Reflections & Proposals [ Post 10 ]

 

Reflection

Since post eight my direction has slightly changed. Or my wording rather. After my session last week testing my idea on my class mate Camilla, we discovered the title ‘Stand Up For Women’ wasn’t really appropriate when the idea was to change define masculinity. She suggested that the idea of asking men to stand up for women suggests they don’t already and that they are the perpetrates which might deter them from even coming near my project. It was decided to change the project to ‘Stand Up For Men’. The move is to ask men to focus on themselves, their mental health and ‘manly’ expectations. Camilla made some really interesting points about Australian society. Camilla comes from Sweden and commented that the masculine expectations are very different there. She noticed how Australia is a young country and that they are heavily dependant on sport in their social atmosphere. Sports athletes have become heroes in Australian society. They have become role models for society. We agreed that I need to use them as endorsements to encourage others to be involved.

In post eight my concept was to ‘Stand up for women’ to change males behaviour in group mentalities and settings. To overcome the stigma that standing up for a women makes you a ‘WOM’*or ‘whipped’. My concept has grown and evolved to ‘Stand up for Masculinity’, a social media campaign which asks you to define masculinity and reconceptualise it. It gets to the root of ‘Stand up for Women’ and addresses it directly ‘so what is masculinity?’.

It has a feminist undertone without ever using the word. It makes men turn inward on them selves and think what kind of man they want to be. Females play an important role in that they can prove wrong common conceptions of masculinity.

 

Project Title

Stand Up For Masculinity

Practise Type

Generative Design

The Issue

 

The Possible change

Creating a new understanding and definition of ‘masculinity’ one which does not box males into gender stereotypes and hopefully leads to better treatment of them selves and subsequently women.

Design Action to support change

To create a social media campaign which utilises peoples opinions to shape a new understanding of masculinity which supports gender equality. Influence by the #itsokaytotalk campaign the aim is for ‘I think its masculine’ to become a hashtag  and building social media campaign.

The basic parameters for the generative design include:

A detailed flow chart will be developed to help me find the best process for people to become involved and share their opinions.

 

*  WOM – A slang acronym standing for ‘Women Over Men’ used when A boy prioritises his girlfriend over his mates.

WRITTEN BY ANNA CARMODY

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Our Process [post 9]

 

 

Our group of four pulled out some strong ideas from this task. All having chosen the common subject of ‘Gender Equality and Womens Rights’ we all had a diverse knowledge on the topic and the issues surrounding it. Our discussion and mapping was a suggestion session, sharing articles were have read, ideas we have seen and how we can grow on them to make social change. The process of the group discussion luckily left each individual with a solid direction to explore and a strong problem statement.

 

Source 1: Anna Carmody, 2016. Team member Zara documenting ideas 

 

We undertook the process by all creating an initial ‘problem statement’ individually. From here we took each statement and placed it in the middle of a large piece of cartridge paper.

We spend 15 minuets pulling apart each of our individual problem statements and creating interesting avenues and finding potential emergent practices which would work for each.

 

Source 2: Anna Carmody, 2016. Team member Zara documenting ideas

 

We all had a texta and would put down any ideas which came to our minds and worked off each others ideas to create detailed maps / idea banks. I think we struggles a little as to the meaning of generative design and confused it with coding. But then looking back at the lecture and the example of the tree attometer we realised it was a very open emergent practise with lots of potential.

 

Source 3: Anna Carmody, 2016. Map created during week six studio class on problem statement: ‘Blokeyness of men in Australian society and it’s effects on mental health and women’

 

Our initial maps were rather messy and were essentially like a word vomit of an idea and everything that related to it. This messiness of the task did however allow us to write down anything without being concerned about the depth of the idea, allowing us to be open minded and unbiased of our brainstorm.

 

Source 4: Anna Carmody, 2016. Close up of process in source 3

 

From here we cleaned up our maps to highlight 5 possible emergent practice solutions to our problem questions. We also made diagrams of how our process might work.

