Better Men Project Update

The Better Men Project is a way to take responsibility, a way to step up. We are in the midst of an important purge, a purge that must continue as truth and the implications of toxic masculinity are brought into light.

I come into this work in full acknowledgment that patriarchy is part of my constitution. And that I am part of the problem. I have been conducting interviews for the Better Men Project and I am made hopeful by what I’m finding.

Men are reflecting on our shortcomings, our blindspots and mistakes, and what it means to show up as a man in this culture. Some of us are ready for accountability, the restoration of justice and the responsibility of working with each other to build a culture that is safe for women.

This is a time of pain and self-reflection. Men in these interviews speak of the limits to our cultural idea of masculinity. They speak about having access to a limited range of emotion, of only being taught domination, of not always knowing how to speak to what we are feeling.

These men are increasingly aware of the ways in which we have been crippled by patriarchy. Some make a direct connection between patriarchy, the climate crisis and our pillage of the earth.

I’ve also heard that the very absence of a model for conscious masculinity is what yields the toxic masculinity that is wreaking havoc today.

We are in the early stages of the Better Men Project. We are still conducting interviews. I am specially interested in reaching men who don’t go around calling themselves “woke.” I want to talk to the good guys that mean well, want to do better, and don’t necessarily know how to. Do you know someone? Could you share this link with them?