Patti Giggans talks about the power of The Y Factor and the men that are leading the charge.
This article originally appeared at 1in6.com.
I had the privilege recently of attending the national summit of a new initiative lead by Esta Soler and her team at Futures Without Violence and the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention called The Y Factor: Men Leading By Example. The event saluted and encouraged activists and survivors who are committed to ending violence against women and children. We were treated to an assuredly rare event: a conversation between Willie Mays and Joe Torre, two great and generous men. Willie Mays, frail yet still quite charismatic, recounted how as a player and a coach, he mentored the young ball players coming up by guiding them with a clear yet gentle and non-judgmental hand. Joe Torre told his family story as a witness and victim to his police officer father’s abuse of his mother. He spoke honestly and candidly about how terrified he was of his father’s rage and how he would try not to go home to avoid it. He has made it his mission to speak out about the impact of family violence and with his wife Ali Torre has created The Joe Torre Safe At Home Foundation, which creates safe rooms in schools for kids to seek safety and get help. The safe spaces are named Margaret’s Place, in honor of his mother.
The power of the Y Factor event was significant in that more than 50% of those present were men. While I was listening to several men speak out about their own childhood trauma and speak up for the traumatic experiences of others as children and as adults, I was struck by how important this is and how rare it still is to hear men speak about them. When men and boys are encouraged to come out from behind their masculinities and break through the silence, healing begins. That healing can be stopped or stunted if that intimate spoken truth is not received. Trauma needs acknowledgement and it needs to be attended to. Trauma will be acted out if it isn’t acted upon. This requires the teller to have someone to tell. We all have to find ways to create a culture that is receptive and safer for those who suffer from childhood sexual abuse, family violence, sexual violence and all kinds of violences to speak their truths. We have to work much harder to make it safer and even welcoming for men and boys to disclose, reach out, ask for help and be received.
If each and every one of us could commit to learning how provide that “Margaret’s Place,” therein lies a paradigm shift that would transform the world. We could create the possibility of living in a world where we all become “Enlightened Witnesses,” as Alice Miller, the childhood trauma researcher and author advised. We would go beyond being bystanders for each other and be witnesses for and to each other.
This month of April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Child Abuse Prevention Month, with Denim Days happening all over the country on Wednesday, April 25th. (For more information on Denim Day, and to register to participate, visit www.denimdayusa.org.) Many people will speak out publicly—including electronically—for the first time or disclose to another person. We can practice our “enlightened witnessing” by really listening—not with our ears but with an open heart. When we have the opportunity to be this witness, we can acknowledge the person’s truth without judgment and with compassion by our full attention and by our presence. We can be the receiver of the story that the teller will have a told. We can be a “Margaret’s Place.” Thank you, Joe Torre, for being both a teller and a told.
Patti Giggans is the Executive Director of Peace Over Violence. Peace Over Violence is dedicated to building healthy relationships, families and communities free from sexual, domestic and interpersonal violence. She is also the Vice-President of the Board of Directors for 1in6.
Photo credit: Flickr / NHS Confederation
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So when are we going to start opening shelters for battered men and boys? Sounds all well and good but as she said, half there were some men speaking out. Did men and women speak out against the women who are violent? These safe houses are for “children” but there is still nothing that allows that child to be safe with his/her father. Many shelters won’t even allow teen boys in them because they’re seen as a threat. From what I could tell, a lot of the information on the “1in6″ site, with little exception, showed men being the perpetrator.
Regardless, I applaud their efforts.
So here we have another organization that claims all domestic violence is the fault on and perpatrated by men. Yep, and the beat goes on.
Another half arsed attempt to fix a NON-Gendered issue. I applaud the effort of tackling Domestic violence in any form but wouldn’t it be better for men and women to lead the way in reducing violence against all? The fact you say it’s violence against women AND children indicates to me you mean males under 18 as well as ALL females, so why not care for the males over 18 as well? There are plenty of stats showing near equal rates of physical, emotional and now even sexual abuse between the genders.
These chivalrous organizations tackling women AND children are starting to really be offensive, it clearly ignores male adults and isn’t setup to only deal with females since it says children, not little girls. So what’s the deal? Men not worthy of the same protection you ask them to afford to others? I’m sorry but I can’t support such organizations, call me when you focus on one gender fully and have a sister campaign or when you include all victims of violence. It’s extremely offensive to just rule out adult men.
