Repression, DV & the Freudian left

Earlier this summer eleven Australian women were murdered over a three week period. It led to a debate on social media about domestic violence and how it might be tackled.

On one side of the debate were those who emphasised two things. First, that women are the victims of violence and men the perpetrators. Second, that the solution is for men to change, in particular, by becoming less repressed and by better expressing their emotions. For instance, one woman I engaged with ("Megwa") began by demanding that we "Fix the men". When I asked her what she meant by this, she replied "by taking down the patriarchal bs that inhibits teen boys from showing their emotions, oh sorry, fighting’s okay, but don’t cry."

a) The narrative

There is a strong tendency in these debates for the facts to be filtered to uphold a narrative of men as perpetrators and women as victims. This is despite the fact that men are considerably more likely than women to be the victims of violence (for instance, 70% of those murdered in Australia are men). 

It is true that men are also more likely to be the perpetrators, though not to the extent that those who believe in the narrative imagine. For instance, my female colleagues guessed that when it comes to domestic violence that 95% of the perpetrators are men. The real figure is not nearly this high. The NSW Government provides up to date data on those brought to court by police on charges of domestic violence (i.e. physical assault). In the period from October 2021 to September 2022, there were 10,790 men proceeded against by NSW police and 4,531 women, giving a roughly 70/30 split. 

If violence is caused by the socialisation of men, how then do you explain the 30% of domestic violence assaults that are perpetrated by women? There must be another explanation.

b) Men and emotions

There is a commonly held belief that problems in society are caused by boys being socialised to repress their emotions. If boys could be raised to be more girl-like in their emotions, the theory goes, then you would not have the pathologies of "toxic masculinity". 

This idea is taken so seriously that there are organisations in Australia which go to schools and conduct group therapy sessions for the boys to guide them to release their feelings as a future model of masculinity.

Where does this belief come from? It is a survival of left Freudianism, one of those "accretions" within the larger political culture. I'm not as well versed in left Freudianism as I'd like to be, but my current understanding of it runs as follows. Freud himself thought that repression led to discontent within the individual but that it was necessary for civilisation. The left Freudians, in the mid twentieth century, took a different approach. They thought that it was not enough to have a political revolution to reform society - this had been tried in places like Russia but had led only to a new type of authoritarianism. To succeed, there had to be a psychological transformation of the individual and this would occur when the individual ceased to repress their instincts, feelings and emotions.

You get a sense of this left Freudianism in the claims that masculinity is toxic because it leads men towards dominance and power which is exerted in oppressing women through acts of violence and that the path forward is for men to not be socialised to repress their emotions and feelings. In other words, we have a left Freudian claim that an authoritarian personality type is being created via psychological repression.

This is often joined together with another accretion within our political culture, namely the leftist belief that there are power structures which have denied humans an Edenic existence of living in peace, harmony and equality. In this case, the power structure most usually targeted is the patriarchy, which is held responsible for encouraging boys to repress their feelings.

The American feminist Gloria Jean Watkins (commonly known by her pen name bell hooks) wrote a book titled The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love (2004). In this work, she gives voice to these ideas about men. She complains that,

...masses of men have not even begun to look at the ways that patriarchy keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving. To know love, men must be able to let go the will to dominate.

She adds:

...by supporting patriarchal culture that socializes men to deny feelings, we doom them to live in states of emotional numbness. 

c) Criticisms

1. Lack of awareness

My first criticism of this common approach to ending male violence is that those who hold it aren't aware of where their ideas come from, i.e. that they are blindly following the accretions within modern political culture.

2. Rousseau

My second criticism is that there is a faulty assumption about human nature in this view, one that shares with Rousseau the idea that humans are good by nature but corrupted by society. This suggests that human nature is perfectible and that it is therefore reasonable to demand an end to male violence as an immediately achievable goal (some of those commenting on social media believe that it is within the power of men to stop other men from being violent). There is too little acknowledgement that human nature is flawed and that a complete eradication of violence is not a likely prospect, even in the most rationally ordered social settings.

3. Solipsism

Some of the women involved in the debate assume that if men are to have emotions they must be experienced and expressed in the same way as women - otherwise they do not exist. It is difficult to explain to these women that a man can have a rich inner life without being "emotional". Men are generally more able to be analytically detached from their feelings and to express them less overtly, but this does not mean that a man is incapable of love and other deeply felt inner states. 

Despite claiming that men are emotionally numb in a patriarchy, Gloria Jean Watkins makes two telling admissions. First, she admits that men are able to love women for who they are, whereas women are more likely to care for men on the basis of a man's performative role:

We struggle then, in a patriarchal culture, all of us, to love men. We may care about males deeply. We may cherish our connections with the men in our lives. And we may desperately feel that we cannot live without their presence, their company. We can feel all these passions in the face of maleness and yet stand removed...Caring about men because of what they do for us is not the same as loving males for simply being. When we love maleness, we extend our love whether males are performing or not. Performance is different from simply being. 

Second, she admits that she did not like her own partner opening up emotionally because it undermined her sense of his masculine strength:

When I was in my twenties, I would go to couples therapy, and my partner of more than ten years would explain how I asked him to talk about his feelings and when he did, I would freak out. He was right. It was hard for me to face that I did not want to hear about his feelings when they were painful or negative, that I did not want my image of the strong man truly challenged by learning of his weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

4. Raising boys

The idea that the key to raising boys is to encourage emotional vulnerability is not harmless, because it disrupts one important aspect in the raising of boys, namely the "make strong" ethos. It is normal and healthy for fathers to want to encourage physical and mental strength in their sons. This does not mean that boys or men should never seek help with problems, particularly if these are acute, but this is not the general mindset by which men seek to develop who they are as men.

5. Tackling violence

If the aim is to reduce the level of violence in society, it is important to understand what promotes it. The data suggests that violence is more likely to occur within a social underclass marked by drug and alcohol abuse, unemployment, homelessness and mental health issues. Anglicare Victoria has suggested that these factors are present in about 80% of cases of domestic violence. In cases of female homicide victims:

James and Carcach (1998) suggest that almost 85 per cent of victims, and a little over 90 per cent of offenders, belong to what can be described as an underclass in Australian society.

