Tag Archives: women

Some Men: Feminist Allies and the Movement to End Violence Against Women.

2 Mar

The International Conference on Masculinities is only a few days away! Today, we are excited to provide an excerpt from a new book by three featured speakers: You can hear Michael Messner, Max Greenberg and Tal Peretz on a featured panel on ‘Ally Tensions’ on Saturday March 7th, 11.15am in the Grand Ballroom. The following is an excerpt from their new book “Some Men: Feminist Allies and the Movement to End Violence Against Women”. The excerpt will also appear in the spring issue of VoiceMaleMagazine. 

Some Men

What does it mean for men to ally with women to stop gender-based violence?  This is the central question we tackle in our new book Some Men: Feminist Allies and the Movement to End Violence Against Women.  Based on life history interviews with 52 men anti-violence activists aged 22-70, and twelve women who work with these men, we explore the opportunities as well as the strains and tensions in men’s work to prevent sexual assault and domestic violence.

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Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

CRUSH

31 Oct

By Lyndol Descant

For me, crushes have turned out to be like a mind-trap or the ultimate carrot-and-stick scenario, ever dangling just out of reach but there to see; to entice.

Let me explain.

In the past my crushes have gotten me out of bed in the morning; the excitement, the thrill, the belief, or maybe it was hope, that he would eventually realize how wonderful I am and see that I deserve his love. And when he does, I will know for sure too. I will know with certainty that I too deserve good things.

But that never happened. It couldn’t. It can’t.

Romantic relationships are never as clean and easy as they are in our imaginations which, incidentally, don’t tend to indulge the realities of life; the complicated, messy, fleshed-out-by-difference-of-opinion and diversity-of-interest, realities of life.

Once I had a year-long crush on a peer who, one day, approached me, suggesting that we get coffee. What did I do? I ran in the opposite direction (literally and figuratively), yelling “thanks anyway”… over my shoulder.

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Tags: , , intimacy, , music, , , society,

NUDIES

17 Oct

DESCRIPTION: Nudies is a compilation of found footage that represents one’s intuitive relationship to gender over time. By looking at what we were looking at, we start to define our relationships to larger systems as reactive and changing. Through this metamorphosis, the subconscious mind reflects most honestly the inner struggles and accomplishments that can’t be defined or pinpointed by waves.

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BIO: Meredith Degyansky, often under the alias of The Work Intern, is an artist/administrative aide that creates systems for paying off our debt, systems for redefining and valuing our labor, and systems that connect us to one another usually through food and conversations about sadness. www.theworkintern.org

Tags: , change, choice, , , , representation, visual media, ,

Disabling women or grasping at straw men?

27 Jul
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The cheap shots just keep coming and a popular target these days is Hillary Clinton. All the talk of a possible 2016 presidential campaign is sending her opponents into a frenzy. As if being called too unattractive to be in the public wasn’t enough now she’s accused of being incapable of holding a conversation let alone office because of a tumble she took some years ago. Republican father-figure Karl Rove and America’s angriest rich guy Rush Limbaugh have been spinning tales about the state of Clinton’s health amidst demanding that she address rumors of a sustained brain injury. To add insult to ‘alleged’ injury, Clinton’s recent People magazine cover has become fodder for media speculation about her aging body and apparent need for a walker. Oh, and there’s more. Thanks to Drudge Report there was some pretty unforgiving online images of Clinton’s head photoshopped onto the body of a visibly old, half naked woman à la 16th century oil painting style. The lady-berating doesn’t end there.

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Tags: ageism, , , lookism, , politics, , ,

Boobs, branding and bravado served up with a side of wings: it’s what happens when the worst of American pop-culture collides

31 Mar
Jeff Fusco-Getty Images

Jeff Fusco-Getty Images

Another annual Philadelphia chicken wing-bowl has come and gone, apparently. I wasn’t even aware of the event until my husband stumbled upon a BBC article about it. It is, or was in the past, exactly what one might imagine, a chicken-wing eating contest. As with pies, pancakes and hotdogs, wings are another popular favorite among America’s competitive eaters. To be honest I’m not particularly bothered by people who competitively eat or eating contests in general but I still have no burning desire to attend witness either. The wing bowl however, has morphed into more than your run-of-the mill eating competition. What one ESPN journalist called the ‘the worst event ever’ and what a Philly journalist described as a ‘ gigantic boozy frat ‘n’ bachelor party at a disgusting strip joint that just happens, one night, to hold an eating contest’, the wing bowl is what happens when the worst of American culture collides in a stadium-sized space. Participants and, by default, champs are mostly men, unsurprisingly. Sure, women go to this event and this years winner happened to be a woman but let’s face it, meat, men and competition do go together in the psyche like a triptych.

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Tags: capitalism, competition, crisis, femininities, individuality, , , Western culture,

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