Friday, November 30, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

New Zealand rugby tackles VAW

Posted: 29 Nov 2012 06:00 AM PST

New Zealand rugby players tour to combat domestic violence in Pacific Island nations.

“Break the Silence End the Violence” is the message New Zealand police and rugby players are taking to the Cook Islands.

Ten players from selected New Zealand rugby clubs visited the island of Rarotonga this week for a tour of schools and community groups, to promote the message that "[domestic] violence is not ok".

NZAid’s Pacific Prevention of Domestic Violence Programme (PPDVP) sponsored the tour. The programme has been collaborating with New Zealand rugby for four years. 

According to Cam Ronald, head of the PPDVP in New Zealand, “it is very positive that so many of our young sportsmen, many of them with connections to the Pacific, want to take a stand against violence."

Ronald further explained that the popularity of rugby in the Pacific and the players' status as role models add weight to the message that domestic violence is unacceptable. The players have become a powerful influence to young men and women in the Pacific countries that support the programme.

Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati, Vanuatu and the Cook Islands receive assistance from the New Zealand Police as part of the PPDVP, and all of these nations now have domestic violence units (DVUs) in their police departments.

In other Pacific countries, local and international NGOs provide domestic violence services.

Steve Symonds, Professional Development Manager with Wellington-based team the Hurricanes, says that the project is very popular with the players and is over-subscribed every year.

The Pacific region has some of the highest rates of violence against women in the world.

Up to 80 per cent of women in Fiji have experienced some form of violence in the home and 37 per cent of women in the Solomon Islands reported some form of sexual abuse before the age of 15, according to statistics released in 2010 by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM, now part of UN Women).

Recently Médecins Sans Frontièrs (MSF) estimated that 70 percent of women in Papua New Guinea (PNG) will be raped or sexually violated at some point in their lives.

Unni Karunakara, president of MSF, said that violence is the preferred tool for conflict resolution in PNG, whether between tribes or within the family.

He has challenged the new PNG government to tackle the widespread problem with health and psychological services ,since law enforcement alone has not been sufficient to stem the violence and protect PNG's women.

UNIFEM also pointed to specific factors, some of them cultural, in the problem of widespread violence against women in the Pacific.

In a statement UNIFEM said that ‘women in the Melanesian sub-region experience particular forms of violence such as arranged and forced marriage, mistreatment of widows, sorcery murders and sexual trafficking that reflect the rapid and complex transition they are making from traditional to modern, cash-based societies’.

At the 2012 Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) in August, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard launched a 320 million AU dollar project, the Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development Initiative, to promote gender equality and empower Pacific island women.

As part of the initiative female leaders will receive training to end violence against women in their countries.

During their week in the Cook Islands the New Zealand rugby players visited local schools and a prison.

As well as promoting their anti-violence message, the players also train with local youth rugby teams.

The players who participated were: Mark Hammett – Head Coach, Hurricanes; Wally Rifle – Coach, Blues; Mark Ranby – Professional Development Manager, Crusaders and Canterbury Rugby; Awen Guttenbeil – former league player, White Ribbon Ambassador; Thomas Perenara – Hurricanes; Gafatasi Sua – Auckland; Joseph Wheeler – Tasman ITM and Highlanders 2013 squad; Mahonri Schwalger – Chiefs, Counties Manukau; Motu Matu’u – Hurricanes and Albert Nikoro – Blues.

Liverpool rallies against domestic abuse

Posted: 29 Nov 2012 05:00 AM PST

White Ribbon Day rally highlights horrific statistics on violence against women.

‘Karen’, a mother of two, recounted how she was a victim of her ex-husband for seven years, suffering physical, financial and emotional abuse.

Karen, who joined the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women rally through the centre of Liverpool on November 25 to highlight domestic abuse and violence, said for a long time she had thought she was the only one.

"Before I met my ex-husband, I was working as cabin crew and I had a great life.

"After the first hit, there were sorrys and tears and he said he would never do it again. I believed him.

“Now I want to tell young girls not to take that first hit or slap, just to walk away.”

She added: “If I had gone somewhere like Liverpool Domestic Abuse Service, I could have left earlier.

“That is why it is so important for women to know there is help out there and they are not alone.

“I’m now a survivor and a happy one,” she said – and she urged women to get help if they were being abused.

