Feminists, Franciscans and Football

Just before Rutilio through the balloon into the air, there was a moment of anticipatory anxiety and excitement in the room full of women. Once the balloon had taken flight, chaos broke loose. The women in the center jumped and smacked the balloon, trying to get it to their goalie armed with a tack for popping it. Within seconds we were all screaming, swatting and sweating. One after another, participants in the game were getting injured- scratched, hit in the face, falling off chairs, breaking jewelry.

This was just one of the interactive games we engaged in during the Allied Women workshop for the Masculinities program of CBC. A caravan of three microbuses full of women arrived on Friday at the Franciscan retreat center in the mountains of La Palma in Chalatenango. Each of the women who participated either works with or is friends with one or more men who have gone through the process of the masculinities program. Through games like these, we were able to analyze how we act out the hegemonic model of masculinity. This model lays out the roles that men are supposed to play, how they should look physically, emotionally and psychologically. If men don't fit into the hegemonic model in some aspects of their lives, they exaggerate it in others. For instance, a man who can't provide for his family because he's unemployed might try and become physically abusive of his wife and children. The process of the masculinities program helps uncover this hegemonic model, explore questions of sexuality, fatherhood and prevention of gender based violence by helping men to examine how they have experienced masculinity in their own lives.

The methodology of the masculinites program is really cool. We engaged in exercizes in which we held hands and had to hold each other around the waist, activities that make men uncomfortable as they don't usually touch each other very much. We also participated in reflective activities where we quietly thought about what parts of the hegemonic model we take on as women, and then taped those qualities to our bodies. Like in balloon-soccer, many of us are violent in our daily lives, not caring what harm we do to others in the struggle to reach our goals. This model of the masculinites program could be powerful for men in the states as well.