The aim should be, therefore, to do what can be done to limit the size of this underclass in if we wish to reduce the prevalence of violence. Asking ordinary men to cry more is not a targeted solution.

6. Repression & emotions

If the aim is to promote a healthier inner life for men, then the left Freudian idea of not repressing our feelings, instincts and urges is misguided. The better aim is to rationally order these feelings, instincts and urges both toward our own good and toward the common good. It is more in the failure to achieve this that our inner life is radically diminished and that we are cut off from sources of love and connectedness, i.e. that we become emotionally and spiritually damaged or broken. 

If we truly want to help men live an emotionally rich life, then we should encourage earlier family formation; a more stable culture of family life; an opportunity to provide and protect for a family; a more secure experience of fatherhood; a reasonable work/life balance, including an opportunity to cultivate male friendships within male social settings; an opportunity for serious participation within a religious tradition; an active participation within a polis; and a culture which connects men to their family lineage and to their own ethny and culture.

Mark Latham on DV

Never thought I'd be posting something in support of Mark Latham. He is a former leader of the Australian Labor Party, who lost the 2004 federal election to John Howard. In the video below he wins an argument with two journalists on the issue of domestic violence. He mentions during the interview statistics published by the NSW coroners court. I've looked these up and they are very interesting - I'll post on them soon.

Barrister speaks out against bias

Michael Challinger, a Melbourne barrister, has seen the family court system abused many times. He gives the following example:

My client Tom was at work when the police turned up. They served him with an intervention order, took him home and told him to pack a suitcase. If he returned home, or contacted his wife or children, he'd be facing two years' jail. He'd had no inkling this was coming.

The order was an interim one, granted ex parte. That means the court issued it in his absence, having heard only his wife's side of the story.

In theory, Tom could go to court and argue his case, but a hearing date was months away. With his wife now in sole possession of the family home, her lawyers came on heavy about a divorce and a property settlement. They hinted that if he played ball, he could start seeing his kids again.

It is difficult for men to contest the allegations:

Most men simply can't afford to keep paying out indefinitely for lawyers. They can't keep taking days off work. They can't stand not seeing their children for months on end, so they come to terms with the applicants. They consent to orders without admitting the allegations and then try to negotiate some child access.

Those who dig their heels in and contest the applications don't fare much better. Often, the paperwork doesn't even particularise the case they have to meet. Tom's application claimed he was "abusive and controlling". How? When? In what way? He'd find that out in court.

In any event, the act defines family violence so widely, it includes the sort of friction that occurs occasionally in even the happiest family: heated argument, raised voices, the silent treatment. I've seen an application succeed where the husband criticised his wife's cooking and (on a separate occasion) slammed a door. You can always find something a man's done wrong.

How to reform the situation? First, the definition of domestic violence needs to be tightened. It needs to be something more than a heated argument or the silent treatment. It should involve physical violence, or the real threat of violence. Second, men who do have an ex parte decision made against them should be guaranteed a court hearing within a specified period of time (a month?). Third, the paperwork should detail the specific accusations made against the men. Fourth, if a woman is found to have fabricated an accusation it should be considered negatively when parenting orders are finally made.

What are the risks?

I read a piece in the Daily Mail about a talented young woman who took her own life despite the best efforts of her family to help her. A very sad story which I wouldn't normally comment on here, except that the statistics at the end caught my attention, namely that in Australia over 2500 people commit suicide each year and over 60,000 make an attempt.

This reminded me of my recent post on domestic violence in which a mother of daughters claimed that "I worry about the most lethal and emotionally devastating threat to each of my girls — being in a relationship."

The mother was claiming that being in a relationship would expose her daughters to the lethal threat of domestic violence. She used the oft repeated, but false, claim that "Recent statistics show domestic family violence claims more Australian women’s lives and causes more ill health than all other well-known preventable risks."

Obviously this isn't the case. About 100 women a year in Australia are killed by their intimate partners (i.e. via domestic violence). Of these about 90% occur amongst an unemployed underclass.

In Australia women are 1 in every 3 of those who commit suicide. That means that about 830 women will commit suicide in Australia each year. Women are 60% of those who attempt suicide, which means that 36,000 women will attempt suicide.

So what is the greatest risk to women? It is not harm by a male partner, but self-harm. Women are 8 times more likely to be killed by self-harm than by domestic violence and 360 times more likely to attempt self-harm than to be killed by an intimate partner.

Of course it is a worthy aim nonetheless to try to reduce the number of deaths by domestic violence. It is a pity, though, that the issue should be framed as one of men oppressing women. The statistics are that 50% of those assaulted in domestic violence cases are male; 30% of those injured are male; and 25% of those killed are male. In 2010 28 men were killed in Australia by female partners.

So women are the majority of victims but men make up a substantial minority. So why focus on women alone as victims?

The answer is that it fits into a certain ideology. According to patriarchy theory, men use violence against women in a systematic way in order to uphold a gender supremacy. The theory claims that masculinity itself was created on the basis of this violent suppression of women. Logically, if you believe the ideology, you will think that the solution to domestic violence lies with all men changing their attitudes toward women and abandoning masculinity and privilege.

We should be encouraging those participating in domestic violence campaigns to drop the ideological approach in favour of a more practical outlook. And a test of this is whether the campaigners are willing to see domestic violence in general as a problem, and not reduce it to a male oppressor/female victim scenario.

There does exist a group attempting to influence the debate called One in Three. I especially like their page dealing with misleading statistics.

The biggest threat to your daughter?

The Daily Telegraph is a major newspaper here in Australia. In an opinion section it ran a piece titled "The biggest threat to my daughters is them being in a relationship". The author, Jodie Whittaker, writes:

I worry about the most lethal and emotionally devastating threat to each of my girls — being in a relationship.

So there you have it. A young woman being a relationship with a young man is now considered a lethal and emotionally devastating threat.

