Poison Prose
A critique of an article by Simon Collins, New Zealand Herald, 21 August 2006
Before we go any further, let me make it quite clear where I stand on violence: I don't believe it is OK for men to hit women. I don't believe it is OK for women to hit men.
Nor do I believe that the common combination of intimidation, verbal harassment, putdown, windup, and so forth that often accompanies, precedes, or serves instead of, physical violence is OK, from either sex.
I believe it is sometimes appropriate for parents to use physical means to discipline children, but certainly not to the extent that physical injury occurs. We are not talking in this case about conflict resolution between adults, we are talking about appropriate limits being established and maintained for children whose upbringing is our concern and responsibility.
So when an article like the one below appears in the Herald, ostensibly part of a media campaign to raise awareness about family violence, why does my stomach crawl?
My stomach crawls because the article is a piece of anti-male shit. It is a piece of anti-male shit despite the fact that its author is apparently male, and despite its ostensible focus on "family" violence.
I have no personal gripes about either the Man Alive Centre or the Prevention of Violence in the Home group. What I do have issues with is the way in which their activities and statements have been used as ammunition in this article so as to target men.
[My reaction, I imagine, is the same reaction that a Maori might have when he or she sees prison statistics utilised by those with racist agendas so as to reflect on all Maori. If the figures I was given recently are correct, the percentage of Maori who are not in prison is 98.8%. The percentage of non-Maori who are not in prison is 99.9%. Prison figures are not a good start for drawing conclusions about racial characteristics. They refer to a very small section of the population indeed.]
We'll start with the photo, a couple of women working for Preventing Violence in the Home. The picture is shot from low down - a classic film cliché to add stature to the persons being photographed.
We note that the organisation is called Preventing Violence in the Home, or PVH, a comfortable, neutral title. Later on we discover that the organisation was founded to assist women and children who are victims of violence, not men. (emphasis mine)
The opening paragraphs are then devoted to an extended description of an example of white middle-class male violence, culminating in a visit from the police, who notify PVH. PVH counsellors arrive with a checklist in hand for Susan to complete to establish whether the relationship is abusive, and it scores on all except two boxes.
I'd want to know for a start who designed the checklist and what the criteria for "abusive" are and who supplied them on the basis of what research. Readers' Digest or Cleo is not good enough to label a relationship as "abusive".
I'd want to know what effect producing such a checklist immediately following a crisis involving police intervention might have on how the boxes are ticked compared with what the response might be a day or two later.
I'd want to know what "permissions" labelling the relationship as abusive gives the woman concerned. "Right, you've got an abusive relationship, that's clear. Now, here's what you can do....."
I'd want to know whether men ever get a say in the relationship being thus labelled.
But those are to the side, as it were.
The report follows this immediately with the sentence, "Unfortunately, Susan's experience is all too common." (emphasis mine)
Question: What kind of picture of "family violence" is being depicted?
Answer: Men are violent, women and children are victims.
Question: In this article, dealing with "family" violence, are there any graphic examples provided of female violence?
Answer: No.
What would it have taken to write "... this experience is all too common"?
The next paragraph tells us that "surveys" suggest two women in ten and one man in ten have partners like Susan's. In other words, using figures supplied in the article, about 33 % of partners who damage property are women. Not a majority, but a very significant minority.
But the experience is "Susan's". Women are victims.
For every three women that have been "hit, kicked, pushed, grabbed or shoved", there are two men whose partners have behaved in this way, if the surveys are valid ones. 40% of violent partners are women. Family violence goes both ways.
Is this reflected anywhere in the article except in these two short paragraphs? No, it isn't.
But it's "Susan's experience" that is all too common. Women are victims. Men are violent.
The next section of the article starts with a nice, comfortably neutral, introductory sentence:
Unlike some other antisocial behaviour, everyone regrets such violence - even the perpetrators.
That's great. You can feel yourself nodding in agreement.
We now switch to Mal Lange, who counsels violent men at the Henderson "Man Alive Centre. I don't know Mal, but I have visited the centre for a social function or two, and I've heard good things about it. I love the sign in the loo which says, "Please leave the seat up when you leave."
