✿ RESOURCES
The following resources have played prominently in influencing my work as a facilitator and a consultant, and many have been assigned as part of the reading for New Masculinities Group meetings.
✿ FOUNDATIONAL TEXTS
Books and essays to help provide a good set of fundamentals for masculinity and intersectional feminism
✿ Understanding Patriarchy
By bell hooks
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This essay is a powerful starting point for anyone, especially men, who want to understand the issues at hand, in particular with regards to how men are hurt by, and belong in the struggle against, patriarchal violence
✿ The Will to Change
By bell hooks
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This is one of the best places to start for a feminist understanding of masculinity. hooks understands the responsibility men have to join the struggle against patriarchal oppression, but is also full of compassion for the violence boys endure on the path to being turned into men
✿ I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression
By Terrence Real
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This book is mostly about the ways patriarchal values limit emotional maturity and expression in men, and how this leads to a lifetime of depression that manifests itself in various harmful ways. But this book isn't just about depression—it's also about the journey to end cycles of generational trauma that lead to depressed, hurt, and broken men, and about the hope for a masculinity that can be expressive, caring, and nurturing
✿ Women, Race, and Class
By Angela Davis
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This is an excellent primer on the structural foundations of the intersecting forms of oppression felt variously by so many Americans. Davis not only provides a history of various interconnecting identities, she also traces the way macro-scale systemic changes affect individual personal identities, ideologies, and behaviors. Critical reading for anybody who only understands racism, sexism, and classism as only expressed through individual interactions
✿ Men Explain Things to Me
By Rebecca Solnit
This book of essays is already a classic, and for good reason. Solnit explains with unique clarity the various ways structural issues play out on individual scales, and also how many small actions on the part of individuals can add up to systemic change. Solnit explores implicit sexist biases, rape culture, and many other manifestations of contemporary patriarchal oppression
✿ Amateur
By Thomas Page McBee
This memoir by a trans male journalist is notable for the way it complicates - and adds a refreshing nuance to - our understanding of the possibilities for positive masculinity. Using the frame narrative of his journey training for a charity boxing match, the author also explores his transition and his fight to feel at home in his body and in his gender expression. This book asks us to stop taking gender for granted—as a fact of our birth or an assignment from our parents—and to start thinking of gender (masculinity, in particular) as something we actively define for ourselves
✿ How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective
By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
This volume presents the founding manifesto of the titular influential black feminist collective. The manifesto is as radical and pressing as ever, and the interviews conducted by Taylor are lively, powerful, and inspirational for any who want a radical, intersectional feminism. The Combahee River Collective is known in part for coining the term "identity politics" which, despite its contemporary connotations, to them simply meant a politics born out of the experiences resulting from one's own identities
✿ ON SEX, CONSENT, AND RAPE CULTURE
Resources to foster crucial conversation about intimacy, pleasure, and active communication
✿ In The No
By Radiolab
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A podcast series performing an in-depth conversation around the "grey areas" of consent, ultimately advocating for a clearer, more active, more mutually understood language around desire and consent
✿ The Female Price of Male Pleasure
By Lili Loufbourow
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An article in The Week detailing the many ways in which men's sexual pleasure is prioritized above all else, which often leads to the erasure of women's pleasure and the silencing or disbelief in women's pain and discomfort
✿ What Teenage Boys Still Don't Know About Sexual Assault
By Laurie Halse Anderson
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Based on the author's interviews with young boys, this piece argues that one of the major causes of rape culture is a society that does almost nothing to prepare young people for talking about or navigating difficult conversations about sex
✿ We're Not Done Here
By Laurie Penny
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An exhilarating and impassioned take on the lasting implications of the MeToo movement
✿ Sex Toys Will Never Be Able to Do the Hardest Work For You
By Fancy Feast
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A nuanced take on sex positivity, arguing that we should not prioritize the pressure to have "good sex" over the necessity of clear, open, compassionate, trauma-and-power-dynamic-informed conversation with our partners about sexual intimacy
✿ Why We Need to Take Bad Sex More Seriously
By Katherine Angel
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A text exploring the question of why consent isn’t enough, and what we need beyond establishing active consent. To Angel, the answer lies in the equitable distribution of power, and the recognition of the ways our political identities are always present, even in our most private moments
✿ MEN’S PLACE IN THE MOVEMENT
Resources to explore how men should organize and struggle against their own patriarchal training
✿ Men at Work
By Barrett Swanson
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A piece about the new Evryman men's group, and about the problem with building "emotional maturity" in men without anchoring that work in historical, political, or anti-patriarchal ideology
✿ Inside the Movement to Reprogram Masculinity
By Isabelle Kohn
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Offers a look at a number of organizations and approaches working toward a more positive and less toxic construction of masculinity
