Men Working on Reproductive Issues
Inspired by the work that RC women have been doing on reproductive issues, I decided that we men needed to join them in thinking about the topic. So I led a one-day men’s workshop on it.
In the morning we worked on men’s oppression, withdrawal of closeness, prohibitions on discharge, and the installation and manipulation by an oppressive society of distresses related to sex.
In the afternoon we worked on sex and reproduction, birth control, decision-making, and more. We talked about our use or non-use of birth control and about abortion, infertility, thinking about these topics with our children, choosing not to have children, and being raised in RC and facing these things.
Each man spoke briefly about an aspect of all this that he would like to have a session on. Then I did three sessions up-front—one on infertility, one on abortion, and one on birth control and heterosexual sex. We had mini-sessions in between. Everyone was pleased that we had started this work.
Dan Nickerson
Freeport, Maine, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail
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