Head to head
Jun. 20th, 2012 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sacredchaoMy brain has been a bit froth and bubble today. It's revolved around accountability for violence, particularly violence against marginalised and disempowered groups. I'm going to thrash it out a bit here and see if I can't find some order in my thoughts. It's all going to be a bit ad hoc though.
Before I even start to address this, I'm going to say that this is a monstrously divisive issue and provokes immediate, vehement and defensive reactions from both men and women. I think that's partly because it's invariably framed as being a topic where men and women are on opposite sides in an intractible war of the sexes and I suspect that this is at least partly the problem.
Many of you are going to have immediate and distinctly visceral reactions to this topic. Please please let the churning bile settle a bit before you comment and please have a go at reading and genuinely trying to understand the parts that make you step firmly into your tribal territory and want to throw things. Also understand that that last bit wasn't just directed at you, is was also directed at him *points* and her *points again* and them clustered together in the corner *gestures vaguely*. Ok? Deep breaths.
The disconnect with this whole nasty mess was pointed up to me this morning while reading an account of a transman who was refused access to a womens' shelter. He had been in a men's shelter where, once being discovered to be trans, he was raped. He also faced difficulties in that men's shelters don't provide services relating to the needs of those possessing female anatomy. Whether they should is another question altogether but the stark fact is that they don't. So, homeless, and abused he presented to the womens' shelter and was refused entry on the grounds that he presented a danger to the residents, being as he was, entirely too masculine. This is not an isolated incident either. This happens regularly to both transmen and transwomen on the basis that they both carry the taints of femininity and masculinity. The former gets them assaulted and the latter gets them abused.
This isn't a diatribe about the problems produced by transphobia, spectacularly nasty though those are. What it is is an attempt to bridge the disconnect between the perceptions of men and women when it comes to that sort of exploitative violence with a brief look at those who are caught in the middle.
Ok, so the nasty fact is that a terrifying percentage of women are assaulted both in the context of rape and not and that violence is committed more or less entirely by men. Women are therefore wary as hell of men because you can't usually tell at first glance who's a sane, nice, non-violent person and who's a psycho that will drag you into the bushes at the first opportunity. This is the point where the men reading this are finding that their pulse is going up because they've heard this particular story a lot and they think they know where it's going. Chill. Now, most men are nice sane people who find the idea of violence abhorrent. Pretty much everyone knows this as well. The issue of just not being able to tell who's who is what so horribly fouls the water though. Even if only a tiny percentage of men *are* violent goons, you probably walk past a couple on the way to and from work each day, based simply on the law of averages. In other words, if you don't know the guy, there is in fact a non-trivial chance that he's genuinely dangerous. That's not the fault of every other man out there, it's simply a profoundly unpleasant fact.
Unsurprisingly, women are afraid and angry about the fact that they're collectively the subject of persistent, violent and singularly denigrating attacks. They want it to stop. The chorus of responses that suggest that women should think about what they wear, where they go and when and so on really don't help matters either. There's a picture doing the rounds at the moment that shows a woman holding up a sign that says something along the lines of the problem being that the message is "Don't get raped" rather than "Don't rape". Telling women "Don't get raped." is a pointless dialogue (not that there are usually two sides to that discussion) and seriously offensive. It blames the victim and in a great many cases positively reeks of slut shaming.
Ok, so there's anger. Women see themselves being attacked by men. So they tell men to stop it. This is where the wheels fall off the dialogue and badly so.
It's not the violent men who are being told this, nor the rapists. Their response would be likely to laugh and quite possibly punch the person doing the telling in the face. This response isn't likely to vary materially if it's a man doing the telling either. Men who don't assault women do not have much in the way of channels of communication with those who do that aren't also available to women, particularly with regards to this topic.
The men being told to stop raping women are the men who aren't doing it in the first place. Unsurprisingly when someone is told to stop doing something abhorrent that they're not actually doing, they get tetchy. That's nothing more nor less than guilt by association and rather tenuous association at that.
"But violence against women *is* committed by men!"
Yes it is, or at least close enough to being so that pointing out the women who also commit violent acts is seriously nit-picking. If men committed no more violence than women, we'd have a much calmer culture.
But! "All violence against women is committed by men" really REALLY isn't the same as "All men commit violence against women." Now women don't actually say that exact thing because women *know* this. But "Men commit violence against women." pops up regularly and is presented in the context of telling man that as men they have to take responsibility for this violence because it's certainly not the fault of women.
In that context, the word "all" or at the very least "most" is implied at the start of "Men commit violence against women." I've had plenty of women indignantly tell me that it's not but in the accusatory context in which it's delivered, it's no less offensively inclusive than "Homosexuals have AIDS." The word "all" isn't there but it really doesn't need to be.
