” he’d yell. “GODDAMNIT!
SCREAM!… SOMETHING!”
Off the court people treated me differently, too. “Dude, if you weren’t on the
team I’d probably make fun of you too.
Fuck it, though. You’re cool. Bitches seem
to like you.” Thankfully, girls did show
me attention. At least I was a cute weirdo,
on the basketball team, and not some
freak fag like a theater major. I couldn’t
tell my teammates that I was minoring
in theater. I didn’t need to give them any
more ammunition.
I loved basketball, but it was ruining my
life. At the time my desire to play was overwhelming. I wanted to show Coach that
basketball was my priority. I stopped telling
him I’d have to miss practice for tutoring
sessions or class requirements. Often I
would show up at study groups late, still
sweaty from practice. I’d convince the ushers at the theater to let me in late. I feared
missing practice.
Coach seemed to love most of his players’ attitudes. They were rich kids who
didn’t think about their parents’ money
or care too much about education. Their
father’s business would hire them, so what
did a C- or a D+ here or there matter? My
priorities were different. I didn’t have time
to stay and bullshit about “bitches and
beer” in the locker room. I didn’t care if
Susan was wearing a low-cut shirt today in
Philosophy, or that she almost fell down the
stairs last night at the soccer party. It wasn’t
theirfaultthattheygaveherthebeer.Noone
told her to drink so much.This is college, not
kindergarten. I had reading to get done; I
had papers to write. I always felt like the
odd man out, but now I started not to care.
This isn’t what I wanted from a basketball
team. I didn’t feel a part of a team, even if
the school saw and treated me like I was.
Something was changing; it was me.
I’d talk to old friends on the phone about
school. I’d lie and tell them things were
going well, I was adjusting fine. The next
party I went to, I bought in for a red plastic
cup. It was soon full of beer. Maybe they’re
right, and I do need to loosen up, I thought. I
had practice late the next day, and wouldn’t
have to worry about being hung over. If
15
After the South Dakota Victory
Time for Men to Champion Reproductive Rights
By Rob Okun
• V oice M ale
I
16
haveason,18,andthreedaughters,all
in their twenties. Imagine if even one
parentinSouthDakotahadadaughter
who’dbeenrapedandbecamepregnant.Mustthatfamilyhavetofollowa
statelawthatforbadetheyoungwomanfrom
abortingtherapist’schildbutinsteadcompelled
her to bear her assailant’s baby as the state’s
wayofrespondingtoherassault?That’salawI
knew I had to challenge.”
I shared those sentiments, if not those
exact words, numerous times last fall on the
frontstepsofSouthDakotans’homes,where
I spent several days before the November 7
midterm elections. I traveled around the
state, working to overturn the most restrictive abortion ban in the nation. Happily,
we won, 55 percent to 45 percent. Even
in a state often described as very conservative and anti-choice, South Dakota voters
apparently decided, “enough is enough.”
The celebrations are over; much work
remains, in South Dakota and beyond.
Thosewhofavorupholdingtheprotections
the Supreme Court afforded women in
Roe v.Wade nearly three and a half decades
ago would be well advised to pay close
attention to the strategic and well-organized state-by-state battle currently being
waged to restrict women’s reproductive
rights and freedoms.The campaign is being
coordinated and financed by a coalition of
far-right political and religious institutions
with close ties to the Republican Party and
the Bush administration. To thwart the
opposition’s efforts—currently being organized in a dozen states—many organizers
are considering ways to better engage men
in the struggle.
Beyond the size of the victory, what was
heartening about it was the energy the
scores of volunteers from around the country brought to the Campaign for Healthy
Families, the statewide organizers. Arriving
by plane, bus, van and car, volunteers
fanned out across key South Dakota cities
One South Dakota
man said he was afraid
to display a lawn sign
announcing his opposition to the restrictive
abortion law—his
neighbors would do
more than ostracize
him; he feared they
would threaten him
personally or vandalize his property.
The author and Sara Slumskie, president of the Sioux Falls chapter of the National Abortion Rights
Action League (NARAL), hold signs advocating overturning the state's abortion law on Election Day.
and towns to help get out the vote to repeal
the law. College students—many able to
attend thanks to the generosity of the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)—
outnumberedmiddle-agedveteranactivists,
but everyone felt a spirit of enthusiasm and
energy. Savvy, gritty, native South Dakotan
men and women in their late twenties and
early thirties were in key leadership positions, orienting out-of-state volunteers to
the conservative political opinions of many
of the state’s residents, while underscoring
that those very residents also had a strong
aversiontogovernmentalmeddlingintheir
personal lives.
On my first day, another volunteer and I
hopped into one of a legion of rental cars
organizers provided, and split up to canvass
a well-to-do neighborhood in Sioux Falls,
the state’s largest city (pop. 130,000). We
had lists of houses to visit, urging residents
to vote to repeal the ban the Republicancontrolled state legislature had passed last
winter and Republican governor Mike
Rounds had signed into law March 6.
Opponents’signs outnumbered“our”signs
by four or five to one, I estimated, raising
concerns about our chances for success.
I soon learned why the final vote and
the public show of support would be so
out of alignment. I spoke with a doctor
in his fifties, an arthritis specialist, who
was initially wary when he opened his
wide, ornate front door. After determining
which side I represented, he shared some
disturbing observations: He was afraid to
display a lawn sign announcing his opposition to the restrictive abortion law—his
neighbors would do more than ostracize
him, he said; he feared they would threaten
him personally or vandalize his property.
From the pulpit of his church, he said, he
was being told to vote to uphold the ban;
leaflets were handed out in church, he went
on, and were being mailed from the church
through the U.S. Postal Service (all violations of the law). He said he felt afraid to
complain since he couldn’t be assured of
his anonymity. He felt encouraged, he said,
New Book Urges Engaging Men
How Can We Stop the Violence?
By Rus Funk
Rape,domesticviolence,sexualharassment,andstalkingareeverydayoccurrencesthatRusErvin
Funkhasbeenchallengingformanyyears.Whilewomenhavebeeneducatingotherwomenabout
theseissuesfordecades,Funk,authorofthenewbookReachingMen:StrategiesforPreventing
SexistAttitudes,BehaviorsandViolence,believesthattosuccessfullycombattheseproblems
societymustbettereducatemen.Funkhaswrittenanaccessiblevolumedesignedtodojustthat.
AccordingtotheMenStoppingViolencewebsite,oneinthreewomenarephysicallyorsexually
assaultedbyamanatsomepointintheirlifetime;onaverage,threewomenaremurderedbya
partnerorex-partnerdailyintheUnitedStates;andmorethanhalfamillionwomenarebeing
stalkedrightnowbyaman.Sadly,amajorityofcasesofsexismandviolenceagainstwomenand
mengounreported.Funk,alongtimesexualviolencepreventioneducatorandactivist,saysthatif
menareunskillfullyapproachedonthesubject,theyoftenwillchallenge,disagree,confront,tune
out, or dismiss any talk of men’s violence.
