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Passionate about modern feminist issues? Want to learn more about how today's political, academic, and cultural leaders strive for a future of universal equality and justice?
Join NOW in a podcast dedicated to intersectional feminist discussions in American society with leaders in entertainment, sports, politics, and science. From conversations on constitutional equality, to economic justice and reproductive rights, listeners will find new ways to learn, engage, and get empowered.
Listen for new episodes released every other Wednesday.
Tony Porter (00:02)
When I think about the work of challenging the manosphere, I think about men and what we can do. I'm coming back to that large majority of men. And many of us are not associated with or spending any time in those spaces, those manosphere spaces. But what we haven't done is put the energy into developing a voice to counter it. And that's why they're ahead of us, because they put a lot of energy into developing a voice to create this space. And so a big part of our work is really just titled Your Influence, Your Platform, right? And helping men to use the influence they have, right? By creating a platform, meaning what you choose to elevate, right? And helping them to develop a voice. Men who have the ear of men.
Kim Villanueva (00:58)
Hello and welcome to Feminism Now! I'm Kim Villanueva, the president of the National Organization for Women, and I'm here with National Vice President Rose Brunache.
Rose Brunache (01:05)
Hi, everyone.
Kim Villanueva (01:07)
Okay, Rose, what's gotten you mad?
Rose Brunache (01:09)
Well, everyone's talking about the Cornell 7, and everyone's giving their opinions. It's very disappointing, but not surprising, some of the discourse. It seems that some people think that if you consent to any sex act, that means every sex act after is also somehow okay, and it's not. So that's sad. What's making you mad?
Kim Villanueva (01:29)
You know, I think also along the lines of the Cornell sexual assault case is the fact that we're still working on this issue. I mean, when I first joined NOW 40 years ago, we were talking about domestic violence and sexual assault and holding Take Back the Night rallies, and we're still holding rallies about making sure that women feel protected on campus and in the community. I'm just mad that we're still having to do this all this time later. On the positive, though, is that young women are stepping up and saying, "We're sick of it too."
Rose Brunache (02:00)
Yeah.
Kim Villanueva (02:00)
And they're also calling on men to be accountable.
Rose Brunache (02:02)
How do you think it would be if we had social media 40 years ago? Do you think we'd be having the same conversations, or would it be different?
Kim Villanueva (02:10)
I think we would be having the same conversation. I think it would be very visible. I think social media certainly brings things to the fore much more quickly and much more visibly than in the past. I think it would certainly have helped us discuss things more. But good question.
Rose Brunache (02:25)
Isn't it frustrating how often our anger comes down to men, things men are doing or things masculinity is doing?
Kim Villanueva (02:30)
Right. Yeah. Of course, we're not man-hating feminists. Far from it. You know, intellectually, we know that everyone we interact with is a human being and that we need to respect their humanity. But we know that men are socialized into their roles. And so often the roles that men are socialized in lead them to hurt other people, and they hurt the men themselves.
Rose Brunache (02:52)
But of course, so often it falls on women to fix them, to fix men. We all play a role in the patriarchy, but women cannot fix it by ourselves.
Kim Villanueva (02:59)
Right. Yeah, we can't, and we shouldn't. And that's why I'm so excited this week to talk to Tony Porter. He's the CEO of A Call to Men, which is an organization that works to educate men and boys about healthy and respectful manhood. Tony even advises the NFL, teaching that manhood should not be toxic, and that it's about keeping everyone safe and lifting everyone up.
Rose Brunache (03:22)
You know, I don't think we've ever had a man on the show. Is that true?
Kim Villanueva (03:25)
Yeah, I think you're right. But before we talk to him, we want to hear from our listeners. We'll be talking about masculinity this episode. So, listeners, what do you think about masculinity? Give us a call at the number in our show notes, or send us a voice note to feminismnow at now dot org. Now, let's welcome Tony Porter.
Kim Villanueva (03:51)
We're so pleased today to be speaking with Tony Porter from A Call to Men. So Tony, thank you for joining us today. And I wanted to congratulate you. I think you're the first male guest on Feminism Now. So, congratulations.
Tony Porter (04:04)
Oh, wow, that's a big deal. And truly an honor. So, thank you so much for the invitation.
Kim Villanueva (04:07)
Yeah, it is. Absolutely. Well, you have a very important message to share, and we're anxious to talk with you about it. So, to start things off, I was really intrigued by the way you described masculinity. You have a very visual description of it as a man box. So, can you tell us how you came to that concept and what it means?