 

Source 5: Anna Carmody, 2016. Final map of problem statement map

Finished with our cleaned up idea maps. We are set with directions to explore.

 

WRITTEN BY ANNA CARMODY 

 

Building problem statements [post 8]

 

Team work and numerous opinions enforced my ideas. This exercise got us to narrow down into our issues to find a direct pathway to communicate/ collect data for / visualise, which helped with the process of creating possible solutions. We created 5 different avenues of potential / exploration mine included:

The concept of masculinity in Australian society and mental health 

This would be a potential service design to help men feel comfortable to be open about their emotions and become more comfortable with sharing their emotions. This would hopefully act as a pathway to build better relationships for men and themselves as well as others.

Rape culture

This would be a data visualisation mapping habits of rape culture trying to shock viewers. We discussed in our group how many of the troubles we have heard about in colleges have been from friends not so much the news. This would be a collective piece collecting stories for individuals from colleges.

Sexism and patterns within it

This would be looking at social tendencies of men to speak about women in derogatory terms when they are ‘with the boys’ but less likely to speak like that when a women is around. Why?

Role models

Unsure of which emergent design practise avenue this concept would take it would attempt to recreate role models for masculinity. Considering many currently are sports starts who can treat women disrespectfully.

Men standing up for females

looking at the stigmas surrounded sticking up for females. Why do males speak up or not speak up? reputation? may ruin the relationship? you may be considered whipped? a WOM? how can we change this? who are the ones making this so difficult? how can we change these behaviours?

 

Proposal 

I propose to create a generative system in response to the issue of men standing up for females. I see this as a hybrid to explore male mental health and social confidence with an opportunity to change behaviours against male treatment of women in society. The system would have rules for the participants and the resulting data will be unpredicted as it comes from individual participants. The campaign would ask individuals to finish the sentence “I think it is masculine ….” 

This opens the question to everyones perception of what is masculine and provides an opportunity to change the current perception of the ‘blokey’ masculinity we have now in Australia. The idea came from a fellow group member who answered the question with “..when a guy is lanky with long hair and a surfy vibe”. To me this was an unexpected result, but made me more intrigued in how this could change males minds about masculinity hearing what girls really think. I would additionally want males to contribute to make an influence and act as role models.

Source 1: Anna Carmody, 2016. Proposed visual strategy for “I think its masculine..”

Source 2: Anna Carmody, 2016. Proposed visual strategy for “I think its masculine..”

Source 3: Anna Carmody, 2016. Proposed visual strategy for “I think its masculine..”

Ideally I would include the faces of the individuals or just short of their faces to create more of a persona. I want people to look at it and realise like minded individuals are making a stand and creating a change, reshaping the modern Australian man.

 

WRITTEN BY ANNA CARMODY 

 

 

 

 

Scrapping twitter [post 6]

Specific features and functions of Twitter 

Twitter is an online social networking platform made up of no more then 140 character messages known as Tweets about all different social topics and discussions. You select who you follow: people your inserted in, interesting social conversations, organisations and news broadcasters. Messages from the users you choose to follow will show up on your home page like a personalised newspaper. You can Retweet peoples messages, which means sharing what they have said on your page or you can reply to their posts. Retweeting is how twitter trends evolve and social issues are recognised.

 

Unique qualities 

Twitter is used by the general public as well as business and individuals or groups trying get their opinions out there and have a say. The Twitter community is very much based on different opinions regarding current social issues and trends. There is no tendency for one gender to use it more so then the other, hence why I saw it as an appropriate means to explore for my issue.

 

My scrapping process 

a flow chart of my process

My findings 

I found that over half of the content found when using the pipeline, although its was nice and organised it was irrelevant or insigntful. Over half the top retweets, users, hashtags were based on sex and sexualising genders. Only a handful were relevant and not necessarily completely on par with my topic. I gain a strong insight into how the words you choose can have so many different meaning then the one you intend. Some of my words may have been to broad and if I were to redo this exercise I defiantly would reconsider some of my broader ones such as male, female and use masculinity or femininity. I was overall surprised with the search results here. I thought given that I was putting in hashtags #heforshe and #itsokaytotalk, which are well known and spoke about, that all the results would be about those. However there were only a handful for #heforshe and none at all for #itsokaytotalk.

