Letters - 26 May 2017
From gender awareness to the adult children of alcoholics
Tweaking the testimonies
In the paragraph entitled ‘Equality’ in the article ‘Tweaking the testimonies’ (19 May) the phrase ‘gender niceties’ was used. This should have been ‘gender awareness’ and the sentence, in the article, should have read ‘1981 was too early for gender awareness’. This was due to an editorial oversight.
Richard Seebohm
I appreciated the article on ‘Tweaking the testimonies’ but I want to respond to the phrase ‘gender niceties’. I’m sure the author did not intend this, but ‘niceties’ rather implies a fine point or a subtle distinction and thus belittles the importance of gender-equal or gender-neutral language.
Gender-inclusive language is an essential part of ending women’s second-class status in the world. Language matters: it both reflects and causes thoughts, attitudes and cultural values. Quakers have played an admirable role since early times in embracing and promoting women’s equality. However, being Quakers does not exempt us from having internalised the sexist assumptions that are inevitable in everyone, women and men, because we were all born into in a male-dominated culture – just as we all carry racist attitudes because we have grown up in a racist society.
For example, despite decades of feminism I still sometimes catch myself assuming that a doctor being referred to is a man, or imagine the person referred to is white. We’ve come a long way, as Friends and as a culture, and we still have a long way to go. It is not our fault but it is our responsibility to discern what needs to change. Let us lovingly support and encourage each other as we seek to root out our unexamined sexist (and racist/able-bodied/homophobic) words and actions and replace them with more egalitarian and inclusive ones.
Sheila Rose Bright
Editor: The author of the article did change ‘gender niceties’ but unfortunately his correction was not published.
Hunger strike in Palestine
I recently returned from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. A major issue is the hunger strike of up to 1,600 Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails – currently in their sixth week on water and salt. I am shocked at the lack of UK media coverage of this action by men prepared to sacrifice their lives to achieve better prison conditions.
Nearly 7,000 Palestinian men, women and children are being held in Israeli custody. The hunger strike is one of the few ways to try to bring about improvements. Better contact with family members is one of the key demands.
I spoke with many relatives of the hunger strikers. One mother had two sons; Israeli soldiers killed one at eighteen, the other in prison seventeen years and now aged forty-five. She has not been allowed any physical contact in all that time. All the mothers I spoke with expressed the desire that, before they die, they might touch their son again. Others told stories of being allowed to visit only once a year. One mother has seen her son just seven times in seven years. This causes immense suffering.
The hunger strike to achieve better conditions seems to have been rendered invisible outside Palestine. No governments or international agencies are mediating. It looks like the prisoners will die with their demands unmet.
Jane King
Equality and the election
A Friends House booklet on the general election makes no reference to ‘Brexit’ – for many the defining issue and main reason for the ballot. A leaflet by the Quaker Council for European Affairs on populism shows how Friends seem to view the outcome of the referendum.
John Pilger, veteran journalist on the left, wrote: ‘The majority vote by Britons to leave the European Union was an act of raw democracy. Millions of ordinary people refused to be bullied, intimidated and dismissed with open contempt by their presumed betters in the major parties, business and banking oligarchy and the media.’ The result was described by some disparagingly as ‘populist’. I find this puzzling as surely political parties exist to gain majority votes? As the EU has demonstrated in the past, if people give the wrong answer, as they did in Ireland in the first vote on the Lisbon Treaty, they have to vote again; hence, in Britain the calls from some quarters for a second referendum.
An analysis produced by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation concludes that the people who voted to leave the EU were mainly low paid, poorly educated and socially conservative. Are these people’s views not of equal value? What has happened to Quaker notions of ‘that of God in every man’ and ‘speaking truth to power’? It’s a paradox that whilst it could be said that the Leave vote is an example of the latter, its supporters have often been denigrated or patronised.
Rosemary O’Dea
An imaginative vision
A recent pastoral letter from the archbishops of Canterbury and York calls on politicians to ‘renew and re-imagine’ the UK’s shared values amid the divisions of recent years. A great divide exists, not just in terms of the political right and left warring against each other, but also between ‘the haves and have nots’.
Two years ago politics professor Anthony King posed the question Who governs Britain? His book wasn’t complimentary about politicians, claiming that they were living a lie – in that the world had changed so utterly while Britain’s political architecture and furniture had changed so little. The United Kingdom’s political leaders and would-be leaders are living in a world that is not only remote but unreal.
I have witnessed and been involved in many general elections but the one on 8 June is critical. Left/right debates no longer appeal and have become deadlocked. A prophetic politics is required, calling for a coming together of personal and social responsibility. The crisis is self-evident: poverty amid prosperity, public education, health and housing denied resources for all to flourish. Both nationally and internationally an environmental crisis threatens the survival of many, as do the powerful military arsenals deployed to settle conflicts and disputes.
Jim Wallis, in his book God’s Politics, invites political leaders to learn the wisdom that the way to achieve common ground is to move to higher ground where personal ethics and social justice are connected. Prophetic politics focuses on fundamental moral issues: children, family, diversity, community, citizenship and ethics. It’s practical politics too!
Tom Jackson
Affirming young children
I feel that the presence of a range of ages, including children, is necessary to be a community. Our ‘silent’ (unprogrammed) worship, with some Friends concerned about noises children might make, can become a barrier to welcoming families and being community.
Jane Taylor (19 May) thinks that children shouldn’t stay in Meeting for Worship for longer than fifteen minutes. She suggests that anyone planning to bring a child to Meeting should make contact in advance. This is unrealistic, in practice, for several reasons. Some Meetings are frightened of having any responsibility for children, even with advance warning, and are unable to make separate provision.
I’d hope that all Meetings would always make parents and children of all ages welcome. If the Meeting doesn’t provide a Children’s Meeting it would by default be all-age, should children attend. Elders could provide a welcome, reassure parents about noise and encourage them to take children out only if they become unsettled. There could be a playmat and a few toys provided. There could also be some programmed ministry ready to use on such occasions. Most children will learn to settle if the adults around them are settled and will get a great deal from Meeting.
Advices & queries tells us: ‘Rejoice in the presence of children and young people in your Meeting and recognise the gifts they bring.’ Let’s do this without reservation!
Wendy Pattinson
Adult children of alcoholics
In January of this year, there was a rift within my family. About the same time I heard an item on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. Two women from an organisation for Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunction Families (ACA) spoke of their experiences as children and how these experiences affect them now as adults. This item touched me very deeply and I realised these women were speaking my life’s experiences. I looked up ACA on the internet (www.adultchildrenofalcoholics.co.uk) and discovered there is a meeting locally to me. I have been attending weekly and have also begun a twelve-step programme for adult children of alcoholics to begin to understand and change my life.
I made tentative enquiries within Friends to see if there might be other Quakers like me, but drew a blank. I had begun to think I was the only Quaker who had had these experiences, but somehow I knew I couldn’t and wouldn’t be. While attending a course at Woodbrooke recently, with the help of tutors I was put in touch with a Friend there on a different course. She is an adult child of an alcoholic. After only twenty-four hours we felt like sisters. She and I are now wondering if there are any more Friends like us who identify with some of the things I have mentioned, with parents who drank alcohol to excess or parents who took drugs. If you do and would like to be in touch, please contact me.
Patsy Wilson
Comments
While we’re on the subject of gender awareness (Sheila Rose Bright’s letter) - Friends could be pioneers of inclusion by saying ‘women, men and those of other genders’ or ‘everyone, of any gender’.
By sharonlangridge on 25th May 2017 - 15:08
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