Some answers for the hard questions about growing up male in America.
Beyond Men and Masculinity
- Description
- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
This is not a film about men versus women. BEYOND MEN AND MASCULINITY explores how men see themselves, how they relate to the people they care about and how the personal affects the political. What happens when men are taught to shut themselves off from their feelings because they want to be strong and independent? What is the connection between shame and male violence? Why is it so difficult for us to appreciate kindness and compassion in men? And what role do women play in defining what is expected of men and masculinity? A discussion about these sometimes uncomfortable questions is more important today than ever. From the therapy room to the political battlefield, this provocative film offers a clear insight into why we need to look beyond traditional definitions of men and masculinity.
No reviews available.
Citation
Main credits
Gabbay, Alex (film director)
Gabbay, Alex (director of photography)
Other credits
Music, Wajid Yaseen; editor, Dhritiman Das; camera, Alex Gabbay.
Distributor subjects
Cross Cultural Views on Masculinity; Challenging Toxic Masculinity; Human Psychology and Well-Being; Redefining Gender RolesKeywords
Masculinity,Toxic Masculinity,Psychology,Gender Roles,Multicultural,Gender Stereotypes; "Beyond Men and Masculinity"; GOOD DOCS
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MONKEY AND ME FILMS PRESENTS |
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BEYOND MEN AND MASCULINITY 56 MINS |
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00:20 |
RUNNING FROM SHAME
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00:27 |
ASTON: BOSTON, USA
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00:30
01:39 |
ASTON: TERRY REAL ASTON: FAMILY THERAPIST ASTON: AUTHOR
TERRY REAL: One man told me this horrifying story, I’ll tell it to you. He was um a hockey dad. And he was in a hockey game. And this father, this boy did okay, not great. And this father was excoriating him, full voice in front of a 100 people, 200 people in the audience, screaming at him. And the son started to cry. And he started screaming at him for crying. And this man observed this boy, maybe 13, 14, goes up into the stands where his mother is sitting. He sits next to his mother. Still in tears, the mother reaches out an arm to comfort him. And he punches the mother in the face. That's the transmission of patriarchy.
TERRY REAL: The big preoccupation throughout my life has been male power. What is healthy male power? I've never seen it.
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TIMING??? |
ASTON: MENS’S GROUP THERAPY SESSION ASTON: BOSTON, USA
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Joe: I, you know, I don't get angry at somebody that's outside me.
TERRY REAL: Yeah
Joe: Until I've already completely shredded myself inside, um. And I've got, I've got nothing left to work on inside. So I, um.
TERRY REAL: You eat it and eat it and eat it. And then
Joe: Until badder arse comes flowing out.
TERRY REAL: Yeah, one, one day your, your partner says something that strikes you the wrong way. It all comes out.
Joe: Yeah. So, I think what I'm after here today, because I'm still, um thrashing myself about my inability to work in the world with other adults.
TERRY REAL: Uh, why don't we start with you, um, learning how to not thrash yourself so much? Let's take a little detour. How many men in this group give themselves a really hard time?
TERRY REAL: And how violent, is a really hard time?
Joe: Oh, God.
TERRY REAL: Most men have terrible relationships to themselves. They're more violent to themselves, than they are to other people. We judge ourselves based on performance, other people's opinions, what we have. That’s outside in self-esteem. Men in particular, rely on performance based esteem and when we talked about the fragile male ego, well, this is what it is. Its fragile, because there's no internal sense of self-worth. It's all based on how well you do, you know, this particular day. And uh, how well you did yesterday doesn't much count.
Doug: I think anger comes to me in two different ways, when I'm feeling cornered, um or have to do something. Life is demanding a reaction. And I’m, I'm feeling, um when I'm feeling traumatized, and that's, in that moment, I'm feeling a sense of I don't know what to do.
TERRY REAL: Yeah, get me from that to the rage or the anger.
Doug: Uh, I think its rage at being put in that position.
TERRY REAL: Okay.
Doug: Um, sort of feeling like, you know, this is not my doing or responsibility, but I'm the one who has to deal with this. You feel shame for not being able to get yourself out of it in a quote normal way. Um, you know, I think anger definitely kicks in at myself for not being one of those people who, um, you know, grew up who not traumatized or just grew up in, I don't know figured out some uh a better outlet
TERRY REAL: Okay.
Doug: for their trauma.
TERRY REAL: Okay. Trauma wasn't your fault, Doug.
Doug: Yeah.
TERRY REAL: But you take it on as shame. Okay. Yeah, feel that. Let the sadness wash over you, won't hurt you.
Doug: I think I always feel like the sadness is gonna hurt me or it does hurt me.
