How do we get men to engage with posts about and for men?

To be honest, i have no helpful idea. The worst part is that i had two ideas that possibly might have worked:

[1] Have the cover pic for this blog post be a curvaceous semi-clad woman with the impression that there might be more pics in the post.

[2] Use the word ‘boobs’ somewhere in the title.

Objectify women to draw men into a space to tell them, among other things, we need to stop objectifying women? Doesn’t seem like a sound strategy.

An A-choir-ed Taste

Problem is though that although i have compiled a helpful list of 40 practical ideas for men to start working on themselves to be better men – over here – and although i wrote a piece on Women’s Month trying to draw men’s attention to the war on women in South Africa and around the world –over here – the majority of comments and shares and likes have come from women and from a handful of men who mostly already get it anyways.

i have found the race stuff a lot easier in at least getting people who fall in the category [white people] to engage with the writing around race and the ideas for us to change. But men really don’t seem to engage with much beyond sport and fun vibes with friends and family on social media. That is a huge generalisation but i make it because i have generally found it to be true.

In my experience men engage a lot more on the Twitterer in terms of issues like race and sexism and news. But for some reason the engagements i have on posts and questions and articles shared and videos on Facebook tend to be from women.

That’s it. That’s really the post. i guess the best idea i have on this is that – as with many other things – the real work will happen through relationship. So it becomes imperative that the men who do get or have started to get this stuff are talking to the men in and around their lives. Start with your family and friends. Then adopt a #NotOnOurWatch commitment and move on to strangers and start interrupting everywhere you see it. And supporting others who are interrupting!

Do the work with/alongside your friends. As in tag and invite and read a book together and have a meal and conversation. It might be a lot easier to say “Hey, I am doing this thing, will you join me?” 

The quandary for me in this is that since women seem to be the ones interacting, that the call needs to go out to “Bring your men!” in a sense. This always feels unfair in terms of expecting the oppressed to do the work to help the oppressor to change. But if the reality is and continues to be that men are not engaging with these things, i wonder if it is okay to ask you to share and tag and invite the men in and around your lives to engage with these things. With the hope that when their eyes are opened somewhat, they will then move on to working with the men in and around their lives and some kind of domino snowball effect might ensue.

Beyond that, i am just left with questions. But i will continue to speak and write and share and hope that moment by moment there is some effect happening that hopefully will grow into a greater and much-needed movement.

Would love to hear some more thoughts and ideas around this one…