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Men are being asked to open up, but are we prepared to listen when they do?

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The cultural conversation around men and masculinity often feels less like a public discussion and more like a rhetorical battleground.

But if it’s a chaotic and hard-fought debate during most of the year, this November, during the month highlighting men’s health issues and International Men’s Day, the thrusts and parries were enough to make your head spin.

In Parliament, we saw Jess Phillips MP’s derision at the idea of a debate about men’s issues on International Men’s Day, lead to that exact thing taking place for the very first time; at the University of York, a veto on marking the day by 193 feminist academics and students, prompted a feminist-led petition in support of the day signed by thousands; and most recently, student George Lawlor, who was attacked across the national press for refusing to attend a sexual consent course, was offered a compassionate hearing on about as mainstream a TV show as there is – ITV’s This Morning.

On International Men’s Day itself, there were a slew of articles mocking the day, but it also felt as if more national news outlets than ever gave a platform to powerful and informed defenses of why there needs to be public recognition of the gendered issues men face.

At the heart of each of these stories is the same conflict – our society’s deep ambivalence and discomfort about men speaking out about the issues they face.

Men given mixed messages

On the one hand, men are being told more than ever that they must open up, that their refusal to overcome traditional masculine ideals of strength and stoicism is the source of a multitude of their own and society’s problems — the need to help men express their anxieties in order to stem the tide of male suicides, became the unofficial central theme for this year’s International Men’s Day.

But on the other hand, men are also repeatedly told their voices are too dominant, that speaking about the issues that affect them amounts to giving a special platform to the already privileged, and as a result of this perceived privilege, the only gender issues they should really be speaking out on are those that affect women.

At times, men even appear to be asked to do both at once: called on to open up about the experience of being a man, but then told which parts of that experience are acceptable to discuss.

November’s fraught public discussion about men and masculinity was book-ended by last weekend’s Being A Man festival at London’s Southbank Centre. Now in its second year, I attended the event with no small degree of trepidation, because the first BAM in 2014 was very much driven by the belief that when it comes to exploring men’s issues, there are only certain issues that are acceptable to discuss — the ones sanctioned by feminism.

An evolving conversation?

For example, there were talks about why men should be feminists, but none on why they shouldn’t be; there were discussions about why male violence against women is a problem, but none on the problem of female perpetrators and male victims; while another panel explained why porn is bad for you, but offered no perspectives on how men can explore, express and celebrate their sexuality.

But on attending the Saturday session of this year’s three-day event, despite my heart initially sinking when the first talk I heard was a keynote speech about male sexual violence against women, it seemed to me the range of issues tackled during the rest of the day and how they were addressed, was yet another indicator of how rapidly the conversation about men and masculinity is evolving.

At a talk about depictions of men in TV and film, both the audience and panellists warmly accepted the idea that society is far too tolerant of violence against men in the media and that this is a reflection of our greater tolerance of violence against men and boys in real life; at this year’s panel debate about porn, there was none of the demonising of male sexuality that had gone on in the previous year; and most powerful of all, there was an extraordinary panel discussion about the need to raise awareness and support for male victims of rape.

I think it’s fantastic that this discussion is now breaking into the mainstream, from Parliament to the Southbank Centre, because I believe it’s imperative that men are encouraged to speak about what it means to be a man. But I also believe it’s essential that people truly listen when they do speak out. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything these men say, but it does mean listening in a way that allows them to be heard.

During this November’s high-profile skirmishes about men and masculinity, it was telling that the core issue under discussion was the crisis in male suicide. What everyone appeared to agree on, was that a central plank in tackling this public health emergency is finding ways to encourage men to talk more openly about their fears and anxieties. But what is still very much up for grabs, is whether we’re really prepared to hear them when they do.

By Dan Bell

Image Credit: Beyer Projects

We all need to help men talk about men’s issues

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I was deeply saddened to hear that the University of York has cancelled its plans to mark International Men’s Day and raise awareness of important men’s issues like male suicide, writes Glen Poole, co-ordinator for International Men’s Day in the UK.

I understand the university had planned to follow up the day by highlighting the availability of mental health and welfare support that is available to men.

When 13 a men a day in the UK are dying from suicide, it is essential that everyone in positions of power, trust and influence does everything they can to help men talk about the issues that affect them.

And that includes the academic community and student representatives.

One way we can all do this is to make it easier for people of all backgrounds and political perspectives to talk about men’s issues.