“Menhaveadifferentrelationshipto,andunderstandingof,sexism,violenceandtherelationshipbetweensexismandviolence,”Funksays.“Thewaythatadvocateseducatemenneedstobe
somewhatdifferentthanhowweeducatewomen.”Inhisbook,andintrainingsandpresentations
heoffersaroundthecountry,Funksaysthefirststeptoapproachingmenaboutsexismisestablishingaframeworkformentounderstandthatsexismandviolenceare“theirissue.”Without
inculcatingthatbaselinebelief,advocatesareunlikelytobesuccessfulintalkingwithmenabout
whattheycandoaboutit:bettersupportthepeopletheyknowwhoarevictimized;challenge
peopletheyknowwhoactinsexistorabusiveways;not“standby”whenwitnessingsexismor
abusiveness;becomealliesforwomenandothermen;developintoactivistsinthemovementto
stop sexism and violence.
AcofounderofD.C.MenAgainstRape,thePeople’sCoalitionforJustice,theBaltimoreAlliance
Against Child Sexual Abuse, and M.E.N.—Mobilizing to EndViolence, Funk is a professor at
boththeKentSchoolofSocialWorkattheUniversityofLouisvilleandtheSpaldingUniversity
SchoolofSocialWork.ReachingMenispublishedbyIndianapolis-basedJISTPublishing,which
publishes and distributes support materials for children and their families (www.jist.com).
S
the efforts to respond to and combat
sexist violence.
Those of us who have worked as activists
around these issues know that educating
men about sexism and violence can be
a daunting task. How do we phrase the
issues so that men can (and will) hear the
message? How do we respond to men’s
defensiveness? How can we convey the
messages without inciting men’s anger?
Having men sit politely in a room and
merely listen to a presentation is decidedly
not the goal. Creating a space where men
can choose to move is an improvement.
But men are unlikely to make any movement as long as they remain comfortable.
and violence can be a daunting
task. How do we phrase
the issues so men can hear
the message, without
defensiveness and anger?
The topics of sexism and violence (rape,
domestic violence, sexual harassment,
pornography and prostitution) are inherently uncomfortable. These forms of violence are gendered because they are used
to maintain a particular system of power
and control—sexism. Educating men
requires using the inherent discomfort
of these topics to engage, challenge, and
motivate men.
Men have an enormous ability (as yet,
largelyuntapped)torespondtosexismand
violence, both individually and collectively.
Focusing on men’s abilities to respond is an
effective tool in overcoming men’s sense of
W inter 2007 •
exism and violence are widely understood and defined as
“women’s issues.” When men
do talk about these issues,
it is generally in a defensive
manner (“not all men are bad…”), or
one in which they sympathize with the
women or men who have been victimized (“those poor victims” or “if that
were me, I’d kill somebody”). Neither
of these responses, men’s defensiveness
or men’s sympathy, is an appropriate
response to women or men who have
been victimized, nor have they proven
effective as tactics for motivating men
to become more actively involved in
Educating men about sexism
17
GBQ R esources
For more info or to submit new entries for GBQ Resources contact us
at (413) 253-9887 Ext. 33 or [email protected]
AIDS CARE/Hampshire County
Contact: (413) 586-8288. Buddy Program,
transportation, support groups and much
more free of charge to people living
with HIV.
AIDS Project of Southern Vermont
Contact: (802) 254-8263. Free, confidential
HIV/AIDS services, including support,
prevention counseling and volunteer
opportunities. T.H.E. Men’s Program
(Total HIV Education) Contact: Alex
Potter (802) 254-8263, Brattleboro, VT.
Weekly/monthly social gatherings,
workshops, and volunteer opportunities.
Email: [email protected]
Bereavement Group for Those Who
Have Lost Same-Sex Partners
For individuals who have lost a same-sex
partner. 2nd Thursday of each month from
7-9 pm at the Forastiere Funeral Home,
220 N. Main St, E. Longmeadow, MA 01028;
year-round, walk-in group with no fee or
pre-registration; bereavement newsletter
also available. For more information, call
(413) 525-2800.
East Coast Female-to-Male Group
Contact: Bet Powers (413) 584-7616,
P.O. Box 60585 Florence, Northampton,
MA 01062, [email protected]. Peer
support group open to all masculine-identified, female-born persons – FTMs, transmen
of all sexual orientations/identities, crossdressers, stone butches, transgendered,
transsexuals, non-op, pre-op, post-op,
genderqueer, bi-gendered, questioning
– and our significant others, family, and
allies.Meetings 2nd Sundays in
Northampton, 3-6 p.m.
Free Boyz Northampton
Social/support meetings for people
labeled female at birth who feel that’s not
an accurate description of who they are.
Meet 1st and 3rd Mondays, 7 p.m. at
Third Wave Feminist Booksellers,
90 King St., Northampton.
• V oice M ale
Gay, Bisexual & Questioning
Men’s Support Group
Drop-in, peer-facilitated. Monday,
7-9 p.m. Men’s Resource Center,
236 No. Pleasant St., Amherst, MA.
For information: Allan Arnaboldi,
(413) 253-9887, ext. 33.
18
Gay Men’s Domestic Violence Project
Provides community education and direct
services to gay, bisexual, and transgendered
male victims and survivors of domestic
violence. Business: (617) 354-6056. 24hour crisis line provides emotional support,
safety planning, crisis counseling, referrals,
and emergency housing: (800) 832-1901.
www.gmdvp.orgoremail:[email protected]
Generation Q (formerly Pride Zone)
A Program for GBQ youth. Open
Thursdays, 4-9, for drop-in and a support
group. Open Fridays, 4-9, for drop-in and
pizza. Contact info: 413-582-7861
GLAD (Gay & Lesbian Advocates
& Defenders)
Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders
is New England’s leading legal rights
organization dedicated to ending discrimination based on sexual orientation, HIV
status and gender identity and expression.
Contact: 30 Winter St., Suite 800,
Boston, MA 02108. Tel: (617) 426-1350,
Fax: (617) 426-3594, [email protected],
www.glad.org. Legal Information Hotline:
(800) 455-GLAD (4523). GLAD’s Legal
Information Hotline is completely
confidential.
Trained volunteers work one-on-one
with callers to provide legal information,
support and referrals within New England.
Weekday afternoons, 1:30-4:30; English
and Spanish.
GLASS (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight
Society) GLBT Youth Group of
Franklin County
Meets every Wednesday evening in
Greenfield. Info: (413) 774-7028.
HIV Testing Hotline
AIDS Action Committee in Boston provides
referral to anonymous, free or low-cost HIV
testing/counseling sites: (413) 235-2331.
