In February, UPrep sponsored a Young Men’s Conference at El Centro de la Raza. About 100 male-identifying students from UPrep and schools across the city gathered to listen, explore, and share with each other how their maleness and other identities are perceived and experienced with the goal of moving towards a more inclusive, positive, just, and less toxic masculinity. Four students who attended the conference then planned and ran a session titled “Unraveling the Concept of Masculinity” during UPrep’s Social Justice Day in April. We spoke with three of these students, Roan L., 10th grade, Ari F., 11th grade, and Owen D., 11th grade, about both experiences. *

What were your biggest takeaways from the Young Men’s Conference?

Owen: There are not many spaces to talk about topics like mental health and men’s place in society. It was cool to be with other young men from local schools and talk about these topics. My biggest takeaway was from keynote speaker Christian Paige (an educator and an Emmy-nominated spoken word poet). He said, “Respond, don’t react.” To me, that meant holding space to have dialogues, and that the most important part of my toolkit is being mindful and self-aware.

Roan: For me, the conference was less about the content and more about the opportunity to talk about things we’ve never talked about before. I’ve never specifically been in a space where we have the opportunity to talk about being a man.

Ari: The conference gave me the opportunity to have a better understanding of what it means to be a man. Before that, I didn’t want to be vulnerable, but once the common factors we all share were acknowledged, it was easier to talk about things.  

Tell me about the Unraveling the Concept of Masculinity session that you all led on Social Justice Day.

Owen: The four of us are hoping to create a space to hold more conversations to talk about masculinity on campus. This session was our test pilot project. We wanted to see how people reacted to holding this space. We talked about the men in our lives and their positive traits, and about how men are socialized to act. Our aim is to have some sort of young men’s group at UPrep in the future.

Roan: We invited all genders to come, but only male-identifying people attended the session. We were happily surprised at how little facilitation was needed and how people really opened up to sharing. My biggest takeaway was the importance of having the dialogue with people about masculinity, the expectations of gender roles, and mental health instead of just holding everything inside. We haven’t had the opportunity before to see how positively people react when they have the space to discuss these topics.

Ari: I’m glad we’re having this dialogue at UPrep. We need to keep talking about how to change some of the traditional values associated with masculinity. For example, I often see female-identifying people hugging, and I see fewer male-identifying people hugging. The traits associated with being male can be annoying. I wanted our workshop to have people from all genders so we could learn from the feminist movement and people’s experiences. Even though only male-identifying students came to the workshop, we still had important dialogue and shared many of our experiences. That said, I hope to gain a wide range of perspectives on this topic in the future to learn from the experiences of a diverse range of people in the hopes of creating real, powerful change in our community. 

Read more about UPrep's 2023 Social Justice Day.

*Beruk S., 11th grade, is the 4th student who helped plan the session on Social Justice Day.