Being a V-Man is recognizing that we men are privileged. This means that we men often claim the privilege of being the head of our households – that we men sometimes claim the privilege of making financial decisions at home. We are aware that men can claim a higher status than women. We are aware that if we are white, we can claim undeserved privilege over other races.
As a V-Man, I know that we were raised this way. Our fathers and even our mothers passed this on to us by modeling what their parents had modeled to them. We see it in movies and on the TV and in our daily lives – everywhere. As boys we are raised with the Four Basic Rules of Masculinity:1
1. No Sissy Stuff! Reject all things feminine.
2. Be a Big Wheel! A bumper sticker put it this way: ‘He who has the most toys when he dies – wins.’
3. Be as sturdy as an oak tree! What makes a man a man is that he is reliable in a crisis. And what makes him reliable in a crisis is that he resembles an inanimate object – a rock, a pillar, a tree.
4. Give ‘em Hell! Give off the aura of daring and aggression. Take risks; live life on the edge.
The single greatest obstacle to women’s equality [and safety] is our behavior resulting from our sense of privilege.
You are a V-Man if you are a man who believes that women and men are created equal, that your role in a relationship is to help each other grow mentally and spiritually and to protect the women in your life from harm, that you understand your own gender and recognize and honor the feminine within you, that you recognize that power and status is not everything, and that being a man does not mean we have to resemble an inanimate object such as a rock, a pillar, or a tree.
We recognize that the differences between men and women are fewer than the differences within each of our respective genders.
A V-Man recognizes that most domestic violence involves male anger directed against their women partners. Boys are not born to be violent, or to be superior to girls. These attitudes and behaviors are learned through stereotypes of what our society thinks it means to act and behave like a man. V-Men know this and want to break that cycle. Thank you!
1Michael Kimmel
Want to know more about gender issues? Interested in V-Man workshops? Contact Peace and Justice of La Luz at pajoll@zianet.com — Visit our website at http://pajoll.org
