ICMI20: Mike Bell - "From Outrage to Engagement: Focussing Energy on Effective Campaigning"
Mike lives near Cambridge, UK. He was involved in environmental campaigning in the 1980’s, worked on political policymaking in the 1990’s and taught science in a secondary school in the 2000’s.
He now draws on these experiences as a volunteer for two linked initiatives in the UK:
- Equi-law UK, which aims to engage with the political process to try to ensure that UK laws are developed and implemented in a gender-neutral fashion and
- The Equalogist, a monthly digest newsletter of campaigns, books, videos, events etc on men’s issues.
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 its equal co-creators.
The inaugural conference was held in 2014, and since 2016 the conference has been held annually:
- Detroit (2014)
- London (2016)
- Gold Coast, Australia (2017)
- London (2018)
- Chicago (2019)
Playlists of all 100+ presentations at the conferences (and this one) are here, as well as playlists of the presentations at the Messages 4 Men conferences in London (2017-19) and the (UK) National Conference on Men's Issues, “Domestic Abuse is a Men’s Issue, Too” (2020):
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKhX1c3ow6BrzdzP3ydpeZQ/playlistsThe 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 (Interna
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orp4l52jUoU