Recognizing Men Who Care – The Founding Fathers
June 19, 2010
by Alison
|On this Father’s Day Weekend, The New Agenda celebrates the men who join our Pro-Women movement by working and speaking out on behalf of women and girls.
On this Father’s Day I would like to say thank you to the many men who work and speak out on behalf of the safety and welfare of women and girls.
While we tend to think of women’s issues being supported by women alone, there have always been visionary men who have made an important impact on the lives of women. From the suffragist movement, which was largely funded by wealthy men, to today’s fathers, brothers, husbands and sons who are speaking out against violence against women, various women’s movements throughout the ages have found support in men.
The Founding Fathers is one such group of men. An initiative of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, the Founding Fathers works to prevent family violence and promote respect for women.
It all began in 2003 on Father’s Day when 350 men joined together to make a public declaration calling for the end of violence against women. This declaration was advertised in the New York Times and read:
“We know the realities of violence against women and children – as witnesses and victims, as friends and companions of those who have suffered. That’s why 350 of us, men from all walks of life, have committed to turn our private concern into public action.
We call ourselves Founding Fathers because we intend for this crucial beginning to give way to a new kind of society – where decency and respect require no special day on the calendar, where boys are taught that violence does not equal strength and where men stand with courage, lead with conviction and speak with one voice to say, ‘No more.’”
And now each year on Father’s Day the Founding Fathers calls on men to come together to demand that violence against women become a thing of the past. By signing the Founding Fathers Declaration, men can can identify themselves as a person who is commited to ending violence against women and in turn promoting peace in all families. More that 1,200 men nationwide have signed the declaration. You may also choose to honor a man that you feel represents the ideals of the Founding Fathers. You can do so here.
The Founding Fathers also works to support legislation that can reduce violence against women and offers a mentoring program that seeks to Coach Boys into Men. This program includes tips on how to talk to boys about violence as well as other guidance in mentoring boys to grow up to respect women.
The group is diverse and includes many big names such as Matt Lauer, Russel Simmons and Joe Biden. Another famous Founding Father, Joe Torre, had this to say about his childhood experiences with a violent father and the importance of nonviolence:
“My father was a violent man. His physical and verbal abuse terrorized my mother and all five of his kids. I was in my 50’s before I truly realized how much this experience has impacted my personality and relationships. But the cycle can be broken. We must teach our boys through our words and actions to respect women and to understand that violence is never a solution. It’s the most important coaching job I’ll ever do.”
Awesome!
I’m thrilled that The New Agenda has so many male members! So many men are also pro-women!
Russel Simmons? Considering how degrading rap music is to women I can only say hhhhhmmmm. I think rap music pretty much standardized the degradation and sexualization of women in music and media which want to think of themselves as hip. I would be curious to hear Russel Simmons interviewed on this topic and until I do I will withhold my praise.
Alison,
I appreciate what you are saying on behalf of those men who do view women as equals. I really do. I just wish there were more of them and that they were willing to march side by side with us and be willing to speak out publicly everywhere that women are speaking out about the injustices women must continue to endure. I just haven’t seen or heard the kinds of open support by men you speak about. I’m sure there are pockets of this kind of support, but it’s not mainstream by any stretch and has a long, long way to go before these enlightened men are listened to and taken seriously by other men.
As to our Founding Fathers. I keep hearing the “All MEN are created equal” refrain that continues to echo through history and be missued and misunderstood and even used as a tool to rationalize the suppression of women. I also hear Abigal Adams imploring her husband, John, to “not forget the ladies” when they were planning the future of this New World. He forgot, or didn’t think he could convince the other Founding Fathers that women are people too!
Women are much more generous when it comes to recognizing and showing appreciation for those efforts made by men on our behalf. I stil haven’t figured out why all men haven’t yet come to the same conclusion as these menf. Don’t get me wrong. I totally support what you are doing here. But I’m still conflicted. I keep thinking about the horrible existence the large majority of women are still having to deal with around the world — sex trafficing, prosetution, burkas, beatings, stonings, domestic violence, and outright murder of women for just being women and I can’t stop asking WHY? Why, in this so-called enlightened world, women are still expected to live in the dark ages when it comes to how they are expected to exist in a man’s world and endure these injustices under the cruelest and most unforgiving conditions created and promoted by men.
