This year, we are asking men and women to have courageous conversations about the #Outdated.
Film yourself, get your videos online and tag them with #Outdated or #WhiteRibbonNZ so we can all join in and have a conversation about what healthy masculinity should look like.
Men’s violence towards women in our communities remains appallingly high and if we are to tackle this violence we need to focus on the attitudes that enable men to think violence is ok and that trap them in the man box.
We are asking men to speak up about the #Outdated ideas they hear and sometimes feel pressured to conform to which research links to violence. We’ve all heard these phrases like Be A Man, Harden Up, Kids Should Be Silent, Treat E’m Mean Keep E’m Keen, and Show Them Who’s The Boss. We want to highlight behaviour that supports healthy masculinity. (see below for some helpful ideas)
One way of doing that in a public manner, is to create a short video and post it on your own social media feed and tag it with #Outdated. In the video, tell people why you are challenging the #Outdated ideas associated with old school masculinity, and or, tell us how you role-model the principles of healthy masculinity. Everyone is encouraged to take part, not just men.
Today boys and young men are still being taught unhelpful messages about what it is to be ‘Real Men’. As Tim Winton argues “Boys and young men are so routinely expected to betray their better natures, to smother their consciences, to renounce the best of themselves and submit to something low and mean. As if there’s only one way of being a bloke(!)” That such rules – or roles – of masculinity have remained constant, despite an increasing awareness that such rules hurt everybody, points to just how ingrained and pervasive these expectations can feel as evidenced by White Ribbon’s own research in 2019. Let’s challenge the #outdated and support healthy masculinity, which is a protection against violence.
Check out some of the videos that have already been added.
Healthy Masculinity looks like:
- Healthy masculinity is rejecting unhelpful outdated stereotypes and unspoken rules about what it is to be a boy or man.
- Healthy masculinity is about being kind, empathetic, finding peaceful resolutions to problems.
- Healthy masculinity is about boys and men being confident in who they are without feeling pressure to be a certain type of boy/man.
- Boys and men can still be ‘brave’, and have ‘muscles’, be assertive, tough, love rugby, enjoy time with other men and boys, enjoy a ‘pint’ with the lads (for men!). But boys and men should also be free to express sad emotions, enjoy cooking, dancing, gardening and anything else that does not fit into gender stereotypes.
- Healthy masculinity is treating everyone with respect.
- Healthy masculinity is recognising that people express gender and sexuality in a variety of ways.
- White Ribbon calls the expectations that men must always appear dominant, tough and in charge “The Man Box”.
- It’s a box that’s prescriptive and restrictive. Any different behaviours are dismissed as being not manly.
- Often a boy and a man will believe he needs to appear tough and in-control in front of other men. This is from a fear, real or not, that they’ll reject him, possibly violently, if he doesn’t fit in. Being told to ‘Man Up’ is to be reminded to get back into The Man Box. A man may use violence to show his peers he is manly.
- Suppressing individual identities and diverse emotional responses is stressful. It’s also unhealthy as these men avoid asking for help.
- Men who break out of The Man Box to choose their own masculine identity report that they’re less stressed, more satisfied with life and have happier relationships.