It seems that on this occasions, those academics, student representatives and alumni who have campaigned against the university’s plans to mark International Men’s Day, have put their personal gender politics ahead of their compassion for men and boys in crisis and distress.

I’d invite these campaigners to reflect on their actions and ask themselves this question: “whose voice is it more important to listen to on International Men’s Day, yours or the voices of suicidal men and those bereaved by male suicide?”

I wonder if you’d have compassion for men like Robert, who wrote to me last week and told me he’d sat on the railway tracks on many occasions in recent years, waiting for the Carlisle to Newcastle train to put him out of his misery.

With the help of supportive family and “an amazing GP” he managed to pull through. “You don’t know me,” he wrote, “but I just want to say how much I admire what you’re doing. I myself am a ‘survivor’, my story isn’t over thankfully. I will do whatever I can to help.”

I wonder if you have any compassion for men like Dave who wrote to me and said: “Your hard work on these issues warms my heart. My best mate from the age of four committed suicide four years ago as he couldn’t go on and no-one really got it or him. I still think of him everyday”.

I wonder if you have compassion for the young man called Sam who wrote to me last week about hisexperiences of having suicidal thoughts. He said:

“As a man who is recovering from mental problems and who has struggled with suicidal thoughts in the past, I have had to face up to shame and discuss it in detail. It has been a painful and at times frightening process but one that has been key to my recovery. When we look at the problem of male suicide, we need to look at how our society sets up young men to experience potentially unmanageable levels of shame and need to work together to build a society where this in no longer the case.”

I wonder if you would take a moment to consider, with compassion in your hearts, whether your actions in campaigning against International Men’s Day are helping or hindering men like these to come forward and share their stories of male suicide?

When you campaign against initiatives to highlight men’s issues, are you helping suicidal men to talk about their issues, or making it harder for suicidal men to talk about their issues?

International Men’s Day in the UK has a proud record when it comes to promoting the need for male suicide prevention initiatives.

This year our theme for International Men’s Day is “Making a Difference for Men and Boys”.

I’d like to invite all those who have found time to campaign against an initiative that is designed to make a difference, to invest that time in supporting the day instead.

It takes great courage, compassion and creativity to take on difficult issues like preventing male suicide.

One creative way people are raising awareness of male suicide on International Men’s Day is by supporting a new social media campaign led by the charity CALM UK.

You can sign up for free to support this campaign at www.biggerissues.co.uk.

I don’t know if this campaign will help men talk about their issues or not, but I do know it will do more good than campaigning against the good people supporting International Men’s Day who are trying to make a difference for men and boys.

If you haven’t the compassion to join us, then my request is that you kindly leave us in peace do our work to help men talk about men’s issues like male suicide on International Men’s Day.

To get involved with this year’s International Men’s Day in the UK on 19 November and find out what’s happening to mark the date near you, visit the UK Men’s Day site here

It’s time to have a new kind of conversation about men and boys

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insideMAN’s Features Editor, explains how an exchange he witnessed in an editorial meeting over ten years’ ago, offers an insight into why we need to change the way we talk about men and boys.

— This is article #100 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

Many years ago, when I was just starting out as a journalist, I witnessed an exchange in an editorial meeting that spoke volumes about the way people tend to respond if you say you are interested in writing about the issues that affect men and boys.

I was working as an intern for The Nation magazine in New York, one of America’s longest-standing left-leaning political magazines, when Cindy Sheehan, a mother whose son had been killed in Iraq, was invited to come and speak about the Mothers For Peace anti-war campaign.

As she was addressing the room of editors, she mentioned in passing that dead soldiers’ fathers had also asked to take part in their campaign. The moment she said this, an audible series of sniggers and snorts of derision went around the room, as if to say: “Typical! Bloody men again, trying to muscle-in on a women’s campaign! Don’t they already control everything else?”

‘Why do men need a voice?’

I can still clearly remember how astonished I was at that reaction – fathers being excluded from a campaign to end military deaths and suffering experienced almost solely by young men, many of whom would themselves be fathers. What made the response even more breath-taking to me, was that the fathers who weren’t in the room, but at whom these sniggers were directed, would themselves have been part of the generation of men drafted for the Vietnam War. If there was anyone who had a right to be a part of an anti-war campaign, it was surely them.

As a young trainee journalist I just sat and kept my mouth shut, far too intimidated by the room full of high-powered – and predominantly female – editors to question their reaction. But that exchange has not only stayed with me ever since, it’s also one I have seen versions of played out in editorial meetings at every publication I have worked for consequently.