Also at the rally was the new police and crime commissioner for Merseyside, Jane Kennedy, who said that domestic violence is ‘a crime about which it is usually possible to predict both the victim and the perpetrator, so it should be preventable’.

Ms Kennedy also called for a fight against forced marriages, saying that since last summer, the Merseyside Police had received 35 phone calls on the subject of forced marriages, and we must stand up and fight against it.

The Lord Mayor of Liverpool, Sharon Sullivan, announced that 104 balloons would be launched in memory of the 104 women killed in the UK by current or former partners in the past year, saying: “We’re here to show our intolerance for such crimes.”

On average two women are murdered each week in the UK by a partner or ex-partner, at least another 80,000 women are raped each year and 45 per cent of UK women experienced domestic violence, sexual abuse or stalking.

The United Nations estimates that up to 70 per cent of women experience violence in their lifetime and this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women – or White Ribbon Day – highlighted the fact that violence against women takes many forms.

Bad Sex Award reaches its climax

Posted: 29 Nov 2012 01:30 AM PST

The Bad Sex Literary Award causes a flutter of excitement each year.

And a flash of embarrassment, not least to the winner.

The annual prizegiving exposes the author who has written the worst sex scene in a newly published novel.

This year’s shortlist has created something of a titter amongst the media literati because of who it leaves out.

There is no nomination for EL James’ Fifty Shades of Grey – as expressly erotic novels do not qualify – and there’s nothing for J K Rowling’s A Casual Vacancy.

Despite the Harry Potter author doing her best with lines like: "The leathery skin of her upper cleavage radiated little cracks that no longer vanished when decompressed" and "that miraculously unguarded vagina", her crimes to literature weren’t judged to be heinous enough.

Instead the Literary Review  who run the awards has plumped for Tom Wolfe, Craig Raine and Nicholas Coleridge among others. Of the eight nominees three are women: Sam Mills, Nancy Huston and Nicola Barber.

It is Barber, author of The Yips, who appears to be the people’s favourite, at least on Twitter to win on December 4 with her humdinger: "She smells of almonds, like a plump Bakewell pudding; and he is the spoon, the whipped cream, the helpless dollop of warm custard."

This is not just sex, this is M&S sex.

While the women are prosaic and metaphorical, the men get down to business. For them, it is not so much pudding and custard as cock and bull, as the quotes from The Guardian illustrate.

Here’s the entry from Raine’s The Divine Comedy: "And he came. Like a wubbering springboard. His ejaculate jumped the length of her arm. Eight diminishing gouts. The first too high for her to lick. Right on the shoulder."

And this from Paul Mason: "He began thrusting wildly in the general direction of her chrysanthemum, but missing — his paunchy frame shuddering with the efford of remaining rigid and upside down."

Chrysanthemum?!

In the 30 years since the awards were first set up by Auberon Waugh, the vast majority of the winners have been male.

This could be down to two reasons:

1. More men are published.

2. Male writers are more prone to bad sex than good sex – a couple of thrusting paragraphs and it is all over.

So why is it so difficult to write about sex in a good way? And why did EL James strike such a chord, and become the biggest selling novelist ever, with such bad sex writing?

Jonathan Beckman is one of the judges and he believes poor sex literature is down to good old-fashioned British prudishness.

He writes in the FT: "You can sense the urge to shy away from sex, to displace it with simile or hide it all together. It's striking how frequently the view becomes cloudy or obscured."

The answer says Beckman is to write with straightforward honesty and refuse to take part in a "diversionary pantomime of imagery".

It may make for good literature but is it really what readers want? Much of the erotica of sex centres on the imagination, the physical reality is often more messy, perfunctionary, sometimes rather brutal, often comic.

Rowan Pelling, former editor of The Erotic Review, says women didn’t connect with Fifty Shades because of the multiple bad descriptions of multiple orgasms but because: "The fantasy they relive has less to do with sadomasochism than the tale of a self-effacing, clever young woman who beats off all competition to win the unobtainable male." Discuss.

What hasn’t appeared in the awards shortlist is gay bad sex writing. Is it all good? Or hasn’t it yet hit the popular radar?

Our attitude to sex in literature reflects our ambiguity to sex in life: with the truth being hidden under a torrent of metaphors and similes.

As TheDailyThompson says: "Fiction needs to find a happy medium between the real-unreal dichotomy; real sex which cuts the bullshit about mountains and precipes, which simultaneously doesn’t put us off our dinner."