Note, we have now left "Susan's problem" with her violent husband and we are talking to a counsellor of violent men.
He says:
I don't think any guy [abuses] his partner or children and doesn't feel some degree of regret, shame or remorse (emphasis mine)
Now my guess is that Mal spoke about guys simply because he works with men and that is what he knows about. But once again, the emphasis in the article suggests males are violent, women are victims.
There is nothing in the article that makes any reference to counselling services for violent women or groups that assist male victims of violence. Do they even exist? We aren't told. Violence, in this article, is something that men do to women. "Family" violence is something that men do to women.
In a context where at least one third of partners who damage property are women, and at least 40% of partners who are physically violent are women, the absence of assistance for men in a "family" violence context is weird.
It is weird if it doesn't exist at all. It is even weirder if it exists and is being ignored in this article on "family" violence.
The next section of the article addresses a fundraising drive by PVH. Spokeswoman (sic) Trish Sherson is quoted saying:
We have known that this problem [family violence] has been getting worse for some time. Now we are looking for solutions.
That's great. We need solutions. She goes on to say:
"Solutions" of two kinds are needed: first, to protect women and children from violence; and second, to stop the violence in the first place.
Now PVH's focus is on women and children, not men. No problem with that. They were not founded to assist men.
Given their choice of title, though, you'd think they might be more even-handed. Families include men, homes include men, and men have violent partners as well. But they're not even-handed, they were not set up to assist men, no matter what their name is, and in the final analysis, it's their business.
However, in the context of the article, this quote is one more finger pointing at the conclusion: Men are violent. Women (and children) are victims. This article is not about family violence, it is about targeting men.
A few paragraphs later, again using PVH procedures to illustrate, the same thing happens: PVH visit victims and where there are children, "they like to make three or four visits until the woman and children are all safe".
Next, the article features a series of recommendations from the Hughes taskforce against "family violence". These all seem to be fairly constructive and useful proposals until we get to the last one quoted which reads:
Action plans for each family are agreed and implemented. Police will prosecute breaches of protection orders, probation officers will return men to jail if they breach an order on parole, and the housing agency will change locks or move a woman to a new home. (emphasis mine)
Once again, there seems no reason to specify sex where assistance is needed with a violent partner. And the upshot in this report, once again, is to point at men as violent, women as victims.
A few paragraphs further and we get:
Agencies such as PVH and Man Alive get funding from the Family Court, CYFS and charities to run groups for violent men. (emphasis mine)
As a little further jab we are told that 40% of men drop out of such programmes. In the context of the article, that's another finger pointing at men. I venture a suggestion that something is seriously wrong with the design or implementation of programmes that are rejected so early and so often.
And finally, we are told that the solution to family violence is probably to change the way we bring up our boys. Great stuff. I knew there was simple solution all along. Why didn't we think of this before? It's a no brainer, isn't it? Let's DO IT!
All men are violent, so change the way we bring them up.
Wait on. Who said ALL men are violent? Is that like ALL men are rapists?
Let's slice those figures again, the article's own figures: 79% of women have partners who do not "hit, kick, push, grab or shove". 80% of women have partners who do not damage property.
If we look at violent partners, despite the fact that 33% of partners who damage property are women, despite the fact that 40% of partners who are physically violent are women, the solution is to change the way we bring up boys. Women don't need to change because they did all the changing they needed to do 40 years ago.
Well, according to the article, that's what Mal reckons.
PPPPPHHHHHTTTTT.
This article is an exercise in male bashing. And not even an honest and open piece of male bashing. Given its ostensible moral-high-ground "family violence" focus, a critic of its poisonous agenda might well end up accused of undermining efforts to combat violence, or being a closet basher himself (Or herself. I'm sure there are women out there whose skin crawls every bit as much as mine in the face of this stuff.)
I am not even going to speculate on the motives that made Simon Collins produce such an appalling act of journalistic prostitution, but there it is.