When I mention that I am interested in finding ways to give men and boys a voice, one of the first reactions is often, “why do men need a voice? Aren’t virtually all powerful and public voices already male?” But in my experience, men are rarely given the opportunity to speak publicly about the issues that affect them as men. There may be plenty of male politicians, pundits and journalists, but to speak out as men, is to risk being labelled a whinging bully, or worse.

Let’s push things forward

All of this is a very roundabout way of explaining why I am so excited to have worked on our #100Voices4Men and boys project. When we started, we knew we were doing something that was both powerful and unique. But we weren’t prepared for just how insightful, thought-provoking and diverse the responses would be.

The series has included insights from young men into how they feel about feminism, on what it’s like for a father to lose a child through his wife’s miscarriage, how a gay Methodist minister reconciles his sexuality with his religion, the views of a campaigner against male circumcision and the story of a former boxer who uses his tough upbringing to inspire young men.

What’s really great, is that more and more publications are realising the need to engage in a much wider and more sophisticated discussion about men and masculinity. Huffington Post Men is the latest publication to join the conversation, alongside Telegraph Men and BBC Radio’s Men’s Hour, these are offering a vital counterbalance to what at times can seem like a relentlessly negative and one-dimensional way in which we talk about men.

Our strap-line at insideMAN is “Pioneering conversations about men and boys”. Let’s break some new ground and move the conversation forward.

This article first appeared on Huffington Post Men

Feature image: flickr/floeschie

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

‘Men don’t have problems, they cause them’ is now the only politically correct thing you can say about men

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There is now a pervasive drive to limit the discussion of men and masculinity to a single, poisonous, narrative: Men don’t have problems, they cause them. This is how it’s happening in schools, universities, across the media and even in the UN itself.

— This is article #99 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

On Monday, The Times reported on the Raising Awareness and Prevention initiative – a project in which a former New York sex-crime prosecutor goes into London schools to lecture boys on how porn is generating a rise in misogyny. The article starts with this sentence: “Mission impossible: one hour to re-programme teenage boys’ sexual manners so they are fit for a feminist world”.

It ends with this: “These are boys any parent would be proud of and they are also now scarred for life. Any time they imagine doing something furtive online, it will trigger the thought that adults of influence – maybe even some formidable American women – are seeing into their souls via their search history. Mission accomplished.”

This isn’t sex education. It’s indoctrination, bordering on abuse. It’s also just one example of what is now a pervasive drive to limit the discussion of men and masculinity to a single narrative: Men don’t have problems, they cause them.

‘Good Lad’ workshop

The boundaries of what some people would like to see as permissible speech about men was summed up earlier this month, when rugby players at Oxford University took part in a ‘Good Lad’ workshop, aimed at combatting what the organisers say is a crisis of sexual assault and harassment on campus.

In 2009, another men’s group was set up at Oxford University, this time not aimed at teaching men how to stop harassing women, but as a space for young men to explore what it means to be a man in contemporary UK society. The group was vociferously condemned as “reactionary and ridiculous” by the very same campaigners who say that male students should take part in forums such as the ‘Good Lad’ workshop.

At the time, Olivia Bailey, then NUS national women’s officer, said: “What exactly will a men’s society do? To suggest that men need a specific space to be ‘men’ is ludicrous, when everywhere you turn you will find male-dominated spaces.”

You can speak up as a man, as long as it’s to apologise

So, just to be clear, the only time men are permitted to come together to talk about their experiences of being men, is when they hold themselves in contrition in an attempt prevent themselves from abusing women? Right. OK then.

But student campaigners aren’t the only ones committed to controlling the conversation about what it means to be a man. In January of this year, the Southbank Centre held the Being A Man festival, the first of its kind in the UK and organised by the same people who run the well-established, feminist-orientated, Women of the World Festival.

I was genuinely excited at the prospect of such a high-profile event that would put a vibrant discussion of men and masculinity at the heart of the UK’s cultural establishment. Except that isn’t what happened. What actually took place was a series of ideological set pieces, in which prominent feminists and their allies told us what they think men are and how we need to change.

Over the course of two days, we were told that men should be feminists, but offered no view on why they shouldn’t be; that male violence against women is a problem, but given no views on the problem of female perpetrators and male victims; that porn is bad for you, but offered no perspectives on how men can explore, express and celebrate their sexuality. And so on.

HeForShe

In the run-up to the festival, the organisers arranged a series of panel discussions among men to explore what the big issues for men are that the festival should address. From the line-up of speakers at the event, it’s hard not to conclude they didn’t simply exclude any voices that weren’t in line with their own feminist worldview.

