Healthier Masculinities
The SASC launched the Healthier Masculinities Program in 2015. The program is designed to encourage male identified and masculine presenting students to get involved in creating an awesome, safe and caring community. The Healthier Masculinities Program is a multi-faceted project, which works to engage men and masculine-identified folx in anti-violence work in the UBC Vancouver community, and to support a broader process of reimagining masculinity.
The project’s goal is to eradicate gender-based and sexualized violence by critically examining the damaging stereotypes that society enforces and teaches us about masculinity, and what it means to be masculine. This can include engaging in discussions on power, privilege, mental health, boundaries, entitlement, and consent, gender normsstereotypes, incarceration rates, and sexuality, identity, pop culture, and our lived experiences of masculinity. This program aims to provide space for folx to engage in these conversations by inviting them into our communities (such as Men’s Circle and Let’s Talk events) and by equipping them with the tools to step up and speak out in their own communities (through workshops and online content). These conversations aren’t always easy, but we’re all better for having them. We hope you’ll join us.
Our mission statement is to educate and empower student on the UBC Vancouver campus to stand against sexualized and gender-based violence, by promoting a culture of healthier masculinities.
Our guiding principles include:
- Working from an anti-colonial, anti-oppressive and intersectional lens
- Acknowledging privilege and positionality
- Promote open, safer spaces to discuss and express various forms of masculinity
- Establish participant- driven learning while safely and strategically challenging harmful negative behaviour
- Broaden the community of understanding by engaging in topics and activities outside of masculinity
- To develop a broad, diverse, inclusive, friendly, consistent, and inspiring community
- Critically acknowledge, utilize, and challenge gender social constructs
- Strive to embody healthy expressions of masculinity
- Remain accountable to intersectional feminist knowledge and frameworks, and to the women and non-masculine identified folx in our community
If you want to know more about the program or get involved please check out our Volunteer Program or email sascvolunteer@ams.ubc.ca.