Voices We Love: Dan Kipp

One of the newest voices to be added to voices we love is Dan Kipp.  He is young, but that detail cannot dispute his boldness. He holds courage to speak the truth and the ability to provide people assurance when dealing with difficult subject matter. Kipp works for the Young Adult Abuse Prevention Program in Maine. He brings to this responsibility his sociology and women’s studies degrees.  His blog, Calling Out, Welcome In, is his vehicle to sharing tools, his thoughts, and daily experience with the world. According to Kipp, “The way I see it, these are two essential steps to take: (1) Calling out, or holding men accountable for the messed up actions we’ve taken or beliefs we’ve learned from a sexist society, but doing so in the spirit of (2) Welcome in, or inviting men to be introspective and to seek positive change from within.” To Dan, this cycle is empowering.

This post is also categorized as ‘Tools We Love’ because Kipp has provided an amazing list of resources for young people who are facing abuse.  Share this list with anyone who you think may need it.

Here is a piece of one of Dan’s posts called Lesson #2.  We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.  Check out Calling Out, Welcome In. It has a lot to offer and you get to experience this young, active, change-making voice for your self.

 

Dismantling the Part-riarchy

Violence, superiority, entitlement: these are things that all men in a hetero-sexist, patriarchal society learn (albeit, to varying degrees).

They are attitudes that are normal, active, even functional for men in such a society.

They are attitudes that lay dormant in a man who has not questioned this version of masculinity, who has not had any positive role models to show him an alternative way to be a man.

This makes the line between a “good guy” and an “abuser” scarily thin. It’s why, when I’m playing the role of the abuser, I try to win over the male students in the classroom early in the skit. If I can get them to identify and laugh with “Jake” before they see his abusive side, it helps to show that abusers aren’t just monsters, or sociopaths, or skeeveballs we can see from miles away. An abuser could be our friends, our fathers, our coaches.

I don’t say this to scare you.

I don’t say this to condemn men as a group.

I say this to call you in.

Once we realize the scope of the problem, it demands of us some collective work:

To examine masculinity. To question masculinity as it exists within ourselves as individuals, but also within our friends, family, school, and wider culture. To unlearn masculinity-as-sexism. To unlearn masculinity-as-violence.

To examine what it means to be fully human. To encourage the boys and men in our lives – but also the schools we attend, the culture in which we partake – to treat others with full humanity. To learn masculinity-as-respect. To learn masculinity-as-nonviolence.  

We need to rewrite the script on what it means to be a man in America, and we need everyone to play their part.

Projects We Love: That’s What She Said

by Stephanie Riedel

While you probably recognize, “that’s what she said!” as a joke, here in Madison it’s also a show that’s changing lives. Thought up in 2011 by Molly Vanderlin of The Bricks Theatre along with friends Miranda Hawk and Karen Saari-Pausch, they imagined a show where women could come together to find strength and share stories of their lives on stage with an audience.

Every show starts with a theme such as resolution, mother-load, lie or perfection and a group of six to ten women. Rehearsals start with a meet and greet where the women discuss the theme for that show and read what they have started writing. For the next month the cast breaks up into smaller groups that meet once a week to workshop what they’ve written with Molly leading them.

The whole process is emotional, powerful and sometimes extremely difficult. Even the most benign stories can lead to some pretty powerful places as the women explore them, which is exactly what makes this show so special. Past stories have included buying your first house as a single woman only to find you’ve got a roommate: a mouse; starting new Christmas traditions after your old ones were torn apart by divorce; that time you were in college and ended up working as a cocktail waitress in a strip club; having your first orgasm at fifty while coming to terms with a marriage that brings you both joy and absolutely no sex; coping with migraines that seek to destroy all the relationships around you; and being an adoptive mother trying to maintain her place in her child’s life as they meet their biological mother for the first time in India. Stories are unique to women, but reach out and transcend gender, race and age.

The women who perform are always from the community. Some of them have experience in performance, but not writing, others are writers, but not performers, still others have never done anything like this in their lives. The one thing they have in common is they are all terrified and they are all brave.

This August is their ninth show, themed Crave and marks the third year in the That’s What She Said run and this show may be the most important one yet with stories of addiction. Rehearsals start July 13th and the show runs August 20th-21st with eight women performing at The Brink Lounge (701 E. Washington Ave). Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at the door, or at brownpapertickets.com.

***For more information check out the group’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TWSSBricks, or call (608)358-9609.