TERRY REAL: Listen, feelings will not hurt you. Running from feelings can kill you.
TERRY REAL: It is part of the essence of traditional masculinity that you can run from shame, helplessness, powerlessness into grandiosity, better than superiority, dominance, and revenge. And I think this is the root of male violence. You hurt me; I get to hit you twice as hard back. All perpetrators see themselves as angry victims, even while they're lashing out.
TERRY REAL: You know, for 50 years, feminist psychologists have correctly identified that the healing move for most girls and women is re-empowerment, finding their voice, and the wound is disempowerment, never having a voice or losing it. The wound for boys and men comes much earlier than girls. It's about three, four or five years old. And the wound is about disconnection. We teach them to disconnect from their feelings. We teach them to disconnect from vulnerability. We teach them to disconnect from other people. We call that being independent. It's a particular trauma that men learn to escape by moving from shame to grandiosity. Grandiosity is driving so much of what's difficult in men; grandiosity itself is a consequence of trauma that men did not ask for. That, that little boy did not ask for .
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07:30 |
THE NEED TO CONNECT
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ASTON: JUDY Y. CHU ASTON: AUTHOR ASTON: WHEN BOYS BECOME BOYS |
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Young girl: And what are you?
Young boy: I am a rock star and I’m playing a guitar.
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JUDY Y. CHU: There are at least two truths about boys that we tend to overlook or underestimate. And the first is that boys have relational capabilities.
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08:05 |
Young girl: Ahh! He gave me a kiss! I don’t like kisses!
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08:10 |
JUDY Y. CHU: The other truth about boys is that they are vulnerable.
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Young girl: It’s too cute.
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JUDY Y. CHU: And of course, the, only when we sit back and think about it, we know these things, but we still tend not to um acknowledge them or value them in boys, um to the point where vulnerability or relational capabilities, boys, they may recognize those things in themselves, but they know they shouldn't show other people. They know it's considered a feminine weakness, they know it's a liability; they might be seen as soft boys or sensitive boys, um. In fact, even adults, you know, most adults can think of, Oh yeah, I know a boy like that, who really cares about other people, who's, you know, so sweet and really kind and very gentle. But they'll always refer to those boys as being the exceptions.
JUDY Y. CHU: One of the things that kind of motivates boys to conform to group and cultural norms is exactly this desire to identify with and relate to the other boys. It's not that they they hear that there's this need to prove masculinity, and they do it in some abstract sense out of obligation- it’s that they're trying to connect.
JUDY Y. CHU: For instance, at this particular school, the boys had created a club called the mean team, and it was created by the boys, for the boys, for the expressed purpose of acting against the girls. It was also meant to help them define themselves in opposition to the girls. And so in the beginning, they wanted to call it the good team. But then they realize, wait, the girls are good, the girls are good and nice. So we have to, if we're boys be the opposite of the girls. So then it was either the bad team, or the mean team and the bad team just didn't. Wasn’t really, then something that they wanted to be called?
JUDY Y. CHU: When I asked them also, what does the mean team do? Like what's mean? Like they said, like, Oh, so if they are playing a game or something we might come by and try to disturb it like say talk during their game or something. It was never, you know causing physical harm. Sometimes the girls would chase them, and then they would get scared.
JUDY Y. CHU: But it got complicated because the mean team created a hierarchy among the boys. So there was a boss of the mean team. And when I interviewed Rob, who was not the boss of the mean team. He would say that Mike, the boss, well he's the boss. So he gets to decide what to do. And we have to do it. And I said, well, you know, what, if you don't want to do it? He goes, I do it anyway.
JUDY Y. CHU: And at one point, Rob, does think, well, I don't always want to do what the other boys are doing. And so he had this dilemma where he wanted to break away from the mean team. But he was worried that if he tried to, then all of the boys would gang up and just come after him.
JUDY Y. CHU: Another boy, Jake confided in me, he said, well, actually, I'm friends with all of the girls, but the mean team is not supposed to associate with the girls.
JUDY Y.CHU: This one boy displeased Mike the boss. And so he says, you know, you're fired from the mean team. You're on the nice team, you're a girl.
JUDY Y.CHU: Gender socialization involves and results in disconnections. They feel like, I have all these feelings, and there's nowhere for these feelings to go. And the fact that I even have them makes me an anomaly.
JUDY Y.CHU: That they have to disconnect from parts of themselves. They can't be fully present and genuinely engaged, then nobody will know them. This is this path to loneliness.
