828: Richard Reeves: For Boys and Men: support and love over misunderstanding

When people talk about helping men, a lot of people think any and maybe every man might just have latent misogyny, so helping him risks augmenting misogyny. Richard Reeves has researched the situation extensively and for whatever advantages they (we) once had in some areas, still have in some of them, society has been kicking us down, especially in education, income, medicine, and law.

A big part of his job is handling preconceptions and objections. In this regard, his work overlaps a lot with sustainability leadership: people's preconceptions override seeing what's happening right in front of them. Listen to him on any other podcast and you hear he has to bend over backward and repeat himself on simple points that I would think should be obvious to clarify that helping men doesn't mean hurting women. His success shows me that we who work on leadership in sustainability can learn a lot from him.

His book Of Boys and Men takes him into challenging territory, but to do important work, sadly difficult. Many of these problems are not caused by boys and men, but boys and men experience them. I found it heavily researched, well researched, and well written. I don't think I'm overstating things, not that I came up with the following observation, but when society disadvantages girls and woman, people tend to say society needs to be fixed but when society disadvantages men, people tend to say men need to be fixed.

We can learn from his leadership.

• Richard's home page
• The American Institute of Boys and Men

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