insideMAN

Feeling stressed? Try doing something creative

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There are many ways to unwind and relax — taking part in sports or exercise is a great choice, meditation can help combat anxiety, and simply spending time with those who make you the happiest can help you let go of stress.

But if sitting in the lotus position isn’t quite your cup of tea, and getting sweaty away at the gym doesn’t appeal, sometimes the best way to release worry and tension, is to do something that will simply let you see the physical manifestation of what you’ve created. In other words, an activity that allows you to witness the results of your efforts and track your progress.

You might say to yourself, “I’m not creative at all – I can’t do anything like that”, but you might surprise yourself. To some, the idea of being creative revolves around the image of writing lines of poetry or holding a painting on a canvas. Of course, these are good examples of being artistic and expressing emotions, but they aren’t the only ways. There are methods of being expressive and creative that you may not have thought of, yet can still help you to get things off your chest in a positive way.

Blogging

Venting, as the name implies, is all about releasing pent up emotions. As is sometimes all too apparent, for many people social media has become the first port of call to vent frustrations and share feelings across their network of friends, both positive and negative. The problem with social media, though, is that its immediacy can result in public statements that we may regret. Blogging, on the other hand, is much more considered and can bridge the gap between friend and stranger, encouraging a more considered level of communication and offering the chance to build ties with people who have similar experiences, which in turn can challenge feelings of isolation.

Starting out on your own blog adventure isn’t actually that difficult, and once you start uploading blog posts, it essentially works as an online diary. Writing down your thoughts and feelings is hugely beneficial for your mental health; sharing them on an online platform and social media might seem daunting at first, but the more you do it, the more comfortable you’ll feel having people read your words. The idea is for people – no matter if they’re strangers or acquaintances – to empathise with your experiences. Once you share, you’ll be surprised how many people go through similar struggles.

Colouring books

Yes, it might seem very odd at first to suggest picking up a colouring book (something you probably haven’t done since you were five), but be open to the idea. Many people staunchly believe in the concept of colouring books for adults, as they simply allow someone to empty their mind of all thoughts and focus on nothing but the image; somewhat akin to meditation, only more hands-on. Plus, after you’ve completed the drawing, you’ll have something quite beautiful to show for it. Check out these colouring books and see for yourself.

Music and Photography

These might be hobbies you dabbled with as a kid but never really pursued them fully. Perhaps you became bored or didn’t have the time anymore, but now could be the moment to revitalise one or both of these interests. The goal doesn’t have to be anything more than playing for your own enjoyment, or to work towards a set goal simply for the sake of personal accomplishment. Making space for “me time” is what’s important. No one expects you to be Jimmy Page as soon as you pick up a guitar, nor will they expect you to best Ansel Adams after taking your first photograph. Music and photography help you shut off your thoughts for a while, and let you focus on creating something that you believe is good, no matter what anyone else thinks.

Cooking

Finally, the thought of cooking may well bring up images of Gordon Ramsey yelling at you for overcooking the salmon on Hell’s Kitchen, but in reality, cooking is far more relaxing than this. Like everything on this list, the idea of cooking is grounded in having something to show for your effort at the end of it all. You get the advantage of doing something that takes your mind off matters, you learn new skills, and then you’ve (hopefully) got something tasty after the effort. Jamie Oliver’s cookbooks and YouTube series allow beginners to get to grips with cooking, and he’s far more chilled out than Ramsey, that’s for sure.

Image: Flickr/13Moya Photography

Why did the BBC erase the 88% of rough sleepers who are men? And what can we do about it?

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On Wednesday, the BBC reported there had been a 16% rise in the number of people sleeping rough on the streets of England in the last year and that since 2010, the number of rough sleepers had more than doubled.

The report went on to outline a range of issues impacting on these more than 4,000 people who are the “most vulnerable” members of society, and to separate the numbers in terms of region, age and nationality.

But what stood out, was that when it came to breaking the numbers down in terms of gender, at no point did the BBC mention that fully 88% of rough sleepers are male – a “rough sleeping gap” that has increased from 85%.

Not only this, but the report in fact went on to highlight the 12% minority who are female.

But… why??

insideMAN tweeted at the BBC calling on them to explain why they had chosen to erase this glaring male gender disadvantage, while at the same time drawing attention to the minority of women who sleep rough.

The BBC did not reply, but our tweet was retweeted scores of times and triggered a passionate discussion online.

The big question was: how could a broadcaster that is dedicated to highlighting gendered disadvantage when faced by women, seemingly deliberately erase gender disadvantage faced by some of the “most vulnerable” men in society?

Here, insideMAN news editor, Glen Poole, gives his insight into the deep and complicated reasons why, and offers a radical way forward in thinking about gender that includes issues facing both men and women.

***

Why does the BBC ignore male rough sleepers? Well, first we’re going to need to do some gender theory.

The issue of society being blind to homelessness as a gender issue that affects men is a combination of male privilege/burden and female privilege/burden. In simple terms it’s “the masculine realm” and “the feminine realm” at play.

The masculine realm is built around the public citizen who was historically male. Men had rights (“privilege”) and responsibilities (“burdens”) that women didn’t – such as the right to a career, the right to vote versus the responsibility to provide for (earn) and protect others (e.g. conscription).

The feminine realm is built around the private world of nurture and care, which was historically female. Women had the privilege of being protected and taken care of (women and children first) but also the duty (or burden) of domesticity/childcare and a lack of rights to participate as public citizens.

This was just the “natural order” of things, we were largely blind to it until feminism (in its broadest sense) began making gender visible and asking awkward questions like why can’t women vote, have an education, have careers, be free from the burdens of the motherhood and domesticity?

What we still haven’t had is an opposite and equal push from men to say why can’t men be stay-at-home-dads, win custody of their kids when they separate, be protected and taken care of, and also be free from the burdens of the protector and provider role?

So, we have two forces at play:

  1. Traditional and conservative views of gender that remain blind to men’s gender issues and either reject women’s gender issues as “political correctness gone mad”, or accept them from the traditional viewpoint that women are the weaker sex and should be protected and taken care of.
  2. Progressive views of gender that seek to make gender visible, but only highlight the “privilege” of the male experience and the “burden” of the female experience. Or as we say in populist terms, the view that “Men ARE problems and Women HAVE problems”.

(As an aside, feminist masculinity studies, in particular, explicitly set out to make men visible — to name and problematise men and masculinity as things that should be the object of study, criticism and public policy, but with the intention of addressing the “problem” of men.)

Anyway, so yes, our failure to see homelessness as a gendered issue that mostly impacts men is shaped by traditional/conservative views (which some call patriarchy) because the failure to see homeless male citizens as gendered individuals is built on top of deep, historic social structures that established the default public citizen as male (which some people see as male privilege and the female burden in action).

But, our failure to see homelessness as a gendered issue that mostly impacts men is not just a problem of patriarchal thinking, it’s also shaped by progressive thinking too (or what some would simply call feminism). Because what progressive thinking is blind to is the way it preserves the privilege of victimhood/vulnerability — particularly the female privilege of being taken care of and protected, which it preserves by fiercely defending the position that “it’s a man’s world and only women can be gendered victims” (for example, some of those in the women’s refuge movement don’t just advocate for female victims but also advocate against male victims).

Then we need to throw into the mix the view that men have agency and women don’t, that men are agents of shaping this gendered world we live in and women are objects of it, that men act and women are acted upon and from this universally held view you get the unspoken belief (what some call unconscious bias) that:

Homeless men are failures and homeless women are victims (another version of men ARE problems, women HAVE problems).

Why is this?

First, because of the view that men have agency and are privileged in the public, masculine realm of work and are expected (first and foremost) to protect and provide, homeless men have failed in their duty to fulfil the privileged role of being a male citizen — they are failures and because they are male they are assumed to be independent and have agency and therefore are seen to be the cause of their own problems.

