The Problem With Equality

Let me first preface this with a trigger warning for abuse. If you have issues triggered by discussion of gender-specific violence, you may wish to skip this particular post. I wish you well in your healing.

A close friend, whom I value, posted this last week. During the conversation about the problems with this statement, this came up:

Details removed for privacy and unnecessary triggers

Let me be clear. I don’t disagree with the spirit of either of these posts. I believe we’ve moved past violence as a solution in our community, which is why I’m against the death penalty. I don’t believe in judging people by their appearance, race, sexuality, or anything other than their actions (and even then, we are products of our history). I believe in gender as a spectrum, and certainly don’t believe in superiority of any one group of people. We are all flawed, and it is up to make the best of the lot we’ve been dealt in life. Overcoming adversity should not be punctuated by spite or revenge.

But that’s really the problem here. I don’t have a problem with equality.

These posts seem lovely in theory, but failing to address gender-specific violence means we also lose opportunities to support victims, and target offenders (and those who would be offenders if not for intervention).

When we say ‘No one should experience violence. This is a human issue, not a men’s issue’ to someone without significant sexism, that’s what they hear. They hear ‘Violence isn’t okay, no matter who you are’, but they weren’t the people with the hang ups in the first place.

When we say ‘No one should experience violence. This is a human issue, not a men’s issue’ to a man who beats his wife, he hears ‘Sometimes it’s the woman’s fault’, which is what he tells her anyway. He hears ‘This isn’t a men’s issue’. He doesn’t hear ‘cut that shit out, you’re not better than women’.

When we say ‘No one should experience violence. This is a human issue, not a men’s issue’ to a woman who is abused by her husband, she hears ‘Even though he beats me because I am female, it’s not about that’. She hears ‘Sometimes it’s the woman’s fault’, something male abusers get a fucking award for saying repeatedly.

When we decide that an issue needs to be treated with equality, we malign the very people who need to hear the message the loudest.

If you understand that violence is never okay, then you’re not the target audience of domestic violence campaigns.

They are designed for people who believe that it’s sometimes okay. It might only be okay if they’re a woman, or if they talk back, or if they’re gay, or if your husband doesn’t earn enough at work that week.

But these people? These are the ones who need to hear ‘don’t fucking hurt people’. Not the people who weren’t going to do it anyway.

I don’t believe in ignoring the message entirely. There are going to be some people who hear it better that way, and there are those who fall in the gaps of targeted campaigns. If nothing else, if we don’t continue the general message against violence, we risk not teaching it to future generations. ‘Don’t abuse people, fucknuts’ is an effective message that we need to continue teaching.

It’s just that it isn’t enough on its own. Not with our statistics the way they currently are.

One of my previous posts talks about vaccination being compared to rape, and the statistics of actual abuse. I won’t recap. You know what the numbers look like.

We talk ourselves into believing that we’re safe in our danger, and that women must have deserved it somehow. It’s the reason mothers sanction the abuse of their daughters. If we play by the rules, we’ll be safe and okay. If we’re not, clearly we did something to deserve it. The idea that maybe, just maybe, we are at the total mercy of someone else is too much for people to bear. If we only go out in pairs, and wear pantyhose, and don’t show skin, and we don’t leave the house after dark, we’ll be okay. Horrible things only happen to people who break the rules, right?

Fucking wrong, and we all know it. Still, it’s the main reason behind female-sanctioned violence against women. It’s also something that we can change by centering the blame where it belongs – with the abuser.

It’s bullshit that it’s 2015 and we’re still raping children and beating our partners. If there is anything we can do to reduce those numbers, we have a social obligation to do so. Particularly when it’s as minimal as campaigns targeted at key demographics for perpetrators.

Violence against women needs to remain a ‘men’s issue’ if for no other reason than because men who beat women don’t listen to them. If you’re a sexist fuck who believes all women are sluts and whores, you’re not particularly likely to listen to anything they have to say on power exchange and abuse. The change needs to be internal.

