A former pro football player, who says he wrestled with his own identity after spending years in the hyper-masculine world of the National Football League, visits Aspen Monday to talk with students and their parents about healthy relationships. Derek McCoy says these conversations can help end dating violence.
McCoy is the violence prevention director at Denver-based Project Pave, which teaches youth to think critically about gender stereotypes they see in popular culture and express emotions in healthy ways.
Monday, he’ll spend time working with students at Aspen High School.
“We do a lot of promoting healthy relationships, practicing those behaviors together in groups and really advocating and giving space to reflect upon healthy expressions of our identity,” he said.
He often works with boys in particular on healthy masculinity.
"When you think about guys not having access to their full spectrum of emotions and that sort of being coached into us or coached out of us as young people, we don’t develop a relationship with our own emotions, therefore we have less empathy for ourselves, therefore we have less empathy in relationships," he said.
By the same token, he said, girls are damaged by stereotypes that they're both more passive and more emotional than boys.
Monday evening, he’ll host a conversation with families at the school. He hopes to encourage parents to have conversations with their kids about who they are and what they value.
"How can we help them develop standards and boundaries and then help them figure out how to communicate what their standards and boundaries are in relationships?" he said.
McCoy speaks at Aspen High School Monday starting at 5:30 p.m. The event is hosted by Response, a local nonprofit that advocates for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, in honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month.