OBRM -- other & beyond 'real men': OBRM is now on Twitter

about the editor and this blog

I work as a national security analyst for a ‘think tank’. I spend about half my time writing critical studies of U.S. defense policy (that should help you locate my political leanings) and the other half of my time goes to making information about national security issues available on the Web so that millions of people in the United States and around the world are better informed and therefore better prepared to engage in the politics of security.

In 2004 I watched while George Bush and Karl Rove successfully called John Kerry’s masculinity into question around a war in which Kerry had served with distinction while Bush had used family connections to avoid going. Seemed like an unlikely formula for political success! But Bush and Rove used male insecurity and female attachment to the most fundamental of bargains in patriarchy (men protecting the women folk) to build an election victory.

I realized that in order to make it harder for men like George Bush to lead us into unnecessary wars we need to free as many males as possible from the tyranny of wondering if they are ‘real men’ -- so that they can confidently say ‘no’ to war (as well as other destructive behaviors.) And that will take men organizing their own liberation from the confines of conventional masculinity.

A friend called my attention to the literature of people who have trans-gendered. Reading their stories brought home to me how much of what we experience as our gender is socially constructed. If people can change their gender by choice and if we allow ourselves to think outside the confines of the binary Male/Female, the possibilities for liberating males is huge and obvious.

In this blog I will build on ideas and practice for the liberation of positive new masculinities. I will call attention to instances of the expression of new masculinities and to collective action in support of liberation and an end to gender violence.

There is so much that needs exploration. I invite your thoughts, dear reader, and will post those I judge to add something meaningful to a mutual exploration of promising new gender space. Write me at otherbeyond(at)gmail.com

Charles Knight

OBRM -- other & beyond 'real men'

Thursday, February 19, 2009

OBRM is now on Twitter

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OBRM -- other & beyond 'real men'

Thursday, February 19, 2009

OBRM is now on Twitter

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the editor

about the editor and this blog

Blog Archive

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