A More Intimate, More Emotional Call With the Publisher [Live Recording]

Below are the show notes from the introduction to The Good Men Project weekly call with the publisher. They rare run by GMP Publisher Lisa Hickey.

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Lisa Hickey:

Hello everyone! Welcome to our weekly Call with the Publisher, held every Friday at 12 Noon EST / 9 am PST. I got an email a while back from a longtime community member who said they imagined that Friday’s calls would be a more intimate “Call with the publisher”, where you might be talking with folks about where you want to take things in the Project. This person didn’t want the call to be like the other calls — even though they regularly attended the other calls and liked them.

This echoes something long-time community member Jed Diamond has also said: that the Friday calls he likes best are the ones where I talk about the mission and vision for The Good Men Project.

And– since we have not had these calls in a while — I’d like to do that. I’d like to spend a few minutes talking about The Good Men Project and what is new, I have one small anecdote about “here is what I see in the world” and then I would love to have a personal, Q&A type of call where I answer questions from you all or just find out how you are doing and what you are interested in.

So the first new thing is — we now have a mobile app! You can download our app from either the Apple app store or Google play — works on either iPhones or Android. And currently what it allows you to do is to get notifications any time we publish a new story in the category of your choosing.

So — for example — you can get a notification any time a new story is published on our website. But the cool thing is — you ONLY have to sign up for categories you really like. So for example — if you like to read stories about relationship advice — just sign up to get notifications for that! and then you might come to our calls on Monday run by Kat Starr and share your newfound knowledge there! Ditto if you like attending the Environment Calls every Thursday. We publish several articles a day on Climate change and the environment. Or maybe it is social justice articles that go right along with our Tuesday StopRacism calls.

Here is the full range of categories we have.

Other quick updates:

– We are also meeting with other people and organizations who are involved in men’s work to see how we can combine forces and grow this conversation. Jed Diamond, for example, has what he calls a “moonshot mission”. His focus is Being male is now the single largest demographic factor for early death.
Over 375,000 lives would be saved in a single year in the U.S. alone if men’s risk of dying was as low as women’s.

If male mortality rates could be reduced to those of female rates, this would eliminate over one-third of all male deaths below age 50 and improve the lives of males at every age.

Achieving this goal would do more good than curing cancer.

– Still have our diversity & inclusion program, and our weekly column on how to be a better ally in today’s world. And we have just been invited to speak in the UK.

I want to wrap up with one more thing. Often on these very calls, men will say they never got the message to “act like a man” or “man up” or “be more manly”.

And my son actually pointed how to me how prevalent that sentiment used to be, with a series of beer commercials that ran back in the early part of the 2000s. The tagline was. “A man should act like a man, and light beer should taste like beer.”

And the commercials start with a group of men in some macho activity — ie, barbequing, or watching sports on TV or fixing a car in a garage.

And then one of the men will do something quote-unquote “unmanly”. Like in one there is a cute little dog and one of the men says “ooooh, how cute”.

And then a giant beer can comes in and crushes the man — the beer can is like 20 feet tall, so the implication is the man is not just killed, but completely obliterated. And the tagline comes on: “A man should act like a man, and light beer should taste like beer.” Milwaukee’s Best Light
And instead of being horrified one of their buddies was just crushed to death by a giant beer can, the men nod approvingly — “yeah, men should act like men.”

Other so-called NOT macho things men are doing are: blotting oil off pizza, wearing a matching shirt with a significant other, trying to get away from a bug, or going out of the garage to secretly call his wife. In all cases, the offenders are crushed by a giant falling can.

Now — there are 3 quick things I want to note about these commercials and then I will open it up.

First — it was so unexpected the first time I saw it that I DID laugh. I was quickly horrified at myself for laughing — but that is why using humor to try to minimize harm is so insidious in our culture. When you get someone to laugh at something, it is more likely that they will remember the message. That is part of the reason advertising works.

And the second thing is — these commercials would never fly today — and that is a GOOD thing. These stereotypes about what makes a real man are harmful. To everyone. I mean to laugh at a guy (and fake kill him) for wanting to have a good relationship with his wife?) That is just wrong in so many ways.

The third thing I find interesting is the men that don’t see this. Even if you didn’t see these particular commercials, this type of messaging was everywhere. It’s not easy to erase that kind of conditioning without conscious effort. So if you don’t believe you were exposed to it — or worse, don’t believe there were *other* guys who were exposed to it — it makes it harder to fix the conditioning.

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Thanks for coming tonight. The rest of our network lineup happens at the same time every evening at 5:00 PDT – 9:00 EDT. Every day, for an hour we have a conversation call on a variety of subjects.

On Monday, we begin the week with Kat Starr hosting the popular ‘Love, Sex, Etc’ discussing the diversity of modern relationships and all the challenges therein.

On Tuesday, we have “Stop Racism” with Ashok Selvam. With Ashok out on leave, Kat Starr is stepping in to guide conversations on racism in the news and its affects on the American psyche.

On Wednesday, Amanda Vining is hosting the GMP Playlist which are stories taken out of the headlines of the Good Men Project’s online publication.

On Thursday, we have Climate Change by the Elements, now with Coronavirus with Thaddeus Howze and Carol Bluestein where we discuss the existential crisis of our ongoing climate disaster.

On Friday, at 12:00 Noon, 9:00 AM PDT the conversation is led by Lisa Hickey in the Call with the Publisher where she discusses topics discussed during the week and ideas sparked by those conversations. You can listen to our recordings on Soundcloud.com. Search for the Good Men Project.

If you enjoy our lineup of shows, please show your support for the network by joining the Good Men Project or donating to our Patreon. Thanks again for coming and goodnight.

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You Might Also Like These From The Good Men Project

Compliments Men Want to Hear More Often

Relationships Aren’t Easy, But They’re Worth It

The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex

..A Man’s Kiss Tells You Everything

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This Post is republished on Medium.

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Photo credit: iStock