 

 

At this point I decided to enter the same words into a different twitter scanner. One which was not limited to 500 top results and produced over 3000. Interestingly enough the top hits here were incredibly relevant and came from users such as BBC News, The Guardian and other highly renowned sources.

 

WRITTEN  BY ANNA CARMODY 

Issue mapping [post 7]

Approaches to design for change, design-led ethnography [post 5]

For the interview I had the privilege of interviewing a class mate who had a strong interest and passion on the issue of gender equality and womens rights and therefor was an endless bank of knowledge and insights.

For the initial interview I prepared the questions:

•Would you consider yourself a feminist?

•What do you consider a feminist? and if you classify yourself as a feminist why?

•What is your opinion of men in feminism?

•Would you ever desire being the bread winner in the relationship?

•Do you see there as any social challenges being a feminist?

Her responses to my questions were very informative. She classified her self as a third wave feminist and showed a strong care for the socio-economic and social issues of all women. She understood the negative ‘wrap’ that feminism can have attached to be rooted from men seeing feminism as a threat against them and the patriarchy. Although she see’s men as part of the problem she also understands that they are important in creating positive change for women, acknowledging that you can’t power a movement with just the oppressed. She said there is a distinct line though however between men being allies and supporting feminism. She shared an interesting point which stuck with me:

“I really dislike when men decide that a women is doing her feminism wrong” 

This really struck me as a very interesting angle. Just acknowledging that its wonderful to have their support, however they are not the first hand oppressed in the situation. Coming from a strong family with feminist beliefs, it was no wonder she would desire being the bread winner in the future and after her dads role model example she joked about her expectations for her future husband.

She said that her feminist views can play a different role in different situations. She enjoys comfort to express her views in certain environments such as uni and at home, however sometimes can be found in uncomfortable situations in the work environment where she can run into the more conservative types. She raised an interesting point that men that consider them selves ‘feminist’ when in a group mentality especially when alcohol and drugs are in the situation they forget to give women a voice.

I found this task very successful. She provided me with a really strong understanding and example of a new wave feminist and was generous enough to share her story. I thought for my probe I could have asked her to search articles for feminist mentions etc. but I was more interested in her rich experiences. I asked her to share with me some of her stories. Stories of her own experiences, things she has witnessed or heard that have evoked her feminism.

These were the results

1.

I was walking home after my birthday with my best friend; my boyfriend was walking about 10 meters behind with another friend of mine. We walked past this group of boys, and as I went past one of them put his hand out an grabbed my breast. My and my best friend yelled at him and called him filth. By this time my boyfriend had caught up and he started yelling at the guy and kicked him in the shins. One of the guys tried to cool the situation down as it was obviously getting out of hand.

2.

This is just something that I’ve noticed when people drink and socialise in pubs. I hang around with a lot of men who called themselves feminists, as progressive men of the left. However whenever we go to the pub together and they drink they talk over me or ignore things I’m saying. Sometimes I internalise it and think it’s because what I’m saying isn’t particularly intelligent or interesting. Then a man makes the point that I tried to make, and low and behold the male chorus arises in ‘yeahs’ and ‘good point’.  Sometimes my partner, who I’ve voiced  my frustration about this to says ‘yeah that’s what Rose just said’, however it’s meant that I’ve stopped socialising with men to the point where my friendship group is almost exclusively women.

3.

A recent incident where I noticed men engaging in sexist behaviour was at a party I was at. Two boys and myself were sitting in a circle when one of them used the term ‘pussy’ and ‘bitches’ as a pejorative. When I pulled him up on it, him and his friend said I was over reacting. When I argued that that was a sexist stereotypes used to manipulate women’s’ emotional response to oppressive acts they told me to ‘drop it and that it was a party’.  When my partner walked into them room they called him over to ‘calm me down’ despite just voicing my opinion. My partner chose not to interfere as he had been drinking and didn’t want to get involved.