I read a newspaper leader in Australia last year, in the “progressive” Sydney Morning Herald, that was about men’s health and it used this phrase: “Man, an Aussie bloke is his own worst enemy” — which is a great example of the belief that because men are privileged and have agency (unlike women) that when men have problems they have no-one to blame but themselves. (Like those pesky, suicidal men, for example, if only they’d stop being so macho and talk about their feelings…).

Second, because of the belief that men have agency corresponds with a view that women don’t have agency and should be protected and taken care of and provided a “safe space” in the private feminine realm of the home, when women are homeless it’s seen more as society’s collective failure and leads to calls for specialist, gendered interventions.

Yes, these ways of thinking have deeply structured roots (that Evolutionary Psychologists would argue are grounded in biology and psychology) but they are not just locked in place by conservative/traditionalist thinkers (“women and children first”) but also by progressive thinkers (“women and girls first”).

Pretty much all charities working in homelessness and prison reform are run by progressive thinkers and they are pretty much blind to the view that men have gendered problems (and so see male prisoners and homeless men as victims of class, poverty and race… but not gender).

Neutrality, attack, or inclusivity?

I wrote about the failure of homeless charities to see homelessness as a gendered issue here in 2015.

So it’s not just the Government’s fault or the BBC’s fault or the homelessness sector’s fault — it’s a symptom of the “public story” about gender that’s shaped both by traditional (“patriarchal”) and progressive (“feminist”) thinking.

So our challenge is how do we challenge those deeply structured ways of thinking in a way that he vast majority of people can hear it?

There are basically three ways to response to this:

  1. Call for GENDER NEUTRALITY: we should help ALL homeless people, ALL prisoners, ALL kids not getting to university, ALL victims of violence, ALL suicidal people etc. etc. etc. etc., regardless of gender – “let us talk no more of women’s problems and men’s problems, let us just deal with human problems…”
  2. React against the one-eyed view of gender: attack the BBC, attack Government, attack biased policy makers… attack, attack, attack, declaring “what about the men?” Which is a valid response and certainly one of the ways I respond to a lot of issues… in a way this approach is fighting against gender exclusive ways of thinking, but it can also be hard to differentiate from other voices who react to every gendered initiative as another example of “political correctness gone mad”.
  3. Take the visionary, moral high ground and be role models in our willingness to champion highly effective GENDER INCLUSIVE approaches to social issues that take into account the fact that men and women may face the same problems (homeless, domestic violence, suicidality) but have different needs (both as a group AND as individuals).

Rather than saying it’s bad and wrong that the Government, the BBC, homeless charities etc. are highlighting the gendered issues facing homeless women, I think we should be more enthusiastic about this that anyone else on the planet.

More gendered thinking, please!

Because what we need, is not LESS gendered thinking we need MORE gendered thinking and we need MORE gendered thinking that is MORE THAN just focusing on the problems women have (and the problems men cause).

So let us enthusiastically embrace every single manifestation of gendered thinking we come across and demand MORE of it; let’s celebrate gendered thinking about social issues and be at the leading edge of getting people to think MORE deeply about gendered issues.

How does that look, in practical terms?

It starts with an enthusiastic response to every example of gendered thinking we encounter:

“It’s FANTASTIC that the BBC is highlighting that homelessness is a gendered issue for some women, what we’d love to see is the BBC also highlighting how homelessness is a gendered issue for the 88% of homeless people who are men.”

Take a breath… be visionary.

What this approach has the potential to do is bring BOTH supportive small-c conservatives AND open-minded progressives along with us.

Small-c conservatives are more likely to think “well I don’t really like all this gendered nonsense, but if we’re going to take a gendered approach to women’s issues then it only seems fair and right that we take a gendered approach to men’s issues too, and if it pisses off a few feminists in the process, then that’s a bonus!”

Progressives are more likely to think:

“I believe in gender equality and that ‘patriarchy is bad’ — this is proof that ‘patriarchy hurts men too’ so yes we should be taking a gendered approach to addressing this issue.”

So while a knee-jerk, gut reaction to stories that ignore or down-play glaring male disadvantage, is often (understandably) to think “fuck this, what about the men?” …if we can take a breath and respond from a visionary place, from our higher selves, and remember that whatever our individual views, then we can authentically say that we think:

“It’s GREAT that people are taking a gendered approach to tackling women’s issues… and what we stand for is a world where we take a gender inclusive approach to social issues that tackles BOTH women’s issues AND men’s issues, fairly and equitably.”

It’s not the BBC or the Government or the homelessness sector that’s the issue here, it’s us, the men’s movement. We haven’t yet won the argument that men have gendered issues and that homelessness is a gendered issue that mostly impacts men. We have to win that argument by persuading enough people over enough time that is the most moral, ethical and effective way to think about the problem.

We won’t get there (I believe) by correcting and complaining. We will get there by championing gendered thinking and evolving it to the next logical stage of its evolution.

VIDEO: Do our beliefs about domestic violence match the facts?

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Perceptions of ‘typical’ incidences of domestic violence are deeply ingrained in the public consciousness and based on gender stereotypes — but although more women than men are victims of domestic violence, statistics show that many incidences of violence are mutual, or involve a female aggressor and male victim, or take place within same-sex couples.

In December, Prof. Ben Hine, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of West London, gave a presentation at University College London in which he asked challenging questions about these societal beliefs around partner abuse: How do our perceptions of domestic violence influence the judgements we make regarding those involved? Are some victims taken less seriously than others, and why? And how do we change this?

This fascinating, surprising and insightful talk, explores our perceptions of domestic violence, and – for the sake of all victims – emphasises the importance of challenging unhelpful narratives.

To watch Prof Hine’s presentation, which was the latest in the UCL Gender Equity Network’s series of talks on contemporary gender issues, click on the videos below.

Part 1

Part 2

One man’s grassroots insight into the Duluth Model domestic violence perpetrator programme

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Last week the Office for National Statistics released new data that revealed more than one in three victims of domestic violence in England and Wales are men, and that the gap between male and female victims is now the narrowest on record. Despite these statistics, there are a total of 24 refuge places dedicated to male DV victims in the UK, compared to around 4,000 spaces for over 7,000 women and children.

A key aspect of this gendered approach to domestic violence is the widespread use of Duluth Model perpetrator programmes, which frame domestic violence as a crime committed by men against women as a result of men’s wider patriarchal oppression of women in society. Here counsellor and insideMAN reader, Phill Turner, gives his insight into the reality of how these programmes operate with the men who are required to attend them, and asks whether this is either an accurate or effective approach to tackling the issue.

Since my divorce in 2004, I have worked on the helpline for Family’s Need Fathers, trained as a counsellor, I have two children now 22 and 18 and a supportive partner and now works part-time as a counsellor in primary care and private practice. I was challenged by my experience working in a domestic violence agency, and I wanted to explore the impact that a gendered view has on men and also wondered if a gender-inclusive view and therapeutic approach could possibly be more effective to help end family violence.

What is the Duluth Model?

This model of domestic violence (DV) was developed by the late Ellen Pence and Michael Paymer in Duluth Minnesota in the early 1980’s the idea is based on the feminist theory of patriarchy, that men feel entitled to control and dominate women and intentionally use violence and coercion. (1) The idea is to coordinate the responses of the police, courts and community based organisations to end violence against women, hold ‘batterers’ responsible and put them through a Non-violence or perpetrator group program (2). It was revolutionary for its time and as Ellen Pence says it reduced reported incidence of DV by 50%. (1)The Duluth’s power and control wheel was developed in women’s groups and refuges are central to its theory and gendered view, it is the widest adopted approach in the world.

