Reilly Dempsey, Head of Programme and Advocacy at Soroptimist International, reports back on a challenging and inspiring SI CSW58 side event, giving a male perspective on the need to break down gender stereotypes.
If we can call a group
of girls “guys”, why can’t we call a group of guys “girls”?
This question was posed to our panel by a young Cambodian
woman who was learning English. She found it so strange that we use the
slang term “guys” to refer to women, men, boys, and girls, but we can’t do the
same for the word “girls”. What an eye opening and challenging question!
Eye-opening and challenging are definitely two words which
described SI’s panel, Blue is the New Pink, held yesterday at CSW 58. It
was SI’s first ever all-male panel, and we had a packed house with an amazingly
diverse audience – from many ages, genders, and countries.
Soroptimist International believes in the word
“transformative” being used so much here at CSW58. We believe that part
of true transformation for the Post-2015 agenda includes understanding that
gender equality, or indeed INequality, affects everyone. This is
precisely why we held an all-male panel, to ensure that we push ourselves as
advocates to have dialogue and conversation to break down gender stereotypes
that affect men and women.
In Tuesday’s event, Pink is the New Blue, we, alongside our
partners at WAGGGS and World YWCA, explored breaking down barriers for women
and girls to enter into traditionally male dominated arenas. One of the
issues which came up again and again was that, once women are in a male
dominated field, the expectations of being “masculine” or “machismo” created
such a damaging environment that they are unable to stay in that field.
How devastating – we’re doing all this wonderful work to encourage girls and
young women to enter into STEM careers, but once they get there these
persistent damaging gender stereotypes make it impossible for them to stay.
As we then learned in Blue is the New Pink, these
stereotypes hurt boys, young men, and men just as much.
Carlos Andres Gomez shared his story with us, from the time
when he fell while playing soccer at the age of 5 and the coach told him to
“man up” and get back on the field and stop crying to the time when he was in a
nightclub, and, when confronted by an aggressive man who wanted he fight,
Carlos found himself shedding tears instead. Carlos shared how that
moment made him realise that with today’s harmful masculinities, in a tenth of
a second, men have to decide whether to lose a life or take a life.
Carlos moved the audience to laughter and tears, and
certainly made us all think about the different ways boys and young men are
told who they are supposed to be, rather than giving them to freedom to be who
they want to be.
Darnell L Moore opened his talk by reading us a letter he
wrote to a woman in jail, facing charges for defending herself against a
long-term abuser. The letter revealed an intimate part of who Darnell is
today, and the choices he had in male models. His father was a violent,
abusive man who was rarely present in Darnell’s life. But his grandfather
presented him with an alternative manhood, one which was caring and kind.
Darnell challenged us all to look in the mirror and to be
aware of our own identities and the identities we project onto others. He
suggested that there are many teaching moments in life, and, ensuring that it
is within a safe space, we can indeed do the work we need to do to end harmful
masculine stereotypes. He posed this closing thought to the group:
“implicit socialisation requires explicit transformation”.
We had a wonderful Q&A session at the end with many
thought-provoking and inspiring points. The dialogue was exciting and
ambitious. Long may it continue!
The session ended with Carlos performing one of his poems,
leaving everyone moved and ready to continue to move.
Keep the conversation going! Connect with Carlos, Darnell and Soroptimist International on Twitter:
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