Today's WSSN meeting abot the Men's Network
Kerry Dowding
Hello all,
I met with the Women’s strategic services network (WSSN) today (reps from all the women’s services in Brighton) will all our findings about the Men’s Network. In general they were all really concerned and keep to act on this issue. Below is a bit of a summary of what was said.
· It was pointed out that Eleri Butler may also be concerned about this issue (I need to clarify her role, I suspect they want to make contact first) It was pointed out that the women’s resource centre have a document which states that where equalities issues are called into question they have the responsibility to hold those people to account. This could be a useful resource in proceeding.
· General feeling was that the council may be unwilling to engage, confronting them should be done in a public way so as to assure responses justifying their funding of the group.
· It is important to get a range of groups on board with this issue, especially a range of men to strengthen the case. LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) groups will be contacted over this issue as they are discriminated against in parts of the website.
· Concerns about general legitimacy raised: Their mentoring programmes are not done through any accredited trainers or facilitators, and they have links with ‘Temper!’ and fathers for justice.
· Lisa Dando had a hard line on this issue, she believes that now is the time to stop talking and take action, and that although some services the men’s network provide are positive their ideology and links to other organisations mean they are not the best people to deliver these services.
Actions we need to do
Several actions were discussed. We agreed that we would like to directly challenge the group and those who fund them by comparing equality laws and legislations (including policies of organisations such as the council and CVSF who support the group) with sections of the website which show clear breach in these areas, and open up public debate where the group have to justify their views. In order to start arranging such an action the WSSN may gather legal advice and draw on women’s resource centre abilities, and show information to key people in the city. For all this to commence I have promised the group that we will send them everything we have on the men’s network. Please send every screengrab, piece of analysis or text to my email address kdow...@hotmail.co.uk so I can forward the whole lot to the group. Please also have another quick look for anything additional you can find from the site, I’d hate for us to miss anything important.
I have offered to continue to represent Fembright in these meetings so we can keep track of things, and they seem happy for me to do so. Seems like we might be able to make a big a genuine impact with this one J
Kerry x
