The Good Men Project Magazine

A little bit of background.

I attended undergrad at Randolph College, founded as Randolph-Macon Women's College, from 2005 to 2009.  My first year, the college was a women's college that strove to mold young girls into brave, mature, intelligent women who could go toe-to-toe with their male counterparts in every field, from music to political science to biology.  By my sophomore year, the Board of Trustee's decided to transform the women's college to a co-ed school, a decision that the students fought as much as possible with class strikes and coalitions, but lost in the end.  The first co-ed class came to Randolph in the fall of 2007.

I will admit now, since this will come up later, Randolph(-Macon) had a large impact on how I identify myself as a woman, and that identity sometimes seems nebulous.  I want to be an empowered woman - I don't want to be branded as a raging lesbian feminazi (and it's sad how often women's college graduates have to disabuse people of that very notion).  But that's a different post all together.  For now, I just wanted to link up to The Good Men Project Magazine.  A friend of mine posted a link to this article on her facebook and it sparked my interest.  Hugo Schwyzer, a professor and an activist, writes about SlutWalk, a campaign started in Canada in response to a police officer's remark that if women didn't want to be raped, they shouldn't dress like sluts.  Schwyzer's comment that "[he has] come to believe that there’s one lie that’s bigger than any other we tell about men: we cannot reconcile our arousal and our compassion. In other words, the lie says we can’t truly respect what we also desire." struck a chord with me.  It's refreshing to see a man, any man, stand up for women's basic rights to be respected as a human being, rather than an object or an archetype that must be revered or feared.  
Further information on SlutWalk can be found here.  Take a look and read the stories.  Satellite walks have been going on for weeks since the original SlutWalk in Toronto.  If there's one near you, I urge you to join in.  


I ventured to read another article entitled "What Women Don't Tell You".  It sounded like yet another vapid Cosmo/Glamor/Marie Claire article on How to Have Better Sex NOW, but I was honestly surprised by how well thought-out the content was.  Writer Amanda Marcotte starts the article by stating that women are taught from birth to coddle the male ego, especially in bed, and because of this they often don't speak up if their sexual needs aren't being met.  To put it bluntly - I am that girl.  Outspoken in public, but I have a unfortunate tendency to get lock jaw when it comes to having a relationship with the opposite sex.  Working on it.  


In short, The Good Men Project is definitely worth adding it to your bookmarks.  


Plenty more to come in the next few weeks.  More on gender and feminism, much more on identity, and far more on religion.