Stephen Fisher assesses three approaches to boyswork. Please see below for the attachment, in PDF.
Activism & Politics
For increased inclusion of men into violence prevention efforts to work, we need to educate them about consent. Real consent.
We're still missing the mark when it comes to teaching consent. We have heard "No means No", and I think we're finally clueing in on "Yes means Yes" - in other words that the absence of a "No" is not in itself consent. But the problem is that we are still stuck in the old paradigm. It's still based on the idea of permission: there is this line that once crossed can't be un-crossed, and the woman is just going to have to live with the consequences of her actions (emphasis HER actions). As a culture, we still blame male arousal on women.
A collection of lists and guides. Please see below for the attachment, in Word.
The men's movement is a painful place for gay men, says academic Gary Dowsett. He doesn't want to hear about the problem of who does the washing up anymore, as he told Michael Flood.
Please see below for the attachment, in PDF.
Why do we need a sexual identity? Is there a heterosexual community? How do we encourage safe sex if we don't validate straight men's sexuality? Writer and activist Gary Dowsett has some ideas. He is interviewed by Michael Flood.
Please see below for the attachment, in PDF.
David Dendy boldly goes where few men have gone before: across the gulf between desire and politics, to seek new forms of monogamy, masturbation and sexual preference.
Stubbornly, with determination, I resisted. I knew and experienced emotional and sexual desire from an early age as complex, broad-ranging and variable. It was and is still not a simple attraction to one sex or another. It was and is not fixed to one pattern of attraction, lust or pleasure.
Men have responded in complex and contradictory ways to the profound changes of the last three decades, changes set in motion by the women’s movements, changes in family organisation, economic and social shifts and other forces. Small numbers of men have responded by mobilising in support of feminist goals, changing their own behaviour and working with women to shift gender relations in progressive directions. Yet other men have mobilised in opposition to feminism and the changes in gender with which it is associated, forming “men’s rights” and “fathers’ rights” groups. An organised backlash to feminism is now visible among men in Australia, as in most other Western capitalist countries.
We have reached a pivotal moment in terms of fathers’ roles in families and communities. There is, at present, a significant opportunity for fathers to develop stronger, more intimate bonds with their children and to enhance their roles within their families. Indeed a growing number of fathers are embracing this situation. But the opportunity is in danger of being lost. The unhelpful agendas of some participants in fatherhood debates, and continuing economic and cultural obstacles to paternal involvement in child-rearing, threaten to limit men’s positive involvement in parenting.
Public attitudes towards fathers have shifted, but has fathers’ behaviour shifted too? Michael Flood describes the obstacles to paternal involvement, and the potential dangers in the new emphasis on fatherhood.