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Struggling to make a difference for male victims in Wales

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What’s it like being a man fighting for male victims of domestic violence in a world dominated by people whose primary concern is keeping the spotlight on female victims? Glen Poole of insideMAN speaks to Tony Stott of Healing Men, who has been campaigning on the issue in Wales for several years.

I’ve been watching men trying to influence public policy on gender issues for 20 years. I’ve seen fathers fighting for dads to have an equal right to be part of their children’s lives when parents separate. I’ve seen men who say their genitals were mutilated without their consent as children, fighting to protect boys from medically unnecessary circumcision. And I’ve seen men fighting for male victims of domestic violence to have equal protection and support.

The gender political war around domestic violence, in particular,  is one the most difficult gender battles to stomach as it puts anyone who attempts to advocate on behalf of male victims in direct conflict with those who work to help female victims—and nobody in their right mind would ordinarily choose to place them self in opposition to people speaking out for female victims.

Feminism has a problem with male victims

I have written elsewhere on the way the emergence of male victims and female perpetrators threatens the very existence of feminism and feminists who are the primary advocates of female victims. So it is a brave (or foolish) campaigner who attempts to tackle the status quo in a domestic violence sector that is dominated by feminists running services and programmes for female victims and male perpetrators.

One such man is Tony Stott of Healing Men who has been campaigning for male victims of domestic violence for many years, most recently in Wales, where he has been fighting the passage of a new Violence Against Women Bill—not because he supports violence against women, but because he believes it excludes male victims.

Last week Tony was at the Welsh Assembly watching the Bill being debated. He told me:

“I have been campaigning, pointlessly so far, against deeply sexist and unequal legislation being debated within the Welsh Assembly and wanted to see this at first hand in the Assembly chamber.”

Tony believes the Bill demonstrates that Wales has become a “Feminist One Party State”. He says the architects of The Bill have a gender political approach to domestic violence which can be characterised by the following passage from the book “Perceptions of Female Offenders” which describes the feminist view of the issue as:

“A result of patriarchal social systems where men are exclusively the batterers and females are exclusively the victims….This Neo-Marxian model posits the masculine (bourgeoisie) as occupying the upper rungs of privilege, authority, and power over the feminine (proletariat). Thus, domestic violence is the physical manifestation of his social dominance as it is forcibly imposed on her submissive feminine body. Conversely, female violence is initiated reactively, purely as a form of self-defence.”

Masculinity is seen as the problem 

Tony is particularly incensed by a passage in the “Task And Finish Group Report” which informed The Bill:

“Masculinity is associated with violence in most cultures and Wales is no exception; thus, all preventative work and interventions must be designed to address men’s violent behaviour, while at the same time recognizing that both men and women may be the victims of violence that is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men.”

Tony believes this viewpoint is nothing short of discrimination against men. “Would such a gross and wholly stupid statement be tolerated against black or Muslim peoples?” he asks. “No! But this statement against men and boys is supported and uncritically welcomed by the Welsh Government. “

Tony is genuinely concerned that all victims of violence get the help and support they need. He has followed and engaged with every complex stage of The Bill since its inception in 2012 and even launched a epetition that gathered support from campaigners around the world.

Radical gender warriors

He feels that the entire process has been “hijacked by the radicalised gender warriors” in Wales and transformed from a project which could recognise the complexity of intimate human relationships (and the necessity of including mutual and female abuse and violence for the sake of children) to the Violence Against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Bill.”

After spending 90 minutes listening intently to the Welsh Assembly debating the Bill last week, Tony told be he was in “despair for men in Wales and fearful for the boys and girls in Wales who will be left to learn violent and abusive behaviour at the hands of violent and abusive parents”.

“The main discussion,” he says “was around the question of how quickly the Welsh Government could get organised to teach seven year boys the “masculinity is associated with violence .. and all interventions must address men’s violent behaviour” theme.”

“Some wanted this ‘education’ to be put in the Bill”, he said, “but the Minister, rather chillingly I thought, sought to appease by stating that the charity Women’s Aid have volunteered to send in staff to teach ‘Healthy Relationships’ in schools.”

Tony is deeply frustrated at what he sees as the refusal of the Welsh Government to give consideration to the needs of male victims, despite his constant hard work to bring the issue to the table.  But he isn’t giving up and he has one message for those who share his concerns—do not be silent!

—Photo credit: Flickr/ky_olsen

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Why I won’t be saying Eve Ensler’s Man Prayer on Valentine’s Day

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Today is Valentine’s Day. Love it or hate it, it’s been around for hundreds of years, with the association with romantic love said to date back to the 14th Century days of the poet Chaucer.

More recently, the feminist campaign, V-Day has claimed February 14th as a day to focus on violence against women and girls. V-Day uses Eve Ensler’s hugely successful The Vagina Monologues stage play, to raise money for and awareness of  initiatives to end “men’s violence against women”.

Since 2012, V-Day has been superseded by One Billion Rising, which invites women all over the world to “rise up” against violence against women and girls by dancing and drumming.

A day which has long been about (predominantly heterosexual) men and women celebrating each other at our best, has become a day for women (and their male allies) to highlight men at their worst.

End violence against everyone

For the avoidance of doubt, I’m against violence by anyone against anyone and I certainly wouldn’t challenge any individual’s right to speak out against violence—particularly those who have been on the receiving end of another human’s brutality.

I do find the deliberate co-opting of the one day in the calendar when men and women have traditionally expressed their love for each other to be deeply cynical, but that’s a detail I won’t labour over here.

