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By Rob Okun
FROM THE EDITOR
Finding Light in the
Heart of Darkness
Last fall I spent close to a week at
Auschwitz, the death camp. It’s a place
where hearts ache and break, where
the shadow side of human nature sought to
overwhelm the light by eclipsing every bit of
what’s good and whole and radiant in our lives.
What I found, though, was even that place—at
the heart of darkness—couldn’t extinguish the
light. I felt enlivened being there, in no small
part because I was in a community of more
than 80 people from a dozen countries who had
come to bear witness to what happened seven
decades ago.
Each morning we would walk from the
Center for Dialogue and Prayer to Birkenau,
the neighboring camp—22 times larger than
Auschwitz—less than two miles away. We
would sit in silence beside the railroad tracks
where cattle cars bearing men, women, and
children screeched to a stop at the “selection”
site where the healthy and young were forced
into barracks to become slave laborers and
everyone else was herded to the “showers”—
the gas chambers—to be fatally poisoned.
We meditated on violence, on cruelty,
on inhumanity. We meditated on peace, on
kindness, on compassion. Away from our dayto-day
lives, we meditated, too, on the contradictions
of being human—from our murderous
rage to our heroic selflessness. Is it really our
nature to swing so wildly on the pendulum
of human behavior? Certainly the politics
and psychology of fascism lay at the root of
what happened in Nazi Germany: The few
had invaded the hearts and minds of the many,
poisoning them, sending their frozen hearts into
spiritual and political hibernation.
In our group of 80 were a Palestinian imam,
an Israeli rabbi, pastors, priests (Catholic
and Zen), therapists, actors, writers, lawyers,
doctors, meditation teachers, business people,
filmmakers, and students. I felt enriched by the
voices and spirit of the young, 16 in all, high
school and college age, brimming with open
hearts and exercising quick, keen minds.
Twice each day, some moments after we
began another round of sitting in silence, four
people would stand at the four points of our
circle. Each held a typed sheet of paper covered
with single-spaced names of those who had
been murdered. Often the same surname was
intoned, person after person, age 47, or 36, or
23. (Among the several thousand names we read
that week none was younger than 16 or older
than their 50s; the Nazis kept no records of the
Voice Male
old and the young who they immediately gassed
at the camps.)
Beneath a gray November sky some would
chant the names—they were praying. Others
seemed to be working hard just to maintain
control, just to be able to get through the recitation.
It was the hardest part of each day for me.
I found myself rocking back and forth, choking
back a moan, picking up pebbles and flicking
them down as if I was adding exclamation
points proclaiming each of these people’s lives
mattered. Goldberg, Avram! Goldberg, Sara!
In the afternoons, we would walk into
the dank, dark barracks—virtually untouched
since the Nazis left in January 1945—and light
candles before reciting the Kaddish (the Jewish
prayer for the dead) in Polish, English, Dutch,
Hebrew and German. Often we would sing.
Rabbi Ohad played guitar, leading us in songs of
hope and healing. Whatever notion anyone had
that singing at Auschwitz-Birkenau was disrespectful
dissipated as our voices rose inside the
barracks of death, and drifted skyward, a balm to
those whose spirits still hover above that place.
At dusk on the last day of the retreat, we
gathered at the pond where the ashes of the
dead were dumped, delivered there from the
crematorium in whose shadow we stood. At
the edge of the pond a stand of tall trees, many
dating back to those dark days, still bore silent
witness to the atrocities. We ringed the pond with
candles and, standing behind the tapers, some
stood silent, some cried, and some sang: “We are
rising, like a phoenix from the ashes, brothers
and sisters spread your wings and fly high,” we
chanted through our tears. “We are ri-i-sing, we
are ri-i-sing.”
A few days after I returned home I was
a guest speaker in a first-year high school
class that had just finished reading Eli Wiesel’s
memoir, Night, about his horrific imprisonment
at Auschwitz. Before we started talking,
I wanted the students to have as a reference
point this simple truth: understanding history is
key to understanding current events. So I wrote
on the blackboard these words from the Czech
writer turned political figure Václav Havel: “The
struggle against oppression,” he said, “is the
struggle of remembering against forgetting.”
As I shared these words—and utter them
to myself still—I am left with the questions of
how to remember and how to best face the world
I live in now.
Voice Male editor Rob Okun can be reached at
rob@voicemalemagazine.org.
Rob Okun

Winter 2011
Volume 14 No. 52
Changing Men in Changing Times
www.voicemalemagazine.org
8
Features
8
12
14
16
19
22
28
John Lennon on Manhood, Fatherhood and Feminism
By Jackson Katz
Flying My Freak Flag at Half-mast
By Michael A. Messner
10 Things Men & Boys Can Do to Stop Human Trafficking
By Jewel Woods
Women Can Say No…and Yes
By Michael Kimmel
Real Men Know How to Take Paternity Leave
By Allison Stevens
It’s Not Just a Game
An interview with filmmaker Jeremy Earp by Jackson Katz
Coming Home to Pinsk
By Rob Okun
16
Columns & Opinion
19
2
4
5
7
10
20
21
From the Editor
Letters
Men @ Work
Men & Nonviolence
OutLines
Poem
Men Overcoming Violence
Finding the Peacemaker Within By Jan Passion
Gay Bashing Is About Masculinity By Michael Kimmel
Tucson Lament
Where Men Stand in Overcoming Violence Against Women
By Michael Flood
25
27
Men & Sports
ColorLines
In the NFL, Violence Comes to a Head By Dave Zirin
Erotic Revolutionaries An Interview with Shayne Lee By Ebony Utley
27
32
Resources
ON THE COVER:
Pete Saloutos Photography
male positive • pro-feminist • open-minded
Winter 2011

Mail Bonding
Rob A. Okun
Editor
Lahri Bond
Art Director
Michael Burke
Copy Editor
Read Predmore
Circulation Coordinator
Azad Abbasi, Zach Bernard, Michael Wei
Interns
National Advisory Board
Juan Carlos Areán
Family Violence Prevention Fund
John Badalament
The Modern Dad
Eve Ensler
V-Day
Byron Hurt
God Bless the Child Productions
Robert Jensen
Prof. of Journalism Univ. of Texas
Sut Jhally
Media Education Foundation
Bill T. Jones
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co.
Jackson Katz
Mentors in Violence Prevention Strategies
Michael Kaufman
White Ribbon Campaign
Joe Kelly
The Dad Man
Michael Kimmel
Prof. of Sociology SUNY Stony Brook
Charles Knight
Other & Beyond Real Men
Don McPherson
Mentors in Violence Prevention
Mike Messner
Prof. of Sociology Univ. of So. California
Craig Norberg-Bohm
Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe
Chris Rabb
Afro-Netizen
Haji Shearer
Massachusetts Children’s Trust Fund
Shira Tarrant
Prof. of Gender Studies,
California State Long Beach
Voice Male
Initiating Our Boys
Thank you for bringing to light the
possibility of modern day initiation for
teenage boys (Philip Snyder’s “How Can
Boys Come of Age in Today’s World?”
Voice Male, Fall 2010).
I believe Initiation
is a missing
link in the health
of our society.
The West African
saying goes “If
we don’t initiate
our boys, they
will burn down
the village.”
G a n g s ,
v a n d a l i s m ,
violence, alcohol
and drug addiction,
disrespect
and abuse of
women, despair
and suicide are
all fires we need
to put out. As
men, knowing who we are and where we fit
are keys to a positive and fulfilling life. Initiations
begin this process. I believe we men
have an obligation to our boys and to future
generations. Mature men and elders are in
our communities willing and ready to serve
this process. They just don’t know where to
start. We need to build a societal structure to
initiate and mentor all our boys. Our society
needs it, our boys deserve it.
Sam Rodgers
Boys to Men Mentoring Network
Western Mass. & Southern Vermont
Leverett, Mass.
Men Help Honor Friedan
Voice Male readers may be interested
to know that NOMAS, (the National
Organization for Men Against Sexism), has
helped to fund a historical marker to honor
Betty Friedan and the ground-breaking
influence of her book, The
Feminine Mystique, which
helped to create massive
support among women for
the women’s movement in
the 1960s.
In response to Veteran
Feminists of America,
which is seeking support to
place a plaque at Friedan’s
birthplace in Nyack, N.Y.,
NOMAS donated about
60 percent of the cost of
this endeavor. I find it
impressive and noteworthy
that an organization of
primarily men helped to
make this happen, and I
share this to let you know
of the ethics, service and
commitment of NOMAS. We have a good
ally and partner in this organization.
Please consider checking out the
NOMAS web page—www.nomas.org—
where you can learn about a conference they
are sponsoring in Tallahassee in April.
Rose Garrity
Owego, N.Y.
Letters may be sent via email to
www.voicemalemagazine.org
or mailed to Editors: Voice Male,
33 Gray Street, Amherst, MA 01002.
VOICE MALE is published quarterly by the Alliance for Changing Men, an affiliate of Family
Diversity Projects, 33 Gray St., Amherst, MA 01002. It is mailed to subscribers in the U.S., Canada,
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colleges and secondary schools, and among non-profit and non-governmental organizations. The
opinions expressed in Voice Male are those of its writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of
the advisors or staff of the magazine, or its sponsor, Family Diversity Projects. Copyright © 2011
Alliance for Changing Men/Voice Male magazine.
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be responsible for their loss or return. Manuscripts and queries may be sent via email to www.voicemalemagazine.org
or mailed to Editors: Voice Male, 33 Gray St., Amherst, MA 01002.

Men @ Work
Gender and Climate
Concerned about the persistent
exclusion of women’s rights and
gender issues in climate debates, the
Women’s Environment and Development
Organization (WEDO) created
an NGO-United Nations alliance in
2005 as a unified front to address
gender and climate change. It is a
project of the Global Gender and
Climate Alliance (GGCA), a unique
network of 13 UN agencies and
more than two dozen civil society
organizations working together to
ensure that climate change decisionmaking,
policies and initiatives, at
all levels, are gender responsive.
Since its founding, WEDO has
played a leadership role in facilitating
global and national policy advocacy,
capacity building and knowledge
generation, in partnership and
collaboration with various members
under the GGCA umbrella.
The project was successful
in seeing that eight strong references
to women and gender, and
new gender language was included
in the December 2010 Cancun
Agreements. Key partners in advocacy
work include ENERGIA
– the International Network on
Gender and Sustainable Energy,
Abantu for Development in Ghana,
Oxfam International, CARE,
ActionAid, UNIFEM (now part of
UNWOMEN), among others.
WEDO works with members of
the alliance to lobby governments
and build GGCA’s membership
of organizations working toward
gender-sensitive international
climate change agreements and
plans. For more information, visit
the GGCA website, www.genderclimate.org/.
[Men @ Work continued on page 6]
A Call to Take on The Gender Byline Gap know why. As only a child with a fierce, idealistic sense of right and
wrong can be, I tried to resist these messages without knowing what
In 2011, male writers still dominate the public discourse and have
was really going on. But not very successfully. What I knew in my heart
a much higher percentage of bylines in most corporate magazines
then was that my cousin was a better student than I, and much more
online and off, even in progressive media. In January Ms. Magazine
talented as an artist, a dancer, and in other ways. But to people around
(msmagazine.com) started a campaign against the New Yorker after the
us, my development—as the boy—seemed to be more important. This
magazine went two issues with only two or three contributions by female
pattern continued through high school and after. My uncle would give
writers, that in a close to 150-page magazine. It’s not just the New Yorker.
my father cigars when I scored touchdowns
January’s issue of Harpers had only three
during high school football games, while my
out of 21 stories by women. The Nation’s
cousin would cheerlead in semi-obscurity. In
latest print issue has four and a half female
student government, I was the president and
bylines out of 17 articles. The Atlantic did a
she the secretary. . .
little better, featuring five and a half female
“Over the years it finally dawned on me
bylines, of 18 total stories.
why I was frustrated. I was being unfairly
“Publications as prominent as the New
deprived—deprived of the talents, the ideas,
Yorker need to know they can’t get away
the perspective of half of society. Often it was
with gender inequity in bylines,” said
a point of view I very much wanted. Women’s
Jessica Stite, online editor at Ms. “This
voices and writing provided a balance to
isn’t one of those examples of insidious,
the macho orientation most successful boy
difficult-to-measure sexism. They will get
A meeting of concerned women writers at AlterNet. students and athletes received when I was
caught by anyone who can count!” Ms.
growing up in America.
senior editor Michele Kort told the progressive media website AlterNet
“When I came of age in the early seventies I discovered amazing
(www.alternet.org) that although the New Yorker has showcased many
women writers—authors of sprawling, multi-layered novels like Marge
talented female writers over the years, it needs to do way better to ensure
Piercy and Sara Davidson. I was introduced to the work of brilliant
equal representation on a regular basis. “The New Yorker can only offer a
thinkers like Dorothy Dinnerstein, Germaine Greer, and Shulamuth
richer perspective on the world if it includes more women’s voices.”
Firestone, whose ideas and social critiques made infinite sense to me,
Meanwhile, The Harnisch Foundation offered a $15,000 challenge
more so than many of the male thinkers did at that point.”
grant to AlterNet for its Gender Byline Project if it matches that amount
Hazen said women writers’ ideas helped to “shape me. They’ve
from its readers, especially those on Facebook. All of the money in this
been fundamental to who I am and what I value. So that is why I think
project would pay for content written by women, said executive editor
battling the gender byline gap—and it still is severe, we have tons of
Don Hazen in an appeal to readers.
data to support it—is a key part of every issue we care about, and
Why is gender byline fairness important to Hazen? “I became a
a linchpin to our future success in creating the society we want. It’s
‘feminist,’ or let’s say I had my ‘consciousness raised,’ as a young child,
important for men to get on board, because currently we are being
although I didn’t quite know what that was at the time. I think I was
deprived.”
seven. My female cousin was the same age as I, and almost a sibling
To learn more, in addition to AlterNet and Ms., visit the OpEd
since our families spent a lot of time together. As we grew, I started
Project (www.opedproject.org), an initiative to expand public debate,
getting messages about how I was supposed to act around her: protect
emphasizing enlarging the pool of women experts who are accessing
her, open the door for her, walk on the outside closer to the street. And
(and accessible to) key print and online forums.
there were other, more subtle messages that made me angry, but I didn’t
www.alternet.org
Winter 2011

