“Who would you be if you were allowed to walk into your full self?” – Kenyon Farrow In this powerful panel discussion (which is also a quick watch at less than 15-minutes), five Black gender activist-scholars grapple with the role of patriarchy in their/our masculine identities, families, relationships, and communities. While the discussion poses more…
Over the last year and a half, discussions of abolition, defunding the police, re-funding social services, etc. have been widely debated, but not unexpectedly, few actual initiatives have to come to fruition. One of the areas, however, where some productive shifting of funding, staffing, and vision has occurred is in relation to school resource officers,…
As the dumpster fire that is the year 2019 comes to a close, I want the final post of the year and decade to be one of hope, love, and joy. May the year 2020 be the start of a new era of healthy masculinities rooted in empathy, interconnection, and care for the self and…
“The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed, exactly as it is.” ~~~ One of the first things I was taught when I began my 40-hour training to become a certified Advocate for victim/survivors of sexual violence, was that our job was to “support and…
It should not come as a surprise that some of the best resources I have found for parents to discuss seemingly tough topics with their young children comes from Planned Parenthood. Discussing bodies and bodily autonomy is a topic covered in a variety of ways on The Bridges We Burn as we believe it is…
This past August I had the pleasure of attending the 2018 National Sexual Assault Conference in Anaheim with frequent contributor and member of our Board of Directors, Brian Heilman (also representing his work with Promundo), along with Aapta Garg, Promundo Program Officer, and Elizabeth Miller, Director of the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, Children’s…
Empowering children with information and knowledge is one of the most effective means of protecting them from sexual abuse and at the same time fostering empathy and consent-based relationships. In the United States, we often want to shelter children from sex and sexuality, which tends to create a culture of shame and confusion around our…
Comedy can be an incredible tool for furthering social justice by challenging seats of power and shining light on uncomfortable truths. Alternatively, comedy is often wielded by those with power—straight white men—to perpetuate oppression and discrimination by picking on people marginalized by society; by punching down. In Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix special, “Nanette,” the Tasmanian comic squares her…