It's not difficult to respond to this kind of thing in terms of facts. Jodie Whittaker gets a number of things wrong. She writes:

Recent statistics show domestic family violence claims more Australian women’s lives and causes more ill health than all other well-known preventable risks.

That's not a recent statistic. It is a rogue statistic that has been doing the rounds since the 1990s (I have written about this statistic here and here). Suffice it to say that an Australian woman is about eight times more likely to self-inflict mortal wounds than to suffer such wounds from another person (i.e. the bigger threat to Jodie Whittaker's daughters is themselves not their boyfriends).

Similarly, it is not true that women are safer alone than when partnered. In 1996 the Australian Bureau of Statistics released a Women's Safety Survey which found that single women were 250% more likely to experience violence than those living with a partner (see here). It should also be noted that about 90% of cases of intimate partner homicide occur amongst a social underclass in which neither partner is employed.

The problem is that we can correct misinformation until the cows come home, but these kind of attitudes will persist, despite the fact that it is more natural for the men and women of a community to feel allegiance to each other rather than being set apart as enemies.

There is something about modern society that encourages this setting apart of men and women. Perhaps it is the loss of complementary relationships in which men and women needed each other and experienced a sense of completion through their relationship with the opposite sex. In such societies, sex distinctions were generally celebrated and formalised within culture, for instance, through acts of courtesy.

Perhaps too it is the use of sexual politics as a battering ram to gain a competitive advantage in the workplace (and moral status in society in general).

Or maybe it has to do with loyalty between men and women not fitting into the logic of a modern liberal society run along technocratic lines (channelling Jim Kalb here). Such a loyalty is "opaque" (i.e. not bureaucratically administered) and therefore antiquated or irrational in modernist eyes.

Or it could be that there is a fear that without the demonization of husbands, that young women might be tempted to see the roles of wife and mother more positively.

A feminist challenge: what to do when the facts are against you

What to do about domestic violence? Two American professors have pointed to research which shows very clearly that women are much safer when married to the biological father of their children:

This social media outpouring makes it clear that some men pose a real threat to the physical and psychic welfare of women and girls. But obscured in the public conversation about the violence against women is the fact that some other men are more likely to protect women, directly and indirectly, from the threat of male violence: married biological fathers. The bottom line is this: Married women are notably safer than their unmarried peers, and girls raised in a home with their married father are markedly less likely to be abused or assaulted than children living without their own father.

Just how strong is this research? Well, look at the graph below. The first column shows the incidence of violence (toward children) in families with married biological parents; the highest one (over ten times higher) shows that for a single parent with a partner.

And there's this graph:

This time the graph shows domestic violence towards women. The two lowest lines, the ones which barely register, show levels of domestic violence for married couples. The highest one represents single mother with children families. It's difficult to tell exactly but it looks like the single mother rate of domestic violence is over 30 times that for married women.

The evidence seems irrefutable. Women are safest when married.

But that's not a conclusion that feminists are likely to want to draw. So what is a feminist to do?

Enter Australian feminist Clementine Ford. She remains undeterred and argues as follows:

The concept of male-bestowed ‘protection’ is one that harms rather than helps women. A society which operates along paternalistic lines is one which undermines the rights of women to exercise their own autonomy and protect themselves. Instead of advising women to tether themselves to a ‘decent’ man who’ll willingly marry them and protect them from the world’s villains, we should instead be enforcing a zero tolerance policy towards those people who abuse. Men are not the conservators of women, and it’s not their morally bestowed obligation to protect us. As human beings, it is the moral obligation of everybody to refrain from harming others.

Her logic goes something like this:

1. As a feminist and a liberal modernist she holds individual autonomy to be the key good in life
2. It is not autonomous for women to depend on men for their physical safety
3. Therefore, society must be remade so that women can protect themselves and not need help from men
4. This requires society to make sure that no man ever commits an act of violence against women
5. Therefore society had better make sure that no man ever commits an act of violence against women

The moral thing, thinks Clementine Ford, is for women to be autonomous, therefore we must insist that people act in ways that conform to this moral outlook.

Note that the primary concern of Clementine Ford is not to safeguard women and children from violence. It is to promote female independence from men. That is why she will never accept "male-bestowed protection" even if it is effective in terms of minimising the risk of women experiencing violence.

The problem with Clementine Ford's approach is a basic one, namely that she makes the good of autonomy the sole, overriding moral aim.

That can't end well. It's dangerous to think that there is one single good that society has to be forced to conform to. Better to recognise a range of goods that have to be ordered into a workable framework.

A scientist gets it right

For some decades now, feminists have been arguing that society has been arranged to give men an unearned privilege at the expense of women and that male privilege has been upheld through acts of violence against women. Therefore, domestic violence is a product of patriarchy. The solution to domestic violence is, in this view, to deconstruct traditional masculinity.

There are many arguments to be made against this feminist view. One of them is that women commit acts of domestic violence as well. Women have no reason to commit domestic violence to uphold the patriarchy; therefore, there must be other reasons for its existence.

A new study carried out by Dr Elizabeth Bates of the University of Cumbria has found that women are more likely than men to initiate acts of verbal and physical aggression:

Psychologists at the University of Cumbria questioned 1,104 young men and women using a scale of behaviour which ranged from shouting and insulting to pushing, beating and using weapons.

They discovered that women were ‘significantly’ more likely to be  verbally and physically aggressive to men than vice versa.

They concluded that violence was linked to controlling behaviour such as checking up on partners and persuading them not to see certain friends.

Interestingly, Dr Bates has drawn the logical conclusion:

Study leader Dr Elizabeth Bates said: ‘The stereotypical popular view is still one of dominant control by men. That does occur but research over the last ten to 15 years has highlighted the fact that women are controlling and aggressive in relationships too.’

She said scientists may have to think again about the reasons for male violence against women, which previous studies said arose from ‘patriarchal values’ in which men are motivated to seek to control women’s behaviour, using violence if necessary.

She said other research also looked at men in prisons and women in refuges, rather than typical members of the public.

What colour ribbon do you wear for this?

I browsed the news this morning and found two news items relating to domestic violence.