✿ Relinquishing the Patriarchy
By adrienne maree brown
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A blog post which compassionately asks men to learn to give up their power and privilege, in pursuit of a more caring, intimate, egalitarian world
✿ I Want a 24 Hour Truce During Which There is No Rape
By Andrea Dworkin
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A 1983 speech to a men's conference, encouraging the men to be far more ambitious with their activism
✿ EMOTIONAL AND DOMESTIC LABOR
Resources to explore patriarchal imbalances in the various forms of labor found in family, friendly, and romantic relationships
✿ A Woman's Greatest Enemy? A Lack of Time to Herself
By Brigid Schulte
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An article about the ways women's gendered burdens within familial and romantic relationships prevent opportunities for fulfillment and creative output
✿ Men Have No Friends and Women Bear the Burden
By Melanie Hamlett
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An essay about the toll of men's emotional and social isolation on the women in their lives, which also explores the work some men are doing to actively connect with other men
✿ Women Aren't Nags - We're Just Fed Up
By Gemma Hartley
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A great primer on imbalance in domestic labor, and how merely having a "good, feminist" male partner doesn't make domestic labor any easier
✿ Tidying Up With Marie Kondo Is Inadvertently about Women's Invisible Labor
By Nicole Clark
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Uses personal and pop culture narratives to show the ways our domestic lives and labors are so heavily gendered
✿ The hidden load: How 'thinking of everything' holds mums back
By Melissa Hogenboom
✿ Why Women Do the Household Worrying
By Jessica Grose
✿ INTERSECTIONAL / ABOLITION FEMINISM
Resources to explore the imperative for a feminism that serves all people equally, not just affluent white women, with a special eye toward ending the exploitation of capitalism, colonialism, and mass incarceration
✿ The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House
By Audre Lorde
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A key text in explaining intersectional feminism. Lorde speaks out about the ways racism, classism, homophobia, heteronormativity, and other forms of oppression continue to play out in certain feminist spaces, and argues for a feminism that advocates for all, not just for white women of privilege
✿ The Intersectionality Wars
By Jane Coaston
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Explores the contemporary (mis)understanding of the concept of intersectionality, explaining the term's origins, its significance, and its various political implications
✿ Abolition Feminism: Theories and Practices
By Angela Davis
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A recent speech explaining the meaning and various contemporary expressions of Abolition Feminism, a new approach that is foundationally anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and against incarceration
✿ Against Carceral Feminism
By Victoria Law
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A criticism of a feminism that is too dependent on state violence, primarily as represented by mass incarceration. Law not only decries the violence of incarceration, but also the way state violence ends up hurting marginalized women as well
✿ Who Wins When We Incarcerate Brock Turner?
By Erika Lynn and Lily Zheng
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This potentially controversial opinion piece argues that while we work to end rape culture and promote justice for victims of sexual violence, calling for more state violence in the form of prison time is not necessarily the solution
✿ Strategies for Cultivating Community Accountability
By Ann Russo
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This list of strategies will be helpful for anyone reading the above articles and wondering how we might promote justice and safety without the need of imprisoning offenders
✿ Aching for Abolition
By Camonghne Felix
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A gorgeous and heart-rending account of the way carceral feminism did nothing to protect or heal the author from her experience of assault. Felix shares her journey toward abolition, a movement she finds liberating
✿ MEDIA IMAGERY
Resources to contemplate the role of advertising and pop culture in establishing and combatting oppressive narratives about gender and sexuality
✿ Athliesure, Barre, and Kale: The Tyranny of the Ideal Woman
By Jia Tolentino
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An essay describing the overwhelming persistence of aesthetic ideals for women. Tolentino notes in particular the way feminist rhetoric has been co-opted by corporate entities, in order to make workouts, foods, and beauty products seem inherently feminist or otherwise progressive
✿ Pop Culture Detective
By Jonathan McIntosh
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Performance and incisive critiques of some of the most dangerous patriarchal tropes and narratives in popular TV and film. A great introduction to feminist critique for the uninitiated, or for folks who love pop culture
✿ Men Explain Lolita to Me
By Rebecca Solnit
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A piece that wrestles with the way narrative art inevitably informs our understanding of the world. Solnit makes the case that art is dangerous because it is powerful, and that we ought to take the lessons and content of the art we consume far more seriously
✿ WORKPLACE PATRIARCHY
Resources to explore the ways sexism, misogyny, and heteronormativity manifest in the workplace
✿ The Deadly Truth about a World Built for Men
By Caroline Criado-Perez
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A piece about how a world designed with and built on maleness as the default are harmful and often even fatal for women
✿ Confidence is No Virtue
By Dan Brooks
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A piece arguing that confidence - a trait commonly rewarded in American workplaces - is actually a sign of uncertainty and arrogance, and should no longer be rewarded or seen as a valuable trait