All is not what it seems

The room was dark but the occupants could just make out the outline of the others, hearing breathing and shuffling as if to indicate each other’s presence. Outside the room a man and a woman’s voices could be heard, quiet at first but getting louder and more agitated. The man said “I’m only f’in asking, am I not allowed!?” The woman replied “It’s not my fault, why do you always start?” Their recriminations got louder and louder as they spoke over each other to create a crescendo of indistinguishable noises, then CRASH! as if something hit against the wall. There was a long silence of anticipation. What would happen next? The door opened to let in a dim light and the two people walked into the room and quietly sat down.

What sounded like a couple arguing was actually a role play between a female group facilitator and myself at a group meeting for male perpetrators, which was run according to the Duluth Model handbook: “Looking at the impact of men’s violence on women and children”. This session was aimed to illustrate how DV impacts on children. But for Greg*, however, one of the men in the group, there was horror on his face as the sounds of the role play had taken him back to his childhood memories and he was reliving the trauma of his own parents’ violence.

Does everyone have a ‘normal’ childhood?

As a counsellor one question I often ask my clients is “what was your childhood like?” supplemented with “and your parents?” nice open questions, and not too directive. Early childhood experiences influence us and set up patterns of behaviour that we replicate or react against; it’s where we learn to have relationships.

How was my childhood? Ordinary and loving, I suppose. My father worked long hours and did shifts. My mother was anxious and would send me and my older sister out to play so we wouldn’t get under her feet. I do remember sitting on the stairs with my sister, listening to my parents arguing and that felt normal. But doesn’t everyone’s childhood seem normal to them?

Luckily my grandparents lived next door but one and their house was somewhere that I felt more accepted and loved My grandfather was a tall gentle man, with a dry sense of humour, hands the size of dinner plates and a dimple in his temple from a stray German bullet from the First World War. My grandmother was short, round and bespectacled, always dressed in a house coat and loved us with hugs and food but she was firm and even my grandfather knew where he stood. They were a loving and affectionate couple to the end and positive role models for me as a child.

Not until my divorce did I have any understanding of domestic violence. I went to a meeting at ‘Families Need Fathers’ (FnF). I told the meeting my wife wanted a divorce and that I believed equal parenting would be best for my children as I’d always been a ‘hands on’ kind of dad but I knew that my soon to be ex-wife didn’t agree.  A number of the men warned me to “wait for the accusations of DV!” “There haven’t been any” I replied but they were not wrong and as soon as I applied for shared residence, the accusations of me being violent started.

Skip forward 10 years. I had gained shared residence, volunteered for the FnF helpline and trained as a counsellor, a process that can’t help but change your life.

As a therapist I feel I need to challenge my own prejudices

My divorce and helpline work had given me experience of how men are prejudiced against in the family courts and how an accusation of DV can change the dynamics for fathers but women’s violence or controlling behaviour is often not taken seriously. I had the chance to volunteer at a domestic violence agency as a trainee facilitator and I wanted to challenge those past experiences of my divorce and FnF helpline work, I found the helpline work fulfilling and saw it as helping others as I had been, and was aware of the high suicide rate in this area of work. But I had only experienced one side of DV and thought a broader perspective would help me as a professional counsellor and I wanted to understand more about why I had been treated as though I was a danger to my wife and children without evidence.

I’m aware how violent some men can be and the impact that their behaviour has on others. I specifically remember one older male client who was recovering from another familiar round of binge drinking but this time with a new suicide attempt. Out of the blue he broke down in floods of tears and started talking about his childhood, remembering his “beautiful mother” being beaten and thrown naked into the snow by his father, an incident which had plagued him for 60 years. I saw this as setting the seeds of his own violent co-dependent behaviour with his wife, alcohol problems and own self-harm.

The ‘perpetrator’ group

The men were from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities. Some reminded me of the people I had met at FnF meetings or helpline callers, as they were struggling to maintain relationships with their children and having to attend the group as part of ongoing court procedures. Some were violent, or in co-dependant violent relationships, it was discussed in the group. Others complained there had not been violence (but then it’s not always about violence) and were not sure why they had to attend the group, and when it was discussed about men’s violent or controlling behaviour said there hasn’t been anything like that.

Each man had to attend 24 two-and-a-half hour sessions. Groups were run by at least one male and one female facilitator and each session was based around an exercise from the Duluth handbook. There were about ten men in the group I attended.

At the start of each week’s session, we all had to check in and even the facilitators had to say if they had been violent or abusive to their partners that week. This check in process sometimes took a while if several men recounted incidents in detail.

One week a chap recounted a long story about a fight with his partner, which ended up with her smashing up his plasma TV. The couple’s children were there and got involved in the argument and I wondered what it was like for those children and what future they would have? The man wanted to also talk about his partner’s violence but he was accused by the lead facilitator of minimising the impact of his own actions. It is a central part of the Duluth model that men should take responsibility for their violence, and women’s violence is only seen in response to men’s violence. This one sided view did leave me feeling uncomfortable as it didn’t fit with my experience but at the time I was there to learn and gain experience.

Another chap had trouble seeing his daughter on Saturday afternoons because his partner would put obstacles in the way, like parties or family were visiting, a story I was used to hearing on the helpline. As part of their remit the agency wrote court reports on how the men were progressing in the group sessions. He said he had been to court and he was angry that the report had shown him in a bad light. He was getting frustrated and angry he seemed to be thwarted at every turn but for a moment I was aware he was getting upset when he spoke about his daughter wanting to see him too. This seemed to reveal a more vulnerable side which was never acknowledged or discussed. I wondered if he had to hide it because he was constantly being criticised, you don’t reveal vulnerability’s if it’s not safe to do so, his default position was to use aggression if he felt vulnerable, which had got him where he was.

There were some success stories. One chap had come to the end of his 24 weeks of compulsory attendance and seemed to have a real sense of achievement and remorse. He said he was ashamed of holding his partner against the wall by her throat, and he was pleased and it was clear to see in his face he was proud how far he had come in understanding and starting to atone for his actions. He said “I didn’t realise it was domestic violence to hold my wife’s arms by her side”. I was also surprised and wondered if it indicated she too had learnt to respond with violence and indicated a co-dependent relationship learnt from their childhood to respond aggressively.

I enjoyed going to the group, I felt I was helping the men turn their lives around, and a couple of the younger men responded in a positive way towards me as an older male. I did struggle with the Duluth model’s rigid and stereotypically gendered view of DV and if the funding for that group hadn’t finished I would have found it hard to continue to work there. Yes I did also feel embarrassed to be a man because of the violence that some men had enacted, but I was also embarrassed with the way that some of the facilitators responded to men’s disclosures behind their backs, we were there to help them, these behaviours doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The agency’s assessments forms included the title “Mr Perpetrator” where a man’s name was to go, and the male and female assessment forms were different and didn’t question the woman’s behaviour, they were titled ‘Ms Survivor’. A gendered assumption of who were perpetrators and victims.

As a member of a professional body, working under ethical guidelines, I have to wonder if there are ethical considerations of treating men and women differently based on a gendered assumptions. I personally know of men who have been referred to ‘perpetrator’ programs despite their partners  having been violent and abusive. With the recent example of the case of Sharon Edwards long term abuse and murder of her husband we are aware that DV does not have such a simple explanation.

Men’s mental health, my misgivings

All of the sessions I attended were focused on other people — partners, children, people who were not in the room. The sessions seemed to miss the chances to reflect on what was happening for the men. We could have explored the men’s reactions on a personal level, and I felt they didn’t feel listened to. Yes, we need to stop violence, but regardless of who it is against. Counselling theory suggests therapeutic change comes about by having your story heard and your feelings validated, I know this wasn’t therapy but working compassionately is the basic starting point for building positive relationships. The Duluth model website says it does not use shame as a way of changing men but in my view it does at an implicit level. Modern research suggests men who experience or perpetrate DV are at high risk of mental health problems. (3) So rather than constantly accusing men of minimising and not taking responsibility for their actions, it may be more useful to help men reflect on what’s going for them in the moment, to explore the dynamics in their relationships with partners and explore a different ways to be a man.

