"Why is it important for two men to sit on a stage and have a conversation about gender?" asked Byron Hurt, filmmaker, author and anti-sexism activist, March 9 in Call Auditorium. "We're in the 21st century," answered Jackson Katz, an educator, author and filmmaker. "It's time to move past such ridiculous ignorance about even the category of gender as being somehow synonymous with women."

Katz and Hurt, whose documentaries include "Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and "I AM A MAN: Black Masculinity in America," discussed masculinity, race and class in their presentation "Man Up: Tough Talk About American Manhood," the third of a series of community forum events held in response to student requests for administration to address several topics, including gender violence on campus, that became conversation touchstones last fall.

Gannett's mental health promotion coordinator Catherine Thrasher-Carroll described the event as "part of a continued effort to engage our community members in relevant issues related to mental health and well-being, safety and security, brotherhood and sisterhood, and the values of a healthy citizenship while on campus and beyond."

Katz is co-founder of the multicultural, mixed-gender Mentors in Violence Prevention program at Northeastern University. According to Hurt, the program is based on the idea of "men engaging other men." Katz was "the primary visionary in creating the bystander model" for violence prevention, Hurt added, which "has become widely used around the country as a model in which men and women intervene" in the face of physical or sexual violence.

Men are under "intense pressure to conform to certain norms," Katz said, adding that his and Hurt's goal is to try to "change the social norms in male culture so it's not unusual to hear men talk about" gender issues.

Even today, "it's still very rare to have guys talk openly and explicitly about masculinity" and gender violence, Hurt said. He stressed the importance for men and women to hear men speak out on problems of masculinity and violence. By listening to "Jackson and I talking about these issues publicly," said Hurt, maybe "other guys will feel more comfortable talking about them."

Discussions of physical and sexual violence should be "built into the educational process," said Katz. In addition to integrating conversations about these issues into the curriculum and the student services that colleges offer, "we need to start making it expected that men come to events like this," he added.

According to Katz, "within groups that are underrepresented," there is often "resistance to talking about problems in the group in a way that people outside the group can hear" for fear of reinforcing negative stereotypes. Hurt agreed, noting that as an African-American man, speaking out on "violence against women in the African-American community would be helping out one-half of my race."

A "paradigm shift" has to happen in discussions about gender violence, said Katz. These problems are not "women's issues that some good men help out with," he added. "They're really men's issues."

"We must continually examine the roles that gender, patriarchy, sexism, racism and heterosexism play in our relationships and the overall campus climate," said Nina Cummings, Gannett's health educator and victim advocate, commenting on the event. She added that the event was "a proactive effort designed to generate a conversation about underlying issues" relevant to the entire community.

The event was co-sponsored by many organizations across campus, including Africana Library, the Office of Minority Educational Affairs, ALANA Programming Board, Fraternity and Sorority Affairs, Gannett Health Services and the Office of the Dean of Students.

Joseph Mansky '12 is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.