A letter from a regional organisation came through my letterbox today. On the back page was an advert. It was simply a red page with a picture of a white ribbon. I was intrigued. I looked closer, read the web address, Googled the words and have discovered that there is such an organisation called the White Ribbon Campaign.
http://www.whiteribboncampaign.co.uk/
What is the White Ribbon Campaign (WRC)?
The WRC is the largest effort in the world of men working to end men's violence against women.
How did the WRC get started?
In 1991, a handful of men in Canada decided they had a responsibility to urge men to speak out against violence against women. They decided that wearing a white ribbon would be a symbol of men's opposition to men's violence against women. After only six weeks preparation, as many as one hundred thousand men across Canada wore a white ribbon. Many others were drawn into discussion and debate on the issue of men's violence. There are now White Ribbon Campaigns operating in many countries around the world.
The UK Branch of WRC was started in 2004.
Wearing a white ribbon is a personal pledge never to commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women.
Each year, WRC urge men and boys to wear a ribbon for one or two weeks, starting on November 25, the International Day for the Eradication of Violence Against Women
WRC is an educational organization to encourage reflection and discussion that leads to personal and collective action among men.
Throughout the year, WRC encourage men
to do educational work in schools, workplaces and communities,
to support local women's groups,
to raise money for the international educational efforts of the WRC.
WRC distribute Education and Action kits to schools, maintain a website. WRC speak out on issues of public policy.
So how appropriate to my own feelings about violence (against either gender) when you have a look at the WRC website. There have been many men who at the time were and I discover still more men who find the criminal activities of men like Adam Carruthers against so many women utterly appalling. They have been in touch through my blog or via email. Many have said that they are ashamed to be a man, yet they are not the violent ones.
There were men who stood back and didn't act when they had strong suspicions of the dreadful actions that Carruthers was involved in. His friends and some of his colleagues. There was one courageous policeman, backed by his supervisor, who went against the culture of the force at that time and he spoke out to senior officers. These men were the brave ones, the ones I will always have the greatest respect for as, especially at that time, they risked so much in what was the pursuit of justice and they stood by the raison d'etre of all police officers. They didn't want evil to succeed by remaining silent, by standing back and doing nothing.
The judicial process that I went through was dominated by men and, as a rape victim, I found that was incredibly hard for me to cope with. Perhaps more so as the rapist who attacked me was a man in a position of trust, one who abused his power. The WRC has shown me that men have come together in a spirit of concerted effort and hope to educate and to reduce and preferably end violence against women. Well done to the White Ribbon Campaign.
The WRC week is from the 25th November. I hope that lots of people support their efforts; and I don't care of which gender as violence might be predominantly generated by men, but violence is violence and I abhor it. Let us never forget that men can also be violated by women and that's not a gender issue, it's a criminal act just the same as a man's violence towards a woman is. So a gender issue or not?
Will you discuss the activities and aims of the WRC with your friends? See what they think, gauge their opinions? Will you join the volunteers of the WRC and show your support? What about wearing a white ribbon as a committed and caring member of our society who is against violence against either gender, especially against women?
Showing posts with label safety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label safety. Show all posts
Thursday, 6 November 2008
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
Pre-conceived ideas aren't good ideas
Sometimes there are those weird pieces of synchronicity, if you believe such a thing exists. An email came through last week about a visiting writer .....and yes, it really was time I got out of the house, faced the outside world and did something for me. Yesterday I went to a talk with my long-suffering, but thankfully, interested in literature carer. It was given by Scottish writer Ewan Morrison. I’d read about his books and to be honest I thought, this really isn’t going to be my thing. Not sex and relationships and as for the idea of his novel 'Swung.' No I thought, this is not for me, but then I'd not read either of his books. However, I’ve found that listening to writers speak about their process is fascinating, gems can come out of these encounters and Ewan was to hold a master class afterwards and my name was down for it.
I’m eager to learn more about writing. I started to write because I needed to. It was my only way of expressing my hurt; my outrage; the bottling up that was waiting to burst; the things I couldn’t say to people; the time after my fluency had left me and my stuttering was really bad and words went AWOL when I tried to engage in conversation, which to be honest was as little as possible.
