+ Value 1: Empathy and Safety are Necessary.

We’re trying to strike a delicate balance here. There are well-intentioned folks who discourage this project altogether with the concern that it could become a bastion and safe-haven for rape apologism and misogyny, protected behind the guise of men sharing honestly from their perspectives. That is completely counter to our intention. We will do our best to ensure the culture of this site is structured around listening, empathy, and perspective-taking. We hope to counsel one another to be better men.

We have noticed that during landmark, powerful moments, like the touch-off of the #metoo movement, there were sadly many men who didn’t feel comfortable sharing their real stories. Many men didn’t feel comfortable admitting their mistakes, confusions, and long-time struggles around masculinity, even though so many of us do have instructive, difficult, complex stories that deserve unpacking and sometimes healing.

We noticed that men around us were worried that if they shared honestly, especially publicly, about the stories of their own lives, they would be labeled — as a misogynist, rapist, or sexist. So, they opted for silence. It is critical for men to be silent, move back, and listen to women (trans-women very much included). But that discourse will only take us so far in moving towards a healthier, happier, freer culture of masculinity. For men to change, they also need to be heard and understood, and for us to have empathy for how difficult it can be to be socialized as a man.

To have been a “boy” for many of us meant entering a world that expected you to be tough and aggressive, pressured you to excel in sports and provide financially, and glorified sexual conquest, beating out the other men around you. But even the alpha is lonely. We want to change, widen, and develop the definition of masculinity so that boys and men know these narrow narratives don’t need to be the straps on the straight jacket. We want to write our own scripts, get inspiration from one another, play out new roles with our partners, and hand off these more expansive, honest, and real stories to our friends and lovers, to our fathers, brothers, and sons.

We think that we can strike this delicate balance, maintaining safety and non-judgment, while preventing sexism and rape apologism. We believe that we can move past the hurt and anger and grow together — and recognize all the beautiful, wise, fraternal, and loving aspects of masculinity.

+ Value 2: Diverse Perspectives are Essential.

We are trying to portray “masculinity,” which is by its nature, socially-defined, and in that way, not-fixed or static. By trying to truthfully describe a social construct, we risk “essentializing” masculinity, as though we mean to imply that “all men are like this…”. The stories we share aren’t evidence that it’s natural for men to do this or that. It’s perilous, but we believe it’s just so damn useful to talk about masculinity. We want to discuss masculinity head on, but that doesn’t necessarily mean making broad claims about what masculinity is or is not.

We also can’t say “all men…” because other aspects of our identity really affect that experience. We know that being a man is not the same for black men as it is for white men, or for Muslim men as it is for Catholic men, as for poor men as it is for wealthy men, as for trans-men as it is for cis-men (born with a male body and identifying as a man), for men from politically conservative backgrounds as it is for men from more progressive backgrounds. We need to recognize the “intersectionality” of masculinity with the other aspects of our identities.

Lastly, to understand masculinity, we of course must consider and integrate the perspectives of women. We partner with an Accountability Board, which includes women, who make sure that we don’t cause harm.

+ Value 3: Gender Norms are both Real and Fluid.

We believe that we can hold two complicated truths at the same time: gender roles can be fluid for individuals, and “normative” masculinity is real enough to make a huge difference in the lives of men and boys (and everyone else). Social constructs like gender and race are by definition porous, amorphous, shifting, and blurry. However, in their impact, these same social constructs can be hard, raw, violent, and deeply and fundamentally shape us as human beings.

Masculinity is socially constructed, and changes along with other social norms over time and place. An easy one to see is how the normative “attractive male body” has changed from the slim and dapper Humphrey Bogart in the 1940s to the comically muscular Rambo and his phallic machine gun in the 1980s, just one generation later. Moreover, in different parts of the world, what is “manly” is defined differently, like the cultural norm of (heterosexual) men in Ghana publicly holding hands.

These norms are unrealistic ideals, and literally no man has ever existed who meets all of the characteristics of the “ideal man.” That man doesn’t really exist outside of our collective imagination and media projections. Not even Sylvester Stallone was actually as much of a man as the character Rambo he played. It’s just not possible.

There is no “one” masculinity, so we use the term “normative masculinity” to describe the set of common, “mainstream” beliefs and social attitudes about how “real men” should be. In reality, there are a multitude of masculinities (plural!), defined slightly differently in each subculture and locale; various gender dialects. We realize that a project with “real men” in the title may necessarily seem to reify, reinforce, or essentialize the idea that there is one, real, normative masculinity. It may also seem to even suggest that men should be acting in this “real” way. We are not saying that. We see masculinity as fluid, but still very worth discussing and trying to shift its definition, reclaim it, rather than just abandon it.

It may be more useful to think of our gender identities on a spectrum of “more or less masculine,” and “more or less feminine,” where no one falls all the way on one side or the other on either scale. For some, gender may feel more like an expansive plane where “masculine” and “feminine” are just nodes, like points on an endless map. These folks dance distractedly around those gender polarities, identifying as queer, gender non-conforming or just not finding belonging under a particular gender category or label.

Even as many human beings may move beyond, around, or above gender norms in more queer expressions of their gender, expressing masculine, feminine, and other traits - there can be a parallel process that aims to relocate normative masculinity to a healthier, more vulnerable and empathetic location on the gender map or spectrum. We work within the system, trying to elect better male role models, while acknowledging that we may want to question or resist the system altogether.