One of our users posed a great question on the post, “Where Have All The Good Men Gone?“. One of our other regular users, Erin, said she would like to hear what everyone has to say in response to this question and we thought it would be a good idea.
Joan says:
What I’d like to hear from men, instead of looking back on the good-ole days or bad-ole days and trying to squeeze men into a passé stereotypes, is how do men want to move forward? Obviously there are a plethora of gender-identity issues starting in early childhood for both boys and girls. I’d be willing to invest time or effort into a good man project and I’m sure other women feel the same, but randomness doesn’t yield results.
Since this is a men’s site, what’s most important to men and what would men tackle?
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What do you want to see covered here? What is important to you that you talk to with your friends, family, or children that you’d like to see here?
Photo credit: Flickr / apdk
About the Editors
On a more technical side (as in not in content but about the site itself) there are two other things that come to mind.
1. The search function that is at the top right of the page seems a bit odd. For example when looking for a certain post but can’t think of the full name of it I’ll do a search and most of the time the results that come up won’t even have that fragment I entered.
For example when I search for the post “Op-Ed: This Is Not How You Support Men’s Issues” I put in “this is not how you support” and that post comes up in the third page of results, long after other posts that anything near the frangment “this is not how you support” in their titles.
So I guess maybe a better search engine or perhaps an Advanced Search option?
2. Like what Joan says finding a post after its no longer on the main page can be difficult.
For example the “Featured Content” section. Other than the 5-7 posts that rotate on the main page is there any other way to get to the Featured Content portion of the posts? As far as I know there isn’t. So how can a reader find a post that’s a part of the Featured Content section once a few days have passed and its no longer a part of the 5-7 post rotation on the main page?
Danny, good observation on the search function…it took me about 15-20 minutes to re-find this post.
One thing I’ve noticed about the site, it does not offer much balance or expression for more conservative views or for ethnic populations. Men and women are white, black, or some color in between. Many are closet conservatives when it comes to things like marriage, family, education, money, and exclusivity.
If one were an alien reading this site, you’d think that all men were gay, porn fanatics, with open sexual relationships because many of the hot-topic featured articles are about the LGBT community and issues like porn. Yes, those are important topics, but do they need dominate the global conversation about men? Can some of those be screened or balanced a little better and return to the stories about men?
The original mission statement is “[w]e are fostering a national discussion centered around modern manhood and the question, “What does it mean to be a good man”? and the defining moments in a man’s life.” This site offers a lot of discussion around what it means to be a good LGBT, and not much about what it means to be a good black man, Latino man, or Hmong man, etc. Nor does it discuss what it is to be a good male teacher, mentor, hero, mechanic, pilot, IT Analyst, or business owner, etc.
Unfortunately, some people are turned off by this site for those very reasons: a lack of balance. From a marketing perspective, if the imbalance is turning off regular male readers, it may be turning off potential readers too. It’s a candid critique, yet it’s a great site and has untapped potential.