Featured Meetup!

Beth ♦ April 30, 2018

Thursday, May 31

FFNY: Dear Feminist Men…   

Each month we will feature a regular meetup for one of our participating organizations. We hope you will visit many of these events and learn more about each group.

For May our Featured group is Feminist Freethinkers

Tonight we have a guest host , David Browning. We will be discussing Men in Feminism from a variety of angles.
David Browning is a project manager, surfer, and radical feminist ally living in Ridgewood, Queens.

Some of the questions we will address:

Men/women: Do you think men can be feminists? Do you prefer to call them feminist allies? Do you care?

Men: Do you ever find yourself speaking over women at work, home, or in feminist groups? How do you recognize this and address it?
Women: Do you ever find male allies speaking over women at work, home, or in feminist groups? How do you recognize this and address it?

Men: Do you feel that your feminism is ever more about your feminist identification than it is about feminist issues themselves? How do you recognize this and address it?
Women: Do you feel that your feminism is ever more about the male allies in your lives’ feminist identification than it is about feminist issues themselves? How do you recognize this and address it?

Men: How do you examine your life to you to make sure you are living true to feminist values?
Women: How do you examine the lives of the male feminist allies close to you to make sure they are living true to feminist values?

Men/women: How do you keep from centering your feminist work on building positive masculinity, which centers feminism on men instead of women?

Men: You don’t want to center feminism on men, and you also don’t want to solve women’s problems in a way that ignores their agency; what principles and strategies do you align yourself with in order to keep your focus where it should be (for example, on following and supporting women, or on taking the lead in male-only environments but deferring in coed environments, or on imagining yourself as a backup singer, etc.)?

Men: Who are your male feminist ally role models? Is this even possible, if an ally’s role is best performed in the background?
Women: Who are the male feminist ally role models you recommend to your male feminist ally acquaintances? Is this even possible, if an ally’s role is best performed in the background?

Men/women: What revelations have you had about your own privilege?

Men/women: What is your strategy for feminist discovery –> self-examination –> growth?

Men/women: Do you focus more of your energy on addressing internalized patriarchy (for example, improving the way you interact with your significant other) or external patriarchy (for example, improving the way your father interacts with your mother)?

Men/women: How do you balance self-examination and activism?

Men/women: What sexist mistakes have you made / have you ever caught yourself being sexist? How did you recover?

Men: What religious or philosophical ideologies help you as a feminist ally?
Women: What religious or philosophical ideologies help you give advice to the male feminist allies close to you?

Men: How do you manage to amplify women’s voices without speaking for them and putting men in the spotlight?
Women: How do you advise the male feminist allies close to you to amplify women’s voices without speaking for them and putting men in the spotlight?

Some articles to get you started:

What Does It Mean To Be A Male Ally https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-male-ally_us_596d49d8e4b05561da5a5a05

Beware the Male Feminist http://www.thecrimson.com/column/femme-fatale/article/2017/3/23/hu-beware-male-feminist/

Disney Princes Reimagined as Feminist Allies https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/20/disney-princes-reimagined-as-feminist-allies

To sign up for this meeting please go to https://www.meetup.com/Feminist-Freethinkers-of-NY/events/250098707/https://www.meetup.com/cfinyc/events/cvjzfpyxgbmc/

FFNY is a welcoming home to explore women’s issues and the role of women in the secualr and humanist community, as well as host to social activities that encourage a supportive and vibrant community.

6:30PM- 8:30PM

New York Society For Ethical Culture

2 West 64th Street- 5th Floor