Boys don’t cry…? 3

Day 3.

At the previous day we were talking about gender identity and other terms which may be confused with that. We as well remembered Conchita Wurst and talked about what could be her identity in terms of gender. I wish Conchita was with us to clarify, because we only could guess from the interviews she gave where she spoke about herself. We found out that Conchita will be in October in Bologna and everyone was invited to meet her there by our friends from Archi Gay il Cassero.

The next workshop was about Gender and Language and was run by Agnes. We analyzed the phrases of evaluation of the performance of human beings from the point of view of gender and discussed how the grammar of languages and their structure passes gender stereotypes from generations to generations; we as well could see that the connotation of the same phrases said from man to woman and man to man, woman to woman etc. changes the message of the phrase.

Debates around gender were hot. We could see the diversity of the opinions on the controversial statements proposed by the facilitators. The issues raised at the discussion through statements included the understanding of the family, what is equality between men and women, responsibility for rape, rights of homosexual couples etc. The process was very emotional and even frustrated some of us, but different opinions and vision is something what happens in every day life and we should be able to know our position, be able to explain it and defend it. We may disagree with someone but we should respect the people at the same time and respect their opinions.

In the second half of the day we worked on the topic of domestic violence using exercise “Kati’s story”. It is a simulation about how Kati, the character of the story got in the situation of violation by her husband and which steps she did to come out of it. Working groups and frozen statues on the cycle of violence, understanding all its stages, followed the exercise. Thee debriefing was as well very emotional, as we came out with many real examples from the people we know and our families.

The last formal program element of the day was space to present our Organizations. It is a firs step when thinking on follow-up of the training course. We could see with who cooperation is possible and what kind of cooperation partner organization is searching for. It is always as well to get presents, will that be a bag, a pin or a post card.

The day brought much learning and deserved to be finished at the lakeside swimming and chatting in Estonian sauna.

 

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