Boys Will Be…Themselves (If We Let Them)
Next Gen Men is featured in a new Canadian documentary called Boys Will Be…Themselves, which explores the questions we’ve been grappling with—both as an organization and more broadly as a society—about what it means to ‘be a man.’
Next Gen Men staff (both current and former), friends of NGM, youth from our programs, and our colleagues in the field of gender justice all took part—and our Community Manager, Veronika, worked on the film as Head Researcher. Today, we sit down with Veronika and Youth Program Manager Jonathon to discuss the making of the documentary.
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How to Support Boys Emotionally
A smoky small-town rodeo arena might seem like an unconventional place to situate an analogy about supporting boys’ emotional lives, but there are three main qualities of pickup riders that have become part of how I envision working with boys.
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Where does Men’s Liberation Come From?
In a previous episode of Modern Manhood we discussed the 1900s to set the scene for men’s involvement in the suffragette movement; now we’re moving on to the Men’s Liberation in the 1970s.
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A Century of Men in Feminism
It is fascinating that ideas of male liberation were being discussed more than a hundred years exactly before Next Gen Men began. It encouraged me to dig deeper from the history that I already knew about male movements.
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What Does Testosterone Have To Do With Men?
We all think we know what testosterone is, but where is the line between fact and fiction? Well, it’s complicated. Testosterone has become more than just a hormone — it’s also a commodity and a symbol. How did one hormone become so intertwined with what masculinity is supposed to mean?
To find out, let’s take a deep dive decline into the three sides of testosterone.
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How Men Fit Into Feminism Across History
Men’s involvement in feminism pre-dates our Next Gen Men community by more than a hundred years. From the UK to the US, as early as the mid-1800s, there were men who supported women’s right to vote.
Men’s support for women’s suffrage was certainly slow and sparse to start — and indeed many men found the idea laughable — but it grew steadily toward the turn of the century.
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5 Lessons We’ve Learned From Hosting Online Programming For Boys
Since we’re writing the Status of Boys Report (thanks to the Next Gen Menbers’ support!) we’ve been working hard to understand and unpack the intertwining relationship between adolescents, online trends and masculinity that young boys are navigating every day. All these topics have us reflecting on our very own online Summer Camp we hosted online to connect with the boys we would have normally seen in person. Read all the lessons, Jonathon Reed, Next Gen Men’s Youth Manager, learned while navigating our first version of what is now our free Boys Club hosted on Discord.
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A 10th-Grader’s Response to Andrew Tate
A man can be as feminine he wants, and still be a ‘strong’ man: Femininity will never make a man weak. So to any comments like ‘be a man,’ ‘toughen up,’ or ‘dress like you’re supposed to’…I say, I shall not! I shall dance, filled with joy. And that does not make me any less of a man.
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The False Dichotomy of ‘You’re Either Sexist or Feminist’
Sometimes, especially on social media, folks wan to simplify the world by creating false dichotomies (i.e. you’re either feminist OR sexist) that cover up the complex ways that people encounter and perpetrate oppression both as individuals and within systems. The reality is typically more complicated.
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How to Sustain a Positive Masculinity Program
In the years since #MeToo, I’ve seen a question increasingly materializing among the best schools: how do we sustain positive change? If you’re reading this, you probably know why schools should be talking about positive masculinity. You might already be starting to put this into practice. So let’s talk about what’s next.
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How to Get Boys to Show Up to a Program on Masculinity
In some ways, the program itself is the easy part. The hard part is getting a troop of boys and young men to show up in the first place. At Next Gen Men, we’ve been engaging boys and young men in gender equality for a long time, so we’re here to share some insights we’ve gained along the way.
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How to Be an Involved Dad
When it comes to school performance, behaviour, and social skills, children with involved dads perform better than those without. In many ways, by being affectionate, open, caring, nurturing and present, you are giving your children a head start to have healthy minds, hearts, and relationships.
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