Counter-narratives are where Men Can Stop Rape, the 15-year-old organization that led October's national Healthy Masculinity Summit in Washington, D.C., starts. The national nonprofit focuses on creating a culture of "positive masculinity" through public awareness campaigns and programs targeted primarily at high school- and college-age men that emphasize taking a stand against violence and harassment—especially of women. The agenda of the summit expanded the discussion to include the multiple generations and topics, including the role of masculinity in sports, faith, violence, gender expression, and the media. It's arrival felt like the codifying of a movement, men changing what it means to be a man. That's half the story.

The other is more personal. I know that if you are a man, you're reading this with awareness or resistance, that how you interpret these men says a lot about the type of man you are. It's easy to pretend to be objective, to describe a movement as if I'm not invested in its outcome, but as I researched this story I realized that I couldn't tell the truth without exposing all of it: healthy masculinity as a sea-change, and why I want my own counter-narrative to be part of the turning tide.

"If you look at survey data you would find that most men in America today still subscribe largely to the ideology of masculinity that was the dominant ideology when I was younger, when my dad was younger," Michael Kimmel tells me. The professor of sociology at Stony Brook University and author of Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men, contends that though while most men might not realize it, there's a gap forming. "I think you're witnessing a disjunction between what we grew up thinking it means to be a man and the lives we're actually living and want to live," he says.

He points to data: Generation Y men do more housework and are more involved fathers than any generation in American history. They also have more cross-sex friendships, which Kimmel suggests means that young men see women increasingly as true peers—equals—in life and work.

Men Can Stop Rape works to remove the shame from diverse masculinities, and celebrate men bucking masculinity that's toxic to others. "One of the things that we talk about in the work that we do are the dominant stories of masculinity, and some of the qualities that come up when we talk about counter-stories," says Pat McGann, director of strategy and planning. "What kind of message do we get about what it is to be a man? How do we understand ourselves? What kind of men do we want to be?"

He lists some of the words the men at the summit used to describe healthy masculinity: nurturing, kind, positive, good, caring, courage, confident, inclusive, courageous, honest, accountability, and respect. Not your father's Marlboro man—but maybe closer to the reality of your father. Which is the point. "We have an exercise we do where we ask men and boys to name the strongest man in their life and then talk about what it is that makes him strong," McGann says. "Most of the time, it's their father or a counselor or a minister, and the ways in which they care for them. Or it might be about integrity, or it might be about their willingness to stand up for what they believe in, their compassion, all those kind of qualities—which are much more qualities of character. Those are always the things that we've associated with healthy masculinity."