What concerns me more about V-Day and One Billion Rising is the oppressive gender politics that lurk in the background of the movement. From all I have seen, it seems to be another iteration of the binary belief that women HAVE problems and men ARE problems, driven by a form of feminism that Warren Farrell said: “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”.

This principle can be seen in action in Eve Ensler’s “Man Prayer” which was turned into a short film for One Billion Rising in 2013 and is doing the rounds again this year.

The prayer is described as being  “for all men” and those behind the film say: “we hope all of you will watch it and share it with every man you know”.

On V-Day’s You Tube page, the movement makes the interesting claim “violence against women hurts everyone, including men,” though they fail to mention that violence against men tends to do more damage to men. And then they “invite our brothers to take up this cause, and be free from the limiting strictures of our modern definition of masculinity”.

Modern masculinity is bad and wrong

And therein lies to key message behind Eve Ensler’s prayer—modern men and modern masculinity are bad, wrong and unhealthy. The only healthy form of masculinity is the feminist version of masculinity, which is to be more like a woman, because women, of course, have an innate moral superiority.

The thrust of Ensler’s prayer is to pair up supposedly opposite qualities and attribute the unhealthy half of each couplet to modern masculinity and describe the apparently healthy, feminine and feminist qualities as the way men should behave.

So bad men are presented as people who dominate space, are controlling know-it-alls who move abruptly and are obsessed with performance and outcomes.

In contrast, good feminist men behave more like women who, apparently, create space, are kind, listen, move slowly and value experience and touch.

Almost funny

This interpretation of what masculinity is and what masculinity should be would be laughable if it wasn’t articulating a view of men and manhood that is pervasive in the post-modern mindset.

Feminists like Ensler often complain that the “patriarchy” creates a gender hierarchy where men and masculine qualities are given more value that women and feminine qualities.

According to the American philosopher, Ken Wilber, this tendency is typical of second-wave feminism. He says:

“While it allows for inherent differences between the masculine and the feminine modes, essentially it says all of the feminine-mode differences are positive and all of the masculine-mode differences are negative. The masculine mode includes hierarchical ranking and behaviors that are authoritarian, aggressive, analytical, divisive, etc., while all the feminine-mode qualities are healing, positive, and looked upon as constructive. In this view, all of humankind’s problems are seen as a result of men’s oppression of women.”

Men are bad, women are good

Once you define masculine qualities as being inherently bad, as Ensler does, it then becomes logical to wage war on those qualities, to dismantle masculinity, to emasculate men and think you are doing men, women and the world a favour in the process.

What Ensler is essentially trying to create with her Man Prayer, is a new type of gender hierarchy where women and feminine qualities are given more value than men and masculine qualities.

“May I be a man who appreciates listening more than knowing” says Ensler’s Man Prayer.

But how about being a man (or a woman) with advanced listening skills who also knows a lot of stuff? Can’t we have both?

Best of both worlds

“May I be a man who creates space rather than dominates it” says Ensler. But why not aspire to be a man or woman with the ability to both create space and dominate that space in a way that creates something new and wonderful, depending on which quality is called for at the time.

“May I be a man who seeks kindness over control,” says Ensler. But how about helping men and women to develop both their empathy (where kindness comes from) and discipline (which control can be an unhealthy version of), knowing that both have value.

“May I cherish touch over performance and the experience over getting there,” says Ensler. But why can’t we have both? Especially on Valentine’s Day? Can’t men and women together have a wonderful experience, where they cherish each other’s touch, perform to the best of their ability and enjoy getting somewhere in the process?

The most ridiculous aspect of Ensler’s feminist view of men and boys is that she claims to be liberating men from “the limiting strictures of our modern definition of masculinity” by insisting that men adopt a whole new set of “limiting strictures” created by the post-modern view of how masculinity should be constructed.

That’s not freedom. That’s not liberation. That’s not a vision for a future where men and women are equal, autonomous and empowered to work together to create a world free from violence.

Here’s a final word from Ken Wilber:

“Feminist thought…still has a lot of cachet today. Of course, there are cases of victimhood, but the vast majority of cultural structures have been cocreated by men and women. That’s a much more adequate way of looking at it and, frankly, a much more truthful way, which also fits the evidence better and allows us to look at data more effectively.

“That’s not to stay that there aren’t cases of oppression and victimization. But in overemphasizing those and in making victimhood the essential definition of the feminine, feminism went too far.

“Unless we come up with a different view of how the relationships between the sexes historically have been cocreated by men and women and not merely imposed on women, we are basically looking at women as sheep and men as pigs.

“We need more creative, more integrative, and more accurate views of why men and women have the relationships that they do have to each other, and how they contribute in their own ways to creating societies.”

Photo: V-Day

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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The views expressed in this article are not necessarily the views of the insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to to join the conversation about men, masculinity and manhood. Our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

Feminism in crisis as male supporter expresses view of his own

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Feminism went into global meltdown today after one of its male supporters defied feminist logic and revealed he was a man with a mind of his own.

Tanveer Ahmed, a psychiatrist and comedian, is one of 2,000 male celebrities and community leaders who have been selected by the feminist White Ribbon campaign to tackle violence against women in Australia.

Now operating in 70 countries worldwide, the White Ribbon movement is committed to “the advancement of gender equality and the dismantling of patriarchy”—and they would have got away with if it wasn’t for that pesky psychiatrist!

When we said never remain silent….

