COMEGA, Connecticut Men’s Gathering, empowers men to create & foster community through an invitation to break down internal barriers that cause isolation, to inspire the courage to consciously explore the challenges in his life, and to bring forth his authentic self — then bring this back to his relationships and communities. www.comega.org
MMG, Massachusetts Men’s Gathering, is a participant-organized and participant-led weekend that happens twice a year at a year-round camp/retreat center. Whether we are offering a workshop, talking over coffee for hours with a new-found kindred spirit, or just exploring the peaceful country setting, we are MMG. For thirty now, men have been using the wide-open format of the weekend to take chances and be good to themselves. massmensgathering.org
Granite Men’s Gathering — There is great freedom to pick and choose from a range of social, recreational, educational and spiritual experiences throughout the weekend. Each man may develop new friendships, converse with other men about anything and everything, attend or present workshops, perform in a talent show, jam on drums or other musical instruments, eat great food, or simply bask in the sweet serenity of the place. There are abundant opportunities to socialize, but a man can also have quiet solitude to mull things over, do creative work or simply renew his relationship with others or himself. It’s a wonderful opportunity for men to enjoy camaraderie with other men, not only in play but also as they work on the issues, challenges and truths of being a man in the world. www.granitemen.com
NextGenMen — offers “History of Men’s Movements in the Modern Manhood” podcast. This podcast will mostly concentrate on the systemic issues, struggles, and hopes for masculinities. With a pro-feminist viewpoint, we’ll investigate how masculinity has changed throughout our lives and what the future looks like for gender. This podcast is supported by NextGenMen (nextgenmen.ca) and the Alberta Podcast Network. The link to the podcast is https://pod.link/1110611289/. The link to NextGenMen is www.nextgenmen.ca.
Leeja Miller offers this video on YouTube — Men are not okay. The manosphere is a vast network of incels, mens rights activists, pick up artists and more, and their violent rhetoric easily translates to conspiracy theories, making them the perfect target for the Alt Right. See the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-V_xf2gAiI.
Angelica Ferrara has a newsletter entry called “Why Men Need Each Other”. It goes on to say “High quality friendships are difficult for men to find and maintain. New research shows that platonic bonds could help them live healthier, more fulfilling lives.” Read the newsletter at https://angelicapuzio.substack.com/p/why-men-need-each-other. Incidentally, she’s writing a book due out in 2025 entitled “Men Without Men”. Something to look forward to. Some more links to articles about Angelica Ferrara and her forthcoming book include: https://gender.stanford.edu/news/mens-loneliness-feminist-issue-men-without-men and https://gender.stanford.edu/news/qa-postdoctoral-fellow-angelica-ferrara
The Minnesota Men’s Conference — Founded by Robert Bly in 1984, the Minnesota Men’s Conference celebrates the telling of old stories, the gifts of poetry, myth, and music, and opening our hearts to grief. We all have a deep yearning for richer lives of purpose, meaning, and community. The conference is a unique opportunity to enrich ourselves as individuals in a group of other men. The conferences YouTube channel is deep and rich with nearly forty years of recordings of world-class teachers from around the globe — storytelling, lectures, discussions, poem readings, insights and more — for men and women of all ages. Go to minnesotamensconference.com for more on the conference. Their YouTube page can be reached at www.youtube.com/@MensConference/featured.
