Foster Care Training

It is impossible to ignore the impacts of sexism and toxic masculinity in today’s society. While men and masculinity are not inherently violent, the way masculinity is constructed and encouraged to be expressed in the United States has harmful impacts on all of us regardless of gender. Toxic masculinity asks men to use aggression and violence to assert their dominance and masculinity, which is reflected in almost every type of harm we see, whether we are looking at statistics surrounding domestic violence, sexual violence, gun violence, or our interpersonal interactions. We are all impacted by this construction and expression of masculinity, regardless of gender: in the US, men comprise more than 90% of all violent criminal perpetrators, according to the World Health Organization, while they are also at higher risk for isolation, unhappiness, loneliness, and related health problems. Creating a more peaceful and equitable world requires all of us to examine the ways we have been taught to understand and perpetuate sex and sexism. In this day-long workshop, participants will investigate their own socialization in a system of oppression based on sex and gender. We will cocreate a supported space to explore what we’ve learned and how we have been impacted by sexism. Through lecture, group process, experiential activity, and reflection, attendees will learn language and the historical construction and function of sexism and will consider how sexism fits into the larger system of oppression. Participants will have space to explore their early learnings and notice where they have learned to accept and collude with systems of sexism in order to imagine possibilities for sex, gender, and our communities outside of a sexist model.