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RE: Log 171118

in #blog7 years ago

Me too ... and wondering about the balance between truth and reconciliation on the one hand, and invisibility and silence on the other.

I'm not sure how I feel about unisex (or perhaps omnisex is a better word) toilets. When I was a young woman, there was a joke about women all going to the toilet together. What happened (and still happens) in the toilet was that women spoke to each other. Sometimes that was the only space where they got to talk, and sometimes they talked about different things from the conversation that was going on outside the toilets. Confidences were shared, information was passed on. On one side of the argument, you could say why should women be confined to talking in the toilet, and, on the other side, even this tiny bit of space is being eroded and taken away.

I've just started working with organisations that tackle violence against women and girls and it is shocking to come up against the extent and nature and prevalence and sheer commonplace of violence against women and girls. It can only be that women are considered in some way as less as a universal belief. How then to change things, how to build and sustain healthy relationships between men and women where each is respected, honoured and nourished, while, at the same time, not becoming vulnerable to those people who will use changes in society, like shared toilets (mundane as it may seem), to continue to prey on others and to normalise ideas about how it is okay to behave towards women.