Unfortunately, the Duluth model isn’t a therapeutic intervention and it has never claimed to be. Its creators aimed to change men’s violent behaviour through psycho-education. Some of the men in the agency group reminded me of naughty boys in detention, being difficult and rebellious and producing a “them and us” situation with the facilitators. The men who wanted to engage with the weekly exercises did anyway, but those who didn’t just went through the motions of attending as required. It seemed as if the boot of coercion and violence was now on the other foot and the aim was to control the men as some had tried to control their partners, to make the men behave in a more socially acceptable ways by coercing and shaming them. This was a condition that some of the men like Greg understood well and it seemed more like retribution than psycho-education. I wasn’t the only facilitator to think that.

At the end of the day

I feel lucky that there was no crash followed by silence when my own parents argued. They heard us on the stairs and came out to tuck us back into bed, embarrassed as much as angry I suspect. Duluth’s view of family life doesn’t fit in with my family experience as a child, my relationships or even my divorce, but I suspect this model based on a gendered paradigm developed from the experience of women from refuges, does not fit into the lives of many men and women, as they are not a representative sample of society and is only a small albeit unpleasant part or relationship difficulties.

Modern, gender inclusive research which comes from a wide range of sources including LGBT relationships (4/ 5) and government statistics demonstrate DV is a spectrum and covers a broad range of relationship dynamics and problems.

We need therapeutic models to help break the cycle of domestic violence, not by shaming men who have been labelled as ‘perpetrators’, but by trying to decrease violent behaviour in both men and women, by helping people understand and change who they are, and how they have learned to be that way, not just focusing on what people do when angry and distressed.

Greg was a violent man and needed help but from his look of horror on his face and his comments he was re-traumatised by our role play. He was as much a victim of his parents’ violence as a perpetrator and he had learnt his patterns of social behaviour well. I didn’t see him again while working there and I wonder what he had experienced that night, it left me with a sense of guilt that he had been harmed and not helped by it. Erin Pizzey, who opened the first women’s shelter in the UK in 1971, said that DV is a generational problem not a gender problem, what I experienced there I can only agree.

Women’s Aid suggest nine out of ten DV victims are women (Neath) (that still leaves a large amount of men with scant dedicated services) but other research suggest one in three victims are men, and still others suggest perpetration rates are equal, even if outcome isn’t. Lesbian and gay relationship have the similar perpetration rates as the heterosexual community and bisexual even higher (4?), so I have to wonder if the 30-year-old gendered theory that supports the Duluth model needs to be revised. Whatever the reality of DV we need affective ethical interventions to cater for all parts of society, so we don’t produce a new generation like Greg or his female equivalent, who’s first reaction to anger and distress is to use control, aggression and violence.

*Names have been changed

 

References:

1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9dZOgr78eE&list=PLwFAjqGXESqvmhjhYaft3bxU7JImrYfLg&index=2

2.

http://www.theduluthmodel.org/about/

3.

www.bmjopen.bmj.com

Occurrence and impact of negative

behaviour, including domestic violence

and abuse, in men attending UK

primary care health clinics:

a cross-sectional survey

M Hester,1 G Ferrari,2 S K Jones,2 E Williamson,1 L J Bacchus,3 T J Peters,4

G Feder2

 

4 .

Illusion of Inclusion: The Failure of the

Gender Paradigm to Account for Intimate Partner

Violence in LGBT Relationships

Claire Cannon, MA

Frederick Buttell, PhD

Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana

 

5.

Exploring the service and support needs of male,

lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgendered and

black and other minority ethnic victims of domestic

and sexual violence

Report prepared for Home Office

SRG/06/017

Marianne Hester, Emma Williamson, Linda Regan,

Mark Coulter, Khatidja Chantler, Geetanjali Gangoli,

Rebecca Davenport & Lorraine Green

Published by University of Bristol 2012

Why Eric Bristow is wrong about male victims of sexual abuse

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The former darts world champion, Eric Bristow has lost his role with Sky Sports after suggesting that the footballers speaking out about being victims of childhood sexual abuse are not “proper men”.

It’s a shocking fact that between 2011 and 2015 there were an estimated 679,000 sexual assaults on men and boys in the UK and 96% were not reported to the police. Yet according to media reports, Bristow said on twitter that footballers are “wimps” and that the victims should not be able to look at themselves in the mirror for failing to get revenge on their abusers as adults. In contrast, Bristow said that darts players are “tough guys” and that he “would have went back and sorted that poof out”, later claiming he “meant paedophile not poof”.

In response to the comments made by Eric Bristow, the Sussex-based charity for male victims of sexual abuse, Mankind, issued the following statement “as a way of gaining greater understanding of some of the issues that Mr Bristow raises”. The statement says:

We recognise that Eric Bristow’s comments on his twitter account were unhelpful and could be received as deeply offensive by the courageous men who have agonised over whether or not to come forward and share their stories of historic sexual abuse. We also feel it is useful to separate the behaviour from the man. Over the coming days and weeks, Mr Bristow will no doubt be pilloried in the press. Sometimes this public shaming of people who express their misunderstanding of a social issue is just as unhelpful as the ignorance of their poorly conceived comments.

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/eric-bristow-bigot-hes-not-alone-hes-one-many-need-challenging/

 

Let’s take a moment to unpack some of Mr Bristow’s misconceptions about how an individual responds to sexual abuse in the moment and how they choose to heal from this experience later in life. Mr Bristow’s twitter feed would suggest that in the first instance a child is fully in control of their faculties to resist a sexual perpetrator. Secondly, he implies that as a survivor matures to adulthood, they “should” seek out their perpetrator in order to take their violent revenge.

Both of these assumptions are often untrue for survivors of sexual abuse. Sadly, Mr Bristow’s views are not held in isolation. At Mankind, we regularly hear from our clients about a general lack of understanding about the impact of sexual abuse on an individual and the pain caused by friends and family members expressing unhelpful comments like “why didn’t you fight back?” and “surely you could have done something about it!”.

So let’s look at Mr Bristow’s first assumption, the idea that a young person can choose to fight off their perpetrator when the abuse is taking place. A crucial problem with this assumption is the idea that a person faced with trauma has full resource of their brain. When confronted with a traumatic event, the back brain referred to as the limbic system takes the lead. This part of the brain is unconscious, automatic and invested in survival. It is this part of the brain that will determine a person’s response when confronted with a serious threat. The front brain or neo-cortex where thinking, choosing, planning and reflecting takes place is bypassed. Accordingly, at the moment of trauma, the individual does not choose how to respond and may be surprised by the response of their body to freeze, take flight or fight.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-3981728/Eric-Bristow-dropped-Sky-sparking-fury-football-abuse-tweets.html

When the fight or flight systems cannot be activated or escape is impossible, the limbic system can simultaneously activate a different branch of the autonomic nervous system, causing a state of freezing called “tonic immobility” – like a deer caught in headlights. There could be many reasons, both physical or relational as to why fighting or fleeing are not viable options, particularly if the traumatic threat is prolonged.

Now let’s take a look at Mr Bristow’s second assumption, the idea that a survivor of historic sexual abuse “should” want to exact violent revenge on their perpetrator. From our experience of working with men who have experienced childhood sexual abuse, we have seen that fantasies about taking revenge are common. These thoughts can sometimes be all consuming and can swallow up an individual’s every waking moment. However, these thoughts often remain just that; thoughts, re-occurring fantasises of what revenge might feel like. As clients begin to recover from their experiences and grow in different areas of their life, they tend to be less interested in revenge.

