I recently had the disturbing experience of watching the documentary, The Red Pill. Disturbing, because it was the brainchild of supposed feminist, Cassie Jaye. Sadly the content of the film, whilst deeply troubling, was not surprising. Jaye rolls out the big guns of the Men’s Rights Movement and gives them a platform to spew their vitriol and spread their propaganda. To say I felt let down by Jaye as a woman and a survivor of domestic abuse is an understatement.
It makes for troubling viewing. A bunch of largely middle-aged, white men defending patriarchy and dismissing indisputable facts about numerous issues affecting woman.
For me, one of the most distressing parts was hearing Harry Crouch, the current president of the National Coalition for Men say this:
“Shame, blame and guilt. Where do those concepts come from? The Duluth power and control wheel, you guys heard about that? I’ll give you a copy. The Duluth power and control wheel. In 1977 a bunch of crazy women up in Duluth Minnesota figured out they had the solution to domestic violence and it was all about patriarchy and all about men and it’s the Duluth power and control wheel.
Because men are all about power and control. Of course not you ladies you don’t control anything, you have no power, you are just sweet and innocent little things. Okay? So this power and control wheel is divided up into all these things about who does this and who does that and blah blah blah and of course its all men.
The entire domestic violence industry was founded on it and still by law they have to use it for battery intervention programs.”
See raw files of interview with Harry Crouch on The Red Pill.
He goes on to say, that men who are directed into these types of programs “will be re-engineered”.
I’m astounded that Cassie Jaye didn’t have a ‘red pill’ moment of her own after hearing this spew from Crouch’s mouth, realize that her documentary was a terrible idea, repent of her brief delusion and run for the hills.
No, for unfathomable reasons, she instead provided a platform for these disgruntled men to perpetuate Men’s Rights Activist Terrorism. Later she attended a MRA three-day event, attracting delegates from around the world, where she was treated like a celebrity.
The mind boggles.
Before the Duluth model.
In her groundbreaking book See What You Made Me Do, investigative journalist Jess Hill explains how society has historically viewed victims of what was historically called wife beating, and how that perception has changed over time.
Up until about 1930 the general consensus was that victims of domestic abuse were weak creatures oppressed by their brutal alcoholic husbands. While women quietly endured the abuse, they did garner sympathy.
All that changed when women started getting vocal about their husband’s behavior and in some cases started applying for divorce. That was the end of pity. Now these women were threatening what was considered the backbone of society, the family unit.
Cue victim blaming, Sigmund Freud style. In 1925 he wrote The Psychical Consequences of the Anatomic Distinction Between the Sexes in which he opined that women were simply men without penises, with female behavior stemming from her envy of the male’s penis.
From there Freud theorized that women were innately masochistic, that they liked being abused. Social workers believed, based on Freud’s work, which was the dominant narrative at the time, that women sought out men who would abuse them. Unsurprisingly this narrative was enthusiastically embraced by abusive men.
Until the 1970’s this victim blaming mentality was the mainstream view. As feminism continued to grow, and the views of the woman were sought (rather than analyzing the abuse through the lens of the perpetrator, which had been the norm), it became apparent that women stayed in abusive relationships not because they liked it, but because they were terrified of the consequences of leaving.
The Duluth model.
When you look at how victims of male abuse were historically viewed, firstly as helpless, and later as masochists, it’s not difficult to see why MRA’s like Harry Crouch get so riled up about the Duluth model. Until the late 70’s society blamed women for their own plight, either because of assumed weakness, or perceived masochism.
All of this changed with the emergence of the Duluth model. Suddenly the tables turned and for the first time, attention was directly squarely at the men.
Men were being held accountable for their behavior, for the first time.
For healthy men, men who love and respect women, Men who are secure enough in their own skin that they have no desire to control another human being, this raises no issue.
But for men who are entrenched in the false victim-hood that exudes from the Men’s Rights Movement, this shift in focus threatened them to their core. After all these men don’t love or respect women.
They hate them.
In the words of John Stuart Mill, a feminist more than 100 years before it’s time:
All Men, except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely, but a favorite. They have therefore put everything in practice to enslave their minds.
The Subjection of Women (essay by John Stuart Mill, 1859)
I’m not for a moment saying all men feel this way today, but the MRA’s do. They vehemently oppose men’s behavior change programs because they see absolutely nothing wrong with how perpetrators of domestic abuse behave.
They take no issue with men coercively controlling women.
In their minds, that’s just the natural order of things.
The problem with naming domestic abuse, ‘domestic violence’
Early in the interview that I linked above, Mr. Crouch asks about ‘how domestic violence is defined’ and suggests that verbal and other abuse is not really domestic violence at all.
This view is devastatingly familiar. My ex-husband was very careful to never hit me. I know this because the clenched fist stopped centimetres from my face, multiple times. In his mind, and I know this because I have heard him say it, I am lying about being a victim of domestic violence, because he never hit me.
Hence lies the problem.
My life was coercively controlled by my first husband for more than two decades. I was stalked, monitored, demeaned, ignored, and humiliated, both in public and private. He spoke to me as if he hated me, yet he would often profess his undying love for me and threaten to kill himself if I left him.
I lived in a permanent hyper-vigilant state, constantly monitoring for clues that he was going to start, and taking preventative action by modifying what I was doing or saying to try and head off an explosion.
It was exhausting. I was worn down, put down, and often held down.
But he never once hit me.
The ‘I never hit her’ defense.
It’s obvious why men’s rights activists have a problem with the Duluth model. They want domestic violence to be about physical violence. They need that for their agenda to survive. Physical violence either happens or it doesn’t. Physical violence focuses on incidents of violence, not patterns of coercive controlling behavior.
