At Kinetic Foundation, we’re always looking at ways to help and improve our young people both on and off the football pitch so we’re delighted to be working with Beyond Equality again. They are delivering three structured workshops across the academic year to all of the young people on our full time academy programme.
Workshop 1. Introduction to Masculinities, Privilege and Emotions
- Stress, anger, mental health, self-care and bravado
Workshop 2. Healthy Relationships, Sex and Sexuality
- Healthy relationships, particularly with romantic partners
Workshop 3. Preventing Gender Based Violence
- How men can play a role in turning rape culture into consent culture.
Beyond Equality supports men in their journeys analysing their own attitudes and internalised ideas about ‘manliness’ and masculinity, a subject that can cause mental health issues and significantly affects the lives of many. The workshops undertaken by our young people encourage everyone to get involved while being honest and open about what they think, based on their individual identities influenced by factors like race, class and sexual orientation. But, as importantly, question how these things are shaped by the world around them, through advertising, the media, their peers and family. It was made clear that there would be no judgement and it was a space offered for them to experiment with sensitive and complicated situations. Beyond Equality aims to promote positive masculinity and in doing so, enable men to deal with complex gender situations and help promote positive change within their social circles and broader communities.
Daniel Guinness, Managing Director at Beyond Equality: “There’s a need and an opportunity in the UK to engage men in a brave and transformative rethinking of what ‘being a man’ means for them and others. We need to engage all men in preventing gender based violence and creating communities that are safe for everyone. We need to give all men and boys the chance to develop identities and behaviours that are healthier for themselves and others.”
We have seen up close the issues that boys and men face. We recognise the stress and pressure they experience living under a system that can have such a narrow, negative idea of what it means ‘to be a man’ and we have heard them speak out and support each other to do better. Engaging men in conversations about gender equality can seem daunting – there are lots of potential crossed-wires, insensitivities and awkward language. These are not easy conversations, nor easy changes to make. But they are essential. The openness of questions allows the boys to think individually and form their own ideas. The quieter boys in the group were also able to ask their questions.
Richie Benson, Universities Project Lead at Beyond Equality: “The boys have been excellent. They didn’t know what they were walking into but they just sat down, opened up and for 2 hours they were honest, they didn’t judge each other when they disagreed. They really started to unpack masculinity and responded to the activities and questions we were providing them with to talk about what it means to be a man, to man up, to grow a pair and how this relates to them on the pitch, in school and the world outside of that. There was some strong self reflection moments, upon how they felt about this session and not just what they thought. Particularly the pressure and expectation put upon them as men to provide, form masculinity a certain way, to act or look a certain way and consequences if you don’t.
In terms of the project, more broadly, its starting to unpack masculinities. We avoid talking about toxic masculinities because it shuts conversation down. These labels that we put upon gender, how does leaning into this conversation show up for you on a football pitch. Does it improve your performance? Does it help you bond with your teammates? Does it help you self reflect upon who you are as a man? Basically what we’re trying to do is say there isn’t one monolithic way that masculinity has to be and how its performed, we want to give men choices back that’s been taken away from them. Every time you hear ‘Be a man’, ‘Man up’, ‘Grow a pair’, its restricting all those choices you have so its being like no, what can we give back to you. There’s a lot of great things about being a man but there is also a lot of things that we carry around with us that we don’t really need and gets in the way of us being vulnerable and compassionate. We all have it in us but this box of masculinity gets in the way, so its really unpacking some of that luggage we’re carrying around and being like that: Do we need this? Does it serve us? Yes? No? Lets explore that and then coming away out the other end of it. Then hopefully that helps serve them with a few questions to think about: them in school, with their family/friends, on the pitch and reinventing masculinity for what serves them I’d say.”
Prince Kwakye, Equity Facilitator at Beyond Equality: “Entering sport and football as one of the main heartlands of masculinity makes it outrageously important and something that I’m so excited to lead on and be a part of on this project. For these young people at Kinetic Foundation, they are football players while doing their education so some of them are in a quicker position potentially to affect their peers and coach young people in a better way going forward. The feedback we’ve received so far from the Kinetic sessions, has been just the actual process of having a conversation and hearing from each other, it fosters respect. The unsaid thing in these sessions is learning to be able to actively listen and learn how people feel.”
We’d like to thank Beyond Equality for their time in delivering these important workshops!