A far greater need is often their desire to be heard, believed and understood by their community. On another level, Mr Bristow’s comments about seeking revenge underestimate the potential complexity of a survivor’s relationship to their perpetrator. In the tabloid press, sexual perpetrators are often presented in cartoonish form where they are stalking strangers who were “born evil”. In reality, the majority of individuals who experience childhood sexual abuse are abused by a member of their own family, a trusted family friend or a person in authority. In the case of the footballers, their abusers had significant influence and power over their lives and indeed the continuation of their careers.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/29/eric-bristow-twitter-toxic-attitudes-stop-abuse-victims

If we imagine a scenario where the perpetrator is an aunty, much loved by the rest of the family and celebrated for her superb community work and social standing, how easy is it for the survivor to seek revenge? For this survivor, to speak out may risk a huge rupture in the family. Worse still, what if they are not believed or their experience is denied? Where the perpetrator is viewed as a sinister male stranger who exists in a vacuum and was simply born evil, Bristow’s idea of a survivor seeking violent retribution is perhaps easier to understand. The idea of an adult survivor paying a visit to their aging aunt who abused them 30 years ago with the aim of beating her up is perhaps a less palatable concept.

It is all too easy to shower Mr Bristow in shame. Perhaps, it is more helpful to unpack some of the stereotypes and prejudices that are contained in his words. These are the views that persist in many sections of our society and act as a barrier to men in coming to terms with their abuse and finding a way forward that works for them .

Mankind is a Hove-based agency that offers support to men who have experienced sexual abuse at any time in their lives. All of its services are by appointment only and details can be found on the website www.mankindcounselling.org.uk.

For more immediate assistance for men who wish to talk about their own experience of sexual abuse, there is a national helpline run by Safeline www.safeline.org.uk who can be contacted on 0808 800 5005.

‘Show us your cock!’ Exploring Some of the issues with the Nottinghamshire Police Misogynistic Hate Crime Strategy

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Here Dr Ben Hine, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of West London and co-founder of the Men and Boys Coalition, explores some of the deeper issues behind recent moves by police forces to re-categorise crimes against women that are motivated by their sex as hate crimes.

Since the 4th April 2016, Nottinghamshire Police Force has classified incidents targeted at women, specifically because of their sex, as hate crimes. This was in response to the Misogynistic Hate Crime Review 2016 by the same force that found an alarming 38% of women who had experienced a hate crime explicitly linked it to being a woman, and that, even more shockingly, only 28% of women would report such crimes to the police[i]. Indeed the scale of the problem is evident, both through direct observation and discussions with family and friends (quite uncomfortable ones at that I can assure you), and through disturbingly ironic incidences such as the public harassment of BBC reporter Sarah Teale as she reported on the change[ii].

Clearly, misogynistic harassment of women is a serious and prevalent problem in our society, and the creation of this classification can be viewed as an important step in encouraging women to report their victimisation and to show how seriously police officers take crimes of this nature. Indeed, a number of additional police forces across England and Wales are now considering expanding their definition of hate crimes to include misogyny[iii]. However, before this becomes common practice, for me there are a number of issues which haven’t been fully considered in taking such a move.

The review itself describes misogynistic hate crimes as ‘incidents against women that are motivated by the attitude of men towards women and includes behaviour targeted at women by men, simply because they are women’. The examples provided range from unwanted or uninvited physical or verbal contact or engagement, to the taking of photographs without permission. It is also important to note that this new categorisation is not a crime within itself, but rather elevates existing crimes that meet this definition to a higher priority on police systems once reported.

‘Inherently discriminatory and sexist’

So what’s the problem, right? I believe one comment from Nottinghamshire Police’s Facebook page sums up the main issue – ‘Will the harassment of men also be deemed as a hate crime? If not then this policy is inherently discriminatory and sexist’[iv]. To put it frankly, and in the hope you will read on, I have to agree.

Whilst I can list a huge number of incidences of harassment towards women by men that I have either directly witnessed or heard second-hand, there are also plenty of examples I can conjure of the reverse. Bar-men harassed whilst women order drinks, men’s bums pinched on the dance floor, and inappropriate, presumptive, and very forward advances towards men by women who find them attractive. As the title of this post suggests, I have also genuinely heard groups of women (think hen-dos) shout ‘show us your cock!’ to men they see on the street. We must therefore recognise that a number of men find themselves experiencing similar types of harassment to women, by women. And whilst some don’t feel aggrieved, many report feeling deeply uncomfortable, and sometimes even threatened by some of these advances. So, whilst these incidences of harassment are based on the fact that they are men, and whilst they could report the harassment itself as a crime, why does no opportunity exist for them to have that report specifically classified as a hate crime?

There are a number of reasons. 1) Maybe people believe harassment of men by women isn’t as serious because they think it doesn’t happen as often? Well, the frequency of such incidents is difficult to assess as at the very outset men and women may perceive, categorise, and report harassment of this nature differently. Whilst some men do think of a pinched bottom as harassment, many don’t, whereas women almost certainly would. That being said, whilst many statistics do suggest that prevalence is higher for women, a significant proportion of men are also affected[v]. Regardless, as with domestic and sexual violence, just because fewer men are victims of these crimes, this doesn’t mean that male victimisation is any less serious.

2) Maybe it is because people believe men don’t mind, or even like the attention, so therefore it’s not harassment? This is also a popular belief, and again one where it is hard to assess prevalence/impact. If it turns out men really don’t view harassment towards them as seriously as women do, is this because they have been told by society that that is how they should feel? Or because they genuinely don’t mind as much as women? Or both? Some would question whether the harassment of men is even a problem because men don’t mind sexual attention of any kind or in any form, as long as it’s attention! However, as mentioned above, many men report feeling uncomfortable by some of the comments and actions taken by women towards them.

Balance of power

3) Finally, maybe people believe that whilst both men and women may experience harassment, it’s more serious for women because it’s more threatening and/or dangerous. This, for me, is the most important, as whilst all of the reasons outlined above can be argued to have some validity, this particular idea ties into fundamental beliefs about the balance of power between the sexes that affect our perceptions of many interactions, including crime.

Many theories of gender socialisation would suggest that, from a young age, boys and girls are taught to believe that they inherently occupy different positions of power within society – boys are socialised to believe they are powerful, girls are socialised to believe they are powerless. This is part of a broad system of beliefs and processes that help to shape our understanding of gender, and the abstract associations that accompany masculinity, manliness and being male, and femininity, womanliness and being female. And whilst these processes are undergoing some change, socialisation of power between the sexes is still prevalent and highly influential in shaping children’s understanding of the world around them in terms of gender.

These socialised beliefs then manifest in our understanding of things like harassment and other ‘gendered’ crime. For example, whilst domestic violence is most certainly perpetrated towards both men and women, studies demonstrate that abuse scenarios are routinely perceived as more serious and severe when perpetrated by men towards women than the reverse[vi]. These effects are found despite the fact that the physical attributes of the men and women involved are controlled (i.e., they are described as having a similar physical stature).

What does domestic violence ‘look like’?

We can argue therefore that perceptions of men and women in these scenarios are fundamentally rooted in who we feel has more power (as well as more ability to threaten, intimidate and control in any given situation), as well as our traditional beliefs of what domestic violence ‘looks like’ (i.e., aggressive male being physically violent towards a scared, weak female)[vii]. When a man harasses a woman, this is seen as a powerful and threatening act towards someone in a position of less power. When a woman harasses a man, it is not seen as serious or threatening, because women aren’t inherently viewed as threatening. Take what happens when a woman and a man walk alone on the street. If a man begins to follow them, a woman is likely to cross the street as she feels under threat, whereas a man will not. Neither will cross if it is a woman following.

Regardless of the extent of one’s subscription to the narrative that crimes like domestic/sexual violence and harassment are direct results and representations of a patriarchal society, and men’s exertion of dominance over women, beliefs regarding imbalanced power between men and women exist in many of us, and clearly affect our interpretations of crimes when they occur. Combine this with other beliefs tied to gender, such as men’s supposed appreciation of any kind of sexual interaction regardless of how it comes, and you get a clear distinction between serious male-on-female harassment and funny female-on-male ‘attention’. A distinction which, I feel, is actually reinforced by the categorisation of harassment specifically by a male towards a female, as a hate crime.