In the first incident, an American woman pushed her husband off a cliff eight days after their wedding because she was having second thoughts. In the second, an Englishwoman tried to hire someone to kill her husband after he found out about her various affairs.

This kind of domestic violence happens and is reported in the newspapers but it simply doesn't exist when it comes to campaigns against family violence. In these campaigns, such as the White Ribbon campaign, it is always assumed that men are the perpetrators and women the victims.

Such is the strength of the "male oppressor/female victim" narrative in our times.

16 male victims don't count?

The Melbourne Herald Sun ran a feature on domestic violence today. The good thing about the report is that it includes statistics from Victoria Police showing not only violence of men against women, but violence of women against men (and also violence in same sex relationships).

According to Victoria Police records, in the last financial year there were 44 homicide offences "in a family violence context." These offences include murder, attempted murder and manslaughter.

So what is the breakdown by gender? Of the 44 homicide offences, 28 victims were women or girls and 16 were men or boys.

Now that does show that women were the victims in the majority of cases. However, 37% of the victims were male, i.e. a significant proportion.

It's therefore disappointing that, having given these statistics, the rest of the report assumes that domestic violence is something that men do to women. The reporter is stuck on the idea that men are to be always thought of as oppressors and women as victims. Here is the type of language used in the report:

[the data] is being revealed today...to raise awareness of, and prevent, men's violence against women.

...CEO of the peak body Domestic Violence Victoria, Fiona McCormack, said it wasn't good enough that women were still not safe in their own homes.

...Det-Acting Supt Binyon said the statistics showed "women face a number of significant risks of violence from people that they know".

So the 16 male victims don't count? Why not, if you're against domestic violence, seek to tackle all domestic violence, rather than just a part of it? The answer, I'm afraid, is that there are people with an ideological view of domestic violence, who believe that men as an entire class benefit from domestic violence as a means to suppress women and that masculinity was created to enforce male privilege over women.

People who hold this view will then argue that violence against women by men is widespread and systemic; that it is supported within a traditional male culture; that it benefits all men; and that it is enacted by all social classes of men. What then becomes the solution to domestic violence? If all this is true, then the solution is to deconstruct masculinity and male "privilege" and to hold all men responsible for the problem.

That is currently the view of the people in charge. It ignores the fact that historically men have made considerable sacrifices to keep the women in their families safe from harm; that violence against women was always very strongly rejected within traditional masculine culture; and that domestic violence is not spread evenly throughout the community but is concentrated amongst those who are unemployed and who have drug, alcohol and mental health issues.

One final point. The report also included figures on the total number of domestic violence "attacks" (which include assaults, harassment, property damage and so on). It is true that a large majority of these attacks had a female victim (29,064 were male on female, 6,122 were female on male).

However, it's interesting to note the statistics for same sex assaults. There were 341 attacks within lesbian relationships. The percentage of lesbians as part of the population is usually given as below 1%, which would mean that there is a somewhat higher incidence of violence in these relationships. But how could that be if domestic violence is about upholding male "privilege"?

Similarly, there were 460 attacks within male homosexual relationships. Again, what would the point of these attacks be, if domestic violence is to be explained in terms of male oppression of women?

The demonisation of boys

From Herald Sun columnist Wendy Tuohy:

But there are themes emerging from the latest debate about what is now known as "rape culture" that some parents of boys are finding very disturbing, with good reason. The subtext of some of the discussion is that teen boys are such forces of nature as to be potential sexual predators just waiting to happen.

The sense that inside every sweet-faced teenage boy there is a sex offender waiting to get out is real enough to be discussed among some parents.

I was recently asked the following by a parent of a little girl: "Do you feel it's a bigger responsibility to raise boys now than it is to raise a girl? I only ask because a friend of mine with three sons says when she tells people she has boys they pity her. She feels like boys are becoming second-class citizens.

"She said if she had a girl she would raise her to be strong, empowered and independent. But with boys you have to concentrate on ways to make sure they don't grow up as little rapists."

At which point I nearly spat out my coffee.

It's interesting to track the way that ideas permeate into society. I've been criticising for a long time now feminist theories which claim that men use violence to uphold a privilege over women. According to these theories, violence against women is systemic, it is embedded into the construction of masculinity and it is widespread amongst all classes of men.

You might say that such theories are just the product of a feminist fringe, but look how they spread over time. There are now suburban mums who are so worried about a "rape culture" that they feel pity for those mothers who have boys instead of girls and they are focused on making sure that their sons aren't raised to be rapists.

You can't rely on common sense to shield a society from the harm of such theories: they need to be actively criticised. I have to say that one of the good things the men's movement has done is to push back against the idea of a "rape culture" in which men (supposedly) have to be educated not to rape women.

Maybe men weren't to blame

We've had a spate of young women murdered in Melbourne over the past few years. Many of the culprits, it turned out, had a very long history of crime and were on parole when they committed the murders. It has led to a review of the parole system here.

That hasn't stopped ordinary men getting blamed for the violence. There is a "white ribbon" campaign here which is based on the idea that violence against women is a product of traditional masculinity, i.e. that men commit violence against women to uphold male dominance and privilege in society. The conclusion is that violence against women is very widespread and that the solution is for ordinary men to change their attitudes toward women by renouncing both violence and privilege.

A typical story from the media was written by a white ribbon campaigner, Andrew O'Keefe, after the murder of a young women, Sarah Cafferkey. He wrote,

now the death of Sarah Cafferkey has shaken us all over again...On the best estimates, one in three or four Australian women experiences violence in her lifetime at the hands of a man...For me, that's a fundamental injustice. Why isn't my daughter as safe as my sons in this world, or my wife as safe as my mates?

...If we truly want that injustice to end, however, we must be the ones who end it...every time I behave in a way that lessens respect for women, I'm supporting the belief that men have rights and privileges greater than those of women.

O'Keefe is seriously misinformed if he believes that his daughters are more at risk of violence than his sons - it is very much the other way round.

But what I most dislike about such writing is the insinuation that the average man is open to the idea of bashing women. Maybe there are some men out there like that, but when I was young the very first law of the male moral code was that you were never to hit a woman. And that belief was very directly based on a traditional masculine ideal of being a provider and protector of women.

