Feminism for Young Men: A Bite-Sized Introduction
Former Concordia Students Launch Web Series that Brings Feminism to Bros
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Feminism for Bros is a short web series that deals with consent, harassment and the expectations of masculinity in our culture.
As all four producers attended Concordia and worked together in other projects before, the series intends to alter the under-represented male perspective on feminism by addressing the way men talk to each other about these topics.
“What we want people to take away from this web series is that it’s okay for men to call other men out on sexism,” said Julia Jones, co-producer of the web series and a member of The Link’s Board of Directors.
“We wanted to make content for men so they become allies,” Jones added.
The issues tackled in the series were regularly discussed in the households of the four producers, who together make two couples —Julia Jones and Skylar Nagao being one, Emily Campbell and Jimmy Bellemore being the other.
The real push to turn these discussions into a web series came from Campbell and Bellemore’s younger brothers, two young men in their early twenties.
“Both Emily and I have younger brothers around that age who have said things that brought up concerns as to how young men view consent,” said Bellemore.
The couple felt it was time to reach out to that specific demographic in an easily absorbable, bite-sized, non-confrontational way.
“We wanted to find a way to gently introduce young men to basic ideas of consent from a feminist perspective, without adding to the cacophony of media that they are subjected to on a daily basis” said Campbell.
Working together on this project came naturally, as all four producers graduated from Concordia a couple years back.
The project was first pitched to the Centre for Gender Advocacy in May of this year. What started as a personal project quickly brought the involvement of a whole community. All of the projects’ contributors were volunteers, including the actors.
“We wanted to be associated with Concordia organizations because we wanted to get the attention of university students,” said Jones. “The Centre for Gender Advocacy and CUTV offered that opportunity. The organizations also offered us a lot of support,” she added.
The Centre for Gender Advocacy gave specific insight on the project, participated in writing the scripts and provided space for readings.
CUTV was instrumental in the output of the series and lent their production equipment out to the creators in order to film the episodes.
Although there has been positive feedback and all creators agree that it has been a fulfilling experience, they currently have no ambitions to work on another series.
“We would love to dive deeper into this project by letting men know that it’s okay to be more feminine by appealing to a wider male audience,” said Campbell.
“[It is important to address the fact that] sexism is hard on men too and that gender-conforming norms are harmful for men as well as women,” said Nagao.
It was essential to first establish ideas about consent and gender equality in the eyes of the target audience in an accessible way before even thinking about addressing more complex issues.
The creators shared their hope that this initiative will spread to other universities, CEGEPs and organizations in the city, further promoting their campaign.
“What I would like to see is CUTV or other filmmakers picking up the project and continuing to produce episodes so that it can evolve and eventually touch on more profound subjects,” said Bellemore.The four creators hope that this project will be introduced during Frosh week so students will be exposed to these messages early in the upcoming academic years.
Final Episode Launch of _Feminism for Bros _web series // Oct. 10 // CUTV Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/user/CUTV/videos
