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Most every #IDEVAW I tweet out bits of Andrea Dworkin’s ‘I Want a 24 Truce During Which There is No Rape’. It’s powerful on many levels. But this year, I’m reflecting, particularly, on what it asks of pro-feminist men. #MVAW #EndVAW #16Days 
https://abs.twimg.com/hashflags... draggable="false" alt=""> https://www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/learn/resources/i-want-24hour-truce-during-which-there-no-rape-andrea-dworkin-1983">https://www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/learn/res...
I’ve had a lot of reasons to think about the role of pro-feminist men in the last year - not least with the disaster of #WhiteRibbon in Oz, and the fact that it has, for too long, taken top billing on this day. A far cry from the origins of #IDEVAW: https://kareningalasmith.com/tag/white-ribbon-day/">https://kareningalasmith.com/tag/white...
I also launched Prof. Bob Pease’s ‘Facing Patriarchy: From a violent gender order to a culture of peace’ last week ( https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/facing-patriarchy/)">https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book... and that, too, led me back to thinking about Dworkin and 24hr Truce and what is means to be a pro-feminist man.
[As an aside, yes it does matter to me that men call themselves pro-feminists and not feminists. Blokes, please have some respect for this position, rather than writing op eds about why it’s a "pointless distraction”. Language matters.] https://theconversation.com/asking-if-men-can-be-feminists-is-a-pointless-distraction-30123">https://theconversation.com/asking-if...
At the launch, I read out this bit of 24hr Truce: "What& #39;s involved in doing something about all of this? The men& #39;s movement seems to stay stuck on two points. The first is that men don& #39;t really feel very good about themselves. How could you?"
"The second is that men come to me or to other feminists and say: "What you& #39;re saying about men isn& #39;t true. It isn& #39;t true of me. I don& #39;t feel that way. I& #39;m opposed to all of this. And I say: don& #39;t tell me. Tell the pornographers. Tell the pimps. Tell the war makers."
"Tell the rape apologists and the rape celebrationists and the pro-rape ideologues...There& #39;s no point in telling me...These men presume to speak for you. They are in the public arena saying that they represent you. If they don& #39;t, then you had better let them know."
And that really resonated with something Bob points out in Facing Patriarchy - that narratives about “good men” actually take us away from the work we need to do, especially around complicity in patriarchal systems.
As others (inc. @MichaelEDyson) have noted - there& #39;s value in thinking about being or becoming a “traitor to patriarchy”. In many ways, I think this is much more useful than language around allies, or even pro-feminists - at least in terms of thinking about activism and support.
So this #IDEVAW, and during the whole #16Days https://abs.twimg.com/hashflags... draggable="false" alt=""> campaign, if you want to help - find ways to be a traitor. Think about what kind of treachery will be required to create the kind of collective action that can achieve a 24 hour truce during which there is no rape. #VAW #MVAW #EndVAW
