A friend of mine has a young son. She recently asked me, and other men, to write a letter to our sons who exist or have yet to be born that she could show to her own child, someday. This is my letter.
Dear Son,
If you’re reading this, you are now set to embark on a journey into that wonderful, stressful, often-sticky phase we call “young adulthood”.
I want you to know that my love for you, my personal stake in your existence, could never be adequately measured.
As you have grown over the last 18 years, all I have ever sought to do is give you the best possible start on happiness in life and to respect and love others as equals.
Michael Kimmel is among the leading researchers and writers on men and masculinity in the world today. The author or editor of more than twenty volumes, his books include Changing Men: New Directions in Research on Men and Masculinity (1987), Men Confront Pornography (1990), The Politics of Manhood (1996), The Gender of Desire (2005), The History of Men (2005) and more recently Guyland (2008) and The Guy’s Guide to Feminism (2011).
I hadn’t really thought much about the difficulties guys face in our culture before I read Guyland by Michael Kimmel. I had focused so much energy on figuring out the societal pressures placed on girls that Kimmel’s account of what it means to grow up and be male was completely eye-opening. It confirmed to me just how much men …
As many of you, as frequenters of the Internet, probably know, in 2007 young adult author John Green and his brother, an environmental blogger named Hank Green, started a video blog called Brotherhood 2.0. They quickly developed a kickass community of followers, who grew to be called Nerdfighters, who fight against WorldSuck. Fighting against WorldSuck- all of the non-awesomeness in the world- is what we as activists do best. The two brothers always advocate equality of the sexes, respect for different sexual orientations, respect for the environment, and social awareness in their videos. Here are two of my favorites that most strongly relate to these important messages, one about girls not acting dumb to get guys, and another against homophobia.
“Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end.?” – Rigoberta Manchu Tum.
Women are quite possibly the most disadvantaged section of the human population. With the onset of the 21st century, their status in society has improved, yet at the same time it remains far behind what the radical feminists envisaged during the feminist revolution.
I think to myself that even all the money in the world can’?t change men?’s attitude when it comes to allowing women and young girls the right to learn. As Indian society becomes more westernized, Indian girls are rebelling. However, their attempts are proving to be very futile because at the end of the day they’?re still …
