Be a Game Changer against Domestic, Sexual, and Gender-Based violence

By John Harrington

One in four women in Ireland has been abused by a current or former partner and 52 per cent of Irish women have reported experiencing sexual violence in their lifetime.

Domestic, Sexual, and Gender-Based violence (DSGBV) can be a difficult topic to discuss but it’s crucial that we do so openly in this country otherwise those horrible statistics will never change and it will remain a silent epidemic.

That’s the motivation behind Game Changer, a new partnership between the GAA, Ruhama, and White Ribbon Ireland that’s supported by the LGFA and Camogie Associations, which seeks to raise awareness and action through sport to tackle Domestic, Sexual, and Gender-Based Violence.

The three-year project is supported by with Governmental funding through Cuan and is designed to deliver on the objectives of the Government’s Third National Strategy on Domestic, Sexual, and Gender-Based Violence. Game Changer sets out the following goals:

• Challenge the societal culture of sexual violence, including sharing of pornography, intimate image abuse and sexual exploitation.
• Encourage behaviours that support values of gender equality and respect; and build confidence, opportunity and ‘sense of place’ for women and girls.
• Encourage men and boys to engage in active allyship to eradicate gender-based violence in our society.
• Support the challenging and disclosure of abusive behaviours.
• Raise awareness of the harms and consequences of human trafficking for sexual exploitation.

Ruhama CEO Barbara Condon is also a Healthy Club Officer with her GAA club, St. Sylvester’s in Dublin.

She has seen at first-hand how the Irish Life GAA Healthy Club Programme has had a transformative impact on communities by promoting positive initiatives related to physical and mental health, diversity and inclusion, and community development.

Because the Gaelic games associations are plugged into every community in Ireland, she believes they can also be hugely influential in fostering awareness, education, and positive change around Domestic, Sexual, and Gender-Based Violence.

“Prevention is key in all of this, and we're talking about a subject matter that's incredibly hidden and incredibly invisible,” Condon told GAA.ie

“The benefits of the Game Changer Project are far-reaching because of the significance of the GAA - it's the heartbeat of communities and it has such a far reach in every town, village and county in Ireland.

“This project can bring visibility locally, regionally and nationally, working towards zero tolerance to Domestic, Sexual, and Gender-Based violence.

“We need to bring it into the national conversation. It was one of the reasons why I would have approached the GAA initially. We have some great male allies, but we don't have enough of them.

“Game Changer is about challenging men and boys to become active allies in eradicating gender-based violence. I think it's really important to recognize that it's not a women's issue, it's a societal issue, and it's one that requires collective ownership. Male leaders and male voices are critical in this work.

“It's really important that they call out unacceptable behaviours. For example, if men tolerate harmful behaviours or misogynistic jokes or turn a blind eye, they then, by virtue, become complicit.

“So it's about men needing to stand up and stand beside women and become champions in this space. A real benefit of this project is that we can reach such a large audience, but particularly the male audience.

“It can be such a major driver in creating positive change in society. Gaelic games is a mirror to Irish society because you have people from all backgrounds that are embedded in every county so it's really perfectly positioned to support and influence the social and cultural change that's needed towards zero tolerance to violence against women.”

Just two of the men already stepping into that leadership space are Oisin Gallen (Donegal footballer), and David Fitzgerald (Clare hurler), who, along with Louise Ní Mhuircheartaigh (Kerry LGFA), and Amy O Connor (Cork camogie), are the public face of the Game Changers initial awareness campaign, which started on November 25^th last to coincide with White Ribbon’s global ‘16 Days of Action’ and ran until mid-January on Gaelic Games own communication and social media channels.

If you’re a parent, then you’ll surely have experienced anxiety about the impact the internet and social media is having on children. Unfettered access to pornography is normalising graphic sexual behaviour and often gives an unrealistic and sometimes twisted view of what sexual relationships should look like.

In recent years there has also been an increasing level misogyny on social media due to high-profile ‘influencers’ spreading a toxic vision of what they believe it is to be a man.

That tap of disinformation is unlikely to be ever turned off, which is why CEO of the Men’s Development Network, Sean Cooke, believes the priority should be to give our young people the tools to critically interpret what they hear or see so they then know what’s acceptable and what isn’t.

The Men’s Development Network is the delivery agent in Ireland of the White Ribbon Campaign, which encourages men to take the pledge to never ‘commit, condone, or remain silent about violence against women and gender-based violence’.