4.

Working in hospitality has been a huge eye opener for me in terms of how sexist the general population is. Sometimes it’s obvious, men will flirt with me, touch my hand or shoulder, talk to me much longer than I want them to, think that because I’m being paid to be polite I’m interested in what they have to say. I had this customer who told me that ‘I looked like the kind of the girl who would lick it up’ then accused me of not being able to take a joke when I banned him from the venue. Sometimes it’s less obvious, that customers won’t listen to me when I say no but when my male coworker says something it’s respected. People will generally be more aggressive to me than to the men I work with. I’ve called silly and stupid or slow and after all that told to ‘smile more’.

I found this a really interesting probe, providing me with really qualitative data and instances that I could relate to. I think it has helped me realise how many other women would relate to such stories and how it is a really powerful way to create a powerful movement or change. It has helped me to acknowledge that men in the group mentality is a ‘hotspot’ for derogatory, oppressive behaviour from males and that could potentially be a spot to work with in my future assessment.

 

Most interesting points:

Men in group mentalities forget to give women a voice

Social situations inform ones comfort to express their views freely

Men are comfortable in the patriarch

Feminism is a response to socialised behaviours

Many females feel similar about mens behaviour it is just not spoken about often

WRITTEN BY ANNA CARMODY

Mental health campaign targets men [post 4]

When I attempted to start this post I was really confused as to what I was looking for and what avenues I would have to take to find an outcome that suited the criteria. Still I’m slightly unsure if I have come to the correct conclusion. Through my research I have become very interested into the correlation between man aggression / behaviour and the link to mental health and mens prevalence to ignore it.

I have found a mental health campaign targeted at men which in my opinion, redesign the approach to mental health and men. They have designed an online campaign called ‘Man Therapy’. In my opinion it is a service design. Studies showed how men are more reluctant to take action on mental health problems, let alone acknowledge they exist. Therefore the concept of them going to talk to someone seems relatively slim. Man Therapy is a new design for Beyond Blue which retargets mental health at men.

”Blokes. They’re happy to get all touchy feely on the sporting field but when it comes to getting in touch with their feelings on the not-sporting field, sometimes known as life, they tend to drop the ball,” Dr Ironwood says in one of the ads

Essentially Man Therapy is page set up as a series of videos which take a humorous approach of targeting men. The videos are set in different settings which are considered masculine: an office with brown leather chairs and rich mahogany, a games room etc. and they are spoken by a man you would imagine on a posh hunting trip in London. He speaks with a deep voice, like you would imagine from a sports reader. The website looks like a vintage website for Cambridge or Oxford University, prestigious. He speaks all about male behaviour and norms and encourages you to feel as though its masculine to address your mental health. Then allowing you to DIY online to cure yourself. This is how I see it as a service design. Its acknowledging male behaviour and attempting to re think it and reduce the embarrassment and shame that men can sometimes feel about mental health problems.

” Depression is a topic not often played for laughs, but a new campaign plans to use humour to convince blokes that real men look after their mental health ” Dr Ironwood

What I think is most successful about this service design is that it’s address the sensitivity of male behaviour when it comes to mental health. Men do not want to confront these issues, they want to keep it private. So designing an online consultation service with help your self services, is a creative response. Traditionally men like to ‘do things them self’ as they ‘don’t need help’. The treatments on the website are more of a ‘do it’ ‘fix it yourself’ approach, reconceptualising it for men.

 

WRITTEN BY ANNA CARMODY

 

Harrison, D. 2013, Mental health campaign targets men, The Sydney Morning Hearld, 5th of June 2013, viewed on the 28th of August 2016, <http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/mental-health-campaign-targets-men-20130604-2no9k.html>

https://www.mantherapy.org.au

Mapping and Photos [post 3]

Mapping the stakeholders of gender equality and womens rights with my group really opened up all the difference avenues to explore. After class I found it very important for me to go home and update the map with more of a focus on my project. Given that I have already decided to focus on men in the realm of gender equality I felt it important to include more about them then perhaps necessary for others in the group. I made a General Map and then categorised them into influence and effect.