Men @ Work
Men Sitting on New
Energy Source?
Could men be literally sitting
on a renewable energy source to
ease the nation’s dependence on
oil? Researchers at the National
Institute of Diabetes and Digestive
and Kidney Diseases say the average
man passes gas 14 to 23 times a day,
producing up to a quart of untapped
energy. “Many people think their
own output is excessive,” according
to William Chey, M.D., in a recent
Men’s Health. A professor of internal
medicine at the University of Michigan,
Dr. Chey says, “it’s normal
for men to produce between a pint
and four pints of gas a day.” Such
“backfires” are the body’s way of
regulating the amount of air in your
stomach and the gas levels in your
intestines. What if you try to stifle
the urge to let it rip? You run the risk
of abdominal cramping or stomach
rumbling, technically called borborygmi.
Excess gassiness can result
from a poor ability to process certain
sugars, such as fructose and lactose,
or starchy carbs, including corn and
wheat. With veggie oil-fueled cars
on the rise, there soon may be an
answer to the burning question: Will
there finally be a good use for men’s
hot air?
Father Knows Best
Among the oppressive patriarchal
holdovers still in force in Saudi
Arabia is a requirement that
females obtain their father’s (or
guardian’s) permission to marry—
no exceptions. Consider: Despite
being 42, and a surgeon licensed
to practice in Canada and the U.K.
as well as her native country, a
female Saudi physician is viewed
as subordinate to her father. It
is estimated that more than three
quarters of a million Saudi women
are in the same position. Women
New Documentary: Boys Becoming Men
From the co-maker of
the Academy Awardnominated
Hoop Dreams
will soon come Boys Become Men,
a new two-hour documentary by
filmmaker Frederick Marx. The
documentary aims to dramatically
demonstrate the urgent need “to
resurrect conscious initiation
of teens in our times,” Marx
says. Featuring families and
rites of passage from different
traditions—Native American,
Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and
secular—the film makes the
point that “all traditions, old and
new, have valuable, much needed
initiations to offer young people.
Having seen real-life teenage
boys slay their personal dragons,
having seen their adult mentors
tested but unfailing and true,”
Marx believes both teen and
adult audiences will witness the
film’s closing celebrations “with
a profound sense of hope that
we can—and will—change our
society through myriad forms of
teen initiation and mentorship.
Most documentaries only present
social problems,” Marx says.
“Boys Become Men will present
Film director Frederick Marx
solutions.” The film complete
a trilogy on urban teenage boys
that, in addition to Hoop Dreams,
included the earlier work, Boys to
Men. All express deep concerns
about teen boys realizing a
healthy and mature masculinity.
Marx has worked in film and
television for 35 years and his
latest film, Journey from Zanskar,
features the Dalai Lama with
narration by Richard Gere. A
successful online fundraising
campaign raised $25,000 to help
produce the film. To contribute,
or to learn more, go to www.
warriorfilms.org.
“can’t even buy a phone without a
guardian’s permission,” explained
a women’s rights activist. As for
the surgeon? She sued her father
in court but no results had been
reported at press time.
A Manual on
Masculinity
A new manual Created in
God’s Image: From Hegemony
to Partnership, aimed at creating
a positive masculinity, has been
published by The World Communion
of Reformed Churches. The manual
seeks to break down images of
masculinity that encourage men to
be dominant by providing positive
examples of what masculinity
can be. It includes studies of the
Bible in the context of gender and
sexuality, passages suggesting a
liberation theology for men, and a
series of modules meant to provide
direction for Christian men and
men’s groups seeking to embrace
positive masculinity.
“There is violence too within
the church—in parishes and in
church members’ homes,” said Setri
Nyomi, general secretary of the
World Communion of Reformed
Churches (WCRC). “Yet too often
we turn a blind eye or are silent…”
One activity in the manual
asks men to make an inventory of
their lives using the metaphor of a
tree: the roots are one’s foundation
(i.e. religious beliefs or family
experiences); the trunk is the social
structure within which one lives;
the leaves are sources of strength
and motivation.
Ultimately, the manual seeks to
bolster men’s participation in the
struggle against gender violence
and helps to change gender relations
which lead to that violence. For those
engaged in faith-based communities
drawing on the Christian tradition,
the manual is an important addition
to a social arena in need of more
resources. To order a copy ($15)
contact WCRC at wcrc.ch.
Brother Keepers
Brother Keepers: New
Perspectives on Jewish Masculinity
is an international book of
new essays on Jewish men. A
wide-ranging collection—from
sociological surveys to confessional
poetry—Brother Keepers offers
a variety of perspectives on the
journey from Abraham’s knives to
the flight of men from American
Jewish life. It was edited by noted
Jewish men and masculinity author
Harry Brod, and Rabbi Shawn Zevit,
who combines spiritual leadership
with teaching and performing.
“Like any good Jewish book,” says
Jay Michaelson, executive director
of Nehirim, GLBT Jewish Culture
and Spirituality, Brother Keepers
“answers the questions it raises
with more questions.”
Essays address personal
experience, gendered bodies, poetry
and prayer, literature and film,
illuminating how masculinities
and Judaisms engage each other
in gendered Jewishness. To order
Brother Keepers ($25 paperback;
$55 cloth; and $20 e-book), go
to Men’s Studies Press at www.
mensstudies.com.
Voice Male

Men & Nonviolence
Finding the Peacemaker Within
By Jan Passion
I
was three years old when I
watched the cops take my
father. Before they arrived,
I watched my parents fight over a
gun. Their own guns drawn, the
cops forced my dad into a waiting
squad car. I sat beside him in the
police car, while my mother and
brother rode in our car behind us. I
think Dad was bleeding from a
bullet that grazed him during the
fight. Somehow, in all the trauma
and chaos, it struck me — at the
age of three — that this wasn’t
right: More violence wasn’t the
answer.
Seven years later my father
killed himself, and that wasn’t the
answer, either. The legacy he left
me is that violence is never the
answer. But how else to protect
oneself against violence, if not by
violence?
Thanks to my father, I set a course early in life to figure out an answer
to that question. My searching would eventually lead me to Nonviolent
Peaceforce (www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org).
Before arriving at Nonviolent Peaceforce, I spent a decade working
with perpetrators of domestic violence and their victims. I learned a lot
about my father, working with men who acted just like him. I learned
to more deeply understand the humanity of these men, who caused so
much pain to their loved ones. I learned I could hate their actions without
hating them.
I learned that by listening to them, and by showing them that acting
out violently was a choice, that by giving them a safe place to speak of
their own injuries, and that by not taking sides against them, these men
began to change. They changed not by force but of their own accord.
They began to see the power of choosing nonviolence over violence.
Slowly the seed of nonviolence began to grow, and the wall of violence
they’d erected to protect themselves began to erode. As they stepped
from the rubble of their violent pasts, just like me, these men began to
see solutions other than violence to protect their lives.
The work of Nonviolent Peaceforce is a larger-scale version of my
work in domestic violence. Both put mending lives and mending relationships
first. Civilian protection is the number one mandate carried
out by unarmed civilian peacekeepers, and we are rigorously trained to
respond nonviolently even when under extreme threat.
I remember when one of our vehicles carrying three peacekeepers
was surrounded by a group of violent young men. They smashed all
the windows, hit the driver in the head and flashed a grenade under
his face.
Because this driver, a Kenyan peacekeeper, was able to respond
nonviolently and was backed by his colleagues’ courage to remain calm,
the situation de-escalated and the result was a meeting the next day.
Once a dialogue opened, the attackers began to understand the mission
of Nonviolent Peaceforce, and once they saw that we do not take sides,
“The work of Nonviolent Peaceforce is a larger-scale version of my work
in domestic violence.”
they apologized for their violent
outburst. The incident reminded me
how tempting it is to write people
off who commit violence. But if
we have the courage to hold their
humanity in our hearts even as
we witness or are harmed by their
acts, we can prepare the ground for
nonviolent action and thus prepare
the way to peace.
I was to learn another lesson in
courage from a 15-year-old child
soldier. I never found out at what
age she had been abducted. She
came to us seeking help after she
escaped her captors and discovered
that she was not safe at home in her
own village with her family. This
was in part because she had short
hair, which marked her as a female
fighter. Though she wanted more
than anything to stay with her family,
she knew she risked re-abduction and would face a severe penalty for
desertion if retaken.
We spent a day accompanying her to another part of the country where
she would be safe, could escape the daily trauma of the life of a child
soldier, and be able to grow her hair out. It was only one day out of the
lives of the three of us accompanying her, but it made all the difference
in her getting to keep hers. She was very quiet on the 10-hour journey,
which involved passing through many military checkpoints. She had the
stillness of terror about her. She did not make eye contact and answered
our questions through the translator in monosyllables. But once we
arrived at the safe place, her expression seemed to soften, and in her eyes
I read the message, “I’m going to make it. I am safe.”
This young woman is still in her teens today, and when I think of her,
I am reminded why the unarmed civilian peacekeepers of Nonviolent
Peaceforce do what we do. We do our work for young girls taken as
child soldiers. We do our work for young boys who hold grenades to
people’s faces. We do this work for ourselves. And some of us do it for
our fathers.
Jan Passion, a lifelong peace activist, spent 10 years as a
psychotherapist working with perpetrators
and victims of various forms of violence
and trauma. Jan has been a peacebuilding
trainer with The Conflict Transformation
Across Cultures Program (CONTACT)—a
member organization of Nonviolent
Peaceforce—and worked at the Karuna
Center for Peacebuilding and as a guest
faculty with Lesley University in Israel. He
can be reached at JPassion@NVPF.org.
Winter 2011

John
Lennon
on
Manhood,
Fatherhood
and Feminism
By Jackson
Katz
Three decades after his murder in New York City, John Lennon’s hold on
our cultural imagination is still strong. The subject of countless biographies,
magazine articles, and documentaries, including a BBC special exploring his
final days with the Beatles and the independent film Nowhere Boy delving
into his childhood and adolescence, this rock icon has been one of the most
chronicled people of our times. So it was a surprise when Rolling Stone
magazine uncovered several hours of a taped interview by Jonathon Cott with
Lennon just three days before his murder on December 8, 1980. While brief
excerpts were published soon after his death, after Cott unearthed the original
tapes a few months ago Rolling Stone published the entire interview in its
December 23, 2010 issue. While the interview revealed Lennon’s plans for a
musical comeback just before his untimely death, longtime antiviolence activist,
author, speaker and Voice Male contributing editor Jackson Katz was intrigued
by something else. “Throughout the interview,” Katz writes, Lennon offered
“a wealth of commentary related to his evolving ideas about manhood.” Katz
believes that when Lennon was gunned down in front of his apartment building
on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the world lost not only one of the greatest
musical talents of the 20th century, “it also lost an artist whose sense of himself
as a man reflected the cultural shifts in gender norms that had been catalyzed by
multicultural women’s movements; someone whose fame and example helped
pioneer a new kind of masculinity for his and subsequent generations of men.”
What follows are Katz’s thoughts on Lennon’s evolving ideas about masculinity,
fatherhood and feminism.
John Lennon is revered by many peace activists as an artist who used his
public platform to oppose the U.S. war in Vietnam. His anthems “Happy
Xmas (War Is Over),” “Give Peace a Chance” and “Imagine” are revered
by millions worldwide. But Lennon was perhaps the most well-known male
artist of his era to embrace feminism—and to incorporate feminist insights
about masculinity and relationships into his art.
After a brief period of high-profile anti-Vietnam war activism in the early
1970s, the former Beatle turned to subjects in his music and personal life that
spoke to some of the changes faced by men of his generation: growing up and
assuming adult responsibilities, nurturing more egalitarian relationships with
women and being emotionally present for their children. One of his songs that
decried sexism, “Woman Is The Nigger of the World” (1972), earned Lennon a
spot in Michael Kimmel and Tom Mosmiller’s 1992 anthology Against the Tide:
Pro-Feminist Men in the United States 1776-1990, a documentary history.
Lennon was a complicated person who struggled (often quite publicly)
with his shortcomings as a father, a partner and a friend. He could be difficult
and emotionally abusive. Many writers have noted that his audacious ambition
and stunning musical achievements as a young man were propelled, in part,
by his efforts to produce art through which he could communicate—and
perhaps transcend—the pain he experienced as a young boy, when his parents
effectively abandoned him. It is no small irony—and it is indefensible—that
Lennon similarly neglected his first son, Julian.
But despite the shortcomings of the man behind the myth, as a Beatle and as a
solo act John Lennon produced some of the most popular and memorable music
in history. His songs have become a part of our cultural fabric and collective
psyche; the enduring popularity of his artistic contributions is testament to
the fact that he connected—emotionally and intellectually—with hundreds
of millions (billions?) of people. In light of that connection and Lennon’s
continuing appeal, consider some of the things he said in his last interview on
a range of topics related to the major gender transformations of his—and our—
time: fatherhood, tough guy posturing, feminism, and women. Three decades
later his thoughts on these critical subjects are just as relevant and enduring as
his music.
Voice Male

On fatherhood:
The thing about the child is... it’s still hard. I’m not the
greatest dad on earth, I’m doing me best. But I’m a very irritable
guy, and I get depressed. I’m up and down, up and down, and
he’s (then-five-year-old son Sean) had to deal with that too—
withdrawing from him and then giving,
and withdrawing and giving. I don’t know
how much it will affect him in later life,
but I’ve been physically there.
On tough guy
posturing:
I’m often afraid, but I’m not afraid
to be afraid, otherwise it’s all scary. But
it’s more painful to try not to be yourself.
People spend a lot of time trying to be
somebody else, and I think it leads to
terrible diseases. Maybe you get cancer
or something. A lot of tough guys get
cancer, have you noticed? John Wayne,
Steve McQueen. I think it has something
to do—I don’t know, I’m no expert—with
constantly living or getting trapped in
an image or an illusion of themselves,
suppressing some part of themselves,
whether it’s the feminine side or the
fearful side.
I’m well aware of that because I come
from the macho school of pretense. I was
never really a street kid or a tough guy. I
used to dress like a Teddy boy and identify
with Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley,
but I never really was in real street fights
or real down-home gangs. I was just a
suburban kid, imitating the rockers. But it
was a big part of one’s life to look tough. I spent the whole of my
childhood with shoulders up around the top of me head and me
glasses off because glasses were sissy, and walking in complete
fear, but with the toughest-looking face you’ve ever seen... I
wanted to be this tough James Dean all the time. It took a lot of
wrestling to stop doing that, even though I still fall into it when I
get insecure and nervous.
On love, race and feminism:
...we hear from all kinds of people. One kid living up in
Yorkshire wrote this heartfelt letter about being both Oriental
and English and identifying with John and Yoko. The odd kid in
the class. There are a lot of those kids who identify with us—as
a couple, a biracial couple, who stand for love, peace, feminism
and the positive things of the world.
“I wanted to be this
tough James Dean all
the time. It took a lot of
wrestling to stop doing
that, even though I still
fall into it when I get
insecure and nervous.”
On learning from women:
I have to keep remembering that I never really was (a tough
guy). That’s what Yoko has taught me. I couldn’t have done it
alone—it had to be a female to teach me. That’s it. Yoko has been
telling me all the time, “It’s all right, it’s all right.” I look at early
pictures of meself, and I was torn between
being Marlon Brando and being the sensitive
poet—the Oscar Wilde part of me with
the velvet, feminine side. I was always
torn between the two, mainly opting for
the macho side, because if you showed the
other side, you were dead.
On his song “Woman”
(1972):
“Woman” came about because, one
sunny afternoon in Bermuda, it suddenly
hit me what women do for us. Not just
what my Yoko does for me, although I
was thinking in those personal terms...
but any truth is universal. What dawned
on me was everything I was taking for
granted. Women really are the other half
of the sky, as I whisper at the beginning of
the song. It’s a “we” or it ain’t anything.
The song reminds me of a Beatles track,
though I wasn’t trying to make it sound
like a Beatles track. I did it as I did “Girl”
many years ago -- it just sort of hit me like
a flood, and it came out like that. “Woman”
is the grown-up version of “Girl.”
This interview—and many others over
the years—makes clear that John Lennon
was strong enough both to acknowledge
his own vulnerability and fear, and also
to embrace women’s leadership, both personally and politically.
For a man who would have turned 70 last year, he was way
ahead of the curve. It is one of the defining tragedies of our
cultural moment that a non-violent man—the leader of the
Beatles!—who possessed the rare gift of translating his genderbending
introspection into brilliant, accessible art was ultimately
silenced by another man’s violence.
John Lennon’s final Rolling Stone interview can be found
at:www.rollingstone.com/music/news/john-lennons-finalinterview-20101207.
Voice Male contributing editor Jackson
Katz is author of The Macho Paradox and
writer-producer, with the Media Education
Foundation, of Tough Guise: Violence,
Media and the Crisis in Masculinity (www.
jacksonkatz.com).
Winter 2011