I suspect, if anything, that the real problem might come, not from a culture of patriarchy, but from a more chaotic post-patriarchal culture. Some of the lyrics of songs coming out of the more matriarchal ghetto culture show a disrespect for women that would have been completely alien to the Australian culture of, say, the 1980s.

Which brings me to my main point. Andrew O'Keefe wrote a column blaming the ordinary male for the death of Sarah Cafferkey. But it has now been revealed in the media that her murderer, Steven James Hunter, was a heavy user and dealer of the drug crystal meth or "ice" - a drug that is notorious for its link to violent crime. According to the Herald Sun:

A surge in vicious attacks, including killings, linked to the drug ice has alarmed Victoria's police and judiciary. In at least 12 murders committed or tried by courts over the past two years, crystal methamphetamine was used by the killer or was otherwise a suspected factor in the crime.

Isn't it more realistic to link Steven James Hunter's violence to his drug use and long record of anti-social criminality (he had murdered previously)? Why should the average hard-working family man be blamed for having caused his crimes?

More reasons to oppose the White Ribbon campaign

The White Ribbon campaign wants to oppose domestic violence - an admirable aim. Unfortunately it is run on the basis of a particular ideology, one which makes these claims:

• that domestic violence is gendered: that it is to be understood as violence committed by men against women
• that domestic violence is systemic: that it is part of the norms of a traditional society and is to be found amongst all groups of men and is widely prevalent in society
• that a society can rid itself of violence by dismantling traditional gender roles, traditional social norms and by creating a new equal, non-hierarchical and non-patriarchal society

The campaign has now been picked up by the Melbourne City Council. The Lord Mayor, Robert Doyle, has therefore exaggerated the prevalence of domestic violence by making this claim:

We know that one in three women has experienced violence. We also know that it is the single biggest cause of premature death among women aged 15-44.

You would think that he would stop and think for a moment before making such outlandish claims. There are women killed by domestic violence but the numbers involved are very small compared to the deaths of young women from car accidents, suicide and cancer. The Lord Mayor is simply repeating a rogue statistic that is never challenged because it is politically useful to those pushing a particular cause.

The Melbourne City Council has also committed itself to creating:

alternative models of masculinity for men and boys in the media and advertising

Do we really want feminist ideologues to be in charge of creating "alternative models of masculinity"? And do we really want to allow the slander against men to remain unchallenged, the slanderous claim that traditional masculinity is oriented toward violence against women rather than the physical protection of women?

And then there's this:

The We Need to Talk strategy, to go before a council meeting on Tuesday, argues that men's violence against women is an expression of "gendered power, that is, the power that men...have over women and children".

Here we have the assumption that men have power at the expense of women and children - even to the extent of the physical harm of women and children.  If you really believed this to be true, then you would have to set out to bring men down in society. You would see expressions of male authority in society in a negative light, as a source of oppression and injustice.

So even though fighting domestic violence is a worthy cause we should have nothing to do with the White Ribbon campaign. We should instead support those who wish to combat all forms of domestic violence (including violence committed by women) and who are willing to admit that there is a statistical link between such violence and poverty, unemployment, mental illness and alcohol and drug abuse.

Criticism of White Ribbon Day in the mass media

Here's some good news. A week ago I again criticised White Ribbon Day, a day when men are asked to wear ribbons to show their opposition to domestic violence. Unfortunately, the White Ribbon campaign is dominated by a feminist ideology which only recognises men as perpetrators of violence; which holds traditional social norms to be at fault for violence; and which exaggerates the extent of violence.

Bob McCoskrie, the national director of Family First NZ, wrote in to support my stance and to point out that he made similar criticisms of White Ribbon Day in a column in the New Zealand Herald last year. His column is very well written: it is clearly explained, balanced and has a lot of supporting information. It's a model of how we could get a point across in the mass media.

The comments from readers were very supportive, but as you might guess Bob McCoskrie was attacked by the political class for his stance:

Women's groups and political leaders have rounded on Family First director Bob McCoskrie for refusing to wear a white ribbon today to oppose violence against women.

I went and looked up the Family First NZ site. It's very good. Some of its policies that are worth considering include:

• optional income splitting for couples for tax purposes
• considering fault when allocating levels of child support to remove economic incentives to divorce
• child support to take into account the income levels of both parents
• presumptive shared parenting
• measures to reduce divorce rates, including affordable premarital counselling 

The ideological madness of White Ribbon Day

Unfortunately, the white ribbon day campaign in Australia is gaining momentum. It's being presented to men as a way to signal opposition to domestic violence. But in reality it's a sneaky way to get men to accept a radical feminist ideology.

What is this radical ideology? It's the idea that men use violence against women as a means of imposing patriarchal rule. That leads feminists to emphasise:

• that domestic violence is gendered: that it is to be understood as violence committed by men against women
• that domestic violence is systemic: that it is part of the norms of a traditional society and is to be found amongst all groups of men and is widely prevalent in society
• that a society can rid itself of violence by dismantling traditional gender roles, traditional social norms and by creating a new equal, non-hierarchical and non-patriarchal society

But such claims run up against the following realities:

• a significant percentage of violence is committed by women not men (here)
• violence is concentrated amongst an underclass and some ethnic groups (e.g. Aborigines) (here and here)
• violence is strongly linked to alcoholism, unemployment and homelessness (here)
• traditional social norms amongst men did not condone rape or violence against women
• women are safer when in relationships with men than when alone (here)
• violence against women is not as prevalent as claimed in the false statistics peddled by the white ribbon day campaign (e.g. see here and here)
• the shift toward a matriarchal feminist culture has not, so far, led to an increasing respect for women, nor to self-respecting behaviour by women, and has, if anything, encouraged rather than discouraged the rise of a "thug" culture amongst men. (at the end here)

The white ribbon day people have explained their ideological approach in documents at their website. For instance, Stephen Fisher has authored a paper titled From violence to coercive control: renaming men's abuse of women. (It's currently the first paper listed at the site.)