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12:16 |
EXPRESSSING MASCULINITTY
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12:25 |
ASTON: UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
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ASTON: CJ PASCOE ASTON: AUTHOR: DUDE, YOUR’RE A FAG ASTON: PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY ASTON: UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
CJ PASCOE: All right, so uh, I can just show you this is part of what sparked our interest in homophobic epithets on Twitter. If you look at this, no homophobes uh, website, it traces the uh prevalence of homophobic insults over time. So if you look right here, you can see that faggot has been used over 41 million times since uh, 2012, No Homo- 15 million. So gay- 13, and Dyke- 8.
CJ PASCOE: So when my co-author and I, Sarah Diefendorf, first started looking at this insult of No Homo in uh, online spaces, specifically on Twitter, we expected to find much what I saw offline with teenage boys, which is that they were being incredibly aggressive with one another, and they were putting each other down. And so we gathered a bunch of these uh examples of the use of No Homo. And what we found was something quite different.
CJ PASCOE: Almost across the board, the emotion that was expressed was a positive emotion, which is not what you would expect. Expressions of love, of liking things, of friendship, of missing one another.
CJ PASCOE: And so what we saw was really this quandary that young men are experiencing when it comes to masculinity, they have these expressions of devotion and love and care and even liking things, that they want to express.
CJ PASCOE: So, the insult of No Homo ironically, allows them to be more authentically themselves. But it also reinforces a particular meaning of masculinity, which suggests that, you know, real men wouldn't say this, right?
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14:42 |
LET’S TALK ABOUT IT
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14:51 |
ASTON: SAN FRANCISCO, USA
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15:07 |
ASTON: EVER FORWARD CLUB
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ASTON: ASHANTI BRANCH ASTON: FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ASTON: EVER FORWARD CLUB
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ASHANTI BRANCH: When I started at Ever Forward club in 2004, there were very few spaces that I saw people focusing on what the young men needs were. They think that they become a man when they can get a license or they're 21. They can drink. But we have this, like teenage years where you're like trying to figure it out. So we got boys walking around, have no purpose, have no value system around. Here's my role as a, a man in this community cuz I'm, I'm still I'm still a teenager, I’m not a little boy, and I'm not a man. I'm a teen. I'm a young man. So what is my role? Oh, nothing just to figure it out when I become a man. That's dangerous to have millions of teenage boys with no purpose, except to figure, wait for manhood, to then get serious about life.
ASHANTI BRANCH: Welcome, everybody. Welcome.
ASHANTI BRANCH: There's very little happening. I think in most of these schools that are helping students that have been in trouble, say, how do you come back? How do you go through this challenging life situation? And then restore yourself back, right? We just say, Okay, well, you're there for now, however long you need to be there, I believe we got to do some work around that. I think that we got to do some healing work.
ASHANTI BRANCH: So on the left side, it says front of mask, so we're gonna just, uh, on the left side, we're going to draw a mask. And so where it says front of mask, please draw a mask, okay.
ASHANTI BRANCH: On the same side, where you drew the mask, I want you to write three words, or three phrases that are qualities of yourself that you gladly let the world see. So what are qualities of yourself or characteristics of yourself that when you head out of your house to go see the world? What are three things you gladly let people see?
ASHANTI BRANCH: And now we're gonna move to the back of the mask, the back of the mask, are things we normally don't let people see we normally don't talk about. And I want you to write those where it says back of mask.
ASHANTI BRANCH: If we don't give men and boys, starting with boys, these tools to say, I'm hurting in a healthy way, then we're going to keep losing them, I believe. And that's what we keep saying.
ASHANTI BRANCH: Let's let's do this one. This is a good question, it says, um. Are you holding on to something that you need to let go of? Let's just say that, that question doesn't resonate with. When have you felt most alone?
ASTON: LORENZO ASTON: GROUP FACILITATOR
LORENZO: Like I used to hear people say, when I was young, like, you know, it's not a day that go by that I don't think about this particular person. And I used to swear up and down that they would be lying. Like, nah, that's not true. Because I, you know, you you've experienced some type of death in your lifetime as just going, experience in life. You gonna know somebody who's passed away, but it just don't hit you to say it. After my brother passed, I got real depressed and then I like lost everything. Like I lost everything, my place to stay, my car, everything and then I became the person that was who was in a position in need and not many people helped me out.
LORENZO: Every day I wake up, like, I have a flood of emotions that just go, like memories, just like flashing through my, through my head. And like it automatically, like makes me sad. So I got to like break that. Every morning, I wake up and I like, got to break this little cycle of like me feeling like this, of everything. And then like getting up and having to go like, still put on this mask, still put on this face, still be this person who everybody knows is being positive. Lorenzo, everybody was like, you know, what I'm saying, so.
