Manhood takes a positive makeover

WORCESTER — Toxic masculinity got Richie Reseda into prison after pleading guilty to armed robbery in 2011. And prison perpetuated the culture of toxic masculinity, Reseda said.

Reseda, freed from prison in California in 2018, is a feminist ally, prison reform activist, recording artist and founder of the social impact label Question Culture. The anti-patriarchy self-help organization he started while incarcerated, Success Stories, was chronicled in the CNN documentary “The Feminist on Cell Block Y.”

Reseda was the keynote speaker at the 2019 #ReimaginingManhood symposium Thursday at the DCU Center, hosted by Jane Doe Inc., the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence.

The masculinity symposium, the coalition’s third, focused on cultural attitudes and systems underlying sexual assault and domestic violence.

It also marked the kickoff of JDI’s White Ribbon campaign, a large-scale effort to engage men, especially young men, in conversations about positive masculinity, healthy relationships and the role they can play in ending gender-based violence, according to organization leaders.

“We know that prevention is possible,” Debra J. Robbins, JDI executive director said. “We can’t always talk about what we’re against. We have to talk about what we’re for.”

The symposium included participants from across the state, from students to health and human service professionals, educators, justice system representatives and activists.

“We know that these issues can’t be solved in a singular way,” said Toni Troop, JDI’s director of communications and development. “It’s not that there’s something wrong with manhood and masculinity. It’s societal values that put men in a box.”

She said the intent was to remake masculinity “in a healthy, positive way.”

Reseda kept the audience enthralled in an interactive discussion, starting with how he ended up with a police officer’s gun at his back as he lay knocked out on the sidewalk, the take from a store robbery in his possession.

“I was taught that what made me a real man was being in control, having money,” he said.

His experience in the criminal justice system taught him how painful it was to be on the receiving end of power and domination.

“Both me and the system are essentially doing the same thing,” he said, “Hurting, controlling others.”

Reseda said, “I would assert that this is the prominent narrative in our culture.”

To back up his point, he provided a lively history of western culture since the Neolithic Age and the birth of agriculture, which spawned the rise of patriarchy and its need for domination.

The outgrowth, Reseda said, was “using fear, violence and control to keep other people from taking what is mine. Domination is power.”

And in this system, which continues today, Reseda said, cisgender heterosexual men, who identify as males, are on the top of the social power ladder.

Reseda showed video clips of singer Chris Brown and fictional British secret agent James Bond as examples of toxic masculinity’s continued staying power. To be a real man, he said, you had to have money, objectify women and be willing to be violent.

Reseda and Indigo Mateo, an Afro-Latinx vocalist who is co-owner of Question Culture, teamed up to provide healthier images of gender and relationship.

Mateo, who was a facilitator at the symposium, wowed the audience with a rendition of her song, “Yes Queen, Yes Goddess,” celebrating women’s strength and beauty without needing validation from men.

The New Jersey-raised Mateo is also founder of Soul Showers, described in the program as "a space where survivors of sexual violence cleanse shame and ‘heal in the sun.’ "

“Women are prey. Women are the most vulnerable people,” Mateo said.

To men, she said, “I am here for your masculinity. But when masculinity becomes toxic, it seeks to overpower.”

Timothy P. Murray, former lieutenant governor and president and CEO of the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce, welcomed the symposium and said it was important to talk about respectable behavior.

Murray chaired the Interagency Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault in 2007.

The business community cared, Murray said. “The single biggest issue that they talk about is access to talent, to workforce.”

He said the #MeToo movement has exposed some of the inappropriate behavior, which generated discussions that “10 to 15 years ago, we wouldn’t have had.”

Women in the audience seemed to know just what the speakers were talking about, nodding and snapping their fingers in agreement; and men seemed eager to learn how to help.

One young woman, Priya, said she and her friends live in fear, always having plans for “if anything happens.” One friend puts 9-1 on her cellphone before heading out for a run, in case she needs to make a quick emergency call.

“It makes me really sad that we have to think about that,” she said.

About a dozen young men from St. John’s Prep in Danvers participated with a few of their teachers.

“We all go to an all-boys’ school,” said Sam Poulin. “It’s more difficult now to see females as peers.”

“I like it because it’s something different,” said Mariobel Hernandez about the symposium. “We’re not taught this in school.”

The school does have a race and gender class, and students are trying to be more proactive about these issues, added Joniel Arias.

Raisa Velez, director of multicultural affairs and community development at the school, said the students were "all committed to doing the work when we get back."

Other participants focused on a desire to stop domestic violence and change the way we think about sexual harassment.

Mark Donnelly, a financial adviser living in Waltham, who is from England, said he wanted to volunteer with a group addressing domestic violence after he learned that his mother had been a victim of her last partner.

Wendolyn Ebbert, a graduate student at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, said, “I’m here because I want to learn more about how to organize and communicate around toxic masculinity, to get past the emotional part of it.”

She said people don’t understand it’s “a big systemic issue.”

Reseda said it was a challenge to change the culture, but it would be worth it.

He said he found so much freedom in "the feminist conversation," guided since his teen years by activist mentors Patrisse Cullors and Mark-Anthony Johnson, and the writings of feminist bell hooks, that it inspired him to work to change patriarchy.

“Men have the least to lose and the most to gain by participating in patriarchy,” he said. “Women and nonbinary people have the most to lose and the least to gain by participating in patriarchy.”

The largest call to reimagine manhood went out to men. Reseda said, “Be willing to step down from being on top of the world; but what we get to do is step in to being part of the world.”

He said, “We have the world to gain.”