It's an extraordinary document - a kind of ideological madness. Let me give you one example. According to Stephen Fisher we shouldn't understand domestic violence as being about acts of physical violence. If we do this, then we might start to think that non-violent men are innocent of patriarchal control. Fisher complains that,

the focus on physical acts allows a distinction to be made between good and bad men. For example, some people may say that most well-meaning men do not perpetrate physical or sexual violence against women. This allows men to believe that if they are not hitting women, then they are not violent and are not the target of violence prevention efforts. In fact many women victims report that they feel most trapped and fearful when the frequency of physical violence decreases.

According to the patriarchy theory of domestic violence, the violence has to be systemic. That's why Fisher isn't keen on making a distinction between good and bad men and why he favours a broader definition of domestic violence to include:

emotional, sexual, financial and spiritual violence

Yes, now there is even a category of "spiritual violence" against women (no, I don't know what this means).

Fisher also makes very clear the ideological distinctions he wants to draw. He wants us to take a "profeminist" view of domestic violence, which means a belief that,

men’s violence against women happens because individual men are supported to perpetrate this violence by the social context of gendered inequalities in a patriarchal society. Ignoring these inequalities is both a symptom and outcome of seeing men’s violence against women primarily as a medical or individual issue.

So the right approach, according to Fisher, is to see domestic violence as being a product of gender inequality in a patriarchal society. The wrong approach is to see it as a medical or individual issue which he explains as follows:

Many of the ways that men’s violence against women is commonly presented either implicitly or explicitly reinforce the idea that there is something wrong with the perpetrator (and sometimes the family or even the victim) that needs addressing. It is said that he may have a problem with anger, alcohol, communication skills, conflict resolution, childhood trauma, or even have ‘sexist attitudes’.

This way of naming the problem results in solutions that diagnose these perpetrators with some kind of ‘disorder’ or ‘problem’ and then devise a therapeutic intervention to 'fix’ them.

Fisher has other ideas. He believes the fault lies with social norms:

Firstly our dominant culture and everyday social norms support men’s superiority and women’s inferiority. Secondly it is not necessarily the case that men are merely ill-informed. There are distinct advantages for men to continue to hold and act on these beliefs, not the least of which is control over women. So while violence may be perpetrated by individuals this is done within the context of wider social norms.

He doesn't want treatments for those men with anger management issues. He wants men to identify themselves as privileged, with all the loss of moral status that entails:

So men’s violence against women is not simply the action of a bad (or mad) man losing his temper and hitting his ‘loved-one’. Nor is the issue one of men simply needing to develop more respect for women. It is true that perpetrators have little respect for women but the central issue is their desire for control over women rather than their lack of respect. The issue is one of systematic power inequalities and a society that supports men’s entitlement to a range of gender privileges.

White ribbon ideology is designed, ultimately, to get men to assent to the idea that they are privileged oppressors of women. If that is true, then men get to be at the bottom of the totem pole of identity politics. They then have to work on themselves, doing what they can to humbly listen to and learn from those they have oppressed. As Fisher advises in the conclusion to his paper:

men who are committed to supporting this important work must continuously strive to listen to and read the work of feminists who have worked tirelessly for decades for gender equality.

We're sceptical too Elizabeth

Elizabeth Gilbert has written a new book titled Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage.

Laura Wood gave it a hostile review over at The Thinking Housewife:

Contrary to its title, this book is not at all about making peace with marriage, at least not marriage to a man. It’s a misty-eyed paean to feminine independence and an ignorant and misleading appraisal of the institution of marriage. It is shockingly anti-male ...

As Laura Wood points out, it's odd that people should accept marriage advice from someone like Elizabeth Gilbert. She was married in her 20s, but divorced when she decided she never wanted to commit to children. She has finally settled aged 40 with a 55-year-old Brazilian man and some dogs.

There are two highly objectionable messages in her book. The first is that women should marry as late as possible, the later the better:

Marriage is not a game for the young. Wait as long as you humanly can to get married, and your odds of staying with one partner forever will increase dramatically. If you wait until you are, say, 35 years old to get married, your odds of success are pretty terrific.

She justifies this by claiming that 85% of women who marry before the age of 23 will divorce and that the divorce rate continues to decrease for women in their 30s.

The statistic is misleading. It's true that there is a high divorce rate for teen marriages, but the risk declines rapidly for those in their early 20s:

According to a 2002 report from the Centers for Disease Control, 48% of people who enter marriage when under age 18, and 40% of 18- and 19-year-olds, will eventually divorce. But only 29% of those who get married at age 20 to 24 will eventually divorce—very similar to the 24% of the 25-and-older cohort.

Furthermore, the risk of divorce for those marrying in their 20s is much lower if the participants are not high school dropouts, if there is a reasonable income, if the parents are not divorced, if there is church attendance and if the couple wait until after the wedding to have children. Depending on these factors the chance of divorce can vary from 10% to 90%.

I would agree that it's probably better not to marry as teens. Most people are still developing into their adult personalities at this time, so the potential of people growing unexpectedly apart is much greater.

But the idea of women waiting until the last possible moment to marry is dramatically wrong. It will lead many women to end up just like Elizabeth Gilbert herself: childless and settling with a much older man. Women are at the peak of their fertility, beauty, sexuality and emotional responsiveness in their 20s. It's when they have the most opportunity to marry well and have children.

And if women wait to the last possible moment, then men are likely to have already adapted to a bachelor lifestyle and be much less suitable husband material.

The second flawed message in Elizabeth Gilbert's book is that women are held back from marriage by a Marriage Benefit Imbalance. She claims that marriage benefits men much more than women - and again she argues her case with some questionable research:

Interviewer: Do you think marriage is more beneficial to men or women?

Elizabeth Gilbert: This is not my opinion, but a fact backed up by every conceivable study: Marriage is far, far more beneficial to men than women. Married men perform far better in life than single men, and are happier than single men, and live longer than single men, and earn more money than single men.