Tony Porter (04:30)
Yeah, so a colleague of mine back in the day by the name of Paul Kivel had created an exercise around what he called the man in the box. I loved it, but I also knew with men, you've got to just make it shorter, and it's got to kind of resonate with their masculinity and how they define it, to try to get men to wrap themselves around it. So I just called it the man box. We're really just talking about the collective socialization of manhood, how we're taught and what we're taught it means to be a man. And if you're working with men of all ages, boys to adult men, and you want to get their buy-in, have this man box and then ask men to put the ingredients in the box of how we define what it means to be a man.
The man box teaches men to be tough, to be strong, to be dominating, to be aggressive, to not be vulnerable, to always be in control, that men don't ask for help. We don't offer help. We don't accept help. We're not gonna be too kind. We're not gonna be too loving. We're not gonna be too caring. And a lot of that measurement comes from how we've also been taught to define what it means to be a man in that box: by distancing ourselves from what we perceive to be the experience of women and girls. What we're taught is that men are strong and women are weak. So anything that has anything to do with weakness, we run far away from. You know, the word weak is not even in the vocabulary of men.
You know, women and girls can share their feelings and emotions. In the box, men and boys are taught that we can't. The only emotion we give each other permission to express is anger, without even knowing that anger is actually fear or pain. And very, very important to this box, we're taught to have less value in women and girls. We're taught to view women and girls as the property of men. And we're taught to view women and girls as objects, particularly sexual objects.
Our work at A Call to Men is to ensure that whatever time we have with men, when they leave our presence, they leave it thinking and hopefully feeling differently than they did when they entered. This man box exercise really helps us to achieve that goal.
And then one more thing I'll say about the box that's also very important is that we believe, and we say, that homophobia, the fear of being perceived as gay, is the glue that keeps the man box together. The man box relies on the collective socialization of what it means to be a man to be heterosexist and to be homophobic.
Kim Villanueva (07:42)
Right. That all plays into the idea of being weak, or being perceived as weak. Yeah, I really like the idea of the box, because that is very limiting to men as well.
Tony Porter (07:53)
Very, very limiting. And many men come to a point in time in their lives where they realize that limitation, or those limitations. And for many of us, we break free of the box, which is extremely liberating. Unfortunately, many of us are held hostage to the box.
Kim Villanueva (08:14)
It really sounds not only limiting but really terrible to put people in that kind of box, especially men. But we keep doing it, especially with young men. So why are we doing that, and who benefits from that type of limitation?
Tony Porter (08:27)
Well, and I gotta tell you, when you really think about the limitation, that inability to ask for help and not knowing who we are emotionally is a recipe for disaster for men. We have many mental health challenges. We don't deal with trauma that we experience in our lives in a healthy way. They say 6 million men go undiagnosed annually for depression and anxiety. Men complete suicide at four times the rate of women. We don't go to the doctor on a regular basis. We don't practice preventative medicine. This man box has many, many limitations, not only on our emotional well-being, but on our physical health as well.
But this is about a male-dominated society, which the United States of America is, all right? And how we have defined what it means to be a man. And I think as long as we continue to see more benefits in it than liabilities, we may continue to do it.
Kim Villanueva (09:29)
We talked a little earlier about your TED Talk, because we just think it's so phenomenal, and it really has a great message in terms of how we can encourage men to step outside the box, literally. So in your talk, you talked about some of the good things about being a man, and that there are some good things about masculinity. So what are the things about the man box that we should keep?
Tony Porter (09:52)
I'm not so sure about the box and what we should keep. The things that are good about a man are really not gendered. What's good about being a person is not really gendered. And I gotta tell you, it's much easier for me to identify things that are good about being a woman, because in defining what it means to be a man, and this is what we're taught, to define what it means to be a man by distancing ourselves from what we perceive to be the experience of women and girls, I find that men are distancing ourselves from our own humanity.
I believe, collectively speaking, that women are a much better representation of how we as a society would define humanity. And as long as we're defining masculinity or manhood by distancing ourselves from the experience of women and girls, we may very well be distancing ourselves from our own humanity. I think what I find that's good about men is really what's good about humanity.
You know, many of us are kind and loving and gentle. Many of us really believe in nurturing, believe in taking care of our children, believe in shared leadership, believe in equity, believe in equality, right? Many of us believe in these things, but it's not so central to masculinity. I think there are wonderful things about being a man, but those wonderful things about being a man are more about being a man who embraces humanity. And then, when we express that, man, it's gorgeous. I think what we're trying to do is to get men to embrace humanity.
Rose Brunache (11:47)
When did you realize that something was wrong about this man box? What made you realize that masculinity as it exists today was harmful?
