Sophomore Noah Rossen and junior Scott Powell have had countless discussions since they moved in together about the role society expects men to take, and why it is OK if they don’t.
“It is taboo for men to talk together, to share their feelings and emotions,” Rossen said, “There is no safe place for that in society or at Elon [University].”
To change the discussion, the two created the Healthy Masculinity group, a discussion-based group where male-identifying individuals can share ideas and experiences about encountering the negative influence of masculinity stereotypes in everyday life.
Powell said this group is a place men can come talk about their struggles with masculinity, how they identify with their own masculinity and how they connect to other males.
“A lot of us men feel the pressure to feel strong and powerful,” Powell said. “Being male doesn’t mean you have to hide your emotions.”
Finding an outlet
When the two men started the year as roommates, they found another male willing to have conversations about their feelings. This was liberating socially and emotionally for Rossen.
They wanted to replicate that for the community on a larger scale.
With the help of I Am That Girl, a female support group, Rossen and Powell created their Healthy Masculinity support group in October 2015.
“We had our first meeting —only five people were there, but we had a two-hour-long conversation,” Powell said.
During the meeting, the guys got a chance to talk about deeper issues men deal with. After that, Powell said the group took off. Attendance for the meeting varies — sometimes there will be 20 people, other times only eight.
One of the goals the roommates have for the group is making it more of a presence on campus. In hopes in doing this and creating a relationship with other organizations, the men in the group recently were involved supporting Elon Feminist for Equality, Change and Transformation (EFFECT) during Support Survivor week.
“We’re beginning to have a presence on campus,” Powell said. “We’re still trying to decide whether or not to become an official organization. There are pros and cons to both being an organization and staying independent of organizational structure.”
The two men hope to continue to expand the group and have been trying to promote it through social media.
“I actually made a video for Facebook that ended up getting like 1,500 views, which was pretty cool,” Powell said. “Noah and I have been posting on Facebook and just getting it out by word of mouth.”
Both were surprised by the community of men at Elon that want to participate in this type of discussion.
“That’s been one of the most rewarding parts of this whole thing for me,” Powell said. “And these guys are a part of everything. They’re everywhere. They’re in Greek Life. They’re in athletics. They’re non-affiliated. There are these individual men that are seeking answers to life’s deepest questions.”
Other ways they are looking into expanding include looking for an adviser on campus and possibly reaching out to Fraternity and Sorority Life leaders.
“These people exist in all walks of life and you don’t know who is struggling with masculinity — because it’s not talked about — so that’s part of the concept of expanding,” Rossen said. “Building a community that people are comfortable talking about these things.”
Creating the discussion
Rossen said one of the hardest things to do in speaking about masculinity is being one of the first people to bring it up. This is why the two men decided they would create a place where no one has to be the first.
“You fear being ostracized from your friends if you have these conversations, so it’s liberating in the sense that you have a place to have these discussions safely,” he said, “Five months ago, my friends from Club Soccer wouldn’t have known this is something I’m interested in, but now I feel comfortable bringing it up and they’ve supported me.”
The group has tackled conversations about Fraternity and Sorority Life, sexual assault, how to construct a positive life, what “success” means and male privilege. They make an effort to make sure that the conversations don’t bash any one topic or person.
“That’s not a productive conversation,” Powell said. “Instead of having divisiveness between affiliated and non affiliated, we try to promote empathy between those two people and realize that we’re all, at our deepest level, very human.”
The conversations can range between having a planned theme to being more open ended. They have tackled conversations as broad as their childhood and where these pressures come from to conversations as meaningful as how they can serve as allies for the LGBTQIA community.
They get away from a group mentality and work to have constructive conversations.
“Groupthink can stop people from standing up for what we think is right,” Powell said. “One of the hardest things to do is stand up and say something, so that discussion was pretty powerful because we were allowed to empathize with each other and discuss strategies for speaking up.”
Including all groups
This group is meant to be inclusive to people of all different sexualities, genders and races. The point is to not create divides, and Powell said if they do hear those types of attitudes in the discussion, they try to challenge it.
“People will come in with opinions that are maybe in contrast to my opinion and we’ll have a discussion about that — not to change their opinion but to enlighten them to how others feel and hopefully in the end construct a way to go about our lives in a better way,” Rossen said. “A key value of ours as a group is to look within and assess our role in the community.”
While the group has a lot in common with different feminist groups, both Powell and Rossen were appalled at the idea of being called “meninists.”
“What I understand about the word ‘meninist,’ and I may be wrong, but from what I’ve gathered, ‘menanist’ is kind of opposite of feminism,” Rossen said, “These are men’s rights activist groups who are combating feminism and who take it as a negative. That’s definitely not what we are and that’s one of the struggles we’ve had with coming up with a name.”
Rossen wants to leave Elon a better place than when they first got there.
“In one way, I am proud of some of the work I do here, but in another sense, I am also humbled because I know I am just another guy and I could easily be going down another path.,” Powell said. “I am a human being and I make mistakes and the humility and awareness that I could go down a different path is close to my heart.”