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Men Walking Against Male Violence
Re: Men Walking Against Male Violence: I am writing to give you my reaction to your proposal for 'Men Walking Against Male Violence'. I have some serious difficulties with your proposal, and I wanted to tell you what they are. I hope that you will consider my comments in the light in which they are offered: as a sincere attempt to find the best ways of addressing the issue of violence against women, as well as the broader issue of violence generally. I am not criticizing for the sake of being critical, but for the sake of working toward a better understanding of violence and how to oppose it. Some of my concerns are stated in this letter. In addition, I also enclose an article I wrote recently: Dances With Guilt: Looking at men looking at violence. In the article, I go into a number of important points which are not dealt with in this letter. So please consider the letter and the article together as one item. I hate violence and I have for as long as I can remember. When I was 13, I ceased being a Christian because I came to the conclusion that the existence of widespread violence in the world meant that either God did not exist, or if he did exist he was evil. Today, I still feel the same physical revulsion toward violence that I did then. The worry that violence will befall my partner, my mother, or my female friends is never far from my mind. But I am also a long-time political activist who believes strongly that all issues have to be analyzed critically, rationally, and honestly. I believe that nothing is more important in working for social change than critical thought, and that nothing is more dangerous than succumbing to myths and ideological thinking. I believe that the 'Men Walking Against Male Violence' proposal fails this test. I do think that the basic idea - men walking to raise consciousness about violence against women - could be a good one if it were well thought out. But the message these walks are intended to convey is not a message I would want to support or be associated with. My objections begin with the name of the project: 'Men Walking Against Male Violence'. I find the deliberate and demagogic sexism of the term 'male violence' offensive. It smears all men with the crimes committed by a minority of men. (Would you use the term 'Black violence' because a minority of Blacks commit violent crimes?) Much more appropriate would have been a positive name which dispensed with gratuitous self-righteousness, something like 'Men Walking Against Violence' or `Men Walking Against Violence Against Women'. The entire project proposal is couched in the same simplistic ideological terms. Though great concern and commitment are apparent, the proposal contains no serious analysis of the causes of violence or of ways of addressing those causes. What it does contain is a great deal of questionable rhetoric. We are told that 'male-controlled culture' 'truly loves and worships violence and terror', that the male 'obsession is to dominate, to control, and to subjugate', that all men are 'complicit' in, and 'criminally silent' about, violence against women and children, which is variously portrayed as 'our violence' 'our terrorism', and 'these crimes we commit'. The clear message of this proposal is that the blame for violence falls not on those who actually commit violent acts, but simply on men as a sex: all men. This is not analysis, but simple-minded theology, the theology of original sin: everyone born with a penis is complicit, from birth, in every evil act committed by every other person with a penis, and every evil in the world is caused by people with penises. The idea that every member of a group is to be held responsible for the actions of every other member of the group, that every member of the group is automatically guilty regardless of what he has actually done, is the hallmark of racism and national chauvinism. It is discouraging to find someone who would abhor this line of thinking in every other context spreading it in this context. I think this view of violence is factually and analytically dishonest and politically reactionary. It fails to acknowledge that many men are not violent, and it fails to understand that women too can sometimes become violent. Anyone who fails to take these basic realities into account it cannot contribute much to our understanding of violence. The central problem with your message is that it relates violence to one factor and one factor only: maleness. This simplistic point of view actually serves to discourage a serious examination of the conditions that lead people to become violent. The implicit message is that we already have the key to understanding and eradicating violence: the problem is maleness, because men have an 'obsession ... to dominate, to control, and to subjugate' and because men 'truly love and worship violence and terror'. This reductionist view of violence is as demonstrably wrong, and as reactionary, as the right-wing ideologies which seek to link crime to skin colour. If violence is related to maleness and nothing else (and certainly no other factor is mentioned in the proposal) then how is it possible to explain that so many men are not violent and that some women are? In this context, it is relevant to mention the preconceived ideological filter which apparently determined the choice of statistics in the proposal. How honest is it to prominently feature, on the front page of the proposal, a set of statistics which supposedly show how violence affects children, and not mention the fact that two-thirds of all child batterers are women? If you were truly serious about wanting to break the cycle of violence, which most often starts with childhood experiences, then you would want to get people thinking about how to stop all violence against children, not only the one-third of it committed by men. A strategy for eradicating the evil of violence has to focus on the conditions which breed violence in our society, the conditions which cause some men and even some women to become violent. By failing to address these conditions, while simultaneously spreading indiscriminate anti-male rhetoric, this project, if it goes ahead, may even do more harm than good. As a socialist activist with a commitment to radical democratic alternatives, I also question the political value of a project which seems more interested in offering a small exclusive group the opportunity to bear moral witness than it seems interested in promoting democratic activism and organizing. Certainly the organization of this project is utterly undemocratic. All the decisions about how the walks will work, who will be allowed to participate, what rules they will have to follow, what activities they will carry out, how fundraising will be done, what routes they will take, have all been made in advance. In addition, there is a disturbingly hierarchical, holier-than-thou tone to this project. I find the idea of having a panel of women (chosen by whom?) interview potential male participants to determine their fitness to take part utterly bizarre. Are we talking about admission to a religious sect here, or political action? In what other realm of social justice have individuals ever been told that a desire to oppose an injustice isn't good enough: they have to be approved by a committee of self-appointed experts before they are allowed to speak out against injustice? What will you propose next? Pre-screening whites who want to speak out against racism? Making anti-war soldiers write an exam before they can join a peace march? Finally, I wonder about the psychology of these walks. Is this really about taking effective action against violence, or is it about meeting the emotional need of the participants to feel they are doing something? Is this going to boil down to a small group of men hoping, perhaps sub-consciously, to relieve their guilt and gain women's approval by going around the province spreading the dogma that men are criminals? What is the likelihood that this approach will succeed in its professed goal of challenging men in society at large to do something about violence? Sincerely, |
