About Gender-Based Violence

Since a number of years, I participated in the World Council of Churches campaign:

Thursdays in Black

A global movement for a world without rape and violence.

This means that I dress in black every Thursdays and that I try to influence others to also participate in the fight against Gender-Based Violence.

This morning, I led an online prayer session that the United Bible Society holds the first Thursday every month. In the prayer meeting I mentioned this as a prayer concern. Present was our Secretary General, Dirk Gevers, who lives in South Africa. He then mentioned that South Africa has classified violence against women a national disaster. When I read about this on BBC it says that an online campaign has led to this stance:

Women were urged to "withdraw from the economy for one day", and lie down for 15 minutes at 12:00 local time (10:00 GMT) in honour of the 15 females who are murdered in the country every day.

When we lived in South Africa we saw how widely spread this scourge was. It gives me hope that women are raising their voices

We are in the middle of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence which is a UN campaign from 25 November (International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women) to 10 December (Human Rights Day).

If you have an opportunity to raise your voice – please do so!

HeForShe

My eldest daughter sent me a message. The message included a link to a speech that Emma Watson has held at the UN.

Dad, this is something you ought to write a blog post about.

She is of course right. My children often are! Children often are!

In short: The United Nations has launched

A Solidarity Movement for Gender Equality

The front figure is the UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson. I listened to her speech held in the UN Headquarters in New York. I liked it!

Of course this is nothing new. It has just reached the UN-level. Nothing strange! Of course there are men who, for a long time, have understood that both women and men benefit from gender equality. Nevertheless, I think this is a great initiative. I am not going to comment on a lot of things. Rather listen to the speech yourselves. It’s less than 12 minutes long. Here is the link.

Last year, in the end of October, I attended the WCC pre-assembly of Women and Men in Busan, South Korea. It was for the first time that the World Council of Churches arranged a pre-assembly of both women and men. For 60 years it had been a pre-assembly for women. I happened to be the moderator of the men’s gatherings in this pre-assembly. The program of the pre-assembly is here.

Amongst other things we as men made a statement. The link is here. In my view the statement was progressive. But we were only around 50 men in a pre-assembly were the women were close to 500. Emma Watson also speaks about this, when she refers to the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995. Also at that conference men were a minority.

For us, at the pre-assembly in Busan in 2013, it was important to underscore that gender inequalities, affect both women and men. We stated:

Unjust gender relations have not only dis-empowered women but also distorted us as men and limited the way we, as men, relate to others, nature and ourselves.

Our statement tried to problematize this even further. One issue we stressed were the different forms of masculinities that we experience:

There are many forms and practices of masculinity and we have not honoured the diversity of men.  We express our solidarity with men who have been outcast because of their sexual orientation and suffer from the violence of homophobia.

Emma Watson focuses, throughout the speech, on the word feminism. She believes that many people understand the word as gender exclusive. That it, for some, even means “man-hate”. And this has to stop, she says.

For those who listen carefully to feminists, I think it is quite clear that most feminists are aware that feminism is about gender equality. For the sake of all human beings. But of course, it is easy to misunderstand. Sometimes we as men put up a defense because we experience quilt. I therefore welcome Emma Watson’s speech also on this note.

Lastly I have to express a critique that I cannot withdraw. "He For She". Really? Shouldn’t it be “We together for All of us”? I’m just asking.

Nevertheless I am prepared to join this movement. It is a good initiative. On the way to a world of equality! You can also join. Do it on the HeForShe-website. The link comes here.

Basic Security in Field II

At the moment my wife and I are busy taking part in an online United Nations Course called "Basic Security in Field II". It is an interactive course which takes approximately five hours to complete. We work on different computers and we do not communicate more than necessary. Right now I have spent three hours and have completed four modules. There are another three to go. Most probably I will continue tomorrow. The instruction given in the beginning is precisely this: Don’t complete the entire course the same day.

Many different areas covered. Some of them we will not need i. e. how to travel in a convoy or how to act in an area with land mines. But other parts deal with cultural differences and how those might be strengths as long as you are aware of your own culture and also accept the specific culture you find yourself in.

Having spent most of Friday and Saturday packing and sorting things in our house this course means a welcome change of perspective. I am becoming increasingly aware of the fact that we are moving to South Africa in less than two months’ time.

But right now we are about to have supper. The wife just completed module three and scored 100%. Congratulations!