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Here’s a framework I’ve been thinking about when it comes to men and abuse.
We know abusive men get into power. Not despite the fact that they are abusive, but often because of it.
Abusive men are the ones who cheat, lie, manipulate, coerce, and bully as a way of life. They also know how to hide that side of them when they need to. They often appear “charming.” And so they manipulate, lie, cheat, bully their way into power, often under the cover of “That’s what real men do.”
We don’t know what percentage of men are abusive. Try looking it up, there are no stats. Some of that is because stats are most often looked at from the POV of the victim. Not the perpetrator. Another reason stats are hard to find is that abuse is put into silos. There’s sexual assault and rape. There’s domestic violence. There’s fraud. There are hate crimes. Mass shootings. But there don’t seem to be studies of how those all are related.
What percentage of men are abusive? We just don’t know. And the last thing we want to do is minimize the problem. Because it is pervasive. So for the sake of this argument, let’s use the 80/20 rule as a framework. If 20% of men are abusive (and that’s a big if), we also know that most of the 80% of the non-abusive men who watch this abuse happen stay silent.
The men who are non-abusive stay silent. And that is the piece of this I want to talk about.
There are many reasons for the silence. Some stay silent because they are afraid of losing their job, or they are afraid that they will be “found out” for something they themselves did wrong. Men often don’t see the abuse—either because abusers keep it hidden (remember how “charming” they can be?), or because men just don’t know what to look for. And because they don’t see the abuse, the problem doesn’t seem that big to them. The beauty of the #MeToo movement was that is was impossible to ignore the scope of the problem. Yet, even them, some men did not believe the magnitude of the problem. I remember being told that women like me should “stop playing victim.” All three of those words—“stop playing victim”—are wrong and harmful. What he was really saying is 1) Women should stop talking about the fact that they were abused. 2) Women are only “playing” when they talk about this stuff. It’s all in good fun, right? and 3) If you only made the right choice, you wouldn’t have to see yourself as a victim. Uhm….No. And no. And no.
And even if men DO see the abuse, even if they do understand its prevalence—they still don’t often speak up. Maybe they are afraid of being bullied, or harassed or cheated, or abused themselves. After all, the real abusers have a cadre of people who get on social media, who are name-calling and threatening and raising ruckus. That rukus is intentional. It’s not just to silence those who DO speak up but to make sure the ones staying silent remain silent. A man has to protect his family, after all. Speaking up probably doesn’t always feel worth the trouble.
Maybe some men are even afraid that if they really think about how screwed up it all is, they might get emotional. They might be visibly caught caring. And heaven forbid that happens.
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But here at The Good Men Project, we’re working to change all this. And the thing to remember is The Good Men Project is—we don’t want to change men. There’s nothing wrong with being a man. But there’s something terribly wrong with being an abuser. And silence in the face of abuse is complicity.
Did you ever think that part of the reason men were expected to be the “strong, silent type” is so they too would keep quiet in the face of abuse?
We want to do two things:
1) We want to help change the system that allows abusive men to get into power.
2) We want to provide a safe space—and the tools and the language and the recognition of abuse—so that large percentage of men who are now silent can speak up about the abuse they see.
If we do these two things while also opening up and expanding the vision of masculinity—well then, we will have really accomplished something.
Once the problem is clear, it gets easier to solve. It seems kind of simple. Difficult as hell, of course. But simple in terms of what needs to be done.
Every once in a blue moon, I think we can change the world. Won’t you join us?
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