Content warning: Some specific references to gender-based violence.

3,000 miles to help raise awareness about intimate partner violence and men’s roles in challenging this violence. That was the main purpose of my bike ride from Amherst, MA to Seattle, WA in 1995. It also was a fundraiser for the now defunct Men’s Resource Center of Western Massachusetts, though in many ways that really was secondary.

Remember, this was before the internet was widely used, so my typical approach to making connections was to roll into town and meet with local folks doing anti-gender violence work. I met so many good people from east to west – Iowa City, Syracuse, Minneapolis, Seattle, Madison, and in so many small towns along the way. The couple with a new born in rural Montana who let me sleep in the back of their pickup truck to have shelter from a massive rainstorm. The man in Wisconsin outside of a Piggly Wiggly who, after hearing about my trip, reached in his pocket and handed me a ten-dollar bill and said “this is the best I can do, but thank you for doing this.” Mostly what I did was make connections with local organizations doing this work and tried to get press about the ride and make sure they included information about local resources, typically the local women’s centers. I met some amazing women doing really important work, and a few men as well. Not surprising that I met many more women engaged in this work. Twenty-six years later those numbers have changed some, but not enough. Yet those women, and the many who came before them, and those who work tirelessly today, continue to create a foundation for challenging patriarchal violence that still is well ensconced in our systems today.

At this point in my life, I have been working with men and boys around matters of violence, leadership, health, sexism, homophobia, racism, and other issues of social justice for 40 years. Forty years, wow, how’d that happen?! I remember in the early days there were very few other men doing this work. When I worked at UMass Amherst I was “the guy” to get tapped to speak at vigils, Take Back the Night, and other events aimed at highlighting and challenging gender-based violence. Every year I would look out at the 3 men in the crowd and say I wanted one of them to be the speaker next year, and to each bring 2 friends. The following year a different 3 men would be in the crowd. I found a few other men – faculty, staff, graduate students – who also were willing to engage to some degree. I organized events, forums, White Ribbon events for the campus and for specific groups such as the football team, and created Phallacies, an award winning men’s health dialogue and theater program. And of course, the Women’s Center and other gender activists continued to do their work and gradually we started seeing more men getting involved. This has been true all over the world. While it’s not an overwhelming number of men, the awareness and involvement has grown.

This is good and important change. Truth be told, in 1995 I was feeling pretty alone in my work.

So imagine my surprise when I stopped in Sarnia, Ontario (I had crossed into Ontario, Canada from western New York with the intention of returning to the US in eastern Michigan. The northern shore of Lake Ontario is quite spectacular, by the way) to meet a group of men involved in something called The White Ribbon Campaign. At that time, White Ribbon had been around a little less than 4 years. White Ribbon was founded by three men, Jack Layton, Ron Sluser, and Michael Kaufman as one part of the Canadian response to the horrific anti-feminist mass shooting at École Polytechnique in Montreal on December 6, 1989. White Ribbon was a small response compared to other responses that included changes in gun laws (imagine that) amongst others. White Ribbon caught on and I believe is now the largest effort globally for men to speak up about men’s violence and is in over 60 countries.

It has always been my understanding that December 6 is a day in which men don’t speak out. We speak out leading up to that day, and after, but that is a day for us to mourn and reflect. That is why I am writing this now. White Ribbon also is part of the annual 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence campaign which kicks off on November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and runs until December 10, Human Rights Day. It was started by activists at the inaugural Women’s Global Leadership Institute in 1991 and continues to be coordinated each year by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership.

Given the ongoing assault on women’s rights, freedoms, and bodies, I feel compelled to remember my White Ribbon pledge to never commit, condone, or remain silent about men’s violence against women and femme folks. White Ribbon has been critiqued in some quarters, and depending on how it is implemented, rightfully so, however what is clear no matter how you slice it – men need to speak up and speak out about the violence of men.

We know that while most violence is committed by men, most men do not commit violence. But far too many of us let the comments, behaviors, and attitudes of other men slide. When we are not speaking up against all forms of sexism and misogyny, we are allowing and supporting cultures that accept and validate abuse.

While I rode those 3,000+ miles, at times feeling very alone in my journey to raise awareness and engage in important dialogue, one thing was very clear to me. And in the many miles I have travelled since then, it is still clear. We, men, need to look at ourselves and each other and have hard, honest conversations, and we need to do this not only when riding for a cause, at a rally, vigil, or fundraiser. We need to do this every day. Egregious forms of violence are woven into the fabric of our culture. They are not standalone events.  And, thus, our conversations and activism to reform cannot be standalone events, but woven into our lives.