Metro Vancouver's third Men's Group Summit took place on January 15th, 2017 and was organised and hosted for a second year by Tristan. Due to a higher number of attendees than expected, a larger venue had to be found. One of the participants made available a public room in the building of his residence in downtown Vancouver.
Groups and organisations that were represented were: Awakened Brothers, B.C. Men's Resource Centre, B.C. Society For Male Survivors Of Sexual Abuse, Canadian Association For Equality (CAFE), Coquitlam Men's Shed, Mankind Project, Manology, Men In The Mirror, The Men's Initiative, Men's Group Vancouver, MenTOR (run by WINGS), Mythic Nature, Reinless, Rolling Thunder Tribe (an umbrella of 4 groups), Unfolding Authenticty, VancouverMensGroups.org and Young Men's Adventure Weekend
A men?s group (or any such gatherings) might, at times, feel that their meeting is not really emotionally intimate, that the discussion remains superficial. This could especially be true for a new group, where trust is not yet established.
To deepen the group conversation it is useful to have some techniques to loosen up, to elevate the level of safety and start examining the participants? lives more closely.
Despite that there are unifying characteristics of men from any generation, each cohort has its own needs for and expectations of men?s work. Its language and approach may therefore need to be adjusted throughout the years.
Millennials could be less armoured than some previous generations as a result of the increased efforts to prevent bullying in schools. Children now learn early on about emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills (such as conflict resolution.)
Although it is okay to draw inspiration from all the old initiation ways, the twelve to eighteen year-olds might not care whatsoever about archetypes and mythology and respond better to an action-based exercise and teamwork.
Because young men are less reserved to get in touch with their feelings, this can promote the willingness of older men (without experience) to also open up and process things.
As boys grow up they have to surrender to the power of parents, the educational system, the government. Rites of passage then, are rituals facilitated by older men meant to mark, inspire and demonstrate that a transition into manhood means that the boy can...
(Women go through this same process.)
Such initiations are not a real part of our culture. Boys grow up without the guidance of men or without the guidance of even just a community. They merely ascend with an ideology of individualism and mistake that as autonomy. Furthermore, the men with real power that boys do see might be the ones who are also doing a lot of harm.
We need to repair society?s sense of community. Even mature men have lost a component of togetherness. The sadness about this disconnection could be at the core of a lot of other fears of men (and women) and, in a search for safety, drives them to be protective. This, in turn, takes them only further away from connection, which is where the safety really lies.
(Some young men might already be good at being autonomous and would benefit more from an initiation into relationships with other men that aims to ease the dominance hierarchy and imbue a mutual sense of safety and accountability.)
At this third summit, which grew in size each year, the concept has gradually changed from a men?s group summit to a men?s summit. The time has come to consider whether the attendees could develop a whole layer of institutional support for men and boys with some sort of coordinating body, a central group that could function as a clearing house of ideas and assist with networking.
At the very least a fourth summit should take place. The summit may need to take all day, perhaps including an overnight stay, perhaps a full weekend. Not just to learn from each other, but also just to be men.
Ideas:
Seven men volunteered to start a working group to make (some of) the above happen.
The e-mail invitation and Facebook event posting read something like:
Representatives from groups in and around Vancouver are invited. If you would like to attend, please contact Tristan [via Facebook or at summit©mender.ca] no later than January 8th. The meeting address will be given in the reply.
Discussion topics may be submitted beforehand or brought up during the meeting itself.
You are welcome to forward this invitation to other men's groups.
See you hopefully in January,
?TristanThe Facebook event was posted in October 2016 onto the Vancouver Men's Network Facebook group (which was launched after the summit in 2016.) It had some 65 members at the time, of which 20 viewed the event post. Including the individuals who were not part of the Vancouver Men's Network Facebook group, a total of 27 people received the Facebook invitation. 10 Marked themselves as 'interested,' and 8 as 'going.' Despite that the event post mentioned that marking oneself as such did not suffice to actually RSVP, only some took further action.
54 Men were invited in October 2016 via e-mail, phone or verbally. (18 Of those were also a member on the facebook group.) Over the next months at least another 4 men received the invitation forwarded by someone.
14 Men confirmed their attendance early on. After a reminder sent 11 days before the summit to those who had not yet responded (28 via e-mail, 11 via Facebook), another 10 were added to the list.
Over the entire registration period, 17 men explicitly declined, either because they were not interested or were not available on the planned day. 23 Men who received a personal invitation did not respond at all.
Of the 24 expected attendees, 3 cancelled, 1 thought it was the following week, and 1 did not show up, resulting in a total of 19 men present at the summit.
To produce this report an audio recording was made during the event and later deleted.