Ahmed has been involved in the White Ribbon campaign since at least 2008 and appears to have been obeying the White Ribbon oath to never “remain silent about violence against women and girls” ever since.

In November 2014, he told guests at the Blacktown White Ribbon Day meeting in Sydney that it takes courage to speak out, but the more you do it, the easier it gets.

But then Ahmed got a little too courageous for feminism’s liking and dared to tell the world what he really thinks about the feminist approach to tackling violence in an article for The Australian newspaper entitled “men forgotten in violence debates”—whoops!

Did nobody tell Ahmed that when the feminists behind the White Ribbon campaign asked him to take an oath to “never remain silent about violence against women and girls” that what they actually meant was they wanted him to ALWAYS remain silent about any views he has that might contradict mainstream feminist thinking—and that rule number one is that in the name of gender equality you never, Never, NEVER ask “what about the men?”

Obviously not!

Feminism was so mightily displeased with Ahmed that it supplied spokeswoman, Clementine Ford, with a pram full of toys to chuck everywhere in one of her self-styled “man-hating screeds” for Daily Life , a news, opinion and lifestyle website for women.

Ford’s primary complaint about Ahmed was that he didn’t present himself like an “aggressively delusional…men’s rights activists” but used one of the most devious and oppressive tools of the patriarchy, “reason”—-what a sneaky, privileged bastard! If only he sounded like one of those evil anti-feminists that the charitable and peace loving White Ribbon campaign describes as “nasty woman-haters”, it would have so much easier to discredit him.

Not that this stopped feminism ripping into Ahmed, a man who having campaigned to end violence against women and girls for at least six years, dared to formulate a view of his own on how best to tackle the issue, like the entitled patriarch he obviously is!

He said, she said

Here are some of the highlights of Ahmed’s comment piece in The Australian and Ford’s reply, on behalf of feminists everywhere, from Daily Life:

Ahmed said: “Men are forgotten in the violence debate.”

Ford said: “I don’t have time for men’s woe-betide-me feelings

Ahmed said: “Women are now more likely than ever…. to commit family violence against partners, children or relatives

Ford said: “It does significant harm to have one of [White Ribbon’s] ambassadors touting a message which prioritises men’s power over women’s safety.

Ahmed said: “Discussions about family violence are stuck in the mindset of 1970s radical feminism.”

Ford said: “Radical feminists didn’t endure the wrath and measurably violent pushback of people opposed to women’s liberation so that their activism could be scoffed at by a man.”

Ahmed said: “There is too little acknowledgment of the importance of male disempowerment in debates surrounding domestic violence The focus on female disempowerment alone will not achieve an improved existence, since they are often surrounded by disempowered men.”

Ford said: “The question isn’t how we can accommodate men’s feelings of disempowerment.”

Ahmed said: “Despite the cries of domestic violence being an epidemic, we should also consider that fatherlessness could fit such a category, with 40 per cent of Australian teenagers living without their biological fathers…. we are downplaying the notion that fathers are even desirable.”

Ford said: “Not all arguments positing men’s disenfranchisement are presented in the aggressively delusional manner. Some come with a veneer of reason that belies the falsehoods presented within. These are the ones we need to be especially wary of.”

Ahmed said: “It is true one woman a week dies at the hands of a partner, current or former. As part of a broadbased strategy, it is critical that improving arrest and prosecution rates, establishing shelters and abuse hotlines, pushing for state provisions against stalking, and creating protections for immigrants all have the goal of getting victims out of abusive ­relationships.”

Ford said: “Ahmed insults the expertise of service workers by making their work invisible just so he can execute a boring and passe critique of the kind of feminism that makes him and numerous other men uncomfortable.”

Ahmed said: “The broader movement that has long fought against violence towards women remains stuck in a view of gender relations from decades past, which will limit its effectiveness in stemming the problem in an inclusive way.”

Ford said: “The ‘inclusivity’ he speaks of is already in action.”

And then to prove just how inclusive feminism is, feminists all over twitter began bombarding the @WhiteRibbonAust campaign with social media requests to remove Ahmed as one of their ambassadors.

I guess the moral of the story is this, be careful what you wish for and if you’re going to ask men to speak out on gender issues, be prepared for them to have a view of the world that’s different from yours. Radical huh?

 —Photo: White Ribbon Day

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Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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It’s thanks to women and girls I’m able to help male rape survivors

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Duncan Craig is CEO of Survivors Manchester, explains how he has been helping pushing the needs of male victims of rape and sexual abuse up the political agenda.

—This is article #84 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

In late 2013, The Ministry of Justice announced a £4 million Rape Support fund that enabled voluntary sector organisations to apply for a share of the fund to support the delivery of their services.

Great news!

Well yes, absolutely if you run an organisation supporting women and girls but not so great if you’re organisation only supports boys and men.

You see, the £4million Rape Support fund excluded organisations only supporting boys and men from applying. Not only did this prevent organisations such as Survivors Manchester, Mankind and Survivors UK from accessing much needed funds to continue to run our services, but it sent a clear message out to the public at large… “if you’re a male rape victim, we don’t recognise you”.

As the CEO of an organisation that supports male survivors of sexual abuse, rape and sexual exploitation, it was a message that was far too seriously wrong to go unchallenged. And so began our lobbying campaign. We took to social media; wrote letters to MPs, colleagues, and organisations in the field of sexual violation asking for support; and challenged the Ministry of Justice’s decision.

Seriously, what about the men and boys…..?

