Women's Views on News |
| Footballers, students and consent Posted: 13 Apr 2015 08:15 AM PDT
Brighton and Hove Albion football club have announced that they will soon be offering "legal training about rape and sexual offences" to all its young players – both male and female. As part of a programme called Protect, Inform and Prevent, players will be trained by a psychotherapist and a former police officer. In 2013 four Brighton players were accused of raping a 19 year-old woman at a hotel but found not guilty. The training will include information about the legal definitions of consent and rape, as well as confidential discussions about the players' previous sexual encounters. The announcement comes as football clubs attempt to shake off the shadow of the Ched Evans case, which dominated the headlines over the past year. Evans, at the time a striker for Sheffield United, was convicted of rape in 2012 and sentenced to five years in prison. Out on licence after serving only half of his sentence, he attempted to return to football last year. He continues to protest his innocence, while his victim has received constant harassment and abuse and has had to change her identity five times. It is not surprising then, that a football club would want to be seen to be proactive when it comes to preventing rape. However, the training given to the Brighton players seems to be focussing on awareness of the legal definitions of rape, rather than combating harmful attitudes towards women; fear of the law shouldn't be the only thing stopping a man from committing an act that robs another person of their bodily autonomy. So it remains to be seen whether sexual consent training helps to prevent rape, or just eases the conscience of a few football managers. In October Oxford and Cambridge universities began introducing consent workshops, and it's easy to see why there too. In 2010 a National Union of Students (NUS) report, Hidden Marks, revealed shocking assault figures and the disturbing experiences women at Britain’s universities face, and articles in the Gaurdian and the Independent covered sickening behavior and increasing misogny at Freshers’ Week events. The NUS then set up the Hidden Marks website for female students who needed help or advice. In January this year an American study found that 32 per cent of male students said they would have "intentions to force a woman into sexual intercourse", if "nobody would ever know and there wouldn't be any consequences", however only 13.6 per cent would admit to having "intentions to rape a woman" under the same circumstances. The findings of both these indicate not only a lack of awareness of the legal definition of rape, but some very worrying attitudes around consent. At the start of this student year ‘consent classes‘ were offered during fresher’s week at 24 Oxford colleges, with attendance compulsory at 20 of those colleges. The Oxford and Cambridge universities’ workshops aim to get people talking about consent and sex in a safe environment, and to understand the importance of consent. The NUS is setting up similar classes with the title 'I heart consent' at universities around the UK. Alex Marshall, who has run some of the sessions at Oxford, told WomensViewsOnNews: "We specifically didn’t call it sexual consent 'training'. "They were 'workshops' and we were 'facilitators', rather than lecturers or teachers or instructors. "The idea was that the workshops were to be open discussions, rather than people getting told what to do. "Overall I think the results were fairly good," Marshall added. "Obviously we haven’t eradicated these behaviours or attitudes completely, but our aim was to get people discussing consent more than anything. "People tended to be quite good at avoiding rape myths and so on during the sessions, which were genuinely taken pretty seriously, and discussion tended to be dominated by people who either understood consent quite well or wanted to." Clearly, sexual consent training alone will not stop rape, but it is an important step in the right direction – particularly for young people who have grown up in a culture which devalues women. However, the training given to young football players must be as comprehensive and carefully delivered as the university workshops have been, not just an exercise to show that football clubs are "taking rape seriously".  |
| Welfare not warfare: day of action Posted: 13 Apr 2015 07:11 AM PDT
This year is the fifth consecutive year of the Global Day of Action against Military Spending (GDAMS), and on 13 April 2015, people around the world will be gathering to protest their government's level of military expenditure. The UK Section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) has called on the UK government to spend money on welfare, not warfare. The fifth highest spender on military in the world, the UK government spent £41.7 billion in 2014. Of that money, £3 billion is spent annually on the Trident nuclear weapons system based at Faslane naval base on the Clyde estuary outside Glasgow. In the UK, faced with the government's desire to maintain its current level of arms expenditure, citizens are enduring the effects of on-going, severe public sector financial austerity measures. Scotland's share of the cost of Trident, for example, is reported to be £165 million per year, which, if used for welfare, could pay for any of the following for a year: 7,500 new teachers; 7,500 new nurses; the abolition of the bedroom tax; more social housing or more affordable childcare. WILPF women are taking part in protests on this day because expenditure of this magnitude on weapons is paid for by cutting essential services elsewhere. Those cuts continue to negatively and disproportionately affect the lives of women. Cuts to public sector jobs and services impact women both as employees and consumers. Currently, 13 times more people are relying on food banks than did five years ago, and one in four children in the UK lives in poverty. WILPF protest about this misuse of public funds. The parliamentarians that we elect in the general election on 7 May 2015 will make the decision in 2016 of whether or not to renew the Trident nuclear weapons system at an annual cost of at least £100 billion. Use WILPF’s election manifesto to ask your candidates how they would advance six actions, including reducing spending on the military. How would you make the world a safer place? Take part in an on-line ballot: click here. And if you are in the area, please stop by and join in at the Glasgow blockade of Faslane Naval Base. Brighton supported the blockade from afar with a stall at the clock tower between noon and 2:30 pm; Orpington, working with the CND, hosted a stall at the high street entrance to The Walnuts shopping precinct from 11:00am to 2:00pm; and protest against military spending was held outside the Penzance branch of Lloyds bank on the Market Place at 1:30 pm. Or if you are in London you can join the CND at the Party and Protest outside the Ministry of Defence, in Whitehall.  |
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