The Spirited Man — an unlimited series of short films about creation & repair, introspection, and thought & books combined with living. The spirited man is an archetype that embodies our favorite part of us, our spirit. Van Neistat, co-creator of HBO’S THE NEISTAT BROTHERS, collaborated with masters and traveled the world as a journeyman film maker, conceiving and writing his latest project, The Spirited Man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT6wYbaRrlQ
/r/MensLib is a community to explore and address men’s issues in a positive and solutions-focused way. Through discussing the male gender role, providing mutual support, raising awareness on men’s issues, and promoting efforts that address them, we hope to create active progress on issues men face, and to build a healthier, kinder, and more inclusive masculinity. We recognize that men’s issues often intersect with race, sexual orientation and identity, disability, socioeconomic status, and other axes of identity, and encourage open discussion of these considerations. We consider ourselves a pro-feminist community. https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized. Here is a list of TEDx talks related to men’s issues:
Unmasking Masculinity — Helping Boys Become Connected Men with Dr. Ryan McKelley, a licensed psychologist and UW-L associate professor of psychology, wants men to do away with the mask. Sometimes emotional restriction is necessary, but it doesn’t need to be the default mode, he says. He challenges men to eliminate phrases like “man up” or “stop acting like a girl.” They should understand that opening up and being vulnerable is courageous. Taking small risks to open up will give them a broader experience of all of their emotions and allow them to make deeper connections. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBdnjqEoiXA
Trained Not to Cry: The Challenge of Being a Soldier with Dr. Richard Doss, a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and works for the Veterans Administration Vet Center. He is also a former Department of Defense Suicide Prevention Program Manager for the United States Army Reserve, training commanders, soldiers, and their families on suicide prevention and assisting over 13,000 soldiers in 26 states and Puerto Rico. Certified in Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST), Richard has trained hundreds of Soldiers and their families in the art of Suicide Awareness and Suicide Prevention. Members and Veterans of the US Armed Forces have unacceptably high suicide rates. Why? It’s not the combat experience like one would suggest, but a much more complex issue that needs to be talked about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkCq6BWFBAM
The Mask of Masculinity — The Traditional Role of Men is Evolving with Connor Beaton (info@mantalks.ca), the founder of ManTalks. He supports mens’ health and wellness by giving them tools to be better fathers, husbands and leaders in their communities. Through powerful stories from his own life, Connor illustrates the damaging impact of the ‘man mask’ and how our perception of masculinity is one of the biggest challenges men face today. His solution: a call to men to cast off the broken ideals and discover new ways of living fully and authentically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmkFdAMFGXo
Emotions: The Data Men Miss with Dr. Adam Dorsay, a licensed psychologist in private practice in San Jose, CA. Dorsay has observed a common blind-spot among many successful men: a difficulty in mining the data provided by emotions to inform decisions and live fuller lives. In this talk, he describes his findings and reveals his roadmap to success; a set of skills to help men truly know and then become stronger from their emotions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqDCnOmyA88
The Boy Crisis: A Sobering Look at The State of Our Boys with Dr. Warren Farrell, an American educator, activist and author of seven books on men’s and women’s issues., including the international bestsellers, Why Men Are the Way they Are, plus The Myth of Male Power. He is the only man in the U.S. to be elected three times to the Board of the National Organization for Women in NYC. and he is Chair of the Commission to Create a White House Council on Boys and Men. Farrell is currently co-authoring with John Gray the forthcoming The Boy Crisis. What is causing a worldwide Boy Crisis and how do we resolve it? A sobering look at the current state of Boys in our society and what we must understand before we can help them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi1oN1icAYc
Tackling The Boy Crisis with Dr. Michael Kimmel, one of the world’s leading experts on men and masculinities. He is the SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at Stony Brook University. Among his many books are Manhood in America, Angry White Men, The Politics of Manhood, The Gendered Society and the best seller Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. With funding from the MacArthur Foundation, he founded the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities at Stony Brook in 2013. For a good deal of his career as an academic and writer, Dr. Kimmel has been thinking and exploring the behavior of men, and believes that feminism can be men’s salvation. In this talk, he explains why we need to rethink the way we educate our boys to prevent them from falling through the cracks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnLmKmTdAgM
Be A Man with Joe Ehrmann, an educator, author, activist, pastor and coach for more than 25 years. He was a college All-American athlete who played professional football for 13 years. Among numerous awards, Joe has been named “The Most Important Coach in America” for his work to transform the culture of sports. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVI1Xutc_Ws
