For this week’s conversation, we are looking at The Good Men Project to have a conversation about what makes (or doesn’t make?) our work different from their approach. Specifically, we will be discussing their “About Us” page.
Additionally we will be reading an article published on the website titled “The Patterns In Mass Shootings and a Conversation About Men.”
This week we are reading the section titled “Sexual Objectification and Male Supremacy” from John Stoltenberg’s book Refusing to be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice
Our next reading is the zine “Dangerous Spaces: Violent Resistance, Self-Defense, and Insurrectional Struggle Against Gender.”
Contents:
– “Anarcha-Feminists Take to the Streets”
– “Safety is an Illusion”
– “Notes on Survivor Autonomy and Violence”
– “Dysphoria Means Total Destroy”
– “An Insurrectional Practice Against Gender”
+ 14 communiques
It is available formatted for on-screen reading or for printing.
Last time we had a few discussions about the direction of the group, so for this coming session we will be thinking about possible names (mens group is so boring) as well as having a rotating facilitator with hopefully more structure.
In terms of reflection we are going to be going through scenarios listed in “the Philly Dudes zine” as well as trying to incorporate some of their other activities.
Also we talked about coming to this coming meeting with personal goals to work through, and have the group form some sort of support role specifically related to individually detoxing from patriarchy in our lives
We’re reading the zine “The Philly Dudes Collective – Year One (And A Half)”
Also, we’re supposed to go to come to the meeting with some type of personal goal we’re working on related to how patriarchy influences our actions. An example might be “i’m going to work on holding the door open less for women” (or something like that — obviously that’s super simple). The idea is that verbalizing it might offer a way to check in on progress in the future and/or to help support each other.
We’re planning to continue talking about the themes raised in the zine “Social Detox” (if there is further discussion) but then trying to have a more general conversation based on personal experiences in our “political” and/or other work in Grand Rapids, personal experiences from our lives, etc. We didn’t have a specific reading for next time, but please come with ideas for conversation and discussion.