So should women be expected to carefully phrase everything in order to placate men? We're back to placing the onus on the victims. Really not on.
Everyone take a few more deep breaths and maybe a couple of steps back.
What we have here, as far as I can see is two parties both agreeing that this violence is a disgusting thing which should not be tolerated. They're also both quite reasonably declaring that as they're not the ones committing the violence, that they shouldn't be held responsible. Ok, so who *should* be responsible?
Well...the men who actually *are* committing the violence. However, they're not here and they're not participating in this discussion, nor are they likely to. They don't *CARE*. Ok...is this a pointless exercise then? No. Really not. But let's not take the people who hate what's going on, arbitrarily divide them into two groups and then set them at each other's throats. Forget about taking responsibility. The blame game isn't going to work because those to whom the blame should be ascribed AREN'T PLAYING. So how do we engage them? How do we *make* them play?
I'm really not sure. I do note that there's actually not that many of them. They really do constitute a minority. Make sure that they stay a minority and don't allow them to blend with the wider community of men in order to hide.
The vast majority of men have to take the responsiblity, not for rape and assault but for ensuring that the very idea is taboo amongst your peers. They have to genuinely listen to and understand what women are saying about what makes them feel unsafe and what makes them cringe and what makes them feel that you're actually not taking this seriously. Listen to what actually constitutes assault and what constitutes consent. You may, in perfectly good faith be getting part of that badly wrong simply because things look so bloody different at the other end of a power gradient. Jokes trivialise this and make it unimportant. It really really HAS to be completely unacceptable. It also has to be acknowledged as something that's real. This can be done without guilt or self-excoriation. You don't think you're admitting to child abuse when you react badly to someone talking about punching a child. It's said over and over again, "Don't take it personally." This is hard when someone says that YOU are responsible and that in fact you are distrusted on sight just because you're male. It's a horribly sexist thing to have to take in but acknowledge that there's a really nastily necessary pragmatism behind it. This is NOT YOUR FAULT but that doesn't make it not real.
Women have to be prepared to differentiate between the wariness that we feel when an unknown man is in a potentially threatening context with us and how we construct this dialogue with men. Remember that we're not actually talking to the men who assault us, we're talking to the men who *don't* assault us and trying to get them to understand a vulnerability with which they have no real experience. Intellectual understanding is not the same as having the experience of sitting on the train staring straight ahead thinking "Please please don't pay attention to me." It's really really not. So let's stop telling our allies that they're horrible people who should be ashamed of themselves.
I'm in a strange position here. I have access to both points of view but I get the sense that speaking overtly with the voice of either gender will be taken with some resentment and a sense that I don't have a legitimate right to either of those voices.
So finally I'll speak with a voice that I really do feel I have a right to, that is as one of those who catches it from both sides. Transmen, transwomen, gay men and probably many others who I haven't thought of. We, by and large do not commit these acts, I suspect we're probably on a par with ciswomen in that respect.
We are the recipient of those acts as those who have some masculinity but who either reject it or who display it non-normatively. Transwomen also receive that special flavour of violence reserved for those being raped by generally homophobic men and who are then discovered to be in possession of a penis.
Despite being the victims of these acts, we are also suspected of them. We're denied access to services specifically for those who are assaulted in this way on the false basis that we're likely to commit those acts ourselves. Moreover, we're told that the factors that place us most at risk of being assaulted are our choice. We're told that we *choose* to be trans and/or queer. This is as comprehensive a blaming of the victim as it gets.
So we carry the fear of violence and on top of that we carry the fear that we will be refused sympathy and care if that violence occurs. This is not a baseless fear. Trans and queer people do get refused treatment at all levels from ambulance officers (who refuse to treat or even touch "it") through emergency and so on through the entire medical system.
Can we please please please stop shouting at each other and start talking instead?
Before I even start to address this, I'm going to say that this is a monstrously divisive issue and provokes immediate, vehement and defensive reactions from both men and women. I think that's partly because it's invariably framed as being a topic where men and women are on opposite sides in an intractible war of the sexes and I suspect that this is at least partly the problem.
Many of you are going to have immediate and distinctly visceral reactions to this topic. Please please let the churning bile settle a bit before you comment and please have a go at reading and genuinely trying to understand the parts that make you step firmly into your tribal territory and want to throw things. Also understand that that last bit wasn't just directed at you, is was also directed at him *points* and her *points again* and them clustered together in the corner *gestures vaguely*. Ok? Deep breaths.
