The Red Knob

I recently went to a conference on domestic violence. The presentations were top quality – I learnt a great deal and have much to take back into my own work now. The venue was great, food was delicious and it was very well attended.

Of the 170 listed delegates, 26 were men and at least 9 of them, from their job titles, worked in the criminal justice system. The only man to take the stage was an actor playing a perpetrator of DV.  We were reminded of the well-known statistics that 2 women die every week at the hands of partners or ex-partners, that 1 in 4 women will experience DV in their lifetimes. That made the odds pretty good that a fair proportion of the predominantly female audience will have been ‘victims’ at some point already – either directly or as child witnesses when they were growing up.

There was a drama piece in the afternoon that portrayed the gradual increase of severity of domestic abuse from subtle put-downs right through to rape, all with a puppet child watching in silence. Very powerful stuff.

About half way through the scene, there was a cut-back in time to the man in the piece being bullied at school, beaten up, humiliated, not picked for teams, possessions stolen, curled up on the floor being made to say he was a stupid baby who wets his pants. About as far away as you can get from the idea of what a man should be.

I am not suggesting, in any way, that that could possibly excuse what he then did.  However, it occurred to me that there is much truth in the old adage that we criticise in others the very things we don’t like about ourselves. It occurred to me that this is not actually about ‘gender’ violence – it is ‘the-idea-of-gender’ violence. Let me explain – in the morning we heard several speakers talking about recent research into violence in teenage relationships. In relationships where it occurred, there was a correspondingly much higher acceptance of old school gender role stereotyping – how boys and men should be, how girls and women should be. Surely this is a pattern we are foolish to ignore.

Incidentally, three of the women speakers managed to slip in their own self-denigration into their presentations – one said – ‘the ladies in the audience will understand that I have achieved my first challenge of the day – getting to the podium without falling over’ – another was introduced with a fantastic resume of all her fabulous research and publications. Her first line to us was,’ Gosh!  That makes me sound terribly important – I’m really not’ and the third equated the anger and frustration that some young people feel as ‘my worst day of PMT’. How powerful are our notions of ‘how women should be’ that expert speakers on DV can exhibit traits, in their very presentations, that would indicate vulnerability to abuse themselves. To apologise for themselves, to minimise their achievements, to assume they will make a mistake, to equate any emotional disturbance to ‘hormonal issues’. I found myself dwelling on that for much of the rest of the day.

Lat week on the sexual health training I run, my colleagues did an exercise with a group of adults who all work with children and young people. Of 12 delegates, 2 were men.  My usual proportion is about 80:20. They were doing a piece of work on gender sensitive approaches to the work we do and were asked to respond to a series of statements by just writing comments on headed flip-chart sheets. (Usual training fare, really) The statements included, ‘the best / worst thing about being a boy is…’,’the  best / worst thing about being a girl is….’. I would have struggled to facilitate that session myself, I think, as the clichés came thick and fast. It seems that the best things about being a ‘boy’ are the absence of the perceived bad things about being a woman – you know, having to give birth, have periods, shave your legs, having to shop for shoes and hand-bags. I’ve done this exercise myself many times and it never ceases to amaze me how I only have to scratch the surface to release a tirade of bile from women and leave any men in the room struggling to say something that might be acceptable. Try it yourself with a group of colleagues and see what happens if you don’t believe me.

Going back to our drama piece at the conference…it occurred to me that this man was full of self-loathing and hatred. He instructed his son to ‘never let anyone see that you’re weak’. He created situations which would make his wife feel and behave like he’d felt and then he could rage at her and abuse her for her stupidity, infidelity, weakness etc etc. At the end of the piece, the audience first asked the female actor if she was OK. As an afterthought or out of politeness, it seemed, they then asked the male actor. During the piece there were times when he would come to the audience and ask for a response to him, in role. Almost to a person, they were angry, tried reasoning, told him to think about how his wife was feeling, mocked him, made it very clear that he was a very unlike-able person. He already knew that. I kept quiet, until he was finding excuses for having ‘been a bit rough’ with her in bed the previous night. ‘Well she gets me all hot and horny and then goes cold on me– what am I supposed to do?’ I suggested he could have a wank  - which raised a laugh, predictably.

I was left at the end of today feeling like the world of professional work around DV is still rooted in the over-simple premise that women are victims and men are bastards. A basic dichotomy. Although we also know that men can be ‘victims’ and women perpetrators, it is relatively ‘small fry’ and the perception of a women’s ability to harm a man is that it just isn’t in the same league. And ‘all men are bastards’ – in relation to young people‘s relationships there seems to be more room for accepting a need to explore where those poor gender perceptions come from and help young people work them through so future relationships can be healthier. But in adult relationships it seems to be about safety of women and children, criminal justice, injunctions and refuges. Where is the line? When do we stop acknowledging that the perpetrators may have been damaged people too? When do we stop having an empathic response to them? Because as hard as it is, as nauseating and horrifying as we might find the violence inflicted by men against women, we will never eradicate it if we stay in ‘gender-wars’ mode. This is about an IDEA of women and an IDEA of men that must be broken down and to which we are ALL victim, men as well as women.

I listen to the radio on my way to work. This morning I listened to Tom Jones singing ‘Delilah’ with new ears. Surely this is the soundtrack to DV. A man, hurt and humiliated by his woman’s infidelity, stalks her, waits until she is alone, knocks on her door and then, when she laughs at him, he stabs her! Then he begs her forgiveness saying ‘I just couldn’t take any more’ – suggesting, of course, that she had brought this all on herself. Apparently written to reflect the story of ‘Samson and Delilah’ (that’s another rant for another day!) we all sing along quite merrily yet I wonder if we really acknowledge what we’re singing about. Come on people! Wake up and smell the skinny-latte!!

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