LORENZO: I'm really dreading the 28th, it’s the, that's the day. And it's just been on my mind. Like constantly, constantly constantly. So like, feeling like, um I want to just like, be angry. And then feeling like I want to just stay at facilitator mode and just you know, be cool. It’s a battle. So
ASHANTI BRANCH: Well, let me just say, you're not a facilitator right now.
LORENZO: No, I know. This is, this is just a battle. It's a mental battle.
ASHANTI BRANCH: So, you're not a facilitator right now. You're not working right now. You have an opportunity to receive right now.
LORENZO: Not used to that.
DONNIE: Let it out.
ASHANTI BRANCH: There's no, there's no time, you don't have to wait for a special occasion. Just so you know. We have to like sometimes craft those situations for ourselves, maybe means going into the woods and hitting some trees with sticks. Like maybe it means taking a piece of paper and with some markers and like, like, I don't know, it just requires us to like. So we need to sometimes create that experience for ourselves. And sometimes we just need to ask for it.
MIGUEL: I felt alone when I got expelled. No one believe in me. There’s nothing much I can say y’all
ASHANTI BRANCH: Thank you. That was beautifully said, thank you.
ASHANTI BRANCH: What's happening right now is an opportunity for men to be human. And to say, hey, in all of my imperfection, all of my uniqueness, I sometimes don't feel like I'm everything I really want to be. But I can take everything I got and help elevate it today. I think that's what I think they want. I think that that what I felt in that space is that we could we could do this every week for an hour, and it'll be so powerful for us.
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23:14 |
EQUAL VOICE
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ASTON: The “Still Face” Experiment
ASTON: EXPERIMENT CONDUCTED BY PROF ED TRONICK CO-AUTHOR: THE POWER OF DISCORD |
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Narrator: In the Still face experiment what the mother did was she sits down and she's playing with her baby who's about a year of age. This baby starts pointing at different places in the world, and the mother is trying to engage her and play with her. And then we asked the mother to not respond to the baby. The baby very quickly picks up on this. And then she uses all of her abilities to try and get the mother back. She smiles at the mother. She points because she's used to the mother looking where she points. The baby puts both hands up in front of her and says, what's happening here? She makes that screechy sound at the mother like, come on, why aren't we doing this? Even in these two minutes when they don't get the normal reaction they react with negative emotions, they turn away they feel the stress of it; they actually may lose control of their posture, because of the stress that they're experiencing.
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ASTON: CAROL GILLIGAN ASTON: PROF. OF HUMANITIES AND APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY ASTON: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
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CAROL GILLIGAN: Relationships depend on the ability to repair the inevitable ruptures that occur. When you lose touch, how do you get back in touch with somebody? What patriarchy does is in the name of manhood, in the name of being a real boy or one of the boys. When a boy starts to register the loss of connection like that one year old baby, Oh my God, I have lost touch, and starts to have the feelings of the loss, a voice comes in and says, Are you a baby, you don't need that relationship.
CAROL GILLIGAN: So, it shames the registering of the feeling of losing connection. And therefore, the ability to act on those feelings and to restore the connection.
CAROL GILLIGAN: So, it makes the break in relationship irreparable.
CAROL GILLIGAN: Once you interrupt or you impede human relational capacities, you’ve set the stage for any form of oppression.
CAROL GILLIGAN: Patriarchy undercuts what's essential for democracy. Democracy rests on a premise of equal voice. Because if you don't have equal voice, you can't resolve conflicts in relationship. You, you are dependent on use of force, who has more strength.
CAROL GILLIGAN: The person on the bottom can't have a voice that is deemed worth listening to, because you can't listen to that voice and keep doing what you're doing. Then the person on top doesn't feel the feelings of the person on the bottom, which you can see in this society right now, all the time.
CAROL GILLIGAN: So what we're saying is, you have a psychology that's maintaining a politics. And a politics that is dependent on the psychology.
CAROL GILLIGAN: And the other thing is, if you premise manhood or masculinity, on the gender binary, it means to be a man means not to be a woman or like a woman. And to be, uh in the superior position. So any move to a democracy, which is toward equality, becomes a threat to manhood. And that's what you see now. I mean that's what's playing out.
CAROL GILLIGAN: And if manhood is threatened, violence is imminent.
MAN ON MARCH: These are young men! These are actual men!
ASTON: UNITE THE RIGHT RALLY ASTON: CHARLOTTESVILLE, USA
CAROL GILLIGAN: There’s a puzzle that we have to figure out, which is how to make the change, without in the process shaming manhood, which will provoke violence. And it's like figuring out how to make that move without it triggering the re-institution of the patriarchal structure.