Tony Porter (11:54)
That's a great question. So I was director of a substance use program in Rockland County, New York. And while leading the substance use program, we would have women from the community come in to engage with the women who were in substance use treatment. And I was doing a lot of what then morphed into anti-racism work. And when you're doing anti-oppression work, you'll find yourself in spaces with folks who are doing the same work but might be really focused on another form of oppression. And we learned that you can't end one form of oppression while perpetrating another.
So doing anti-racism work put me in a room with women who were doing anti-sexism work, and they began to engage me, and it made sense. What it said to me was, as a man, I can actually do in the anti-sexism space what I'm really looking for white folks to do in the anti-racism space. And particularly in the early days, all I was saying to men is what women had taught me. I've been on the journey long enough now that I've learned a lot. But in the early days, I was simply saying what women taught me.
I really wanted to pay attention to the rest of us and begin to ask the question: why are we giving them permission to be who they are? What are we gaining? What are we benefiting from their violence? And so, through a series of events, we started A Call to Men with the purpose of engaging the majority of men, men in general, with a focus on: most men don't perpetrate violence, but the problem is we're silent about the violence.
So a big part of our job is to help men develop a voice, reach in and grab the hearts of men, help them to think differently, and then teach them how to use their influence and platform to be part of the solution to ending it. We firmly believe that if women could end the violence on their own, they would have already. We can't count on the men who perpetrate the violence. And we're not throwing them out, though, by the way. Some of them are men we love. We all might know a man that is problematic, but we still love him. So we're not throwing him out. But if this was an equation, who's missing from the equation is the majority of men. And so that's what we put our efforts on.
Kim Villanueva (14:21)
I'm a big fan of Loretta Ross and her philosophy of calling people in instead of calling people out. And I think that's reflected in A Call to Men as well, because you invite men to help stop the violence and to help change society. You're not indicting men or condemning them for behavior. Why do you think that distinction, why is it important to invite men into the process?
Tony Porter (14:41)
Well, you're 100% correct, and that's another one of our sayings: we invite men, we don't indict men. And calling men in versus calling them out gives us an opportunity to be in community with men, right? We believe that you can call men in. You can have very, very, very accountable engagements with men and still be full of love and kindness. Sometimes people's experience is that accountability has to be partnered with confrontation, but it just doesn't. We have very, very accountable experiences with men, where the men will leave the room, and what they also experienced was a lot of love, and the conversations are high in integrity.
Rose Brunache (15:29)
Your organization offers trainings and education to help people think critically about their masculinity. How does it get received? Is this something that men and boys want?
Tony Porter (15:39)
Often enough, when we're in a room with men and boys, it might be the first time they've had this experience. Sometimes not, but often enough. So they go into the experience with anxiety. They don't think it's going to be a calling-in experience. They don't think it's going to be a loving and kind experience. They go in with the expectation that these guys are just going to come in the room and beat us up. So initially, we just have different ways to grab hold of the room as quick as we can.
I'm not going to just sit in the front of the room, or wherever they have me stationed. Nope, I'm up and walking around the room, going over to the table, saying hello to the men. "How y'all doing?" That quickly gets them to feel like they know me, right? And they start liking me before the engagement even starts. It's really just understanding men, right? So I'm making a connection with them before we even start engaging.
We're going to be up and moving around. We like to get close to them, and we ask questions. We have a discussion. We're much more about discussions versus keynotes, right? I'm going to be moving around the room and engaging with men, getting close to men. That's something that works for men.
Also, to be a trainer for A Call to Men, you have to be willing to give up yourself. In this space, we're trying to bring men to a place of vulnerability, which means myself as a presenter, I have to be vulnerable, right? I have to talk about my inconsistencies and my own challenges. I have to give them permission to then talk about theirs. We operate from the place that there's no big I's and little U's. You'll never hear a Call to Men trainer identify themselves as an expert. We're not experts, we're just men who have some information, who learned some things from women, and we want to share it with men, all right? So it's just about being together. It's not about experts.
Kim Villanueva (17:36)
Tony, we still have more to talk about, but we need to take a quick break so we can hear from our NOW chapters.
Irene Stroben (17:45)
I'm Irene Stroben. I'm the president of Appleton Area NOW in Wisconsin. We received a grant from the National NOW Foundation to help with a project called No Simple Exit: Understanding the Risks, Realities, and Resources Surrounding Divorce in the Context of Domestic Violence. We have a great attorney lined up who's been working in the legal aid area for over 11 years. And then we will have resources available to help our attendees understand what support is available.
