Breaking the Man Box with Chelsey Goodan
Why true liberation requires the liberation of boys and men, too.
Season 3 of the Feminist Founders podcast is back today!!!
I couldn’t be more excited to kick things off with our first guest, Chelsey Goodan!
If you haven’t already, make sure you go listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast player—it’s a conversation you don’t want to miss, especially the parts about healing your inner teenager.
As a special bonus for our amazing newsletter subscribers, I’m sharing this exclusive chat with Chelsey, where we dive even deeper into her work with A Call to Men, a groundbreaking organization focused on rethinking masculinity and preventing violence before it starts.
Chelsey’s insights are powerful and challenging, as we explore the need to shift the conversation from what girls and women should do to what men and boys must do to create real, lasting change. You can watch our conversation in the video below or read the transcript if that’s more your speed.
This season is going to be packed with incredible discussions, and I can’t wait to share more with you. But first, let’s kick things off with Chelsey. Enjoy!
Becky Mollenkamp: Chelsey, thank you for doing this bonus content for subscribers of the Feminist Founders Newsletter. We're gonna talk about A Call to Men, an organization that you're on the board of. I think it's interesting because we talked at least for part of the interview in the main podcast interview, which people need to go listen to and I'm linking to here. We talked about how we often focus on girls and women and what things they should be doing differently, but those things are actually grounded and rooted in the ways men need to behave differently. We talked about women and how they should dress. We talk to girls about how they’re dressing when really we should talk about why men are predators to girls because they look a certain way or dress a certain way. First of all, tell me about what A Call to Men is and how did you get involved?
Chelsey Goodan: A Call to Men is a national violence-prevention nonprofit, and it’s all about preventing the violence before it ever starts. So what A Call to Men does is they work with men and boys in all different capacities. They work with all the professional sports leagues like the NBA, NFL, and middle school boys. They have a curriculum that talks about consent. They work with the military—it’s endless. They have a summer camp, a football summer camp for boys where they can talk about what is healthy manhood and healthy masculinity. It’s not about making men the villain. It’s also not like this whole narrative of "Well, that’s just the way boys are, boys will be boys." No, actually there are plenty of men and boys who want their full spectrum of humanity too. It has a lot to do with men’s mental health. The suicide rate is highest for men. The patriarchy does a disservice to men as well. They would love to show emotion and not be critiqued or this idea that when we insult men and boys, it's usually about homophobia or, "Don’t throw like a girl, don’t cry like a girl," we’re telling them that the thing that’s bad is being like a girl. Therefore, she must be less than or being gay, right? I can’t believe that still exists, right? But it does. The way A Call to Men phrases it is it’s the man box. It’s this really constrictive box of how we define masculinity, and men have to stay inside that box: No fear, be in control always, don’t show emotion, right? A Call to Men does a really good job in their trainings by deconstructing that and helping men see a different way forward that they love way more. It makes them much more mentally healthier as well.
Becky Mollenkamp: I know you also do work with DemocraShe, which we talked about in the show and linked there so you can find out more about that organization as well. But your book is about teenage girls. You work with DemocraShe. So much of your work revolves around women and girls. What made it feel important to you to be involved in this organization where the focus is on boys and men?
Chelsey Goodan: It had everything to do with—this is really heavy—girls telling me stories about being sexually assaulted or harassed. I’m always the first person they come to for help or to talk it out. What was I supposed to say to the girls? I show up for them and support them how I can, but if I'm not a part of the solution of ending this, I don’t feel right about my part in it. That was when I really sat back. I've learned a lot about all the different organizations that are—I know a lot of people in this space. I found A Call to Men was really doing the work that will prevent future violence. It’s not "violence against women," where we often name it off the victim. If women could have ended the violence, we would have done it by now. It turns out you have to turn to the dominant group that has the power because it is a male violence issue. That's actually what it is. It’s like asking Black people to end racism, right? They would have done it right now. We have to turn to white people to be part of the solution in ending and deconstructing white supremacy. So that is the idea behind it. They do it in a way that invites men into the picture and doesn’t indict them. There’s a lot of that triggering because women are harmed. If you have a history of sexual assault, it makes total sense that you would have a trigger and have walls up and be angry. All of that is so understandable. I do feel particularly equipped for this work. I’m not a survivor, thank God, but also because of that, I'm the right person to be on the front lines of this in so many ways. I can meet men where they’re at and have them ask me dumb questions. Really, during the Me Too movement, the amount of men that felt safe to come to me to talk through—I was glad that they were coming to me, even though I wanted to take something and throw it through the glass wall and be like, "Are you kidding me that you’ve never thought of this?" Men during Me Too had no idea that all the women were dealing with this. That was the revelation for them. They were like, "Wait, all of you? Wait, what?" The truth is we have been protecting the men from this truth. We don’t tell them. We don’t tell them it’s happening. It’s actually kind of news to them. So that's where I'm talking about meeting them. So at the basics again of starting this conversation. And on top of it too, as you can tell from my book, I have a pretty amazing dad. So I have a really healthy relationship to masculinity. I think that’s really helped equip me to not have a charge because I have a lot of experience with an amazing man who has empowered me and tons of privilege with that, tons of gratitude with that. I'm going to take that and try to help the world in the way that I can.
