Welcome to our weekly Call with the Publisher. I’m Lisa Hickey, publisher of The Good Men Project and CEO of Good Men Media. Today is Friday June 25, 2021, and we have been having these calls for 10 years now.
I want to start with a topic we were talking about last week. Long time caller Mark S., brought up about how he cares deeply about boys (and men) and wants to make sure they are doing well.
And I want to say — I totally agree with that sentiment and that is a core part of what The Good Men Project is all about.
But like with a lot of disagreements, it’s not the outcome we disagree with — it’s how we get there.
So (as I understand it) Mark thinks we need to make boys and men happier by telling them that it is Ok to be a man, particularly a white straight man. And to tell boys and men that masculinity is GOOD. And to find the male equivalent of “you go girl” and tell men that they can do anything they want and the world is their oyster. And from what I understand — because Mark has been on these calls many times talking about these same things — that is how you fix the problem.
The solution often presented is “Tell men it is good to be a man and they can do anything they want.”
And I disagree with that solution. I think the solution is to tell men that EQUALITY is good. That a more equal society will make life better for everyone — men included. That taking actions that make life more equal will make your life meaningful — not doing the stereotypical things that men are quote unquote supposed to do. It’s not that masculinity is bad, it’s that it is irrelevant. It should be as relevant as having brown hair, or being left handed or wearing a bandanna. That is — it’s a personal style choice.
And I don’t know which of those things most of you on the call believe — but I think that is a conversation worth having. As Thaddeus and I have discussed on other calls — toxic masculinity will kill us all. See for example, climate change or the coronavirus.
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Switching gears — there was an opinion piece in the NY times today titled “Why Is It OK to Be Mean to the Ugly?”
There are a lot of statistics in there:
1) In survey after survey, beautiful people are described as trustworthy, competent, friendly, likable and intelligent, while ugly people get the opposite labels.
2) Research suggests they are more likely to be offered job interviews, more likely to be hired when interviewed and more likely to be promoted than less attractive individuals. They are more likely to receive loans and more likely to receive lower interest rates on those loans.
3) Attractive economists are more likely to study at high-ranked graduate programs and their papers are cited more often than papers from their less attractive peers. One study found that when unattractive criminals committed a moderate misdemeanor, their fines were about four times as large as those of attractive criminals.
4) Daniel Hamermesh, a leading scholar in this field, observed that an American worker who is among the bottom one-seventh in looks earns about 10 to 15 percent less a year than one in the top third. An unattractive person misses out on nearly a quarter-million dollars in earnings over a lifetime.
As we find with the concept of intersectionality, these are compounded with other isms. So for example black women the attractiveness curve is the MOST punishing. So if you are a black woman who is deemed by society to be quote unquote “unattractive” — you only earn 63 cents for every dollar of those deemed attractive.
And I think it is important to understand these dynamics.
One way is just to highlight what is happening so you can look at your own biases. Another is to change the language, like we have in so many other isms. For example — at the Good Men Project — we won’t use the word ugly to describe a person. Why would you? It’s a word that *shouldn’t* mean anything. But we also won’t use the word “attractive woman” as a general term. Because I think that is harmful. It’s ok to be attracted to someone as an individual — so you could say, for example, I woman that I am attracted to. But to use “attractiveness” as a general term — no. What would be the value in that?
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And the final thing I want to mention is a post Thaddeus had on FB today about his experience with Clubhouse. Clubhouse shows that Good Men Project was ahead of its time — as they have calls much like these very calls you are on now. But what is happening is Clubhouse is being overrun by trolls. And because you can’t see the other people, some are pretending to be of other races in order to spread racism. So in the case of Thaddeus — there was a conversation about race, and a guy who said he was Mexican brought up the idea that “reverse racism” was a thing because he had experienced it all his life as a Mexican American. And this allowed him to not only have a platform to promote the idea that “reverse racism” is a thing — which it was NOT — but also to promote the idea of “Teaching about critical race theory results in students growing up hating white people.”
This is a problem. Teaching about racism does not mean people grow up hating white people any more than teach about sexism makes more people grow up hating men.
We have to work towards greater equality. We can’t just wish it was so. And that is what we are trying to do here at The Good Men Project.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
Escape the Act Like a Man Box | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men | Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Race | The First Myth of the Patriarchy: The Acorn on the Pillow |
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