Groups of committed people can have a significant effect on movies and television shows, something I learned well when working in gay activism in the 1990s. NYC Men for Social Justice will monitor the media and will respond with criticism or praise to the leaders responsible for creating media content. When women are portrayed as one-dimensional sex objects, valued only for their looks and hotness, we will speak out. When men are portrayed as fascistic macho men, invulnerable emotionally, and purveyors of conflict and violence, we will speak out.
Teachers are major socializers of gender norms so we will work with schools to promote more humane gender values. And we will confront the lack of school challenges to bullying of boys and girls, and LGBT students. We will fight against the right-wing attempt to erase women, LGBT people, and African-American people from libraries and from the curriculum. Challenges to racism in schools will be part of our work as well.
Feminists have played a major role in urging gender equality in the raising of children. If men don’t join in this process, we tacitly condone the absence of fathers from child-rearing. I know from my students that some fathers can and do urge their daughters to be financially independent and on guard against predatory men. We can join such fathers by supporting gender equality. And when fathers do what one of my students witnessed in a toy store, calling his son gay because his son liked some girls’ toys, we can do what my student did and call out the inhumanity of this fatherly response. We will do such calling out in an organized way, helping to build a movement for teaching children humane gender values.