OutLines
The tragic suicide of Rutgers
University first-year student Tyler
Clementi last fall led to a wave of
national hand-wringing anguish about the
daily torture and humiliations suffered by
young gays and lesbians. An article in The
New York Times expanded the conversation
to include the stories of several other gay
teens who recently committed suicide,
such as Seth Walsh of Fresno, Calif., who
endured a “relentless barrage of taunting,
bullying and other abuse at the hands of his
peers.” Walsh hanged himself in September
at age 13.
Gay
Bashing
Is About
Masculinity
By Michael Kimmel
Yet, in our collective search for
explanations and solutions we’ve missed
one salient fact. Here are the names of
the teenagers in The Times article: Tyler
Clementi, Seth Walsh, Billy Lucas, Asher
Brown. Notice anything?
They’re all boys.
Writing that gay “teens” suffer such
relentless abuse or bullying obscures as much
as it reveals. It’s not “teens.” It’s boys.
Yes, lesbian teens can be relentlessly
tormented, harassed and bullied in school.
They can be mercilessly taunted in
cyberspace, and shunned in real space.
But the amount of rage they inspire rarely
compares to that experienced by boys.
And that’s not because of the current
fad of faux-lesbianism among teenage
girls. Sure, it’s true that many teen girls
have “kissed a girl” and “liked it,” as Katy
Perry proclaims. But there is something
fundamental about male homosexuality
that elicits what psychologists call
“homosexual panic,” and a near-hysterical
effort to circle the wagons and get rid of
the perceived threat.
For my book Guyland I interviewed
nearly 400 young people all across the
country. I found that many of America’s
high schools have become gauntlets
through which students must pass every
day. Bullies roam the halls, targeting the
most vulnerable or isolated, beating them
up, destroying their homework, shoving
them into lockers, dunking their heads in
toilets or just relentlessly mocking them.
It’s all done in public—on playgrounds,
bathrooms, hallways, even in class. And
the other kids either laugh and encourage
it or scurry to the walls, hoping to remain
invisible so that they won’t become the
next target. For many, just being noticed for
being “uncool” or “weird” is a great fear.
Why are some students targeted?
Because they’re gay or even “seem” gay—
which may be just as disastrous for a teenage
boy. After all, the most common put-down
in American high schools today is “that’s so
gay,” or calling someone a “fag.” It refers
to anything and everything: what kind of
sneakers you have on, what you’re eating
for lunch, some comment you made in class,
who your friends are or what sports team
you like. The average high school student
in Des Moines hears an anti-gay comment
every seven minutes, and teachers intervene
only about 3 percent of the time. After
spending a year in a California high school,
one sociologist titled her ethnographic
account Dude, You’re a Fag.
It’s true that gays and lesbians are far
more often the target of hostility than their
straight peers. But it’s often true that antigay
sentiments are only partly related to
sexual orientation. Calling someone gay or a
fag has become so universal that it’s become
synonymous with dumb, stupid or wrong.
And it’s “dumb” or “wrong” because
it isn’t masculine enough. To the “that’sso-gay”
chorus, homosexuality is about
10 Voice Male

gender nonconformity, not being a “real
man,” and so anti-gay sentiments become
a shorthand method of gender policing.
One survey found that most American boys
would rather be punched in the face than
called gay. Tell a guy that what he is doing
or wearing is “gay,” and the gender police
have just written him a ticket. If he persists,
they might have to lock him up.
Many guys think being gay means
not being a guy. That’s the choice: gay or
guy. In a study by Human Rights Watch,
heterosexual students consistently reported
that the targets were simply boys who were
un-athletic, dressed nicely, or were bookish
and shy.
Take the case of Jesse Montgomery,
who filed a Title IX suit in the Minnesota
courts after suffering 11 years of verbal
and physical abuse. Jesse was treated to a
daily verbal barrage of “faggot,” “queer,”
“homo,” “gay,” “girl,” “princess,” “fairy,”
“freak,” “bitch,” “pansy” and more. He was
regularly punched, kicked, tripped. Some
of the torment was directly sexual: One of
the students grabbed his own genitals while
squeezing Jesse’s buttocks and on other
occasions would stand behind him and grind
his penis in Jesse’s backside.
By the way, Jesse Montgomery is
straight. So, too, was Dylan Theno, an 18-
year-old former student at Tonganoxie High
School in Kansas. Beginning in the seventh
grade, he was consistently taunted as
“flamer,” “faggot” and “masturbator boy,”
harassed daily in the lunchroom and on the
playground. Teachers looked the other way
or laughed along with the harassers. Why?
Dylan explained: “Because I was a different
kid, you know, I wasn’t the alpha male. …
I had different hair than everybody else; I
wore earrings … I wasn’t a big time sports
guy at school.”
Of course, if you actually are gay,
the harassment is relentless—and often
dismissed entirely by the adults in charge
or, worse, considered appropriate. Take
the case of Jamie Nabozny in the mid-
1990s. Beginning in middle school, he
was harassed, spit on, urinated on, called
a “fag” by a teacher and mock-raped while
at least 20 other students looked on and
laughed. Each time the school principals
and teachers shrugged off his complaints,
telling Jamie that he should “expect” this
sort of treatment if he’s gay and that, well,
“Boys will be boys.”
Nabozny successfully sued the school
district and the principals of both his middle
school and high school, who paid out close
to $1 million in damages. His lawsuit
opened a door for those who are the targets
of bullying and harassment in school,
because school districts and administrators
may be held liable if they do not intervene
effectively to stop the abuse.
But gender non-conforming boys still
need protection—not just from the bullies
but from the teachers, parents, administrators
and community members who look the other
way, at best, or collude with it.
Most Americans find explicit racist and
anti-Semitic behavior unacceptable, an
affront to their moral sensibilities. Racism
and anti-Semitism are out of bounds even
when they don’t become physical, and most
of us believe that those who openly express
those sentiments should be severely punished.
Why is the same not true of gay bashing?
Michael Kimmel, a
Voice Male contributing
editor, is author or editor
of more than 20 books on
masculinity and teaches
in the Sociology Department
at the State University
of New York at Stony
Brook.
Winter 2011 11

Flying My Freak Flag at Half-mast
By Michael A. Messner
Not long ago I pulled the plug on my four-decade flirtation
with the John Lennon Look. A few years back, I had
already quit with the round granny glasses. But now, at
age 57, I’ve truly done it: I cut my hair. I really had little choice,
having observed with growing horror the death throes of the thinning
diaphanous do above my rapidly growing forehead. Oh, there’s still
enough hair to run a comb through. But when I gaze into the mirror
while standing under the unforgiving fluorescent lights in a public
restroom, the truth is revealed—I am crowning like a newborn,
the oval top of my increasingly shiny skull transparent through the
graying wisps. What I see is a shock—not of hair, but of cranium.
My hair is not entirely gone: it’s still ample on the sides, and on
top a sparse tuft survives, still substantial enough that I’ve not yet
begun to take daily inventory of the individual hairs—or to name
them (as in, “Oh, honey, as we slept last night, I lost Walter!”). But
rather than resembling as they once did a neatly unified congregation
flowing uni-directionally in some shared faith, the follicles atop my
head are now akin to a shrinking gathering of nonbelievers, upright
but akimbo in surprise during a cruel moment of final judgment.
Like so many mid-1960s American boys, in the wake of the
British Invasion I abandoned my crew-cut, and urged my straight
brown hair to creep over my ears and forehead, as far as would be
allowed by parents and coaches. My dad, it turned out, was both my
parent and my coach (a particular breed of post-World War II man
passionately committed to the idea that long hair on their sons erased
their own ability to make the crucial distinction between boys and
girls). Later, off to college, I was freed up to cultivate a semi-sloppy
“hippie look.” Long hair became more than a style: it was a political
statement, a sign of my opposition to war, patriarchy, and “the establishment.”
The equation was simple: Short hair = Nixon; long hair
= a New Man, peaceful and egalitarian. As usual, John Lennon in
12 Voice Male
Viet Nam War protest, 1971 photo: Diana Davies
1971 drew the line in the sand between the violent lies of Nixon and
the truth of our Nutopian vision:
I’ve had enough of reading things by neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed
politicians, all I want is the truth, just give me some truth, no shorthaired,
yellow-bellied son of Tricky Dicky is gonna mother hubbard
soft soap me with just a pocketful of hope
During the 1968 elections, Senator Eugene McCarthy’s peace
campaign for the presidency inspired some from my generation to
go “Clean for Gene.” Four years later, many young people rallied
similarly behind Senator George McGovern, hoping he would
reverse Nixon’s terrible war. I resisted the drift toward conventional
attire and the pull of liberal politics. Already, the lyrics of David
Crosby’s 1970 anthem to the deeper meanings of long hair looped
inside my head:
Almost cut my hair
It happened just the other day
It’s gettin’ kind of long
I coulda’ said it was in my way
But I didn’t, and I wonder why
I feel like letting my freak flag fly
Yes I feel like I owe it to someone.
Did others besides me buy this illogic? In retrospect, it’s amusing
that Crosby’s nebulous “explanation” for keeping his hair long resonated
with anybody. Maybe we were all ingesting the same mindmuddling
substances at the time; I don’t know. But I do recall that,
with some degree of self-righteousness, I continued to sport long hair
as a statement of my anti-establishment identity.
Long hair on guys didn’t retain its radical political meanings for
long. In the 1980s, I should have gotten my first motley clue from
the mullet, a truly unfortunate look that likely inspired many men’s
return to the barbershop. And by the 1990s, it seemed that the only
longhaired male musicians were twanging Country or shredding
Heavy Metal, two genres I could not stomach. Most of the rockers
I admired—Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Neil Young—had gone
to a shorter look. Even Paul McCartney was keeping his mop
neatly trimmed (and presumably dyed). By the turn of the millennium,
some middle-aged men faced up to imminent hair loss with
a suddenly-fashionable Bruce-Willis-pre-emptive depilation. When
my brother-in-law Willy (who in his shaggy youth was frequently
mistaken for Jerry Garcia or Karl Marx) went shiny billiard-ball, I
should have noticed that the fashion shift had penetrated the grassroots
of society. But I remained stubborn in my longhairishness, still
figuring, I suppose, I owed it to someone.
For a time, I fought to preserve my gray, thinning mane. Three
or four years ago, I considered using Rogaine. But simply reading
the instructions on the box turned me off. Slather slimy goop on my
head every day? And leave it there? Yeccch! Ever since the midsixties,
when I’d joined the generational rejection of Brylcreem and
other “greasy kids’ stuff,” I had sailed proudly under the banner that
the wet-head is dead.

But then my doctor introduced me to a little blue pill called
Propecia. Before taking it, I looked it up online and learned that most
men who take the drug daily for a three-month period of time experience
noticeable “hair re-growth” that reverses hair loss. Eureka,
yes! Let a thousand follicles bloom! And oh, yes: Clinical studies
also showed that “A small number of men had sexual side effects,
occurring in less than 2% of men. These include less desire for sex,
difficulty in achieving an erection, and a decrease in the amount
of semen.” Seeking a second opinion, I found another website that
reported even better odds: only 1.8 percent of men who take Propecia
experience decreased libido, a mere 0.8 percent a decreased volume
of ejaculate, and incidence of impotence is “less than one percent.”
Lucky me to learn that I am so rare as to be included in an epidemiologically
singular group of less than 1 percent! To be concrete,
after three weeks of swallowing the magical blue pill, I began to
wither where it most mattered. In the manhood department below
the belt, I had always already been painfully average in size—oh, a
bit below average in size, okay? But this had never been a problem.
My wife, Pierrette, is petite, standing a full foot shorter than I, and
weighing eighty pounds less. Once in the early 1980s, as a younger
couple strolling in a neighborhood of Mexico City, Pierrette and I
walked by a group of snickering men. One of them made a comment,
and they all burst into laughter. After we had passed the men, Pierrette
translated: “He said, ‘How does he reach her?’” Now, gentle
reader, you can intuit the answer to this question.
But now, after three weeks of Propecia, I had to make a choice:
accept a self-imposed flaccidity (albeit potentially topped off with
a full noggin of hair), or capitulate to a balding crown (but with
continued virile tumescence). If forced to choose thusly, which freak
flag would you elect to fly?
It was not that hard to decide. Now, with my hair cut shorter, I
have found that I’ve not yet been ejected from any clubs—political,
professional or musical. My friends and family still love me, and
my students still take notes when I speak. It turns out apparently that
nobody felt I owed it to them to keep my hair long. And maybe, I
have to admit, I look less bad as a shorthair. A 20-year-old mophead
in 1972 may have shined with sexy, youthful rebellion. A mophead
pushing 60 comes across more like, well, an inverted worn-out mop,
with gravity tugging the lifeless gray threads down on the sides.
Life transitions, however unwelcome, can bring small and
surprising benefits. With my hair now more closely cropped, I have
discovered older women on occasion bat their eyes and say that I
look just like Clint Eastwood. To be sure, this is not the look I was
going for. After all, Eastwood is what?—20, 25 years older than me?
(He’s no John Lennon, either, I should add.) Overriding my objections,
a woman friend recently advised my wife, “I wouldn’t take it
as an insult; Clint is hot.” So I have decided to take this unexpected
comparison as a compliment. Or perhaps, at least, as the only sort
of compliment I can expect to get from here on in.
Voice Male contributing editor Michael
Messner is professor of sociology and gender
studies at the University of Southern California.
His memoir, King of the Wild Suburb:
A Memoir of Fathers, Sons and Guns, will be
published this spring by Plain View Press.
Winter 2011 13

