Byron Hurt grew up witnessing his father verbally abuse his mother. This influenced him to question gender dynamics and male dominance. After college, he took a job with the Mentors in Violence Prevention Project, an organization aimed at preventing gender violence. Through his work and readings of black feminists, he came to embrace feminism. He realized feminism offered an important critique of patriarchal society and helped him understand his own experiences witnessing domestic abuse as a child. Hurt now identifies as a male feminist and uses his platform to advocate for gender equality.

1. Published on The Root (http://www.theroot.com)
!
Why I Am a Male Feminist
By: Byron Hurt
Posted: March 16, 2011 at 12:24 AM
The word turns off a lot of men (insert snarky comment about
man-hating feminazis here) --
and women. But here's why black men should be embracing the
"f" word.
When I was a little boy, my mother and father used to argue a
lot. Some mornings, I would
wake up to the alarming sound of my parents arguing loudly.
The disagreement would continue
until my father would yell with finality, "That is it! I'm not
talking about this anymore!" The
dispute would end right there. My mother never got the last
word.
My dad's yelling made me shrink in fear; I wanted to do
something to make him stop raging
against my mother. In those moments, I felt powerless because I
was too small to confront my
father. I learned early that he had an unfair advantage because
of his gender. His size, strength
and power intimidated my mother. I never saw my father hit
her, but I did witness how injurious
his verbal jabs could be when they landed on my mom's psyche.
My father didn't always mistreat my mother, but when he did, I

2. identified with her pain, not his
bullying. When he hurt her, he hurt me, too. My mother and I
had a special bond. She was
funny, smart, loving and beautiful. She was a great listener who
made me feel special and
important. And whenever the going got tough, she was my rock
and my foundation.
One morning, after my father yelled at my mom during an
argument, she and I stood in the
bathroom together, alone, getting ready for the day ahead of us.
The tension in the house was
as thick as a cloud of dark smoke. I could tell that my mother
was upset. "I love you, Ma, but I
just wish that you had a little more spunk when you argue with
Daddy," I said, low enough so
my father couldn't hear me. She looked at me, rubbed my back
and forced a smile.
I so badly wanted my mother to stand up for herself. I didn't
understand why she had to submit
to him whenever they fought. Who was he to lay down the law
in the household? What made
him so special?
I grew to resent my father's dominance in the household, even
though I loved him as dearly as
I loved my mother. His anger and intimidation shut down my
mother, sister and me from freely
expressing our opinions whenever they didn't sit well with his
own. Something about the
inequity in their relationship felt unjust to me, but at that young
age, I couldn't articulate why.
One day, as we sat at the kitchen table after another of their
many spats, my mother told me,

3. "Byron, don't ever treat a woman the way your father treats
me." I wish I had listened to her
advice.
As I grew older and got into my own relationships with girls
and women, I sometimes behaved
as I saw my father behave. I, too, became defensive and
verbally abusive whenever the girl or
woman I was dating criticized or challenged me. I would belittle
my girlfriends by scrutinizing
their weight or their choices in clothes. In one particular college
relationship, I often used my
physical size to intimidate my petite girlfriend, standing over
her and yelling to get my point
across during arguments.
I had internalized what I had seen in my home and was slowly
becoming what I had disdained
as a young boy. Although my mother attempted to teach me
better, I, like a lot of boys and
men, felt entitled to mistreat the female gender when it
benefited me to do so.
http://www.theroot.com
After graduating from college, I needed a job. I learned about a
new outreach program that
was set to launch. It was called the Mentors in Violence
Prevention Project. As a student-
athlete, I had done community outreach, and the MVP Project
seemed like a good gig until I got
a real job in my field: journalism.
Founded by Jackson Katz, the MVP Project was designed to use
the status of athletes to make

