It’s time men take on the responsibility for ending male violence
Warning: This article contains potentially distressing material.
Stephen Burrell is an Assistant Professor (Research) in the Department of Sociology at Durham University, where he is based in the Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse (CRiVA). He completed a PhD on engaging men and boys in the prevention of men’s violence against women in England earlier this year. He is now investigating the role that businesses and workplaces can play in contributing to violence prevention through an Economic and Social Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship. You can read more about his work here: https://www.dur.ac.uk/sociology/staff/profile/?id=13303 In this blog, Stephen offers some personal reflections on his research.
Once you have been given an awareness of the gendered nature of violence in society – in the sense that the vast majority of it is enacted by men – it is something which is difficult to unsee. It starts to become clear that different cases and different forms of violence are actually frequently interconnected, even if they may take place in very different contexts. Newspaper headline after headline starts to tell a specific story, and it is not one of ‘isolated incidents’. They tell a story of attempts to assert, or reclaim, masculine power and control – be that against women, other men, children, animals, the environment…even against ourselves, in terms of the range of self-destructive behaviours that our inability to meet unattainable standards of masculinity can feed into.
One thing it is hard not feel when seeing the sheer pervasiveness of men’s violence in society and the harms that it causes is anger. It is often said that one of the few emotions society permits men to express is anger. Then why aren’t we getting angry about all the things that are being said and done in our names as men? Or about the victim-blaming excuses we make for men’s violence that hold men to such a low bar of behaviour, as if we are somehow inevitably misogynistic and abusive?
For men, it is very easy for us to think that crimes such as rape and domestic violence have nothing to do with us if we are not perpetrating them ourselves. But they and other forms of violence against women are such everyday occurrences that we will all inevitably know men who have perpetrated them. We have all probably at some point or another expressed or held the kinds of sexist and misogynistic ideas that enable violence, harassment and abuse towards women. We all contribute, often unwittingly, to reproducing the kinds of norms and expectations about gender that underpin that violence. And gender inequalities can impact upon all of our relationships, even if they are not abusive. All of us benefit as men from the ways in which violence helps to sustain male dominance in society as well as in the interpersonal contexts in which it is enacted (though some men benefit more than others). These patriarchal logics are so deeply embedded in both our psyches and our social institutions that it is not always easy to detect when they are at work.
This means that all men are implicated in the problem. And if we are going to be able to prevent violence against women, and all forms of men’s violence, we all have a responsibility to play a part in that. I see this as a positive thing – it means we all have the potential to contribute towards creating a more equal and peaceful society. Though again, it is important to recognise that some men have more power to do this than others – for example, we can’t place the burden solely on young people to make change. So we men need to start coming together much more in recognition of this shared responsibility that we have – and build a social movement which supports feminist efforts to end violence against women. Organisations such as White Ribbon provide a brilliant springboard for doing this, and the White Ribbon promise never to commit, excuse or stay silent about men’s violence against women is something which many more men need to take to heart and put into practice every single day of our lives.
For me this movement has to be a political one. We have known for a long time that at the roots of men’s violence against women lies patriarchy – so preventing violence means changing society. As many feminists have long pointed out, this is also something which is profoundly personal for all of us – so creating political change also means continuously working on the gender inequalities in own lives, attitudes, behaviours and relationships with others. This can be difficult and uncomfortable, not least because the patriarchal status quo is so often seen as natural and inevitable that it becomes invisible. However, doing so can also be incredibly liberating – I know from personal experience that feminism offers men the tools to free ourselves from the bounds of masculinity, and become closer to our true selves and our own humanity.
For men who are willing to play a part in ending violence against women then – which should be all of us, if we want the world around us to be a fair and just one – this both means resisting dominant norms of masculinity in our own everyday lives, and collectively challenging the structures of patriarchy in society. This could not be more urgent – every day we waste with defensive responses such as ‘not all men’, more harm is being wrought by men’s violence. This is painfully illustrated by the general election in the UK currently, in which numerous politicians have serious questions to answer about their attitudes and behaviours towards women, whilst cuts to domestic and sexual violence services go largely undiscussed. Things do not have to be this way – and we men have the potential to play a massive role in preventing violence. But only if we get up and start putting pro-feminist change into practice personally and politically.
White Ribbon Ambassadors are men who volunteer to act as role models, engaging with other men and boys to call out abusive and sexist behaviour among their peers and promote a culture of equality and respect. You can sign up here.