Two Workshops at Newport Rising

I’m hosting two workshops at the Newport Rising event next week (Fersiwn Gymraeg yma). It’s being put on by the lovely folk of the Anarchist Action Network, just over the Bridge. It is part of a wider run of events under the banner of the Anarchist Traveling Circus. It looks quite like the Co-Mutiny week we did here in Bristol a few years back after the 2009 Anarchist Bookfair. It doesn’t feel like that was almost five years ago!

On Tuesday 27th May I’m doing a crash course in first aid from 4pm-6pm. It’s only two hours so I can’t do much but I can do enough of the basics so you can keep someone alive that otherwise may have not made it before an ambulance arrives plus some other useful bits to keep your comrades in the land of the living. That’s got to be worth 2hrs of your time, right?

Next one is another Why Men against Patriarchy? workshop, similar to the one I did at the Bristol Anarchist Bookfair as that got really positive feedback. That one is on Thurday 29th from 3pm-4.30pm.

Of course there are loads of workshops and events throughout the whole week so check out the program and get over the Newport, the event is aimed at everyone, not just activist types. However with NATO heading there for their big shindig this September it seems wise to meet friendly faces and have a mosey around…

Right-o, I’m off to have a barbecue in the rain!

Challenging Male Domination in Activist Meeting Spaces

I recently went to an interesting discussion on gender roles around work in the Men Confronting Patriarchy group I attend. (I hope to write my notes up about that at some point soon.) Also I jus read the zine “Gender Roles in Conversation” by Corrine Monet (1997), a summarised excerpt from her thesis.

At some points during reading the zine I felt a bit defensive, as Monet repeatedly asserts that men’s behaviour in mixed gender conversation is about domination and critiques others who present other – agreeably marginal – reasons for men’s conversational characteristics causing “glitches” in the theoretical conversational model. I felt like Monet’s text generalised that men not only dominate conversations (which I readily agree with) and that this is intentional (with which I mainly agree), but also that this is a conscious decision. Maybe this was just my defensive male reading of the text, so this is definitely an area I’d like to discuss more.

Men Against Patriarchy (Pt1)

Last night I went to the newly re-formed Men Against Patriarchy discussion and support group in Bristol. I came away feeling very positive about how it went and feel like sharing some of the points that came out of it. Of course, everything said in the meeting is held in confidence within the group so hear I’m just going over the general themes and ideas that came out of that discussion.