10 Things Men
and Boys Can Do
to Stop Human
Trafficking
By Jewel Woods
Human trafficking is modern-day
slavery. It is the use of force, fraud,
or coercion to compel another person
to provide labor or commercial sex against
their will, and it is one of the fastest growing
criminal enterprises in the world.
The Renaissance Male Project believes
that men are complicit in this crime when they
purchase sex because they create the demand
by allowing others to exploit women and
children for profit. Men must play a role in
ending this form of slavery, a vicious industry
that exploits and perpetuates the suffering of
hundreds of thousands of women and children
in the United States and around the world.
Based on a list of statistics that the Polaris
Project compiled:
▪ A total of 27 million are enslaved globally.
▪ Between 14,500 and 17,500 individuals are
brought into the U.S. as human trafficking
victims each year.
▪ One million children enter the global commercial
sex trade every year.
There are specific actions that men and
boys can take to end these atrocities:
14 Voice Male
1. Challenge the glamorization
of pimps in our culture
Mainstream culture has popularized the
image of a pimp to the point that some men
and boys look up to them as if they represent
legitimate male role models, and they view
“pimping” as a normal expression of masculinity.
As Carrie Baker reflects in “Jailing Girls
for Men’s Crimes” in the Summer 2010 Ms.
issue, the glorification of prostitution is often
rewarded, not punished, in pop culture:
Reebok awarded a multi-million-dollar
contract for two shoe lines to rapper 50 Cent,
whose album Get Rich or Die Tryin (with the
hit single “P.I.M.P.”) went platinum. Rapper
Snoop Dogg, who showed up at the 2003 MTV
Video Music Awards with two women on dog
leashes and who was described in the December
2006 cover of Rolling Stone as “America’s
Most Lovable Pimp,” has received endorsement
deals from Orbit gum and Chrysler.
In reality, pimps play a central role in
human trafficking and routinely rape, beat and
terrorize women and girls to keep them locked
in prostitution. Men can take a stand against
pimps and pimping by renouncing the pimp
culture and the music that glorifies it.
2. Confront the belief that
prostitution is a
“victimless crime”
Many men view prostitution as a “victimless
crime.” But it is not. For example, American
women who are involved in prostitution
are at a greater risk to be murdered than
women in the general population. Research
also shows that women involved in prostitution
suffer tremendous physical and mental
trauma associated with their work. Viewing
prostitution as a victimless crime or something
that women “choose” allows men to ignore the
fact that the average age of entry into prostitution
in the U.S. is 12 to 14 and that the vast
majority of women engaged in prostitution
would like to get out but feel trapped. Men
should stop viewing prostitution as a victimless
crime and acknowledge the tremendous
harm and suffering their participation in
prostitution causes.
3. Stop patronizing strip clubs
When men think of human trafficking, they
often think of brothels in countries outside of
the U.S. However, strip clubs in this country as
well as abroad may be a place where human traf-

ficking victims go unnoticed or
unidentified. Strip clubs are also
places of manufactured pleasure
where strippers are routinely
sexually harassed and assaulted
by owners, patrons and security
personnel. Men rarely consider
whether women working in strip
clubs are coerced into that line
of work, because to do so would
conflict with the pleasure of
participating in commercialized
sex venues. Men can combat
human trafficking by no longer
patronizing strip clubs and by
encouraging their friends and
coworkers to do the same.
4. Don’t consume
pornography
Pornography has the power
to manipulate male sexuality,
popularize unhealthy attitudes
toward sex and sexuality and eroticize violence
against women. Pornography leads men and
boys to believe that certain sexual acts are
normal, when in fact sexual acts that are nonconsensual,
offensive and coupled with violent
intent result in the pain, suffering and humiliation
of women and children. In addition,
a disproportionate amount of mainstream
pornography sexualizes younger women with
such titles as “teens,” “barely 18,” “cheerleaders,”
etc. Targeting younger women socializes
men to develop appetites for younger and
younger women and creates a pedophiliac
culture among men. Victims of human trafficking
have also been forced into pornography.
Men can stop the voyeurism of sex and sex
acts that fuel human trafficking by refusing to
consume pornography and encouraging others
to do the same.
5. Tackle male chauvinism and
sexism online
Contrary to the myth that men do not
gossip, men spend a significant amount of time
online discussing their sexual exploits. The
Internet provides many men with the ability to
mask their identities while indulging in racist,
sexist and violent diatribes against women and
girls. Choosing to be a critical voice online is
an extremely important way to educate and
inform men and boys about their choices. Men
can change this culture by starting threads in
online forums that cause men to talk about
their attitudes toward women and how these
attitudes and behaviors are linked to human
trafficking.
Sculptures by Gustav Vigeland (1869 – 1943), The Vigeland Park, Oslo, Norway
6. End sex tourism
Men in the U.S. and other “first world”
nations routinely travel overseas and have sex
There would be no human trafficking if there was no demand for it.
with women in developing countries. When
men engage in these practices, they do not
acknowledge the fact that many trafficked
women and children come from developing
countries—even in countries where prostitution
is “legal.” Traveling overseas grants men
a great deal of anonymity. As men, we have a
responsibility to confront the men who go overseas
and participate in sex tourism.
7. Talk to men and boys about
men’s issues in male spaces
The only way to change men is by engaging
spaces where men and boys talk and develop
their ideas and attitudes toward sex and sexuality.
Male spaces such as barbershops, locker
rooms, fraternities and union halls are the real
classrooms where boys learn to become men
and where men develop most of their ideas
about how to interact with women. If men do
not feel comfortable talking about these issues
in male spaces, they can drop off informational
brochures and make themselves available to
talk with other men and boys when they have
questions or concerns. As men, we need to
turn male spaces into circles of accountability
where men learn about non-violence, social
justice and ending violence against women.
8. Support anti-humantrafficking
policies
In 2010 President Obama proclaimed
January National Slavery and Human Trafficking
Prevention Month. However, more
substantive legislation is required to end human
trafficking. Men can educate themselves about
the issues by visiting anti-trafficking organizations
and by asking their elected officials
what they have done to support or sponsor
anti-human, trafficking legislation. One of
the most important acts men can do to stop
human trafficking is to support
anti-trafficking legislation at the
local, state or federal level.
9. Support creation of
“John Schools”
There would be no human
trafficking if there was no
demand for it. Strategies aimed
at ending human trafficking must
focus on eliminating the demand.
“John Schools” are education
programs designed to educate
customers apprehended by law
enforcement who attempted to
purchase sex. By teaching the
legal and health effects of buying
sex and the realities of prostitution,
such schools impart knowledge
that can reduce demand,
making men conscious of how
their actions can spur on human
trafficking. Learn whether or
not your local community has a John School.
If not, encourage your local prosecutor’s office
or city council to start one.
10. Raise sons and mentor boys
to challenge oppression
No boy is destined to be a “john,” a pimp,
or a human trafficker. Raising young men in
circles of accountability to be respectful and
protective of all women and children is one
of the most important things men can do to
stop human trafficking. Talk about human
trafficking as a modern form of slavery to help
convince men and boys to become allies in the
fight to end this form of oppression.
Jewel Woods is
an author and a
gender analyst
whose views on
men and boys in
American society
have been featured
on television, radio,
and publications
including Essence
and Ebony, and on
websites including
The Root, The Black Commentator,
Alternet, and Huffington Post. He is the
author of The Black Male Privileges
Checklist and Don’t Blame It on Rio:
The Real Deal Behind Why Men Travel
to Brazil for Sex. He is the founder and
executive director of The Renaissance
Male Project, Inc. (www.renaissancemaleproject.com).
Winter 2011 15

Women Can Say No…and Yes
By Michael Kimmel
Courtesy of Yale Daily News
Posing in front of the Yale Women’s Center, a
fraternity pledge class held signs proclaiming
“We love Yale sluts.”
Nearly 30 years ago, in a column in the New York Times
Magazine, conservative firebrand William F. Buckley waxed
nostalgic about his college days at Yale. He imagined a young
Yalie today, at the now-coed, gender-integrated university, longing for
“the fraternity that wouldn’t end.”
Someday, damn it, we’ll have a treehouse of our own. We’ll build
it out in the woods where Mother can’t find us.
And we’ll eat when we want, what we want.
We’ll bring our friends. Have a secret club. And
no girls.
Not bad for a guy whose first book title
included only God and man.
Defensive and wistful, Buckley experiences
increasing gender equality as an invasion into
those pure homosocial refuges, coupled with
constant policing by angry Mommies. It’s as if
Buckley was Spanky, on the Little Rascals, putting
up the sign “He-Man Woman Haters Club. No
Gurls Allowed.”
I was reminded of this little dream of homosocial purity as I learned
of the now-viral video of a fall pledge party at Yale’s Delta Kappa
Epsilon fraternity marching around and shouting “No Means Yes! Yes
Means Anal!” and other slogans.
(For the historically minded, DKE was mentioned in the Times in
November, 1967 in a scandal over branding their pledges with red-hot
coat hangers. The newspaper called the practice “sadistic and obscene.”
The chapter president, one George W. Bush, defended it as akin to
a cigarette burn. That was the first time Bush was mentioned in that
newspaper.)
16 Voice Male
What does it mean to target
the one place where women
might actually feel safe?
It’s a reminder that men still
rule, that bro’s will always
come before “ho’s.” That
even the Women’s Center
can’t protect you.
The immediate and universal outcry focused, rightly, on the first half
of the chant—the explicit support and encouragement of sexual assault.
Legal questions were raised: Is this hate speech? Does it promote a
hostile environment in which actual sexual assaults (Yale reported 92
last year) are ignored, downplayed or explained away?
At first, the fraternity issued a cover-your-ass smirking apology for
offending people’s feelings (read: you feminists
can’t take a joke). Their next apology, a day or
so later, was far more abject, and showed they’d
put some serious thought into how their actions
might have been experienced by others. It seemed
sincere enough.
But it lacked historical perspective. In 2006,
fraternity guys marched in a sort of picket line
outside the Women’s Center on campus—chanting
those same phrases. In 2008, members of another
fraternity celebrated their love of “Yale sluts” by
screaming about it outside that same Women’s
Center on campus.
What does it mean to chant “No Means Yes” outside the campus
Women’s Center, the place that offers services to women who have been
assaulted or abused? What does it mean to target the one place where
women might actually feel safe enough to find their own voice, to feel
strong enough to succeed in a world still marred by gender inequality?
It’s a reminder that men still rule, that bro’s will always come before
“ho’s.” That even the Women’s Center can’t protect you. That is, it’s a
way to make the safe unsafe.
We could leave it there, and let the campus judiciary and the blogosphere
continue to debate about free speech and hostile environments

As part of their outreach efforts, the Women’s Center sponsored a roundtable
discussion at Toad’s nightclub in New Haven.
and hate speech. But I think it would miss another, equally important
element—the second half of the chant, “Yes Means Anal.”
This chant assumes that anal sex is not pleasurable for women; that
if she says yes to intercourse, you have to go further to an activity that
you experience as degrading to her, dominating to her, not pleasurable
to her. This second chant is a necessary corollary to the first.
Thanks to feminism, women have claimed the ability to say both
“no” and “yes.” Not only have women come to believe that “no means
no,” that they have a right to not be assaulted and raped, but they also
have a right to say “yes,” to their own desires, their own sexual agency.
Feminism enabled women to find their own sexual voice.
Sometimes, as in the case of the now-famous Karen Owen at Duke,
they can be as explicitly raunchy as men, and evaluate men’s bodies in
exactly the way that men evaluate women’s bodies. (I agree with Ariel
Levy that imitating men’s drinking and sexual predation is a rather
impoverished view of liberation.)
This is confusing to many men, who see sex not as mutual pleasuring,
but about the “girl hunt,” a chase, a conquest. She says no, he
breaks down her resistance. Sex is a zero-sum game. He wins, if she
puts out; she loses.
That women can like sex—and especially like good sex—and are
capable of evaluating their partners changes the landscape. If women say
“yes,” where’s the conquest, where’s the chase, where’s the pleasure?
And where’s the feeling that your victory is her defeat? What if she is
doing the scoring, not you?
Thus, the “Yes Means Anal” part of the chant. Sex has become
unsafe for men—women are agentic, go for it, and evaluate our performances.
So if “No Means Yes” attempts to make what is safe for women
unsafe, then “Yes Means Anal” makes what is experienced as unsafe
for men again safe—back in that comfort zone of conquest and victory.
Back to something that is assumed could not possibly be pleasurable for
her. It makes the unsafe safe—for men.
In this way, we can see the men of DKE at Yale not as a bunch of
angry predators, asserting their dominance, but as a more pathetic bunch
of guys who see themselves as powerless losers, trying to re-establish
a sexual landscape which they feel has been thrown terribly off its axis.
This is especially ironic, of course, because these straight, white, upper
class Yalie DKEs are among the most privileged 20-year-olds on the
planet. And yet now they feel one-down, defensive, reduced to impotent
screaming about entitlement—and all because of women’s equality.
Man up, guys. Women can say no—and they can say yes. And in
2011, real men can learn to hear both.
Voice Male contributing editor Michael Kimmel is the author of
Guyland and Manhood in America, among his many books on men and
masculinity.
23-25
The Prison Birth Project
working to provide support, education and advocacy to
women and girls at the intersection of the criminal justice
system and motherhood.
www.theprisonbirthproject.org
Winter 2011 17

“This vital publication is an important
tool in our struggle to re-imagine ourselves
in the world.”
—Bill T. Jones, artistic director
Bill T. Jones/Arnie
Zane Dance Company
“I celebrate you for standing with women
in the struggle to end violence against
women and girls. Your brave magazine
is bringing forward the new vision
and voices of manhood which will
inevitably shift this paradigm
and create a world where
we are all safe and free.”
—Eve Ensler, activist-playwright
(The Vagina Monologues)
What’s happening with men and masculinity?
That’s the question Voice Male tries to answer each issue as it chronicles manhood in transition.
The changes men have undergone the past 30 years, our efforts following women in challenging
men’s violence, and our ongoing exploration of our interior lives, are central to our vision.
The magazine’s roots are deep in the male positive, profeminist, anti-violence men’s movement.
We draw inspiration from the world-changing acts of social transformation women have long advanced
and the growing legion of men agitating and advocating for a new expression of masculinity.
At this key moment in the national conversation about men, Voice Male has much to contribute. Join us!
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18 Voice Male
—