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10:29:34 |
THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL
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ASTON: BETHLEHEM, PALESTINE
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ASTON: SAMI AWAD ASTON: FOUNDER ASTON: HOLY LAND TRUST PEACE INITIATIVE
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SAMI AWAD: When I saw as a child, an 18, or 19 year old Israeli soldier, a few years older than me yelling and shouting and insulting my father. And my father couldn't respond because if he responded, he would probably be treated even worse, maybe even physically beaten up. Then what does that create for me looking into this role model of a man and saying, wow, he can't do anything about this, what does that do to me as a as a young boy, and how that even traumatized me, in saying, is this the man I'm supposed to look up to.
SAMI AWAD: And I know in his silence, he was protecting me and protecting himself. But this is the complexity of this patriarchal system, this expectation that men stand up for their rights and stand up for protecting their children and others. When in reality, they're not able to do that, within that system.
SAMI AWAD: We see this everyday as Palestinians. Every morning at 3am, Palestinian men, thousands of them, every day, being humiliated, standing in this sort of slaughter house with their heads down, in obedience to that system of oppression - just so that they would be able to work for that day and to bring enough money to buy bread for their families. There is a humiliation that these people experience that can only be manifested in violence, either internally where they feel they're not man enough, they're not good enough, and as an outer expression, towards their wives, towards their daughters, even towards their sons.
SAMI AWAD: It's a masculine occupation that de-masculinizes an entire community.
SAMI AWAD: Especially when we talk about political energies, for me, these are masculine energies that are in this conflict- how men relate to each other, how political entities relate to each other. From what I experienced, and see the way men relate to each other is a lot of doubt. We have friends, you know, we can call them friends. And these are the men we hang out with or we go bowling with. But to say like you have intimate relationships between men, it's very rare to see. And this is because men are afraid of each other.
SAMI AWAD: How men relate to each other, there is mistrust and fear, how men relate to women, there is mistrust and fear. And the only way to express any form of relationship with the other is and in how it relates to power and domination.
SAMI AWAD: This is exactly what becomes manifested at the political level as well. Palestinians and Israelis in their political identities, we don't trust each other. It's all about who has more power than the other, who presents a better argument than the other, who has control over the other. This is the patriarchal system that I think both men and women are entrapped in.
SAMI AWAD: What I would need for my own healing in terms of my relationship with women is.. is actually the feeling that I'm trusted. I, I think it's very important for us as men to really understand that we have been in the domination for thousands of years. It’s, so it's not about what I need to you know, to keep myself or to protect myself, I think for me to be completely trusted and vulnerable in the eyes of a woman and hopefully not be judged, not be condemned, not to be seen as less manly because I am vulnerable, I think is what helps me create myself and transform myself to becoming this new human being.
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10:34:12 |
HEALING
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10:34:26 |
ASTON: BOSTON, USA
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Chris: Crying when things went poorly for me.
TERRY REAL: Yeah,
Chris: In sports, specifically hockey, was very looked down upon and, and.
TERRY REAL: And your father was
Chris: My father was front center with that. Yes. There would be times when I would get upset and I would, I would tear up and I will cry and then very distinctly the start of one season. I didn't have that problem anymore. I just didn't cry.
TERRY REAL: Not a problem Chris, its a gift. It’s a problem to your father.
Chris: Right
TERRY REAL: Family pathology rolls from generation to generation. Like a fire in the woods, taking down everything in its path until one person in one generation has the courage to turn and face the flames.
Chris: What would happen to me then is I would probably get, I would get shouted down, beaten down, for my insubordination, for my insolence.
TERRY REAL: It was like that?
Chris: Yeah. Um.
TERRY REAL: Subordination for your insolence.
Chris: Yeah. If I
TERRY REAL: You didn't have a father, you had a sergeant.
Chris: Yeah.
TERRY REAL: What’s it like to see that?
Chris: Mean I, in a way I've always known that, um. It's, it's painful.
Chris: I feel like, not like, a little nauseous. Just like getting close to that.
TERRY REAL: What’s the emotion connected with that.
Chris: I would say its pain, anger and shame.
TERRY REAL: Yeah. Wow.
Chris: It's a pretty potent mix.
TERRY REAL: Yeah, shame about?
Chris: Shame about my, my self-worth. Like, what? Who am I, to break the rules? Or who am I to, uh stand up for myself?
TERRY REAL: Who the fuck do you think you are?
Chris: Yeah.
TERRY REAL: Who do you think you are?
Chris: Nobody. I'm nobody. It's what I tell myself.
TERRY REAL: How long you’ve been that?
Chris: As long as I can remember.
TERRY REAL: You're nobody.
Chris: That's right.
TERRY REAL: What does it feel like to be nobody Chris?