My writing from that period is not aired and I have it filed away. The only exception being some poetry from that early venture I made into writing which was taken by the police as evidence for the trial against Carruthers. The officers said it was so strong and that it gave compelling evidence that something drastic had gone wrong in my life and that it was caused by a man and heavily indicated what the event was. Drastic it was and yes, life had gone very wrong, that bast..d had raped me and he was a senior policeman. My beliefs and ideas on trust had been blasted into oblivion in around half an hour of sheer hell. Then there was the head injury and my life took a further nose dive.
We arrived early. I got pick of the chairs and we went into a corner at the back where I felt safest. Ewan Morrison wasn’t what I was expecting. Pre-conceived ideas? No Jane, you should have learnt by now that you don’t have pre-conceived ideas; you take things and take people as you find them. If people I meet seem open, honest, kind, up-front that’s great. If they’re any of the negative things then time to buzz off. The man was a delightful character, showed a warm personality in front of his audience.
Ewan’s reading was superb. Not all sex, rampant hormones, and, after hearing his 15 minute extract, certainly not what I thought it would be. He explored an amazing array of issues from one small part of his novel “Distance.” His reading voice was good; it was clear, intonation great. There was a chance at the end for a Q&A session before the master class.
I had a question. I tried to keep it in my head, not be side tracked by other questions and Ewan’s answers. My short-term memory can be such a pain. I managed to pluck up the courage to ask about his process and just got in with the final question. Fascinating answer about the way he doesn’t want to overly analyse his work or else he thinks he’ll be scuppered (at that point I glanced at a university lecturer who is a specialist in critical writing analysis.) Ewan spoke about his way of exploring ideas and working in beginnings, middles and ends right though his work until it builds up into a composite volume.
The master class followed a short coffee break. Great to have this chance in one way I thought as I do need to improve my writing (even if only for the sake of campaigning), but I always get really nervous about this sort of thing. It can be a real exposure of your inner self and although I knew all bar one of the participants there is that inner fear lurking inside me. Ewan discussed beginnings; we looked at some examples of how writers have started novels, he spoke of the three W’s and ‘Chekov’s window.’ Fascinating stuff. Then the exercise, except it didn’t happen. He set us the exercise to be emailed to him, if we wanted to do it. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d do it and the issue of ‘want to’ didn’t come into it. With no time to do the exercise Ewan planned for it was on to the ‘book game.’ I suddenly remembered that I’d played this fun and intriguing game years ago in a wee bothy on Mull when the rain hit the windows hard and horizontally one evening. I got home enthused by the mixture of ideas whizzing round in my head. The tape I had from the master class was helpful to listen to bits of. I’ve downloaded it and will play it again when there’s more time.
I looked up more about Ewan on the net at http://ewanmorrison.com/ and it seems there is a lot more to him than the subjects of his novels suggest. For goodness sake, why shouldn’t there be? I found an article he’d written for The Guardian on stuttering. He wrote about how trauma can start it off and how the discussion rages on about the “why of stuttering.” Ewan was a stutterer, so was his father. The extract he’d read to us, a father shouting to his stammering boy on Arthur’s Seat. It all made sense. That’s how Ewan knew so much about stuttering. He’d been through it. The agonies of not being able to say what you want to say, of feeling the word forming, hearing the word in your mind, but the word won’t come out. Crumbs, how did he cope with me in his master class? Was I an awful reminder of his years of stuttering? I hope not. My speech is much improved from the initial head injury, but I have good days and not so good days and yesterday wasn’t the most fluent day. I’ve got to the stage where I can read my poetry fluently, but it takes a lot of hard work. Stress, being tired, my brain slows and then everything goes downhill; the concentration, the clumsiness and the frustration of non-fluent speech and the crappy communication.
Meeting Ewan was helpful to meet to me as a ‘wanna-be’ writer; learning about some of his processes in writing; the master class exercise, the 'book game' and the nuggets from his writing life experiences were all so stimulating. I found today that there was more to him, the ex-stutterer, the man who overcame his barrier and now …..a man who has the most amazing critiques of his novels that, to be honest, I can probably only ever dream about. So often I’ve thought of writing a book about the last dozen years of my life. For now I’m mostly sticking with poetry and writing for campaigning and this baby blog. Poetry suits my attention span and my joy at playing with words in short pieces. Maybe, maybe one day the book on Jane Dearie’s disastrous meeting will be written.
I’m eager to learn more about writing. I started to write because I needed to. It was my only way of expressing my hurt; my outrage; the bottling up that was waiting to burst; the things I couldn’t say to people; the time after my fluency had left me and my stuttering was really bad and words went AWOL when I tried to engage in conversation, which to be honest was as little as possible.
