A Forum for Men's Voices

galway | gender and sexuality | press release

Monday January 08, 2007 21:27

by Margaretta D'Arcy - Radio Pirate-Woman

margaretta at iol dot ie

A 10-day Men's Radio

Radio Pirate-Woman opens its airwaves to Men, after 21 years of operating as a women-only station, to examine the current position of men in Ireland vis-a-vis women.

Radio Pirate-Woman, now in its 21st year, will open its airwaves in February for a ten-day forum exclusively for men.
The role of men in our society – young men in particular – is changing. Now that the forces of capitalism have coerced more and more women into the workplace, replacing men as bread winners and heads of families, is the unhappiness, frustration and displacement of far too many Irish men indicated by the number of suicides? Is the problem growing? Are men becoming more and more alienated? And how far is this alienation reflected in mutual abuse, psychological, verbal or physical? The National Crime Council and the Economic and Social Research Institute report that 29% of women and 26% of men have experienced domestic abuse, while 13% of both women and men suffer physical abuse, and 29% of women and 5% of men report to the Gardai.
Radio Pirate-Woman hopes to facilitate this forum on what men feel and think, to ask questions and to debate what can be done. For instance – who is to blame? – the cruel blast of a hostile environment, the domination of politics by the economy, or the market forces determining a new morality? How far can women be blamed, or the Mammy – women as a cultural police force? Who are the abusers? Who are the abused? Has historical cultural conditioning produced the child-man or the self-loathing control freak, perhaps an educational drop-out, or a post-graduate under-achiever? What of the influence of well-known stories? – e.g. the Book of Genesis, Bluebeard, Jane Eyre, or My Fair Lady (as altered from Shaw’s Pygmalion for commercial reasons to bring back Eliza submissively to the professor’s feet with his slippers!). How many men were oppressed as children to hear –
What are little girls made of?
Sugar & spice & all things nice.
What are little boys made of it?
Slugs & snails & puppy dogs’ tails.
We are seeking a so-called gender equality where all differences between the sexes are ironed out to make us all into robots, but a means of discovering ways for each and all of us to live happily and creatively together.
We are inviting any man who is interested in taking part in this forum to contact us with their ideas and personal experiences. The forum itself will be as flexible as possible, using skype, e-mail, telephone and studio participation. Anonymity of course will be preserved. Each broadcast will be put on my web-page which can be downloaded.
Please contact us at Radio Pirate-Woman

Margaretta D’Arcy & John Arden,
10 St Bridget’s Place Lower,
Galway.
phone: 091 565430
e-mail: margaretta@iol.ie
web-page: www.margarettadarcy.com

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