Chris: It feels, it sucks.
TERRY REAL: Go on and let it go.
Chris: Feels so bad.
TERRY REAL: I ask most of the men I see what kind of father did you have? What kind of father do you want to be? Will you let me help you be that man? Who says no to that. But most of us are making it up. Most of us are trying to do better than where we came from.
TERRY REAL: I want you to remember the youngest time that you can remember where somebody is shaming you for crying. How old are you?
Chris: Five, maybe. I am at um, a hockey rink.
TERRY REAL: Yeah.
Chris: I was at a, at a game for talented players, up and coming boys.
TERRY REAL: Yeah. Good.
Chris: And I was, um, I was in position to to get a goal. And there was a wide open net. And the puck just slid right under my stick. I missed the shot.
TERRY REAL: Yeah.
Chris: And afterwards, all I heard was, there was a yawning net. It was wide open and you missed it.
TERRY REAL: Yeah. Who did you hear that from?
Chris: That was my father.
TERRY REAL: Yeah.
Chris: And, um, and I was, I was just really hurt.
TERRY REAL: Yeah.
TERRY REAL: What do you want to say to him? Right now, if he were in front of you, what do you want to say to him?
Chris: I’d say
TERRY REAL: Break the rule. Stand up to him.
Chris: No.
TERRY REAL: There you go. Say it like, you mean it.
Chris: No.
TERRY REAL: Say it again.
Chris: No, no.
TERRY REAL: No, what?
Chris: No. I can feel whatever I want to feel. Doesn't matter that I missed the shot. It doesn't matter.
TERRY REAL: Here's the revolution. You can teach a man how to love himself; you can heal the wound of disconnection. You can teach a man how to show up and be responsible for the people around them. You can educate people out of this, but it's not straightforward teaching because you have to also deal with the trauma.
TERRY REAL: And now Chris, I'd like to meet that five year old and I want you to find that five year old. He's living inside of you.
TERRY REAL: What do you feel if you look at him?
Chris: Heartbreak
TERRY REAL: Yeah. Go on and feel it, go on and feel it. Open the back of your throat. Keep breathing. Tell him, tell him out loud. As I look at you, my heart is breaking.
Chris: As I look at you my heart is breaking.
TERRY REAL: Yeah. Go on and feel that.
Chris: I know how much you are going to suffer.
TERRY REAL: Yeah.
Chris: You don't deserve it.
TERRY REAL: Yeah,
Chris: I missed you so much. And we need you. We need you here. And we want you here. I want you here.
TERRY REAL: Yeah.
Chris: I want you as a part of me.
TERRY REAL: Yeah. That’s what you both deserve, it's what you deserve. And that's what he deserve.
TERRY REAL: Well one of the things I say to men across the board is, your feelings never left you, you've left them. They've been here the whole time. Just tune the dish in instead of out and they'll be right there for you. Give men structure; give men your conviction that they can do it. And they can do it.
TERRY REAL: How you doing?
Chris: I'm doing very well. I'm very. I feel joy.
TERRY REAL: There you go.
Chris: I feel joy. It, it feels so damn good.
TERRY REAL: Yeah. Listen you have a ton of feelings. What you have to understand Chris, is that having those feelings breaks the rules.
Chris: Yeah.
TERRY REAL: And you have to have courage.
TERRY REAL: Listen, I do this last. I want you to feel the power of the circle. I want you to feel the power of community with other men. Really community from the heart and what miracles that can bring. Just feel it.
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10:43:03 |
STILL GOT WORK TO DO
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43:37 |
Carol Gilligan: Proust talks about when he wanted his mother to kiss him goodnight before he went up to bed. And she said, now come on, you're a big boy now, you're five years old. And he said he wasn't going to go to sleep until his mother came and kissed him goodnight. He went up to his room. And he just held out. Until the father finally intervened and said, look, you know, he is so upset, why don't you go and spend the night in his room and help him settle down. Because the idea that the father makes the law, he can change the law, he can do whatever he want. But the thing that I got from it is the sense that the, to the little boy, the father wasn't that in touch with his feelings. It was that the mother and the grandmother had been the ones who were in touch with his feelings. And for them to turn a kind of deaf ear to his feelings and to teach him that, felt like a much deeper betrayal. And I've often wondered about, you know, whether, or or to what degree men's anger at women is for women's complicity and patriarchy.
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44:46
45:07
46:07 |
Judy Y. Chu: There was a, few research study in 2018 that show that although we say we value kindness and compassion, we value them more in women than we do in men. Although we say we want men to talk about their emotions and share these things. It also showed it found that women tend not to value men who are emotional.