Maybe some view the elevation of these crimes as just a natural way of addressing that imbalance of power, by placing the law on the side of women? However, whilst with one hand this delivers a message regarding the seriousness of such crimes (a message which I wholly support), with the other it reinforces the idea that men are powerful, predatory and dangerous as harassment perpetrated by them is deemed particularly serious. This as an idea which not only serves to undermine the idea that a man can be harassed by a woman (or indeed another man) because of the fundamentally ‘powerful’ position men occupy, but helps to reinforce the idea of women as weak and needing extra protection and provision within the law. I would draw similar criticisms of sexual violence legislation in this country – for example, why is rape a gender-specific crime (i.e., can only be classified as rape if the assault involved penetration by a penis)? Does this not create a clear distinction between the seriousness and trauma of ‘proper rape’ (of a man or woman by a man), as opposed to say sexual assault by penetration (performed maybe by a woman on a man)? Aren’t they both equally traumatic and violating?

More harm than good?

As I stated at the start of this post, the sexual harassment of women is a serious, dangerous, and abhorrent feature of our society. I have spoken to many female friends who feel threatened, and even physically endangered when approached, and sometimes persistently pursued by men. At one party recently, a female friend of mine felt the need to arrange a complex system of interactions with us in order to finally convince one guy to ‘fucking leave her alone’. However, whilst classifying misogynistic incidences as hate crimes is a bold and important statement, it is not without issue. How are we to ever to challenge conventional beliefs about power between the sexes, and the narrative of ‘men as problem, women as victim’, when we are almost enshrining that imbalance within the law itself.

I am not sure what the alternative is, but I can’t help ask whether we shouldn’t maybe instead focus on highlighting the negative effects of harassment and abuse regardless of gender? And in doing so, help to re-educate men on their perceptions of what is/isn’t harassment? This would not only help to encourage men to recognise and call-out any harassment they experience, but also help them to more fully understand how intimidating their behaviour towards women is. And should we not also focus on breaking down the model of socialisation experienced by both girls and boys’ experience that leads to the unequal perception of power, and that may lead boys and men to believe such behaviour is acceptable, and lead girls and women to believe such behaviour is inevitable?

Above all, I believe that equality before the law is essential. Whilst crimes such as harassment are not gender-specific, the new hate-crime classification essentially creates a two-tiered system, where crimes towards men and women are not viewed equally. It is not my place to say whether this is right or wrong, but I do question where it leads us. Will this spread to other ‘gendered’ crimes, such as domestic and sexual violence? And what does this do for the smaller proportion of male victims? What of their pain and suffering that arguably becomes further diminished and trivialised by emphasising the importance of female victims and the severity of their victimisation? And whilst changes to these laws may help in some ways (i.e., encouraging reporting), do they actually end up encouraging our perception of women as ‘victim’ or as weak? Or am I coming at this whole question from a position of male privilege? Unable to fully understand or assess the problem because I have no idea what it feels like to experience harassment from a female perspective? And have I just interpreted any harassment I receive differently because of my male upbringing and my belief that I am never under threat? Regardless, research tells us that there is a clear difference in the way that harassment and other crimes are evaluated based on which genders are involved – and enshrining such perceptions within the law could end up doing much more harm than good.

By Dr Ben Hine

Dr Hine is a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of West London and a chartered member of the British Psychological Society (BPS). He is a co-founder of the Men and Boys Coaltion.

[i] Misogynistic Hate Crime Review (2016). Nottinghamshire Police.

[ii] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-36775398

[iii] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/10/misogyny-hate-crime-nottingham-police-crackdown

[iv] Misogynistic Hate Crime Review (2016). Nottinghamshire Police.

[v] http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/resources/statistics/

[vi] Seelau, S. M. & Seelau, E. P. (2005). Gender-role stereotypes and perceptions of heterosexual, gay and lesbian domestic violence. Journal of Family Violence, 20, 363-371

[vii] Dutton, D. G., & White, K. R. (2013). Male victims of domestic violence. New Male Studies: An International Journal, 2, 5-17

The Red Pill Movie: who is the victor in this tale of heroes and villains? 

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This week I watched the Red Pill movie, the new documentary in which a 29-year-old, feminist filmmaker, Cassie Jaye, explores the world of Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) in North America writes Glen Poole.

It was an interesting experience as I have met and have shared platforms with at least five of the people interviewed in the film including Warren Farrell, author of The Myth of Male Power, who wrote in 1993:

“Feminism articulated the shadow side of men and the light side of women, but neglected the shadow side of women and the light side of men”.

By contrast, it can be argued that MRAs highlight only the light side of anti-feminism and the dark side of feminism. Cathy Young, whose 1999 book, Ceasefire, called for men and women to join forces to achieve true equality, has already made this point in her review of Red Pill, saying:

“MRA critiques of [feminism] are well-deserved: With few exceptions, feminism has not only ignored male disadvantages but openly opposed attempts to rectify biases in such areas as child custody and domestic violence.”

Young goes on to argue that anti-feminism (in the form or Men’s Rights Activism), also has a dark side. “One valid criticism of The Red Pill,” she says “is that it soft-pedals or evades the extreme, even genuinely misogynist rhetoric spouted by some of its subjects”.

Who’s promoting real diversity?  

Here at insideMAN, we receive many comments from MRAs around the world that point to this dark side, such as the following comment on an article written by a pro-feminist who had changed his mind about marking International Men’s Day:

“Feminists have made their filthy, sticky, flea-ridden bed and this time they are going to have to lie in it. Lucky for them, lying is what they do best. It boils down to this, Feminism now has 2 simple options: 1) Get out of our way OR 2) Be utterly destroyed. Choose!”

On the same article, we saw the lighter side of MRAs in this comment from Peter Wright, who works alongside some of the key characters in The Red Pill movie:

“It’s true that feminists are the strongest promoters of diversity on the planet,” said Wright “yet ironically display the most ignorance of real diversity among those supporting men’s issues — which most all feminists lump into the one category of “men’s rights activists” before dismissing that variety of voices and even censoring them. In that notorious ‘feminist’ move a great range of diversity is lost.”

If you want to make sense of where The Red Pill sits in the messy world of gender politics, then you need a map to guide you. A map, as they say, is not the territory but it contains enough truth to help you make sense of the terrain you are navigating.

http://heatst.com/culture-wars/new-film-the-red-pill-asks-whether-mens-rights-activist-have-a-point/

A map of gender politics 

So there are two things to keep in mind when watching The Red Pill.

Firstly, there are a whole load of binary pairings at play: men/women; feminism/anti-feminism; men’s issues/women’s issues; men’s rights/women’s rights. Each component has a light side and a shadow side. If you want the whole picture, you need to see all sides—and if you want to know where someone is standing, simply observe which sides they highlight or exaggerate and which sides they ignore or deny.

Secondly, there is a whole world of conflation at play, both in the male corner (between men’s issues/men’s rights/men’s rights activists/anti-feminism) and in the female corner (between women’s issues/women’s rights/feminism/gender equality).

As the comment by Peter Wright suggests, there is a broad church of people who are concerned about and committed to addressing men’s issues and most of us are not MRAs or anti-feminists.

I wrote recently in The Telegraph about the First National Conference for Men and Boys in 2011, which saw nearly 100 organisations sign a joint letter to the Government, calling for more focus on the specific needs of men and boys and how to address them. Reading the list of signatories provides a useful snapshot of the diversity of people committed to making a difference for men and boys in the UK, most of whom do not identify as either feminist or anti-feminist/MRA.

What about the non-feminist majority? 