For Hepatitis C information and referral:
(888) 443-4372. Both lines are staffed M-F
9am-9pm and often have bi- and tri-lingual
staff available.
Men’s Health Project
Contact: Bob (413) 747-5144.
Education, prevention services, and counseling for men’s health issues, especially
HIV/AIDS. Springfield, Northampton,
Greenfield. Tapestry Health Services.
www.tapestryhealth.org or email
[email protected]
Monadnock Gay Men
A website that provides a social support
system for gay men of Keene and the entire
Monadnock Region of Southwestern NH.
www.monadnockgaymen.com or email
[email protected]
PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends
of Lesbians and Gays) of Springfield/
Greater Springfield
Educational information and support for
the parents, families, and friends of Gays,
Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Transgendered
People. Contact info: [email protected],
Judy Nardacci, 413-243-2382 or
Elizabeth Simon, 413-732-3240
Safe Homes: the Bridge of
Central Massachusetts
Providing support and services to gay,
lesbian, bisexual, transgender youth via
a weekly Drop-In Center, community
outreach system and peer leadership
program. Based in Worcester, serving
all towns in region. 4 Mann Street
Worcester, Massachusetts 01602
Phone: 508.755.0333 Fax: 508.755.2191
Web: www.thebridgecm.org/programs.htm
SafeSpace
SafeSpace provides information, support,
referrals, and advocacy to lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQQ) survivors of violence and
offers education and outreach programs
in the wider community. P.O. Box 158,
Burlington, VT 05402.
Phone: 1-802-863-0003;
toll-free 1-866-869-7341.
Fax: 1-802-863-0004.
www.safespacevt.orgoremail:[email protected]
The Stonewall Center
University of Mass., Amherst. A lesbian,
bisexual, gay, and transgender educational
resource center. Contact: (413) 545-4824,
www.umass.edu/stonewall.
Straight Spouse Network
Monthly support group meets in Northampton, MA, the first Tuesday from 6-8 p.m. For
spouses, past and present, of lesbian, gay,
bisexual or transgendered partners. Contact:
Jane Harris for support and location,
(413) 625-6636; [email protected].
Confidentiality is assured.
The Sunshine Club
Support and educational activities for transgendered persons. Info: (413) 586-5004.
P.O. Box 564, Hadley, MA 01305.
www.thesunshineclub.orgoremail:[email protected]
VT M4M.net
Dedicated to promoting the overall good
health of Vermont’s gay and bisexual men, as
well as those who are transgender, by providing information, resources, and a calendar
of events for gay, bisexual, questioning, and
transgendered men. www.vtm4m.net
My Gay San Francisco, Then and Now
Part One: Life in the ’80s
I
gains for legal recognition of gays and lesbians had opened the floodgate of endless,
exuberant celebration.
On the ground, life as I experienced it in
those years, before and during AIDS, was
larger than life. Every day I got up I felt,
as many of us did, that I was participating
in making history. This was the time when
Armistead Maupin, then a local columnist,
was writing twice-weekly columns, called
“Tales of the City.”We read his installments
as a kind of open collective journal.
In retrospect, it all seems heartbreakingly innocent and naïve. Even at the time,
many of us were saying to each other,“This
is too good to be true; something is going
to happen.” Even as “everyone” was being
embraced, many people were feeling left
out, invisible or shunned. “Gay” began
looking very white, male, and comfortably
middle-class. And, just as sexual identity
politics shifted focus to queer and multicultural, AIDS hit, and hit catastrophically
hard. Castro Street was ground zero. An
entire generation of gay men were fodder for a precision-pinpointed genocide.
Because San Francisco is a city of dense
neighborhoods, and much smaller than
L.A. or New York, the AIDS epidemic was
inexorably palpable and ubiquitous.
Castro Street became a ghost town—
many businesses and most bars folded
overnight. I remember thinking that this is
what the Black Death must have felt like.
And for five years, Ronald Reagan could
not even say a word about AIDS. We in gay
San Francisco lived with an acute awarenessthatthepresident’sRepublicanregime
clearly was waiting for all the fags to die.
What had we been celebrating?
Togiveamoreaccuratepersonalaccount,
I have to admit that I arrived in San
Francisco a full-blown, raging alcoholic. I
got sober two years later, initially through
the assistance of Eighteenth Services, one
of the first-ever alcohol and drug treatment
Castro Street overflowed with
young gay men, mostly buff,
white twenty-somethings in 501
jeans and flannel shirts. Gay
bars, bathhouse culture, and
the leather scene were thriving.
Then AIDS hit, and Castro Street
became ground zero.
The author in San Francisco, 1980.
facilities for gay men. I learned to appreciate much more keenly the vast scope of the
gay community in San Francisco, as well
as in the Bay Area and northern California
more broadly. I even escaped a ghettoized
existence of my own making.
In 1981 I got sober, became infected with
HIV, and returned to graduate school, never
expecting to survive to the end of my studies. In 1993, Ph.D. in hand, I accepted a
teaching post in Boston, still not expecting
to live much longer. When I moved back
to San Francisco in 2005, after 12 years in
Massachusetts, I discovered my crazy, wild,
maddening,belovedcitymuchchanged.In
fact, I had completely missed the dotcom
boom-and-bust, one of the defining events
of recent times here. And there were more
ghosts waiting to haunt me than I could
shake a stick at.
Les Wright is currently a freelance writer,
filmreviewer,andindependentscholar,living in a cushy garret in San Francisco’s
bourgeois-bohemianNoeValley;heisalsoa
formermen’ssupportgroupfacilitatoratthe
Men’sResourceCenterforChange.Part2of
his column on San Francisco will appear in
the Spring 2007 issue.
W inter 2007 •
swearRichardNixonwentonnationwide television to resign the presidency on the very day I was flying
back to Germany, an avowed out-ofthe-closetexpatriate.Fiveyearslater,
in 1979, when I found myself repatriating
to the States, I had become radicalized
by the gay left in Germany. So when I
arrived (by Greyhound from Boston, hung
over) in San Francisco, I came looking for
the grand experiment in gay community
known as Castro Street. Like many gay pilgrims before and after, once I got here, I
abandoned myself to the city, and jumped
into the never-ending party.
The gay activist upstarts populating the
Castro and led by Harvey Milk represented
a very different kind of gay political vision
from the one I had carried with me from
Germany. They were mavericks even in
1970s gay boomtown San Francisco; a
solidly established, if very quiet gay and
lesbian community already had a long
tradition of working within the political
culture of the city.
By the time I arrived in August 1979,
San Francisco was still in shock from the
Jonestown mass suicide in Guyana (Jim
Jones had moved his People’sTemple there
from San Francisco’s poor black Fillmore
neighborhood) and recovering from the
double assassination of city supervisor
Harvey Milk (representing the gay Castro
district) and Mayor George Moscone. That
summer Castro Street overflowed with
young gay men, mostly buff, white twentysomethings in 501 jeans and flannel shirts.