But in undertaking this lobbying campaign, I began to wonder… “why do I still have to make these stances? when will the discussion not have to end in ‘oh and boys and men too’”

Whilst all the lobbying activity, discussions and meetings resulted in fantastic win – a £1.3million ‘Male Rape Support fund’ that would be spread over two financial years; I soon realised that the real challenge is not about fighting for a small pot of money, but how to move the discussion on to a point where we can talk about victims of sexual violence without alienating anyone, male or female.

In looking at how to make the challenge to the Ministry of Justice, I turned to the Rape Crisis England and Wales website and began looking at what they had done over the 41 years they have been around.

How to make change happen

They have campaigned tirelessly to end the sexual violence committed against women and girls and helped thousands of service users to get the help they deserve. I’m so grateful to them for what they have done; for the sheer effort and determination they have made to ensure that the needs of women, who have experienced the abhorrent acts of violation that occur in sexual abuse and rape, are not ignored. I am grateful to them for continuing to keep the issue of sexual violation on the agenda and for always responding to the injustices in this arena.

However, I’m most grateful for showing me how to apply pressure in the right areas to make a change for those that you want to support the most – victims of sexual abuse and rape.

But don’t be confused here between specialist organisations that support a single gender or community and those that should be looking after us all and only look one way.

We don’t need to apologise for helping men and boys

Whilst Rape Crisis England and Wales focus on female victims, they acknowledge boys and men also experience rape and sexual violence and that the impacts on their lives can be similarly devastating and long-lasting, and they don’t need to apologise for their focus. Equally, organisations such as my own, Mankind or Survivors UK, shouldn’t need to apologise for focusing on boys and men.

But those charged with looking after the health, well being and safety of the general public have a duty to ensure that they don’t just look one way or the other! They have a legal and moral duty to ensure that whether a victim is male or female, boy or girl, man or woman… they should have equal access to support to help heal and recover from the trauma they experienced.

So why do we apologise? Why do those of us that provide gender specific support feel the need to apologise? and why don’t we stand together?

I think the answer is simple.

The passion and desire that we all have to help those we designed our organisations around, set against a difficult political climate and an even more difficult and tight funding environment has resulted in silo working. But the future needs to change if we are to thrive and early signs on the horizon look promising.

The newly formed male survivors’ alliance, although in its infancy, is already looking at the lessons we can learn from the women’s movement, and our early discussion with our female counterparts are exciting and give hope to a new movement, one where males and females stand proudly together with the aim of making central government and policy and decision makers listen to the voices of survivors.

So thank you to those women that paved the way. Never think that in our efforts to have the voices of male survivors heard that we are trying to silence you.

Lets stand together to ensure that all survivors get the help they deserve, regardless of gender.

—Picture credit: Sniper Girl

Duncan Craig is CEO of Survivors Manchester, you can find him on twitter @SurvivorsMcr 

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

Why I’m fighting a charity that supports female domestic violence victims

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Why would a man who wants to end violence end up fighting with a charity that helps female victims of domestic violence?

—This is article #75 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

I’ve been fighting for male victims of domestic violence in Wales to be given equal treatment by the state for around seven years. As a result, one of the organisations I cross swords with in on a regular basis is Welsh Women’s Aid (WWA), a charity which has been supporting the introduction of a new bill that seeks to help women and girls in Wales, to the exclusion of men and boys.

As part of this work I co-ordinated an online petition which recently prompted WWA to send me an official letter, outlining their response to my campaign. The first thing I noticed was that the letter heading for WWA states very clearly “ putting women and children first”.

This raised a question for me “who comes second?”. One answer is boys who, unlike girls, are excluded by WWA from refuges for victims of domestic violence from quite a younger age. WWA’s letter also carried the statement and logo “ children matter” and yet they makes no reference to keeping girls and boys safe from all forms of domestic violence, including abuse by their own mothers.

WWA frequently mentions the number of women killed by their partner each year but not the 60 to 70 children who are killed each year by their parents. Surely this shocking fact in connection with domestic violence should be clearly recognised by those proclaiming that “ children matter”!

WWA also fails to address the human suffering and distress caused by domestic violence against women ins same-sex relationships. Surely this would be a priority in “ putting women first”?

Suicide amongst men is a major issue in Wales. Recent research has shown that men kill themselves after suffering domestic violence and that this could bring the number of deaths attributable to domestic violence to something like equality between men and women.

I believe that the shaming of men is contributing to these grim statistics and the WWA approach—i.e. “men second”—can only be making matters worse. I also wonder what impact the concept of “men second” may have on young Welsh boys and how young girls may feel about what is, or is not, it is an acceptable way to relate to boys.

Research by Dr Erica Bowen at Coventry University has found that it is seen to be OK to hit boys because “he probably deserves it”.

In a recent paper called “women more aggressive to partners than men”, given to the British Psychological Society, Dr Elizabeth Bates from the University of Cumbria said her research found that:

 “ … women engaged in significantly higher levels of controlling behaviour than men …. This study found that women demonstrated a desire to control their partners and were more likely to use physical aggression than men … Thissuggests that [domestic abuse] may not be motivated by patriarchal values and needs to be studied within the context of other forms of aggression, which has potential implications for interventions …”

Patriarchy theory 

I find it somewhat troubling that the current policy of the Welsh government continues to be based on the neo-Marxist “patriarchal” theory, which is increasingly inappropriate to new legislation looking forward into the 21st century in Wales.

Solid, evidence based research and practice that protects children and subsequent generations from all sources of domestic abuse (including violent women) must be the central principle that guides government policy and new legislation in Wales moving forward into the 21st century.

