New White Ribbon boss cuts symbolic ties
White Ribbon’s new boss is axing its ambassador program, which counts 1200 prominent Australian men who took a pledge.
Exclusive residential college St Paul’s at the University of Sydney was mired in scandal in 2009 when it emerged that a group of male students had started a Facebook group called Define Statutory, which described itself as “anti-consent” and rubbished the existence of rape on campus.
A former female student who had been sexually assaulted by a student at the college was not only aghast at the existence of the group, but devastated to learn it included the young man who had attacked her.
The college appeared to be taking the issue seriously and spoke to groups including the NSW Rape Crisis Centre about how best to address what any reasonable person would describe as a cultural problem within its walls.
However, it was decided the easiest fix would be to hold a gala fundraising dinner where the students got to wear tuxedos for the night, with a cheque for $10,000 being forwarded to anti-domestic violence organisation the White Ribbon Foundation.
Award-winning journalist and women’s rights campaigner Nina Funnell is a longstanding critic of White Ribbon and cites that incident as an example of its historic capacity for being co-opted without doing anything tangible to protect women from assault and abuse.
“It was a classic case of how the organisation could effectively let itself operate as a feel-good, corporatised Kumbaya boys club,” Funnell tells The Australian. “It showed how White Ribbon allowed itself to be compromised, where merely by some act of throwing a cheque around or wearing a ribbon, people who haven’t changed their behaviour could sit back and go: ‘Problem solved’.”
From a crowded field, Funnell is one of many strident critics of the manner in which White Ribbon met its charter of tackling the culture of violence against women, to being seen as an easy option for businesses and individuals to show their bona fides on domestic violence. While those people were overwhelmingly well-meaning, the organisation’s critics had a point when they asked how much rigour or what level of expectation was placed on ambassadors.
(A disclosure: the author of this piece was asked to become an ambassador about five years so, and did so, but has had little to do with the organisation since taking the pledge.)
At worst, the organisation was also accused of being used as a get-out-of-jail-free card for men who had done the wrong thing, with celebrities and athletes who had mistreated their partners vowing to sign on or make donations in a questionable display of repentance.
Tellingly, these critics even include its new chief executive, Brad Chilcott, the Adelaide-based social activist who says he is determined to transform the organisation into an edgier campaigning force and instil some real value into its advocacy work.
One of the first steps he is taking is a symbolic one aimed at dismantling the organisation’s reputation for symbolism — he is axing the ambassador program, which counts 1200 prominent Australian men who historically took a pledge promising to reject, expose and speak out against violence against women, and were awarded a white ribbon for their efforts in doing so.
The bestowing of these ribbons and the reciting of the pledge were often billed as major news events, such as the 2009 ceremony at federal parliament’s Senate courtyard where the prime minister at the time, Kevin Rudd, and opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull put aside their differences to sign up as ambassadors.
“Men are definitely part of the solution because we need men to change if we are going to stop violence towards women,” Chilcott tells The Australian. “But the organisation went wrong by almost elevating people to hero status for putting on a ribbon and showing up at an event.
“We are completely reshaping the ambassador program, which was only open to men, and moving to a new system of community partners, which will be open to both men and women. We think that having a hierarchy that puts someone on a pedestal for saying they won’t commit violence is problematic.
“It’s a whole-of-community response we need. It needs to involve men, it needs to involve men speaking to other men and boys, but it does not need a hierarchy for blokes to celebrate.
“It needs us all in this discussion and what it really needs is to move from awareness to action. Australians are more than aware of this crisis. It’s time for action to see less violence happen.”
When it collapsed in November, White Ribbon had gone through a chaotic churn of chief executives and board members, and racked up debts of $1.3m, unable even to pay its 28 staff, who were forced to seek their back pay and leave pay though the commonwealth Fair Entitlements Guarantee scheme.
But the great strength of the organisation remained its brand recognition and enduring goodwill in the corporate and public mainstream, away from the world of academe, activism and social media, where its detractors were angrily questioning its value. As such, 40-year-old Perth-based community services body Communicare jumped at the chance to pay an undisclosed sum for the organisation’s intellectual property, confident it could orchestrate a meaningful reboot of the organisation.
With its focus on providing domestic violence and family services across Western Australia, acquiring White Ribbon was a perfect fit for Communicare, chief executive Melissa Perry telling The Australian the charity needed “to go back to a grassroots level”.
“There is an opportunity for us to reimagine what that looks like,” Perry says. “We need to be engaging boys and men in this conversation. We need more men and boys talking about this to other men and boys.”
The doubts over whether White Ribbon was fulfilling its role were underscored in South Australia during the past few years with the creation of two high-profile organisations that sought to carve their own niche in the domestic violence space.
Former Democrats leader Natasha Stott Despoja formed national organisation Our Watch, which takes a much more critical look at the treatment of women generally as a precursor to domestic violence, while Adelaide city councillor Arman Abrahimzadeh formed the Zahra Foundation in honour of his mother, who was stabbed to death by her husband at a Persian New Year function at the Adelaide Convention Centre in 2010. The Zahra Foundation is a nuts-and-bolts organisation that partners with shelters and community service providers to give women greater economic independence to escape violent relationships, providing the type of protection Abrahimzadeh and his two sisters were denied when they and their mother finally fled the family home in 2009.
As a longstanding supporter and ambassador for White Ribbon and a speaker at its annual Adelaide breakfast, Abrahimzadeh brings a unique perspective to his critique of how White Ribbon lost its way. “You don’t want people just putting on a white ribbon for the sake of it and saying, ‘well, I’ve done my bit’,” Abrahimzadeh tells The Australian.
“I think the organisation made it too easy for people — the odd event or march here, taking a pledge, all that is good but it needs to look more at what the practical things are that can be done to actually stop it because the statistics aren’t getting any better.”
Funnell says the reboot of the organisation will fail if it does not listen more and wind back on the grandstanding. “I hope they can fix it because there has always been a space for men to play a significant role in preventing violence against women,” she says.
“Historically, they alienated a lot of people because they were seen as so tokenistic; but worse, they become part of the redemption industry where people could hide behind their white ribbon even though they hadn’t really addressed or changed anything.”
In new chief executive Chilcott, and under the stewardship of Communicare, White Ribbon’s critics finally may see the organisation take on a bit of a new edge.
“Look, White Ribbon did a great job getting this on the agenda, but it is time to move beyond tokenism,” Chilcott says.
“Rather than just saying there is a problem, we need to move to advocacy and push for meaningful change. It’s great to have a breakfast, it’s great to go into schools, but the challenge is how can we actually stop it? If anything, the role of White Ribbon should mirror the role of men in this, which is to listen, learn and act.
“I think in the past it felt like White Ribbon was a bunch of men trying to think up ideas to help and then telling people what they were going to do. Instead of saying this is what White Ribbon is going to do, we need to talk to people on the frontline and at the grassroots level and say: ‘What do you need White Ribbon to do?’ ”
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