Women Shining Magazine Women Shining Spring 2018

It helps to ensure we don’t get full community support because those that are victims/ survivors see the kind of comments that are made by other community members. It is very hard to feel a part of a community when people are still blaming you for the violence. The cost is huge. And of course this doesn’t take into consideration the many genders that actually exist. This is a whole other discussion. I think the other thing I alluded to is that ideology is that masculinity and violent behaviour for men, which they are brought up in and acceptable - it is promoted for them to be this way in many ways. Charlene: We are not. We are putting the Band- Aid over the problem over and over again and expecting different results. It is not an excuse for their behaviour, but there is a promotion - I think it is very detrimental. We know men die younger, have greater health issues, emotionally and mentally, men as a whole, as a species, are more shut down. They are less emotional, the reason they have nervous system disorders, have heart attacks younger, they live 10 years less than women So the whole ideology of masculinity in our culture does not do them any favours either. Interviewer: Do you feel it needs to be redesigned or defined? Interviewer: Do you feel that we are not really addressing the problem? Interviewer: Do you feel that ‘society’ views this issue as being attached to specific economic groups? Charlene: Absolutely. However, we know that violence does not discriminate. We have women from every socio-economic status that come to this centre and we also know of many who go through private counselling if they can afford to. Even though, interestingly enough, we have a lot of women who come here because we have been doing this for a lot of years and we are specially trained in sexual violence. Yes, there are groups that are more at risk. Charlene: Yes it does. It does not do any of us any service trying to be in a relationship with one another where one side of the coin basically lives in fear all the time, and the other side lives in the masculine sense of not being able to be certain of things that I think all human beings inherently are - which are emotional creatures. 24 Indigenous women are much more at risk of sexual violence. So are members of the LGBTQ community

Women Shining Magazine Women Shining Spring 2018 | Page 26