Judy Y. Chu: Boys especially, are not just hearing the messages, we tell them, they're also seeing our behaviors. And that communicates something even more strongly. I think that the, one of the roles of girls and women are to kind of be more consistent in what we're saying, we value in boys and men. And again, it's not about one list over another. It's not like oh, we’ll value, if you're sensitive over if you're macho, but its like valuing when men show up and bring themselves into the conversation when they show up openly and honestly. And sometimes being honest and open is going to mean that they're going to say things that we don't like, the being a good person is not about only saying things that we want them to say. It's about them being able to tell us the truth. And so I think, you know, can we handle the truth? Can we, are we strong enough? Can we, are we tolerant enough to really allow people to enter the conversation as they are? Because I think, unfortunately, we often we want to hear what we want to hear. A Judy Y. Chu: It goes both ways. I don't know that it's only advice for women and girls; I think that's also advice for just anyone who wants to have healthy relationships, to kind of be ready to um, not always be told them to get exactly what we think we want. And sometimes we'll be surprised. We will be pleasantly surprised, we'll get something more than what we were asking for or expecting.
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10:46:30 |
BREATHING ROOM |
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10:47:46 |
ASTON: AIDAN KEY ASTON: FOUNDER & DIRECTOR ASTON:GENDER DIVERSITY
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46:59
47:45
48:01
48:19
48:26 |
Aidan Key: You know, oftentimes people ask, When did you know Aiden? But I've learned that it's actually not the right question. It's more so, when did I understand that people weren't seeing me, for who I am? I would say, you know, I am pretty darn young. There was an adult couple, who had a couple of small children. And I looked at them, I was nine. I thought, oh, oh, I'm gonna grow up and people are going to expect me to get married and have a family. And I thought about that. And I thought, yeah, I would like to have a family. I'd like to get married someday. And then an absolute immediate sinking feeling, which is
Aidan Key: I'm not the mom and the wife; I’m the dad and the husband. And that despair was because that's impossible.
Aidan Key: We have tried to define that line between genders, and we cannot do it. It doesn't exist, no matter what way we slice it. We're gonna find people who embody those exceptions.
Aidan Key: If we can take a look at that binary representation, and say, Hey, can we, can we bust out the boundaries a little bit here?
Aidan Key: Can’t we provide a more expansive landscape that gives us awesome all breathing room?
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10:48:37 |
ASTON: BEERSHEBA, ISRAEL
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48:49
48:53
48:57
49:01
49:07
10:49:08
49:17
49:23
49:36
49:43
49:48
49:52
49:56
50:01
50:04
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Toar Tiferet: When I joined the gym, no one spoke to me for a whole year.
Toar Tiferet: Nobody spoke badly to me, they just didn’t speak to me.
Toar Tiferet: Even though I went there six times a week.
Toar Tiferet: I didn’t dare shower there.
Toar Tiferet: Slowly, but surely, after a year, the girls started to talk to me. And after the girls started talking to me.
ASTON: TOAR TIFERET
Toar Tiferet: then suddenly a man dares to say hello to me.
Toar Tiferet: At the beginning of my transition I was totally convinced that I wanted to start with the major procedures.
Toar Tiferet: Genitals, breast, I wanted the gender reassignment surgery badly.
Toar Tiferet: I wanted the beard quickly. jj Toar Tiferet: I would shave a lot to grow my beard.
Toar Tiferet: I was very stressed and in a mentally unhealthy place.
Toar Tiferet: I was trying to achieve a type of masculinity that I didn’t even believe in
Toar Tiferet: I don’t believe in becoming a man this way.
Toar Tiferet: but still I felt I had to establish myself as a man.
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10:50.18 |
ASTON: LEAVENWORTH, USA
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50:15
50:24
50:27
50:33
10:50:33
50:41
51:28 |
Hairdresser: Do you like um, do you like having some of this length that up here on top or do you feel like it needs to be a little bit shorter?
Sammy: Um, I think, that it needs to be a little bit shorter.
Jamie Krejci: Sammy has always been a really kind and sweet child, but he was always a bit awkward
Jamie Krejci: And seemed kind of uncomfortable in his skin, really choosy about clothes and textures.
ASTON: JAMIE KREJCI ASTON: SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHER ASTON: CASCADE SCHOOL, LEAVENWORTH
Jamie Krejci: Two weeks before school started, he came to us and said, I want to start school as a boy with the name Sammy. The way he explained it uh was, his whole life he grew up knowing there’re boys and girls, but he didn't really understand the difference. It didn't have a definitive meaning until about second grade, uh. Used to be boys and girls played soccer together. All those things were together, and then they split. So the boys went on one team, the girls went on another team. And it was at that point, that he realised like, Oh, this is an actual thing where I have to define myself as one thing or another.
