_Toplumsal cinsiyet rolleri yüzyıllar sürecinde kurulan, yazılı ve yazısız tüm kuralları etkileyen ve o kurallardan etkilenen yaşama yönergemiz. Bu yönerge neyi nasıl yaşayacağımızı emrediyor. Örnek üzerinden gitmek daha açıklayıcı olabilir. Bir bebek doğmadan odası, kıyafetleri, oyuncakları hazırlanır. Kız çocuğu ise doğacak olan insan, pembe patikler, zıbınlar, havlular, bez bebekler, aynalar, taraklar hazır edilir. Erkek çocuğu için mavi ve tonları tercih edilir ve silahlar, arabalar satın alınır. Doğmadan birileri bizim için düğmeye basmıştır yani.
İlerleyen dönemlerde kız çocukları seçilen renklere ve oyuncaklara yüklenen anlamlar paralelinde bir zarafet objesi olarak yetiştirilir. Saat sınırlaması koyulur eve giriş çıkışlarda ve arkadaşları bile ebeveynler tarafından seçilir. Kadınların sokak ile olan ilişkisi küçük yaşlarda kesilmiş olur. Erkek çocukları ise olabildiğine rahattır, pipi göstermeler, küfür öğrenmeler ilk kavganın aynı süreçleri yaşamış baba tarafından öğretilmesi sınırsız özgürlüklerin bebek yaşta habercisidir. Tüm bunların sonrasında kadınlara evlerin içi, erkeklere de sokaklar kalır.

   Kadınlar ömürlerini evlerinde kız çocukları ile geçirirler maddi karşılığı olmayan işleri yaparak. Erkekler ise eve ekmek getirmek için sokakta olurlar hep, bazen isterseler eve gitmeme seçenekleri vardır ama kadınlar en fazla annelerinin evlerine kadar gidebilir ancak fark eden pek bir şey yoktur ev evdir. Ev içinde kadına ait işler vardır, erkeğin bu işleri yapması "erkeklik"lerine zarar getirebilir, zira ataerkil bu düzende yetişen hiçbir erkek kendisine light erkek, soğan erkeği ya da kılıbık denmesini istemez. Muhtemelen ev içinde eşine yardım etmek isteyecektir bir çok erkek, fakat roller bunu pek mümkün kılmaz ya oynamak zorundadır o rolü ya da cezalandırmaya maruz kalacaktır.
Bazı istisnai durumlar erkekliğe leke getirmeyebilir. Kadın hastaysa, engelliyse, hamileyse ya da annesinin evindeyse ev içi işleri yapmak bir erkek için yüz kızartıcı olmaktan çıkar, kabul edilebilirdir. Ama evden dışarı çıkınca "erkeklik" gömleğini giyer ve kaldıkları yerden devam ederler egemen olmaya, hayata.

   Bizler Toplum Gönüllüsü gençler olarak istisna olanın; bu rolleri oynayarak kadınları evlere hapsetmek, namus cinayetleriyle kadınları ya da eşcinsel erkekleri öldürmek, sokak ortasında kadınlara taciz ve tecavüz etmek, aile içi şiddete maruz bırakmak, özgürlüklerini ellerinden almak olduğunu düşünüyor ve söylüyoruz, "Erkeklik İstisnai Bir Durumdur" esas olan toplumsal cinsiyet eşitliği çerçevesinde, kişisel hak ve özgürlüklere saygı duyarak barış içinde yaşamaktır.

This article by Robert Jensen was originally published 5 June 2008 on Counterpunch ( http://counterpunch.org/jensen06052008.html). Reposted here with permission from the author.


What Does It Mean to be a Man?"

Masculine, Feminine or Human?

By ROBERT JENSEN

In a guest lecture about masculinity to a college class, I ask the students to generate two lists that might help clarify the concept.

For the first, I tell them to imagine themselves as parents whose 12-year-old son asks, ?Mommy/daddy, what does is mean to be a man?? The list I write on the board as they respond is not hard to predict: To be a man is to be strong, responsible, loving. Men provide for those around them and care for others. A man weathers tough times and doesn?t give up.

When that list is complete, I ask the women to observe while the men answer a second question: When you are in all-male spaces, such as the locker room or a night out with the guys, what do you say to each other about what it means to be a man? How do you define masculinity when there are no women present?

The students, both men and women, laugh nervously, knowing the second list will be different from the first. The men fumble a bit at first, as it becomes clear that one common way men define masculinity in practice is not through affirmative statements but negative ones -- it?s about what a man isn?t, and what a real man isn?t is a woman or gay. In the vernacular: Don?t be a girl, a sissy, a fag. To be a man is to not be too much like a woman or to be gay, which is in large part about being too much like a woman.

From there, the second list expands to other descriptions: To be a man is to be a player, a guy who can attract women and get sex; someone who doesn?t take shit from people, who can stand down another guy if challenged, who doesn?t let anyone else get in his face. Some of the men say they have other ideas about masculinity but acknowledge that in most all-male spaces it?s difficult to discuss them.

When that process is over, I step back and ask the class to consider the meaning of the two lists. On the first list of the culturally endorsed definitions of masculinity, how many of those traits are unique to men? Are women ever strong? Should women be strong? Can women be just as responsible as men? Should women provide and care for others? I ask the students if anyone wants to make the argument that women are incapable of these things, or less capable than men. There are no takers.

I point out the obvious: The list of traits that we claim to associate with being a man -- the things we would feel comfortable telling a child to strive for -- are in fact not distinctive characteristics of men but traits of human beings that we value, what we want all people to be. The list of understandings of masculinity that men routinely impose on each other is quite different. Here, being a man means not being a woman or gay, seeing relationships as fundamentally a contest for control, and viewing sex as the acquisition of pleasure from a woman. Of course that?s not all men are, but it sums up the dominant, and very toxic, conception of masculinity with which most men are raised in the contemporary United States. It?s not an assertion about all men or all possible ideas about masculinity, but a description of a pattern.