Preventing Violence in the Home advocates Zaif Khan (left) and Jill Proudfoot. Picture / Greg Bowker |
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10397176
Attitudes change towards old taboo
Monday August 21, 2006
By Simon Collins
When her 2-year-old daughter started slamming doors and kicking the walls, Susan finally decided she had to do something about her husband's behaviour.
Things had deteriorated gradually during their 13-year relationship.
"I always knew he had a temper," she says. But at first, it was just irritating.
"Everything was my fault, nothing was ever his fault. If he couldn't find his car keys, it would be, 'What have you done with them?' It would be door-slamming and kicking and throwing things."
It became worse when the two children came. Susan (not her real name) had to eat with them in a bedroom because he would complain if they made a noise while he was watching the news.
If she planned to go out with friends, he would come home late so she couldn't leave the children.
"He couldn't handle the attention I was giving them," Susan says. "He wanted all the attention himself."
He began to criticise her. She was fat. She was not parenting properly.
They lived in Susan's house and she worked fulltime to pay the mortgage.
Last year he had long periods at home between jobs. He still expected her to do most of the housework.
Finally, without consulting her, he gave up his job to look after his sick father. His anger intensified.
"I guess it got to a stage where the children were being affected, in that my daughter was doing the same sorts of things - kicking, hitting, slamming doors, breaking things, kicking walls," Susan says.
She finally asked her husband to go and live with his father. He was angry, but he went. He looked after their preschool son at his place while Susan went to work. She changed the locks at home.
One night he came round at the children's bedtime, saying he wanted to say goodnight to them. He kicked in the back door and left only when Susan called the police.
They could not arrest him because he had not harmed anyone, but they alerted Preventing Violence in the Home, which helps women subjected to family violence. Its advocate brought a checklist to see whether the relationship was abusive, and Susan ticked all but two items.
"I was trying to juggle work and family commitments and trying to come to terms with these sorts of issues that I thought never happened to a white middle-class family," she says.
Unfortunately, Susan's experience is all too common. Surveys show that 19 per cent of women and 10 per cent of men have had partners who have "destroyed, damaged or harmed" things in a frightening way.
Twenty-one per cent of women and 14 per cent of men have been "hit, kicked, pushed, grabbed or shoved".
Out of 61 murders last year, 29 involved family violence.
Unlike some other antisocial behaviour, everyone regrets such violence - even the perpetrators.
"I don't think any guy [abuses] his partner or children and doesn't feel some degree of regret, shame or remorse," says Mal Lange, who counsels violent men at Henderson's Man Alive.
But abuse happens because many people want to control what their partners and children do, in the false belief that this is "love".
For two months since the deaths of twins Chris and Cru Kahui, New Zealand has been in one of its periodic states of heightened awareness of the problem.
Three weeks ago, a taskforce led by Social Development Ministry head Peter Hughes came up with a long list of proposals to do something about it.
And when Preventing Violence in the Home launched a campaign last week to get Aucklanders to donate goods to the city's biggest-ever garage sale in November, spokeswoman Trish Sherson said: "The country is at a tipping point. We have known that this problem has been getting worse for some time. Now we are looking for solutions."
"Solutions" of two kinds are needed: first, to protect women and children from violence; and second, to stop the violence in the first place.
Preventing Violence in the Home (PVH) and agencies like it already do much to protect the victims. PVH gets 90 to 100 referrals from police every week in Auckland City alone and now holds files on 13,857 people in the city's 145,100 homes.
PVH advocates such as Jill Proudfoot and Zaif Khan aim to contact victims within an hour of each police visit.
If children are present, they like to make three or four visits until the woman and children are all safe - and hope to be able to do so if the big garage sale reaches its $500,000 target.
The Hughes taskforce proposes:
* Local co-operation between police, Child, Youth and Family Services (CYFS) and victim support groups such as PVH, with law changes to allow them to share information about individual families.
* Funding counselling for couples and families with violence issues, not just the existing separate programmes for perpetrators and victims.
* Dedicated family violence courts, with court advocates to help victims through processes such as getting protection orders.
