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.

Huh?  Recession and sex, in the same sentence?  Check out my latest at Recessionwire, a personal (well, not that personal) riff on a Forbes article that asks whether recession is good for sex.  And I forgot to link to last week’s post, about Marco coming back home…

In a Time magazine article about an Oregon school for troubled youth that is under scrutiny, journalist Maia Szalavitz (author of Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids) deserves huge props for throwing the spotlight on it all.

Check this out: In required seminars that the school calls Lifesteps, students at Mount Bachelor Academy in Oregon say staff members of the residential program “have instructed girls, some of whom say they have been victims of rape or sexual abuse, to dress in provocative clothing — fishnet stockings, high heels and miniskirts — and perform lap dances for male students as therapy.” Think you can treat ADHD by making girls dress up as French maids? Think again.

Coverage at Jezebel, here.

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…

We’re in the first panel, organized by Kathleen Gerson.  Panelists are Bob Drago, Shirley Hill, Jennifer Glass, and Erin Kelly.

For a blow by blow of who’s saying what in real time, check out Veronica (who is sitting right in front of me!) over at Viva la Feminista.  She’s using this very cool software called Cover It Live.  (Man, that lady teaches me EVERYTHING!)

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….

Hiya from the Council on Contemporary Families conference in my hometown Chicago.  It’s 70 degrees and sunny, and only a gathering like this one could keep me inside.

This morning Virginia Rutter, Stephanie Coontz, and I offered a media workshop, where I heard some of the best ever rationale for why “popping it up” (meaning, learning to write/communicate your complex and researched ideas for a broader audience) is not “dumbing it down”:

Barbara Risman: “If your idea is truly smart, it can be conveyed without jargon.  It’s laziness to think otherwise.”

Josh Coleman: “Reducing a complex idea to a soundbyte is a form of wisdom in itself.”

Stephanie Coontz: “It’s not a compromise to your intellectual integrity.  If you can’t reduce your complex idea to one or two sentences, it may be because there’s a hole in your argument.  It’s not merely a matter of laziness but intellectual self-deception.”

Virginia Rutter: “If you can’t boil it down, maybe media isn’t the medium for you.  Maybe it’s meant for a smaller discussion.”

!!!

I’m heading to Chicago today for the Council on Contemporary Families conference today and guess who wants to come with me.  Tula, you’re staying home with your human father.  Awesome program posted here.  See some of ya’ll there!

A dear friend and colleague of mine–and fellow blogger!–Shari Cohen is leading a fabulous workshop here in NYC for anyone currently looking to jumpstart their career.  Looking to make a move from an unsatisfying position to something more meaningful?  Or between jobs and searching for what’s next?  Then you seriously might want to check this out.

Shari’s Career Action Group is a 4-week career transition workshop starting on May 5. She’s doing it in partnership with Next Step Partners, a firm that is launching similar groups across the country, including in Philadelphia and the San Francisco Bay Area.  Why is this workshop different from all other career workshops?  Shari has an intense background in leadership development work, and she’s awesome at helping people figure out ways to contribute their talent and creativity in new directions.  I should know.  I’ve worked with her myself.

Here’s the formal bio:

Shari Cohen, Ph.D., a senior consultant with Next Step Partners, focuses on leadership development.  She has been working for over ten years to help leaders in international development, health, philanthropy, advocacy, market research, technology and publishing, to access their potential, build their confidence and expand their creativity.  She has consulted for the World Bank, Carnegie Corporation, Bain, Demos and Doctors without Borders.  Previous experience includes senior management positions at two non-profits where she built leadership programs.  She also served as a professor of international relations at Wellesley College.  Shari holds a Ph.D. in political sociology from University of California, Berkeley, and a BA from Cornell University.  She has a certificate in organizational and executive coaching from NYU.

For more info about the Career Action Group, go here.  But whether you’re career-shifting or not, definitely check out Shari’s blog, Unstuck Future, where she’s been writing lately about thinking about your career from the inside out, and her own career transition, as well.  Like me, and like many GWP readers I know, Shari is a postacademic, so her insights really resonate, if you know what I mean.