Please ask the leaders of your organization this question. Why do we ask men to care about violence against women and children when violence against men often goes unnoticed, unspoken, and ignored even by anti-violence campaigns?
To the GMP folks, are there any campaigns you can get to write an article on domestic abuse that is genderless, or at least a few that are male victim focused? How about writing the folks at http://www.oneinthree.com.au ? Most seem to be violence against women and on a site with male victims the balance feels a bit off, I’m sure a woman’s site hearing about male violence only would start to get annoying as well. Without the male side covered it becomes reinforces of the protector role for men, to ignore our own violence victimization but pledge against the violence towards women. Hope you can understand what I mean.
There are two organizations I know of the support male victims. One in California I forget the name at the moment. Vally Oasis, something oasis sancutuary… sorry, memories out, but it is an abuse shelter that serves both genders and has taken a lot of flack in the for doing so from the DV industry. The founder died last year after writing a story about the feminist verbal assaults she took. The other one is in Canada (Edmonton I believe) and is MASH 4077 (Men’s abuse something something), a male abuse hotline and sanctuary that is going to be closing down soon because it can’t get funding. The only men’s shelter in all of Canada (that I know of anyways) and it can’t get funding.
Sorry. there is also mankind initiative in the UK, also privately funded, no government money
Let me get this straight….
“Violence against women and children”
So if you own a penis, and you are 17 years and 11 months old, and your mom slaps you with a frying pan, you are a victim.
But if you own a penis, are 18 years old, and your mom slaps you with a frying pan, you’re no longer a victim. I guess this means victimhood is something reserved for non-adults then?
BUT if you’re a woman, you reserve this for life? Does this not infantalize women? Does not this framing imply that women are “children”?
It’s “violence against people”
Or violence against females. In which case some of y’all bigots should be fine with moms beating the crap out of their 5 year old sons (which I know many of you are).
Your current frame however infantalizes women by implying women are on the level of children….
That’s just insulting, sexist and misandrist stereotyping.
Child abuse is mostly female perpetrated and patterns inside DV show women to be significantly more likely to be violent and initiate the violence.
Anyone interested in studies and data showing women to be the family abuser more often, just ask..
It is not men’s masculinity that prevents them from breaking the silence. It is this: The event saluted and encouraged activists and survivors who are committed to ending violence against women and children.
After a decade of speaking to other male survivors, I learned that the most common reason men and boys’ give for not coming forward is because they do not think anyone will believe a man or boy can be a victim of abuse. The message we send to them is that what happened to them is rare, unimportant, and not as bad or wrong as what happens to women. We do not make them part of the discussion. We do not invite them to speak, invite them to share their stories, or invite them to share their opinions about how to address domestic and sexual violence.
If you want to create “a culture that is receptive and safer for those who suffer from childhood sexual abuse, family violence, sexual violence and all kinds of violences to speak their truths” then you simply do it. We can create a more receptive culture and a safe space for male survivors by losing the gendered language, removing the politics, excluding the feminist talking points, involving more men in the process, and actually listening to men and boys.
But we cannot do that if we keep playing gender politics with this issue. All that does is teach male survivors that they do not count, do not matter, and that they should keep their mouths shut.
As a male survivor, I would like to see more organizations reaching out to men and boys to share their own experiences abuse rather than only having them affirm that violence against women is bad.
“We can create a more receptive culture and a safe space for male survivors by losing the gendered language, removing the politics, excluding the feminist talking points, involving more men in the process, and actually listening to men and boys.
But we cannot do that if we keep playing gender politics with this issue. ”
Case in point:
http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2012/04/27/a-place-just-for-men/
Of particular note is where one official states “men do not deserve their own space” and the list of how dangerous and monstrous masculinity is as is posted on the women’s centre website. Note in the comments where one of the women’s centre feminists support a men’s centre, so long as that men’s centre is dedicated to promoting the feminist ideology, depicting men as bad and privileged, promoting the help women(only) mentality and ultimately ignoring men’s issues.
This is what feminist equality looks like.