Boys Won’t Be Boys. Boys Will Be what We Teach Them to Be — with Ben Hurst, the head of Facilitation and Training at The Good Lad Initiative (GLI) and coordinates their workshops in schools and universities. He also works with Fearless Futures, an anti-oppression organisation, and is the founding director of SPACE for PSHE, an independent PSHE provision for secondary schools that facilitates important conversations with young people around sex, race, and gender equality. Hurst is also the co-founder of D/ecology, which facilitates conversations about decolonising shared spaces. Boys will be boys, right? Hurst rejects this commonly-used phrase as a “get-out-of-jail free” card for boys, men and toxic masculinities. Instead, he states, boys will be what we teach them to be. Citing Tony’s Porter’s TED talk, “A Call to Men,” Hurst references the workshops he conducts with boys and young men to illustrate the pressure the patriarchy places on men to repress their feelings and embrace hyper-sexualisation and violence. Hurst believes that we need to challenge our assumptions around toxic forms of masculinity by encouraging conversation, providing space for men to express emotion, refusing to accept minimum standards of behaviour and building positive masculinities. Hurst’s work focuses on challenging traditionally toxic forms of masculinity, and exploring ideas of minimum standards and positive masculinities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dp08bAUwi8
Machismo Hurts Men Too with Alejandro Jimenez, a poet, educator, and long-distance runner from Colima, Mexico. In 2011 he became the first Latino to win the Su Barrio Slam Poetry Competition. The following year he was a member of the SlamNUBA poetry team that placed 5th at the National Poetry Slam Competition in 2012. Alejandro works with youth in Denver and tries to laugh with them as much as possible. What assumptions do we make about others based on their gender or ethnicity? When Alejandro Jimenez first learned about the Hispanic stereotype of machismo, he was shocked. Was he doomed to a life of rage and aggression? In this inspiring talk and poem, he explores what it means forge your own identity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tue7ECtTIMg
Redefining Asian Masculinity with fitness coach and model Kevin Kreider, who recalls being bullied for his skinny figure and Asian heritage at a young age. He now has won several natural bodybuilding competitions, graduated with a degree in exercise science and certified in nutrition. As a model, Kreider has been featured in publications such as Men’s Health and Men’s Fitness Magazine and publications internationally. In 2014, the stress and non-stop nature of his career in the entertainment industry took a toll on his body and Kevin was diagnosed with alopecia areata, an auto-immune disease that attacks the hair follicles. In two weeks, he not only lost a majority of his hair, and his modeling career. The same year, Kevin decided to embark on a soul-searching journey. He grabbed his skateboard and traveled from LA to NYC on his board in hopes that the trip would allow him self-reflection. It wasn’t until a few years later that Kevin found himself back into the health and wellness industry where he ultimately felt happiest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEloVeiZaJg
Expanding Masculinity: Moving Beyond Boys Will Be Boys with Blake Spence, one of the creators of Calgary’s award-winning WiseGuyz program at the Calgary Sexual Health Centre. WiseGuyz is an innovative school based program that aims to create safe spaces for young men to connect with one another, learn and grow into socially aware young adults. WiseGuyz gives young men an opportunity to safely explores questions and concepts around sex, health, relationships, gender and vulnerability. Spence shares his own struggles with stereotypical notions of masculinity and his journey to creating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe0Nh5tn6s8
A WiseGuyz Journey with the Calgary Sexual Health Centre. WiseGuyz is a Calgary Sexual Health Centre program that is transforming young men, their peers, and the communities they live in. This school-based program teaches grade 9 boys about critical issues such as consent, healthy relationships, gender equality, bullying and homophobia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDCGND7J6LM
Boys Will be Boys with Danny Blay, a qualified Men’s Behaviour Change Program facilitator and counsellor. His key achievements included the contribution to an expanded and coordinated approach to family violence in Victoria, the development of innovative training on family violence prevention for the community sector and fostering formal working relationships with other aligned organisations and stakeholders. With increasing concern over domestic violence levels in Australia he asks whether patriarchal cultures are not only failing women, but also failing men. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kaU69DTxxo
Your Boyfriend Wants to Be Pretty with Nick Thornton. Occasionally, and probably not often enough, young men are told to embrace their feminine side. But what does getting in touch with your “feminine side” actually mean? Here, Nick Thornton (@unboringlearn), a 4th year History major at the University of British Columbia, provides a thought provoking and entertaining look at this question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNQu8mtGgvA
Breaking the Boys Code of Masculinity with Bill Pozzobon, who has worked on gender and violence issues with youth and educators for over a decade. In his role as director of the SafeTeen Boy’s Program, he trains the new SafeTeen Agents for Change and co-leads Educator Trainings locally, nationally and internationally. With humour and skill Bill invites the boys and men he works with to step into their full humanity with dignity and courage. “I am a strong believer in the power of personal choice and heart centered action. My own personal journey and the undeniable impact on the thousands of young men I have worked with, give me an enduring passion for this work.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDpuJXgD7Rs