It still takes my breath away and I can’t help thinking of what Dr. King said when asked “aren’t you satisfied yet, with all the progress you’ve made?” Dr. King answered, “No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I guess that’s pretty how I’m feeling about the female condition in a world run by men.
Kathleen,
I hear what you are saying and I understand that there are still many men who just don’t get it. Or don’t care. But many men do and I think we need to embrace them.
One reason I was interested in writing about the Founding Fathers is because I have recently had conversations with several men who have been impacted by domestic violence – men who have had a sister, girlfriend, daughter, mother, etc. hurt by domestic violence. With no preset plan of joining a “women’s movement” these men are now speaking and working on behalf of women. And I honestly feel that more men would partake in a pro-women agenda if they were to feel welcome. There are many segments of feminism that might be intimidating to men and I think the “big tent” ideology that the New Agenda embraces is more welcoming.
I can’t tell you how many women I have met who feel rage about topics such as racism, homophobia and xenophobia, and rightfully so. But these same women will practically yawn at the topic of domestic violence. So I believe it is absolutely imperative to embrace those men who feel a sense of love and protection for the women and girls in their lives. Father’s particularly! I’ve had so many conversations with dads who are worried about the world their little girls are growing up in and they want to help!
Just as the civil rights movement was helped by white Americans who “got it”
I truly believe that the pro-women movement will gather more momentum with the help of men!
Alison,
I agree that we will need men’s involvement, if there ever is to be gender equality on every level in society.
When you say men feel “intimidated” to help feminist, I can’t but think it’s an excuse by men to avoid any “real” involvement and again, they are blaming the women. You would think that these men who are sensitive to the plight of women in society would understand our hesitancy to embrace them without their taking the first step in taking action and not just words that they truly want to help.
It stands to reason that men hold the lion’s share of power in society. Thefore, they are in the best position to use that power to help us and their seriousness in helping will come from their approaching women’s groups first! Having lived through the civil rights movement when it was just beginning, I don’t recall the AA commkunity nurturing the white community to help out, I recall the white community going to them and joining the cause and even dying for it.
Women have a tendency to “baby” men. I find it hard to believe that anyone who truly believes in a cause (such as the women’s movement) does not understand that it is they who should take definitive steps on their own using the power that they have to show that commitment. I doubt very seriously that the women’s groups would turn them away and would not readily embrace them with welcoming arms.
I would prefer to see these you write about to have written such an article about their desire to see gender equality and how we can achieve it. Until they have the courage to do that because they know it’s the right thing.
As we all know, the road to hell was paved with good intentions. Especially with the escalating violence against women growing everyday, I would think father’s of daughters would think nothing of moving heaven and earth to make certain that they stop the violence and would not need our invitation to do so.
Alison is correct. Far too many women do indeed “yawn” at the topic of domestic violence. You say stupid things, like, “if I were in that situation, I would just leave. I wouldn’t let a man treat me like that.” Yeah, maybe YOU wouldn’t. Because YOU have a completely different situation in life. Many women have no choice. Usually because of the children involved. As long as most of the women think like you, the victimized women never will have a choice.
Some of us men have a hell of lot more knowledge about this topic than any of you women. After all, simple statistics means that 50% of children of abusive fathers grow up to be men.
Anonymous male,
You are totally correct. My mother was a victim of domestic violence and could not leave because she had no outside help from friends (she had no family) because my stepfather never allowed her to have friends. I was finally able to pull her out of this horrible existence after I was grown and even then, she was afraid to leave because he threatened to kill her if she did!
Some of us women know as much about this topic as you do, so, don’t be so quick to draw conclusions. Men react differently to growing up in an abusive home than women. They become like their abusive father or father figure, while far too many women are totally broken from the experience. Fortunately, some of us find a way out, but the scars caused by the experience never leave you. While women rarely use this experience to be violent to another human being, sadly young boys imulate it on their girlfriend/wife. I speak from experience. I grew up in an abusive home, where my step-father made sexual overtures to me, got drunk every weekend and terrorized us. I had two brothers, but they did not grow up to abuse their wives physically, just emotionally. I witnessed my mother become my step-father’s slave, afraid to say or do anything that would set him off. It made me furious that he had such power and there were no consequences for his treatment of my mother. At 14, I confronted him when he hit my mother and told him that if he hit my mother again, I’d kill him. My brothers stayed in their room, afraid to confront the SOB. Sometmes, facing that which you fear most is the best way to deal with it and move on.