I think we all are aware enough to know that that moment in time of separation is probably the most dangerous to the woman, it's usually a woman, and her children. So they need to be, you know, eyes open to what could happen and what the resources are that are available to them when they take that step. So part of what we're trying to create is just education and awareness, what would be involved. And then second, here are the resources that you can tap into to make that decision, to go through that transition, and what comes afterwards.
We are on Facebook as Appleton Area NOW. We also have an Instagram by that same handle. You can find us at appletonareanow.org. That's dot O-R-G.
Kim Villanueva (19:21)
And we're back with Tony Porter, the CEO of A Call to Men. Tony, your work is so important because it talks about questioning masculinity and finding something more positive. So what does good, positive masculinity look like to you, and how does it feel?
Tony Porter (19:38)
Good, positive masculinity, again, is really more about embracing humanity. But if we were going to call it masculinity, it would be men being open to share their feelings and emotions. It would be men having the ability to ask for help, right? It'll be men reaching toward being their authentic selves, no longer being a role self, but to embrace their whole self. It'd be men living outside of the norms of this man box. It would be men who are nurturing, who are kind, who are loving. It'll be men who practice unconditional love.
Rose Brunache (20:16)
So I follow these discussions about male loneliness online and on social media. And a lot of men say that women oftentimes make them feel that they can't talk about their feelings, that women have the expectation of masculinity. Is this something that you've come across?
Tony Porter (20:32)
There's truth in that. It's not an absolute. Many women will adhere to the same principles of masculinity as defined by men. So if I say, as men, we most respect men who are tough, who are strong, who are dominating, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, then that might be the man that a woman loves and looks to partner with, right? Because that's the man that other men respect. She might even do that just out of a place of protection, because she knows that she's going to be protected by this man. She might do it from a place of, you know, her socialization. I mentioned it earlier: a mother, a single mom particularly, is going to raise her son in many cases to be respected by men, right? And she's doing her best to figure that out, right? And so she may be teaching her son to really live in the confines of that man box so that he's respected by other men.
So I can find truth in that statement, but I wouldn't get carried away with it, because there are just so many women who, you know, are appalled by those same characteristics of masculinity and would love to be partnered with men who are loving, who are kind, who are gentle, who are authentic, who are all the opposites, or who are living simply outside of that man box, right? That's the man that they're looking for.
So far too often, you know, when you talk about this epidemic of men and loneliness, which is real, instead of looking to therapy or other interventions to change their lives, they're leaning into spaces of the manosphere and those various avenues. And in those spaces, nine out of 10 of the ills that men experience will be blamed on women. So if that's where you're hanging out to figure out why you're lonely, then the messages you're going to be getting are rooted in misogyny, and they're going to blame women for your experiences. If you're hanging out in spaces where you just want to be a better person and have a more active and full life, you're not going to get the message that women are the root cause of your problems.
Kim Villanueva (22:54)
Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the topic of the manosphere, because that's an issue that young women are struggling with. They don't know how to push back against the messages that young men are receiving when they explore the manosphere. Do you have suggestions on how we can push back against those messages that are so negative and so anti-woman?
Tony Porter (23:11)
I'm always cautious of giving women the responsibility to put in the work for men, because they're putting in so much work already. So when I think about the work of challenging the manosphere, I think about men and what we can do. I'm coming back to that large majority of men. And many of us are not associated with or spending any time in those spaces, those manosphere spaces. The manosphere is fierce. But what we haven't done is put the energy into developing a voice to counter it. And that's why they're ahead of us, because they put a lot of energy into developing a voice to create this space. And so a big part of our work is really just titled Your Influence, Your Platform, right? And helping men to use the influence they have, right? By creating a platform, meaning what you choose to elevate, right? And helping them to develop a voice.
Men who have the ear of men. So we spend a lot of time in sports. We spend a lot of time with faith leaders. We spend a lot of time with military men. We spend a lot of time with the men that men look up to. Now, these men, you know, they also fit in many cases very firmly into this man box. But when you have a man that men look up to who is speaking about these issues, now you have an opportunity to have an audience. Men stop, men listen.
Rose Brunache (24:41)
Unfortunately, masculinity is in the news a lot lately, from school shootings to campus sexual assault, as we've seen recently at Cornell University. We've talked about the man box. What are the messages in that box that boys receive that make them either go along with or violate consent like that?