Gaybarshadsproutedlikemushroomsafter
a hard rain, all across the city. Bathhouse
culture was in full swing. The leather scene
centered around Folsom Street was thriving. The old gay commercial heart on Polk
Street still thrummed. Hippie-bohemian
Haight-Ashbury had plenty of gay commercial life as well. Discos and designer
drugs were all the rage. Recent reformist
O utlines • G ay & B isexual V oices
By Les Wright
19
• V oice M ale
The High Cost of Manliness continued from page 11
20
than we are different, and that given the
pernicious effects of centuries of patriarchy and its relentless devaluing of things
female, we should be skeptical of the
perceived differences.
What we know is simple: In any
human population, there is wide individual variation. While there’s no doubt
that a large part of our behavior is rooted
in our DNA, there’s also no doubt that
our genetic endowment is highly influenced by culture. Beyond that, it’s difficult to say much with any certainty. It’s
true that only women can bear children
and breastfeed. That fact likely has some
bearing on aspects of men’s and women’s
personalities. But we don’t know much
about what the overall effect is, and given
the limits of our tools for understanding
human behavior, it’s possible we may
never know much.
At the moment, the culture seems
obsessed with gender differences, in
the context of a recurring intellectual
fad (called “evolutionary psychology”
this time around, and “sociobiology” in
a previous incarnation) that wants to
explain all complex behaviors as simple
evolutionary adaptations—if a pattern
of human behavior exists, it must be
because it’s adaptive in some ways. Over
long stretches of evolutionary time, that’s
true by definition. But in the short term
it’s hardly a convincing argument to say,
“Look at how men and women behave
so differently; it must be because men
and women are fundamentally different”—when clearly a political system has
been creating differences between men
and women.
From there, the argument that we need
to scrap masculinity is fairly simple.
To illustrate it, remember back to right
after 9/11. A number of commentators
argued that criticisms of masculinity
should be rethought. Cannot we now
see—recognizing that male firefighters
raced into burning buildings, risking and
sometimes sacrificing their lives to save
others—that masculinity can encompass
a kind of strength that is rooted in caring and sacrifice? Of course men often
exhibit such strength, just as do women.
So, the obvious question arises: What
makes these distinctly masculine characteristics? Are they not simply human
characteristics?
We identify masculine tendencies
toward competition, domination, and
violence because we see patterns of differential behavior; men are more prone
to such behavior in our culture. We
can go on to observe and analyze how
men are socialized to behave in those
ways, toward the goal of changing such
destructive behaviors. That analysis is
different from saying that admirable
human qualities present in both men
and women are somehow primarily the
domain of one gender. To assign them
to one gender only is misguided and
demeaning to the other, which is then
assumed not to possess these qualities
to the same degree. Once we start saying
that strength and courage are“masculine
traits,” it leads to the conclusion that
woman are not as strong or courageous.
Of course, if we are going to jettison
masculinity, we have to scrap femininity
along with it. We have to stop trying to
define what men and women are going
to be in the world based on extrapolations from physical sex differences. That
doesn’t mean we ignore those differences
when they matter, but we have to stop
assuming they matter everywhere.
I don’t think the planet can long survive
if the current conception of masculinity
endures. We face political and ecological
challenges that can’t be met with this old
model of what it means to be a man. At
the more intimate level, the stakes are
just as high. For those of us who are biologically male, we have a simple choice:
We can settle for being men, or we can
strive to be human beings. VM
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at
the University of Texas at Austin and a
member of the Men’s Resource Center for
Change advisory board. He is the author of
The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism,
and White Privilege and Citizens of
the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our
Humanity. He can be reached at rjensen@
uts.cc.utexas.edu.
A Call to Men has created some tools to
help address men’s violence against
women. Our educational CDs and DVDs
and inspiring shirts (sizes M - XXXL)
are available for those well-meaning individuals who are now ready to act.
· CDs
· DVDs
· T-Shirts
· Polo Shirts
- order online at www.acalltomen.com -
W inter 2007 •
21
R esources
Men’s Resources (Resources for Gay, Bisexual
& Questioning Men, see page 18)
International Society for Men’s Health
and Gender
P.O. Box 144, A-1097, Vienna, Austria/ EUROPE
Phone: +43 1 4096010, Fax: +43 1 4096011
www.ismh.org or [email protected]
Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe, Inc.
www.mijd.org
Men’s Resource Center for Change
www.mrcforchange.org
Men’s Resources International
www.mensresourcesinternational.org
Sex & Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA)
(800) 749-6879 Referrals available for 12-step
groups throughout New England.
Mentors in Violence Prevention
http://www.sportinsociety.org/mvp
Fathers with Divorce and Custody Concerns
Looking for a lawyer? Call your state bar
association lawyer referral agency. In Mass.
the number is (800) 392-6164. Here are some
websites that may be of use to you:
www.dadsdivorce.com
www.dadsrights.org (not www.dadsrights.com)
www.deltabravo.net
www.directlex.com/main/law/divorce/
www.divorce.com
www.divorcecentral.com
www.divorcehq.com
www.divorcenet.com
www.divorce-resource-center.com
www.divorcesupport.com
Collaborative Divorce
www.collaborativealternatives.com
www.collaborativedivorce.com
www.collaborativepractice.com
www.nocourtdivorce.com
Dads and Daughters
www.dadsanddaughters.org
The Fathers Resource Center
www.slowlane.com
National Fatherhood Initiative
www.cyfc.umn.edu/Fathernet
Internet Resources
Brother Peace
http://www.eurowrc.org/01.eurowrc/04.eurowrc_
en/36.en_ewrc.htm
EuroPRO-Fem: European Menprofemist Network
[email protected]
[email protected]
Men Against Violence
http://www.unesco.org/cpp/uk/projects/wcpmenaga.htm
• V oice M ale
Men’s Health Network
http://www.menshealthnetwork.org/
Montreal Men Against Sexism
c/o Martin Dufresne
913 de Bienville
Montreal, Quebec H2J 1V2 CANADA
514-563-4428, 526-6576, 282-3966
Fathers
22
The Men’s Bibliography
A comprehensive bibliography of writing on men,
masculinities, gender, and sexualities, listing over
14,000 works. It’s free at:
http://mensbiblio.xyonline.net/
Men Can Stop Rape
www.mencanstoprape.org
Men for HAWC
http://www.danverspolice.com/domviol9.htm
Men Stopping Violence
http://www.menstoppingviolence.org/index.php
National Men’s Resource Center
www.menstuff.org
National Organization for Men Against Sexism
www.nomas.org;Bostonchapterwww.nomasboston.org
National Association of Men and Women
Committed to Ending Violence Against Women
www.acalltomen.org
100 Black Men, Inc.
www.100blackmen.org
White Ribbon Campaign
www.whiteribbon.com;www.theribbonlady.com
XY Magazine
www.xyonline.net
Pro-feminist men’s web links (over 500 links) www.
xyonline.net/links.shtml
Pro-feministmen’spolitics,frequentlyaskedquestions
www.xyonline.net/misc/pffaq.html
Pro-feministe-maillist(1997–)www.xyonline.net/
misc/profem.html
Homophobiaandmasculinitiesamongyoungmen
www.xyonline.net/misc/homophobia.html
Magazines
Achilles Heel (from Great Britain)
www.achillesheel.freeuk.com
Save the Date
Memo to the Media continued from page 13
He forced the men out of the classroom
at gunpoint, then opened fire on the
women. He killed 14 women and injured
many more before committing suicide.