 

Fig. 1 Mapping the stakeholders 

click here to see a pdf version of the map

Fig 2. highlighting the most influential groups and the most affected groups

Click here to see PDF version of influence-map

“Identify yourself as a feminist today and many people will immediately assume you are man-hating, bra-burning, whiny liberal”

An initiative founded from a course called Women In The Public Sphere at Duke University called ‘Who Needs Feminism’ is an attempted to fight back against misconceptions surrounding the feminist movement. They do not provide a definition of feminism to keep it the concept open to personal definitions. Their aim is to remove negative connotations. They asked both males and females to write down ‘why they need feminism?’ and then to have their photo taken with the sign. These have been shared, changing gender perceptions and the ideas of what surrounds feminism.

http://whoyneedsfeminism.com/about.html

 

 

Danielle Henderson started a blog with her classmates to document the feminist theorists they were studying at the time. What started out as a lighthearted concept of pairing sensitive feminist theories with dreamy, nice boy, sweetheart Ryan Gosling became an overnight sensation.

https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Feminist_Ryan_Gosling.html?id=lkIGZK1A090C&redir_esc=y&hl=en 

This photo is an example of what a post would look as part of the #itsokaytotalk campaign, coming out of England mid 2016. Started by UK rugby player, Luke Amber, who lost his brother-in-law to suicide, the campaign raises awareness about mens mental health. Suicide is the biggest killer of men in the UK.

“#itsokaytotalk is all about sharing the simple message that men don’t have to keep their feelings bottled up as generations of macho conditioning has demanded” Men’s style 

The idea is to take a selfie with the hashtag and tag five of your friends in it to prompt them doing like wise, thus creating greater awareness.

https://thecalmzone.net/itsokaytotalk/

http://www.mensstyle.com.au/lifestyle/itsokaytotalk/

 

Last year Bic released pink pens for International Womens Day. The gendering of pens and only creating ‘Womens’ pens now insinuates that all the pens before have been male. This campaign received plenty of public criticism from women mocking the idea that they are allowed to use these pens and how its a miracle. The company came under fire as the campaign was seen as being ‘sexist’. They were forced to apologies for their campaign feature of  a women with the catch phrase ‘Look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man, work like a boss’. Its not surprising that after this interesting choice of words twitter was very active with the opinions of both men and women.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3484499/Female-workers-ridicule-Bic-s-pink-pens-sarcastic-hand-written-messages-man-produce-squiggles.html

 

White Ribbon is the larges movement of men and boys working to end men’s violence against women and girls in the world. Working to promote gender equality, healthy relationships and create a new vision of masculinity. Similar to that of the #itsokaytotalk campaign ‘gentlemen its time to write a new code of manhood’ encourages men to be emotional to express them selves freely. It attempts to encourage less ‘blokeness’ they have a hashtag  #manhug used to encourage males to be comfortable with intimacy and emotions.

http://www.whiteribbon.ca/be-a-man/

Im a feminist because.. is a tag that has spread across various means of social media, mainly being twitter and tumbler. The concept is similar to ‘who needs feminism?’ in that is asks everyone to truely think and come up with a personal relation / reason. I particularly like this contribution as I see feminism as something that should be installed and explained to young men. If the can grow up respecting it and understand gender equality for both women and themselves there is a better chance for more equal relationships in society, the work place and at home.

http://feministbecause.tumblr.com

 

 

HeforShe is a campaign branching out of UN Women. Trying to redefine feminism and create a better understanding of gender equality, asking the males of the world to look out and stick up for the females in their lives. Emma Watson introduced the campaign the the United Nation Headquarters in 2014, proposing to men that it is their issue too. Since then celebrates such a Harry Styles have posted with the #heforshe making it a current and influential campaign with over 1,302,655,061 supporters worldwide.

http://www.heforshe.org/en

http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2014/9/emma-watson-gender-equality-is-your-issue-too

 

on 15th of June this year at the United States of Women Summit Barack Obama gave a moving and influential speech about gender equality around the world. He spoke highly of women and finished with:

“I may be a little prayer then I was eight years ago, but this is what a feminist looks like”

This along with his influential essay in the young womens magazine glamour has had a very influential affect and created this idea of ‘this is what a feminist looks like’.  Trying to change the perception of feminism and gender stereotypes.