Real Men Know How
to Take Paternity Leave
By Allison Stevens
What does it mean to be a real man at the office? It means
being a workaholic, says Joan Williams, and that has devastating
consequences for women, men and families.
Men prove their masculinity in the workplace by putting in long
hours, Williams said last week at a panel discussion at the Center for
American Progress in Washington, D.C. She was discussing her new
book Reshaping the Work-
Family Debate: Why Men and
Class Matter. I know just what
she means.
This man is my father,
an attorney who spent most
weekends at the office when I
was a little girl. He is also my
husband, who works 10- or 12-
hour days even though he has
two young children at home.
He’s even my sister, a lawyer
in a male-dominated firm who
always asks me to call her back
at work, even if it’s 10 p.m. on
a Saturday.
These workers sacrifice
their waking lives on the altar
of modern-day machismo.
According to many studies,
professional men’s working
hours rose in the 1990s,
Williams said. “They just went
bananas,” she said. At the same
time, men’s household contributions
leveled off in the 1990s
and haven’t risen since.
A third—and likely related
phenomenon also occurred.
“When men’s household
contributions leveled off,
guess what? So did women’s
labor force participation,”
Williams said.
Those women who continue
to work are still responsible for
more than their share of child
care and household responsibilities.
Not surprisingly, we
have become the driving force
behind the growing movement
for better work-life balance.
Work Benefits Enjoyed Elsewhere
We want one of the big benefits that our peers enjoy in many other
countries: paid leave to care for ourselves or a family member who falls
ill or to bond with a new child. We also want more control over our
work schedules so we can fit a doctor appointment or a meeting with
our child’s teacher into our busy workdays.
Yet despite the obvious and
desperate need for these kinds
of benefits, bills that would
provide them to millions of
employees around the country
are going nowhere.
That’s because men aren’t
involved in the discussion,
Williams argued. (Right, of
course! They’re too busy
putting in long hours at the
office proving their manhood.)
“We have to open up a
national conversation about
the gender pressures on men
that are making them feel so
unable to change,” Williams
said. “Women will continue to
lose in kitchen-table bargaining
over child care and housework
until we open up successfully
that conversation about men
and masculinity.”
This conversation has taken
place in our house and it has
had huge payoffs.
Last year while pregnant
with our second child, I learned
that my husband had accrued
six weeks of vacation leave
and a stunning eight months
of paid sick leave. I suggested
(and was prepared to insist)
that he use it after the birth of
our son and he enthusiastically
agreed—and actually made
it happen. I was pleasantly
surprised—or should I say
downright stunned—since he
works in an office comprised
mostly of military officers.
He certainly has gotten his
fair share of ribbing from his
colleagues for taking such an
extended leave (some of his
Winter 2011 19

colleagues in the military are just happy to be in the same time zone when
their children are born). But I must say, he’s also gotten some surprising
and welcome chest-bumps from envious colleagues.
One Complaint
One lingering complaint, however: He couldn’t use his deep well of
sick leave during this period (which was when our son was six months
old) because of his gender. As a father, and not a mother, he was apparently
not entitled to use sick benefits to care for our child because a
certain limited amount of time had passed.
But he did exhaust his vacation leave—and then some—to care
for our children after I went back to work, and I cannot overstate how
fabulous it was for our family.
During these two months I was married to the equivalent of a traditional
wife and mother, with all the benefits that bestows on any bread
earner. What a gift!
But my husband was the greater beneficiary. He has often said since
that those two months (he tacked on a couple weeks of unpaid leave)
were the best of his life. He lost two weeks pay, and ignored warnings
about the risk to his career, but he came out ahead, way ahead.
Sporting a beard, a baby carrier, and his version of a gender-neutral
diaper bag (a black backpack) spilling over with diapers, wipes, my
pumped breast milk and all manner of other infant accoutrements, John
headed out—often with the dog in tow, too—every morning to the park,
the museum, the playground, wherever, to spend some quality time
with his kids.
Loving Every Last Minute
He loved every last minute of it. When I asked him how he felt about
going back to work, his eyes began to water.
Now, my husband is no crier. He didn’t cry when he proposed to me.
He didn’t cry during our wedding ceremony. He didn’t cry during the
birth of our first and second sons.Like most men, John expresses neither
joy nor sorrow through tears.
To be sure, my husband loves his job. But the mere thought of
returning to the long days and late nights of his working world—and
missing out on uninterrupted weekdays with his children—brought him
to an emotional precipice.
John and I are now talking about ways he can spend more time with
the kids, from job-sharing to flex-time and all the other options women
often wind up considering after we become mothers.
It’s the kind of discussion we all need to have, not just us women.
Men may be seen as less macho in the workforce if they alter their
schedule for their children, and perhaps they’ll pay a price in the same
way that women do if they attempt to find that precarious balance
between work and family.
But the discussion alone can yield incalculable rewards.
Talking about ways fathers can spend more time with their children
could open up more options for dads and will push the work-family
movement forward—and it may just make a few more overworked
fathers well up with tears of joy.
Allison Stevens is a writer in Washington, D.C.
A version of this article originally appeared in
Women’s eNews (www.womensenews.org).
A Tucson Lament
And when the shots ring out and the dead and the
wounded lie in a Safeway parking lot like pieces
from a discarded board game
And when a 79 year-old husband puts his body
in front of the barrage of bullets aimed at his wife and
dies saving her
And when a gentle Buddha nestles his boss against his ample
chest so she doesn’t choke on her own blood
And when the glint of a Southwestern sun reflects off of the
hood of the hearse bearing the casket of the federal judge
And when those who preach separateness from a place of
fear inside themselves hear at dawn’s early light a quiet voice
chipping away at the pillars of their certainty
And when the parents of a nine-year old donate their
daughter’s organs to a little girl in Boston
who one day may run for student council
Only then, two thousand miles away, with the
rat-a-tat-tat from another Tucson gun
show piercing my heart do I hear
the gunshots for what they are
a 31-bullet salute to a broken-hearted nation desperate to
begin again
—Rob Okun
20 Voice Male

Men Overcoming Violence
Where Men Stand in Ending Violence
Against Women
By Michael Flood
Additionally, the report examines men’s immediate responses when
violence occurs. Most men say that they are willing to intervene in situations
of domestic violence, although sometimes, their interventions may not
be very helpful. The fact is, a silent majority of men disapproves of violence,
but does little to prevent it, while significant numbers of men excuse or
justify violence against women. The silence, and encouragement, of male
bystanders allows other men’s violence against women to continue.
Men’s involvement in preventing violence against
women
Finally, Where Men Stand looks at what role men can and do play in
reducing and preventing this violence. Men’s involvement in efforts to end
violence against women is increasing. There are several elements to this
uptick in men’s involvement:
A
new report from Australia, Where Men Stand: Men’s Roles in
Ending Violence Against Women, was released on the International
Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women,
November 25th of last year. The report, edited by profeminist scholar
Michael Flood, a contributor to Voice Male and a longtime researcher on
issues related to men and masculinity, is in his words “a taking stock, a
reckoning, of where men are at when it comes to violence against women.”
The report, summarized by Flood below, focuses on four key dimensions
of men’s relations to violence against women.
Men’s use of violence
Where Men Stand starts with the use of violence itself. We know most
men do not practice violence against women, at least in its bluntest forms.
But we don’t really know how many men have used a range of forms of
violence against a woman. More widely, we don’t know how many men
use non-physical behaviors that can harm a partner or ex-partner: routine
insults and psychological abuse, monitoring and controlling a partner’s
movements, or dominating everyday decision-making. Similarly, we do not
know what proportions of men routinely treat their wives and partners with
respect, offer intimacy and support, and behave fairly and accountably.
Men’s attitudes toward violence
Next, Where Men Stand looks at men’s attitudes toward violence. Most
men believe that violence against women is unacceptable. Most men reject
common myths about domestic violence. However, a substantial minority,
over a third, believe foolish ideas like rape results from men not being
able to control a need for sex. And men are still too willing to believe that
women lie and make up false accusations of violence. There’s a powerful
link between violence against women and sexism. The research shows
that men with the worst attitudes, the most violence-supportive attitudes,
are those with the most conservative or sexist attitudes toward gender and
gender roles.
Men’s responses when violence occurs
• A growing number of men are being public advocates for violence
prevention, particularly through the White Ribbon Campaign.
• Men and boys are increasingly the targets of education and other forms
of intervention, particularly in schools.
• Men’s involvement in violence prevention is more on state and federal
government agendas than in the past.
• Finally, violence prevention efforts among men do work—if they’re done
well. There is a growing evidence base, suggesting that well-designed
interventions can shift violence-related attitudes and behaviors.
That said, the report noted, it is important not to view such efforts
through rose-colored glasses. There are other aspects to men’s efforts that
are more sobering. Only small numbers of men are involved in violence
prevention in active and ongoing ways. Some efforts are ineffective or
tokenistic. And there’s an energetic backlash to efforts to address violence
against women, being pushed by anti-feminist men’s groups.
The report looks at what’s inspired men to get involved in violence
prevention advocacy, but it also looks at the challenges and barriers to
everyday men taking steps to help reduce and prevent violence against
women.
Raise the bar
We must raise the bar for what it means to be a “decent bloke,” a “nice
guy.” To stop violence against women, well-meaning men must do more
than merely avoid perpetrating the grossest forms of physical or sexual
violence themselves. Men must strive for equitable and respectful relationships.
They must challenge the violence of other men. And they must
work to undermine the social and cultural supports for violence against
women which are a part of communities throughout Australia—and the
world—sexist and violence-supportive norms, callous behaviors, and
gender inequalities which feed violence against women.
It is time for men to join with women in building a world of nonviolence
and gender justice.
For the full report, in PDF, go to: www.xyonline.net/content/wheremen-stand-men’s-roles-ending-violence-against-women/.
Dr. Michael Flood is a research fellow at Autralia’s La Trobe University,
funded by the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth). He has
published research on best practices in primary prevention, how to engage
men in violence prevention, factors shaping violence-supportive attitudes,
young people’s experiences of violence in their relationships and families,
and other issues. Dr. Flood also is a trainer and community educator with
a long involvement in community advocacy and education work focused
on men’s violence against women.
Winter 2011 21

Power, Politics and American Sports
It’s Not Just a Game
An interview with film director Jeremy Earp by Jackson Katz
People who follow sports have long been told that they don’t mix well with politics. But the
way sportswriter Dave Zirin sees it this is just wishful thinking. In Not Just a Game: Power,
Politics and American Sports, a new film from the Media Education Foundation (www.
mediaed.org), Zirin, sports editor of The Nation and author of A People’s History of Sports in the
United States, takes viewers on a fascinating and uncompromising tour of the good, the bad, and the
ugly of America’s sports culture. Along the way he reveals how throughout history sports have helped
to both stabilize and disrupt the status quo. The film examines how American sports have long reinforced
repressive political ideas and institutions, at the same time glamorizing militarism, racism,
sexism, and homophobia, excavating a largely forgotten—and ultimately exhilarating—history of
rebel athletes who dared to fight for social justice beyond the field of play. In this exclusive interview
for Voice Male, contributing editor Jackson Katz spoke with the film’s director, Jeremy Earp of the
Media Education Foundation, who cowrote the film with Zirin.
22 Voice Male

Jackson Katz: The title of the film, Not Just a Game, suggests some
people think sports are simply games—recreation, or entertainment.
How do you respond to people who say that examining the politics of
sports undermines enjoyment of the athletic competition?
Jeremy Earp: I’d say they’re off base. For a long time we’ve had
this artificial separation between sports and politics—this belief among
a lot of sports fans that we should keep politics out of sports (by which
they usually mean politics they don’t agree with), and among a lot of
political activists and intellectuals that sports is a waste of time—a huge
commercial behemoth that glorifies a lot of bad stuff in the culture while
creating a mass diversion from real issues. Dave Zirin’s work explodes
this division.
We also wanted to encourage people who’ve turned away from
sports to take another look: to take the power of sports culture seriously,
to actively engage and push back
against its often reactionary political influence
while also recognizing what’s best about
sports: how, at their best, athletes model forms
of courage and commitment and sacrifice—on
and off the field—that are truly inspiring. The
bottom line is that taking a hard, analytical
look at sports culture doesn’t mean you can’t
enjoy sports and athletic competition. It’s true
it may ruin your enjoyment of all the ridiculous
things in sports culture that exploit and
pervert what’s best about athletic competition,
but that’s probably a good thing—because too
often that enjoyment comes at the expense of
other people.
JK: Speaking of ruined enjoyment, some
men associate sports—especially organized team sports like football—with
very negative memories from their childhood or adolescence.
These memories often include bullying by peers who were “jocks,” or by
verbally abusive coaches. As a result of these experiences, some men are
turned off by the entire world of organized men’s team sports.
JE: I get this. And that’s one of the reasons I think Dave Zirin’s
work—and this film—are so important. It points to the difference
between sports and sports culture. What we’re trying to provide is an
analysis of sports culture —which, despite the things we love about
sports, has become this larger force that too often works to reproduce
ideas and attitudes that alienate a lot of people in just the ways you
describe. The fact that jock culture enjoys a position of privilege in our
schools to the detriment of a lot of kids who aren’t into sports is just
one, very important, example of how sports culture reinforces our sense
of what’s cool and what isn’t, what’s normal and what isn’t—and this
can do a job on boys, especially, given how intimately sports culture
is mixed up with our ideals of manhood. I think one of the things that
makes this film so powerful is that it uncovers a largely forgotten history
of athletes who challenged power and spoke up, against great odds, for
the underdogs of our culture.
JK: In the film Dave Zirin contrasts Muhammad Ali, who uses
his sports accomplishments and celebrity to effect social change, with
Michael Jordan, who is an unapologetic corporate pitchman. Is it fair
to say that for today’s professional athletes, commercial opportunities
and pressures trump all other considerations?
JE: Sadly, yes. One of the baseline points we make in the film is
that commercial pressure, more than any kind of overt political or ideological
pressure, is probably the biggest reason so few athletes speak
up politically today. Their greatest fear seems to be alienating sponsors,
or the corporations that pay their salaries. And while it’s true that these
commercial pressures have grown more intense over time, the fact is that
they’re not new. These pressures were always there. In fact, in the film
we go to great lengths to show how athletes like Muhammad Ali, Billie
The film aims to inspire
sports fans to cut against
the anti-intellectual grain
that runs through so
much of sports culture, to
encourage them to think
about why sports matter
culturally and politically.
Jean King, John Carlos and Tommie Smith were willing to risk losing
sponsors and money and pop-cultural prestige to stand up for what they
believed in. We have all this amazing archival footage of them explicitly
saying it’s not about money or commercial deals to them, that they see
their fame first and foremost as a platform for political activism. And
they backed up their words. It’s like they’re calling out today’s superstars
with their words and their actions, exhorting them not to forget history,
to follow their lead and make a difference in the world.
JK: In the film you feature several contemporary athletes who have
taken a stand on controversial social and political issues. Can you
name some of them?
JE: Dave Zirin calls them rebel athletes. They include NFL star Pat
Tillman, who enlisted in the U.S. military after 9/11 and turned against
the war once he got there, saw what was going on and had the guts to
say so, only to be misrepresented by both the
U.S. military and NFL football as a gung-ho
warrior after he was killed by friendly fire
in Afghanistan. Then there’s NFL star Scott
Fujita, who’s been a vocal supporter of gay
rights despite the rampant homophobia that
permeates so much of NFL culture. Baseball
great Jackie Robinson, who broke the color
barrier on the field, became an ardent and
outspoken advocate of civil rights off the
field in the 1960s. Billie Jean King, the tennis
great whose activism helped bring the fight
for women’s equality into the mainstream in
the 1970s. Muhammad Ali, who contrary to
the benign image we have of him today, was
an absolutely fierce, and radical, fighter for
black equality and social justice in the 1960s—not to mention risking
everything by resisting and speaking out against the war in Vietnam, way
before a lot of people dared to. And, finally, 1968 Olympians Tommie
Smith and John Carlos, in many ways the inspirational anchors of this
film, who sacrificed everything—glamour, money, everything—to
remind the world that despite their amazing individual achievements as
athletes, the United States was still engaged in a bloody struggle for the
most basic forms of racial equality.
JK: Can you talk about homophobia in male sports? “Don’t Ask,
Don’t Tell” has been repealed, and acceptance of gay marriage appears
to be growing, at least in the polling data. Do you think you’ll live to
see the day when gay male athletes will, in significant numbers, come
out during their playing career?
JE: I think it’s likely. And in fact, we see a lot of signs we’re heading
in that direction. But we’re not there yet, and I don’t think it’s going to
be easy. Any time we see our culture opening up to progressive change,
we tend to see an equally forceful backlash against that opening. And I
think that’s especially likely to be the case when gay male athletes start
coming out of the closet, especially if they’re high-profile athletes in any
of the Big Three sports. Homophobia not only pervades sports culture;
it also seems to haunt our very ideals of American manhood. Because
so much of our mythology of what it means to be a real man is defined
explicitly against being gay, and because so much of our sports culture
is about proving manhood, openly gay athletes in many ways pose a
tremendous threat to the whole fragile, frequently paranoid edifice of
traditional American manliness. And I think, ultimately, as with so many
other issues that cut to the core of male identity in a culture like ours—a
culture that’s so in love with sports and militarism that it often mixes the
two up—change is going to require courage not only from gay athletes
who come out, but from straight guys who have the guts to support them
and call out homophobia for the bullying and bigotry it is.
JK: You were a competitive varsity athlete in high school, and you
continue to follow professional football and baseball. Can you talk
Winter 2011 23