Tony Porter (24:59)
At A Call to Men, we have a curriculum called LIVE RESPECT, and in it there's about a dozen different classroom topics. Well, one of the topics is on consent. And we did a survey of boys at the beginning of the curriculum. Only 19% of boys really clearly understood what consent meant. And we only had one lesson on consent, but by the end of the lesson, we flipped that number, whereby 85% clearly understood what consent meant. We're not talking to boys enough about it, is one thing. And consent has expanded in its definition, which is a good thing. We know that just not saying no does not mean it's a yes. So we're teaching boys: no, you're looking for an enthusiastic yes.
But the thing that really comes up for me with your question, when I'm thinking about boys and I'm thinking about these incidents we're having on college campuses, as you're alluding to: what are we as parents teaching our sons as they go off to college? What are we as guardians and bonus parents and just adults in a boy's life teaching? See, we will teach our sons on their way off to college to never assault a young woman. He knows that. But are we teaching him at the same time to look out for a young woman who is or is about to be assaulted? And we're not. We're not.
You know what most parents will say? "Well, I hope he would. I think he would." Did you teach him to? And most of us, our answer to that question would be, "No, I didn't teach him to do that." That's the root of the work of A Call to Men. Most men don't perpetrate violence against women and girls, but the problem is we're silent about the violence.
Rose Brunache (26:49)
Do you think some men are afraid? In the manosphere, they call men who protect women and stand up for women white knights, or they'll call them manginas, or weird names. And do you think that there's a fear of retaliation in men standing up for women?
Tony Porter (27:06)
There's no question about it, right? So remember, I said earlier: the glue that keeps the man box together is homophobia, the fear of being perceived as gay, right? We teach boys, who later become men, to define what it means to be a man by distancing themselves from the experience of girls, who later become women. And in many cases, the first time we really give boys permission to have an interest in the experience of girls is around sexual conquest, right? Outside of that, we're teaching boys to distance themselves. All these dynamics are in play. In many cases, again, as men, we're just operating off of tradition, what we've been taught. We're not stopping to really think and challenge.
Yeah, those names, they work, and they will stifle some of us until coaches and men of influence correct that and step in, again using their influence and platform to say, "Nah, maybe that's the way it used to be, but that's not the way it is anymore."
Kim Villanueva (28:16)
We always try to end on a message of hope. So I'm wondering, do you have some stories to share from your work with young men and boys that keep you hopeful and keep you going in the work?
Tony Porter (28:28)
We're recognizing the organization next year as 25 years old as a nonprofit organization. And I started doing the work about five, six years before that. So I have about a generation in. I've seen growth, I've seen change in the human service arena. I'm not doing a cartwheel up and down the hallway, because we've got a lot of work to do, but I have been blessed to be at it long enough to have seen institutional as well as individual change.
Kim Villanueva (28:55)
Well, Tony, thank you so much for joining us today and talking with us, and for sharing the amazing work of A Call to Men.
Tony Porter (29:01)
Thank you all so much for having me.
Kim Villanueva (29:07)
The Iran War, a conflict that has not been approved by Congress, has cost nearly $50 billion. It's also cost thousands of lives. That $50 billion is enough to fund the entire Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known as WIC, for nearly seven years. That money, if sent to Americans who needed Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, or SNAP, would give everyone who needed it more than $1,000 for food. Instead, this money is being used to kill when it could be used to help and feed people. And I hope you'll join me and the National Organization for Women in standing against this conflict.
Kim Villanueva (29:47)
Rose, that was such a big conversation. What did you think about it?
Rose Brunache (29:51)
The conversation was wonderful, and I think that, unfortunately, men and boys are more likely to listen to other men and boys. And so when a man says something, I think it's going to resonate more.
Kim Villanueva (30:04)
Right. I was really interested in the perspective that Tony brought, that men need to step up, because I think women have been saying that for a long time. And the fact that Tony and his organization are willing to encourage men and teach men how to step up and be accountable and responsible is really good.
Rose Brunache (30:21)
Yeah. The conversation has really left me hopeful, because I do think that there are larger discussions about the male loneliness crisis. And I think some of that is due to the box that men think that they're in. And it's framed as men being the victim, which hopefully will change, into men taking that loneliness and trying to discover that they're not the victim per se, and to not redirect that rage towards women, and to realize that it's all connected. This loneliness and these gender roles are connected.
Kim Villanueva (30:53)
Right. I like that Tony described masculinity as something that should expand beyond the traditional idea of male roles and female roles. And really, we're all human beings, and we need to embrace the best of being human. It's conversations like this that really make me realize that having this type of podcast is so important. So, listeners, I hope you got the same information and the same inspiration that we did. We'd love to hear your reflections. Give us a call at the number in the show notes, or send us a voice memo at feminismnow at now dot org.
Rose Brunache (31:23)
Thank you all for joining us, and we'll see you next time.