Through volunteer work, my college education, and career, I’ve been involved with “violence against women” issues in some form or another since I was 17 years old (9 years). I currently volunteer with the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network , I work for an organization that partially addresses sexual harassment & assault on campus & in workplaces, and I’m deeply entrenched in street harassment activism in my free time.
Despite all my involvement and education about various forms of “violence against women,” it wasn’t until I started reading Jackson Katz’s book The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help this week that I finally noticed that men – the perpetrators of about 98% of the violence against women – are absent from the naming of the problem and much of the work around the problem. Shouldn’t it be called “men’s violence against women ”? Women are not sitting around just getting hurt – someone is hurting them.
Shouldn’t we focus just as much time and energy on ending the culture that allows and fosters male violence as we do on helping survivors and teaching women how to try to avoid being a victim? Why is the focus so often disproportionately on women’s responsibility to not get assaulted? We can spend our whole lives altering the way we live, look, and act and still we may be attacked or assaulted. We may have already been assaulted when we were too little to know it was our responsibility to avoid or stop it….
[Okay, just thinking about this is making me so mad - most of half of the population is harassed or assaulted at home, on dates, on the streets, at work, and at school, yet instead of being able to directly hold men accountable for this reality, we have to tip toe around the issue and frame it as a “women’s issue” so men don’t get upset and offended and hurt. WTF.]
I suppose the problem with adding men directly into the name and activism strategy is exactly that - it clearly labels it as a “men versus women” problem (which it is) and makes people defensive. A really important point in Katz’s book is how the societal expectation of men is SO LOW that as long as they don’t hurt women, they are good guys. (And the men like him and the smattering of guys who I've volunteered or worked with on these issues are seen as heroes/gods for caring enough to take action.) Men can tell or laugh at sexist jokes, look the other way when their buddy takes advantage of a drunk young woman, and stand idly by while men around them harass, exclude, and demean women BUT since they don’t engage in abusive actions themselves, they are still good guys. Because good guys are told they are exempt from the problem, they are likely to become defensive if/when they are implicated as complacent by-standers or simply talked to about violence against women.("Why are you telling me about this? I don't do it")
Because I know nothing will change without having the “good guys” on board, I realize that a direct, blunt approach is usually not going to work. I’m only on chapter 3 of the book and so I’m eager to hear Katz’s ideas at the end for how we can hold abusive men accountable for their behavior and getting more men active in ending the violence.
What are your thoughts on bringing more attention to the role of men in “men's violence against women” and how we can most effectively bring men into the activism effort? Male readers, what are your thoughts on all this?
(I just noticed that even the category I selected for this post is called "violence against women," not "men's violence against women")
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I'm not sure how I feel about this. The obvious objection is that most men don't do violence against women. But then, not all (or most?) women are the targets of violence and we still say violence against women.
I think perhaps changing the "violence against women" label to something more inclusive to all involved like "sexual violence" or something like that would help a lot. Men can't help but feel defensive when the attitude is that this behavior appears to be incurable (a mix of the name and the focus of the efforts). While I personally don't feel this is the case, I do believe that many of the "guy's guy" friends I have probably feel like this.
Well, how about this:
Feminists will often say women and feminists are not a monolithic entity, and you cannot hold one feminist responsible for the actions of another, nor can you do so for women.
So, I posit:
You cannot hold one man responsible for the actions of another.
I don't beat women, I don't rape women, I don't speak crossly to women (unless they speak so to me first), and I'm not violent. Hell, I don't even date.
Ergo, I'd say, I've done my part. It's not my job to stop other men from doing things. I'm not a police officer, social worker, or mental therapist. It's not in my purview.
Same as it's not yours to answer for the undesirable actions of other women, or other feminists.
Fair, no?
I disagree--you live in this world too, so your part is to try to make it better.
Here's an analogy. I can't speak for you, but I, on occasion, drink alcohol. The same is true of most adults. That makes me a member of the group--alcohol consumers--that is 100% responsible for alcohol related traffic fatalities.
Now we can all agree that drunk driving is fucked up. Terrible. I personally don't drink and drive. Never have, never will. Great. Am I to blame for drunk driving? Of course not. But have I done my part? I think not.
What about when I'm at a party and a friend that has been drinking decides to drive home? Surely its easier to let him than to stop him. Is it okay if I don't object? He may kill somebody, but I'm not a police officer, social worker or mental therapist.
When I drive, I certainly expect that any potential drunk drivers have been stopped by their friends.
So you can bet, if I was a woman, I'd expect others to prevent any potential sexual assaults for my sake too. Especially since sometimes prevention is just as easy as making it clear to other men that violence against women is unacceptable.
Point is, it's not my job.