A recent poll by the Fawcett Society, for example, found that while the majority of people “believe in equality for women and men”, only 7% of people identify as feminist and 4% as anti-feminists. This means that around 93% of people in the UK are not feminist, we are non-feminist. Further more, the overwhelming majority of all non-feminists do NOT identify as being anti-feminist.

As the libertarian conservative blogger, Anthony Masters, has observed: “It is worth remembering that public debates between a self-described feminist and anti-feminist will only represent about 11% of the adult population.”

So while MRAs and others point out, quite rightly, that feminism is not the same thing as gender equality, by the same token, anti-feminism and men’s rights activism, is not the same thing as men’s issues, as I discuss in the article: Is International Men’s Day About Men’s Rights or Men’s Issues?

It’s not about men’s issues

If you want a map to navigate your way through The Red Pill or know what to expect, here’s what you need to know:

a) It’s not about men’s issues. Yes it highlights some of the key men’s issues that continue to be overlooked, but it doesn’t explore any of those issues in depth. Take suicide as just one example, the movie will give you the American statistics on male suicide but provides no understanding of why the rates are so high or how we can stop it.

b) It’s not about the MRA movement. If you want a 360 degree understanding of MRAs then this isn’t the film for you. In making this film, Cassie Jaye will help you see the lighter side of anti-feminist, men’s rights activism and the darker side of feminism. She does so fairly and without recourse to exaggeration or denial, but she also ignores the darker side of men’s rights activism and the lighter side of feminism.

I offer these observations as way-markers rather than criticism, for anyone who is interested in the whole map of gender issues and wants to know what territory The Red Pill does and doesn’t explore.

Belinda Brown: The Red Pill is a film that could finish off feminism

What is this film actually about? 

So if it isn’t about men’s issues or men’s rights activists, what or who is the film about?

The answer lies in identifying the “hero” in the piece, which is an easy job for anyone who knows anything about the theory of scriptwriting or ise familiar with Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero With A Thousand Faces”.

The “hero” of the film is Cassie Jaye. It is she who takes the archetypal “hero’s journey” that has dominated human storytelling for millennia and returns to where she started, a changed woman who knows that things will never be the same again.

“The truth is somewhere in the middle,” she says. “There are so many perspectives on gender and I believe they are all worth listening to, however, the conversation is being silenced. I don’t know where I’m headed, but I know what I left behind. I no longer call myself a feminist.”

The Red Pill is ultimately a biopic documentary that charts how a woman who identified as feminist (like 7% of the UK population) spent time with some people who identify as anti-feminists (like 4% of the UK population) and ended neither feminist nor anti-feminist (like nearly 90% of the UK population).

Building a better future 

Personally, I ended the film in the same place that I started, convinced that the most effective way to address men’s issues in the UK and beyond is to engage and mobilize more of the 90% (the non-feminists) in tackling the problems that men and boys face and understanding the different ways that the noisiest (and at times most powerful) 10% or so, can both help and hinder our progress.

It is sometimes said that minds are like parachutes, they work best when they are open.What The Red Pill reveals is that the world needs more open-minded people, like Cassie Jaye, who are prepared to think about gender issues in a way that considers both the light and dark sides of feminism and anti-feminism; rather than the censorious feminists who have tried to stop the film being shown in Australia or the anti-feminist who stood up to make this comment at the end of a screening in London:

“Feminism cannot be negotiated with, it’s a female supremacy movement driven by the hatred of men and to me the idea that you can negotiate with feminists or that feminists will cede power to men and boys…it’s as fanastic as Jews in the Second World War thinking the Nazis would help them.”

It’s an entirely false victim-narrative that infantilizes men and suggests we have no agency or personal power to address the issues that men and boys face, unless feminists “get out of our way or be utterly destroyed”.

Can feminism be a barrier to addressing men’s issues? Yes it can, as sure as gravity can be barrier to human flight! Is destroying feminism the answer to the problems men and boys face. Of course not. That’s not the way to stop suicide or improve boys’ education or end workplace deaths or tackle homelessness or improve men’s experiences (and rights) as fathers. Those kinds of complex human problems need men and women to apply the same kind of world-changing thought and action to gender issues, that the Wright brothers applied in their successful battle to overcome and work with gravity, to reach for the sky.

Belinda Brown has argued in her review of The Red Pill on the Conservative Woman blog that the answer to gender issues cannot come from feminism as long as “it is a movement that is based on the assumption that women are victims and men are bad”. What is missing from her argument, is an equal and opposite acknowledgment that the answer to gender issues cannot come from an anti-feminist movement that is based on the assumption that men are victims and feminists are bad.

So while as many as 10% of the population seem to think that the answer to all gender issues is to either dismantle patriarchy or destroy feminism, the vast majority of us, like Cassie Jaye, think “the truth is somewhere in the middle” and want to build a better future.

Glen Poole has recently published his latest book, You Can Stop Male Suicide, which is available to buy online from www.StopMaleSuicide.com.

Historic coalition of over 50 leading men’s issues advocates launches ahead of International Men’s Day

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More than 50 of the UK’s leading charities, academics, journalists and campaigners have come together to form the UK’s largest ever coalition to tackle gender-specific issues affecting men and boys.

The Men and Boys Coalition, which includes insideMAN, brings together organisations and individuals specialising in fields ranging from mental health and suicide prevention to education and parenting and will be launched in Parliament today ahead of International Men’s Day on 19th November 2016.

The Coalition aims to collectively ensure that issues affecting men and boys are fully recognised and tackled by Government, the statutory sector and society in general.

The many nationally-recognised and award-winning campaigns that have agreed to participate in the Coalition include The Campaign Against Living Miserably [CALM]; Britain’s leading charity for male victims of domestic abuse, the Mankind Initiative; and organisations working with men and boys affected by sexual violence, such as Survivors Manchester.

A world first

Although bringing diverse expertise and coming from across the political spectrum, all members are committed to developing constructive, progressive, coherent and gender-inclusive solutions to male-specific issues. The Men and Boys Coalition will bring these voices together under a single lobbying and campaigning umbrella, believed to be the first coalition of its type anywhere in the world.

Mark Brooks, Chair of domestic abuse charity the ManKind Initiative, said: “Over recent years, we have seen many examples of cooperation from a wide range of voices and charities all concerned that not enough is being done to support men and boys in tackling issues they face in their lives.

“This joint working includes challenging statutory bodies to provide services, campaigning for funding and representing the needs of men and boys in the political arena. It is welcome and long overdue that this new coalition has been formed which will represent us all and make all of us stronger – for the good of men and boys, and of course, the women and girls they share their lives with.”

Jane Powell, CEO of the Campaign Against Living Miserably, said: “As a society we need to look at the needs of men and boys across all of our services, as we have done, for girls and women, and rightly so.

‘Long overdue’

“We see boys failing significantly more than girls in education, significantly more men in prison than women, and far more men taking their lives than women. Inequality in any guise is unacceptable; this is a coalition which is long overdue.”

Duncan Craig, CEO of Survivors Manchester, said: “The Men and Boys Coalition is important to the growth of an area that has been vastly under resourced and neglected – the health and wellbeing of men and boys.

“The coalition provides us with an opportunity to address inequalities, network and join forces and build new relationships that will inevitably result in better provision across the UK for men and boys.”

‘A better society for all’

John Adams, stay-at-home-father and leading dad blogger, said: “Women face a lot of issues that need addressing and men have a role to play in making society better for women and girls. There has, however, been a definite change. Slowly but surely, society is waking up to the fact men also face significant challenges: poor mental health provision, a depressingly high suicide rate, ever poorer educational attainment. I am delighted to do my small part to help men meet these challenges and help create a better society for all.”

To mark its launch ahead of International Men’s Day, the Coalition has created a series of meme cards for sharing on social media, highlighting some of the hard-hitting facts the Coalition’s members hope to address. Each of the cards has the tagline “Not everyday Is International Men’s Day”.