4. gender violence socially unacceptable. When I met with Katz, I
didn't realize that the project
was a domestic violence prevention program. Had I known that,
I wouldn't have gone in for the
job interview.
So when Katz explained that they were looking to hire a man to
help institutionalize curricula
about preventing gender violence at high schools and colleges
around the country, I almost
walked out the door. But during my interview, Katz asked me an
interesting question. "Byron,
how does African-American men's violence against African-
American women uplift the African-
American community?"
No one had ever asked me that question before. As an African-
American man who was deeply
concerned about race issues, I had never given much thought
about how emotional abuse,
battering, sexual assault, street harassment and rape could affect
an entire community, just as
racism does.
The following day, I attended a workshop about preventing
gender violence, facilitated by Katz.
There, he posed a question to all of the men in the room: "Men,
what things do you do to
protect yourself from being raped or sexually assaulted?"
Not one man, including myself, could quickly answer the
question. Finally, one man raised his
hand and said, "Nothing." Then Katz asked the women, "What
things do you do to protect
yourself from being raped or sexually assaulted?" Nearly all of
the women in the room raised

5. their hand. One by one, each woman testified:
"I don't make eye contact with men when I walk down the
street," said one.
"I don't put my drink down at parties," said another.
"I use the buddy system when I go to parties."
"I cross the street when I see a group of guys walking in my
direction."
"I use my keys as a potential weapon."
"I carry mace or pepper spray."
"I watch what I wear."
The women went on for several minutes, until their side of the
blackboard was completely filled
with responses. The men's side of the blackboard was blank. I
was stunned. I had never heard
a group of women say these things before. I thought about all of
the women in my life --
including my mother, sister and girlfriend -- and realized that I
had a lot to learn about gender.
Days after that workshop, Katz offered me the job as a mentor-
training specialist, and I
accepted his offer. Although I didn't know much about gender
issues from an academic
standpoint, I quickly learned on the job. I read books and essays
by bell hooks, Patricia Hill
Collins, Angela Davis and other feminist writers.
Like most guys, I had bought into the stereotype that all
feminists were white, lesbian,
unattractive male bashers who hated all men. But after reading
the work of these black
feminists, I realized that this was far from the truth. After
digging into their work, I came to
really respect the intelligence, courage and honesty of these

6. women.
Feminists did not hate men. In fact, they loved men. But just as
my father had silenced my
mother during their arguments to avoid hearing her gripes, men
silenced feminists by belittling
them in order to dodge hearing the truth about who we are.
http://www.jacksonkatz.com/aboutmvp.html
I learned that feminists offered an important critique about a
male-dominated society that
routinely, and globally, treated women like second-class
citizens. They spoke the truth, and
even though I was a man, their truth spoke to me. Through
feminism, I developed a language
that helped me better articulate things that I had experienced
growing up as a male.
Feminist writings about patriarchy, racism, capitalism and
structural sexism resonated with me
because I had witnessed firsthand the kind of male dominance
they challenged. I saw it as a
child in my home and perpetuated it as an adult. Their analysis
of male culture and male
behavior helped me put my father's patriarchy into a much
larger social context, and also
helped me understand myself better.
I decided that I loved feminists and embraced feminism. Not
only does feminism give women a
voice, but it also clears the way for men to free themselves from
the stranglehold of traditional
masculinity. When we hurt the women in our lives, we hurt
ourselves, and we hurt our

7. community, too.
As I became an adult, my father's behavior toward my mother
changed. As he aged he
mellowed, and stopped being so argumentative and verbally
abusive. My mother grew to assert
herself more whenever they disagreed.
It shocked me to hear her get in the last word as my father
listened without getting angry. That
was quite a reversal. Neither of them would consider themselves
to be feminists, but I believe
they both learned over time how to be fuller individuals who
treated each other with mutual
respect. By the time my father died from cancer in 2007, he was
proudly sporting the baseball
cap around town that I had given him that read, "End Violence
Against Women." Who says men
can't be feminists?
Byron Hurt is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and
anti-sexist activist. Follow him on Twitter.
http://www.bhurt.com/
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/hiphop/
http://twitter.com/byronhurt
Workplace Culture and Leadership
· Creating a collaborative, nurturing workplace culture is an
important component in the delivery of quality healthcare.
Personal styles of leadership play an integral role in the
effectiveness of the team as a whole when developing
congruency in evidence-based practices.
· Review the Resources, focusing on strategies for effective

