Girl w/ Pen

Join Shira Tarrant as she discusses her new book, Men and Feminism

Tuesday, May 26 @ 7:00PM

Lir Irish Pub, 903 Boylston St., Boston

(617) 778-0089

There’s no denying that men’s involvement and interest in feminism is key to its continuing relevance and importance. Shira Tarrant, an expert in gender politics, feminism, pop culture, and masculinity, in her new work Men and Feminism, addresses the question of why men should care about feminism in the first place.

Men and Feminism lays the foundation for a larger discussion about feminism as a human issue, not simply a women’s issue. Men are crucial to the movement — as fathers, brothers, husbands, boyfriends, and friends. From “why” to “how” to “what can men do”, Men and Feminism answers all the questions men have about how and why they should get behind feminism.

Sponsored by the Center for New Words and co-sponsored by the Boston Chapter of NOMAS

Cross-posted at http://shiratarrant.com.

Why do some men support gender diversity in leadership while others REALLY DON’T? Catalyst asks this question through a new body of research evaluating men’s involvement with gender diversity in a report released today titled, Engaging Men In Gender Initiatives: What Change Agents Need To Know. The study tells us a lot about men’s advocacy for gender equality at work.

Straight from the release:

Bringing men into the conversation of diversity is in a company’s best interest and is paramount to creating equality in business leadership. “The preponderance of men in leadership means their efforts are necessary to advance change in the workplace,” said Ilene H. Lang, President & CEO of Catalyst. “Research continues to show that diversity well-managed yields more innovation and is tied to enhanced financial performance − factors good for all employees.”

When asked about what keeps men from supporting gender initiatives, some men who were interviewed for the study pointed to a “zero-sum” mentality – a belief that gains for women necessarily mean losses for men. Companies may inadvertently encourage this line of thinking by instituting practices that increase competition between employees and put the focus on the individual first above the organization as a whole. A shift away from this “win or lose” mentality to a recognition that everybody benefits from gender equality can lead men to become greater advocates of change.

What are some characteristics that make men advocates for gender equality? The report finds that men who are seen as champions of diversity have a strong sense of fairness. Men who were committed to the ideal of fairness were found to have more personal concerns about issues of equality in general and were more aware of gender bias in the workplace and likely to take action.

Men identified as taking action on gender diversity indicated factors that may work as roadblocks to becoming champions of equality. These obstacles included two barriers to men’s engagement: fear of losing status or of being seen as part of the problem, and apathy – a sense that issues of gender do not concern men. Organizations can take steps to help remove these barriers and engage men in initiatives to promote gender equality by appealing to men’s sense of fairness, providing men with women mentors, exposing men to male leaders who champion inclusion, and inviting men into the discussion through male-only and male/female groups. In addition, research shows that men gain significant personal benefits such as better health, freedom to be themselves, and the ability to share financial responsibilities with a spouse or partner when working in a place free of gender bias.

Amen to all that, I say.  You can download a pdf version of study here.

You heard it here first!  Or rather, folks have heard it on Publisher’s Lunch last week, and I’m uberexcited to share the news with the GWP community.  Here’s the listing announcing my next project (title, of course, subject to change!):

NON-FICTION: HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS
Young feminist commentator and author of SISTERHOOD, INTERRUPTED: FROM RADICAL WOMEN TO GRRLS GONE WILD Deborah Siegel’s MAN ENOUGH: HOW THE NEW MANHOOD IS CHANGING WOMEN’S LIVES, exploring how young men today may express very different attitudes about gender equality than previous generations but at the same time our cultural ideals of masculinity have not changed very much, to Amy Caldwell at Beacon Press, in a nice deal, by Tracy Brown at Tracy Brown Literary Agency (NA).

Our very own Shira Tarrant, of The Man Files here at GWP, was speaking on WBAI radio today about her awesome anthology Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex and Power. Joining Shira were filmmaker Byron Hurt, author Jeremy Adam Smith (who I met last weekend at CCF!) and author Jacob Anderson-Minshall. The group chatted about some of our favorite topics over here: men, masculinity, sex, relationships, violence prevention, and positive change. Check out the MP3 version here.

Miley Cyrus is all grown up.  Yes, I am going to squeeze Simone de Beauvoir and Miley Cyrus into the same sentence.  If you’re following Miley’s career these days, you’ll know that she’s “becoming a woman” in the media and entertainment worlds.  Simone de Beauvoir definitely had it right, and rarely do we see so clearly exactly how someone “becomes” a woman.  But really, this is her “adult,” womanly roll-out, and just to be sure we get it the media coverage makes clear that Miley is all “grown up” now.  She’s on the cover of Glamour magazine this month, hit the American Idol stage this week in a sexy strapless gown, and has a movie in theatres nationally.  With a career like that she definitely has adult responsibilities, I’m sure.

