June 2010
1 post
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New Rules of the Sports Legacy
I have a confession to make. It’s unbecoming of a member of the non-violent and pro-feminist cohort of readers of bri xy, I realize, but here goes: I partake, almost daily, in the sports bickering.
The sports bickering (for the blissfully uninitiated among you) refers of course to the ever-expanding array of TV programs that feature, essentially, a handful of guys arguing about sports news. These...
March 2010
15 posts
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Another Open Email: Victory and Violence in Sports
Here’s another email I’d like to share, this time one I sent a moment ago to the listserv “Men Against Violence.” The email is pretty self-explanatory.
Dear Men Against Violence,
It was a great day. I fell into tickets to the first round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and after an inspiring upset of Georgetown by a much-maligned Ohio University team, I was...
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An Open Email to Mike and Mike
I sent this email to Mike and Mike after watching the debate this morning about coaches’ responsibility for their players’ academic performances. I was surprised to hear Greeny walking the narrow line that coaches’ responsibility ends with basketball alone, and wanted to urge him to reframe his thinking. In honor of the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament tip-off today, I...
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The Shames of Men
For various reasons that don’t make perfect sense, I’ve been reminded lately of a few of my least shining moments as a son. To be fair, I wasn’t violent or criminal on these (or any) occasions, but for whatever reason the following three unsavory performances still carry the sting of shame:
One night when I was 7, I convinced our babysitter to call the movie theater where my...
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“I have often used this blog as a tool to paint a self-portrait of how big of a...”
– Ohio State Men’s Basketball benchwarmer/blogger Mark Titus, in a recent post summarizing his emotional relationship to the success of his blog vis-a-vis his childhood basketball-superstar ambitions. The blog is a guilty pleasure of mine, both because (a) it’s hilarious and (b) Titus...
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Songs of American Manhood, as interpreted by bri...
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“Anderson did not enter the Army acknowledging his own sexuality. Ironically, it...”
– Fellow Fletcherite Sasha Suderow writing about the US military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. The policy, which entrenches a hypocritical and self-defeating form of military masculinization, is under new scrutiny as President Obama, Secretary of Defense Gates and Joint Chiefs of...
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Woman named HS football coach: This is... →
With the launch of the Parivartan / “Coaching Boys Into Men” program in mind, this piece of news reminds us how far we have to go in fully realizing the dream of transforming male youth sports into teaching grounds for gender-equal and respectful relationships. Congrats to Natalie Randolph and all women players/coaches in traditionally male sports!
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“Winning a match is important for a coach but a big part of the job is helping to...”
– Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar said this, in his public endorsement of the ICRW/FVPF/MSSA/Apnalaya project I worked on this summer. It’s thrilling to hear one of the world’s foremost sportsmen support the idea of using sport as a way to teach respectful gender relations. Thrilling.
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NYT: Will the triangulated crisis map be regarded... →
Thanks to Patrick Meier for tweeting this link. Once again, my classmates and colleagues at the Fletcher School are being acknowledged for the important work they’ve done in establishing the crowd-sourced crisis map as a vital tool in peacebuilding, humanitarian response, election monitoring, and more.
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“The recession has hit hardest the most macho trades, such as building and...”
– from the Lexington article “Angry White Men” in the Economist (3-6). Seems that blue-collar men are both stuck and complicit in their stuckness. It’s telling that the guy with a job says ‘I think you should work for your money,’ despite the obvious fact that similar...
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Whose Blood Is Thicker Than Salt Water?
I just got back from a lunch lecture at Harvard titled, “Is Salt Water Thicker Than Blood? Allah’s Bonbibi and the Making of Kin in Deltaic Bengal.” The presenter shared fascinating information from over a decade of studying fishing communities in the Sundarbans, the huge tidal forest at the mouth of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers.
Residents of the Sundarbans, it seems, have...
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“We find that the Congolese woman is living in a prolonged terror and is a victim...”
– Newly-formed “Congo Men’s Network” on the occasion of International Women’s Day 2010 (March 10). Thanks to Steven Botkin of Men’s Resources International for sharing. Read the entire press release here. The gaffes in grammar are just testament to the group’s...
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Manhood and Rock & Roll
My blender, my bicycle and my guitar all held on just long enough for me to get a job. Almost the instant that I received a job offer earlier this week, all three broke. The blender launched broken plastic across the kitchen, the bicycle’s pedal shaft snapped, and the guitar sprouted a brutal crack below the bridge. But thanks to the precious sliver of manhood I gained thanks to this job and...
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WatchThis is by far my favorite video from the summer in India, but somehow on Vimeo it always gets hidden at the bottom. I wanted to draw it into sharper focus here.
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Surfing the web with nothing but brainwaves →
Forget “jacking in” a la Neuromancer, now scientists say we will surf the net with nothing but our thoughts. Time will tell, but a lot of the component technological pieces seem to exist already. In other words, hold off on the new desktop computer, people.