about your own experiences in sports, and how they did or did not affect
your thoughts about the importance of Zirin’s work, or your work on
this film?
JE: It just so happens that a lot of us who worked on this film are not
only sports fans, but played sports ourselves—Dave Zirin included—and
I think more than anything else this helped us keep our criticisms of
sports culture separate from what we love about sports. My sense is
that there are a lot of sports fans out there who love sports, but are
embarrassed by a lot of things in sports culture: the ridiculous levels
of commercialism; the sentimentalizing of militarism and war; all the
cartoonish macho posturing that confuses acting tough with actually
being tough; the sexism and homophobia that pervade virtually every
aspect of sports culture, from the bantering of sports commentators to the
juvenile beer commercials that run ad nauseam
during football games—all that sort of stuff has
nothing to do with sports, but everything to do
with sports culture, and we just think there are
a ton of sports fans out there who love sports
enough to want to see them liberated from all
this garbage. And one of the reasons we feel
confident in this assertion is that the main
people who worked on this film feel exactly
this way: we love sports, are rabid sports
fans, but are sick of feeling like it’s a guilty
pleasure. With the film, we wanted to show
why it doesn’t need to be this way.
JK: Considering all of the conservative
aspects of U.S. football culture—from the
jingoism and militarism to the blatant sexism of
scantily clad cheerleaders—how is it possible
to be politically progressive and remain a football
fan? I’ve personally wrestled with this one
(pardon the mixed metaphor) for a long time.
JE: There’s the game of football. And then
there’s all the external stuff—the silly, but also destructive and
dangerous, ways the game is put to use by other people. The film takes
American football culture apart, shows how it works to reactionary
ends politically, and ends up hurting a lot of guys in the process. This
includes things like the NFL’s lackluster and irresponsible approach to
protecting players from head injuries, something that can’t be separated
from the league’s tendency to pander to the lowest common denominator
if it means maintaining market share—in this case, allowing the ratingsboosting
bloodlust for crushing hits to trump player safety. But as far
as the sport itself goes, the actual game underneath all this media stuff,
there’s a world of contradiction there: football is incredibly physical, but
it also requires players to execute highly complex and cerebral strategy;
it demands unbelievable individual skill, but it also requires individuals
to work first and foremost in service to the team; it’s violent, but it’s also
full of finesse, a showcase of both brute force and of the most refined
athleticism. Does any of this mean that football is “progressive,” or
“good,” or that it’s a force for good in the world? I would never argue
that. But I would never argue the opposite either. What I would say is
that I wouldn’t want to expose myself only to what other people say is
good for me. Contradiction is good for you too. So I guess I’d say I enjoy
football just about as much as I enjoy trying to figure out why I enjoy
football—in other words, a lot.
JK: The issue of concussions in football and hockey has received a
growing amount of attention in media, and in Congress. (Editor’s note:
See Dave Zirin column on facing page). It seems to me that the subtext
of the discussions about how much violence is acceptable in these sports
is all about how we define “manhood.” One of the highlights for me of
Not Just a Game is how richly you illustrate the role of sports in playing
out cultural changes and tensions about what it means to be a man.
24 Voice Male
Sports violence can’t be separated from our ideals of manhood.
JE: I agree with you that the discussion about violence and injuries
in sports can’t be separated from a larger discussion about how our ideals
of manhood are wrapped up in these games. For too many guys, athletes
and fans alike—but probably more the case with fans who aren’t actually
in the arena getting their heads smacked around—there’s this attitude
that refs and leagues should stop being so aggressive and over-protective
with their whistles and penalties and just “let ’em council play.” You hear
this all the time from self-styled tough guys hollering from the safety
of the stands: “C’mon, ref, let ’em play!” But I think this has less to do
with keeping the game moving than it does with these guys getting off
on violence. How else do you explain the absurdity of hockey fights?
These same hockey “fans” who think that whistles designed to protect
players get in the way of the flow of the game seem to have no problem
at all when a fight breaks out and interrupts the
action. They cheer that. And along the same
lines, how are we supposed to believe the NHL
is concerned about head injuries when fighting
is still allowed in the first place—when refs
stand back virtually every game and let two
guys viciously beat on each other’s heads until
blood streams down their faces while boys and
men cheer wildly from the stands? This has
nothing to do with keeping the game moving;
it’s about keeping our traditional ideas and
ideals of manhood intact. The ability not only
to inflict—but to endure—pain is absolutely
fundamental to how a lot of guys measure and
define manhood. And outside of war, the world
of sports is the most visible place we measure
manhood in our culture. So when we talk
about protecting athletes, it shouldn’t come as
any surprise that the reflexive response from a
lot of guys is that this would feminize sports,
make our athletes softer. I don’t think we’re
likely to see that attitude change until more guys
embrace a definition of manhood that equates toughness with things
other than ridiculous temper tantrums, hysterical outbursts of violence,
and the ability to survive or inflict a beating—cooler and in many ways
quieter things like courage, perseverance, mental discipline, focus,
teamwork, self-awareness and self-control.
JK: Not Just a Game is a great video for college and high school
courses. It’s also something I think every athlete and sports fan should
see—as well as parents of student-athletes. I’d love to see it screened
and discussed in all kinds of places where men (and women) gather—like
Rotary Clubs, Knights of Columbus, Lions Clubs—not to mention local,
state and national political organizations. It sparks just the kinds of
conversations we need to be having in our sports-crazed society. In a
better world, the Media Education Foundation would be able to mount
the kind of enormous promotional campaign that Hollywood films typically
receive. But you have to be more resourceful and creative. What
are your plans for distributing the film?
JE: Right now we’re focusing on getting the film into the library
collections of as many colleges and highs schools as possible. That’s our
primary mission at the Media Education Foundation: to make our films a
part of the educational experience of young people. We also hope it will
be picked up by activists, community leaders, sports programs, so that
they can organize their own screenings and events and discussions about
the issues the film raises. We think the time is right for what Dave Zirin
is talking about in this film, especially with all the increased awareness
we’re seeing around bullying, violence, and intolerance in our schools
and beyond. Not Just a Game not only gives crucial insight into some of
the big cultural and societal dynamics that reinforce the worst aspects of
our culture; it also inspires us to try to change them.
To learn more about Not Just a Game, go to www.mediaed.org.

Men and Sports
In the NFL, Violence Comes to a Head
By Dave Zirin
With each passing week, I hear from football fans saying that
it’s getting harder to like the game they love.
They’ve spent years reveling in the intense
competition and violent collisions so central to the
sport, but this is the first time these NFL diehards
feel conscious about what happens to players when
they become unconscious.
In August, to much fanfare, NFL owners
finally acknowledged that football-related
concussions cause depression, dementia,
memory loss and the early onset of Alzheimer’s
disease. Now that they’ve opened the door,
this concussion discussion is starting to shape
how we understand what were previously
seen as the NFL’s typical helping of off-field
controversy and tragedy. When Denver Bronco
wide receiver Kenny McKinley committed
suicide, the first questions were about whether
football-related head injuries led to the depression
that took his life. When the recently retired Junior
Seau drove his car off of a cliff the day after
being arrested for spousal abuse, questions about
whether head injuries sustained during a 20-
year career affected his actions soon followed.
Such conjecture is not only legitimate; it’s
necessary and urgent.
This season a typical NFL game is starting to look like a triage
center. On concussions alone, a reader at deadspin.com compiled the
following list of players who have borne the brunt of a brain bruise
in 2010:
Pre-Season: Ryan Grant, Hunter Hillenmeyer, Joseph Addai, Mark
Clayton, Nick Sorensen, Aaron Curry, DJ Ware, Louis Murphy, Scott
Sicko, Mike Furrey, Darnell Bing, Freddy Keiaho
Week 1: Kevin Kolb, Stewart Bradley, Matt Moore, Kevin Boss,
Charly Martin
Week 2: Clifton Ryan, Jason Witten, Randall Gay, Craig Dahl, Zack
Follett, Evan Moore
Week 3: Anthony Bryant, Cory Redding, Jason Trusnik
Week 4: Jordan Shipley, Willis McGahee, Jay Cutler, Asante
Samuel, Riley Cooper, Sherrod Martin
Week 5: Aaron Rodgers, Darcy Johnson, Jacob Bell, Landon
Johnson, Demaryius Thomas, Rocky McIntosh
Week 6: Josh Cribbs, Desean Jackson, Mohamed Massaquoi, Zack
Follett, Chris Cooley
In assessing the list, the most striking aspect is its randomness.
There is a mix of star quarterbacks, shifty running backs, burly tight
ends and anonymous linemen. All play different roles in the game, and
all wear different kinds of equipment. Sports Illustrated writer Peter
King, after a weekend where he says he saw “six or eight shots where
you wondered, ‘Is that guy getting up,’ ” proposed some solutions: “It’s
time to start ejecting and suspending players for flagrant hits…. Don’t
tell me this is the culture we want. It might be the culture kids are used
to in video games, but the NFL has to draw a line in the sand right
here, right now, and insist that the forearm shivers and leading with
the helmet and launching into unprotected receivers will be dealt with
severely. Six-figure fines. Suspensions. Ejections.”
King’s suggestions are not unlike those who told 1950s children
to hide under their desks in case of nuclear attack. The hits that cause
concussions aren’t just the kind of helmet-to-helmet collisions that
make King shudder but often come from routine tackles. Frequently,
brain bruises aren’t even diagnosed until the game has ended. In
other words the most devastating hits are often the most
pedestrian. This was seen in utterly tragic fashion
during the college contest between Rutgers University
and Army. Rutgers linebacker Eric LeGrand was
paralyzed from the waist down on a play described
as a “violent collision.” But if you look at the replay,
the only thing “violent” about the play is its horrific
outcome.
It’s also not, as King writes, “the culture” that
celebrates this violence. It’s the NFL itself. The
video games that the NFL promotes and sponsors
deliriously dramatize brutal tackles. Highlight
shows on the NFL Network relish the moments
when players get “jacked up.” Anyone who saw
HBO’s Hard Knocks, their behind-the-scenes look at
the New York Jets preseason, heard it loud and clear.
Whenever a player would “jack-up” the opposition,
Coach Rex Ryan would whoop and yell, “That’s a guy
who wants to make this team!”
Here’s the reality check to Peter King and all who
want their violence safely commoditized for Sunday: there is no making
football safer. There is no amount of suspensions, fines or ejections
that will change the fundamental nature of a sport built on violent
collisions. It doesn’t matter if players have better mouth guards, better
helmets or better pads. Anytime you have a sport that turns the poor into
millionaires and dangles violence as an incentive, well, you reap what
you sow. It is what it is. I think it’s a waste of time to feel “guilty” about
being a football fan. If people are disgusted by the violence visited on
these players, they should vote with their feet and stop watching.
If people are at peace with the fact that they are enjoying something
that wrecks people’s bodies, then that’s their business as well. But for
goodness sakes: if you are to remain a football fan, at least support
the players in their upcoming negotiations with ownership. Reject the
idea of an eighteen-game season as “good for the game.” Reject the
idea that players need to have their pay cut for the league’s “financial
health.” Reject the idea that owners shouldn’t have to contribute to
the medical well-being of players after they retire. Recognize the
humanity of the carnage on the field so you can do something to
support the humanity of players when the pads come off. That’s what I
pledge to do… for now. But in the interests of full disclosure: I might
be a Desean Jackson-Dunta Robinson moment away from ditching the
game for good.
Author of five books and featured in the film Not Just
a Game: Power, Politics & American Sports, which
he cowrote, Dave Zirin hosts the popular Sirius XM
satellite weekly program Edge of Sports Radio. He
is sports editor of The Nation magazine and in 2009
was named one of the Utne Reader’s “50 Visionaries
Who Are Changing Your World.” A version of this
column appeared on his blog, edgeofsports.com.
Winter 2011 25