“So we need to break through these limitations. We need to keep changing the attitude that raises our girls to be demure and our boys to be assertive, that criticizes our daughters for speaking out and our sons for shedding a tear. We need to keep changing the attitude that punishes women for their sexuality and rewards men for theirs” obama

Many celebrities jumped on board the concept. Many influential individuals wore shirts with ‘this is what a feminist looks like’ written across the front. These men showed how it is masculine to stand  up for feminism.

“It is absolutely men’s responsibility to fight sexism too. And as spouses and partners and boyfriends, we need to work hard and be deliberate about creating truly equal relationships” obama

http://www.glamour.com/story/glamour-exclusive-president-barack-obama-says-this-is-what-a-feminist-looks-like

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/president-obama-this-is-what-a-feminist-looks-like_us_57605770e4b053d433068d9e

 

 

Silent Victims  was written in the Weekend Australian talking about how both men and women can take part in domestic abuse. Supporting the mens campaign 1 in 3 the idea is to make a statement about mens tendency not to report abuse or feel comfortable with society

 http://www.oneinthree.com.au/news/2015/11/14/silent-victims-bettina-arndt-the-weekend-australian.html

 

WRITTEN BY ANNA CARMODY

 

Scholarly research [post 2]

Margaret Umeed

 

 

Margaret Umeed is a RGN General practice specialist nurse whom has worked in general practise in Glasgow since 1990. Currently still working in a socio – economic deprived area in Scotland, Glasgow. She holds an NMC lecturer / practice educator qualification and is a registered teacher for TREC (Travel- health related education and care). She wrote this article for an academic journal called ‘Practice Nurse’. They publish News, Features and Research in the field of nursing. A peer reviewed source coming out of the United Kingdom. Making 12 contributions to the publication, Margaret is a keen contributor also writing about travellers health. Her article focuses on domestic abuse against men in Great Britain. She employee the powerful findings from Brain Dempsy’s research for AIMS (abuse against men in Scotland) Men’s experience of domestic abuse in Scotland to challenge societies perceptions of men in domestic violence. She defines what is understood as domestic violence and highlights the statistics for both men and women. Showing that the issue is misunderstood.

 

Linn Egeberg Holmgren

Linn Egeberg Holmgren writes for ‘Antena’, an academic journal coming out of The United States focusing on literature theory and criticism, poetry, social sciences and humanities. Her contribution here ‘Cofielding in Qualitative Interviews: Gender, Knowledge, and Interaction in a Study of (Pro)Feminist Men’ is among three major peer reviewed contributions. The others being ‘Framing ‘men in feminism’: theoretical locations, local contexts and practical passings in men’s gender-conscious positionings on gender equality and feminism’ for the The Journal of Gender Studies.

 

 

WRITTEN BY ANNA CARMODY 

Umeed, M 2013, ‘Understanding domestic abuse in men’, Practice Nurse, 43, 10, pp. 37-40, Health Business Elite, EBSCOhost, viewed 31 August 2016.

Dempsey, B. (2013) Men’s experience of domestic abuse in Scotland. What we know and how we can know more. AMIS/University of Dundee. Available at: http://www.amis.org.ukAccessed: 23 July 2013

 

 

 

 

 

let’s not forget about men [post 1]

In my secondary research I found lots of very interesting articles and viewpoints on so many dimensions of this huge concept of gender equality and womens rights. When reaching the conclusion of my research my interest was most strongly drawn towards my realisation that males were positioned in a very interesting way in this issue. They are the perpetrators. I found that this is not necessary true and many males go unrecognised as victims of domestic abuse. I wanted to look at gender equality in the light that to be equal we have to look after the rights of males as well. My research has ended up as a hybrid of gender equality and mental health.