I'm to be responsible for my own actions. Which I am.
The actions of others are their own responsibility, period.
To blame innocent men for the actions of guilty men is just another exercise is overall man-blaming.
It's also bullshit.
I think there would be quite the feminist uproar if I started holding all women responsible for the actions of some, so, I simply offer the same solution.
We are not a monolith. I am not responsible for what someone else, who is not me, does.
Or, as human beings, we're all responsible for each other. I'm not for changing the name, I think there are bigger wars to fight, but I think we're all responsible, in a small part, for what direction society takes.
If we live lives of harming others, we are bad people. If we live our lives not harming others, we are simply people.
Its only if we - women and men, every demographic group - actively engage in helping others and stopping harm being done than we are good people. Good isn't the absence of bad. Good is active and vital and looks beyond itself. That's why its so difficult.
(my opinion)
Then why is it you can be legally charged as an Accessory Before/After the Fact in a court of law if you know of a crime but do nothing about it?
You didn't do the crime, but you know about and failed to act.
Being complacent and allowing bad things to happen makes you just as bad as the people doing the bad things. To make an example to the extreme, Nazi Germany. Plenty of Germans didn't hate Jews enough to kill them personally, but very few did anything to try to stop what was going on. They used the same excuse you are now using. "It's not my fault, it's not my job, it's not my problem, I have nothing to do with it, I didn't do it."
We are responsible for what is acceptable or what is not acceptable. By allowing it to happen, we condone it and allow it to continue.
Terrible logic.
One could, by your logic, argue that everyone is responsible as an "accessory" to every crime on earth, because we're all aware that crime happens.
For the record, an accessory is someone who assists in the crime, but doesn't participate directly in said crime.
Simply knowing about it isn't enough for an accessory charge. You'd have to know, for certain (not just a maybe), and know that your knowledge and inaction was directly assisting the criminal.
It's a bit more complex than you're attempting to make it out to be.
Again, if you want to fight crime, you have a few options.
Either get a badge, or hope you get bitten by a radioactive spider.
The way to NOT fight crime, is by blaming people who don't commit crimes, for the crimes of others.
Perhaps you misunderstand what I'm saying. If you and your buddies are out at a bar and you see your buddy harassing a girl and you laugh at it, or you ignore him and don't call him out on that, YOU are as GUILTY as he is.
As for the accessory-after-the-fact, if your brother murders someone and comes to you and you let him in your house, you let him shower, you let him dispose of his bloody clothes and you don't call the police, guess what, you are an accessory after the fact. You assisted him in covering up a crime, by not doing anything to stop him.
You sir, are an example of what is wrong with the world. No one wants to hold themselves or others accountable. They just want to go along with their heads down and try not to cause trouble, because it's not *their* problem, it's someone else's problem.
this reminds me of a really good discussion from not long ago: http://www.feministing.com/archives/012118.html
I totally agree that the focus of prevention in these cases should be more on men's behavior than women's (overwhelmingly so). After all, thats what needs to change, and anything to the contrary is helplessly apologist.
However, I fundamentally disagree that changing the name of the problem to "men's violence against women" will be constructive. Yes your anger at the status quo is valid, yes, there is a massively unfair privilege issue at stake here and yes, protecting women is more important than protecting men's feelings. But "men's violence against women" isn't helpful, because it doesn't make the distinction between men that perpetrate this violence, men that are complacent around this violence and men that behave in a way that stops this violence. Because it lumps all men in together, it isn't likely to induce the first two groups to join the third. Meanwhile, it also runs the risk of alienating men that feel they are being blamed for things they actively object to already. The more included men feel in the campaign, the more likely they are to positely influence the actions of other men, so yes, hurting mens feelings is counterproductive.
You mentioned the importance of the "good guy" mentality. The most productive thing a male-focused campaign against violence-against-women can do is make clear that simply not perpetrating violent acts against women is NOT enough to be a "good guy"--to get in the "good" category, one must also stand up against this violence in daily life. For men, this means holding friends accountable when they try to cross the line, and being held accountable oneself for complacency. While all men are not the problem, all men are responsible for the solution.
Ironically, if you look at homicide statistics, men are the gender most at risk:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/vsextab.htm
In 2005, a random man in the United States was four times more likely to be murdered than a random woman.
Why is it ironic?
Have you not heard the term "black on black" violence? Not that I agree with the term, but here there is a distinction that black men are disproportionately both the perpetrators and the victims. But why name it in one case and not others?
I'm sure the reason was to highlight risk factors such as poverty and social and familiar risk factors for black men. Also, the fact that blacks are already marginalized made it easier for society to accept this terminology when none existed for other groups; like a term for white-on-white school suicide-shootings for example, doesn't exist.