But just ask my daughter—Miley is sixteen, which does not seem especially grown up to me, particularly as the parent of an 8-year-old (So my daughter is halfway to adulthood?? I hope not!).  Here are my questions: what does it mean for a sixteen-year-old (or her handlers) to be reinventing herself as a “woman” in media terms?  Can we expect her to shed the squeaky-clean image and angle for meatier (read: sexier) parts?  And what does it mean for her tween fan base to witness this transformation?  Finally, you tell me: when do girls become women?  What marks that transformation in your mind?

Becoming a man.  Judith Warner has a thoughtful column this week, “Dude, You’ve got Problems,” about the use of “gay” as an epithet.  She writes, “It’s weird, isn’t it, that in an age in which the definition of acceptable girlhood has expanded, so that desirable femininity now encompasses school success and athleticism, the bounds of boyhood have remained so tightly constrained?”  I’m not so sure, however, that I agree with Warner’s assertion that being called a “fag” has “almost nothing to do with being gay.”  Instead, she argues, “fag” is used to deride weakness or femininity.  Well, yes, and that’s what I call homophobia, which certainly does go hand in hand with sexism.

Is Women’s Studies the next Sex and the City?  Let’s hope HBO can do for women’s studies what it has already done for big city career girls, mobsters, undertakers, and polygamists.  The cable network apparently has a show in development about a former “feminist It Girl” who is now turned to being a professor at a small liberal arts college.  Will such a show poke fun at women’s studies?  Sure, this field offers plenty of material for laugh lines, but if we also wind up as the next hit series everyone is talking about, then the HBO line on my cable bill will have been money well spent.

–Allison Kimmich

I’m supershort on battery so may only get through part of this next session, but here we go…

Jeremy Adam Smith, creator of the blog Daddy Dialectic and author of the book The Daddy Shift, is introducing the panel by talking about the difference in attitudes about fatherhood among his grandfather, his father, and himself.

Panelists are:

Reeve Vanneman (he’ll be talking about The End of Gender Revolution?)
Oriel Sullivan (on Slow but Steady-ish Change)
Josh Coleman (speaking on The Ghost of Traditional Marraige in Contemporary Ones)
Mignon Moore (talking about Is Convergence Moot in Same Sex Copules?)
Amy and Marc Vachon, bloggers at Equally Shared Parenting and coauthors of a forthcoming book on the subject (on that)

Reeve Vanneman is up first:  There was a big shift in the 1990s, he notes, a stalling in gender revolution. But the question is, why?  Three possible reasons:

1. End of feminist protest: in the mid-1990s, media coverage of feminism declined…

2. Economics: in the mid-1990s, for the first time in a long time, men’s earnings increased.  They had stagnated in the 1970s, but during the early Clinton years, there were fairly broad-based increases in men’s earnings.

3. Culture: gender attitudes shifted (ie, when surveys asked questions like “do you agree that a working mother can have a warm relationship with her children?” the answer “yes” trended upward from the 1970s, then leveled off in the 1990s; other questions tracked were questions like “do you believe that men make better politicians”? etc)

In sum, we have evidence that there was a stalling of gender revolution in the mid-1990s. But we don’t fully know WHY.

ARGH! Hate to leave ya’ll hanging, but I’m running out of battery here…

Josh Coleman steps up to the mike and frames the conference by starting with how the women’s movement has made life better not only for women but for men.  Yet at the same time, and especially in this moment of recession, where men are being laid off in droves, women’s increased power is in some way a challenge to men’s identity.  The traditional markers of male identity–protector, provider–have been eroded.  As Michael Kimmel says, men are left with all of the empowerment and none of the power.  [??!!]  So there’s a crisis in masculinity out there.  (Ok, yes, reality check: women earn 80% what men do, etc etc.)

Questions the conference will ask:

How will recession affect relationships between men and women?

Will men express their masculinity by doing even less?

Is the gender revolution dead, or still evolving?

What’s going on with gender convergence in families and intimate relationships?

What’s going on with gender in the next generation?

Is our culture of individualism make marriages today more happy and resilient or more fragile?

What kind of work/family policies make families more resilient and what makes them more stressed?

What does the recent election tell about gender today?

Stay tuned….

Time for some serious talk about men’s violence. I’ll break it down to make a difficult point really simple.

Number one: Men’s violence against women is a men’s issue.
Number two: Prevention is the best solution.

It’s been almost two months since Chris Brown’s infamous and brutal attack on Rihanna. With our three-second Twitters, four-second sound bites, and a five-second news story shelf lives, it’s like this assault happened a million years ago. It’s so easy to collectively forget and move on to the Next Big Story.

