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Brown University offers program for male students to unlearn toxic masculinity

The New York Daily News - 10/27/2018

Oct. 27--Brown University has created a program that teaches male students how to unlearn toxic masculinity.

The Ivy League school's health services department rolled out the initiative, called "Unlearning Toxic Masculinity."

The program claims in its description that "rigid definitions of masculinity are toxic to men's health," causing them to die at younger ages than women. The program description also cites higher suicide rates for men than for women.

It claims too that men have been socialized in a way that "plays into the type of violence that exists in college communities."

In other words, men have been raised to inflict harm on themselves and others, it claims.

"Men will often resort to violence to resolve conflict because anger is the only emotion that they have been socialized to express," the school's website reads.

It explains that the way men are conditioned causes them to commit sexual assault and other forms of interpersonal violence on campus.

The BWell program aims to create safe specs for men to "unpack all of the things they have learned about masculinity and what it means to be a man. The goal is to help those socialized as men to unlearn some of the notions that have led to such profound harm being enacted toward others and toward themselves," says the program description.

The programming includes a weekly discussion group called Masculinity101 in which students can "unlearn toxic masculine norms."

* Brown University

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