On Saturday night, the Atlanta-based nonprofit Men Stopping Violence presented its annual True Ally Award to the Good Men Project. At the event, hosted by CNN anchors Don Lemon and Richelle Carey, I accepted the award on behalf of GMP.
The True Ally Award (which was presented last year to musician and activist Tim McGraw) was in recognition for our work in creating a space to start a new conversation about men. We were honored, I was reminded in the introduction to the award, not because we propose one narrow standard for “goodness” but because we refuse to accept our culture’s dismal view of who men are and what men can become. While the media promote the idea of a “masculine malaise”, at GMP we’re talking about men who are actively engaged in the culture, in our communities, and in our families. Our editors and writers come from a wide variety of backgrounds and share little in common other than a commitment to involving men in the conversation—and the solution—to the challenges that grip our society.
This honor comes early in our life as a project. As I told my hosts, when I learned that GMP had won the award, I felt a little bit like President Obama must have felt when he heard he’d won the Nobel Peace Prize eight months into his term. “That’s awesome”, I thought, “but now we have to go out and continue to earn it.”
But as I learned on Saturday night, in the eyes of many, we’re well on our way. Men Stopping Violence was recently contacted by a young man from rural Kenya named Moses. Distraught over the rape epidemic in his country after his country’s disputed elections, he started looking for resources about what “good men” could do to stop the violence. The first site he found was ours. From what he read at the Good Men Project, he got the inspiration and the encouragement to believe in the possibility that men could make a vital difference in changing the hearts and minds of other guys. Moses then found Men Stopping Violence. MSV is launching in Kenya, and will soon bring Moses to Atlanta for a month-long training program. GMP opened the door for that to happen.
As I told the several hundred people at the gala on Saturday, there’s no question that men need to change. But before we can change men, we have to believe men have the desire, the willingness, and the capacity to change. And in order to believe that, we have to believe in men’s essential goodness.
Recommended Resources…
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Groups like this are part of the problem.
Women are the primary child abusers, primary domestic abusers, rape only appears gendered because we don’t count envelopment as a definition and most male rapists have been sexually abused by a female in their childhood.
As long as these feminist are selling the myth of the pure female and evil male, this reality will remain hidden.
Well, where in the world specifically do women live in peace free of male violence. Not some imagined past, but the present? And if you leave women out of the picture, who are the military invaders, who conducts massive rape in Congo as an act of war? And where are the hundreds of domestic violence shelters that men run to in terror because their wives have almost beat the husbands to death, or run in fear of a future attack? If you can tell me where these places are, I’ll believe you. And if you are 100% honest, why is… Read more »
Kiran, they have been lying to you
REFERENCES EXAMINING ASSAULTS BY WOMEN ON THEIR SPOUSES OR MALE PARTNERS:
AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Martin S. Fiebert
Department of Psychology
California State University, Long Beach
Last updated: May 2011
SUMMARY: This bibliography examines 282 scholarly investigations: 218 empirical studies and 64 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 369,800.
ht tp://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
Hey Everyone,
Note that the Feminist statistics are just lies. They distort and manipulate the truth, which is that DV is committed roughly 60-70% of the time by the women in the relationship. Men are angry. We will not stand.
– A Concerned MRA
To be honest MRA – it is really hard to trust stats on DV from either feminists or MRAs. They both have such a strong agenda. I agree wholeheartedly that the stats taken as ‘true’ come from feminist dogma and are completely wrong. But I can’t just accept a whole new bucket of stats coming from MRAs!
I’d like to see more research on this subject.
Agreed Quiet Girl.
There is far too much noise on the subject of violence. The data is actually quite clear on incidents but unfortunately, the industry has fallen prey to political grandstanding.
But MRA’s don’t produce stats, they just use the bulk of the genuine research as opposed to feminist stats. which according the genuine DV research community are contrived.
All of this is truly a male problem worldwide, and it has been a male problem for thousands of years. I don’t believe in the essential goodness of men, never have and never will. I see no evidense of them getting better anywhere in the world, I see clear evidense that they are becoming worse than we ever imagined possible. Men created male supremacy, and the sex class system. It means that every man on the planet is a full participant and beneficiary of this sex class system, and I have never known an oppressor group that decided to “be… Read more »
That post, Kiran, actually sounds funny when read a certain way.
Ignorant, but funny.
@Kiran: “All of this is truly a male problem worldwide, and it has been a male problem for thousands of years.” Actually, there are numerous societies in the past and even some that still exist today that don’t have these problems, that are NOT patriarchal and DON’T focus on power imbalances. Yes, patriarchy has been amongst us for a few 1000 years but the vast amount of time humanity has spent on Planet Earth has been cooperative and peaceful. Patriarchy is learned behaviour, not natural behaviour. If it were natural, as Marilyn French points out, it wouldn’t have to be… Read more »
“the vast amount of time humanity has spent on Planet Earth has been cooperative and peaceful.”
Citation needed.
