Re-storying MasculinityHow can we reroute and reroot masculinity into a paradigm of serving and regenerating life?
Explore empowering narratives that redefine healthy and connected expressions of masculine identity.
taught by Ian MacKenzie
Adam Jackson and German Villegas lead our journey with a diagnosis of contemporary masculinities within a historical, social and cultural framework, with a focus on how wider sociocultural forces shape men’s relationships.
Chapter 1
Introduction With Ian MacKenzie
Chapter 2
Contemporary Masculinities and the Renaissance of Men’s Work With Adam Jackson and German Villegas, Hosted by Ian MacKenzie
Chapter 3
Q&A With Adam Jackson and German Villegas, Hosted by Ian MacKenzie
Module 2Meeting our Monsters: Patriarchy’s Mother Wound
How can addressing the Mother Wound allow men to (re)establish a profound sense of connection to this earth, and to others, that they are deeply, and naturally longing for? How can we repattern through remothering, thereby restoring the feminine within the masculine and being in right relationship?
Chapter 1
Meeting our Monsters: Patriarchy’s Mother Wound With Bayo Akomolafe and Pat McCabe, Hosted by Ian MacKenzie
Chapter 2
Q&A With Bayo Akomolafe and Pat McCabe, Hosted by Ian MacKenzie
Module 3In a Time with No Fathers: Forging Intiatatory Pathways
What does it mean to father a culture, and how can we, regardless of where we are on the spectrum of masculinity, participate in this fathering? What happens when there are few initiated men, and an absence of holding? How might we collaboratively, life-givingly, initiate and liberate generational men’s work?
Chapter 1
In a Time with No Fathers: Forging Intiatatory Pathways With Stephen Jenkinson and Jhaimy Alvarez-Acosta, Hosted by Ian MacKenzie
Chapter 2
Q&A With Stephen Jenkinson and Jhaimy Alvarez-Acosta, Hosted by Ian MacKenzie
Module 4Liberating Gender: Queer and Trans Futurities
What sorts of healthier masculinities can emerge from widening the spectrum of gender, and breaking the binary? Is there a role for navigating the distinction of “femininity” and “masculinity”? What are ways we can conceptualise and understand the distinction? And how do we do so while embracing fluidity?
Chapter 1
Liberating Gender: Queer and Trans Futurities With Zhenevere Sophia Dao and Al Jeffery, Hosted by Ian MacKenzie
Chapter 2
Q&A With Zhenevere Sophia Dao and Al Jeffery, Hosted by Ian MacKenzie
Module 5Decolonising Masculinity through Indigenous Thinking
How do the ghosts of an imperial past haunt us in the present? In the spirit of truly decolonising masculinity, we ask: if the solution is not to supplant an oppressive universalism with another, what might we learn from re-storying masculinities back into place and culture? Is rootedness the antidote, the...
Chapter 1
Decolonising Masculinity through Indigenous Thinking With Téo Montoya and Ke’oni Hanalei, Hosted by Ian MacKenzie
Chapter 2
Q&A With Téo Montoya and Ke’oni Hanalei, Hosted by Ian MacKenzie
How do we reroot and reroute masculinities, in service of healing the earth? If masculinity has become a monoculturing myth within a dominator paradigm, how do we feed it as compost, back to the earth, and encourage its regeneration in a diverse, flourishing form? How do we develop and rediscover mythologi...
Chapter 1
Rewilding Masculinities and Embodying the Future With Tamsin Omond and Paul Pule, Hosted by Ian MacKenzie
Chapter 2
Q&A With Tamsin Omond and Paul Pule, Hosted by Ian MacKenzie
As a monoculturing myth, the story of patriarchal masculinity is retold repeatedly, both reinforced by and reinforcing the social structures that colonial, capitalist modernity has birthed. This myth, very much alive, has trapped generations within it, destroying land and life in its path. How can we reroute and reroot masculinity into a paradigm of serving and regenerating life? How might we embark on this journey of restorying?
Attempts thus far have been entrenched in conflicts on gender and power, often resulting in individual and collective pain. There is danger in having the prescription for healing written by the wound. Living in and working within a dominator paradigm, the enchainment of individual ego, the absence of initiatory pathways and holding spaces, the constraining effects of colonial constructs and the refusals to acknowledge the longings and hurts of the inner child, are but some of the reasons these attempts have failed.
In the aftermath of these attempts, factions have splintered into polarised encampments, unable to find themselves in a shared reality. Yet, the work to restory masculinity must be done together: there must be a rejection of universalising agendas, individual struggle, and binaristic answers. Perhaps a better framing is to say that the ask is to restory masculinities—we are coming together to diagnose, acknowledge, dissect, uncover, so that we can rewild, emerge, initiate, liberate. A polyphony of voices, including yours, will dialogue in this conversation.
What is the current state of contemporary masculinity and what sociocultural forces, historical events, psychological patterns, mythic stories, and rigid constructs shape(d) it? How do we look into the heart of patriarchal masculinity and heal the wounds that have created monsters today? What are men and masculinity missing, in a time of no fathers? In restorying the future of masculinities, how do we embrace a diversity of expression and forms, and make space for each one as they come into being?
- 6 Modules
- 6 Sessions
- 12 Speakers
- Curated readings, resources and embodied practices
- Community discussion area
- Explore a historical and mythic roadmap of some of the forces that have shaped modern masculinity in the past and present
- Understand the psychosocial and psychological context for the recent upwellings that characterise attempts to shift masculinity, and what stands in the way of these shifts
- Understand the psychological and cultural dimensions of “patriarchy” and the complex benefits (and limitations) with this lens
- Navigate and interrogate the various frameworks around understanding gender from a biological, social, and mythic perspective
- Contrast the Western conceptions of individualism alongside rooted frameworks—and why this is key to avoiding universalist agendas
- Explore possibilities to reconstruct rites of passage and rebuild holding spaces to liberate generational and communal men’s work
- Explore emerging narrative ideals and pathways toward rerouting masculinity in reconnection and stewardship of social and ecosystem healing
