Free virtual keynote offer below.
Last week featured International Women’s Day, a middle-aged man’s personal vendetta against a member of the royal family, the discovery of Sarah Everard’s body after she had been murdered, the charge of murder against a serving police officer, a candlelit vigil for Sarah Everard ‘broken up’ by heavy-handed Met Police actions and Mother’s Day.
All-in-all a challenging week, one which saw responses both predictable and necessary.
Predictable:‘women should stay indoors’ and ‘not all men are violent’.
Necessary: reclaim the streets, thousands of women on social media saying “here’s what happened to me” and ‘let’s talk about the real issue’.
Shall we stop talking about what women need to do to ‘stay safe’ (Hint, it’s not as easy as hands, face, space because men will invade them all)? Since 1975 and Peter Sutcliffe’s first murder women have been told to stay at home / don’t wear that / don’t drink too much / get a taxi / don’t get that taxi etc… what has changed in nearly 50 years? Very little.
There were 1,425 women killed by men[1]between 2009 and 2018 – between 124 and 168 a year and 82% of perpetrators[2]in Domestic Violence cases have more than two previous crimes of DV listed.
Male Violence is the underlying cause of much of the violent crime against the person in the UK with 74% being a single male perpetrator[3].
Sorry for the difficult statistics and potential upset the above may have caused you but it’s time we addressed the elephant in the room – men’s violence and especially male violence against women.
To help you start these conversations with your KS3 and KS4 (and above) students I’m going to offer you my pre-recorded keynotes for free for w/c 22ndMarch so you can spark some debate and open up thinking about the way we relate to each other, how prevalent victim-blaming is and how often male violence is seen as an ‘incidental part’ of assault on women and girls rather than the key driver of it.
Here’s the Teacher Info film which is a prelude to the two films which will be available next week, it outlines what the subject is, how the two films can be used and trigger-warnings and the need to make sure pastoral support teams are aware of what you’re going to be talking about. https://vimeo.com/460964336
I make no apology that there’s not much time to plan this for – these conversations need to start now on the tail of the events of last week and that’s why I’m acting now too.
In return I ask two things:
- Make a donation to refuge in the name of Sarah Everard and in the name of my sister, Sarah Gosling. https://donate.refuge.org.uk/page/51133/donate/1?ea.tracking.id=GEN_B
- Complete the following form with contact details so that I can ensure I send the links and materials to the correct place.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1d178RIVrUqZLq011Pxk8XTjpiwrCuJ-f-awbRy7PYjw/edit
Obviously, if next week is too soon for you to do anything to open these debates, then I can offer keynotes live via Zoom / Teams etc; live face to face (when permitted again) or via subscription to the videos – from which I make a donation to Refuge too.
If there was a more urgent time to open the debate around male violence and misogyny I can’t think of it – please try and fit this in to your PSHE and RSE offering next week.
Kind regards
Bernie.
[1]https://www.femicidecensus.org/data-matters-every-woman-matters/
[2]Hester (2019) referenced in ONS data.
[3]ONS data.