26 Voice Male

ColorLines
Black Women, Sexuality
and Popular Culture
Erotic
Revolutionaries
An Interview with
Professor Shayne Lee
by Ebony Utley
Erotic Revolutionaries: Black Women,
Sexuality and Popular Culture by Prof.
Shayne Lee (Hamilton Books, 2010)
revolutionizes the politics of black female
respectability. Instead of writing about how
hypersexualized representations hurt black
women, Lee celebrates black female pop
culture icons who purposefully hype uninhibited
sexual agency. He defends Karinne
Steffans, Tyra Banks, Alexyss Tylor and other
women who have been publicly accused of
promiscuity. He argues that their attention
to masturbation, vagina power, multiple sex
partners and reverse objectification will help
black women reclaim their sexuality. Lee, who
teaches at Tulane University, asserts that prosex
black women are the new sexy. Professor
Lee was interviewed for Ms. Magazine online
by Ebony Utley, an author and editor with
expertise in hip hop, relationships, and race.
What follows are excerpts.
How does your male privilege help or hinder
your erotic revolutionary endeavors?
I’ve been told by people that I shouldn’t have
written Erotic Revolutionaries because I’m a
man. But I don’t think any one [person] can
represent the female voice. Gender is fractured
by class, by beauty standards, by social positioning
in ways that I don’t think one voice can
represent other women. So in that way, I feel
safe as a man to objectively, or at least the best
I can, look at black women in pop culture for
the ways in which these women transcend the
politics of respectability.
How did you became interested in “erotic
revolutionaries”?
I became intrigued by the ways in which thirdwave
feminists fought for their right to be both
empowered and sexy. I thought that message
was missing within black academic feminist
thought. Then I realized that pop culture was
full of these individuals who weren’t really
career feminists but who embodied the kind of
energy that I thought was powerful from third
wave feminism. So that’s when I came up with
the idea for Erotic Revolutionaries.
In your Tyra Banks chapter, you argue that
she flips the gaze and is able to objectify
men. How would you characterize that gaze
reversal?
You have these binaries: male/female; male on
top/female on bottom; male has agency, power;
female is passive and victim. As long as these
binaries exist in society, to make them even
you have to reverse them for a while. Since
men have enjoyed so much agency in objectifying
women, there’s gotta be some point
where women really go overboard and enjoy
those spaces, first of all to show men how it
feels to be constantly objectified and second
of all to feel the power of subjecting men to
the female gaze. Once that’s done enough,
maybe we could get to a more equitable form
of society where men and women are objectifying
each other equally.
What is it like talking about black erotic
revolutionaries with college-age white
women?
The really hard theoretical conversations and
the comments that blew my mind were generally
made by the white gender studies students
who had already been exposed to a broader
range of feminist ideas, whereas many of the
black students just kind of [generally] rejected
it by saying these erotic revolutionaries are just
trying to be hos. That kind of disappointed me,
but at the same time that’s one of the themes
of my introduction—he ways in which there
is more pressure on black women because
of the hypersexualization of black female
bodies, the legacy of slavery and segregation,
and television having this horrible record with
black female bodies. I do think there is more
pressure on black women to maintain a certain
kind of dignity.
Because of these erotic revolutionaries, we
have all this pro-sex talk that we’ve never
really had before in these public spaces and
yet no talks about safe sex and STD prevention.
What’s up with that?
The people in pop culture that I’m focusing
on, their job is not to be sexual teachers. Their
job is to express themselves and how they
feel at particular moments. I do think there’s a
place in the feminist movement, and I do think
there’s a strategic way that you can inform
the public in ways that protect from sexually
transmitted diseases … but I’m very nervous
about requiring or holding artists to the fire for
not doing that because that’s what activists and
advocates are supposed to do.
What writings inspired Erotic Revolutionaries?
Rebecca Walker’s To Be Real. Joan Morgan’s
When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost.
Really catch the energy and spirit of what
they’re saying. Read Mark Anthony Neal—all
of his books. Angela Davis and Hazel Carby’s
work on blues women.
In ten years, where will black sexual politics
be and what role will your work have
played?
I think it will be in a completely different state.
Lisa Thompson’s Beyond the Black Lady and
Erotic Revolutionaries will force the academy
to grapple with a radically pro-sex, radically
sexually empowering message for women
within black sexual politics. Our books represent
a turning of the page. I’m very excited to
see the next ten years make that turn full.
Ebony Utley, Ph.D.,
is the author of the
forthcoming book The
Gangsta’s God: The
Politics of Respectability
in Hip Hop
(Praeger 2012) as well
as the coeditor of Hip
Hop’s Languages of
Love (2009).
Winter 2011 27

A Son’s Search for His Father’s Early Life
Coming Home to Pinsk
By Rob Okun
Pinsk photos: Rob Okun
The author as a boy with his father, Joseph Okun, superimposed over the river in Pinsk where he played growing up.
For as far back as I can remember I
have thought about my life in relationship to
my father: who he was as a boy in Eastern
Europe, who he became as a man in America.
Until I was a father myself, I didn’t realize I
was measuring my life by the yardstick of
his. And now, at 60—in the sixth inning of
my life as the poet and writer E. Ethelbert
Miller puts it—I hunger to understand him
even more, so I can better understand me.
He was ethical and kind; am I as ethical and
as kind? He was patient and loving; how do
I stack up? He was generous and forgiving;
what about me? If it seems I am living my
life in his shadow it is not a burden; it feels
more like a compassionate confrontation
with myself.
Joe Okun was very old school—someone
born in the Old Country who nine decades
ago carried with him across the ocean to
America the best of that world’s sensibility.
Over the years I have often written about
him: from a newspaper column to the pages
of Voice Male.
“When the terrible hurricane and flood
of 1938 destroyed scores of area homes, [my
father] was the first furniture man to open his
28 Voice Male
store to the needy,” I wrote in a Sunday newspaper
appreciation when he retired in 1985.
“He let people take away new furnishings
without asking for a dime down…Friendships
grew out of such an act, the bills were
eventually paid, and the children of those he
helped grew up to become customers…” And
this: “I remember sitting in his office as a boy
of 12 listening to him on the telephone and
realizing for the first time he was the person
who arranged for burying of the dead at our
synagogue’s cemetery…[H]e passed on the
values he learned in the old country to me
growing up in the new one. What are those
values? Study. Help others. Be charitable. Be
fair. Contribute to your community…Most of
all, fill your home with love and tolerance
and understanding.” How consistent am I in
living up to those values?
Despite all the words I’ve written about
him, all the conversations we had, and feelings
of love expressed, I didn’t really know
where he came from. At the end of October
last year I traveled several thousand miles to
find out. Today, more than a century after his
birth and nearly 25 years after his death, he
remains my guiding light. I feel his presence
in my life, stronger than ever.
Joseph Okun was born in Pinsk in 1907,
fifth of sixth children. Where is Pinsk?
Good question. In the beginning of the
20th century Pinsk was a part of Russia; for
most of its history, though, it was part of
Poland. Today, however, Pinsk is a city in
Belarus, 200 miles east of Poland’s capital
city, Warsaw. Hardscrabble Belarusian city
today, Pinsk was a Yiddish-speaking town
until the Holocaust cut short the lives of most
of the 27,000 Jews still living there in 1942
when the Nazis came.
There were no family photos of what
Pinsk looked like; I had never breathed its
air, walked its streets, eaten its food. I didn’t
know if I would see peddlers rolling out
barrels of onions and potatoes and pickles
on street corners (I didn’t); or if there would
be a street market with people hawking
wares from Ukraine, Russia, and other parts
of Belarus (there was). What images I had
I carried in my heart: decades-old memories,
and rich, evocative pictures my father
painted of his boyhood.
It is hard for me to imagine my children
not knowing where I came from. By the

One of the current residents of the Okun home in Pinsk,
95 years after the family left for the United States.
time they’d begun kindergarten I had driven
them past my childhood home in a small
New England town so many times they were
rolling their eyes before they even knew what
rolling their eyes was meant to convey.
Pinsk was—in my childhood memory—a
magical place where children sold matches
and hand-rolled cigarettes to villagers (as
my Uncle Morris did); where you could put
a potato on the woodstove in your cheder
(Yiddish for school) when you arrived in the
morning and eat it, fully baked, for lunch (as
my father and his siblings did). It was a place
where the strong currents of the Priyat and
Pina rivers met, a waterway of mysteries
for boys like my father, Yosel, who played
along the riverbank, simultaneously excited
and frightened by its torrential power.
Long before I ever conceived of actually
going to Pinsk, the stories had been
braided, like a Sabbath challah, into the
fabric of my life. If my wife’s description of
me is accurate—someone who lived in the
contemporary world but carried within him
an old country sensibility—it was because
of my childhood. That childhood had at
its center a grandson visiting his Bubbe
and Zayde every Sunday where a mosaic
of Eastern European Jewish life thrived
in a triple-decker on Hebron Street in the
North End of Springfield, Massachusetts.
Mingling with the oil-drenched fragrance
of Bubbe’s latkes frying on dark December
afternoons—and the laughter following
another story told mostly in Yiddish so the
kinder wouldn’t understand (I didn’t let on
how much I took in)—I was in heaven. I
loved it—the food (Q: What eight yearold
is really into herring? A: Me!), the
smells—didn’t everybody’s grandmother
make their own wine? And the décor. Okay,
what did I know from décor back then? Not
much, but I loved the doilies, covering so
many surfaces like snowflakes. I loved the
wind-up Victrola, its cabinet—heavy with
78 rpm records—as tall as me; the darkstained
breakfront, shelves crowded with
treasures brought across the ocean. Bubbe
always had a bowl of walnuts in the shell in
the middle of the dining room table with a
nutcracker on top.
Over the years I would share with my
wife my dream of going to Pinsk, to see
where my father had been born, to learn
where I had come from. But someday
never came. Children, work, friends, aging
mothers—there were plenty of reasons to
stay put in the New World instead of going
back to the old one. The closest I’d ever
gotten to Pinsk was as a college student,
traveling with a Jew’s heavy heart through
Germany and Austria two decades after the
war. Back then going to Eastern Europe
seemed as far away as going to Asia or
Africa does today. Farther even. A variety of
curtains obscured the region then and not all
of them were made of iron.
But the itch to go to Pinsk was always
there, surprising me sometimes, like a
mosquito in November. Several months
Warsaw native, noted therapist-trainer Anya Dodziyuk,
traveled with the author to a memorial created from
pieces of a destroyed cemetery near the Okun home.
ago, when I turned 60, I told myself it was
time; I had to go! If not now, when? And, if
not me, who? No one in our family had ever
gone back.
Our branch of the Okun family—Okoon
in Russian; it means perch, the fish—settled
in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1920. Well,
most of the family did. Actually, my grandfather,
Nussan (Nathan), a skilled carpenter,
had arrived in the U.S. a decade earlier—
advance scout in search of streets paved with
The Okun family home: “I circumambulated the house as if it was a holy shrine and I was on a spiritual pilgrimage.”
Winter 2011 29

Chaya Leah with her children in Pinsk, circa 1911. Joseph Okun is the little boy on the right.
gold. The closest he got to the pot at the end
of the American rainbow was supervising a
crew laying the floor of the U.S. Treasury
building in the nation’s capital.
Zayde saved his money to send for his
wife, Chaya Leah, and their six children,
ranging from tots to teens, but World War I
foiled their plan. With the mail cut off and
no reliable alternative to get money to the
family, my grandfather followed a relative
who’d settled in Springfield. My grandmother—working
as a seamstress—cared
for the brood in Pinsk. It would be a decade
before they reunited.
Belarus is not an easy place to get to.
It’s not impossible, but it sure isn’t
like traveling to, say, London. The
former Soviet state proudly maintains a
pre-1992 Soviet Union-influenced approach
to governance and some English-speaking
visitors can expect to receive a chilly reception.
Since I didn’t speak Russian, I knew I’d
be at a significant disadvantage navigating
my way. Nevertheless, once I’d made up my
mind to go I was not about to take nyet for
an answer.
A friend who coordinates retreats in
Poland introduced me to Anya Dodziyuk,
a Jewish native of Warsaw who had been
to Pinsk. Through email correspondence, I
learned that she had gone in 2007 in search
of her grandfather’s house. She found the
site, I learned, but in place of her family’s
home was a four-story Soviet-era apartment
building. For my part I wasn’t expecting—
nearly a century after they’d left—to find
any trace of where my father and his family
had lived. It would be enough for me, I told
myself, to walk along the banks of the river,
to meander the streets of whatever remained
of the old city, to eat a bowl or two of borscht
(another staple of my diet growing up).
A Pinsk historian whom Anya had met on
her earlier trip had told her he thought there
might be documents about her grandfather
and father among the records at the city hall.
So she decided to go with me. A lucky break.
Maybe, she speculated, the historian might
be able to find something out about the Okun
family, too.
A psychotherapist and trainer well
respected across Poland for her work
addressing addictions and sexual dysfunction,
Anya is one of only some 10,000 Jews
living in Poland 65 years after the Holocaust.
(Before the Nazis began carrying out Hitler’s
“Final Solution” aimed at eradicating European
Jewry, there had been three million Jews
in Poland, a half million in Anya’s native city
of Warsaw alone. Poland once had the largest
Jewish population in the world.)
Leaving from Boston, I thought that traveling
first to Zurich and a day later to Warsaw
would give me a little time to reflect on the
journey—what I hoped to learn about myself
by going back to my father’s birthplace. How
his boyhood in Pinsk—and Wyskow, the
town the family later moved to when World
War I broke out—had shaped him. The father
I grew up with was patient; he rarely raised
his voice. He spoke so lovingly and respectfully
about my mother that he implicitly
modeled for my older brother and me both
how to act toward women and how, in part,
to become men. Sitting on the early morning
flight to Warsaw, even now, at 60, I still
looked to him to learn more about myself.
Anya and I took an early morning train
from Warsaw to Teraspol, the last town in
eastern Poland. But before being allowed
to cross into Belarus the border patrol made
quite a show of inspecting the passport of
a visiting Amerikanski. Looking around,
I thought about how much had changed.
Neither Polish nor Yiddish was spoken
anymore—the Jews who hadn’t left had been
killed, and the Poles had been pushed out. I
wondered what it might have been like to
return to Pinsk when I was, say, 35 or 40,
with my father as my traveling companion.
What might I have learned about my father’s
life then —and mine?
Arriving in Pinsk at the end of a long day,
we walked the city streets. I felt I was navigating
between 21st century reality and early
1900s childhood fantasy. There was the Pina
River at the confluence of the Priyat. There
was the riverbank where nearly a century
ago my father and his younger brother, Abe,
were playing with two neighbor kids, also
brothers, when their handmade ball bounced
into the water. Although none of the four—
probably between six and nine—could swim,
one of the other boys went in after the ball
and soon was flailing his arms in the fastmoving
water. His brother immediately
went in to help and soon he, too, was being
dragged down. Little Abe started in after the
others but my father pulled him back. “No!
We’ll drown,” he yelled in Yiddish, “I’ll
go for help.” Racing full-speed onto a side
street, my father yanked open the first door
he came to, a bakery. He locked eyes with
the baker’s assistant and, before beginning
to breathlessly explain what was happening,
remembered with horror that the man was
deaf. By the time help arrived the boys
had drowned. Whenever my father told the
story he always got wistful, wondering what
would have happened to the boys if the first
adult he had encountered hadn’t been deaf.
I was thinking about that story that first
night in Pinsk, anticipating exploring the
riverside with Anya and Edik Drobin, the
historian who served as our guide. Edik, who
wasn’t Jewish, had made it his mission to
30 Voice Male

