It's International Men's day!

November 19 is international Men's day! I thought I'd make a quick post about it.

Each year has a specific theme, but the day as a whole is based around these six goals.

1. To promote positive male role models; not just movie stars and sports men but everyday, working-class men who are living decent, honest lives.
2. To celebrate men's positive contributions to society, community, family, marriage, child care, and the environment.
3. To focus on men's health and wellbeing: social, emotional, physical, and spiritual.
4. To highlight discrimination against men in areas of social services, social attitudes and expectations, and law.
5. To improve gender relations and promote gender equality.
6. To create a safer, better world, where people can be safe and grow to reach their full potential.

The concept was born in Kansas in the early 1990s, but kind of sputtered out. Malta had been celebrating it for years, but the newer date and orginisation in trinidad and tobago spread around the carribean and it really started to take off around 2008. Now it has spread to many countries around the world with like.. hundreds of events in the UK each year and such! Awesome!

It seems to catch a lot of flak each year when nov 19th rolls around, but IMHO we need men to support, encourage, and advocate for each other. Highlighting specific issues like Health, Suicide, access to reproductive care, etcetc is important, and I want for there to be people with good intentions and good ideas to be doing this, not just Jordan Peterson. Or Nazis. Or Jordan Peterson in a room full of nazis on a podcast.

This event seems to be ticking along well in many places, and doing good work, so I thought I'd make a post for awareness. Providing positive reinforcement, putting focus on specific issues, celebrating men & boys, and having events for these things is a fine thing. Combating toxic masculinity and negative ideas about men falls under the same sphere. I don't have a ton of links or resources atm, But I'll add 'em in post if this takes off a bit.

Oh! In the USA it's national caffinated carbonated beverages day too. Bizarre.