On this week’s episode of Talking Radical Radio, Ian Ford talks about working with other men against the violence faced by women and to transform masculinity.
Many people who work to end the violence faced by women and other gender-oppressed people have long pointed out that responses which focus on changing the behaviour of women — don’t go there, don’t wear that, and so on — are not only inadequate but are also sexist and unjust. Instead, we must work to change both the men and the institutions that are responsible for the vast majority of this violence. This is not, as today’s interview participant makes clear, a matter of bashing men, but of working with men to challenge the ideas and attitudes and practices we all learn, across many different spheres of our lives, that reinforce and reproduce social relations of gender oppression. And it involves introducing men to the idea that not only are we privleged by that particular facet of how our social world is organized, but we are also constrained by the dominant ways we are taught to do masculinity, and that both a more just world and a richer realization of our humanity can only come through opposing gender oppression and gender-based violence. Ian Ford works with a community-based education project called I Can MANifest Change. He talks to me about the work that they do with men and boys.
For more information about I Can MANifest Change, click here.
Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada through in-depth interviews that concentrate not on current events or the crisis of the moment, but on giving people involved in a broad range of social change work a chance to take a longer view as they talk about what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. To learn more about the show in general, click here.
You can also learn more about ways to listen or go to the show’s page on Rabble.ca. To learn more about suggesting grassroots groups and organizations for future shows, click here. For details on the show’s theme music, click here.
Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Sudbury, Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.
