The Invisible Men
Well, the fab chaps and chapettes at The Red Knob have been quiescent for a little while – but fear not…we’re hitting the road yet again! Representatives from the mighty Knob will be appearing at the Royal College of Nursing sexual health conference tomorrow in London…exploring the theme of lifestyle, subculture, and young men’s health…we’re sure you’ve all read our spiel! If not, read the blog! Belated details of the conference can be found here:
RCN Sexual Health Conference 2009
Last year’s conference saw Kathy French talk about the invisibility of young men in teenage pregnancy discourses – a situation which – now let’s be honest, hasn’t really changed. We do need to keep raising the profile of this – which the low key commando unit that is The Red Knob strives to do…well, we try our best, given the paucity of funding for this work – we did start off in a converted coal bunker you know! The good news is, that whilst the folk at The Knob rail valiantly on in their tirade against the dearth of sexual health promotion work that deals with young men ‘as they are’, the mandarins at Brook appear to have picked up the penny that they’d dropped a while ago and decided to take another look at work with young men – including the possibility of a literature review with those iron men ( you’ve gotta be tough to do this work) at Working with Men. Information here:
Brook research – boys and young men
We can only applaud this – but chaps, pleeeeease can we acknowledge that sometimes that however ethically uncomfortable it might be for all of us, and as much as we may not personally like it, that some young men do inhabit authentic cultures – that are real to them - and that sometimes current guidance doesn’t work? That we need to be a bit more realistic about ‘what works’ in order to deliver our messages? Possibly too uncomfortable a price to pay for some professionals? The teenage pregnancy strategy is a decade old – young men haven’t gone away, yet how much focus on them is there really? Young men deserve more than this. C’mon!
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