The only reason I can see for at least thinking about the term "men's violence against women" is that violence against women (including homocide) more likely to be committed by an intimate partner or family member. (For men, it's more likely to be at the hands of a stranger, especially for homicide)
This simple inversion has social and legal implication for women. Victims of random or stranger violence (statistically more likely to be a man) are more likely to be credible and are less likely (not always but less likely depending on the circumstances) to be considered culpable. The system undermines justice for women victims in a disproportionate manner.
I don't agree with the name change to "men's violence against women" simply because it will likely be counterproductive.
There was a posting on here about a program geared toward teenagers to try to get teenage girls to change their "poor behavior" in hopes of reducing violence among boys. There was a lot of criticism about that, mainly because people felt like the girls were being blamed for the actions of the boys.
The thing is that holding all members of a community (i.e, boys and girls, men and women) responsible for fostering an atmosphere of overall non-violence has merit. It's too bad we can't get beyond the finger pointing to see it through.
It's ironic because, well, when it comes to not being killed, women are the ones with the statistical advantage, who have privilege, and here we are talking about violence against women. Is there something fundamentally different about the violence directed against women that makes it worse*, or should we be more concerned with the gender that is most likely to be a victim?
I don't want to think of myself as that guy who says "but what about the menz?", but, well, sometimes "the menz" really do have it worse!
*Abusive relationships do, indeed, disproportionally involve a male abuser and a female victim. If being a victim of intimate partner violence is worse than being a victim or other kinds of violence - and one can, indeed, plausibly make that claim - then it does makes sense to care more about violence against women than about violence in general.
----
More statistics:
Breakdown by race and gender:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/varstab.htm
This shows that women are less likely to be murdered than men of the same race.
To break down stranger homicide by gender, I had to follow the links to the source data. In the years 1990-2005, 31% of male homicide victims were killed by strangers, and 14% of female homicide victims were killed by strangers. Men are, indeed, more likely to be killed by a stranger than women are to be killed by a stranger, but men are still more likely to be killed by someone they know than by a stranger.
There is a missing piece to your puzzle.
The question is not "who gets hurt or killed MORE/at higher rates?" but, rather, why are these people being hurt and killed?
For men-on-men violence, there is a very wide range of possiblity, a diversity. Men kill men because of, variously (to name only a few examples): theft of money or goods; failed business deals; drugs; gang territorialism and tit-for-tat; jealosy; to get rid of witnesses; to make someone do something they don't want to; to get back at someone; to vindicate a perceived wrong (or even another murder); as bias crimes (i.e. because of hatred of another religion, race, or sexuality); by mistake during heated arguments; etc; etc; etc.
Men rape, beat, imprison, enslave, traffic, and, yes, KILL women for reasons that revolve *to a very large extent* around one fact of birth: women's and girls' birth into the female sex (and, in transwomen cases, their presentation as women and/or transgression of gendered norms).
The fact of an individual having a vagina is itself the risk factor in male-on-female violence. Men's violence against other men is not half so reductive and far more varied and diffuse.
A program socializing men to not kill other men would likely fail in that it would have to cover: failed business deals; drugs; gang territorialism and tit-for-tat; etc. etc. (see above). It would essentially be an anti-CRIME seminar ("don't be a criminal.")
A program socializing men not to assault and kill women would be much more focused (though no less comples): do not brutalize women because they are women. Do not assume a woman is consenting to your sex act. Do not hold X, Y, or X expectation of women because they are women.
Basically, it would be a program about one thing: gender.
"I don't want to think of myself as that guy who says "but what about the menz?", but, well, sometimes "the menz" really do have it worse!"
Really? What about for black females. Black females had roughly the same number of murders per 100,000 people in 2005 as did white males. That is not a place of privilege.
The reality is is that black men are the ones being murdered (and murdering) in astonishing numbers. But the real kicker is that for a black woman, simply associating with male peers in her own community puts her at risk of being murdered as well. I can tell you that it's not a pretty place to be.
Can you see how this is unacceptable?
* I focused on black folks here to make the point about assumptions on race, gender and privilege; plus as a black woman, I find these stats especially scary :(
The biggest killer of women between the ages of 15-44 worldwide is male violence. Women are affected disproportionately by male violence, that is to say they do not intiate violence against men yet are murdered by men in alarming numbers. Men and women are at risk from men not women.
Why is it okay to say violence against women, but not all women have violence done against them, but it's not okay to say men's violence against women, even though not all men perpetuate violence? Certainly men are more at risk of violence -- but by men. So should the phrase just be men's violence against humans? Someone is being violent, the violence is not a passive act, we ought to recognize that.