1:

Author: Emma Watson – British actor and UN ambassador

Form: Speech to the United Nations on the 20th of September 2014

Emma Watson spoke for the UN to spread her passions for female rights, gender equality and a urge to change the the way that ‘feminism’ is understood in society and the role men play. Emma, best known for her role as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series was appointed good will ambassador for UN Women in 2014. UN Women is a United Nations branch created in 2010 seeking gender equality and empowerment for women world wide. UN women is is organised an governed by a multi tiered intergovernmental structure, making it a very trustworthy and reliable source. Having a popular reputation in the public as a well known actor, she had a very influential effect on the public introducing the UN Women campaign ‘He for She’. She brought the attention of the UN to a generation and target market which may not have necessarily been interested without her participation. Her stance was influenced through her experiences and opinions, seeking a brighter future for generations to come. Having worked in third world countries and towards female education for several years she comes from a strong background on female equality and empowerment. This was her first contribution to the United Nations, seeking to reach her audience on a more genuine and emotional level. The speech is well researched, opinionated, factual and delicate. I agree with her position. its encouraging, thought provoking and emotional. I agree that negative stigma needs to be removed, and a new understanding required.

 

2:

The author is Jessica Valenti who speaks on behalf of The Guardian, a renowned Australian newspaper. The Guardian initially a newspaper in the UK and US was brought to Australia in 2013. The Guardian prides it’s self to have no hidden influence or agenda, no commercial interests, just open, honest, fearless journalism. Jessica hosts a podcast series called ‘What would a feminist do?’ offering interviews, real life stories and advice on the most current topics of feminism. Bringing in both male and female opinions on different topics, Jessica encourages an open conversation with experts and leading specialists in their fields. The content is factual and well researched. This particular podcast is called ‘Talking about sexual violence with men’. It provides an interesting insight into reasons why men shy away and become defensive when the concept of feminism is brought up, giving well researched responses to how steps can be taken forward. With guests Jamil Smith, Senior National Correspondent on MTV news, and Dr Dorothy Edwards, Exceutive Director of violence- prevention non-profit Green Dot, experts in their fields. This podcast has been really interesting for me. Similar to the Emma Watson speech for the UN is speaks about the position of men in advocates for getting rid of domestic violence, unlike many other articles which position men as perpetrators. I believe this position is modern and becoming more recognised and talked about.  As we are reminded here, men are also victims. This often goes unrecognised.

 

3.

Shalaiah Medhora political correspondent for Triple J Hack, reports on the opinions circulating on social media regarding the recent Stanford rape case. The Hack program runs on Triple J ‘talking about stuff that matters to young australians’. Triple J is a branch of the trustworthy ABC radio broadcasting corporation. ABC radio has concerns itself with Australian news, current affairs, documentaries, education and sport since 1937. Renowned for its quality and reliability it is owned by the Australian government. Shalaiah comes from a strong background across radio, online and television, having worked for trustworthy Australian broadcasters SBS and The Guardian, having joined the Hack team in early 2016. This article is factual (case facts), opinionated (Facebook posts from public) and in the position of the general morals of society (that rape is wrong and this case is being unfairly handled). There is an extra layer to this article in that Shalaiah has a background passion for the wrongful acts of rape, having written about her own near rape experiences in The Guardian early April 2016. She has been a victim of other people having insensitive opinions her experiences and making generalised judgements, similar to the situation of the victim in the Stanford case.

4.

