PRESENTATIONS
Schools Peer Safety Conference
On 29 November MACS co-founder Chris Green was the Keynote Speaker at a ‘Schools Peer Safety’ conference for 5 schools. The event provided opportunities for local schools to discuss issues such as male allyship, consent and the impact of pornography.
Chris’ keynote talk focussed on the need of men taking a stand against all forms of male violence against women and girls – including sexual abuse, intimate partner violence, coercion, financial abuse, sexual harassment and the sexual exploitation industries (pornography and prostitution). MACS also had a stand at the post conference marketplace and distributed materials to staff and students.
Allyship Training
That same week Chris gave a ‘Male Allyship’ workshop to the Streetscene staff of the local council, focussing on how men can be better allies to women and girls. The men taking part in the workshop were very engaged. One participant shared a great example of allyship: he described how he had intervened the previous afternoon when he observed an older man harassing a female school student at a bus stop to ensure that she got on her bus safely, and also to report the incident to police and to his work supervisor.
EVENTS
Nordic Model Now’s #BreakingTheCycle Conference
We were really chuffed to have a stall at the Nordic Model Now conference Breaking the Cycle on 11 November in London. The event was very well organised and attended and addressed a variety of issues, including what is happening to girls in a pornified culture, the impact of webcamming, OnlyFans and ‘sugar dating’ as well as how radical feminist thinking on pornography has been hijacked by neo-liberal ‘feminists’ who reduce the experiences of female porn performers to ‘sex-work’. We recommend you watch the event back on YouTube.
PETITIONING & OTHER SUPPORT
At the start of the month we emailed our MPs asking them to vote down the Conversion Therapy Practices Bill, which had been rumoured to be included in the King’s Speech on 7 November. In the end of course, the Conversion Therapy Practices Bill was not included in the speech.
A couple of days later we became one of 30+ organisations to sign Sex Matters’ #TimeToAct letter to Rishi Sunak and Kemi Badenoch. The letter called on the government to commit to publishing a proposal for secondary legislation to clarify the relationship between the Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act, to support the development of a post-legislative scrutiny committee in Parliament to consider how the Gender Recognition Act is working in practice and to hold a public inquiry on the erosion of protection for single-sex services, spaces and data, and the impact of this on safeguarding. You can find a detailed post on the Sex Matters website.
In the week of 6 November, we also became one of the Signatory Organisations of the Declaration for Biological Reality. The Declaration for Biological Reality focusses on 5 aspects of concern regarding the impact and influence of gender ideology: child protection, women’s rights, LGB rights, freedom of speech and public sector neutrality.
A few weeks later we signed a petition to the General Medical Council, asking them to reverse their decision to remove the word ‘mother’ from maternity documents. We agree, as the petition states, that the removal “disregards the biological reality that women are uniquely capable of giving birth“.
Towards the end of November we also signed a petition to the UK parliament asking for a statutory public inquiry into gender Identity ideology & queer theory.
Starting on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (25 November) we put our #16DaysOfAction into practice. During our first 6 days of activism, we donated to Virago Women’s Workshop in Leeds, Maisha Safe House in Kenya and a group class action by 1950s women related to pension discrimination in the UK.
Check out our 16 Days of Action 2023 here.
PRO-FEMINIST DISCUSSION GROUP: VICTORIA SMITH – HAGS: THE DEMONISATION OF MIDDLE-AGED WOMEN
In our November meeting we discussed Victoria Smith’s book Hags. You can read our thoughts on the book and its contents here.
NEXT DISCUSSION GROUP MEETING
The next group will take place on Monday 18 December. We will be reading and discussing Tough Crowd: How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy by Graham Linehan.
To find out more and to join our group, please email us.
