CAMPAIGNS
We started June ambitiously by starting not one, but two campaigns. Both of them are still ongoing, so please support them where you can!
CAMPAIGN 1: FUNDRAISER FOR ‘BEHIND THE LOOKING GLASS’
We are partnering with Vaishnavi Sundar to support her in funding and completing her latest documentary film ‘Behind the Looking Glass‘, focussing on the lives and experiences of women whose male partners have undergone or have a desire to transition. Vaishnavi still needs additional funds to fund this important film, the first one on this subject. If you can, please support Vaishnavi, her team and the film by making a donation, watching the teaser trailer and / or helping promote the fundraiser via social media or email using the below images and the hashtags #behindthelookingglass #btlg.
CAMPAIGN 2: #NoAbusersOnStage
We’re running our #NoAbusersOnStage campaign to increase awareness about the number of male abusers that have not been cancelled, but are currently touring and being celebrated across the globe. We want to get people think about what these artists have been accused, whether they should be celebrated and supported and so these abusers continue to be challenged on their behaviours.
We also want festival / event organisers, venues, the police and the government to do more to prevent men harassing, abusing and assaulting women sexually at gigs, festivals and music events.
At the same time we are calling on all men to do more. It’s not good enough to not assault, or harass women. We are asking men to educate themselves about the scale of the problem, reconsider which artists their support and learn bystander skills so they can behave in an effective way when they witness another man harassing or assaulting a woman.
As part of the campaign we contacted a number of large UK festivals and were especially encouraged by the hard work and commitment from Boomtown to ensure women & girls were safe at festivals. Most other festivals did not reply or seemed unwilling to engage in a conversation on the topic.
For more information about the campaign, please follow our hashtag #NoAbusersOnStage on social media and read our full campaign release here.
MEETINGS & EVENTS
We were really pleased that Chris was able to meet with a Labour Party representative to introduce Male Allies Challenging Sexism and the work that we do. We also travelled up to the LGB Alliance’s Big Night Out in Newcastle to make some new connections and meet some more like-minded people.
PETITIONING & OTHER SUPPORT
We were one of 90 organisations and 562 individuals who signed Nordic Model Now’s open letter to the Lancet, following their editorial entitled ‘Protecting the health of sex workers in the EU‘.
We also signed an open letter by Collective Shout to Hardie Grant Children’s Publisher to remove their advice for minors about the sending of nude pictures. In a book called ‘Welcome to Sex’ (Dr Melissa Kang, Yumi Stynes, Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing, Richmond, Vic, 2023), the authors the authors write (p.174) “If we were talking to our own kids, we’d tell them to always crop their heads out of any photos, just in case…”. This kind of advice is irresponsible and dangerous. You can add your own signature to the open letter here.
We wrote to our MPs expressing our support for age verification relating to online pornography as proposed by the Online Safety Bill. We expressed our concerns about children and young people being exposed to hardcore pornography for the last 20+ years without any sort of control from policymakers or governments and the devastating effects this has had for the last 2 generations of women, who feel immense pressure to accept increasingly disrespectful and violent behaviours from their male partners as well as the impact on men’s behaviour and their expectations regarding sexual relationships.
We also wrote to Oxfam as a result of their sexist ‘Pride Month’ animated video depicting a group of malicious and unattractive looking individuals, including a woman with ginger hair wearing a ‘TERF’ badge. We informed Oxfam that their apology “for the offence caused” was not enough and that they needed to produce a statement informing the public about how they had decided that this sexist animated marketing video was OK in the first place, regardless of whether the figure was meant to depict JK Rowling or not. We also expressed our concern to them about recent reports that an employee was hounded out of her job for defending JK Rowling.
We also signed petitions to remove the 28-day time limit for applying to the lenient sentence scheme to have a sentence reviewed, for convictions of murder, a petition to Yorkshire Building Society to reinstate Rev Richard’s Account after comments he made in a customer survey about objecting the Society’s endorsement and promotion of gender ideology and a similar petition following Metro Bank’s decision to refuse a bank account to ‘Our Duty’, an international support network for parents who wish to protect their children from gender ideology.
RAMMSTEIN – #KeineBühnefürRammstein / #KeineBühne
We also showed a lot of international solidarity by signing petitions opposing concerts by Rammstein in Berlin, Vienna and Bern, after a number of women said singer Till Lindemann had sexually abused and assaulted them and a few weeks later 2 women came forward saying keyboardist Christian Lorenz had sexually abused them. More information is available here.
PRO-FEMINIST DISCUSSION GROUP: GAIL DINES – PORNLAND
Due to our busy schedule, we had to postpone the June book group to 24 July and this time we read the 2010 book Pornland: How Porn has Hijacked our Sexuality by Gail Dines. The write up of our discussion is available here.
NEXT DISCUSSION GROUP MEETING
We are yet to confirm the date for the August meeting and the book that we will read. To find out more and to join our discussion group, please email us.