In response to this atrocity, in 1991
a number of Canadian men created the
White Ribbon Campaign. The idea was
for men to wear a white ribbon as a way
of making a visible and public pledge
“never to commit, condone, nor remain
silent about violence against women.”
The White Ribbon Campaign has since
become a part of Canadian culture, and
has been adopted in dozens of countries.
Will men respond to
“
these tragedies by
averting our eyes?”
After last fall’s schoolhouse horrors, the
challenge for American men is clear: will
we respond to these tragedies by averting
our eyes and pretending that none of this
happened? Or will we at long last break
our complicit silence and work together
with women to turn these tragedies into
a transformative cultural moment?
Less than two weeks after the Amish
schoolhouse murders, the town’s leaders had the schoolhouse demolished.
While the community continued to
mourn, the demolition was a symbolic
attempt to move past the tragedy. This
was an understandable response from
a small, grief-stricken community. But
what about the response from the rest of
our society? How long can we continue
to lurch from one tragic moment to the
next, each time wiping the slate clean
and pretending that these are all just a
series of “unrelated incidents”? VM
Men’s Resource Center for Change
11th
Challenge&Change
AwardsCelebration
Sunday, April 22nd 5 p.m.
Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House
Holyoke, Mass.
JacksonKatzisaleadingadvocateingender
violence education and a member of the
advisoryboardoftheMen’sResourceCenter
for Change and Voice Male magazine.
He is a cofounder of Mentors in Violence
Prevention (MVP), and cocreator of the
video Tough Guise: Violence, Media and
the Crisis in Masculinity. His book The
Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt
Women and How All Men Can Help was
published in 2006.
Reproductive Rights continued from page 16
The South Dakota abortion rights story
is just one of today’s human rights stories
I hope more men will pay attention to
in the days ahead. Abortion is a highly
personal decision that women must freely
make, without governmental interference.
Still, men’s voices—as allies, as partners, as
brothers, as fathers—can be a great asset in
the chorus of support.
Looking back on my journey, I felt
buoyed,witnessingmen’scapacitytodothe
right thing, especially when the stakes are
high. For the daughters of South Dakota,
the stakes couldn’t have been any higher.
In the days ahead, when similar abortion
bans in Arkansas, Mississippi, Ohio, and
elsewhere are being debated, men will
have increased opportunities to engage in
the conversation. Will we see a growing
number of men who feel the same way men
who worked in South Dakota felt? I hope
so. I urge men in other states across the
country—fathers and sons, brothers and
uncles, cousins and neighbors—to stand
up for all women and girls, not just their
own wives, partners and daughters. To do
so will demonstrate a kind of courage men
of conscience are ready to take. VM
Rob Okun is the editor of Voice Male. He can
[email protected].
W inter 2007 •
that the Campaign for Healthy Families had
people out canvassing, but then stopped
short; we’d spoken long enough. He didn’t
want to draw any undo attention from his
neighbors for chatting too long.
A couple of days later I was walking
through neighborhoods in Watertown,
about 100 miles from Sioux Falls. It was late
afternoon, I’d been out for more than four
hours, the temperature was dropping and
I was tired. A man who resembled a scary
character from a children’s story—wart on
a knobby, misshapen nose, shiny bald head,
dark hair sprouting from large ears, lines
creasing his forehead—opened the door to
his brick corner house. I was wearing a colorful Campaign for Healthy Families T-shirt
that made plain where I stood on the state’s
abortion ban. I felt tense as he sized me up,
reading theT-shirt, studying my face. Should
I turn on my heel before he blasts me? I asked
myself. Before I could answer my own question, he thrust out a callused, meaty hand
and began pumping mine up and down.
Parting his lips wide to reveal a mouthful of
misshapen teeth, he gripped my hand even
tighter, leaned into my face, and bellowed,
“I’M WITH YA!! I’M WITH YA!!” I jumped
back and would have lost my balance had
he not been squeezing my hand so tightly.
Before I could fully recover, he let go, gave
me thumbs up and said, “Good for you.”
In Madison, a day later, a woman in her
thirties was chatting with a neighbor, leaning against an old sedan, smoking. She
was on the other side of the debate and
wanted me to know I was in the wrong.
Even though we had been advised not to
debate those whose votes we were unlikely
to receive, it was difficult not to hear her
out, or to share a thought or two of my
own. Had she considered, I asked in a
quiet voice, the psychological and emotional ramifications for a teenage girl who
became pregnant after being the victim of
incest from a relative (in addition to rape,
there was no exception in the law for incest
or the physical health of the mother). “God
will take care of her” was her simple reply.
“God will give her whatever strength she
needs to bear the baby and to love the
child.” While some young women might
be able to do so, I allowed, what about
those whose emotional or physical states
were too fragile? “The Lord will take care of
everything, and everyone,” she answered,
extinguishing her cigarette in the driveway
by the old car. Case closed. I knew it was
time to move on.
The journey the other volunteers and
I took into the heartland of our country
underscored the deep divisions that exist in
the United States, but also connected a networkofalliesreadytoexpandourmovement
for reproductive justice. I was impressed that
amongtheSouthDakotanvolunteers—and
staff—were a number of younger men. Men
who shared with me how their parents had
impressed upon them the importance of
responsible sexual behavior and, in some
cases, had imbued in them a genuine concern for the cause of reproductive rights. I
was grateful for these conversations and felt
encouraged by them.
Tired and hungry after a weekend of canvassing, 120 of us crammed into one of the
Campaign for Healthy Families offices for
hot food and a debriefing. In the past two
days, organizers told us, we had collectively
visited nearly 14,000 households! A roar
of astonished approval rang out; people
put down their food to whoop and cheer.
We felt a kinship in that moment, a shared
sense of accomplishment. We felt what we
had done had really mattered.
23
C alendar
Please send all Calendar Listings
for events from April 1, 2007
(and beyond) to:
V oice M ale C alendar
[email protected]
or mail to :
236 N. Pleasant St., Amherst, MA 01002
Fax (413) 253-4801
Deadline for Spring issue:
March 15, 2007
February 16 – Brookline, MA
Understanding Emotional Regression:
An Evening with John Lee
John Lee is the author of Facing the
Fire: Experiencing and Expressing Anger
Appropriately, The Flying Boy, and The Missing
Peace. Instrumental in men’s work, he has
been featured on Oprah, 20/20, in Newsweek
magazine and The New York Times.