But think back to the leaked police photos of 21-year-old popstar Rihanna’s bruised and swollen face. Although her bruises may have faded along with our collective voyeurism, a crucial issue remains.

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that 1.3 million women are victims of assault by an intimate partner each year. Do the math. That works out to nearly two-and-a-half women assaulted every minute, typically by a boyfriend or husband.
We live in a culture that shrouds these facts of violence in secrecy, silence, and misunderstanding. We’re taught to confuse abuse with passionate love. Our culture links violence with romance with lines like, “Baby, I only hit you because I love you” — the kind of relentless refrain we see repeated in mainstream movies, TV, magazines, and music.

If a celebrity woman stays in a violent relationship, or gets back with an abusive guy, the takeaway for most people is that that male violence is not so bad. This insidious message, comments journalist Katha Pollitt, reinforces ideas that male violence is a natural part of life, and something in which women are complicit by provoking it, using it, even liking it.

This is dangerous misinformation. It contributes to a culture that normalizes violence and is accustomed to looking the other way, even with the rates of abuse so astronomically high.

But here’s the thing. Whether we’re talking about two megastars in Hollywood or the couple living right next door, we might scratch our heads and ask, “If he’s abusive then why does she stay?”

It’s a fair question. But the wrong one. The question that goes to the heart of the matter is Why does he hit?

Men are certainly victims of domestic assault. But the vast majority of cases are women hurt by men’s hands, words, and control. Direct service agencies and hospital samples indicate that men commit nearly 90 percent of domestic abuse. Yet, ironically, we’re trained to think of abuse as a woman’s issue. When we’re talking about male violence against women, says violence-prevention educator Jackson Katz, we’re really talking about a men’s issue.

This isn’t about blaming men. The point is more profound and the goal more constructive than that. The most effective way to end violence against women is to stop the problem before it happens. Doing so means we need men on board. We need men taking responsibility, getting in on the conversations about male violence, and refusing to be silent bystanders to the problem.

Rihanna and Chris Brown are high-profile cultural icons. Millions of fans look to them as trendsetters and culture creators. With media giving so much attention to their personal lives, the couple’s private relationship has powerful public impact.

The Rihanna-Chris Brown fan base skews young. So does abuse. Girls and women between the ages of 16 and 24 are more likely than any other group to be in abusive relationships. The NCADV reports teen dating violence is one of the major sources of violence in adolescents’ lives. A full 20 percent of dating couples report some type of violence in their relationship. Teen dating violence is particularly insidious because it happens at a time when young people are navigating intense relationships, sorting out their values, and laying emotional roadmaps for their futures.

A recent study of Boston teens that found nearly 50 percent of the 12-to-19-year-olds surveyed blamed Rihanna for getting hit. But this isn’t just about pop-star punditry. The issue literally hits at home. According to the Boston Public Health Commission, 71 percent of the teens they questioned said arguing is a normal part of relationships and 44 percent said fighting in relationships is routine.

This is startling.

So let’s seize this cultural moment to keep talking — really talking! — about masculinity, violence, and pop culture. Honest conversations across communities about male violence against women are crucial for the safety of teenagers at risk, for children who witness abuse, and for survivors everywhere. We need to start talking across communities because men’s violence against women is a men’s issue. And prevention is the best solution.

Our very own Shira Tarrant (curator of “The Man Files” here at GWP) is on the advisory committee for this one, as is Michael Kimmel, whose work I utterly admire.  So I totally wanted to share:

Call for Presentations
THE 1st NATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR
CAMPUS-BASED MEN’S GENDER EQUALITY & ANTI-VIOLENCE GROUPS
November 6-7, 2009 / St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota

What it is: Across the country, groups of male students are making their voices heard!  More and more men are finding the courage to say “no” to ideas of manhood and relations between the sexes that aren’t good for women and aren’t good for men as well.  They’re speaking out against date rape and violence against women.  They support gender equality.  Some work through residence life or student activities offices, others through women’s centers and counseling programs.  Some are campus branches of national organizations like MVP, White Ribbon, Men Can Stop Rape, 1 in 4, or V-Men.    These men face common problems: How to have an impact?  How to find positive ways to get their message to other campus men?  How to deal with backlash, to work in partnership with women’s groups, to recruit and sustain their groups?  For the first time, campus-based pro-feminist men’s groups from across the country are meeting together.  To share resources., trade their best ideas, discuss strategies, and simply find out what’s happening on other campuses.

For more details, including on costs and the members of the organizing & advisory committees, visit: www.michaelkaufman.com/campusmensconference