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…
Tag: Europe
The riots in London were not a political protest. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t have a meaning. They were, of course, a miserable business. They further destroyed downtrodden communities. They traumatized children. In addition to chain stores, looters trashed small businesses sweated over by families, often immigrants. To figure out what these riots were…
A special guest blog by Jorgen Lorentzen in Oslo Dear friends, A terrible action of terror hit Norway on Friday. It is now clear that it was one man’s work: a 32-year-old ethnic Norwegian with right-wing sympathies named Anders Breivik. The theory now is that the blast in downtown Oslo, outside the Prime Minister’s office,…
After four days of heavy rain and battering winds on the west coast of the Highlands, the weather is glorious. I’m now speaking at a conference outside of Inverness, still in the Highlands, but far from the rugged interior: here the countryside is rolling hills, dotted with prosperous towns and gentle farms. In spite of the…
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…
Two, three or even four opposing things can co-exist. It is possible that someone is, at the same time, a) a courageous, even heroic, advocate who says that citizens should know the truth and who is willing to take enormous personal risks to make that happen; b) an individual who may have committed a form…
A million women hit the streets in 230 Italian cities on February 13. 400,000, alone, marched in Rome. Media around the world played it up as a march against the sleezy, likely-Mafia-connected, Prime Minister Berlusconi who seems to have a thing for hair dye, plastic surgery, and buying sex from young women. I wondered if…
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…