Or why we don’t issue statements
In our office, we regularly talk about the news, global injustice, an announced demonstration or a petition that crossed our path – shouldn’t we address that as well? Shouldn’t we co-sign that petition, issue a statement about the terrible situation in x or y, speak out about this or that urgent social issue? Invariably, our conclusion is: we won’t, for all sorts of reasons, but shouldn’t we write a statement on that for once? So here goes.
One of the reasons we consciously choose not to respond to current affairs as an organization is that masculinities and engaging men is relevant for almost all social issues, which means we can keep ourselves busy getting involved in debates and speaking up about the news. Everything feels and is urgent and important, and everything has something to do with our work. But as a small organization, we just don’t have the capacity to respond to everything. And if we support one cause, condemn one situation, why not another?
Another reason is that in our work on engaging men, we try not to be reactive not to react to every news item. Our work is gender transformative: that is, we work to transform and deconstruct gender, i.e. the meaning of ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’, and at the same time, paradoxically, to change the norm that things we as a society call ‘masculine’ have more value and status than things we as a society consider ‘feminine’.
A lot of activism focuses on action, short-term results, decisiveness, and other traits traditionally considered ‘masculine’. This is understandable, justified, and necessary for change. But in our gender transformative approach, we try to apply other strategies. We want to work on the long term, the big structures that lie beneath everyday problems, to transform those systems – patriarchy, capitalism and racism, and all the other oppressive -isms that stem from them.
We are convinced that we need to do so in ways that have traditionally been called rather ‘feminine’: focused on the process, on relationships, on the body, on connection, on being, rather than doing. Because the better world we are working on needs more such traits. Because we believe the outcome of our work cannot be gender transformative if the path towards it is not. And because we cannot win people to a process of love and gentleness with action and decisiveness alone.
At the same time, it is also difficult: we all work at Emancipator because we are idealists, activists, and the news often feels very urgent for us too, we can clearly see how everything happening in the world is directly or indirectly related to our work. So it hurts not to do something about these problems directly, especially when people in ourcommunity are asking us to: you’re right. We feel connected both as individuals and as an organization to all kinds of activist movements and groups, and we wish we could support them more directly and explicitly.
So here is our statement of support, our statement on everything: whether it is climate or genocide, poverty, inequality, racism or white supremacy, decolonization and neo-imperialism: we stand in solidarity with the people who are victims of oppressive systems, marginalized and oppressed because of who they are or where they were born. And we are critical of the systems that cause problems as well as the people who benefit from them – often men, white people, people in the global north, heterosexual people, theoretically educated people, people from middle and upper class backgrounds. We are norm-critical, self-critical, and we do our best to be part of the solution ourselves. For us, that includes taking a gender transformative approach, trying not to fall into the classic traps of masculinity in fighting all that injustice. A prince on a white horse was never going to overthrow the patriarchy. Or in the words of Audre Lorde: ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.’
As a organization working to engage men and transform masculinities, we choose to stick to our core: we believe that we are the very organization to focus on the long-term and the big story, not to be reactive, and to always keep pointing to how everyday examples fit into the big systemic story, both to explain the problem and to provide solutions. We want to be a place to have conversations about the connection between all these themes with each other and with masculinity, and to find each other in our powerlessness in the face of all the injustice in the world, and the vulnerability we feel in the midst of it.
And ultimately, we hope and believe that our work on transforming masculinities also contributes to the causes you are committed to.