Cost: $8
Location: Brookline High School
Info: www.brooklineadulted.org,
617-730-2700
• V oice M ale
February 16-17 – Storrs, CT
Situating Gendered Violence Within
a Global Context: The 19th Annual
Conference on Women and Gender
This conference examines the global
intersections of gender and violence.
Hosted by the Women’s Studies Program
at the University of Connecticut, it deals
with issues including domestic violence,
sexual violence, violence in the media,
and gendered violence in schools.
Cost: unknown
Location: University of Connecticut
Info: www.womens.studies.uconn.edu,
(860) 486-3970
24
March 2-4 – Rowe, MA
Gender-osity: Diving into the
Kaleidoscope of Gender
Whatever your gender identity or sexual orientation, Gender-osity will use role-play, inner
work, guided ritual, and spirited discussion to
tease out and explore our personal beliefs about
the role of gender in our lives. Together, we will
seek ways to free ourselves from the confines of
antiquated notions of gender, learning to revel in
the spectrum of gender identities actually available to us in the human experience.
Cost: program: $175 - $275, room/board:
$65 - $250
Location: Rowe Camp & Conference Center
Info: www.rowecenter.org,
[email protected], 413-339-4954
March 5 - April 2 - Goshen, MA
The Spirit of Men
An opportunity to meet with a small group
of men to explore and deepen our own
spiritual quest within the safety and support
of like-minded men. Experience the growth
and power of the Spirit of Men. Facilitated by
Jimmy Nelson, Spiritually Based Counselor.
Meets 5 Mondays, 7-9 PM.
Cost: $150
Location: Goshen, MA
Info: [email protected],
413-268-7090
March 23 – East Windsor, NJ
It Takes Everyone to Prevent
Sexual Violence
A conference for those interested in learning how to help stop sexual violence in their
communities. Emphasizes teaching youth the
importance of respecting and empowering
others to prevent sexual violence.
Cost: $40 - $65
Location: Holiday Inn
Info: www.njcasa.org/conference1.htm,
609-631-4450 ext. 207
March 23-25 – Boston, MA
Pornography and Pop Culture:
Reframing Theory, Re-thinking Activism
In the world of the Internet, cell phone porn,
Howard Stern and Girls Gone Wild, the central
insights of the critical feminist perspective
are more important than ever. What do the
“porn wars” mean for feminist theory and
activism, and how can we rebuild a vibrant
feminist movement that addresses the harms
of misogynist images that help define our culture, our visual landscape and our sexuality?
These issues will be addressed at a national
conference at Wheelock College. This conference will (1) feature recent feminist theory
and research on pornography, prostitution
and pop culture, and (2) provide space for
collaborative discussion on how we can
prepare the ground for building a broadbased, energized and vibrant feminist
movement that can address the harms of
pornographic images in the context of a
more general political and cultural crisis.
Cost: unknown
Location: Wheelock College
Info: http://www.wheelock.edu/ppc/
March 30 - April 1 – Kansas City, MO
Engaging Boys and Men: How Are
We Doing? — 15th Annual Conference
on Men and Masculinities
Sponsored by the American Men’s Studies
Association, this conference will address the
question: What does our work tell us about
ways males can become fully engaged in
healthy ways and healthy relationships, and
reduce the risk of problems faced by boys
and men? Such problems include low reading
rates of boys, high dropout rates in schools
and colleges, high rates of men in prison,
males experiencing depression and suicide,
high rates of homophobia, and greater levels
of violence perpetrated by males at every age.
Cost: $195
Location: unknown
Info: www.mensstudies.org
April 22 – Holyoke, MA
11th Annual Challenge &
Change Celebration
This annual banquet brings together hundreds of guests to celebrate the community work of three individuals in western
Massachusetts. Past award recipients include:
Robert Meeropol, Wally Nelson, Sen. Stan
Rosenberg, Greg Speeter, and Felice Yeskel.
Cost: free (guests are invited to make a
personally meaningful gift to the MRC)
Location: Log Cabin Banquet
& Meeting House
Info: www.mrcforchange.org,
April 26-28 – Watertown, MA
The Power of Dialogue
This workshop is designed to help people
work through“chronic polarized conflict”
as it arises in work, social, or political contexts. Through experiential exercises, an
extensive dialogue simulation, presentations
and demonstrations, participants will learn
how to apply the key elements of Public
Conversations Project dialogue facilitation.
CE credits available.
Cost: $375-$600 (sliding scale - includes
catered lunch and snacks for 3 days)
Location: Family Institute of Cambridge
Info: www.publicconversations.org,
888-727-8326 x13
May 23-25 – Atlanta, GA
Achieving Successful Outcomes
with Male Students
The Institute on Achieving Successful
Outcomes with Male Students will bring
together professionals and scholars to discuss,
deliberate, explore, and plan to increase our
capacitytoengagemalestudentsoncampuses.
Topics will include: Men’s Development
Theory; Social Justice, Multiculturalism,
Diversity, and Male Students; Men’s Health
and Wellness; Assessment of Men’s Programs.
Cost: $125 - $375, plus housing
Location: Morehouse College
Info: www.naspa.org/events,
Fathers, Sons continued from page 12
Not every son who has had to endure his
father’ssuicidesharesDavid’sfeelingsabout
the experience. Nonetheless, his remarks
made me realize just how ridiculous it is to
try to create a hierarchy of loss within the
realm of fathers.
Who suffered more? Such a question is
absurd. The simple truth might be to say
that every loss is unique. “When it comes
to our societal understanding of grief,”
writes Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn in The
EmptyRoom,“theimportantquestionisnot
whose loss is the worst but what does this
loss, your loss mean to you? The truth is
the worst loss is the one that is happening
to you, the one that has picked you up and
thrown you down and left you struggling to
put your life back together.” VM
JonathanDiamond,Ph.D.,isapsychotherapist,
speaker,andworkshoppresenter,andauthorof
Narrative Means to Sober Ends: Treating
Addiction and Its Aftermath. He lives in
Heath, Mass., and his website is jonathandiamondphd.com.Thiscolumnwasexcerpted
from his new book, Fatherless Sons: Healing
the Legacy of Loss (JohnWiley & Sons). Used
by permission.
The course gave me hope for a new
way to be in a relationship.
Its radically transforming.

W inter 2007 •
depression could have been worse than
his, David said that what he misses most is
not having his dad to talk about it with. In
one of our therapy sessions, David said he
felt he had inherited all his father’s “unfinished business.” When I asked him to say
what that meant to him, David responded,
“I think he thought it would make things
easier on us if he wasn’t around, but he
was wrong. I know it would devastate
him to know that I struggle with the same
feelings of despair and self-loathing. I’m
sure he thought he took them with him.