Men are more likely to listen to other men who call them out on their rape jokes and slapping their girlfriend around a bit and yelling out of car windows. The men who do horrible things to women because they are women will not listen to them if they’re telling them something they don’t want to hear. Something like ‘If you hit women, you’re a cunt’. They don’t listen to that.

When we declare equality, we miss valuable opportunities to change things from the inside. You’re already preaching to the converted when you tell people that they’re equal. The ones who agree already agreed before you said it. The ones who disagree never listened to you in the first place.

‘But Rori, men suffer at the hands of women too! They’re less likely to get custody and equal visitation, they’re emotionally repressed and seen as weak if they cry, and they aren’t believed when they’re raped and abused by women.’

I know. As the child of a violent mother, I understand the cruelty women are capable of handing out. I know it isn’t fair that men have less access to their children, and that our little boys are being taught not to cry.

This is another reason for targeted campaigns. Not against.

Some of these changes are ones we can make as parents regardless of gender. It is our responsibility to raise our sons to be confident, emotionally well-rounded individuals. It is up to fathers to present good role models for the men they wish their sons to be. It is up to mothers to demonstrate how women should treat their sons as they grow. Targeted campaigns for both sides of the coin are needed.

If our boys grew to be confident men, demonstrating clear communication of their thoughts and emotions, we could skip straight to ‘people shouldn’t hurt other people’. This is improving, but we’re far from there. We still present cardboard cut-out ideas of masculinity and femininity to our children, and when they grow up skewed, we are faced with having to fix entrenched concepts.

It’s much harder than just doing it right the first time.

We need to be empowering our children so that they can grow without the restrictions of gender stereotypes. Your little girl can still love pink and dresses and playing with dolls instead of trucks, but it’s important that she’s doing that because she wants to do it. Not because the other option means she’s a lesbian or something else silly. Little boys should be able to play with trucks and dolls and make up and tools.

In the words of another friend, “I am not raising babies, I am raising adults.”

That should be the aim. We are not fostering forever children. We are giving them the tools they need to leave the nest well-equipped not just to survive, but to thrive as their own human beings, with their own likes and dislikes.

We do no favours to our sons or daughters by sticking them in a mould just because that’s how you grew up. We also wear seatbelts now. Get with the times, please.

We need targeted campaigns for female-perpetrated violence, too. We certainly need better protections for male victims-of-crime, especially around rape and domestic violence. More services need to be made available, and misconceptions like ‘Women can’t rape men’ need to be removed.

Some of the improvement to male victim treatment will be a natural occurrence related to encouraging our sons to communicate their thoughts and emotions. When we teach our sons to be vulnerable, it becomes less shameful to talk about ‘weakness’ – like being the victim of violence. This is a reason for targeted campaigns, not against them.

I do not believe that all men are perpetrators of violence and/or sexism. I believe that people – men included – are largely good and have the best interests of other people at heart. I have suffered from both childhood and adulthood domestic violence at the hands of men, and this is still my stance.

Men are mostly good. They are mostly protectors and not abusers. They are mostly confidantes and not people you have to keep secrets about. This is why violence against women needs to remain a men’s issue.

Because all of you, and your sons and fathers and cousins and uncles and nephews and grandfathers, have such amazing potential to stop violence against women at the source. Men who will not listen to women.

It’s because men are overwhelmingly the champions of women that we need to continue conversations about how men can change things.

#NotAllMen shouldn’t be a hashtag in defense of men, but the start of conversations that women just can’t have.

Not All Men has the opportunity to turn into No Men. Men have the chance to say ‘No male friend of mine will be allowed to abuse women’. You can evoke change right at the very source.

We don’t say ‘Men shouldn’t hit women’ because we think you’re all going to do it.

We say it because we trust you to change a situation that we’re powerless in.

If the friends of my ex-partner had put on some hardcore peer pressure, he might not be on a suspended sentence for breaking into my house to try to kill me. If his friends had told him that his misogynistic, chauvinistic, hateful ways weren’t okay, maybe I wouldn’t wake up with panic attacks at night.

You can do something. You can turn NotAllMen into NoMen.

We’re counting on you.