“We have to provide the opportunities to allow young men and women to reflect on what they're seeing online, how they interpret it, how they manage it, how they analyse it, how they can be critical of it, how they can be forthright in their own feelings about it so they are confident in their thoughts on it,” Cooke told GAA.ie

“That's a learned process. People have to learn how to do those types of things and the only way they're going to learn is if they hear conversations in their normal places that direct them towards thinking and reflecting differently around it.

“Young people need to hear the older people in their lives talking about this openly. They need to hear men talking about it openly so that they can take the lead from them. They need to see role-models in their community, and that’s where Game Changer can have a very positive impact.

“We know that there are thousands upon thousands of volunteers within the GAA who behave in such an incredibly responsible leadership way, who show the way in terms of good practice, good ideas, good values and good ideals. We're looking for those people to come to the forefront here. To talk about those key wonderful attributes that they have.

“But then we also want to give those guys those tools to be able to say, actually, you know, the way you behaving there is not really appropriate either, as well.

“We want our young people to be able to analyse critically what is happening and be able to address it in a way that's safe for them physically and emotionally from a community perspective.”

It’s important to call out bad behaviour, but Cooke believes the most effective way to change attitudes is to have a model of good behaviour you can point to.

Every GAA club in Ireland has positive role models who, if they engage in active allyship to eradicate gender-based violence in our society, could do hugely positive work for their peers and society as a whole.

“If you tell someone there's something wrong with you, they don't necessarily listen to you,” says Cooke. “I know very few people who, when somebody says to them ‘you're a terrible fella’, that they embrace that. That they say, 'Oh God, I didn't realize', and they go off and they change.

“No, that's not how it happens. You have to invite these guys into a conversation in some way, get them to reflect on their attitudes without any judgment and without any shame. There is a potential then for them to transform their thinking, transform their attitudes.

“We do need to confront the behaviours, but we need to be doing it in a way that invites young men and other older men into a conversation to reflect on their attitudes, rather than saying there's something wrong with the way you're thinking here.

“And the step before confronting the behaviours is to promote the fantastic role models that we have rather than concentrate on the impact of the negative ones.

“We need to acknowledge, consolidate, and promote those wonderful people out there, those wonderful leaders, those guys who are leading by example on their teams and in their clubs. These guys show the way already.

“We need to be showing that more out there, because when young people see more of that, they'll understand that that's the way in which to behave, that's what it is to be a man, that's bravery.

“Being able to communicate with and have empathy with the women and girls in their lives. Whether that's around helping them play sport, or whether it's around supporting them in an issue of domestic violence or sexual violence, whatever may happen.

“I think the starting point has to be around providing the moral compass to those young men and women so that they know that there is another way to behave.”

Phase One of Game Changer featured a Gaelic Games specific campaign that promoted freedom from fear of gender-based harassment and violence for women in society which went out across all Gaelic games communication channels.

Phase Two will begin this summer and will see the White Ribbon’s Schools Programme translated into a series of accessible introductory e-learning models for GAA clubs that will live on Tobar.

Phase Three will see the development of face-to-face workshops and will be trialled in a number of clubs recruited through the Irish Life Healthy Club Programme later this year, and Phase Four will see the GAA engage with other sports governing bodies in Ireland to hopefully develop a collective public awareness campaign.

Game Changer coincides with and complements the work of the GAA’s Adult Safeguarding and Culture Review Task Force, to which Sean Cooke also lends his expertise as a volunteer. A motion seeking to enshrine in rule the appropriate parameters of adult safeguarding in the GAA will be voted on at annual Congress in Donegal in February.

The ultimate hope is that the ethos of Game Changer, which is a manifestation of the GAA’s Respect value, will eventually become embedded in every Gaelic games club in Ireland and in doing so will successfully challenge the societal culture of sexual violence in a very real and effective way.

“From the people I've spoken to in my own club and across many other clubs there's definitely an appetite for that,” says Barbara Condon.

“Parents are worried about the negative influences that young boys and the young girls are being exposed to, so they want to be able to do something.

“I was at the vigil that was held outside Leinster house for Ashling Murphy, and I was really, really struck by the amount of young men present there. Even though it was such a sad occasion, it was encouraging to see. There's definitely an appetite for this. People do want to break the stigma.

“We really want to move the dial on violence against women to create that more respectful, safe, and equal society for all women and girls.

“For myself as a volunteer who would be very actively involved in my own local GAA club, the Healthy Club Initiative is such a great platform as part of the wider GAA to really get this message out.

“We would invite everybody to become a Game Changer.”

For more information on the Game Changer programme go to: https://learning.gaa.ie/gamechanger