Courtney Martin of AND teaches men what and where the clit is (just sayin’)
2. advocating for more family friendly work policy for all and changing the culture of work machismo among men
3. reflecting on how much $$ goes into male athletic culture, and how linked it is to violence off the field
4. changing the culture to give men more permission to identify, manage, and talk about their emotions
5. an intersectional approach to incarceration, poverty, and race that includes a gender analysis
Read the quote in context here.
It’s a fair request. Call it the other side of “whut about teh menz?” Because it’s not just about how patriarchy or whatever hurts men, it’s about what are men doing about it.
The following mixed thoughts aren’t actual contributions, just reflections on which of those items I think of myself as able to competently address.
To be honest I don’t know much about male athletic culture. As the painfully skinny, bookish, highly asthmatic kid in most classes I didn’t gravitate towards sports till, really, my mid-30s. The athletes I have known have tended to be of the small liberal-arts-school persuasion than the steroid-packing, “scholarship” hacking, women-smacking collegiate and professional kind that… possibly unfairly considering absolute overall numbers of amateur athletes worldwide… damns all of sports. I will say it’s taken decades to realize that much of my animosity towards organized sports derived from… yet still other forms of… call it alt-male-macho culture.
If I have to leave sports macho to people with more experience I can say whole-heartedly that as a stay at home dad who really really enjoys it I don’t just advocate for family-friendly (and non-gender specific) work policies, I think it’s tragic that men, especially from older generations, haven’t had more time, even just more flex time, to spend not just “being there for” their families but weaving themselves right into the fabric of it.
I’m going to go… ok, not that far out on a limb at all… and say that the measure of whether a sex education course is whether or not it involves critical examination of power, rape, and violence inside relationships. I think that’s a good criteria, by the way, because if a course doesn’t go there then even if it’s progressive as far as maturity-assessment, preparedness conversations, consent, and contraception (instead of just abstinence) it’s still primarily about keeping the kids from knocking themselves up and therefore… not comprehensive.
About teaching men to find someone’s clitoris, since March, 2006, my biggest cluster of server-log search terms and my most-visited page by an order of magnitude would be How to find someone’s clitoris (if you don’t already know). Hmm, 2006. Not sure what I’ve done lately.
Despite having been homeless for nearly two years and nearly homeless for another two I don’t really think I know that much about poverty, let alone incarceration, in gendered terms, beyond what I know about street people and subsistence-level criminals… who, for all their (necessary… they’re on the street… they’re on Cops!) visibility are just a fraction of the real poor in America.
I could be talking a lot more about those things.
Submitted by 2785 (not verified) on Fri, 2009-03-20 16:24.
Despite having been homeless for nearly two years and nearly homeless for another two I don't really think I know that much about poverty...
The thing is, Figleaf, you obviously DO. I'm trying to write about that issue even as I type this comment, that a lot of us bloggers do live on fumes, so to speak, and that it's so common among those in our generation that it IS invisible, because, after all, we've got laptops and writing skills. Which don't pay anything.
wonderful post as usual.