I’ve been fantasizing about men a lot lately. No, not that kind of fantasizing you dirty birds…I’ve been fantasizing about them getting involved in activism around family-friendly work policy, subsidized childcare, sexist mainstream media, violence against women, and a range of other fields that have too long been framed as “women’s issues.” An excerpt from a column of mine that ran yesterday sums it up:
The truth is our fates are inextricably tied together, not running on two parallel tracks. When men lose their jobs — and, indeed, they have at a higher rate than women recently — American families all suffer, just as they suffer when women are paid unequal wages or fired for missing work to take care of sick kids or an elderly parent. Newsflash: Men aren’t from Mars and women aren’t from Venus; we’re all struggling to make healthy, meaningful lives on the same damn planet — and it’s time we started acting like it.
At the end of my panel on feminism and men on Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the unstoppable Daniel May asked a question about the language that we use to frame such issues and it got me thinking…maybe feminists do need to let go of a bit of the ownership. But if we step back, dudes, will you step forward?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 12:36 pm and is filed under General, Generation Overwhelmed. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately too! I work for an international organisation working towards women’s empowerment and gender equality. If I said to my colleagues something like, “men and women need to work together,” I would probably get some nods of agreement, a few people would say “yes! Absolutely,” and show examples of our “partnering with men and boys” projects as proof that we’re headed in the right direction.
But in reality the frameworks, approaches and the language we’re using every day to move forward are completely unsuited to genuine partnership. I will be sure to circulate your column around the office and let’s see if we can reframe the discussion.
I am a really big fan of yours, and have followed your writing since i saw you on an NYU panel around Body image right before your book came out on that issue.
I’m a social worker and work with teens for a school-based, city funded, Community Based Organization called Relationship Abuse Prevention Program (RAPP). We often partner with a program called “A Call to Men” that is amazing and speaks to this issue you raise. Not sure if you’ve heard of it – but if you haven’t, you should definitely look them up.
Thanks so much for writing this post.
Awesome, I’d love to hear what you and your colleagues come up with Sarah!