White Ribbon Ambassador view - Ending the ‘Virus’ of male violence against women
TW: This article contains potentially distressing material.
By Steve Garrett:
It’s hard to find any silver lining in the Covid-19 pandemic which is affecting so many people in the UK and the rest of the world, but one glimmer might be that it’s shaking up our ’normal’ view of the world; encouraging us to reflect on many things that we’d prefer not to think about and bringing home the reality that we live in a very fragile and interdependent world.
I hope the current ‘strangeness’ will encourage more men to open their eyes to other ‘disasters’ in the world that most of us have been able to avoid or have preferred not to think about - one of the biggest and most pervasive of which, in my view, is the ongoing but largely hidden epidemic of male gender violence.
To put it in perspective: as of yesterday, the Corona virus had killed 103 people in the UK, and there had been 2,626 confirmed cases. Not good. And it will get worse. Maybe much worse. And then it will get better. But according to the Office of National Statistics about 7.9% of women suffered domestic abuse in England and Wales during 2018. This equates to about 1,300,000 women last year, 173 people were killed in domestic violence-related homicides - an increase of 32 deaths on 2017 Around one third of women worldwide have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or sexual violence by a non-partner at some point in their lives.
We pride ourselves in being a relatively civilized country where human rights are respected and everyone should be entitled a life that’s free from immediate danger. Yet by and large we turn a blind eye to the horrendous scale and tragic cost of the violence virus that seems to have infected too many men, and although the majority men are not abusive or violent, the statistics of the continuing levels of violence and abuse suffered by women here show up the scale of the problem.
When you look at the huge costs in terms of the women whose lives are damaged, of the men who are incarcerated, and the unnecessary burden on the NHS, the police, and social Services to name but a few, it’s impossible to understand why more resources are not invested into understanding and reducing this scourge.
We know now it’s not just shortage of money because we can see how much has suddenly been made available in the fight against Covid-19. So it must be because women’s safety, and men’s mental health, are not seen as a priority. The approach by government seems to be that if they ignore the problem it will go away.
Maybe a partial explanation is the fact that the majority of our leaders and decision makers are men, and if they are anything like I was until I was forced to learn more about the problem –through the experience of someone close to me – they find the whole issue shameful and painful to think about and prefer, like I did for so long, to look the other way.
But I see now that this is a failure of courage and of responsibility, and in the post #MeToo age there is even less reason or excuse for not facing the full scale of the problem and committing the resources necessary to finally doing something to change it – to creating a world where all women and girls, as well as men and boys, can feel safe and supported in all aspects of their lives.
My take on ending male gender violence is that, along with measures such as penalties for perpetrators and the provision of safe refuges for women and children who need them, it needs two important elements:
More non-violent men being aware of the scale of this ‘violence virus’ so they can do what they can to end it, e.g. by joining White Ribbon and similar campaigns, and making the promise not to tolerate, excuse or ignore violence against women wherever they encounter it.
More support being available for men who may themselves be perpetrators, and are caught in a cycle of violent behaviour that they don’t know how to change, by supporting training programmes such as the Alternatives to Violence Project.
Male violence remains the number one threat to women’s health worldwide; a threat that with the right resources is completely preventable. Just like with Covid-19, there needs to be urgent and adequate investment in research needed to better understand the roots and causes of the horrifically prevalent ‘infection’ so that an antidote can be found which will dissuade and discourage any men who may be tempted to harm a woman, and provide support to help them find a constructive and less damaging way of handling whatever feelings they have that cause them to act out that way.
Right now, we are demonstrating that we are determined not to allow a virus to cause large scale harm. How can we justify not investing what’s needed into ending the much more damaging effects of male gender violence as well?
Steve Garrett is a Cardiff-based social entrepreneur, writer, poet and musician (aka ‘Stainless Steve’) who has a long-standing interest in men’s issues. He runs a men’s group in Cardiff; and, as well as being a White Ribbon Ambassador, is involved with the Good Lad Initiative.