8. communication, managing difficult conversations, and creating
a healthy workplace.
1. Briefly describe your identified leadership style and explain
how it compares to the transformational style of leadership.
2. Explain how leaders in a healthcare organization contribute
to a healthy workplace culture. Then, explain how your style of
leadership could be leveraged to create a healthy workplace
culture.
3. Finally, explain how leaders use transformational leadership
to ensure congruency with the mission and values of the
workplace environment.
References:
Gokenbach, V., & Thomas, P. L. (2020). Maximizing human
capital. In L. Roussel, P. L. Thomas, & J. L. Harris (Eds.),
Management and leadership for nurse administrators (8th ed.,
189–226). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Bell, N., Powell, C., & Sykes, P. (2015). Transformational
leadership: Progressive managers that treat the workforce as a
valued resource and use coaching skills to involve workers in
planning and organization can transform the workplace. The
Safety & Health Practitioner, 33(4), 30–32. ISSN: 0958-479X.
Retrieved from
https://www.tib.eu/en/search/id/olc%3A1956715908/Transforma
tional-leadership-progressive-managers/
Boston-Fleischhauer, C., Herleth, A., & Langr, M. (2019). A
call to action on point-of-care violence in hospitals and health
systems. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 49(3),
116–117.
Fischer, S. A. (2016, July 26). Transformational leadership in
nursing: A concept analysis. Retrieved from
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jan.13049

9. Perlo J., Balik B., Swensen S., Kabcenell A., Landsman J.,
Feeley D. (2017). IHI framework for improving joy in work. IHI
White Paper. Cambridge, MA: Institute for Healthcare
Improvement. Retrieved from
http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/IHIWhitePapers/Framework
-Improving-Joy-in-Work.aspx
Wolf, G. A. (2012). Transformational leadership. JONA: The
Journal of Nursing Administration, 42(6), 309–310.
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Claiming an Education (1977)
by Adrienne Rich
For this convocation, I planned to separate my remarks into two
parts: some thoughts about you, the women students here, and
some thoughts
about us who teach in a women's college. But ultimately those
two parts are indivisible. If university education means anything
beyond the
processing of human beings into expected roles, through credit
hours, tests, and grades (and I believe that in a women's college
especially it might
mean much more), it implies an ethical and intellectual contract
between teacher and student. This contract must remain
intuitive, dynamic,

10. unwritten; but we must turn to it again and again if learning is
to be reclaimed from the depersonalizing and cheapening
pressures of the
present-day academic scene.
The first thing I want to say to you who are students, is that you
cannot afford to think of being here to receive an education: you
will do much
better to think of being here to claim one. One of the dictionary
definitions of the verb " to claim" is: to take as the rightful
owner; to assert in the
face of possible contradiction. "To receive" is to come into
possession of: to act as receptacle or container for; to accept as
authoritative or true.
The difference is that between acting and being acted-upon, and
for women it can literally mean the difference between life and
death.
One of the devastating weaknesses of university learning, of the
store of knowledge and opinion that has been handed down
through academic
training, has been its almost total erasure of women's
experience and thought from the curriculum, and its exclusion
of women as members of the
academic community. Today, with increasing numbers of
women students in nearly every branch of higher learning, we
still see very few women
in the upper levels of faculty and administration in most
institutions. Douglass College itself is a women's college in a
university administered
overwhelmingly men, who in turn are answerable to the state
legislature, again composed predominantly of men. But the
most, significant fact for
you is that what you learn here, the very texts you read, the
lectures you hear, the way your studies are divided into
categories and fragmented