Jamie Krejci: And that's when it started to feel really wrong and we started to experience what they call dysphoria.
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51:45
51:52
51:55
52:13
52:25
52:28
52:31
52:34
52:38
52:50
52:56
53:00
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Toar Tiferet: All of a sudden I looked like a man, well, almost a man, but I didn’t feel like being a man
Toar Tiferet: I really enjoyed being a woman.
Toar Tiferet: I didn’t feel like giving up being a woman.
Toar Tiferet: It was a gift when I said to myself, “I won’t give it up.”
Toar Tiferet: I’m in my place! This is Toar!
Toar Tiferet: I’m trans, that’s my gender.
Toar Tiferet: So when people ask if I’m a man or a woman
Toar Tiferet: I say I’m trans. I was a woman for 20 years.
Toar Tiferet: Now I have a man’s appearance but I’m somewhere in the middle. I’m both.
Toar Tiferet: If a woman can be comfortable being different whilst still being herself
Toar Tiferet: she will feel a lot freer and so will men
Toar Tiferet: It will liberate us all.
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53:07
53:13
53:13
53: 15 |
Hairdresser: Alrighty, sir. It was getting long.
Jamie Krejci: What do you think?
Sammy: I like it.
Jamie Krejci: You like it? Nice. I think it looks really good. Good stuff. All right.
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53:43 |
Carol Gilligan: The solution is within us. We're all born with a voice. And we're all born with the desire to engage responsibly with other people. So basically, let's clear out the impediments because we have the human capacities that are necessary to solve the problems that we collectively face right now. And one of the things that's really getting in the way because it's immobilizing these basic relational capacities, that are integral to solving, whether it's climate change or poverty or inequality or fascism, human problems.
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54:24 |
Ashanti Branch: Like we just need to make it not an anomaly, and build connection, and then build relationships and then build build more real, be more vulnerable with each other. I think the more we help this new generation recognize about kindness and caring and loving, and how about those be our alpha traits, of humans? Not just of men, how about we just be a kind, caring, loving community where we don't judge and, and harm each other.
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54:53 |
Terry Real: Being powerful fully voiced and in relationship breaks the bad patriarchy. Being relational is what we're born for. Being relational is how we are designed, is how we function best. It's the pearl of great price, is the only thing that will really make us happy.
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55:20 |
Aidan Key: When we start poking at that foundation of gender, then we're going to also be poking at some other foundational elements. Race comes into it immediately. So we're really disrupting some core foundational elements upon which our society is built and that feels dangerous.
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A FILM BY ALEX GABBAY
EDITOR DHRITIMAN DAS
SCRIPT EDITORS DHRITIMAN DAS MAYA McMANUS
TRANSLATION ADARSH S B KAHO SAKAMOTO KANA WANATABE ARTIOM FINAROV
RESEARCH ISRAEL MICHAELLA BENVENISTI
SOUND ASSISTANTS NATHALIE DIETRICH ALVIN LI
SOUND DUBBING MIXER JACK WENSLEY AQUARIUM STUDIOS
MUSIC BY WAJID YASEEN
ASSISTANT COMPOSER GADI SASSOON
CAMERA ALEX GABBAY
COLOURIST MICHAEL PEATFIELD
ANIMATION TRACK TILMANN &KAROLINE SCHNEIDER
ARTIST HEATHER ALLEN
HANDBALANCER MAU AGUILAR
SPECIAL THANKS TO NINA NORMANN ANY MYERS DAPHNA JOEL TERRY REAL JUDY CHU, STANFORD UNIVERSITY CJ PASCOE, UNIVERSITY OF OREGON ASHANTI, EVERFORWARD CLUB KAGEKI ASAKURA, SHURE UNIVERSITY ED TRONICK, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOSTON CAROL GILLIGAN, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SAMI AWAD, HOLY LAND TRUST SCRAPCLUB LONDON ERAN HAHN, TEL AVIV SEXUAL CRISIS CENTER FELIX FALKENHAHN AIDAN KEY, GENDER DIVERSITY CASCADE SCHOOL LEAVENWORTH JAMIE & SAMMY KREJCI BRETT JOHNSON TOAR TIFERET ABHI CHATTERJI GENEVIEVE CONNORS AVIRAM ABHRAHAM ILIRA ALIAI SUZY GABBAY DANNY BRAUN SEANA PASIC LOUISE FOURNIER
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DIRECTED BY ALEX GABBAY
BEYOND MEN AND MASCULINITY COPYRIGHT: 2020 MONKEY & ME FILMS
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