I’m thinking someone has been sipping the Marija Gimbutas kool aid
If you take a look at the website linked in the article – the violence they speak of is primarily men’s violence against women. Interesting snippet below on “Men’s Education” and if you have the time, please take a look at the link pasted just below, as they go into more detail with the: Violent and Controlling Behavior List http://www.menstoppingviolence.org/cgi-bin/MySQLdb?VIEW=/viewfiles/view_document.txt&docid=30 Note the inclusion of pornography, logic, sulking, not expressing feelings, yelling, not listening etc ============================================ Men’s Education Reliable data including police reports, witness statements and emergency room reports indicate that men are the aggressors in over 90 percent of incidents… Read more »
That’s quite a worrying checklist elissa. Things like ‘swearing’ and ‘using pornography’ and ‘uninvited touching’ sound like usual aspects of life/relationships to me!
I also do not trust the figure of ‘over 90%’ of violence being perpetrated by men.
“Things like ‘swearing’ and ‘using pornography’ and ‘uninvited touching’ sound like usual aspects of life/relationships to me!” In a male dominated, patriarchal society where women’s (and plenty of men’s– not to mention those of *other* genders, preferences, values, etc) needs and fears aren’t taken into account. All of those things are or are usually associated with a power imbalance, which only exists in a social structure where power has more value than quality of life or pleasure. IN those social constructs it is ALWAYS (as indicated by research so far) the males who wield that power. There is no evidence… Read more »
Elissa: That checklist you provided is, in a word, awful. Pornography? Yelling? Criticism? I hate to tell you, but these things are not automatically indicators of potential violence or even emotional abuse. Relationships consist of disagreements, sometimes they get loud. As long as it doesn’t escalate into personal attacks and violence, there is nothing wrong with this. And criticism? Give me a break. What’s rude and hurtful to one person is another person’s constructive criticism. That is far too subjective to put it on a list and say “If you circle this then you’re probably being abused.” And for the… Read more »
Oh I quite agree that it is awful bordering on stupid. When I first looked at the website, I thought it would be about violence in general, but I was greeted with a splashed advertising of “because we have daughters too…” How radical would it have been to have the much direr category of: “because we have sons too!” And it is indeed funny that the largest category of violence – male on male – one which dwarfs all other categories, gets no play outside of the justice and penal system. Not too many fund raising galas for young minority… Read more »
Congratulations to GMP. It’s nice to be recognized and the hard work from people on this site is truly worthy of said recognition.
But I’d be remiss in my duties as self-appointed ombudsman if I didn’t agree with Quiet Riot Girl’s comments. If men have to change, I believe it is merely the kind of change we all have to do to keep adapting and improving. But that is hardly limited to men. I don’t think women are essentially good anymore than men are fundamentally in need of change.
Men’s innate goodness is real. But that goodness is distorted by a culture that encourages and enables male coarseness and violence. As the name of MSV implies, this is about men taking responsibility for stopping violence because we are the perpetrators of the overwhelming majority of violence (especially lethal violence) on our planet. (Count down to the MRAs showing up with their distorted DV statistics… 3,2,1…) As individuals, we ALL need to grow. As a group, men are particularly likely to be part of the problem — let’s not buy into a feel-good false equivalence that suggests women are equally… Read more »
If the ‘culture’ is one driven by men where men choose to perpetrate violence against women, then why is men’s ‘essential’ goodness so ineffectual? And why oh why oh why do you then suggest that women are somehow, in the current climate ‘better’ than men? And innocent, helpless victims of men’s ‘badness’?
It does neither women nor men any favours.
Right… I agree, but with trepidation. Look, it might seem nitpicky, but I just think we need to be careful about making statements like “men need to change” because it implies that a majority of men are a direct part of the problem, ie, actively committing violence. This is, of course untrue, as a fairly small minority of men commit direct violence. Thus, telling men to “stop hurting people” is counterproductive, because 95% of men don’t in the first place. What men need to do is challenge the culture that enables this small minority. And that involves personal change as… Read more »
“(Count down to the MRAs showing up with their distorted DV statistics… 3,2,1…) ”
While I’m sure there are plenty of MRAs willing to misrepresent statistics in support of their claims, I would give them some small credit for at least recognising that one ought to back up such claims with stats. You might consider occasionally doing the same.
Hugo is making false allegations about abuse and MRAs. Here is a paper about the stats that feminism uses THE POLITICS OF RESEARCH: THE USE, ABUSE, AND MISUSE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE DATA—THE CASES OF INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE Richard J. Gelles http://www.familieslink.co.uk/download/july07/Politics%20of%20research.pdf And here is a government source showing women the be the primary domestic abusers. Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence Daniel J. Whitaker, PhD, Tadesse Haileyesus, MS, Monica Swahn, PhD and Linda S. Saltzman, PhD At the time of this study, Daniel J. Whitaker and Linda S. Saltzman… Read more »
Congratulations on the award.
But…. I think you contradict yourself when you say: ‘Men need to change’ but also GMP believes in ‘men’s essential goodness’.
If men are essentially good why do they need to change? Are women essentially good? Do they need to change too?
It may be worth asking those questions! (and trying to find answers)