The conditions of membership for the Coalition include an agreement that progress for men and boys should never come at the expense of the interests and wellbeing of women and girls. The Coalition’s gender-inclusive approach asserts that solutions to male-specific issues should complement campaigns on women’s issues, rather than oppose them. The Coalition will not accept or work with organisations or individuals who express misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism or any other form of bigotry or discrimination.

The co-founders of the Coalition are: Dan Bell, Features Editor, insideMAN magazine; Mark Brooks, equalities campaigner and chair of the ManKind Initiative; Martin Daubney, journalist and broadcaster; Ally Fogg, writer and journalist; Dr Ben Hine, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of West London and Glen Poole, UK Coordinator of International Men’s Day.

To see the full list of members and find out more about the Coalition’s aims, visit their site at: www.menandboyscoalition.org.uk 

Why I Changed My Mind About International Men’s Day

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It’s time for progressive thinkers to expand the public conversation about men and masculinity and embrace International Men’s Day (19th November) argues a former critic of the day, Joseph Gelfer.

As a researcher of men and masculinities, I have always been interested in reading about International Men’s Day (IMD), even if I have never been particularly fond of it as a concept. Each year a flurry of articles are published in which IMD spokespeople advocate for its importance, while others counter this with a standard “it’s international men’s day 365 days per year” argument.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/10456888/Do-we-really-need-an-International-Mens-Day.html

In short, critics of IMD highlight the unfair parallel drawn between it and International Women’s Day, noting how the latter is about a disempowered minority when IMD is clearly not. Critics also highlight that certain organisations that align themselves with IMD have a darker agenda than merely being “pro-men” and are, in fact, “anti-women”. Numerous feminist researchers and activists who I respect have spoken out against IMD and for a long time this was the position I too held on the matter.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-kaufman-phd/international-mens-day-wh_b_4302641.html

My assumptions about IMD began to be challenged some years ago when a member of the Australian IMD community (where I lived at the time), contacted me to try and gain my support. Of course, I chose not to give that support, but we nevertheless entered an exchange of communications over an extended period of time. In those conversations I shared my concerns about IMD and these were met with some very reasonable responses.

A blind spot in feminist thinking

Further still, my correspondent revealed to me a blind spot in feminist thinking that I had genuinely never considered: critical studies of men and masculinities continually demands the acknowledgement of differing and nuanced masculine experiences, yet does not do a great job of acknowledging such difference and nuance among those groups—such as IMD—it identifies as regressive. In short, critics tend to paint a caricature of IMD that does not bear witness to the diversity within its ranks.

http://www.independent.co.uk/student/news/director-of-helping-men-uk-glen-poole-deeply-saddened-at-university-of-york-s-decision-to-cancel-a6740356.html

While these conversations did not succeed in converting me to the IMD cause, they nevertheless required me to think more carefully as my opinions continued to evolve. I began to more actively interrogate progressive political strategies to see if their intentions were appropriately aligned with their effects.

Within progressive gender politics there is a goal of all people being treated fairly, regardless of their gender. The work of feminist organisations is crucial in this regard, rightly identifying the gendered experiences of women that stops them from enjoying the wellbeing they clearly deserve. But there is a reluctance within progressive gender politics to provide equal support to organisations that identify the gendered experiences of men.

http://www.inside-man.co.uk/2016/02/16/4655/

Beyond the false binary of men’s rights versus feminism

With some exceptions, what then happens is that those organisations that do refer to men’s experiences find it difficult to be accepted in the progressive domain, which in turn consolidates a tired and often false men’s rights versus feminism binary. Those who are naturally progressive but who also have concerns about “men’s issues” are then faced with the anxiety of being labelled as a men’s rights advocate and consequently often remain silent. This has an unfortunate two-fold effect. First, is stops progressives talking sympathetically about men’s issues. Second, it reinforces the authoritarian caricature painted of feminism by men’s rights advocates.

http://www.vocativ.com/252762/international-mens-day-mras/

Such is the anxiety around having anything to do with anyone who might be identified as a men’s rights advocate, many progressives will not engage with initiatives such as IMD even though they may share substantial common ground, such as how gendered experience impacts the wellbeing of all people.

http://www.inside-man.co.uk/2016/11/01/feminists-celebrate-international-mens-day/

 

My own shift in strategy therefore now moves towards a “big tent” approach. If progressives only work alongside people with whom they have seamless ideological ties, they may find that not only do they have increasingly few allies, but they may fatally undermine the achievability of their own goals.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/glen-poole/international-mens-day_b_6178354.html

In conclusion, there are still things I am not keen on about IMD, particularly the anti-women rhetoric of some of the individuals who align with it. However, I am more interested in the growth of conversations about men and masculinities and IMD plays an important role in this. I would rather take the good with the bad than reject IMD in totality.

Is International Men’s Day about Men’s Rights or Men’s Issues?

 

Joseph Gelfer is a researcher of men and masculinities. His most recent book is Masculinities in a Global Era (Springer Science+Business Media, 2014) and he is currently working on a new project, The Five Stages of Masculinity. For more information visit: www.masculinityresearch.com

Prime Minister and Government become first to endorse International Men’s Day

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During Parliamentary questions today on whether the Government was going to mark International Men’s Day on 19 November, it was revealed that the Prime Minster, Rt Hon Theresa May MP, supports the important issues the Day seeks to address and highlight:

“I recognise the important issues that this event seeks to highlight, including men’s health, male suicide rates and the underperformance of boys in schools, these are serious issues that must be addressed in a considered way.”

This was further supported by Government Ministers with Caroline Dinenage MP, Parliamentary under Secretary of State for Women, Equalities and Early Years, who stated:

“…as parents of sons up and down the country we will all be conscious about the issues he has mentioned and the Prime Minister has mentioned.”

“International Men’s Day in the UK does take a very gender-inclusive approach and therefore believes that issues affecting women and girls are also to be resolved”

“I am aware that there are 60 countries around the world that celebrate International Men’s Day and there are various different ways that they do that, focusing on men’s health and wellbeing, highlighting discrimination against men and any inequalities they face, improving gender relations and gender equality. This creates a safer world for everybody, Mr Speaker, and is always to be commended.”

This was the first endorsement by a Prime Minister and Government in the UK.

The International Men’s Day team in the UK, said: “This welcome Prime Ministerial and Government endorsement clearly proves there is now growing acceptance and recognition of issues of inequality that affect men and boys, and, a need to take these seriously. This is a landmark moment. It gives a clear signal to both politicians and the public sector of the need to step up to the plate and ensure that practical policies and action is taken to address them.

“This endorsement will provide comfort and extra impetus to charities, professional  and organisations already working hard to support these issues and often struggle to have them recognised.

“There are at least 25 events already marking the Day right across the UK, and there is still plenty of time to join these events or set up your own. These range from health days, education events and conferences. The full list can be found at www.ukmensday.org.uk/events”

The UK theme for the Day continues to be Making a Difference for Men and Boys.

The theme is designed to help more people consider what action we can all take to Make a Difference by addressing some of the issues that affect Men and Boys such as:

  • The high male suicide rate
  • The challenges faced by boys and men at all stages of education including attainment
  • Men’s health, shorter life expectancy and workplace deaths
  • The challenges faced by the most marginalised men and boys in society (for instance, homeless men, boys in care and the high rate of male deaths in custody)
  • Male victims of violence, including sexual violence
  • The challenges faced by men as parents, particularly new fathers and separated fathers
  • Male victims and survivors of sexual abuse, rape, sexual exploitation, domestic abuse, forced marriage, honour-based crime, stalking and slavery
  • The negative portrayal of men, boys and fathers

The key issue of focus at a national level for 2016 is “supporting boys with their academic, employment, personal, social and health education“. There will also be a continuation of the attention on male suicide. International Men’s day also coincides with International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day.