From men’s rights to domestic violence, we convene a men’s panel to focus on current issues
When a men’s rights group working against “bigotry that is routinely practiced against men and boys in this culture” planned its first major conference this year, protesters were fighting for the event to be cancelled (see The Huffington Post). The push for “men’s rights” has for some time been a hotly-debated concept—and has been seen as a push-back against hard-won rights for women.
A women’s self-defense workshop held in late August was attended by over 20 women, prompting organizers to plan for another in September
Vancouver Island Jiu Jitsu instructor (“professor”) Robert Biernacki and colleague Cathal Walsh offered a women’s self defense workshop in the late summer to introduce concepts related to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, considered to be among the most proven methods of self defense known. Media in both the U.S. and Canada have reported a signficant increase in demand among women for self-defense workshops and courses, and gyms, police departments and colleges are responding to the demand by offering courses to students and community members.
Adult-rated show at Nanaimo Fringe takes the audience into ‘jock boy’ and ‘square girl’ stereotypes, challenging everyone with questions about objectification and relationships
SQUARE: A Stage Pornography is an erotic comedy that explores the crisis unattached people face in their late twenties. Eternal high school jock and big-man-on-campus Thomas Pankratz is in a rut and doesn’t care. Smug and content in his extended adolescence, he happily goes about his daily business of being lewd, crude and clueless until the warm summer’s night he gets a surprise visitor – the girl he has dismissed for twenty years as dull and “square.”
The play is being performed at the 2014 Nanaimo Fringe Festival, at the Nanaimo Museum venue.
An explosive, deeply affecting study of alienation and the redemptive power of love, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea was written in 1983 but retains its funny, frightening, and hypnotic appeal
At a rundown bar in the Bronx two of society’s rejects strike up a halting conversation. Danny, whose fellow truck drivers call him “the animal,” is a self-loathing young man who resorts more to violence than reason. Roberta, who is still haunted by the memory of an ugly sexual incident involving her father, is a divorced, guilt-ridden young woman, distrustful of men. The possibility of a genuine relationship begins to emerge—the first for both of them.
The play is being performed at the 2014 Nanaimo Fringe Festival, at the Harbour City Theatre venue.
Dynamic workshop on the psychology, theory and practical realities of self-defense for women will be hosted by Robert Biernacki and Cathal Walsh on August 24, 2014
On February 25, 2013, Statistics Canada released an updated version of the document Measuring Violence against Women: Statistical Trends [opens to PDF], which was commissioned by Federal-Provincial-Territorial Ministers responsible for the Status of Women.
Theo Boere, Executive Director of the Men’s Centre in Nanaimo will be with us to discuss the general social attitudes which still restrict men in so many ways, some examples of which are: the Equal Parenting Bill C-560, currently before Parliament; the difference in our attitudes toward domestic violence where men are the victims compared to when women are the victims; and the difference in funding levels for resources for men compared to resources for women.
