Good Men

One of my many privileges is the men in my life. I have grown up surrounded by solid amazing supportive men. Men who taught me to play sports, fix bicycles, use power tools, run motor boats, drive tractors, and do anything else I wanted to. Men who listened when I spoke, respected my ideas and feelings and told me theirs. This has helped shape who I am.

I am realizing more and more just how lucky I have been. When I look to the popular media (which albeit I do avoid pretty staunchly) I start to notice that the men we see there are not like the men I know. For the most part the men I see in the popular media are alien to me. At best they usually portray only one dimension of masculinity, which is no surprise given that the popular media is inherently superficial, but sill. I wonder, do men often feel the same about the women they see?

In preparation for some workshops I am helping to prepare about violence prevention I have started a hunt to find more representations of men like the ones I know. Fortunately, since I know so many great men they are helping lead me to just what I'm after.

The first is a link from my friend Daniel whom I met during my training at Opt. As the token male in our class he often shouldered the burden of speaking for his entire gender. Sorry about that Daniel and thanks for doing such an amazing job at it. Here are some other great guys who are speaking up for men, and humans in general.

http://changefromwithin.org/2013/11/21/please-be-that-guy-7-men-who-are-transforming-masculinity/

I also just heard a podcast from this American life on the subject of "Good Guys". Parts of it (Mike Birbiglia) left me laughing hysterically over my sink full of dishes and then, as often happens with This American life, it got dark, and especially the last story left me a bit shaken. Have a listen and let me know your thoughts.

I recognize the glaring hetero-normativity latent in this whole post. I am talking about the popular media, which so often completely ignores anything that falls outside the binary of male/female. I guess that is what I'm after in fact are authentic portrayals and discussion of human beings of all genders. This is just one small step along that path.

On that note here is a link to a handy chart I found on the "Good Men Project" that I thought was funny and also is helpful in reminding us to, as the author says, "Human up and be folks". Nicely put.