I hope you do something about your enlightened understanding of how abusive homes create shell-shocked women, incapable of getting out because they have no choice. Men will listen to another man about this long before they would give a woman the time of day about such a sensitive subject because of lack of respect.
Like I was saying, instead of admonising women on a feminist website about the plight of women in an abusive relationship, why not use this knowledge and speak out to men about it? That kind of action would go further in helping us eradicate this behavior than just about anything.
well yea boys see it as they will one day grow up to be “men” (ugh), a concept that’s created by culture that has no existence outside the minds of individuals in a collective. “man”, it’s very annoying and rather dumb. They are males. They look the way they do because they have one Y chromosome that does not change nor recombine AND because they have violently given themselves the freedom of activity. When you think about it that way, it dissolves the concept of “man”. Nearly every man thinks himself superior because he punches things. He is violent and the whole concept of man is based on glorified violence. In fact, all of society is framed around this concept of fighting and violence.
Most women don’t have a choice. Generally speaking women live in poverty. There is discrimination against pay and promotion and for a large part they must marry themselves to a male, in order to you know, eat.
But I think society should be matrifocused, and child rearing should be largely communal. Forget marriage. It’s outdated.
I like the concept of handfasting, marriage of love, but marriage for economy sake..it’s just ownership under a guise.
And yes most men I’ve found are abusive. If not violently than emotionally. Feminists have done most of the work and heavy lifting of making shelters to get women out of abusive situations. But yea, men only listen to men.
I think what will stop violence against women is ending marriage completely.
I love how they get advertising time too. But it just reminds me of groups like, you know, Christian Men, and men who have been calling out violence against women for centuries, congratulating themselves for doing so but nothing ever gets done. I bet all they talk about is what it m eans to be a man, and cry and hug eachother without ever giving up the concept of “being a man”, but I’m sure all they talk about is manness and I’m sure nothing gets done. Build a shelter.
Happy Fathers day to all the many good guys! We love you and we need you.
Kiuku,
Right on target! Ironically, it’s christian men who one would think would take the first steps in helping women, but they don’t. It’s all about being a man and preserving their power within the church. Women are never part of the equation. That’s where the problem lies when it comes to men understanding women and realizing that we must be part of the equaition of life, if we hope not to destroy ourselves.
While 100,000′s of young girls and women are being sold into sex slavery all over the world, and in the U.S., women have no choice but to unite and fight back. We can’t wait for the men to be nurtured into helping us! I guarantee, were this AA men being sold into slavery, I have no doubt the men would find their collective voices and express their outrage without hesitation, and we would never hear that they felt “intimidated” to do so.
Yes, Happy Father’s Day to to the good guys. But, it will be a truly Happy Mother’s Day when the good guys get out from underneath their fear of feminism and walk the walk, instead of just talking the talk.
Exactly Kathleen! And they would expect us to help and do most of the real grunt work. These are wealthy men apparently. Why don’t they start an underground railroad for women who are abuse victims? Seems its, women’s abuse at the hands of men, just another excuse for them to gather together for buddy buddy time and talk about man-ness, it seems like it, the experience of women they knew who were abused, is construed to be all about them; more like group therapy with themselves and manness as the focus than actually helping women. If they were building shelters that’d be something. Talk is atleast something but talk is cheap.
What you see is what you get and all you’re going to get from men in general. It doesn’t matter how articulate you are at them about what they are doing wrong, they have created a world they are content with and they don’t give a rats ass if anyone else likes it. If we want different institutions such as a government that represents The People or religions where the priests don’t rape children while acting as gatekeepers to God, or financial institutions that make adequate money while serving society, or media where all groups have voice (especially women who are 52% of the population not a minority) then we need to stop telling men what to do and actually build those benevolent institutions OURSELVES. We have to DO it not TALK about it. If we don’t like it we need to step up and build something better. Republican women seem to be doing that and I am intrigued.
It’s not just christian men, it’s men. God isn’t the reason for their violence. It’s the excuse.