learn as much as he could about the Jewish
history of Pinsk. It was he who shared that
although one of the first prime ministers of
Israel, Golda Meir—as well as the country’s
first president, Chaim Weizmamn—had
lived in Pinsk, most Pinskers today were
unaware of that history. There were no
monuments or historical markers at the site
of either home.
Over supper that first evening—I can
still taste that bowl of borscht!—Edik asked
what else I knew about where my family
had lived.
“They lived across from a match factory,”
I told him, pulling out a copy of handwritten
notes my father’s older brother,
Uncle Morris, had written. I had already told
Edik the street, Bresta Gasse, the main road
from Pinsk to Brest, today the first city on the
Belarus side of the border.
In the morning after a breakfast of blintzes
and strong tea, we walked along the
river. Fishing boats drifted in calm water;
mist rose from the surface. I felt a warmth
spread across my chest and I started to smile.
It felt like it did when I was seven or eight,
with the old-timers kibbitzing in the basement
of the synagogue on Congress Street in
Springfield in the late 1950s. Mr. Newman,
wearing his plumber’s snapbrim
cap, would slip me a shot
glass of whiskey while the
other men, my father among
them, ate herring and debated
the rabbi.
But that day in Pinsk,
besides Anya and me, there
were no other Jews in sight as
we wended our way along the
river, letting the place inhabit
me, unconsciously inviting
the spirits of my ancestors to
instant message me—from
wherever they were. No doubt
a lot of spirits still inhabit
Pinsk, especially of those who
were still there in 1942 when
the Nazis rounded them up,
crowding them into a ghetto
as a prelude to forcing them
into rail cars en route to the
death camps at Auschwitz-
Birkenau. Among the unanswered
questions I still carry is
this one: How do I understand
the good fortune my family
experienced—leaving Poland
by 1920—nearly two decades
before the Nazis began their
murderous reign?
Much of modern-day Pinsk features
utilitarian Soviet-style architecture,
a prominent component
of the cityscape. Still, old one-story wood
frame houses lined some streets. Anya,
Edik, and I had been walking for more than
an hour, making our way from the riverside
to the older part of the city. Edik kept up a
running commentary in Russian with Anya
interpreting. “Look, there, across the street,”
Anya translated, pointing. It was a threestory
building. Edik was smiling.
“It’s the match factory!” Anya exclaimed,
realizing before I did the implications of
this news. I was jolted again: The match
factory, Edik announced, “is still open. It
still produces matches.” Excited, I started
photographing the building. It was then that a
heretofore unthinkable thought arose: If that
was the match factory, what about the family
house across the street?
I didn’t have to wait long for an answer.
Beaming, Edik pointed: “There’s your
father’s house.”
I was stunned, light-headed. I gaped at
the plain building, painted red, overcome by
a wave of emotion. Walking up to the house,
an unplanned inner conversation began: I
found myself saying hello to my father, to
Bubbe and Zayde, to my aunts and uncles.
But it was my father whose spirit guided
me as I circumambulated the house as if it
was a holy shrine on a spiritual pilgrimage.
In the backyard an apple tree still bore fruit.
Clothes hung on the line. My breathing
slowed and I wished then that my father and
my grandparents, my aunts and uncles were
alive—that someone was alive to talk to me,
to share with me, to help me connect the dots
of my life.
I had no desire to go inside. What would I
see nearly 100 years after the family had left
on their long journey to America? Someone
else’s life? No, thank you. Just then, standing
in bright October sunshine, a door opened and
an old woman appeared—a timeless crone
spanning then and now. The art director for
Soviet Life magazine searching for a cover
portrait of someone whose face conveyed
10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows could have
done no better than this woman. She stood
in silence. I gestured with my camera and
she nodded yes, I could photograph her. But
why was I? After all, she wasn’t a long-lost
cousin. No, but she had walked out of the
house where my father lived, where he had
played with his siblings; where he had slept
each night on a pile of blankets atop a trunk;
where he had begun his life. Because she
now inhabited my father’s house, I needed
to hang on to a bit of her.
Long after they had immigrated to
America the life my father had known in
Pinsk was annihilated by the Nazis. The
people who had breathed life into Pinsk were
no longer there: the language, the culture, the
neighborhoods, the schools, the synagogues,
the cemeteries—gone, wiped out. On my
last day in Pinsk, drawn back to the river,
I found myself simultaneously welling up
and smiling through my tears. A chorus of
voices came through then, clear and insistent.
“We’re still here. We’re still here.” Jolted, I
blinked, warm tears glistening on my cheeks.
What did that mean? Of course, I realized,
my father, my grandparents, my aunts and
uncles had brought as much of their lives to
America as they could to share with those
of us who followed. And, they are still with
me. My father, especially. Because he had
sketched the portrait of his early life in Pinsk
vividly enough to capture my imagination,
his son felt compelled to come home, to try
and bring the picture to life. And I had. I had
come home. Finally, I had come home.
Winter 2011 31

Resources for Changing Men
A wide-ranging (but by no means
exhaustive) listing of organizations
engaged in profeminist men’s work.
Know of an organization that should be
listed here? E-mail relevant
information to us at
info@voicemalemagazine.org
100 Black Men of America, Inc.
Chapters around the U.S. working
on youth development and economic
empowerment in the African American
community
www.100blackmen.org
A Call to Men
Trainings and conferences on ending
violence against women
www.acalltomen.org
American Men’s Studies Association
Advancing the critical study of men
and masculinities
www.mensstudies.org
Boys to Men International
Initation weekends and follow-up
mentoring for boys 12-17
www.boystomen.org
Boys to Men New England
www.boystomennewengland.org
Dad Man
Consulting, training, speaking about
fathers and father figures as a vital
family resource
www.thedadman.com
EMERGE
Counseling and education to stop
domestic violence. Comprehensive
batterers’ services
www.emergedv.com
European Men Pro-feminist
Network
Promoting equal opportunities
between men and women
www.europrofem.org
Family Violence Prevention Fund
Working to end violence against
women globally; programs for boys,
men and fathers
www.endabuse.org
Healthy Dating, Sexual
Assault Prevention
http://www.canikissyou.com
International Society for Men’s
Health
Prevention campaigns and health
initiatives promoting men’s health
www.ismh.org
Paul Kivel
Violence prevention educator
http://www.paulkivel.com
Lake Champlain Men’s Resource
Center
Burlington, Vt., center with groups and
services challenging men’s violence
on both individual and societal levels
www.lcmrc.org
Males Advocating Change
Worcester, Mass., center with groups
and services supporting men and
challenging men’s violence
www.centralmassmrc.org
ManKind Project
New Warrior training weekends
www.mkp.org
MANSCENTRUM
Swedish men’s centers addressing
men in crisis
www.manscentrum.se
Masculinity Project
The Masculinity Project addresses
the complexities of masculinity in the
African American community
www.masculinityproject.com
MASV—Men Against Sexual
Violence
Men working in the struggle to end
sexual violence
www.menagainstsexualviolence.org
Men Against Violence
UNESCO program believing education,
social and natural science,
culture and communication are the
means toward building peace
www.unesco.org/cpp/uk/projects/
wcpmenaga.htm
Men Against Violence
(Yahoo e-mail list)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/menagainstviolence/
Men Against Violence Against
Women (Trinidad)
Caribbean island anti-violence
campaign
www.mavaw.com.
Men Can Stop Rape
Washington, D.C.-based national
advocacy and training organization
mobilizing male youth to prevent
violence against women. www.
mencanstoprape.org
MenEngage Alliance
An international alliance promoting
boys’ and men’s support for gender
equality
www.menengage.org
Men for HAWC
Gloucester, Mass., volunteer advocacy
group of men’s voices against
domestic abuse and sexual assault
www.strongmendontbully.com
Men’s Health Network
National organization promoting
men‘s health
www.menshealthnetwork.org
Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe, Inc.
Statewide Massachusetts effort coordinating
men’s anti-violence activities
www.mijd.org
Men’s Nonviolence Project, Texas
Council on Family Violence
http://www.tcfv.org/education/mnp.
html
Men’s Resource Center for Change
Model men’s center offering support
groups for all men
www.mrcforchange.org
Men’s Resource Center of West
Michigan
Consultations and Trainings in helping
men develop their full humanity,
create respectful and loving relationships,
and caring and safe communities.
www.menscenter.org
Men’s Resource Center of South
Texas
Based on Massachusetts MRC model,
support groups and services for men
mrcofsouthtexas@yahoo.com
Men’s Resources International
Trainings and consulting on positive
masculinity on the African continent
www.mensresourcesinternational.org
Men Stopping Violence
Atlanta-based organization working to
end violence against women, focusing
on stopping battering, and ending rape
and incest
www.menstoppingviolence.org
The Men’s Story Project
Resources for creating public dialogue
about masculinities through local
storytelling and arts.
www.mensstoryproject.org
Men’s Violence Prevention
http://www.olywa.net/tdenny/
Mentors in Violence Prevention—MVP
Trainings and workshops in raising
awareness about men’s violence
against women
www.sportsinsociety.org/vpd/mvp./php
Monadnock Men’s Resource Center
Southern New Hampshire men’s
center supporting men and challenging
men’s violence
mmrconline.org
MVP Strategies
Gender violence prevention education
and training
www.jacksonkatz.com
National Association for Children of
Domestic Violence
Provides education and public
awareness of the effects of domestic
violence, especially on children. www.
nafcodv.org
National Coalition Against
Domestic Violence
Provides a coordinated community
www.ncadv.org
National Men’s Resource Center
National clearinghouse of information
and resources for men
www.menstuff.org
National Organization for Men
Against Sexism
Annual conference, newsletter,
profeminist activities
www.nomas.org
Boston chapter: www.nomasboston.
org
One in Four
An all-male sexual assault peer
education group dedicated to
preventing rape
www.oneinfourusa.org
Promundo
NGO working in Brazil and other
developing countries with youth and
children to promote equality between
men
and women and the prevention of
interpersonal violence
www.promundo.org
RAINN—Rape Abuse and Incest
National Network
A national anti-sexual assault
organization
www.rainn.org
Renaissance Male Project
A midwest, multicultural and multiissue
men‘s organization
www.renaissancemaleproject
32 Voice Male

Resources for Changing Men
The Men’s Bibliography
Comprehensive bibliography of writing
on men, masculinities, gender, and
sexualities
listing 14,000 works
www.mensbiblio.xyonline.net/
UNIFEM
United Nations Development Fund for
Women
www.unifem.org
VDay
Global movement to end violence
against women and girls, including V-
men, male activists in the movement
www.newsite.vday.org
Voices of Men
An Educational Comedy by
Ben Atherton-Zeman
http://www.voicesofmen.org
Walk a Mile in Her Shoes
Men’s March to Stop Rape, Sexual
Assault & Gender Violence
http:// www.walkamileinhershoes.org
White Ribbon Campaign
International men’s campaign decrying
violence against women
www.whiteribbon.ca
XY Magazine
www.xyonline.net
Profeminist men’s web links (over 500
links) www.xyonline.net/links.shtml
Profeminist men’s politics, frequently
asked questions www.xyonline.net/misc/
pffaq.html
Profeminist e-mail list (1997–)
www.xyonline.net/misc/profem.html
Homophobia and masculinities among
young men www.xyonline.net/misc/
homophobia.html
Fathering
Fatherhood Initiative
Massachusetts Children’s Trust Fund
Supporting fathers, their families and
theprofessionals who work with them
www.mctf.org
Fathers and Daughters Alliance
(FADA)
Helping girls in targeted countries to
return to and complete
primary school
fatheranddaughter.org
Fathers with Divorce and Custody
Concerns
Looking for a lawyer?
Call your state bar
association lawyer referral agency.
Useful websites include:
www.dadsrights.org
(not www.dadsrights.com)
www.directlex.com/main/law/divorce/
www.divorce.com
www.divorcecentral.com
www.divorcehq.com
www.divorcenet.com
www.divorce-resource-center.com
www.divorcesupport.com
Collaborative Divorce
www.collaborativealternatives.com
www.collaborativedivorce.com
www.collaborativepractice.com
www.nocourtdivorce.com
The Fathers Resource Center
Online resource, reference, and
network for stay-at-home dads
www.slowlane.com
National Center for Fathering
Strategies and programs for positive
fathering. www.fathers.com
National Fatherhood Initiative
Organization to improve the well-being
of children through the promotion of
responsible, engaged fatherhood
www.fatherhood.org
Gay Rights
Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against
Defamation
Works to combat homophobia and
discrimination in television, film, music
and all media outlets
www.glaad.org
Human Rights Campaign
Largest GLBT political group in the
country.
www.hrc.org
Interpride
Clearing-house for information on pride
events worldwide
www.interpride.net
LGBT Health Channel
Provides medically accurate
information to lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender and allied communities.
Safer sex, STDs, insemination,
transgender health, cancer, and more
www.lgbthealthchannel.com.
National Gay and Lesbian Task
Force
National progressive political and
advocacy group
www.ngltf.org
Outproud - Website for GLBT and
questioning youth
www.outproud.org
Parents and Friends of
Lesbians and Gays
www.pflag.org
Winter 2011 33

Visit us on the web at Voicemalemagazine.org
Voice Male also be found on both Facebook and Twitter
34 Voice Male

General Support Groups:
Open to any man who wants to experience a men’s group. Topics of discussion reflect the needs and interests of
the participants. Groups are held in these Western Massachusetts communities:
Hadley, at North Star, 135 Russell Street, 2nd Floor: Tuesday evenings (7:00 – 9:00 PM). Entrance on Route 47
opposite the Hadley Town Hall.
Greenfield, at Network Chiropractic, 21 Mohawk Trail: Wednesday evenings (7:00 – 9:00 PM).
Group for Men Who Have Experienced Childhood Neglect, Abuse, or Trauma:
Open to men who were subjected to neglect and/or abuse growing up, this group is designed specifically to
ensure a sense of safety for participants. It is a facilitated peer support group and is not a therapy group. Group
meetings are held on Fridays (7:00 – 9:00 PM) at the Synthesis Center in Amherst, 274 N. Pleasant Street
(just a few doors north of the former MRC building).
Group for Gay, Bisexual, and Questioning Men:
Specifically for men who identify as gay or bisexual, or who are questioning their sexual orientation, this group is
designed to provide a safe and supportive setting to share experiences and concerns. Gay or bi-identified
transgendered men are welcome! In addition to providing personal support, the group offers an opportunity for
creating and strengthening local networks. Group meetings are held on Mondays (7:00 – 9:00 PM) at the
Synthesis Center in Amherst, 274 N. Pleasant Street (just a few doors north of the former MRC building).