Married women, on the other hand, make less money than single women, suffer more from depression than single women, don't live as long as single women, and are more likely to be the victims of violence than single women. This has always been the case, which does fly in the face of the mythology and romanticizing of marriage that is epidemic in our culture.

The "Western Style Problem" my friend Ting in Laos describes is the moment that women start deciding that they might want to delay or even defer marriage - understandable, given the facts - which tends to throw a wrench in the workings of traditional family structure. Social conservatives lament this, but maybe the bigger question needs to be, "How can we create family and marriage structures where women don't lose so big?" Maybe if that were the question being confronted, more women might be interested in embracing marriage again.

What nonsense. Her claims are not "backed up by every conceivable study". There is plenty of research showing that women, too, benefit from marriage rather than "losing big". Consider, for instance, the following information from a Maggie Gallagher column.

First, on the issue of violence:

Marriage lowers the risk that both men and women will become victims of violence, including domestic violence. A 1994 Justice Department report, based on the National Crime Victimization Survey, found that single and divorced women were four to five times more likely to be victims of violence in any given year than wives ...

On longevity:

Married people live longer and healthier lives. The power of marriage is particularly evident in late middle age. When Linda Waite and a colleague, for example, analyzed mortality differentials in a very large, nationally representative sample, they found an astonishingly large "marriage gap" in longevity: nine out of ten married guys who are alive at 48 will make it to age 65, compared with just six in ten comparable single guys (controlling for race, education, and income). For women, the protective benefits of marriage are also powerful, though not quite as large. Nine out of ten wives alive at age 48 will live to be senior citizens, compared with just eight out of ten divorced and single women.

On wealth:

Married people not only make more money, they manage money better and build more wealth together than either would alone. At identical income levels, for example, married people are less likely to report "economic hardship" or trouble paying basic bills. The longer you stay married, the more assets you build; by contrast, length of cohabitation has no relationship to wealth accumulation. On the verge of retirement, the average married couple has accumulated assets worth about $410,000, compared with $167,000 for the never-married and $154,000 for the divorced. Couples who stayed married in one study saw their assets increase twice as fast as those who had remained divorced over a five-year period.

On mental health:

Marriage is good for your mental health. Married men and women are less depressed, less anxious, and less psychologically distressed than single, divorced, or widowed Americans. By contrast, getting divorced lowers both men's and women's mental health, increasing depression and hostility, and lowering one's self-esteem and sense of personal mastery and purpose in life ...

Wives are also much less likely to commit suicide than single, divorced, or widowed women.

Consider what Elizabeth Gilbert is really arguing. She is claiming that despite all the hard work and sacrifices that men undertake for their families, that women would be better off single. What kind of a message does this send men? It suggests that men ought not to make the effort to begin with.

The truth is that Elizabeth Gilbert did not recoil from marriage because of a Marriage Benefit Imbalance. She did so because she was brought up with a liberal ideal of autonomy for women - an ideal that she is now struggling with: she is sticking with it even whilst she wonders what life would be like with some other more traditional ideal.

I'll go on to discuss this in a future post.

Liberal radicalism in France: fidelity a pathology, yelling a crime

Maryse Vaillant is a prominent French psychologist who has written a book, Men, love, fidelity. She says that the aim of the book is to "rehabilitate infidelity".

Her argument (according to newspaper reports) is that infidelity is essential to the psychic functioning of some men, making infidelity "almost unavoidable". If this were accepted it could be "very liberating" for women.

But her argument goes much further than this, it becomes much more radical. She claims that those men who are faithful might have something wrong with them - that they might be suffering from a pathology, a too rigid concept of duty:

However, in Miss Vaillant's book she insists that fidelity is not, by definition proof of love. In fact, "pathological monogamists" in many cases lack the strength of mind to take a mistress, she claims.

"They are often men whose father was physically or morally absent ... during their childhood. These men have a completely idealised view of their father and the paternal function," she said.

"They lack suppleness and are prisoners to an idealised image of a man of duty."

She has inverted the normal view of fidelity. Now it is the faithful men who are weak for not taking a mistress and immoral for following a principle of duty.

What's going on here? I don't have a chance to read the book, but it does seem as if Madame Vaillant is taking a liberal argument to a more radical conclusion. In the liberal view, the moral thing is to be self-sovereign and to do what we will. Therefore, the aim of reform is to remove impediments to our individual choice.

The older morality becomes one of these impediments. It's too rigid - it states clearly that the aim is to be faithful. This restricts what we can choose for ourselves. It makes us a "prisoner" to our sense of moral duty.

The hero is then the one who breaks through moral taboos (impediments). So it is the adulterer, in Madame Vaillant's eyes, who is the healthy one with the strength of mind to act for his own purposes.

It's true that liberalism also states that our actions must not limit the similar freedom of others. But, according to Madame Vaillant, women can find it liberating to accept that their husbands need to have a mistress. So adultery passes that little qualification.

I won't embark here on a defence of fidelity as an ideal in marriage. My intention has simply been to point out how radical liberalism is when applied consistently to such issues. However, there is one curious flaw in Madame Vaillant's argument that's worth pointing out.

According to her, faithful men suffer a pathology because their fathers were absent during their childhood. So father absence is recognised as a bad thing - a source of pathology. But wouldn't men taking mistresses create more father absence in society? Most men find it hard enough to combine a career and family. What if they have to combine career, family and mistress? Won't they be spending less time with their kids? So wouldn't then adultery (the supposedly good thing) create more father absence (the bad thing, the source of pathology)?

All of which raises another question. Does liberalism at least leave people alone to do their own thing, even if it does so by rejecting or inverting normal moral standards? The answer clearly is no. It does not even achieve this. Far from leaving people alone in their relationships, it is extraordinarily intrusive.

For example, the French government has announced it will introduce a new law which bans 'psychological violence' in relationships. A man might end up with a criminal record if he insults his wife during an argument:

Married couples in France could end up with criminal records for insulting each other during arguments.

Under a new law, France is to become the first country in the world to ban 'psychological violence' within marriage. The law would apply to cohabiting couples and to both men and women.

It would cover men who shout at their wives and women who hurl abuse at their husbands - although it was not clear last night if nagging would be viewed as breaking the law.