* Higher income thresholds for legal aid, which will allow about 40 per cent of adults to get legal aid for protection orders compared with about 25 per cent at present.
* More prosecutions when protection orders are breached.
PVH director Jane Drumm says local co-operation should go even further. She is just back from Wales, where fortnightly meetings swap information about families not only among police, CYFS and victim groups, but also midwives, probation officers, schools and preschools, housing agencies, and the equivalent of Plunket nurses and Work and Income.
Action plans for each family are agreed and implemented. Police will prosecute breaches of protection orders, probation officers will return men to jail if they breach an order on parole, and the housing agency will change locks or move a woman to a new home.
The scheme has cut revictimisation for the women involved to 58 per cent - in Drumm's words, "a dramatic impact".
To go beyond that and eliminate the violence, often where couples choose to stay together, requires not just protection, but changing attitudes.
Again, the Hughes taskforce has plans - an ambitious advertising campaign "to transform our society into one that does not tolerate family violence". Ministries have earmarked $14 million for it over the next four years.
"We have changed attitudes to smoking, seatbelts and drink-driving," says Social Development spokesperson Stephanie Edmond.
"It's getting members of the public to think differently about it, as well as having sanctions for the behaviour."
Auckland research firm Gravitas has been interviewing 45 perpetrators of violence and people who know them to pin-point what would motivate them to change or induce the people around them to intervene.
Edmond speculates that they may find that the key motivator, as for Susan, may be realising that the violence is affecting their children.
Already the Health Ministry has funded some public education, such as a Family Planning Association pamphlet for high schools which explains what love is (such as having "freedom to do your own thing") and isn't (such as getting "angry or jealous" when your partner talks to someone else).
Agencies such as PVH and Man Alive get funding from the Family Court, CYFS and charities to run groups for violent men. Lange says two out of every five drop out early on, but if they get through the first two or three weekly sessions they usually complete the 20-week course.
He says a man who is violent to his wife and children feels ashamed and is glad to learn techniques to avoid it. This makes visible differences in their body language.
Relationship Services, which works with many couples wanting to stay together, says more than half its clients are dealing with family violence or abuse, but there is no funding under the Domestic Violence Act to work with couples together.
"It's time we stopped seeing domestic violence as a punch. Domestic violence is also the intimidation, isolation, put-downs, undermining and psychological abuse that goes on," says its practice manager, Jo-Ann Vivian.
"We see the couples and families where the family violence is just beginning, and unless they learn the skills, it's going to keep on going.
"We want to be in there doing the preventative and educative work."
In the longer term, Edmond and Lange both believe we need to change the way we bring up boys.
"Men don't show their feelings. They think they have to be strong, the boss. Not all cultures are like that," says Edmond.
Lange says a 3-year-old girl who grazes her knee will have everyone fussing over her. A 3-year-old boy will be told: "It's only a bit of blood. Stop acting like a girl."
"Right from that age, we are raising boys to be emotionally repressed and ignore their vulnerability," he says.
At Man Alive, he teaches men to express their feelings of anger, hurt, frustration, embarrassment or worry, rather than bottling them up until they break out in violence. And he sees this happening in society.
"I think men are going through a cultural shift. They are beginning to claim their manhood, to redefine it.
"Women did that in the sixties. Men are about 40 years behind, but we are getting there."
* To donate to PVH's garage sale, phone (09) 270-2545 EditRegion1
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Who wrote the questions?
DISCLAIMER
Before we go any further, let me make it quite clear where I stand on violence: I don't believe it is OK for men to hit women. I don't believe it is OK for women to hit men.
Nor do I believe that the common combination of intimidation, verbal harassment, putdown, windup, and so forth that often accompanies, precedes, or serves instead of, physical violence is OK, from either sex.
I believe it is sometimes appropriate for parents to use physical means to discipline children, but certainly not to the extent that physical injury occurs. We are not talking in this case about conflict resolution between adults, we are talking about appropriate limits being established and maintained for children whose upbringing is our concern and responsibility.
If you can't tell the difference between a child and an adult, I'm not sure you should be looking after children.
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