Book Review by Carlton Rounds on:Toxic Masculinity: Curing the Virus: making men smarter, healthier, safer

Toxic Masculinity: Curing the Virus: making men smarter, healthier, safer

Written by Stephen Whitehead

And Reviewed by Carlton Rounds

This book could not be more timely or relevant. When toxic masculinity pours forth from the highest political offices in the land, the urgency to understand the challenges and the opportunities poised at the intersection of power, justice and gender hints at outcomes and predicts the potential future of humankind. I loved this book. It called me out, it reassured me, and it rekindled my curiosity.

The book is accessible and well structured allowing individuals with different levels of gender awareness to follow the observations and narrative. The book explores and defines intersecting zones of masculine identity and behavior making specific, well explained and targeted points. The helpful lists of behaviors and questions could literally be applied as a rough diagnostic tool, or to really get a group going during a facilitated discussion. The author’s approach is neither cajoling nor condescending. His feminist platform is not submerged, and his commitment to the term renews its “spirit” making feminist identity seem more expansive and engaging than what it has become, it feels to me, flattened academic dogma.

It is clear the author would like to see men and women evolve into progressive gender expression, and he calls out both sexes for perpetuating toxicity. In the author’s world, everyone is part of a constellation of behaviors that pollute the integrity of our world. As a progressive masculine man myself, this book helped me recognize issues I need to work on, and due to Stephen’s writing, I have new concepts and language I can drop into discussions I am determined to spark.

I am particularly inspired by the “futurist” scenarios used to show trajectories of change over time. As a historian, this stylistic technique is very compelling. It stretches my perspective and my sociological imagination by requiring continuous growth and evolution not just about gender but about what is possible in human society. My woke style in the year 2019 might be the unenlightened cave of thought by 2050. Finally, Stephen brings not just a lifetime of experience and self reflection to his findings, but an Asian cultural awareness making his work not just a western anchored exploration, but a conversation with a global cadence.

Having met Stephen in person, his warmth and emotional intelligence are much like you would imagine. His role at 70 as gender journeyman is not just fitting, but reassuring. He is helping define what a mature progressive masculinity looks like, not leaving the work and the responsibility to the emerging younger generation. In addition, for those of us who never had the benefit of non toxic Dads or Grandpas, Stephen’s desire for a more deeply connected experience feels personal, validating and healing.

In service,

Carlton Rounds

Invitation as Key Note Speaker for Charles University's Event Sponsored by the US State Department for Cultural Diplomacy

Dear Mr. Rounds – and To Whom It May Concern,

This letter is to serve as official invitation and confirmation that Mr. Carlton Rounds has been awarded a Small Grant for Democracy by the United States Department of State through its US Embassy to the Czech Republic to visit the Department of American Studies of Charles University in Prague to be a keynote speaker and trainer at the Allen Ginsberg Memorial Freedom Festival, to take place in Prague, the Czech Republic on April 29 through May 7, 2015.

Click Here for Information on the Historic Visit of Allen Ginsberg to Prague 50 Years Ago

Mr. Rounds’ participation is key to the success of the Festival, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of out gay Beat poet and activist Allen Ginsberg’s 1965 visit to Prague, in then Communist Czechoslovakia. The Festival presents to Czech university students and faculty, the general public and activist audiences the history and current state of US artistic freedom of expression, democratic dissent, civil rights and LGBT and HIV/AIDS activism, and trains them in cross-cultural coalition building for social justice. Mr. Rounds’ extensive experience and strong record of leadership in these fields make him a highly desirable citizen diplomat for this cultural exchange program.

The Chorus - Follow Up Film from Singing Positive - 10 Years Later - San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus

Gary Fallardo, in this film, is the man whose first tenor seat I occupied a week after his death. The SFGMC later gave out a yearly award in his honor for Most Professional Talent in the ensemble. I was the first to be chosen, and proud that Gary's talents had been remembered and celebrated. I wish, he, like me, could have survived. Gary, as well as many, many others are now part of what is affectionately referred to as:

Disasterology of Johnstown PA- 1889, This is funny to read since I write so long ago and was such a baby.

The Johnstown Flood of 1889:
A Study of Culture, Class and Power Structures
in the Light of Disaster


Program in International Management 49, 1994


A research thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a master’s degree in International Administration at the
School for International Training in Brattleboro, VT

Oral History- Writing for History- C. Rounds

History is rich with bias. These biases exist against class, race, geography, gender, and level of literacy. Elites and western educated minorities value the written word over oral history. This is not hard to understand, as written words are the foundation of laws and societies, as we know it. If you do not have the skills of literacy, you are not included in the history of culture. This ability to read and write is a limited concept when evaluating how well a person can understand and negotiate his or her world. Many brilliant people, in their own context, have rich powerful lives without so much as walk near a library, though it may be true that since they are not in power they may be vulnerable to abuse by dominant powers. Had the west been dominated by oral traditions as the highest form of literacy, the situation could be reversed. In fact, if dance were considered the only valid form of record, one would have to be a dancer in order to be included in the telling or the subject matter.

Overseas History-Writing for History - C. Rounds

Overseas history as an emerging discipline after World War Two began to unearth the idea that non-European histories were autonomous and specific. This new school of thought, with a non-threatening name, allowed the investigation into Africa and Asia without a direct challenge to the establishment. This course of inquiry blossomed into many specific historical tracks, and ideally the comparison of these unique tracks lead to a more macro social narrative, rather than an exclusively European one. This is a fascinating concept, though it may seem obvious to a postmodern historian.

Orientalism- Writing for History, C. Rounds

Edward Said’s essay on the genesis of Orientalism is a formidable and courageous critique not only of an invented term but also as an indictment of an elite dialectic consciousness responsible for cultural and academic colonialism. Said opens his essay with a personal reflection during the civil war in Beirut as an encapsulation of an exchange with a French reporter who laments at the loss of European control of the region as symbol of nostalgia for the colonial past. This reporter does not reflect on the loss of the pre-colonial culture as worthy of mention. This sets the tone for Said’s entire exploration into the historical ideas and trends which served not only to originate the idea of Orientalism, but its use as a tool of dominance and oppression from pre-colonial history to more modern historical thought.

Invention of Tradition- Historical Writing - C.Rounds

The invention of tradition is a multidirectional and complicated concept. Hobsbwam’s book takes patience to discern the distinction between customs and traditions as a way of understanding their unique qualities. Traditions are denoted as being inflexible by nature and support the notions of values and symbolic representations of power relationships and accepted norms. These traditions are linked with the idea of the past, a history, that is seen a suitable and continuous. Customs have a more organic and flexible nature is based more in the agency of smaller interactive groups and individuals. The author notes that a tradition in its basic developmental evolution may initially begin as ritualized behavior or routine which overtime evolves into a more established norm.