In my view, the neo-Marxist “patriarchal” theory continues to dominate the Welsh Government’s thinking as it has not undertaken to treat all victims (both men and women) “equally” in accordance with the Equality Act 2010.

Dr Amanda Robinson, who is the lead author of the report which informed the drafting of the Welsh Bill defines the neo-Marxist theory of domestic abuse as follows:

“The gender paradigm of [domestic abuse] argues that domestic violence is a result of patriarchal social systems where men are exclusively the batterers and females are exclusively the victims of male dominance and privilege.”

Neo-Marxist sexism 

“This Neo-Marxian model posits the masculine (bourgeoisie) as occupying the upper rungs of privilege, authority, and power over the feminine (proletariat).

“Thus, domestic violence is the physical manifestation of his social dominance as it is forcibly imposed on her submissive feminine body. Conversely, female violence is initiated reactively, purely as a form of self-defence.”

In my view, female instigators of, and active participants in, domestic abuse in Wales must be recognised equally and correspondingly with male victims in order to formulate interventions that help break the generational cycle of learned dysfunctional and abusive behaviours that perpetuates domestic violence.

Violent women and male victims must not be ignored or marginalised in the formulation of new legislation in the 21st century in Wales because of blind, radicalised dogma and Marxist theories that date back to 50 to 150 years ago.

It is time for us to take a new approach.

—Picture credit: DFAT

Tony Stott campaigns for men in Wales as “Healing Men”.

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

Yes, we do need to speak about male violence

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Guardian columnist Ally Fogg says that if we want to make a difference for men and boys, we can’t evade the fact that most serious violence is committed by men.

—This is article #70 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

There is an exchange that plays out in the media on pretty much a daily basis. The moves have become so familiar we can see them performed almost as a ritual dance. In the aftermath of some tragic, violent incident – whether a mass shooting, a domestic homicide or a shocking sexual assault – a commentator with liberal or feminist leanings will describe the incident as an example of ‘male violence’ and, therefore, not just an isolated incident but part of a systematic pattern involving hundreds, thousands, millions of related incidents across the world each day.

There follows a storm of comments, social media updates and blogs as detractors – primarily but not exclusively male – throw up their digitised hands in horror and disgust. This is nothing to do with me! I’ve never killed anyone! Why are you blaming an entire gender for the crime of an individual?

The defensive reactions may be understandable, but are largely based on a misunderstanding. Saying that men have a problem with violence does not mean that all men are violent, any more than saying Britain has a problem with obesity means that all Britons are fat. In both examples, it means the phenomenon causes immense social harm and individual suffering, and occurs at levels far above those we should be willing to tolerate in a civilised society.

What about female perpetrators?  

Yes, women can also be violent, especially towards intimate partners and family members. However in recent years the men’s sector as a whole (and I include myself in that) has often become so fixated on demonstrating and documenting the extent of male victimisation at the hands of women that we may have lost sight of the bigger picture.

According to the UN’s estimates, there were more than 450,000 homicides globally last year. Not only were 95% of the killers male, so too were 80% of the victims. In England and Wales, 800,000 adult men were injured in a violent attack in 2013 and around three quarters of perpetrators were not their female partners, but other men. On the other side of the coin, around 37,000 men are in prison today as a consequence of their own violent behaviour. To deny or turn our eyes from the extent of men’s violence is to turn our backs on one of the most pressing and severe social and health issues facing men and boys across the world today.

Only once we acknowledge the scale of men’s violence can we begin to ask why it occurs. I suspect many people are uncomfortable with the suggestion that there is something inherently violent to masculinity. What we might instead call ‘male culture’ colours our attitudes to work and to leisure, to lifestyles and relationships, even to how we communicate and interact. That culture has too often included attitudes towards violence that are directly implicated in too much death and injury.

Are men conditioned to be violent? 

How many of us grew up believing that to be a man demanded that we be ‘tough’ and ‘hard,’ or in other words to be willing to endure and inflict violence? Such traits don’t always come easy, and too many boys still have them literally beaten into us by peers or, tragically, parents and other adults. Research has consistently shown that where formal or informal physical punishment is used, boys are beaten more regularly and more forcefully than girls.

At the same time, psychologists have long known the rough recipe for a violent adult. According to one study by Murray Straus, a child who grows up in a family where the adults are violent to each other is almost three times as likely to display violent behaviour as others. Another study found that a child subjected to physical abuse who also witnesses violent behaviour at first hand is between five and nine times as likely to become an abusive adult. It is true that not all violent adults lived through an especially violent childhood, and absolutely vital to understand that many, many people who experienced violence and abuse in childhood will never harm anyone in turn. Neither fact, however, should obscure the truth that violent adults – by which we most commonly mean violent men – are not born, they are made.

Nor does male violence exist in isolation from other male-specific issues. Only once we acknowledge and face up to the reality of male violence can we begin to unpick the complex relationship between men’s emotional isolation and unaddressed mental health needs, our tendency to self-medicate or escape into excessive alcohol and drug use and from there, the intimate link between intoxication and violent behaviour.

No I am not being anti-male 

It is not anti-man or misandrist to acknowledge that our society brutalises men and boys to a sufficient degree that some will become brutes. On the contrary, I would argue the misandrist position is to claim that men’s violence is an inescapable law of nature, some relic of evolution or neurobiology. Testosterone does not breed violence, violence breeds violence, and the evidence, I am happy to say, is all around us. Current levels of violent crime remain distressing, but are a fraction of what they were 20 years ago. The vast majority of men are not violent and the numbers who are get smaller all the time.

