Individuals

Welcome individuals and help them feel involved. We’re asking cisgender straight men to do something outside of the boundaries of classic masculinity. That they’re attending a Walk Event suggests they’re an interested and available learner and participant. Shyness or a sudden intense awareness of the breaking of gender norms might invite or require someone to abandon their initial interest in walking. Helping individuals connect, become part of the community and celebrate the collaborative, communal gender rule breaking can help us begin to deconstruct the toxic masculinity that contributes to sexualized assault and begin to re/construct or co/construct masculinities that fit with our Men’s Pledge:

Men’s Pledge

We will no longer knowingly participate in and reproduce patriarchy. We will actively work to reveal, know, and overcome our gender biases. We will actively work to end men's sexualized violence. We will actively deconstruct patriarchy and toxic masculinity and re/construct and co/construct gender identities and gender relations that are:

more supportive to those who identify as male,
masculinities that do not diminish the identities or roles of anyone identifying as female, femme, nonbinary, or nonmasculine, and,
masculinities that support a more ethical relationship to the earth and fellow living beings.