The vast majority of people who kill and commit acts of violence are men, but it would be wrong to assume that men are hardwired to harm others, says Gary Barker in this guest blog pegged to the UK release of our new anti-war novel, The Afghan Vampires Book Club. More than 400,000 people are murdered…
Tag: Ending Men’s Violence
A version of this post originally appeared in The Telegraph (London, UK) on January 30, 2014 It’s been many years since I’ve heard anyone utter the words, “Act ladylike.” But it’s hard to go more than a few hours without hearing some version of “be a man”. I couldn’t even escape it this week while…
The fifth of a series with White Ribbon stories & links from around the world. Scroll down or click for: 1: Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific, Part 2: The Americas, Part 3: Europe, Part 4: Asia, Middle East & Caucusas. And check out The Guardian article I co-wrote with Gary Barker: “We Must…
The first of a week-long series with White Ribbon stories & links from around the world… And check out The Guardian article by Gary Barker and me, “We Must Enlist Men and Boys in the Fight to End Violence Against Women” It’s a tragedy in every country. Extensive studies by the World Health Organization tell…
From time to time, I invite colleagues to write a guest blog. Jorgen Lorentzen and Oystein Holter are both prominent in Norway as profeminist men working to promote gender equality and end all forms of violence against women. All opinions are those of the authors. In Norway, Gender Equality Does Extend to the Bedroom by…
SlutWalks are spreading around the globe. So too is the controversy around the name and the image it’s creating. I was proud to be invited to address the inaugural SlutWalk in Toronto on April 3. The idea is glorious and simple: grab onto one of the many epitaphs that get thrown at (some) women as…
As I was just in Istanbul for a few days of work – during an unusual March week of wet snow and pummeling winds – I wanted to tell you about the type of thing that should fill us all with a bit of hope. Turkey still faces huge challenges when it comes to gender…
First a quick story. In early December, I was getting on an Air New Zealand flight from Brisbane to Auckland and there was a group who looked like they were from some South Pacific island. Men and women: tall and striking with flowers in their hair. On the plane, one of the men was sitting…
On December 6, 1989, Canada changed forever. Until that day, thousands of women in our country suffered violence with little recourse. A woman beaten was a woman ignored. A woman raped was a woman who asked for it. A woman harassed at work was a woman who couldn’t take a joke. The violence was treated…
I looked around the meeting hall, full of energy, full of some courageous women and men working in dangerous and challenging circumstances, and others, just like myself, who simply believed we could make a difference in the world. We had gathered from eighty countries, 450 men and women, together with one objective: to improve the…
There are many deep shadows along the cobbled streets of Riga. Shadows not only from the low sun on these short days of early winter, but the ones that cut much deeper from the years of Nazi and Soviet occupation. Those shadows are mine to see for I think of my Grandmother on these streets…
In the end it was the boys. I was in Parma, the sixth of ten cities during my two weeks in Italy, itself the fourth and final country on this speaking trip. The events in Italy were starting to blur: the eighteen workshops for teachers or students, the ten speeches and press conferences, interviews on…
This city rises up the hillsides on both sides of the Bosporus, the wide channel from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, the divide between Europe and Asia. It is a city of domed mosques and pencil minarets, of the old bazaar and new shops selling Boss and Channel, of rambling old streets jammed with…
It’s a small city of 200,000, known as the home of sherry and a centre for flamenco. It’s also a wonderful example of how a city government can promote initiatives to transform the roles of men and support work among men to end violence against women. Seven years ago the city started the Men for…
There is a collection of brothels at the side of the highway an hour outside of Agra. Young women, some really just girls, stand at the roadside doorways, hoping their make up and smiles will bring in the $3 customers. In the poorest neighbourhoods of the cities, sex might cost thirty cents or a buck….
From Canada to Korea, Brazil to China, Spain to South Africa, Pakistan to the United States, men are finally challenging a grave epidemic and a terrible form of terrorism. It is not a disease, nor what we normally refer to as terrorism. But that doesn’t matter for the thousands of women who are murdered each…
Many countries in the western world seemed to have rediscovered fatherhood. We see fathers in movies and on television, in advertisements and newspaper articles: men are cooing to babies, playing with their kids, spreading advice to the next generation, and getting in touch with their own dads. It might get a bit corny at times,…
In Development 44.3: “Violence against Women and the Culture of Masculinity,” September 2001, pp. 9-14. Abstract: Michael Kaufman discusses the need to both address and involve men in ending violence against women (VAW), a few of the pitfalls and guiding principles, and shares his thoughts on what is the most developed example of this work,…
If it were between countries, we’d call it a war. If it were a disease, we’d call it an epidemic. If it were an oil spill, we’d call it a disaster. But it is happening to women, and it’s just an everyday affair. It is violence against women. It is sexual harassment at work and…
For a moment my eyes turned away from the workshop participants and out through the windows of the small conference room and towards the Himalayas, north of Kathmandu. I was there, leading a workshop, largely the outgrowth of remarkable work of UNICEF and UNIFEM which, a year earlier, had brought together women and men from…
This article first appeared in Finnish in Pelastakaa Lapset in the summer of 1998 Many countries in the western world seemed to have rediscovered fatherhood. We see fathers in movies and on television, in advertisements and newspaper articles: men are cooing to babies, playing with their kids, spreading advice to the next generation, and getting…
In my darker moments I think it was inevitable. A young man, wired with hate and fear, pulled the trigger on 14 women’s lives. It was inevitable not because men are naturally violent. There was something else at work. There are those who think that men are predisposed to aggression and brutality. That’s the 2001:…