As mentioned above, 800,000 men were wounded in violent attacks last year, but the same statistic in 1994/5 was 2.4 million. Domestic violence, as estimated by the Crime Survey of England and Wales, has dropped 78% over the same time frame. The same story is playing out across the developed world. Nor is it just the effect of increased prison populations keeping violent offenders out of harm’s way. The number of children and young people entering the criminal justice system (ie being caught for the first time) is at its lowest since records began. Meanwhile the fastest growing section of the prison population over the past few years has been the over 65s.

The explanations for this phenomenal social change are hotly debated by criminologists but one thing is for sure, male biology has not evolved in a couple of decades. It is likely there are a variety of social and even environmental factors involved, I would suggest that it is no coincidence that the least violent generation of young men in living memory is the first to have been raised in the era of the rights of the child, in schools and homes that have increasingly eschewed violent punishments, with anti-bullying policies and where the social acceptability of violence of all sorts has been challenged and rejected as never before.

There is little doubt that men today are less violent, less aggressive, less militaristic than we have been at any time in living memory but there is still a long way to go. The journey will be driven not just by policy and politics but by the desire of all women, children and men to live in a safer, more peaceful world and the principal beneficiaries will be men ourselves.

—Picture credit: striatic

Ally Fogg is one of the UK’s leading media commentators on men’s issues. You can follow his writing on gender at freethought blogs and find him writing in various publications especially The Guardian. He’s also a regular tweeter @AllyFogg

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

Why is there such resistence to recognising male victims of domestic violence?

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Regular insidMAN reader, Nigel Johnson, is a commissioning manager at an NHS Clinical Commissioning Group. Here he explores why the UK’s approach to tackling domestic violence has consistently over-looked male victims and female perpetrators.

—This is article #56 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

Regular readers of insideMAN may well be aware of the recent debate in Wales around a consultation on a Violence Against Women Bill.

Given the very strong socialisation to be protective to women and girls, it can look churlish not to say “unmanly” to object to such a thing. Surely societies in the west have for centuries placed women in the role of “damsel” in need of care and protection and simply modernising this very traditional paradigm is all to the good? Protecting women and girls from harm, nothing could be more worthy.

So why has there been such a debate and why does it get so heated in some circles?

As is so often the case the devil is in the detail. The centuries-old tradition of protections and support for women and girls is still alive and well. Few in the debate seriously challenge the view that women and girls need to be protected from harms, though perhaps pointing out that boys and even men should be equally supported.

At the core of the debate is the idea that these harms are uniquely “gendered”. The notion that the collection of abusive behaviours covered by the bill are always committed by males and always against females. And here is the problem. Put simply, this view is both wrong in terms of actual fact and elsewhere has contributed to both misunderstanding of the causations and direct and indirect discrimination against boys and men,  and women and girls who are on the “wrong” side (who need help with their abusive behaviour or find they are abused by a female).

Surprises and anomalies

The early years of looking at domestic abuse in the UK was driven by interest in “Dating Violence” in the United States. In the United States there had been a series if large scale quantative research reports indicating that violence — which was generally taken to include “emotional violence” and other non physical abuse — was relatively common in adolescent relationships. As is often the case this concern was picked up in the UK and there were a small number of relatively large scale pieces of research done. At the same time Sugar magazine and some other publications for girls and young women did online surveys of their readership.

In terms of covering the experience of both boys and girls navigating the transition to adulthood there was research done for NHS Scotland, Southwark, NSPCC and the Northern Ireland Government. Though not on the scale of the research done in the US, these were on relatively large populations with attempts to make sure these were “typical” of the age cohorts. Simply because of the difficulty in gaining funding most such research tends to be focussed on specific smaller populations (children in care, care leavers, victims in court cases etc.) so these reports remain the rare examples of a more typical population.

The results reported in the data tended to reflect some interesting trends common in US research. In particular in each the researchers reported a number of “surprises” or “anomalies” in the results. These were noteworthy as they were challenging to the hypotheses of the authors which reflected the gendered understanding of abuse in relationships.

‘Boys less likely to see themselves as victims’

The studies found a much higher incidence of both violence and other abusive behaviours towards males than expected. In fact in some cases higher than experienced by the females. Indeed where girls were asked about their behaviours towards their partners, they were indicating even higher incidences. This particularly was so in “emotional violence” but included such things as hitting or throwing things.

Even more surprising is that more boys than girls reported being forced or coerced into sex. A result startling to the authors and not at all what could be expected.

The clues to this surprising set of findings perhaps can be found in the attitudes expressed by the young people. In a sense these perhaps reflect a combination of widespread public information programmes and some traditional social norms. Perhaps the higher reporting of their own abuse of their partners reflected that girls were much more likely to view behaviours as abusive. They were also much more likely to regard some behaviour as upsetting and having a long term effect. The boys reported being very much more tolerant of violence of all forms against themselves and fatalistic about this being what they had to put up with.

Absence of political will?

So how does this link to the debate in Wales. Well it has to do with what happened following these reports. The first thing is that the recommendations from the above mentioned reports were focussed on the findings for girls. At least in part because the commissions came from programmes focussed on abuse against women and girls. So anyone reading the Exec. Summaries and Recommendations will have little clue to the intriguing and unexpected findings with regard to boys.