Michael Roddan writes for The Citizen, an Australian publication located in Melbourne. The Citizen is a platform for advancing journalism, essentially a stepping stone for students doing their masters of journalism. They are non- for – profit which means their aim is to be a serious and right with an emphasis on quality journalism that, in part, seeks to ‘back’ on issues and events that are neglected by main stream media battling budget cuts and cost constraints. Roddan writes the article ‘What about men? lies, statistics.. and peddling myths about violence against women’ as one of his many publications he has contributed to The Citizen. His main contributions focusing on Australian refugees and domestic violence. His other pieces on domestic violence being : Legal landmarks that have shaped the way the courts deal with domestic violence , Domestic violence: telling it like it is. Roddan completed a bachelor of International Studies at UNSW and has reported for The Australian, The business spectator, Fairfax, Forbes and The Melbourne Anglican Newspaper. Roddan employs experts such as Greg Anderson ( one in three), Michael Flood (senior lecturer at Wollongong University) and Elspeth McInnes (research co-ordinator at The University of South Australia). His position is to compare the opinions of these experts and challenging them creating interesting insights into the issue. The piece challenges a very tricky topic, challenging societies opinions.

5.

The article ‘Violence against women and sports’ was written by Suzanne Dyson in late 2013. She is an associate professor and a principal research fellow at the La Trobe University. From Nursing at Deakin she has done her Diploma of Women Studies at Deakin University to her PhD at La Trobe University. She has been a researcher for 16 year’s at the centre of The Australian Centre for sex, health and society. AFL and Vic Health funded her to research AFL behaviour, hence this article written for The Conversation. The Conversation is a publication advitising its self for its ‘Academic rigour, journalistic flair’. It is an independent source of new and views sources from the academic and research communities and delivered direct to the public. Dyson  has delivered three articles to the paper so far. This article in particular being part of a global series ‘Domestic Violence and Sports across the world and dealing with family violence and respect for Women’. Her position among her articles speaks that instilling young people with high quality sexuality and relationship education at home and in schools , will be the best way to address problematic sexual behaviour and encourages equal, respectful and ethical relationships between young men and females. I think this position is common among society. I agree with this position and I think though my research I see how this solution is overlooked at times.

 

Three positions

1.  Athlete heroism – sexual assault and atheletes

2. University rape culture – Stanford University rape case  – Sydney University

3. ‘Heforshe’ campaign – UN Women initiative to make men advocates for gender equality – Emma Watson. Changing the position of men from the perpetrators to supporters – more broad this can be linked with men and violence when talking about the stereotypes in the realm of domestic violence. Also speaking about men and mental health / Australian bluokyness / masculinity. Men as victims of domestic violence / abuse ? Verbal domestic abuse – predisposition that men are commonly in the wrong due to physical strength

• Key ideas for scholarly research
  • male support of feminism
  • domestic abuse against men
  • male mental health
  • Australian male expectations

 

 

 

WRITTEN BY ANNA CARMODY 

 

Watson, E. 2014, ‘Emma Watson’s UN Speech: HeForShe Movement’ UWIRE Text 6 Nov. 2014: 1. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 14 Sept. 2016. viewed on the 6th of August 2016 < http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.lib.uts.edu.au/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CA388992282&v=2.1&u=uts&it=r&p=EAIM&sw=w&authCount=1# >

Valenti, J. 2016, ‘Talking about sexual violence with men: What would a feminist do?’, audio podcast, The Guardian, Sydney, 23 July, viewed on the 6th of August 2016, <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/audio/2016/jul/23/feminism-sexual-violence-brock-turner-valenti-mtv>

Medhora, S. 2016, ‘Rape at prestigious US college prompts international outrage’, Tripple J Hack, ABC Raddio, Tuesday 7th of June 2016, viewed on the 6th of August 2016, < http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/stanford-university-rape-prompts-international-outrage/7487758>

Roddan, M. 2013, ‘What about men? statistics and peddling myths about violence against women’, The Citizen, 11th of December 2013, viewed on 14th of August 2016, <http://www.thecitizen.org.au/features/what-about-men-lies-statistics-and-peddling-myths-about-violence-against-women >

Dyson, S. 2014, ‘Violence against women and sports : ethical responsibility and brand control?’, The Conversation, October 23rd 2014, viewed 14th of August 2016 <http://theconversation.com/violence-against-women-and-sports-ethical-responsibility-or-brand-control-32270 >