I confess I was a tad jealous when I saw the tweets coming through from last year’s Roots of Change conference, sponsored by the Oregon Attorney General’s Sexual Assault Task Force and Men Can Stop Rape. Fantastic workshops and lots of great people getting to share the same space. While it doesn’t give me the feeling of networking with so many amazing colleagues, I was thrilled to at least get a chance to listen to the keynote presentations from the conference, thanks to PreventConnect.
It’s a diverse group of speakers, but the focus is on primary prevention of sexual violence and media and pop culture. It’s most certainly worth a listen–I took advantage of some serious work- and jet lag-induced insomnia to listen to a good portion of the 3. From the site:
Dr. Rachael Griffin, Assistant Professor of Speech Communication at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale: reflects on the intersection of her experience as a black feminist survivor and Tyler Perry’s film For Colored Girls.
Jaclyn Friedman, Executive Director of Executive Director of Women, Action & the Media, the editor of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape and the author of What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex & Safety, discusses how building a stronger relationship with our authentic sexuality is a powerful act of resistance.
Dr. Pat McGann, Men Can Stop Rape‘s Director of Strategy & Planning, talks about his journeys with masculinity through childhood, adulthood, marriage and his feminist transformation.