The second is that because the anomalous findings are about boys, the suggestions that there should be further researched have gone un-headed. The cynical might think it’s because they represent a serious challenge to the authors’ lead hypothesis. But it is true that research funding in this area is driven by VAWG strategies.

So for instance the Bristol University unit followed up their research with a further piece looking at children in the care system again with a focus on vulnerable girls. As there is no funding to explore the intellectually interesting findings about boys’ victimisation then it takes considerable determination to research it.

Without any political will to further investigate typical populations nor to fund outside the gendered paradigm not only does the opportunity for paradigm shifting research get lost but far more importantly the widespread abuse of boys in relationships remains concealed from policy making on education, awareness, treatment and prosecution.

Nina Schutt, from her work for Safer Southwark Partnership, states: “The survey carried out among young people in Southwark overall identify that young people both experience and perpetrated various forms of adolescent domestic violence in their dating relationships. The survey also showed that this is something that is being experienced by both young men and women, and that in some cases young men report experiences higher levels than young women. The young men are also more likely than young women to accept aggressive behaviour in a relationship, as well as justify such behaviour with actions made by their partner, such a cheating on them”

The process of ignoring boys is facilitated by the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy which is policy in England and the adoption by the Scottish Government of a “gendered” definition of Domestic Abuse. In this way these create indirect discrimination that “silences” the experiences of men and boys. Of course this reflects a much bigger silence about Domestic Abuse. One can see similar processes in forced marriage, elder abuse and abuse of disabled people as the actual variety and complexity gets more and more reduced to issues of gender and so a very specific paradigm reinforced by funding being attached to this paradigm.

—Picture credit: Flickr/David Goehring 

SOURCES:

  • Partner exploitation and violence in teenage intimate relationships, Christine Barter, Melanie McCarry, David Berridge and Kathy Evans October 2009 www.nspcc.org.uk
  • Young People’s Attitudes to Gendered Violence. By Michelle Burman and Fred Cartmel University of Glasgow Published by NHS Scotland 2005
  • Domestic Violence in Adolescent Relationships. By Nina Shutt. Published by Safer Southwark Partnership 2006
  • Attitudes of Young People towards Domestic Violence, Judith Bell, Community Information Branch, Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (Northern Ireland) 2008

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

Welsh gender politics putting male and female victims at risk says men’s charity

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The Welsh government is putting male and female victims of domestic violence at risk by failing to manage a gender political row that has broken out in the principality over proposed legislation designed to tackle violence in Wales, campaigners have claimed.

Legislators in Wales initially planned to introduce a Violence Against Women (Wales) Bill to tackle domestic violence and other forms of abuse against women and girls. Advocates for male victims claimed the legislation excluded men and boys and the Welsh government responded to these concerns by changing the title to the Gender Based Violence, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Bill.

The move has angered advocates on both sides of the gender political debate with Welsh Women’s Aid, which plays a key role in the Wales Violence Against Women Action Group, leading the call for the Bill to revert to its original name, the Violence Against Women (Wales) Bill.

According to Paul Apreda, National Manager of FNF Both Parents Matter Cymru (a charity with links to Families Need Fathers  in England), the name of the bill is somewhat irrelevant as The Welsh Government’s plans are clearly focussed towards a Violence against Women agenda, but run the risk of failure because of an ill-conceived attempt to make them appear gender inclusive.

Women’s groups downplay problems facing men

According to a press release issued by Apreda last week,  pressure to recognise male victims within existing women’s services has resulted in a zero-sum game of men’s groups calling for equality of approach which have been countered by women’s groups downplaying the extent of the problem facing men.

Apreda took the unexpected move of backing Women’s Aid’s request for the Bill to focus on women and girls and called for the Welsh government to develop an additional strategy for helping men and boys.

“Having read through the consultation responses received from a variety of Women’s support groups we understand their concerns about commissioners ‘coercing’ women-only DV services to open their doors to men,” said Apreda. “We share their worry about the dilution of the focus on protecting women and girls – and have come to the conclusion that the Welsh Government has completely miscalculated with this proposal.”

‘We believe that if the Welsh Government fails to put forward a credible, realistic, appropriately funded and timely response for male victims they will be in breach of UK legislation on Gender Equality,” said Apreda. “We stand ready to work with Welsh Government on this separate agenda and we hope we can count on the support of Welsh Women’s Aid to return the support we’re giving them now”.

Lies, damn lies and statistics

However, any hopes that Women’s Aid would support the development of a separate strategy to help male victims were deflated when it was revealed that the charity had made a new submission to the consultation on the bill that stated:

“WWA believes that the term ‘violence against women’ does not exclude men and boys as it refers to a crime type rather than a particular class of victim. As women and girls are the overwhelming majority of victims of these types of violence and abuse and 95% of perpetrators have been found to be men, the benefit of retaining the term within the Bill far outweighs any initial confusion that may be cause in regards to coverage.”

This statistic was angrily challenged by the campaigner Mike Buchanan of Justice for Men and Boys who said in an open letter that this “lie” was a misrepresentation of data contained in a 2008 report by the Crown Prosecution Service. According to Buchanan:

“That report does not state that ‘95% of perpetrators have been found to be men. It states that 95% of those charged (over April – September 2006) were men – a very different matter. There are a number of reasons for this high proportion. Over many years British Crime Surveys have consistently reported that male victims are far more reluctant than women to report their abusers to the police and others. The justice system is institutionally biased against men, and treats women far more leniently.”