But the problems didn’t leave or go away.
Only he did.”
In our therapy together, I tried to bridge
the gap between David’s father’s world and
his. I saw this as part of a larger project to
recruit his father as an ally in David’s battle
with his own depressive moods. Toward
this end, I asked David to think about
an activity he missed doing with his own
father that he might invite his son to join
him in. “I used to love to do woodworking
with him,” he responded.
David still possessed his father’s table
saw, but since his divorce had no place
to put it or any of the other tools he had
inherited from his father. He described
a small outbuilding on the property he
was renting, which would make a nice
shop. His landlord said he could do as he
pleased with it. I suggested David not put
this project off any longer.
David asked his son to help him with
his project, and when they finished, he
was astonished to discover that the room
they had built was almost an exact replica
of his father’s work space. David found
this activity an incredibly gratifying and
healing experience.
More rewarding than the project itself,
which lifted David’s spirits immensely,
was the time spent working side by side
with his son. In the course of putting the
shop together, David said, he and his son
talked more about the circumstances surrounding his father’s death than the two
of them ever had. His son was genuinely
interested in hearing stories about his
grandfatherandwasevenmoreinterested
in learning about the kind of connection
David enjoyed with him.
During one of our sessions, David asked
me about my own father and whether
he was still alive. I’m not sure why, but I
found myself disclosing more details about
that relationship to David than I had to
any client prior. The harsh circumstances
surrounding his own loss may have had
something to do with it. I suppose I felt
there was little I could say that would
shock him.
DavidseemedamusedwhenIsuggested
that it must have been harder for him to
live with his loss. “I don’t know, Jonathan,”
he said, gazing out the window at the
maple tree outside my office. “Your dad
sounds like a pretty complicated guy. In
some ways, I imagine the memories of the
man are much easier to live with than was
the person. In my case, it was my father’s
death rather than his life I found traumatizing. He was one of the most gentle people
I’ve ever known.”
I was moved and humbled by David’s
insight. I felt embarrassed by my earlier
thoughts about the horror of his grief and
my focus on what separated us. When I
looked at David, suddenly, in that moment
I felt we were just two sad, lonely sons
missing their dads.
25
T hank Y ou !
TheMen’sResourceCenterforChange,publisher
ofVoiceMale,receivescommunitysupportfrom
near and far. Voice Male allows us a public forum in which to thank the hundreds of people
whohavesharedourinspirationandcommitment,
andcontributedtheirtime,services,andmoneytowardavisionofpersonalandsocialtransformation.Wearefilledwithdeepgratitudeatthe
generosityoftheseindividualsandbusinesses:
Building and Grounds Will Greenleaf/
Whole Foods; Integrity Development and
Construction; Bob Mazer, Bill Patten
Donated Space Network Chiropractic,
Greenfield; Northampton Council on Aging
In-Kind Donations Henion Bakery, Amherst
Interns Rob Brezinsky, Sarah Deguzman
MRC/Voice Male Volunteers Cathryn
Brubaker, Sarah De Guzman, Sam Girard,
Joel Kaye, Joe Leslie, Dan Schwartz,
Claude Tellier
Men’s Walk to End Abuse Volunteers: David
Abrami, Allan Arnaboldi, Jan Eidelson,
Joe Leslie, Bob Mazer. Performers: The
Alchemystics, DJ Dave Lash, DJ Hush, DJ
Mmello, DJ Theory; Sponsors: Integrity
Development & Construction, Greenfield
Savings Bank. In-Kind Supporters: Amanouz
Café, Andiamo, Atkin’s Farms, Big Y Foods,
Bruegger’s Bagels, Haymarket Café, Henion
Bakery, Mimmo’s Pizza, People’s Market,
Starbuck’s, La Veracruzana
• V oice M ale
Steven Schoenberg Concert Volunteers:
Adi Bemak, Amber Bemak, Deb Berigow,
Rob Brezinsky, Jan Eidelson, Karen Fogliatti,
Peter Jessop, Yoko Kato, Jonathan Klate, Joe
Leslie, Bob Mazer, Carlyn Saltman, Tom
Schuyt. Sponsors: Athol Savings Bank, Lisa
Baskin, Blair, Cutting & Smith Insurance,
J.F. Conlon & Associates, Daily Hampshire
Gazette, Downtown Sounds, Eastworks,
Florence Savings Bank, Freedom Credit
Union, Integrity Development & Construction, Meg Kelsey-Wright, Klondike Sound
Company, Marisa Labozzetta & Martin Wohl,
Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House, Robert
K. Ostberg & Associates, R. Michelson
Galleries, Smith College, WFCR, WGBY. InKind Supporters: Big Y Foods, Loose Goose
Café, Osaka Japanese Restaurant, Paul &
Elizabeth’s, Spirit Haus, Woodstar Café
26
Asalways,weextendourgratitudetotheMRC
BoardofDirectorsfortheongoingguidanceand
support they give to this organization and all
who are a part of it. We are also grateful for all
ofourstaff,whoregularlygoaboveandbeyond
the call of duty, and to our team of volunteer
supportgroupfacilitators,whoeveryweekprovideasafespaceformentocomeandtalkabout
their lives.
How Can We Stop the Violence? continued from page 17
being blamed, guilt-tripped, or shamed for
sexist violence. This discussion also lays
the foundation for a deeper discussion
of what men can do to act as allies with
women, to end sexism and violence.
Educating with the goal of motivating
men to be allies is, for many, the main point
of educating men. For the entire history of
this movement, every step forward is the
result of women’s efforts; developing local
centers and resources for people who have
been victimized, creating hotlines, writing
new laws and working to get those laws
passed, organizing marches and pickets,
training professionals, creating an entirely
new arena for professional development,
organizing communities, etc. Rarely have
men been integrally involved in these
efforts. It is time for men to become part of
the solution.
Men as Allies, Not Bystanders
Women have a right to walk down a street
and not be accosted, to sleep in their own
beds and be safe, to live in their own
homes and not be beaten, to walk into
convenience stores and not see images of
themselves displayed as sexual objects, to
spend a day at work or in school and not
be harassed. These are rights—rights that
men have taken from women. Men have
an obligation to work alongside women
so that women can once again experience
these rights.
One of the clearest ways for men to act
as allies of women is to change the role of
“bystander.” A bystander is someone who
stands by while sexism or violence occurs.
Bystanders are those men in a bar who are
silent when one man harasses a waitress
or who listen to other men tell pro-rape
jokes. The role of bystander is a powerful
role and creates a unique opportunity for
men to take action as allies for women.