My writing from that period is not aired and I have it filed away. The only exception being some poetry from that early venture I made into writing which was taken by the police as evidence for the trial against Carruthers. The officers said it was so strong and that it gave compelling evidence that something drastic had gone wrong in my life and that it was caused by a man and heavily indicated what the event was. Drastic it was and yes, life had gone very wrong, that bast..d had raped me and he was a senior policeman. My beliefs and ideas on trust had been blasted into oblivion in around half an hour of sheer hell. Then there was the head injury and my life took a further nose dive.
We arrived early. I got pick of the chairs and we went into a corner at the back where I felt safest. Ewan Morrison wasn’t what I was expecting. Pre-conceived ideas? No Jane, you should have learnt by now that you don’t have pre-conceived ideas; you take things and take people as you find them. If people I meet seem open, honest, kind, up-front that’s great. If they’re any of the negative things then time to buzz off. The man was a delightful character, showed a warm personality in front of his audience.
Ewan’s reading was superb. Not all sex, rampant hormones, and, after hearing his 15 minute extract, certainly not what I thought it would be. He explored an amazing array of issues from one small part of his novel “Distance.” His reading voice was good; it was clear, intonation great. There was a chance at the end for a Q&A session before the master class.
I had a question. I tried to keep it in my head, not be side tracked by other questions and Ewan’s answers. My short-term memory can be such a pain. I managed to pluck up the courage to ask about his process and just got in with the final question. Fascinating answer about the way he doesn’t want to overly analyse his work or else he thinks he’ll be scuppered (at that point I glanced at a university lecturer who is a specialist in critical writing analysis.) Ewan spoke about his way of exploring ideas and working in beginnings, middles and ends right though his work until it builds up into a composite volume.
The master class followed a short coffee break. Great to have this chance in one way I thought as I do need to improve my writing (even if only for the sake of campaigning), but I always get really nervous about this sort of thing. It can be a real exposure of your inner self and although I knew all bar one of the participants there is that inner fear lurking inside me. Ewan discussed beginnings; we looked at some examples of how writers have started novels, he spoke of the three W’s and ‘Chekov’s window.’ Fascinating stuff. Then the exercise, except it didn’t happen. He set us the exercise to be emailed to him, if we wanted to do it. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d do it and the issue of ‘want to’ didn’t come into it. With no time to do the exercise Ewan planned for it was on to the ‘book game.’ I suddenly remembered that I’d played this fun and intriguing game years ago in a wee bothy on Mull when the rain hit the windows hard and horizontally one evening. I got home enthused by the mixture of ideas whizzing round in my head. The tape I had from the master class was helpful to listen to bits of. I’ve downloaded it and will play it again when there’s more time.
I looked up more about Ewan on the net at http://ewanmorrison.com/ and it seems there is a lot more to him than the subjects of his novels suggest. For goodness sake, why shouldn’t there be? I found an article he’d written for The Guardian on stuttering. He wrote about how trauma can start it off and how the discussion rages on about the “why of stuttering.” Ewan was a stutterer, so was his father. The extract he’d read to us, a father shouting to his stammering boy on Arthur’s Seat. It all made sense. That’s how Ewan knew so much about stuttering. He’d been through it. The agonies of not being able to say what you want to say, of feeling the word forming, hearing the word in your mind, but the word won’t come out. Crumbs, how did he cope with me in his master class? Was I an awful reminder of his years of stuttering? I hope not. My speech is much improved from the initial head injury, but I have good days and not so good days and yesterday wasn’t the most fluent day. I’ve got to the stage where I can read my poetry fluently, but it takes a lot of hard work. Stress, being tired, my brain slows and then everything goes downhill; the concentration, the clumsiness and the frustration of non-fluent speech and the crappy communication.
Meeting Ewan was helpful to meet to me as a ‘wanna-be’ writer; learning about some of his processes in writing; the master class exercise, the 'book game' and the nuggets from his writing life experiences were all so stimulating. I found today that there was more to him, the ex-stutterer, the man who overcame his barrier and now …..a man who has the most amazing critiques of his novels that, to be honest, I can probably only ever dream about. So often I’ve thought of writing a book about the last dozen years of my life. For now I’m mostly sticking with poetry and writing for campaigning and this baby blog. Poetry suits my attention span and my joy at playing with words in short pieces. Maybe, maybe one day the book on Jane Dearie’s disastrous meeting will be written.
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