VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN FORUM April 18th: Featured Panelist Irene Weiser
April 3, 2009
by Sheryl Lee
|7 Comments
The New Agenda will be hosting a Violence Against Women Forum on April 18th from 3-5 p.m. at the Benjamin Hotel in New York City. A cocktail hour will follow from 5-6 p.m. RSVP to tnavawforum@yahoo.com
The Violence Against Women Forum will feature four of the New York area’s preeminent experts on domestic violence. Each expert will speak about a specific topic that she feels is currently noteworthy.
One of the four panelists, Irene Weiser, President and Executive Director of stopfamilyviolence.org will speak on “The family court crisis – what’s happening, why, and how we need to organize to address it.”
Details of the event and the other panelists can be found by clicking here.
Why isn’t there at least one male on this panel? We need men to speak out against violence against women. Men need to take this serious enough to take ownership of the issue and do something about this by socially engaging their male colleagues, friends, brothers and sons. Why keep this a women’s issue when it really needs to be brought to men’s attention. Why not go to the root of the problem by getting men involved in this effort. I fear that without male involvement the effort will be marginalized.
Jen,
The membership of The New Agenda is 10-15% men. Men do care about women’s issues – and are of course invited to attend this important event!
[...] New Agenda will be hosting a Violence Against Women Forum on April 18th from 3-5 p.m. at the Benjamin Hotel in New York City. A cocktail hour will follow from 5-6 p.m. [...]
Hello,
It is my positive expectation you may welcome hearing a viewpoint from another male. I wrote about the current nature of violence in today’s society. A considerable amount of this commentary include the subject matter of violence against women. I gave attention to how women are treated in recent, horror films such as the remake of Friday the 13th.
Please visit this blog posting: http://curtisonthenews.blogspo.....opped.html
You may express your viewpoints, I welcome hearing from as many women as possible. You should voice yourselves in varying areas where the floor is given to you to express your concerns.
Sincerely,
Curtis Jackson
Amy,
With all due respect, you did not answer my question. I specifically asked why a male isn’t on the panel for this event. I understand that many men support your efforts and are active members of the organization. But having a male (say the NYPD – Chief) or some other male community leader with first hand knowledge of domestic violence issues could only support the cause in ways that would reach out to more males. Male leadership speaking out against violence against women is key to prevention efforts. I hope you will consider this point of view in the future.
Jen
Jen, I’m not answering for Amy.
I will not, again, ever attend any violence against women seminar which has men talking to us about our lives.It is men who abuse. If men are concerned about what they have done to women, let them form separate organizations and hold seminars delivered to other men.
Last week I heard from a male, police office, crisis team member about a particular case I’m following. His point of view throughout his every reference, his attitude, tone of voice and choice of language and manner of speaking, was to patronize the over 200 women he was speaking to, denigrate and ridicule in a subtle way, and justify why a prostituted woman should be blamed for trading sex for housing in a place that has minus freezing temperature seven months of the year, instead of the blaming the man who was privileged to own the house, who received lots of praise for ‘letting her live there’, and who was, according to the police office, just a poor old senior who was a sex addict. Oh yes, he referred to the prostituted woman as a ‘worker’. Thanks, but I’ll take no-one rather than the male point of view of violence toward women. His male point of view was to call this anything but what it was, to call it work, to call the john a ‘sex addict’ for whom we should feel sympathy, and regret that he was being used by a ‘sex worker’.
It is overwhelmingly MEN who abuse women. MEN have nothing to say on this issue to me. They do not belong in public seminars delivered to women about women, and they do not belong on crisis teams that come out when women call for help. Men caused the crisis.
Dear Anonymous, and to Amy, Jennifer and all others,
I disagree with the following statement:
‘It is overwhelmingly MEN who abuse women. MEN have nothing to say on this issue to me. They do not belong in public seminars delivered to women about women, and they do not belong on crisis teams that come out when women call for help. Men caused the crisis.’
It is sad that Anonymous and other women have this limited and untruthful viewpoint of the male gender. In fact it is offensive and insensitive of what good people had been accomplishing. In realization both sexes have conscious and thinking abilities to select to either good or harm toward one another. In recognition of this many men should had taken the lead in advancing human rights or even basic consideration to others.
Anonymous is correct in acknowledging that many, too many men had illegally abused women and children for their selfish objectives. Regardless there had been through-out history and more so today males whom had always been against such bad practices and attitudes. I myself had wrote at leash two, blog postings against spouse abuse and domestic violence.
Anomymous should also understand that among the bad people some, not enough had made positive changes, adjusted their attitudes and stop their abusive behaviors. If former, drug abusers can be allowed to speak in public against illegal drugs. Would it not then be an advantage to you that former, wife beaters shared their experiences against domestic violence?
My viewpoints include a overlooked fact that also through-out history some women had unwillingly, at times willfully contributed to mistreatment against their own gender and children. Recently a few women, school teachers are facing criminal charges of child molestation. In certain countries women take part in arranging youths for sex for profit from visiting tourist or regular customers.
For decades women had taken part in expoitative and demeaning entertainment and other media including pornographic films, violent, video games. Of course these awful vices noted here do not involve all women. It would be fair to consider these does not include the mentality of all men either. My request is that Ms Anonymous (and others with same-like viewpoints toward men) reconsider her opinion.
Thank you for allowing me to express myself here.
Sincere Regards,
C. Jackson
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