I ask the class: If the positive definitions of masculinity are not really about being a man but simply about being a person, and if the definitions of masculinity within which men routinely operate are negative, why are we holding onto the concept so tightly? Why are we so committed to the notion that there are intellectual, emotional, and moral differences that are inherent, that come as a result of biological sex differences?

From there, I ask them also to think about what a similar exercise around femininity might reveal? How might the patterns be similar or different? If masculinity is a suspect category, it would seem so is femininity.

I have repeated this discussion in several classes over the past year, each time with the same result: Students are uncomfortable. That?s not surprising, given the reflexive way the culture accepts the idea that masculinity and femininity are crucial and coherent categories. People may define the ideal characteristics of masculinity and femininity differently, but most people accept the categories. What if that?s misguided? What if the positive attributes ascribed to ?men? are simply positive human characteristics distributed without regard to gender, and the negative ones are the product of toxic patriarchal socialization?

Because the questions flow from their own observations and were not imposed by me, the discomfort is intensified. It?s difficult to shrug this off as just one more irrelevant exercise in abstract theory by a pontificating professor. Whatever the conclusion the students reach, the question is on the table in a way that?s difficult to dismiss.

It?s obvious that there are differences in the male and female human body, most obviously in reproductive organs and hormones. It is possible those differences are significant outside of reproduction, in terms of broader patterns concerning intellectual, emotional, and moral development. But given our limited knowledge about such complex questions, there isn?t much we can say about those differences. In the absence of definitive answers, I prefer to be cautious. After thousands of years of patriarchy in which men have defined themselves as superior to women in most aspects of life, leading to a claim that male dominance is natural and inevitable, we should be skeptical about claims about these allegedly inherent differences between men and women.

Human biology is pretty clear: People are born male or female, with a small percentage born intersexed. But how we should make sense of those differences outside reproduction is not clear. And if we are to make sense of it in a fashion that is consistent with justice -- that is, in a feminist context -- then we would benefit from a critical evaluation of the categories themselves, no matter how uncomfortable that may be.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center http://thirdcoastactivist.org. His latest book is Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007). Jensen is also the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (both from City Lights Books); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang). He can be reached at [email protected] and his articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html    


Susan Spencer - [email protected]_

According to a government study titled ?Research on Domestic Violence against Women in Turkey,? 41.9 percent of Turkish women are subjected to physical and sexual violence. Women at a ?low-income level? are assaulted at a rate of 49.9 percent, while the number for higher-income women is still high, at 28.7 percent.

Some 55.8 percent of women who have no education or have not finished primary education are subjected to violence, while 27.2 percent of women with at least a high school diploma or higher are the victims, the study said.

Some 48.5 percent of women experience some form of violence but do not disclose their victimization, the study said, adding that women with a lower income (54.1 percent) were more likely to stay silent about being assaulted than women with more education (37.5 percent).

Some 23.4 percent of women have been forced by men to quit their jobs or have been prevented from working; in the lower-income category, this figure is 21.5 percent while it is 21.2 percent for those with higher incomes.

Altogether, 33.7 percent of women said they considered suicide as a solution to their problems. For those with less education, this number is 34.1 percent, while 37.6 of higher educated women have also considered handling their own lifes indepedently.

_Bengi [email protected]

_With nearly a thousand women murdered in Turkey in 2009 according to new data from the Justice Ministry, the country has witnessed a drastic increase since 66 women were murdered in 2002. ?The reason behind violence against women is the imbalance of power in society,? an activist says.
The number of women murdered in a year in Turkey shot up 1,400 percent between 2002 and 2009, according to data recently revealed by the country?s justice minister.

Some 66 women were murdered in Turkey in 2002, but the numbers have been steadily increasing since then, Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin said.

Eighty-three women were murdered in 2003, 164 in 2004, 317 in 2005, 663 in 2006, 1,011 in 2007, 806 in 2008 and 953 during the first seven months of 2009, the last date for which data was available, according to Ergin.

For Professor Aysel Çelikel, head of the Support for Contemporary Living Association (CYDD) the high increase in the number of murdered women stems from from gender inequality and Turkey?s increasingly conservative society.

?Progress in women?s rights are going worse as much as conservatism is increasing in society,? Çelikel told the Hurriyet Daily News on sunday. There is a direct correlation between the increase in the inequality between the genders and the increased level of violence men commit against women, she said. ?According to international reports, the reason of violence against women is the imbalance of power and the inequality between men and women in society,? and  the only way to solve the problem of such violence is to ensure gender equality,Çelikel stated.




?Changing the roles and attitudes of men and women within the family and society while also strengthening the role of women is the only solution in defeating violence against women,? the professor said.

?From 2002 to July 2009, a total of 12,678 cases were opened because of violence and murders,? Ergin told Parliament. ?Some 15,564 people were tried in those cases, and 6,736 were sentenced. In those cases, 1,869 people were acquitted and 794 people were given parole.?

Bengi [email protected]

_
Head  of  Selcuk University Theology Department  Professor Orhan Ceker declaration about  ?chemical castration law? in Turkey caused immense reaction. Ceker claimed that sexual abuse is  a result of  the décolleté dresses of women. According to Ceker,  women have no right to complain about sexual abuse after seducing the men by such kind of physical appearance.  He also indicated, programs with explicit sexual and violent contents should be banned.

However, rector of the Selcuk University apologized to the women after Celik's press release in Haber Turk newspaper, before all of the negative reactions, social media response occurred immediately in twitter .

Bengi [email protected]