The disconnect with this whole nasty mess was pointed up to me this morning while reading an account of a transman who was refused access to a womens' shelter. He had been in a men's shelter where, once being discovered to be trans, he was raped. He also faced difficulties in that men's shelters don't provide services relating to the needs of those possessing female anatomy. Whether they should is another question altogether but the stark fact is that they don't. So, homeless, and abused he presented to the womens' shelter and was refused entry on the grounds that he presented a danger to the residents, being as he was, entirely too masculine. This is not an isolated incident either. This happens regularly to both transmen and transwomen on the basis that they both carry the taints of femininity and masculinity. The former gets them assaulted and the latter gets them abused.
This isn't a diatribe about the problems produced by transphobia, spectacularly nasty though those are. What it is is an attempt to bridge the disconnect between the perceptions of men and women when it comes to that sort of exploitative violence with a brief look at those who are caught in the middle.
Ok, so the nasty fact is that a terrifying percentage of women are assaulted both in the context of rape and not and that violence is committed more or less entirely by men. Women are therefore wary as hell of men because you can't usually tell at first glance who's a sane, nice, non-violent person and who's a psycho that will drag you into the bushes at the first opportunity. This is the point where the men reading this are finding that their pulse is going up because they've heard this particular story a lot and they think they know where it's going. Chill. Now, most men are nice sane people who find the idea of violence abhorrent. Pretty much everyone knows this as well. The issue of just not being able to tell who's who is what so horribly fouls the water though. Even if only a tiny percentage of men *are* violent goons, you probably walk past a couple on the way to and from work each day, based simply on the law of averages. In other words, if you don't know the guy, there is in fact a non-trivial chance that he's genuinely dangerous. That's not the fault of every other man out there, it's simply a profoundly unpleasant fact.
Unsurprisingly, women are afraid and angry about the fact that they're collectively the subject of persistent, violent and singularly denigrating attacks. They want it to stop. The chorus of responses that suggest that women should think about what they wear, where they go and when and so on really don't help matters either. There's a picture doing the rounds at the moment that shows a woman holding up a sign that says something along the lines of the problem being that the message is "Don't get raped" rather than "Don't rape". Telling women "Don't get raped." is a pointless dialogue (not that there are usually two sides to that discussion) and seriously offensive. It blames the victim and in a great many cases positively reeks of slut shaming.
Ok, so there's anger. Women see themselves being attacked by men. So they tell men to stop it. This is where the wheels fall off the dialogue and badly so.
It's not the violent men who are being told this, nor the rapists. Their response would be likely to laugh and quite possibly punch the person doing the telling in the face. This response isn't likely to vary materially if it's a man doing the telling either. Men who don't assault women do not have much in the way of channels of communication with those who do that aren't also available to women, particularly with regards to this topic.
The men being told to stop raping women are the men who aren't doing it in the first place. Unsurprisingly when someone is told to stop doing something abhorrent that they're not actually doing, they get tetchy. That's nothing more nor less than guilt by association and rather tenuous association at that.
"But violence against women *is* committed by men!"
Yes it is, or at least close enough to being so that pointing out the women who also commit violent acts is seriously nit-picking. If men committed no more violence than women, we'd have a much calmer culture.
But! "All violence against women is committed by men" really REALLY isn't the same as "All men commit violence against women." Now women don't actually say that exact thing because women *know* this. But "Men commit violence against women." pops up regularly and is presented in the context of telling man that as men they have to take responsibility for this violence because it's certainly not the fault of women.
In that context, the word "all" or at the very least "most" is implied at the start of "Men commit violence against women." I've had plenty of women indignantly tell me that it's not but in the accusatory context in which it's delivered, it's no less offensively inclusive than "Homosexuals have AIDS." The word "all" isn't there but it really doesn't need to be.
So should women be expected to carefully phrase everything in order to placate men? We're back to placing the onus on the victims. Really not on.
Everyone take a few more deep breaths and maybe a couple of steps back.
What we have here, as far as I can see is two parties both agreeing that this violence is a disgusting thing which should not be tolerated. They're also both quite reasonably declaring that as they're not the ones committing the violence, that they shouldn't be held responsible. Ok, so who *should* be responsible?
Well...the men who actually *are* committing the violence. However, they're not here and they're not participating in this discussion, nor are they likely to. They don't *CARE*. Ok...is this a pointless exercise then? No. Really not. But let's not take the people who hate what's going on, arbitrarily divide them into two groups and then set them at each other's throats. Forget about taking responsibility. The blame game isn't going to work because those to whom the blame should be ascribed AREN'T PLAYING. So how do we engage them? How do we *make* them play?
I'm really not sure. I do note that there's actually not that many of them. They really do constitute a minority. Make sure that they stay a minority and don't allow them to blend with the wider community of men in order to hide.