It’s one thing if student campaigners and metropolitan pundits try to limit what you can say about men, but it’s quite another when the UN gets in on the act. The UN’s recently-launched HeForShe campaign, championed by Emma Watson, calls on men to help end violence against women – and who wouldn’t want to help do that? But the glaring, frankly bizarre, elephant in the room is that the campaign deliberately, explicitly omits concern for male victims of violence.

This is the pledge the UN is asking men to sign up to: “I commit to take action against all forms of violence and discrimination faced by women and girls.” Discrimination can be a very subjective topic, but the UN’s data on violence is unequivocal, globally men and boys are almost four times more likely to be murdered than women and girls.

These messages are being targeted at boys and young men at ages when they are most vulnerable and insecure about their place in the world. The narrative itself excludes discussion of the impact this is having on young men, or of the problems they face due to their own gender.

Young men ‘shouted at and publicly humiliated’

insideMAN recently took the unusual step of actually asking young men how they feel about the conversation that is being had about them, rather than with them. The responses of these teenagers, who are relentlessly subjected to social media propaganda about the failures of their sex – from EveryDaySexism, to Hollaback, to the FCKH8 video – should stand as a wakeup call.

They said that if they make any attempt to contradict these prevailing messages, they “will draw fire… so the only option is to shut up”. Asked what conditions would make them feel able speak their minds, they said “they would need a safe space where they could feel confident they would not be shouted at and publicly humiliated; where their motives were not under immediate suspicion simply on account of their gender. They want protecting against fundamentalism by prominent and leading figures in the campaign for gender equality – people who can defend the sincerity of their interest and allow real discussion”.

But the concluding line of the article is most damning of all. “As the boys left our house they said how great it was to be able to have a sensible conversation about these things. I was struck that this was the first opportunity they had ever had to discuss gender equality without having to self-censor.”

Not to worry though, soon they’ll be at university and there’ll be Good Lad workshop they can go to.

By A Man

 

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

Men are good together

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I’m rehearsing Deep Diving Men pop-up theatre event for International Men’s Day. The theme this year is ‘working together’.

There’s a short script and we’re playing with an image of men running – of movement. Yesterday’s rehearsal was hilarious. Five men getting together, unknown to each other, all facing a deep uncertainty about performing – and we had a great time.

— This is article #90 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

At school, my first memories of break-time were of a battleground, a jungle of wild lawlessness and personal insecurity.  Perhaps we were either bullied or were the bullies – I’ll always remember that aggressive energy seeping up through the concrete. I felt very, very alone then. Women, rather than the male elders we longed for, shuffled us into lines – and the boys were always slower than the girls. Our line generally took longer to form, and it was messier.

What was your experience?

A few years ago I would NEVER have gone to any evening social event where there weren’t women. What’s the point? – No women?

I learnt something important from a man a few years ago – “Duncan” he said. “You’re needy – take that to the men.” Now, I no longer dump everything, all my thoughts and pent-up feelings, at the feet of my partner, girlfriend, wife, sister, mother… She no longer has to carry all that. Women really have been carrying enough.

Beneath the surface of my cultural mask of masculinity – which teaches me to compete against, to distrust, and to see other men as threats – lies a man looking for his brother. Of course I still feel it, at times, my resistance to stepping up and affirming another man.

‘My brother’s got my back’

I still resent his ‘success’. It takes me a long time to trust him. And why trust him when I can make my own stand against the world? Isn’t it all about what’s in it for me? Or is it about my service to others?

Am I really that important?

Are you?

We men are playful, natural creatures of movement and direction and we have a great sense of humour. We like being together but we find it difficult to say that, and we love the commonality of grounded laughter at something we don’t even need to say. I love the ease we men have.

Alone, we perpetuate a mask of masculinity that encourages an outmoded idea – that vulnerability is something feminine, or weak; yet together we dance the surface of a deep, often unspoken, trust – that my brother has got my back, that these other men are actually on my team.

I’m moved by the courage that these men are showing, the trust they have in me, and am excited by how we can make things happen when we step forward and get together.

We don’t need to do it on our own.

Duncan Alldridge runs the Deep Diving Men theatre project which offers men and boys the opportunity to physically explore a sense of their masculinity and place on the male path.

To find out more about Deep Diving Men’s theatre pop-ups that will be taking place around London Waterloo on International Men’s Day, see the Deep Diving Men website and follow them on Twitter @deepdivingmen

– Picture credit:Deep Diving Men

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com.