TradCatknight: Schools offer ‘safe spaces’ to combat ‘toxic masculinity’

At Oregon State University, for instance, students are invited to attend a “healthy masculinities conference” where they will “engage in collective imagining to construct new futures for masculinities, unrestricted by power, privilege, and oppression.”

 

An advertisement for the conference lists several other intended “learning outcomes,” such as examining “the histories and legacies of Eurocentric masculinities and [understanding] how they influenced and continue to shape modern global masculinities.”

“Join us in a collective examination of the histories and legacies that shape present day masculinities. Through a day of presentations, panels, workshops, and artistic expression, learn how to engage systems of power,” the advertisement states, noting that students will be allowed to attend free of charge.

Similarly, Ithaca College will host a workshop on “masculinity and violence” during its MLK Week celebrations, where students will “examine hegemonic masculinity and its role as the wheel that rotates a cycle of violence” while empowering “willing individuals to begin to recognize, acknowledge, own, and disrupt the toxicity of manhood in order to end violence.”

Duke University’s “Men’s Project,” meanwhile, is looking for applicants for a “nine-week long discussion group” that will also “examine the ways we present—or don’t present—our masculinities, so we can better understand how masculinity exists on our campus—often in toxic ways—and begin the work of unlearning violence.”

“We want to explore, dissect, and construct an intersectional understanding of masculinity and maleness, as well as to create destabilized spaces for those with privilege,” a description of the program explains. “Duke is an environment where some are rarely made uncomfortable while others are made to bear the weight of their identities on a daily basis—we aim to flip that paradigm.”

Other schools, such as the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Brown University, have long-established centers for men to confront their masculinity, with Brown’s “B Well” center hosting weekly “Masculinity 101” workshops for “students who identify as men.”