By Myrrhanda Novak
When my husband and I watched Gillette’s short film, We Believe: The Best Men Can Be yesterday, it really didn’t seem controversial to us at all. Asking men to break up fights, to tell their daughters they are strong, to remind one another you can’t harass women - that shouldn’t be profound. The closing message reads: “It’s only by challenging ourselves to do more that we can get closer to our best.”
I would like to believe that this idea of calling men to be more is not a political one. I would hope that it can be a unifying aspiration and not a divisive one.
However, the comments suggest that there are far too many angry, over-sensitive men who are threatened by a challenge to be confident and respectful and to remember that others are watching. To them I say, perhaps you should feel threatened. Society is changing and if you think you should have the right to treat women like objects, you are going to be left behind.
As someone who is raising the men of tomorrow, I can tell you that they will call you out if you bully, they will ask you to leave the room or the board or the college if you mistreat your female coworkers or ignore the word no.
Until that day, I want to do my part to applaud those who are brave, those who empower, those who listen and who seek to understand. I want to say thank you to Gillette and Tarana Burke and Alyssa Milano and so many others who have amplified the voices of women and men who want misogyny, gender based violence and toxic masculinity to become a thing of the past.
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