In this short paper, I will outline a perspective on anti-pornography activism, provide a brief overview of tactics, and offer a few comments about tactics and actions. For the purposes of this paper, I will focus on pornography. But as has been discussed throughout this conference, the distinctions between pornography, prostitution, and sex trafficking are shallow and tenuous. There is more alike between these issues than there is different.
Activism & Politics
This short article details the initial findings from a 3-month conversation between 21 male activists who work to prevent violence against women. Using Participatory Action Research methodology, this research project investigates what men who do this work would like to learn from other men who do this work. To date, no research has been done that examines what it is that motivates and sustains men who work, as their primary effort, to prevent men’s violence against women.
The EMERGE (Engendering Men: Evidence on Routes to Gender Equality) project includes a Practice Brief on "Lessons in good practice from work with men and boys for gender equality". Download the Practice Brief here.
Since the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, there have been tremendous advances in the rights and well-being of women and girls. We are still far from achieving equality between women and men, but by many measures—including health, education, political participation, and income— we are closer to it than we were 20 years ago. As envisioned in the Beijing Platform for Action, one critical piece for advancing the gender equality agenda is engaging men and boys.
I hate pornography. I hate what pornography does to women, what it does to men, what it says to men to do to women and other men.
It’s time to listen to students. Across the country, teenagers have walked out of classes, stood in silence, and delivered stirring speeches calling out their elders for failing to prevent their schools from becoming shooting ranges for raging men. On Saturday, they’ll protest in Washington, DC, with adult allies among the throngs in the capitol and at hundreds of student-organized satellite rallies nationwide.
To achieve gender equality, we’ll have to engage men. Above all, because gender inequalities are sustained in large part by men – by men’s attitudes, behaviours, identities, and relations. First, this work must be feminist – and I mean, strongly, robustly feminist. Second, this work must challenge men. It must address male privilege. Gender inequality is as much a story of male advantage as it is a story of female disadvantage. Gender inequality is a story of male privilege. Third, we have to involve men in processes of personal and social change. Fourth, we must affirm diverse ways of being a man. We should affirm men who do not fit dominant codes of masculinity and challenge sexist constructions of manhood. Finally, we have to engage men in working for systems change. In tackling the material, structural, and cultural factors that underpin gender inequality.
We’re in an interesting period in terms of men’s violence against women and its prevention. This violence is particularly high on community and government agendas. There are some significant signs of progress. But let’s not lapse into rosy optimism. […] This presentation is intended to contribute to, and intervene in, both advocacy and policy-making aimed at the prevention and reduction of men’s violence against women. It emphasises three key directions for our work. And each of the three also embodies a challenge. Each faces significant obstacles.
The film Raise Our Men features interviews with New Zealand men about their experience of growing up and conforming to male stereotypes (the man box).
The film was developed by White Ribbon New Zealand as part of their 2017 campaign, because how we encourage and expect men to behave, directly affects the high level of domestic violence and sexual harm in this country.
The film picks up on four key links:
Feminist analysis and activism have been instrumental in achieving gains in women’s rights, including action to address violence against women and girls (VAWG). Over the past two decades, strong local, national and international women’s movements have brought VAWG, including in armed conflict and natural disasters, into the public domain as a development, public health, international peace and security and women’s rights issue.