Some of the feminists commenting on that article disgust me just with their sheer ignorance towards men. The mentality that it’s a man’s world so men are completely covered? Try find support for male victims of domestic violence or sexual abuse especially by female perpetrators, now reverse the genders and see the disparity.
These I believe are gynocentric feminists, they seem to want to make it all about the womenz. Someone needs to tell them that men too can suffer bullshit in this world!
If you read the article and pay attention to the words I think you will see that I was including the suffering of men also. The article focused on Joe Torre who was a witness to violence growing up in his family. He suffered didn’t he? No ones suffering should be skipped over. There have been very good reasons to focus a movement on the abuse of women. Now that we have, many of us who have worked many years in domestic and sexual violence fields have also included male victims along the way and we do want to make sure that men who are abused get the help they need also. Having men and women work together to reduce violence is I think the way of the future. I suggest you re-read the article.
I hear a lot about how people help out male victims, but correct me if I am wrong but the majority of the anti-DV stuff is worded like “Women’s shelters” “Violence against women and children” “Men speaking out against abuse of women and children” etc. Is there a large amount of genderless wording as well in the campaigns and advertising that I simply am not seeing? Because to me what I see are campaigns, shelters, etc specifically for women so if I were being abused I would probably be far less likely to approach them for help. The other campaigns may exist but I do believe they have very little airtime compared to female-focused campaigns. For example there was a large “Violence against women, Australia says NO” campaign where I see posters around that are male perpetrator, female victim orientated listing abusive behaviour such as controlling her spending, where she goes, what she wears, etc. I don’t recall ever seeing something like that where the female is a perpetrator, male the victim. Never seen a “Violence against men, Australia says NO” campaign either, the closest I’ve seen towards male victims are campaigns where the male is still the perpetrator.
It’s almost like people just have to take their chance to see if a shelter will help them, I can’t help but feel that would leave many men feeling like they have nowhere to go? I myself find society’s mega focus on women as victims and barely a mention of male victims to be quite disheartening. I see various articles written not to reduce violence against all people, but specially to reduce violence against women and children through the wording, the lack of campaigns for men, etc. It’s no surprise to me that many men feel both ignored by the anti-DV groups AND also offended that they are to take pledges for instance to support ending the violence against women (white ribbon, men can stop rape, and other chivalrous organizations). I myself get this sense that I am expected to speak up against violence towards women and children but pretty much “fuck the men, who cares about them”.
In the efforts to genderize the domestic violence campaigns and run single gender campaigns there has been a major gap in coverage for men. I could understand why this might happen back in the 80′s or earlier when stats showed it disproportionately affecting women by a large shot, but stats from the 90′s I believe up until now have showed domestic violence being nearly equal in perpetration between genders, quite a bit of it reciprocal, rape itself was shown to be near equal levels against both men and women for a 12 month period (not to mention a major bias against men was uncovered in stat reporting). I can’t for the life of me understand though why there seems to be a major lack of genderless campaigns, still a lot of single gender campaigns for women (which can be good), and still yet a major lack of campaigns for men. The only justifications I’ve seen for this is that some groups like to target the majority in hopes it’ll help save more people, but really it’s like focusing all our resources and attention towards heart disease and ignoring everything else including breast cancer since heart disease kills/affects more people.
Can someone please explain why there is still a major lack of concern for male victims? I put some blame towards people that go around saying domestic violence, rape, etc disproportionately affects women thus separating them into a much higher risk category but it gets to the point that it’s mixed in with stupid comments like “a woman slapping a man isn’t comparable to a man putting a woman through a wall” which try to paint men as far far far stronger than women, that male victims suffer LESS, and thus their overall need for advocacy is much lower than the need for female advocacy.
I truly want to be proven wrong but currently I am feeling pretty disheartened towards all of this stuff, I am expected to care about women’s rights, women’s victimization, whilst others don’t seem to be expected to give a damn about men. I’d like to see some women leading by example on behalf of men like Erin Prizzey.
I should point out to the author that there will be a few comments that basically are whataboutthemenz. I don’t think any actually dislike the work done to help women be free from violence in all forms but many probably feel a sense of desperation, dismay, even neglected even by those in the anti-DV/anti-violence industry on their own freedom from violence.