You can't fault Jeffrey O'Brien for feeling frustrated.
The past few months have brought a deluge of headlines about violent and abusive aspects of stereotypical masculinity, but few of those stories have mentioned what O'Brien, an expert in gender violence prevention, knows to be true: The decades-long movement to help boys and men liberate themselves from the constraints of conventional manhood is quietly, slowly changing lives.
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To the outsider who isn't familiar with O'Brien, vice president of the Institute for Sport & Social Justice, and his peers, such progress is hard to see.
What we notice instead is the hand-wringing over how, when some boys and men feel adrift amidst rapid social and economic change, they may turn to extremist, racist, or misogynist ideas. For insight about their plight, we read glossy profiles of Jordan Peterson, a psychologist turned pop philosopher whose wide-ranging advice for men happens to include reestablishing their dominance.
"It gets a little frustrating when you've been in this movement for awhile to see some of these conversations."
After a young man who identifies as "involuntary celibate" drives a van into a group of pedestrians in Toronto, perhaps to kill women as revenge for his loneliness, we're more likely to be curious about the twisted corners of the internet promoting the "incel" worldview than focus on boys and young men working to stop gender violence.
"It gets a little frustrating when you've been in this movement for awhile to see some of these conversations as if we haven’t learned a lot already," says O'Brien.
O'Brien leads the Huddle Up initiative at the Institute for Sport & Social Justice, which brings trainings about gender violence prevention into locker rooms and military settings. Launched in 2016, Huddle Up has since trained more than 10,000 participants, teaching them how to confront sexist abuse and engaging them in rich conversations about how macho behavior can harm both women and men.
This Getty image is part of the company's effort to create more complex representations of masculinity.Credit: james whitaker / getty"We work with some of the more hegemonic masculine groups," says O'Brien. "They want to talk about this. They’re in a different place than most people would think."
That eagerness is but one sign to O'Brien that efforts to reach boys and men with a progressive message about gender violence and masculinity are effective -- no matter how much media and public attention is paid to Peterson's popular YouTube lectures, or the retrograde, sometimes violent commentary and behavior that leeches out of various 4chan and Reddit message boards.
While the movement can't claim someone as famous as Peterson, there are high-profile intellectuals and advocates, like author and educator Jackson Katz, sociologist Michael Kimmel, and activist Tony Porter, whose TED Talks, videos, and books present an alternate view of masculinity, one that respects traits like athleticism, hard work, and ambition but isn't premised on winning in relationships, at work, and in society at all costs.
Another image from Getty's effort to change how we envision masculinity.Credit: lucy lambriex / gettyThat view is catching on in Hollywood as well. Actor Justin Baldoni gave a TEDWomen talk last December called "Why I'm done trying to be 'man enough." Terry Crews, an actor and former NFL player, has spoken openly about how masculinity can become like a "cult."
An established network of nonprofit groups, including the Institute for Sport & Social Justice, Mentors in Violence Prevention (founded by Katz), A Call To Men (founded by Porter), Promundo, Men Can Stop Rape, and The Partnership for Youth, has also created programming and campaigns specifically to help boys and men stop gender violence and cultivate a freeing definition of masculinity wherein emotional vulnerability and compassion are virtues, not weaknesses.
"I think what really carries a lot of us is we get to do the real work with boys and men and not just bombastically generate hits on our websites or book sales," says O'Brien.
This image was included in Getty's roundup of photos focusing on complex portrayals of masculinity.Credit: Hero Images / gettyThe Men of Strength (MOST) Club, a youth curriculum developed by Men Can Stop Rape that teaches dating, relationship, and social-emotional skills, has chapters at more than 100 sites across the country. Since its founding in 2000, the program has reached more than two million youth and education professionals.
Neil Irvin, executive director of Men Can Stop Rape, says that boys and men are "performing dominant masculinity" because they're trying to protect themselves from a society that targets any male that steps out of line with ridicule and humiliation.
"These boys, living up to that limited, narrow definition, they find themselves vulnerable and succumb to attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that promote violence against girls and women," he says.
This image is part of Getty's effort to provide its customers with more authentic photos of masculinity.Credit: Igor Ustynskyy / gettyStill, Irvin feels optimistic about how the definition of manhood is evolving. Irvin personally never thought he'd see the day when "powerful white men were held accountable for sexual assault that occurred five, 10, 15 years prior."
"We’re moving there," he says. "This is a thousand-year shift that we’re trying to turn. It is not going to turn on a dime."
"This is a thousand-year shift that we’re trying to turn."
Meanwhile, major brands like Axe, Dove Men+Care, and Getty see the business case for creating more expansive representations of masculinity. Axe, the men's care brand that once gleefully sold consumers sexism in a bottle, launched a campaign last year that rejects macho stereotypes. For the past few years, Dove Men+Care has run ads for Father's Day that focus on men as caregivers. And earlier this year, Getty named "masculinity undone" one of its visual trends for 2018.
Andrew Delaney, director of content for the photo service, says internal research data revealed surprising year-over-year growth between 2016 and 2017 in searches for images related to, for example, "man meditation" (126 percent), "man stressed" (105 percent), "gay dads" (53 percent), and "depression man" (31 percent). Getty also looked at pop culture, consumer behavior, and advertising trends and saw similar interest in more complex portrayals of men and masculinity. One of the things Getty did next was ask its community of more than 250,000 contributors to submit photos to meet that demand.
"We’re seeing beautiful imagery coming in that touches on a much less clichéd way of describing a man," says Delaney. "The important thing for me is that this isn’t something we’ve just plucked out of the air; this is based on hard data and deep research."
This photo is part of the "beautiful imagery" Getty is receiving in response to its requests for different images of manhood.Credit: Thomas Barwick / gettyO'Brien understands that progress in this movement can feel intangible, like "holding sand in your hands."
Yet he's confident that boys and men are ready to embrace a vision of masculinity that isn't interlaced with dominance and harm, to others or one's self.
While O'Brien and his peers may not currently have viral YouTube presences or new bestselling books, they've spent the past 20 years laying the groundwork for this pivotal moment, and they're not about to give up now.
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