It’s important that we acknowledge that the growing movement of men in the United States — in a multicultural sense — and all around the world — in an international sense — the growing movement of men who are standing up and speaking out about men’s violence against women and going into parts of male culture that have historically been either apathetic about or openly hostile to women’s efforts to engage them. That movement of men is indebted to the leadership of women on a personal level, on a professional level, on a political level, on an intellectual level, on every level. Women built these movements, and these are movements that are affecting — in a positive way — everybody, not just women and girls, but also men and boys.
And oftentimes, men like myself get a lot of credit and public acclaim for doing the work that women have been doing for a long time.
Four, almost five years ago, Proposition 8, the great marriage equality debate, was raising a lot of dust around this country. And, at the time, getting married wasn’t really something I’d spent a lot of time thinking about, but I was struck by the fact that America, a country with such a tarnished civil rights record, could be repeating its mistakes so blatantly…
And this powerful awareness rolled in over me that I was a minority, and in my own home country, based on one facet of my character. I was legally and indisputably, a second-class citizen.
I was not an activist. I waved no flags in my own life. But I was plagued by this question: How could anyone vote to strip the rights of the vast variety of people that I knew, based on one element of their character? How could they say that we as a group were not as deserving of equal rights as somebody else?
Were we even a group? What group? And had these people even ever consciously met a victim of the discrimination? Did they know who they were voting against and what the impact was?
And then it occurred to me. Perhaps if they could look into the eyes of the people that they were casting into second-class citizenship, it might make it harder for them to do. It might give them pause.
Obviously, I couldn’t get 20 million people to the same dinner party, so I I figured out a way where I could introduce them to each other photographically — without any artifice, without any lighting, or any manipulation of any kind on my part. Because in a photograph, you can examine a lion’s whiskers without the fear of him ripping your face off.
For me, photography is not just about exposing film, it’s about exposing the viewer. To something new; a place they haven’t gone before; but — most importantly — to people they might be afraid of.
While I was in high school, something happened. I met a young gentleman from our village who had been to the University of Oregon…
I told him, “Well, I want to go to where you [went]”… And he told me, “What do you mean you want to go? Don’t you have a husband waiting for you?” And I told him, “Don’t worry about that part. Just tell me how to get there.”
…I applied to school and I was accepted to [Randolph College] in Lynchburg, Virginia. [But] I couldn’t come without the support of the village because I needed to raise money … and again, when the men heard and the people heard that a woman had gotten an opportunity to go to school, they said, “What a lost opportunity. This should have been given to a boy.”
