Good article. There is another aspect to this. When the South Australian Government introduced mandatory reporting I was tasked with running inservice programmes in various schools. I conducted one session for some 250 staff members. I angered my audience when I stated that based on the statistical data there were at least two or three people in the audience who had perpetrated domestic violence either to their kids or partners. A not insignificant part of the problem is that we are quick to assume that it is others who are at fault. The other part of the problem is that no-one walks around with a label that states they are abusers and so we assume that they are just like us. Moreover we do not recognize it in ourselves that our behaviour can quite unintentionally intimidate others. If we operate in an environment when people can feel confident that they can say to someone when you do x it makes me feel... we will go a long way to addressing the problem.
I have almost nothing to add but I will say a couple of things. I grew up in a household with a war-damaged step-father. It was an egg-shells being walked upon household. In 1972 when I was a young teacher prone to describing women as chicks - a teaching colleague was one of a couple at my school - among those leavening agents-of-change recruited from North America in that decade to overcome a teacher-shortage - who handed over some copies of her Ms Magazine. That helped me along the path towards giving respect to women at least in terms of terminology Years later I was invited to a female teachers event addressed by Dale Spender - who gave the 19th-century background to sexist conventions in speech of he/him supposedly including she/her etc. And how one might describe occupations e.g. postman, policeman (postal worker/police officer)- or how one might see both genders in the term doctor, surgeon and so-forth (not "lady-doctor" as was the "accepted" form even as recently as 40 or so years ago). I taught English many years in Japan and felt quite at ease in explaining the changes taking place in the English language - even to asking my students to put a line through "hostess" and replace it with flight or cabin attendant. I arrived back in Australia over a decade ago to hear such terms as hostess apparently enjoying a revival. I offer these thoughts as an aside to the discussion of violence by men against women - but it has relevance in its demeaning assumptions of lesser. Poetess - fair dinkum!
Thanks to Jane for writing this piece, and a reminder that she has just started her own Substack.
https://janegilmore.substack.com/
Good article. There is another aspect to this. When the South Australian Government introduced mandatory reporting I was tasked with running inservice programmes in various schools. I conducted one session for some 250 staff members. I angered my audience when I stated that based on the statistical data there were at least two or three people in the audience who had perpetrated domestic violence either to their kids or partners. A not insignificant part of the problem is that we are quick to assume that it is others who are at fault. The other part of the problem is that no-one walks around with a label that states they are abusers and so we assume that they are just like us. Moreover we do not recognize it in ourselves that our behaviour can quite unintentionally intimidate others. If we operate in an environment when people can feel confident that they can say to someone when you do x it makes me feel... we will go a long way to addressing the problem.
I have almost nothing to add but I will say a couple of things. I grew up in a household with a war-damaged step-father. It was an egg-shells being walked upon household. In 1972 when I was a young teacher prone to describing women as chicks - a teaching colleague was one of a couple at my school - among those leavening agents-of-change recruited from North America in that decade to overcome a teacher-shortage - who handed over some copies of her Ms Magazine. That helped me along the path towards giving respect to women at least in terms of terminology Years later I was invited to a female teachers event addressed by Dale Spender - who gave the 19th-century background to sexist conventions in speech of he/him supposedly including she/her etc. And how one might describe occupations e.g. postman, policeman (postal worker/police officer)- or how one might see both genders in the term doctor, surgeon and so-forth (not "lady-doctor" as was the "accepted" form even as recently as 40 or so years ago). I taught English many years in Japan and felt quite at ease in explaining the changes taking place in the English language - even to asking my students to put a line through "hostess" and replace it with flight or cabin attendant. I arrived back in Australia over a decade ago to hear such terms as hostess apparently enjoying a revival. I offer these thoughts as an aside to the discussion of violence by men against women - but it has relevance in its demeaning assumptions of lesser. Poetess - fair dinkum!
"Smoking and HIV don’t work because the people who are dying are the ones who could change their behaviour to prevent their untimely death."
As someone living with HIV, I don't know how you would expect a person like me to 'change their behaviour to prevent their untimely death.'