Becky Mollenkamp: There is a lot of privilege in that, and that goes back to like you were talking about with racism. It's the people who have the most privilege who really need to be doing the hard work, the bulk of the hard work. So in the same way it’s incumbent upon men to make the change, those women who maybe have more privilege than other women in that dynamic because of things like having a great dad or maybe never having been a victim of assault or something like that—those women can play more of that role so that those who have had less privilege in those areas don't have to because they shouldn't have to because they're carrying the burden.
Chelsey Goodan: It re-traumatizes you. Yeah, totally. I love that you said that. No one's ever said it exactly like that, and I really—that’s spot on, I think.
Becky Mollenkamp: I love what they're doing. Can you give me, just to finish up, any examples of what that looks like? I think I can hear you—there’s a camp where they can talk about things, but how does it actually change things? What are they actually doing?
Chelsey Goodan: The boys—the boy, I mean, honestly, awareness is the first step. When the boys become aware that there is a man box that they've all been subscribing to—indoctrinated—you used that word during our podcast episode. When they even become aware of their own indoctrination of what it means to be a man, they start deconstructing it. They're like, wait, they can start making choices like, is that actually my authentic self or is it not? Do I actually like to be a more emotional man? What is right for me? They also teach consent. At the beginning of these workshops, none of the boys know what consent is. By the end of the workshop, they all know what consent is. So there are real practical things like that too. But I think it has a lot more to do with boys finally understanding that they can make different choices about how they show up in the world. And certainly, Gen Z boys are better with sensitivity. They really do understand feminism in a brand new way. There’s hope with Gen Z boys on how sensitive, caring, and thoughtful they are and how much better they understand equality. There’s also contraction—we’re expanding, we’re in an era of expanding, and then there’s contraction where boys are like, "My gosh, people only care about the girls and the women and empowering them, what about me?" And they feel lost in this conversation. That creates almost a radicalization that happens. So we have to be real caring about everyone's humanity. That takes a lot of cognizance because the scales have been unfair. Boys have been given—they still get called on in classrooms more than girls do when they raise their hand. There’s a lot of that stuff. When I teach that to boys and talk to them about it, they're like—like the awareness of it—then they realize why we need to advocate more. When you don’t explain that to them and invite them into the conversation, all they see is, "You guys all think girls are better than me now, and I’m just a villain. I’m just a bad guy." Instead, we need to respect the boy's voice of understanding, teaching him also what’s going on and what the history of it is.
Becky Mollenkamp: This makes me think I hope that your next book is called Overestimated, and it’s about boys. I think we do need a book about boys, but I think it’s a very different book. I think your book, Underestimated, about teenage girls is great in that it helps us maybe find the ways that we are still causing harm to these girls. But ultimately, I think so much of it is still that same story of—it’s really the change that needs to happen on the other side of this, which is on the ones who are overestimated, who are given too much, who have all the privilege. We need to have a similar book about how do we raise and have the right conversations with those boys.
Chelsey Goodan: There are some good books out there. Book of Dares is actually our co-founder Ted Bunch's book of A Call to Men. Book of Dares is for the age range of like a 12-year-old boy. It’s for boys, and it accesses dare culture. It dares a boy to include that girl in something. It's a very subversive but fun book. Boys have really liked it. You actually challenge your boy to be like, "Hey, do one of those dares in there." It helps them see a different way, a different path forward. Then for adults, For the Love of Men, Liz Plank's book, Liz is a friend, that’s a really good tool. There are a few that were just written that I haven’t had the time—I think it's called Boy Mom, I haven’t read it yet, but I do have friends in my network who have been talking about it. Right now, that is happening in a big way. People are realizing this piece of the conversation needs to happen.
Becky Mollenkamp: Which is good because both sides need to happen, and you've done a great job with the girls. I love that you're doing this work with For the Love of Men for the idea of helping the other side of the equation—it feels like a good balance for what you're doing.
Chelsey Goodan: We’re not free until we’re all free. It comes back to what I said earlier. Women are going to do it differently. Our idea of power—I talk about it in the power chapter—historically has been a masculine narrative because men have been in leadership that is about domination, oppression, violence, status, wealth, and self-interest. Women, their idea of power—the teenage girls, when I ask them what power is, has to do with care, empathy, equality, community, and all these qualities. It’s like, my gosh, they get it. Let’s do it that way. So if I'm going to try to help girls, if I'm going to try to liberate us from these narratives, I have to liberate the boys at the same time because that’s what I want. I want to do it a different way. It’s not about one person dominating the other person.
Becky Mollenkamp: All the more reason the work with DemocraShe is so important, getting women in power and elected office because that vision of power can look very different. Yes, thank you so much, Chelsey, for your time with the main episode and this bonus content. I really appreciate you.
Chelsey Goodan: I appreciate you. You are doing good work in creating important conversations in the world. Thank you.