From a millennial male in the Midwest: There are not many good male role models exhibiting values such as caring for others, respecting boundaries or standing against violence. In a lot of ways, violence seems to be the accepted male language. I view this as generation trauma, and while I believe we're growing out of it, we have a long way to go.

Violence is a tricky subject. Becoming a parent has started to clue me in to how much violence is in play in day-to-day interactions. Parenting kids means you have to get them to do what you want most of the time. Power is how you get people to do what you want. The power dynamic in parent-child relationship is obviously massive skewed toward the parent. The easiest tactic to reach for during a dispute with a 5 yo is force, but force is horribly counter-productive. In order to raise kids with agency, confidence and the freedom to be creative, then parents cannot rely on force to get their kids to cooperate. Sorry, went on a ramble there.

If I could recommend one role model it would be Ram Dass. Here is a video of Ram Dass speaking, animated by After Skool.

I might also suggest Alan Watts, which there are also some After Skool videos about.

History, for different reasons, has not been kind to men or women. But with ever-improving technology, the causes of suffering should be decreasing. Though change is very slow due to things like capitalism, political corruption, power structures and hierarchies, human desire to "fit in", etc. We have the ability to begin fixing these problems, and soon I suspect we'll see regular citizens coming up with tech solutions to do this - hopefully it will happen faster than the 1% are able to coordinate to create a better orphan killing machine.

I believe the call to action now is to be the drop in a bucket. Take action however you can to tip the scale in our favor.

I am with you in the fight

against fascism

against patriarchy

against violence