11. one from the other -- all this reflects, to a very large degree,
neither objective reality, nor an accurate picture of the past, nor
a group of rigorously
tested observations about human behavior. What you can learn
here (and I mean not only at Douglass but any college in any
university) is how
men have perceived and organized their experience, their
history, their ideas of social relationships, good and evil,
sickness and health, etc. When
you read or hear about "great issues," "major texts," "the
mainstream of Western thought," you are hearing about what
men, above all white men,
in their male subjectivity, have decided is important.
Black and other minority peoples have for some time recognized
that their racial and ethnic experience was not accounted for in
the studies
broadly labeled human: and that even the sciences can be racist.
For many reasons, it has been more difficult for women to
comprehend our
exclusion, and to realize that even the sciences can be sexist.
For one thing, it is only within the last hundred years that
higher education has
grudgingly been opened up to women at all, even to white,
middle- class women. And many of us have found ourselves
poring eagerly over books
with title like: The Descent of Man: Man and His Symbols:
Irrational Man: The Phenomenon of Man: The Future of Man:
Man and the Machine:
From Man to Man: May Man Prevail?: Man, Science and
Society: or One Dimensional Man --books pretending to
describe a "human" reality
that does not include over one-half the human species.
Less than a decade ago, with the rebirth of a feminist movement
in this country, women students and teachers in a number of

12. universities began
to demand and set up women's studies courses -- to claim a
women-directed education. And, despite the inevitable
accusations of "unscholarly,"
"group therapy," "faddism," etc?despite backlash and budget
cuts, woman's studies are still growing, offering to more and
more women a new
intellectual grasp on their lives, new understanding of our
history, a fresh vision of the human experience, and also a
critical basis for evaluating
what they hear and read in other courses, and in the society at
large.
But my talk is not really about women's studies, much as I
believe in their scholarly, scientific, and human necessity.
While I think that any
Douglass student has everything to gain by investigating and
enrolling in women's studies courses, I want to suggest that
there is a more essential
experience that you owe yourselves, one which courses in
women's studies can greatly enrich, but which finally depends
on you in all your
interactions with yourself and your world. This is the
experience of taking responsibility toward yourselves. Our
upbringing as women has so
often told us that this should come second to our relationships
and responsibilities to other people. We have been offered
ethical models of the
self-denying wife and mother; intellectual models of the
brilliant but slapdash dilettante who never commits herself to
anything the whole way, or
the intelligent woman who denies her intelligence in order to
seem more "feminine," or who sits in passive silence even when
she disagrees
inwardly with everything that is being said around her.

13. Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your
thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to
respect and use your
own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work. It
means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with
which to purchase
superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be
treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means
insisting that those to
whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your
mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte's Jane
Eyre: "I have an
inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the
extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a
price I cannot afford
to give."
Responsibility to yourself means that you don't fall for shallow
and easy solutions--predigested books and ideas, weekend
encounters guaranteed
to change your life, taking "gut" courses instead of ones you
know will challenge you, bluffing at school and life instead of
doing solid work,
marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting
pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means
that you refuse to sell your
talents and aspirations short, simply to avoid conflict and
confrontation. And this, in turn, means resisting the forces in
society which say that
women should be nice, play safe, have low professional
expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through
others, and stay in the
places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of
meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and
friendship in our lives. It
means, therefore, the courage to be "different"; not to be

14. continuously available to others when we need time for
ourselves and our work; to be
able to demand of others--parents, friends, roommates, teachers,
lovers, husbands, children--that they respect our sense of
purpose and our
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2 of 2 1/18/2007 1:06 PM
integrity as persons. Women everywhere are finding the courage
to do this, more and more, and we are finding that courage both
in our study of
women in the past who possessed it, and in each other as we
look to other women for comradeship, community, and
challenge. The difference
between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and
dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin
to feel committed
to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be
satisfied with the old, passive way.
Now comes the second part of the contract. I believe that in a
women's college you have the right to expect your faculty to
take you seriously.
The education of women has been a matter of debate for
centuries, and old, negative attitudes about women's role,
women's ability to think and
take leadership, are still rife both in and outside the university.
Many male professors (and I don't mean only at Douglass) still
feel that teaching
in a women's college is a second-rate career. Many tend to

