When the literature mentions respect at all, it isn’t about the perpetrator disrespecting the victim: it’s more about the perpetrator feeling someone had disrespected them. Thus could James Gilligan – a prison psychiatrist working with America’s most violent men for 35 years – conclude he was “yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed”. Gilligan’s language is strikingly absolute: “all violence is an attempt to replace shame with self-esteem”, and direct: “the most dangerous men on earth are those who are afraid they are wimps”.
[I]t can be possible to work gender into violence analysis, roughly as follows: hierarchical gender norms, in which women are assumed inferior, lead men to feel humiliation, shame and disrespect when women don’t behave like their supplicants. They also lead men to think violence is the best way to restore their self-esteem. By this logic, perhaps if we established a more gender-equal culture, the humiliation would dissipate and violence would reduce.
[T]here are still things the gender equality approach just cannot explain. The most famous is the “Nordic paradox”: where Scandinavian countries who are widely regarded to have the most gender-equal societies in the world also report some of the highest rates of sexual assault and gendered violence across the European Union. The frequent riposte is that Nordic women are better at recognising and reporting sexual violence, and while that might be true, it’s not clear enough to explain the data. It certainly doesn’t explain why, in a place like Iceland, which is consistently ranked the most gender-equal country on earth, every second murder is committed by a male partner: significantly higher than the EU average.
Similarly, if gendered disrespect was the fundamental engine of domestic violence, we would expect to see much lower levels of it in same-sex relationships. But we don’t.
A decade on, the problems with this discourse are becoming clearer. Men are killing women at a faster rate. People under 24, the demographic with the most gender-equal attitudes, are perpetrating sexual abuse at greater rates. And a decade on, I can write this because better minds than mine, like investigative journalist Jess Hill and criminologist Michael Salter, are pointing to the things we’ve never wanted to mention in their recent white paper, but with much clearer connections to violence: among them, alcohol, gambling, pornography and abusive and neglectful childhood environments – cycles we can try to break.
Source: 12ft
Ironically, the discourse of “toxic masculinity” could be a driver of male violence, according to Gilligan’s hypothesis. Shaming men (as a class) could be counter-productive to the goals of feminism. (Misandry, to my mind, is anything but progressive.)
Alcohol was a decisive factor in my own childhood experience of domestic violence. But underlying the antisocial effects of alcohol intoxication are much deeper issues, toxic residues of the way social hierarchies are instilled, inscribed, policed and enforced. Egalitarianism is their obvious solution, but on a much broader footing than mere “gender” would allow.
Teetotallers engage in criminal assault at home and other forms of domestic violence. ‘It only happens when he’s drunk’ is way women manage to live in circumstances no human being should be forced to live – because men use alcohol as an excuse. The proposition being put in this article is indefensible. It implies, indeed, that if only women wouldn’t pronounce the truth – that is is men who engage in sexual abuse of women, men who inflict criminal assault at home and other forms of domestic violence, men who engage in crimes of violence against women and men – then all would be well in the world, and men would stop their violence. Way back in 1983, with a reprint and updated chapter in 1990, I addressed this furphy and demolished it – with evidence arising out of research into 312 families where criminal assault at home and other forms of domestic violence was perpetrated – by men overwhelmingly: Even in the Best of Homes – Violence in the Family https://www.amazon.com.au/Even-Best-Homes-Violence-Family/dp/0949646350 (accessed3 May 20240. If the authors quoted as having done a ‘White Paper’ (actually this is a parliamentary term, not a research publication term so is deceptive indeed) putting forward the view that is attributed to them in this article then that is disappointing indeed.
I heartily disagree with Waleed Aly and the other male poster here. I am a survivor of such violence (along with my sisters and mother). Survivors’ voices – and knowledges – should be centered here. We know quite a bit about patriarchy. #LivedExperienceExpert
It is not about men having been ‘vilified’ as a class. It is about power, control, treating women and children as property (include to dispense with or rule over). Yes, men invoke “I’m not respected”. I will never be able to erase those words and the threat that followed them. But that does NOT come from the voices of feminists demanding that men be accountable, including men who do not call out their ‘mates’. It comes from (largely but not only heterosexual) men’s ideas about ‘being emasculated’ or ‘marginalised’, not ‘having rights’. Men (including young men) need to stop thinking the solution is to use violence to undergird their ‘rights’ (what rights, FFS, men rule the world) and their concepts of ‘masculinity’ (as well as dealing with their emotional deregulation). Yes, get them into therapy (including early on, before they wage their wars on our bodies). But men are resistant to seeing themselves – as part of the community – as the source of the issue. Let’s not defend such men’s rights paradigms. They are toxic.
I agree very much . To my mind Aly has concocted a well worded victim blaming excuse to side step his responsibilities .
Dr Scutt response is salutary .