War and Masculinity [Live Recording]

Hello everyone! Today is Friday, Feb. 25, and I am your host of today’s show, our weekly call with the publisher.

I like the way we call these “shows”. When we first started these calls, we actually consciously thought about how to make them have the emotional resonance of a TV show. So, for example, they are both “episodic and serialized”. Episodic means that each call has its own topic and own theme. Our #stop racism call talked about double standards. SLR talked about solo polyamory. GMP playlist talked about “the big sort” — how people move to other areas of the country to be with people who have political views like their own. On Climate Change by the elements, we talk about very specific problems as well as very specific solutions to the existential threat which is climate change. Those our episodes. You can come to any one of them, any time. But if you come to these calls regularly, you get the added benefit of

The good news is the number of Coronavirus cases finally fell to about where they were in December, just before the Omnicron surge. The bad news is — war broke out in the Ukraine.

And that is our world today. The world is changing so fast it is hard to keep up with it.

But here is what The Good Men Project does tht is different than what other media companies do. Most other media companies are reporting ON the war itself. They are trying to figure out the facts. What is happening on the ground, why is it happening. What are the implications. And the really important question of: How do you stop a war? Are economic sanctions going to be enough?

However, some media companies are actually trying to minimize the idea of this war. Fox news, I’m looking at you.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a “special military operation” in eastern Ukraine while warning that anyone trying to interfere with the Russian military will lead to “consequences you have never seen.”

As we have talked about before — this is typical abuser language.

And the Fox News rhetoric — typical enabler rhetoric. It is how abusers continue to get away with abuse in plain site. This was satirized by the movie “Don’t Look Up“. Don’t look up in the sky because you might see the killer comet headed our way!

So what we do at The Good Men Project is —  we help people process what is happening in ways that might help them at an individual level. And we try to do it under the umbrella of ‘we’re sparking a conversation about the changing roles of men in the 21st century. care to join us.’

Some of the topics we expect will be published on our site is:

1) How do you talk to your kids about war? What age is the right age to explain it? What happens if the parents don’t agree?

2) What about families with teenage sons who might be traumatized by the thought of a war they might end up fighting in?

3) What does abuse look like? How do abusers gain power?

4) Is there anything we, as individuals, can do to help stop a war?

5) Do you think that if there is a long extended war the US will be less likely to elect a female president because of the thought that ‘she can’t handle it’.

6) What if you know someone who is in Ukraine? How do you deal with the stress? We actually have someone for GMP who is living in Ukraine. He has a wife and a young son. He had talked a few months back about moving, to Poland I think, but I’m not sure where they are now. I emailed to check-in and haven’t heard back. So the question of ‘what do you do when war hits home’ is not as far off as you think.

7) What does war say about masculinity in general?

I’m going to open it up now.

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