15. eroticize their women students--to treat them as sexual objects--
instead of demanding
the best of their minds. (At Yale a legal suit [Alexander v.
Yale] has been brought against the university by a group of
women students demanding
a stated policy against sexual advances toward female students
by male professors.) Many teachers, both men and women,
trained in the
male-centered tradition, are still handing the ideas and texts of
that tradition on to students without teaching them to criticize
its antiwoman
attitudes, it's omission of women as part of the species. Too
often, all of us fail to teach the most important thing, which is
that clear thinking,
active discussion, and excellent writing are all necessary for
intellectual freedom, and that these require hard work.
Sometimes, perhaps in
discouragement with a culture which is both antiintellectual and
antiwoman, we may resign ourselves to low expectations for our
students before
we have given them half a chance to become more thoughtful,
expressive human beings. We need to take to heart the words of
Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, a poet, a thinking woman, and a feminist, who wrote
in 1845 of her impatience with studies which cultivate a
"passive recipiency" in
the mind, and asserted that "women want to be made to think
actively: their apprehension is quicker than that of men, but
their defect lies for the
most part in the logical faculty and in the higher mental
activities." Note that she implies a defect which can be
remedied by intellectual training;
not an inborn lack ability.
I have said that the contract on the student's part involves that
you demand to be taken seriously so that you can also go on

16. taking yourself
seriously. This means seeking out criticism, recognizing that the
most affirming thing anyone can do for you is demand that you
push yourself
further, show you the range of what you can do. It means
rejecting attitudes of "take-it-easy," "why-be-so-serious,"
"why-worry-you'll-probably-get-married-anyway." It means
assuming your share of responsibility for what happens in the
classroom, because
that affects the quality of your daily life here. It means that the
student sees herself engaged with her teachers in active,
ongoing struggle for a
real education. But for her to do this, her teachers must be
committed to belief that women's minds and experience are
intrinsically valuable and
indispensable to any civilization worthy the name: that there is
no more exhilarating and intellectually fertile place in the
academic world today
than a women's college -- if both students and teachers in large
enough numbers are trying to fulfill this contract. The contract
is really a pledge
of mutual seriousness about women, about language, ideas,
method, and values. It is our shared commitment toward a world
in which the inborn
potentialities of so many women's minds will not longer be
wasted, raveled-away, paralyzed, or denied.
Directions: You must answer the questions on the video -
Confessions of a Bad Feminist. Then, pick TWO (2) of this
week's readings to answer questions on. Finally, you must
comment on at least one other group member's discussion - on a
reading YOU DID NOT answer questions about. You may
additionally choose to comment on other people's posts (not
required for the assignment).
Confessions of a Bad Feminist – Ted Talk by Roxanne Gay

17. · According to Roxanne Gay, What is a "Bad Feminist”?
· Why does she want to knock herself off the pedestal before
anyone else can even put her up there?
· How did feminism help her regain her voice? What does she
use her voice to talk back against?
· What are you taking away from this video? How has it
confirmed or challenged your ideas about what feminism is?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxt_MZKMdes
Reading 1 “Claiming an Education” Adrienne Rich
1. What is the main message of Rich’s article? How does it
relate to the founding of Women’s Studies as a discipline?
2. Explain in your own words what it means to talk about the
androcentrism of the academy (acedmic institutions).
3. Rich discusses that there students should take responsibility
for themselves – what does she mean by this?
4. What is the difference between claiming and receiving an
education? What does claiming an education imply?
5. Do you feel that you are claiming an education or receiving
one? Justify your answer.
Reading 4 - Byron Hurt – Why I am A Male Feminist
1. How does the author begin his essay – what events are he
remembering?
2. Did it surprise you to hear about how he treated women
during his relationships? How did he go from a small boy who
hated his father’s behavior towards his mother, to a man who
would routinely belittle, bully and intimidate his partners to win
arguments?
3. At one point, Byron tells his mother that he wished she would
stand up for herself – why isn’t it that simple? What do you
think this situation was like from his mother’s point of view?
4. During his job interview, Jackson Katz asks Byron – how
does African-American men’s violence against African-America
women uplift the African-American community? Can we ask the
same question about other communities in America? Around
the world? What is the answer?

18. 5. During a training, Katz asks the men and women the same
question – what do you do to protect yourself against
rape/sexual assault? Let’s see how our class answers this
question.
6. What does the author conclude about feminism and who does
it benefit?