William, a retired engineer, blogs on men’s issues on The Illustrated Empathy Gap http://empathygap.uk/ and was the author of the book "The Empathy Gap: Male Disadvantages and the Mechanisms of Their Neglect" (2019). He volunteers with the Welsh charity FNF-Both Parents Matter Cymru and will be talking about some of the charity’s work.
This video is one of 120 videos published for the sixth International Conference on Men's Issues (2020), a conference originally planned for Sydney, Australia, but later turned into a virtual conference due to Covid-19.
From #metoo to the American Psychological Association’s guidelines pathologizing “masculinity” as harmful, to Gillette’s razor adverts blaming all men for the actions of a damaged few, ideologically motivated groups have used unchallenged narratives of female victimhood to promote damaging stereotypes about men and boys, masculinity and men’s relationships to each other.
More than ever before, recognition of men’s issues is needed. Men and boys deserve compassion, they deserve consideration for their unique needs, and they deserve our support.
Men and boys also deserve respect for their unique contributions to society and an end to the promotion of unkind stereotyping of being harmful, abusive, toxic, selfish and hateful. We would not tolerate this stereotyping directed towards any other group.
We are in an era of unprecedented ideological conflict. By reducing men’s ability to take a positive identity from their masculinity we are encouraging young men to pursue ever more radical ideologies to find a place to belong. In turn we are also encouraging young women to embrace an identity as society’s victims rather than it’s equal co-creators.
International Conferences on Men’s Issues (ICMIs) deal with issues that disproportionately (or uniquely) affect men and boys. The inaugural conference was held in 2014, and since 2016 the conferences have been held annually:
- Detroit (2014)
- London (2016)
- Gold Coast, Australia (2017)
- London (2018)
- Chicago (2019)
Playlists of all 100+ presentations at the conferences are here, as well as playlists of the presentations at the Messages 4 Men conferences in London (2017-19):
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKhX1c3ow6BrzdzP3ydpeZQ/playlists
The conferences deal with the social and legal issues that disproportionately (or uniquely) affect men and boys.
This year’s conference is being held online, with the publication of 120 videos (one per hour, every hour) from midday, Saturday, 14 November, to midday, Thursday, 19 November, 2020 (International Men’s Day), Sydney time (the event was originally going to be held in Sydney).
Our thanks to Tom Caulfield, Technical Director at Justice for Men & Boys, for his impressive launch video (20:11):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bC13eFl_5E
