What do you do when you learn that a friend of yours sexually assaulted or harassed someone? How can you know whether he really did harm? What can we do to avoid this from happening again?
Participants: This will be a workshop for MUC members only. Participants are expected to bring questions, experiences, curiosity and the understanding that we need to contribute to keeping people safe.
Goal: The conversation will be started with the presumption that it is important to hold our friends accountable, but also the understanding that this can be difficult and complicated. We will aim to learn together. Probably we will not be able to formulate definitive answers, and this could just be the start of a longer conversation.
Our perspective is shaped by our lived experiences, and we will be a bunch of guys, which means that it is likely that some perspectives will be missing from our conversation. Kira-Lynn Ferderber will support us, with providing an introduction about what is at stake for those who are harmed. During the workshop, the facilitator will also collect questions about those stakes, and Kira-Lynn has volunteered to answer those questions from her own experiences and expertise afterwards. These answers will be distributed in the MUC facebook group a week after the workshop. We aim to respect experiences other than our own too, as we are but one piece of this complicated puzzle.
Kira-Lynn is an educator with years of experience working for a range of awesome organizations in Ottawa, Canada and the US. Although she recently migrated to Florida, she is still very active and embedded in the Ottawa community. She is also a rapper, published in MacLean’s and many other places, and an experienced speaker. Seriously, I feel lucky that she is supporting us!
Location: The meeting will probably take place both online and in someone’s garden. More information will follow.