Charges of physical assault can only lead to conviction if a high standard of proof is met. Often the woman is too afraid to give evidence, or, by the time the court date arrives, has been swept back into the never-ending dance of the cycle of control and won’t, or can’t, give evidence.
Further, physical violence sometimes involves both parties, because it is instinctive to protect your own life.
It’s also the easy way to perpetuate the myth that men and women are equally perpetrators and victims of domestic violence. The difference is that in the vast majority of cases where women physically fight back it’s in self-defense or retaliation from devastating abuse that has been going on for some time.
The deep wounding that comes from emotional, verbal and sexual abuse, the stuff they dispel as irrelevant, that is where the real damage is done. The gradual surrender of a woman’s agency of her life to the control of her partner. The infliction of coercive control over her life, the selfish desire of the man to not only have ownership of his own life, but hers as well, is what’s really at the root of the epidemic of domestic violence.
But the men’s rights activists feel entitled to continue to do all of those things, because they are so steeped in the patriarchy that they are adamant that violence has nothing to do with male power and control.
They are in a time warp. To them women are either lying, weak or masochistic.
They condemn the Duluth model but offer no alternative solution.
Because in their small, entitled minds, unless there is severe physical battering, there is nothing in these abusive relationships that needs to change, and certainly nothing in the man’s behavior, that needs addressing.
MRA’s vehemently resist the definition of domestic violence including anything other than physical battering. In their minds, severe battering is domestic violence, and everything else is private.
MRA’s and the Duluth ‘controversy’.
Another prominent MRA, Paul Elam considers the Duluth model flawed because it focuses on female victims and male perpetrators. He does have a point, but not in the way you might expect.
MRA’s love to indulge their false victim-hood by shining a light on male victims of violence, attempting to imply that such violence is suffered at the hands of women. What they ignore is that violence against men is overwhelming perpetrated by men.
The 2013 Canadian study (Statistics Canada) reveals the reality of their false claims of victim-hood.
When it comes to female victims, 60% of violence perpetrated by friends or acquaintances, 68% of non-spousal family violence, 74% of stranger violence and 98% of intimate partner violence was perpetrated by men.
Male victims experience violence at the hands of a male perpetrator in 74% of cases.
But MRA’s are experts at deflecting facts that don’t fit with their misogynistic, rape apologetic agenda.
Think I’m being harsh? I’ll let Paul Elam speak for himself. This letter, which can still be viewed on the A Voice for Men website, shows not only his hate for women, but the staggering entitlement mentality that he vicariously claims on behalf of all men.
I’ll decide if you were raped, not you.
In fact, you may be so emotional about the matter that you are not going to be the most reliable informant of the facts. As an alleged victim, you are certainly not the most qualified arbiter of what constitutes rape to begin with. It is undoubtedly better that you just shut up about the matter — go somewhere where we don’t have to look at you or listen to you complain — and let someone more capable gather the facts and make a mature sensible decision about what happened.
Like me, for instance.
Actually, I can’t think of anyone better qualified to make a rational determination of the facts; who can avoid the hysterics often associated with the claim of rape, or things that might be misinterpreted as rape, and who can make a sound, considered decision about what happened to you and what to call it. So please, give the rape crisis line and everyone else a break while I sort things out.
You can just tell me what happened, then go off and cry, or go on Oprah, or do whatever it is women do when they think that someone has raped them. I will sort through all the details and then come back to you later, after I have had some time to make a considered and complete evaluation.
I will be the one to decide if you were raped, or just someone who was temporarily inconvenienced.
I have to tell you, though, that I am not one to just go around calling every claim a rape on behalf of women just because they drum up a few tears, or have a few bruises to show off.
Like that girl at Steubenville; the one who partied a little too hearty and then just happened to be penetrated by some of the guys she was partying with. Opportunistic sex? Yeah. Rape? No, not rape. Not even close.
All the outrage I read about the sympathy for the “perpetrators” was way off the mark. These guys needed alcohol and drug education, perhaps a good talking to, but not prison. Prison is for rapists, real rapists, not a couple of kids that got carried away at a party.
Then there was that woman, whatever her name was, in India that made worldwide headlines just a few months ago; the one that was murdered and allegedly raped on a bus in Delhi. The facts on that one don’t wash, either. Sure, she was beaten. There is evidence to support that, particularly in that she died from her injuries. Without a doubt, she was murdered.
But not raped, so let’s try not to get carried away with the righteous indignation, mmkay?
If you can bear to keep reading, you can find the rest of his rant here.
What is the answer?
Whilst I believe strongly that a redefinition of domestic violence to domestic abuse or coercive control would go a long way to raising public awareness of the root of violence (of all kinds) against women, that root being the patriarchal belief, entrenched in many men, that they are entitled to exercise power and control over women, real change starts with men.
Healthy men, men who are as shocked when they read or hear rape apologists like Paul Elam as women are.
Men who embrace the feminist message because they understand its importance.
Men who love and respect women and are prepared to call out misogyny and abuse wherever they see it, even if it costs them.
Men who truly epitomize what it means to be male.
Good men have the power to turn the tide and change the culture of violence against and control of women.
Good men, it’s in your hands.
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock
Anyone who’s watched the Red Pill documentary knows that it doesn’t do what’s being alleged here. Load of rubbish. As for the Duluth model, it’s been criticized by many academics and psychologists because it is not based in any sound scientific evidence, just irrational assumption. The creator Ellen Pence admitted she made assumptions about it. Read this: https://equi-law.uk/duluth-model/