Book club

MUC bookworms,

The votes are in and we will be reading The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks. We will be having a virtual group discussion on the book on Tuesday May 18, 2021 at 8:00 pm. Together we will have the opportunity talk about themes that emerge and how the book’s understanding of masculinity relates to our own lives.

Summary of The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love:

Everyone needs to love and be loved -- even men. But to know love, men must be able to look at the ways that patriarchal culture keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving. In The Will to Change, bell hooks gets to the heart of the matter and shows men how to express the emotions that are a fundamental part of who they are -- whatever their age, marital status, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. A brave and astonishing work, The Will to Change is designed to help men reclaim the best part of themselves.

Hi MUC Bookworms,

We are happy and proud to invite you for our bi-monthly book club!

Our next book club will be Chasing Masculinity with Alicia Walker on February 2nd, 7pm-9pm! Click here for more information.

Our fourth book club was Thursday October 1st, we discussed Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici.

Our third book club was on July 30, also through Zoom. We read and talked about Policing Black Lives, by Robyn Maynard.

The second book club was on June 18th, on The body keeps the score by Bessel van der Kolk,

The first book club was moved to Thursday May 7th, and took place through zoom. We were happy to host Michael Kaufman himself, who provided us with an overview of what he learned during his many decades thinking and working in the field of masculinity.

The book clubs:

Join us for group conversations about books focusing on intersectional feminism. We want to learn what lessons and questions you took from the book, and make the solitary process of reading a bit more social! The underlying goal is to construct masculinity together to fit our needs and understandings.

You will be expected to have read the book, but no other knowledge or expertise is necessary to take part in the conversation!

Who is this for? Men, including cis and trans men, and folks of other genders who identify along the male or masculine spectrum are welcome to attend. We value gender self-determination as a fundamental right, so if you see yourself even partly represented in this description, join us!

The Book club was started by Antoine. Antoine is a palliative care health researcher at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute with a background in medical anthropology. He became involved with Masculinity: Under Construction to learn more about toxic masculinity and its impact on mental health. Antoine lives in Ottawa with his wife and three pets. He is an avid cyclist, reader and film-goer. See: www.masculinity.info/about-us

Accessibility information:

If the Book club takes place in person, we will meet at the Atelier d'Innovation Social. Sadly, due to COVID, this is currently not possible and we move to Zoom

Mental: The book clubs will discuss the content of the book of that session, incl hard topics like (sexual) violence, suicide, self-harm, etc. No graphic descriptions. This space is okay with folks expressing non-aggressive emotional responses and the facilitator will do a check-in and check-out.

Accessibility information about the Atelier:

Physical: The space, including washrooms, is wheelchair accessible. The workshop is on the ground floor, with a ramp and broad entrance.

Sensory/cognitive: The conversation will be in oral English, there will be no use of powerpoint or screen presentations. This is a communal space and there will be other folks, although our workshop room is for this workshop only. There is a background air-conditioning noise.

Gender: There are single-stall all-gender accessible washrooms on the ground floor.

Food and chemical sensitivities: This space has a communal kitchen, that is used by many different folks. We encourage folks to reduce their use of scented products.

For further questions on accessibility, please contact Jan: Jan@masculinity.info.