The vast majority of men have to take the responsiblity, not for rape and assault but for ensuring that the very idea is taboo amongst your peers. They have to genuinely listen to and understand what women are saying about what makes them feel unsafe and what makes them cringe and what makes them feel that you're actually not taking this seriously. Listen to what actually constitutes assault and what constitutes consent. You may, in perfectly good faith be getting part of that badly wrong simply because things look so bloody different at the other end of a power gradient. Jokes trivialise this and make it unimportant. It really really HAS to be completely unacceptable. It also has to be acknowledged as something that's real. This can be done without guilt or self-excoriation. You don't think you're admitting to child abuse when you react badly to someone talking about punching a child. It's said over and over again, "Don't take it personally." This is hard when someone says that YOU are responsible and that in fact you are distrusted on sight just because you're male. It's a horribly sexist thing to have to take in but acknowledge that there's a really nastily necessary pragmatism behind it. This is NOT YOUR FAULT but that doesn't make it not real.
Women have to be prepared to differentiate between the wariness that we feel when an unknown man is in a potentially threatening context with us and how we construct this dialogue with men. Remember that we're not actually talking to the men who assault us, we're talking to the men who *don't* assault us and trying to get them to understand a vulnerability with which they have no real experience. Intellectual understanding is not the same as having the experience of sitting on the train staring straight ahead thinking "Please please don't pay attention to me." It's really really not. So let's stop telling our allies that they're horrible people who should be ashamed of themselves.
I'm in a strange position here. I have access to both points of view but I get the sense that speaking overtly with the voice of either gender will be taken with some resentment and a sense that I don't have a legitimate right to either of those voices.
So finally I'll speak with a voice that I really do feel I have a right to, that is as one of those who catches it from both sides. Transmen, transwomen, gay men and probably many others who I haven't thought of. We, by and large do not commit these acts, I suspect we're probably on a par with ciswomen in that respect.
We are the recipient of those acts as those who have some masculinity but who either reject it or who display it non-normatively. Transwomen also receive that special flavour of violence reserved for those being raped by generally homophobic men and who are then discovered to be in possession of a penis.
Despite being the victims of these acts, we are also suspected of them. We're denied access to services specifically for those who are assaulted in this way on the false basis that we're likely to commit those acts ourselves. Moreover, we're told that the factors that place us most at risk of being assaulted are our choice. We're told that we *choose* to be trans and/or queer. This is as comprehensive a blaming of the victim as it gets.
So we carry the fear of violence and on top of that we carry the fear that we will be refused sympathy and care if that violence occurs. This is not a baseless fear. Trans and queer people do get refused treatment at all levels from ambulance officers (who refuse to treat or even touch "it") through emergency and so on through the entire medical system.
Can we please please please stop shouting at each other and start talking instead?
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-20 02:31 pm (UTC)"we're not actually talking to the men who assault us, we're talking to the men who *don't* assault us and trying to get them to understand a vulnerability with which they have no real experience."
I think this is a very important point. There have been a number of times in the last 15 years that my husband has just looked blankly at me, when I've said something, whether it be not wanting to go somewhere, or ringing him and saying look for me in 10 minutes and he'll just vaguely say yeah, whenever, no rush, or he'll wonder why I locked the car doors. He is just SOOO oblivious to the risks (he grew up without even having sisters to hear it from).
Hmm, that makes me sound far more vulnerable than I usually feel.
I think there's a lot more I could say, but I've used it all up on trying to explain it to a husband who doesn't understand, but is angry that women who don't know him will veer away from him walking along a street.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-20 02:35 pm (UTC)So, good, decent men and women out there, when did you last raise money for a shelter for victims of domestic violence? Or write to your MP to protest a funding cut for a domestic violence officer, or to ask for money for one? (Anne Summers in Ducks on the Pond points out that when she moved to Sydney in 1976 there was not one domestic violence shelter - she and her friends raised the money, ran it on a shoe string and lobbied NSW parliament for funding.) You can write letters to the paper or call up radio stations every time another stupid footballer is violent to a woman - better yet, stop paying money to see the football games and tell the clubs that their attitude is unacceptable.
Oh yes, all of the above applies to women too, in fact to individuals of any gender and orientation, but the reality is that a lot of good, decent, non-rapist non-violent blokes don't see it as their issue and women carry the burden of the work.
In the meantime, I continue to understand why women in a domestic violence shelter would not want a man there, even if that man is a non-threatening individual. Victims of that kind of trauma can't afford to take risks and shouldn't be re-traumatised. I don't know what the answer to that is, but I do see that it's a serious problem, and I do think that it's the responsibility of all of us to work towards a solution.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-23 07:23 pm (UTC)