We must keep trying to find a solution

While not everyone on the men’s side of this gender political debate agrees with Paul Apreda’s approach, he does appear to have the good will and support of many advocates for male victims. Tony Stott of Healing Men who has campaigned tirelessly for the legislation in Wales to be gender inclusive told insideMAN:

“All those involved in domestic abuse should be treated equally and as individuals whether they are instigators or victims or both.  Support, resources and justice should be made equally available to all regardless of gender.  That is not to say that men and women should be treated the same – clearly men and women are of equal importance but each may well have different needs.

“Unfortunately, “different” has all too often meant denying the importance of men’s experiences of domestic abuse and the approach taken by FNF Both Parents Matter Cymru will help bring the inequalities in importance that men face into sharp focus.  This is a hugely difficult struggle but I feel it is so important that we keep trying to face and resolve this discrimination and inequality.  I hope this approach works!”

The challenge for the Welsh Government is to navigate the turbulent world of gender politics and come up with an approach to tackling violence in Wales that doesn’t favour either side of the debate and is equally capable of helping all victims irrespective of  gender.

—Photo credit: Flickr/Peter Harrison 

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Gaza: why does it concern us more when women and children die?

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When 80% of people killed in the Gaza airstrikes are male, why is no-one talking about gender asks Glen Poole?

A total of 172 men, children and women were killed in Gaza over a seven-day period by Israeli airstrikes last week and the death toll continues to rise. It’s a shocking figure and the scenes of death and destruction that have been broadcast around the world will be a concern to anyone with an empathetic heart.

But the question for those concerned about the wellbeing of men and boys to ask is this –why do we care more when women die? More than we care about the children and more than we care about the men? Women account for just one in eight of the deaths (each one of them tragic), but they are in the minority when compared to the men and the children.

According to the German press agency DPA:

  • 119 of those killed are men (69% of the death toll)
  • 31 are children (18%)
  • 22 are women (13%)

Women and children first 

When you look at the number of men, children and women killed in Gaza it is clear that women are the smallest group. And yet the media make women the number one victim group in its reports from Gaza. Here’s Russia Today, for example, with an article headlined “30 percent of Israeli airstrikes victims in Gaza are women and children“:

“Of the 172 Palestinians killed around 30 percent are women and children. The dead include 29 women, of whom seven are under the age of 18. They also include 24 men under 18. About half are small boys aged 10 or under, the youngest an 18-month-old baby.”

Can you see who’s missing after first women, second girls and third boys (referred to here as men under 18)… that’s right it’s adult men. Here comes their mention:

“It is not immediately possible to independently verify how many of the 119 men killed are civilians.”

Presumably this is mentioned because the death of a civilian is somehow more tragic than the death of a male soldier? We live in an era where nation states still rely on men to put their lives at risk in order to protect national security and yet those men’s lives are deemed to have a different value to the lives of the female and male civilians who are killed in conflict.

Men’s injuries ignored by media 

Meanwhile, The Independent newspaper played a similar trick with reports that 1361 Palestinians were injured in the strikes, 53% of whom were men; 29% children and 18% women. The newspaper chose not to mention the 700 plus men who were injured,  focussing instead on the fact that “out of wounded Palestinians, almost 390 were children and 250 were women”.

The Independent, at least, put children first, but was blind to the fact that the majority of  those injured are men — more than women and children combined — with men three times more likely to suffer injury than women.

If all this wasn’t bad enough, Baroness Tonge, an independent Liberal Democrat in the House of Lords, managed to overlook the fact that seven out of 10 victims were men and 80% were male as she declared in parliament that nearly half of those killed were women and children — a statement which stretched the definition of “nearly half” beyond statistical credibility.

These figures are not extraordinary. The World Health Organisation estimates that there are around half a million violent deaths in the world every year and more than eight out of 10 victims are men and boys. The horrific killings in Gaza are consistent with this trend, with 80% of the victims being male an 20% being girls.

The invisibility of the disposable male

When it comes to gender equality, both the the socially conservative and the progressive liberal mindset works on the principle of women and children first. According to this logic, if the only people killed were male then we would have less cause to be concerned, because the male of the species is a disposable resource not worthy of note as a victim of gendered violence.

This has certainly been the case in other conflicts. There was no mention of the gender of the victims when the BBC and others reported that extensive photographic evidence revealed 11,000 “detainees” had been tortured and executed by Syrian forces.

According to one blogger: “The vast majority of the images were of young men most likely between the ages of twenty and forty. There were no children. Within the images seen, there was only one female body.”

There was no outcry about the gender of the victims when ISIS slaughtered 190 male prisoners in Northern Iraq, or when the Iraqi forces murdered 250 sunni men and boys in suspected revenge attacks. 

When the kidnapping of 200 Nigerian girls by Boko Haram caused international outcry earlier this year, the few lone voices that pointed out that Boko Haram had been slaughtering boys for months were drowned out by a noisy global conscience that deems the mass kidnapping of girls to be more worthy of concern than the mass killing of boys.

And when the Syrian government was attacking the city of Homs, the United Nations was successful in negotiating the release of women and children, but the men were left behind. This is the same UN that has an international strategy to End Violence Against Women and Girls by doesn’t deem men and boys—who account for more than 80% of victims of violent death—worthy of such strategic concern.

When it comes to violent death it seems, we all, men and women, remain collectively more tolerant of the harm that happens to men and boys—and that includes the men and boys who are the majority of people currently dying and being injured in the Israeli strikes on Gaza.

—Photograph: flickr/msdonalee

Written by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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