I am going to disrespectfully disagree (although I do want to say so sorry Kathleen for what you wrote).
I have volunteered for many years at My Sister’s Place, our local dv shelter. They do incredible work. Part of what I have learned in my years there is the importance of including men. Men listen to men. For MSP, players from The New York Giants have worked with the org to hold seminars to teach boys and men what it is to be a man – and being a man is not hitting a woman. Plain and simple. Hearing this message from other men has been an invaluable tool.
Just as it can be for spreading our national movement. There are many enlightened men who agree with our work here. Our membership is approx 10% – and we value that. We believe that the way forward is inclusive for women and like-minded men – even if our org is led by women.
Amy,
Thanks for your kind words. I wrote them to make a point that all who grow up in abused homes don’t have to become violent or resort to drugs or crime to deal with the aftermath.
As to your experience with the importance of including men…well, I absolutely agree. I’ve never felt that men shouldn’t be part of raising women out of the world created by men who don’t like us. However, I also believe when it comes to taking action, men are the last to take definitive steps to help women in a way that is heard by other men. While they will tell women they are on their side and don’t believe men should hit women or suppress them, I rarely, if ever, see them speak publicly the same way and with the same passion to a group of men.
If men don’t take that first step of defending women openly and freely with those men who view women as property, then their good intentions are just that — “good intentions”.
As I said earlier, those in the white community who believed in equal rights for the AA community joined them in public displays of support and spoke out against the white supremisist, risking their lives and many died for their support of the civil rights movement. Those whites who joined the civil righs movement didn’t hide their support inside group therapy sessions. They went public. That’s how men can truly help women. By going public.
Until they do that, I have no illusions that their good intentions will change a thing. Young girls and women are being abused, raped, murdered everyday. We don’t have time to wait for the men to come to terms with have the guts to do the right thing.
If civil rights was only about the rights of AA women…there would have been no Dr. King.
Kathleen,
Check out the videos here of men speaking in public about domestic violence:
http://www.founding-fathers.or.....age=fftalk
Also, Patrick Stewart speaks and writes a lot about the issue. He grew up in a home with a violent father. If you google him and check Youtube, you will find a lot on him.
thanks Alison for posting this site. what Jerry Rossi said is exactly the type of action I expect to see from any decent man. I also agree with many here, that this decent behavior is all too infrequent. the common exhibit in my experience is rather male bonding by reassuring themselves by confirming their sense of male supremacy.
Stupid and dumb. Russell Simmons is BAD BAD BAD. Add a couple more bads. He and his wife and their “juicy couture” sell sexualized clothing to children as young as 6 months and they promote an entire culture of degrading women for money. The New Agenda should be ashamed to have any article promoting the Simmons. And if you are not I have plenty of shame for you….
Alison,
I appreciate your point in posting these links. However, I never said men speaking out on behalf of women didn’t exist, but that it was not mainstream enough and public enough (like the marches with Dr. Martin Luther King) in D.C. with white people joining him in speaking out and demanding change.
These quiet venues are great and make us feel good, but they have little affect on a problem of this magnitude in the long run. It’s going to take a much greater public display of outrage if we ever hope to see men realize that hating and promoting violence against women hurts them too and will eventually destroy the world.
Women have been conditioned to expect so little from men that when they do the least thing, we get really excited (you know, when they take out the garbage and consider that helping around the house!)
Men have the money and the power to do better. The reason they haven’t done more is because they don’t want to jeopardize their exalted place in society by being ostracizes by other men. That’s the real problem in getting men to speak out in defense of women.
I agree that Russell Simmons is a joke in terms of empowering women. Including him is like including Hugh Hefner in a list of those responsible for changing the roles of women. Of course I have read where HH claims he started the sexual revolution in the 60′s and is responsible for women owning their own sexuality now. What a load. I guess Russel is saying men can regard women as pieces of ass but hitting them is not OK. Well that probably flys in Liberal world since in their minds there is no problem with images of women in media, but I am not OK with the media’s images of women or the fact that only women who are willing to strip and do stupid sex tricks on camera can have music careers. I keep thinking of all the talented women who refuse to conform to these sexist norms whom we never hear from. Russel Simmons is bad news for women.
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