By remaining silent when acts of sexism
occur, men offer their tacit consent and
support for these attitudes and the behaviors that follow. The person who is acting
in sexist ways “reads” the silence of other
men as encouragement to continue, and
in some cases, to escalate. By speaking out
in these situations, men provide a powerful challenge to men’s sexism and abuse.
This is true not only because they do not
remain silent in the face of sexism, but also
because it is men challenging other men,
as well as men challenging other men in a
setting that has traditionally been a place
where men have felt comfortable in talking
in sexist or abusive ways about women.
Creatinggenderjusticerequiresthatmen
be involved, and the first step for getting
men involved is educating men about gender injustice. Ending sexism and violence
is not solely about individual men treating
women with more respect and care, nor is
it solely about men working collectively to
expose and undermine institutional sexism. Education can work, as is demonstrated by the thousands of men who are
now involved in this effort—each of whom
became educated at some point. VM
Rus Ervin Funk, MSW, is a longtime activist
and advocate for racial, sexual, and gender
justice. He is the co-founder of D.C. Men
Against Rape (now Men Can Stop Rape,
Inc.), Men’s Work: Eliminating Violence
AgainstWomen, and other organizations.
He lives and works in Louisville, Kentucky,
andcanbereachedatwww.rusfunk.comor
[email protected].
Men’s Resource Center for Change Programs & Services
Administrative Staff
Executive Director – Rob Okun
Executive Assistant – David Gillham
Office Manager – Allan Arnaboldi
Financial Manager – Paula Chadis
Moving Forward
Director – Sara Elinoff-Acker
Intake Coordinator/Court Liaison – Steve Trudel
Administrative Director – Jan Eidelson
Partner Services Outreach Counselor –
Barbara Russell
Anger Management Coordinator – Joy Kaubin
Hampden County Coordinator – Scott Girard
Group Leaders – Sara Elinoff-Acker, Karen Fogliatti,
Scott Girard, Steve Jefferson, Joy Kaubin, Dot LaFratta,
Susan Omilian, Bill Patten, Tom Sullivan, Steve Trudel
Support Services Coordinator –Tom Schuyt
Support Group Facilitators – Allan Arnaboldi,
Michael Burke,JimDevlin,Michael Dover, Carl Erikson,
Tim Gordon, Jerry Levinsky, Gábor Lukács, Bob Mazer,
Tom Schuyt, Frank Shea, Sheldon Snodgrass, Roger
Stawasz, Bob Sternberg, Gary Stone, Claude Tellier
Youth Programs Supervisor – Allan Arnaboldi
Group Leaders – Aaron Buford, Malcolm Chu
Board of Directors
Chair – Peter Jessop
Clerk/Treasurer – Tom Schuyt
Members – Charles Bodhi,Tom Gardner, Yoko Kato,
Gail Kielson, Jonathan Klate, Bob Mazer
Executive Director Emeritus – Steven Botkin
Main Office: 236 North Pleasant St. • Amherst,
MA 01002 • 413.253.9887 • Fax: 413.253.4801
Springfield Office: 29 Howard St. • Springfield,
MA 01105 • 413.734.3438
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.mrcforchange.org
Fathering Programs
■ A variety of resources are available —
Fathers and Family Network programs,
lawyer referrals, parenting resources, workshops, presentations and conferences.
Contact: (413) 253-9887 ext.10
Youth Programs
■ Young Men of Color Leadership Project
Amherst
■ShortTermGroups,Workshops,Presentations
and Consultations for Young Men and YouthServing Organizations
Contact: (413) 253-9887 ext.33
Moving forward
Anger Management, domestic violence
intervention, youth violence prevention
■ Anger Management
Various times for 15-week groups for men,
women and young men at the MRC. For more
information, call (413) 253-9887 ext. 23
■ Domestic Violence Intervention
A state-certified batterer intervention prog
ram serves both voluntary and courtmandated men who have been physically
violent or verbally/emotionally abusive.
Fee subsidies available.
■ Basic Groups
Groups for self-referred and court-mandated
men (40 weeks) are held in Amherst, Athol,
Belchertown, Springfield, North Adams, and
Greenfield.
■ Follow-up
Groups for men who have completed the
basic program and want to continue working
on these issues. Call (413) 253-9588 ext 12.
■ Partner Services
Free phone support, resources, referrals and
weekly support groups are available for
partners of men in the MOVE program.
■ Prison Groups
A weekly MOVE group is held at the Hampshire
County Jail and House of Corrections.
■ Community Education and Training
Workshops and training on domestic violence
and clinical issues in batterer intervention
are available.
■ Speakers’ Bureau
Formerly abusive men who want to share
their experiences with others to help prevent
family violence are available to speak at
schools and human service programs.
■ Youth Violence Prevention
Services for teenage males who have been
abusive with their families, peers, or dating
partners. Contact: (413) 253-9588 ext.18
Workshops & training
■ Workshops available to colleges, schools,
human service organizations, and businesses
on topics such as “Sexual Harassment
Prevention and Response,” “Strategies and
Skills for Educating Men,” “Building Men’s
Community,” and “Challenging Homophobia,”
among other topics. Specific trainings and
consultations also available.
Publications
■ Voice Male
Published quarterly, the MRC magazine
includesarticles,essays,reviewsandresources,
and services related to men and masculinity.
■Children,LesbiansandMen:Men’sExperiences
as Known and Anonymous Sperm Donors
A 60-page manual which answers the questions men have, with first-person accounts by
men and women “who have been there.”
Contact: (413) 253-9887 ext.16
Resource & Referral Services
■ Information about events, counselors,
groups, local, regional and national activities,
and support programs for men.
Contact: (413) 253-9887 ext.10
Speakers and Presentations
■ Invite new visions of manhood into your
university, faith community, community organization. Many topics including: “Manhood in
a Time of War,” “Fathering,” and “Men’s Lives,
Men’s Lies.” Contact: (413) 253-9887 Ext. 20
W inter 2007 •
The mission of the Men’s Resource
Center for Change is to support men,
challenge men’s violence, and develop
men’s leadership in ending oppression
in our lives, our families, and
our communities.
Support Group Programs
■ Open Men’s Group
Sundays 7-9 p.m. at the MRC Amherst office
Tuesdays 6:45-8:45 p.m. at the Council on
Aging, 240 Main St., Northampton.
Wednesdays 7-9 p.m. in Greenfield at Network
Chiropractic, 21 Mohawk Trail (lower Main St.).
A facilitated drop-in group for men to talk
about their lives and to support each other.
■ Men Who Have Experienced Childhood
Abuse /Neglect
Specifically for men who have experienced
any kind of childhood abuse or neglect.
Fridays 7 - 8:30 p.m. at the MRC.
■ Gay, Bisexual & Questioning
Mondays 7 - 9 p.m. at the MRC. A facilitated
drop-in group for gay, bisexual and questioning men to talk about their lives and
support each other (not a discussion group).
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