The law is expected to cover every kind of insult including repeated rude remarks about a partner's appearance, false allegations of infidelity and threats of physical violence.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said electronic tagging would be used on repeat offenders.

The law makes every adult person in France a criminal. Who hasn't at some time shouted at or insulted a spouse during an argument?

It's possible that the law might catch out some of those men who do systematically bully their wives. But it does so in an incredibly intrusive way, by criminalising behaviours that occur in nearly all relationships, thereby making men in particular dependent on the good will of their wives (and of the magistrates who will judge the cases).

So in liberal France men do not end up getting left alone. There is a sword hanging over their heads in their relationships, courtesy of a state which thinks it best to manage relationships through crime laws.

A crude hatchet job on men's rights

Men's Rights activists should be a little bit pleased. They've been noticed. Enough to merit a vitriolic attack on them in the Melbourne Herald Sun.

The hatchet job columnist is a guy by the name of David Penberthy. He ridicules the idea that women might be the perpetrators rather than the victims of domestic violence. He laughs at the idea that there might be domestic violence victims called Nige and Bazza,

hiding in the broom cupboard begging for mercy as the little lady gives them the rounds of the kitchen.

And so he endorses the White Ribbon Day campaign which blames men as a class, male culture and male privilege for domestic violence - with the implication that masculinity itself is anti-social and must be deconstructed.

The problem with Penberthy's argument is that women often are the perpetrators of domestic violence. They are the perpetrators of domestic violence against men, children and other women. One statistic alone is telling here. In 2007, in the Australian state of New South Wales, 2336 women were charged with domestic violence offences.

How can this be? What forms does female domestic violence take? Well, here's a sample from the mainstream media collected over the past few weeks:

Sydney, Australia: Sibling tiff ends in tragic slaying. A young woman has admitted killing her schoolgirl sister after a fight over a hair straightener.

Sydney, Australia: Tragic end for unloved little boy. Rachel Pfitzner loathed her toddler son ... Her callous mistreatment culminated in October 2007 when she murdered the two-year-old.

Bairnsdale, Australia: Brutal street slaying. A woman walking her two dogs was stabbed to death in broad daylight ... The woman is believed to have been attacked by a young woman.

Melbourne, Australia: Mother encouraged daughter to attack. Footage of a mother encouraging her daughter and another teenage girl to brutally assault a shy and vulnerable teenager has been played to a Melbourne court.

London, England: A primary school teacher who specialises in helping aggressive children has been sacked for punching a female colleague in the face.

Langley, Canada: Police in Langley are investigating after a woman kicked a man in the groin so hard he lost a testicle - the latest in a series of similar assaults. "I just want to know what her problem is," victim Anthony Clarke, 22, said this week. "People like her shouldn't be on the streets."

Adelaide, Australia: A jealous wife who allegedly set her husband's penis on fire will answer a murder charge in January.

Epping, Sydney: A 26-year-old woman has been remanded in custody after being charged with the murder of an elderly Sydney woman.

DeLand, Florida: Scorned wife hurls soup can at husband's head. The wife whacked him in the head with a can of soup when he got home, leaving a 1-inch cut on his forehead.

Edgewater, Florida: An Edgewater woman faces felony charges after police said she went after her estranged husband and another woman, cutting them with a razor knife.

Brandon Woods, UK: A 98-year-old woman has been charged with the murder of her 100-year-old room mate.

Remember, these are just the cases of female violence I've stumbled across in the press in the last few weeks. I could have added of course one of the most high-profile cases of domestic violence, the alleged attack on Tiger Woods by his wife Elin.

Oh, and here's one with a photo:

Gold Coast, Australia: A fight erupted between female schoolies last night ... About six girls viciously punched each other and scuffled in the sand.

Not all women are genteel. Women can and do perpetrate violence. Any honest campaign against domestic violence ought to recognise this fact.

I'll leave the last word to Sue Price. She is part of an Australian group called the Men's Rights Agency. David Penberthy's attack piece in the Herald Sun was directed mostly at her, for her criticisms of the White Ribbon Day campaign. But I think she got it right:

“By claiming nearly 30% of young women can expect to be assaulted, WR campaigners are creating an unnecessary climate of fear and an expectation that far greater numbers of young men will be violent”, said Sue Price. “To profile our young men and particularly young impressionable schoolboys in Grades 5 – 8 in such a way is to diminish their belief in themselves as young males. Branding them with a wrist band displaying the slogan 'Say no to domestic violence’ and indoctrinating them in believing they should take on the shame and guilt for others' bad behaviour is totally unacceptable and counterproductive.”

Author of Not Guilty: the Case In defence of men (1999) David Thomas applauded teaching boys to be “non confrontational” but warned “educationalists who seek to cut down on sex–attacks and crimes of assault by attempting to undermine the very idea of masculinity or to feminize young boys will find their policies have precisely the opposite effect. Well-balanced men, who are secure and confident in their masculinity are far less likely to harm women than men who are insecure or resentful” (p.217).

Losing moral status

Here's another brief thought on the domestic violence issue.

When I see what has happened with the White Ribbon Day campaign, I'm reminded of just how the left manages to set the framework of politics to their advantage.

It goes like this. The left makes a claim that men as a class are violent toward women because they enjoy an unearned privilege in society. The anti-domestic violence cause seems like a good one, so a lot of men unthinkingly sign on to the message.

But straight away these men are caught in a trap. Once you accept that men as a class are perpetrating an injustice and an oppression to defend an unearned privilege, you lose moral status as a man in society.

And it's exactly the conscientious, politically active type of men who can't bear to lose moral status. They will desperately want to win it back somehow. How can they do it?

The message that is delivered to them is that they can redeem themselves by breaking ranks with other men. They can continue to speak with moral authority if they separate themselves from the other men and if they identify against the tradition of masculinity.

This solves (for a time anyway) the problem of moral status - but at a tremendous cost. It means turning against your own, thereby forfeiting an aspect of your self-identity and your group loyalty.

Something like this also happens with the issue of race. Whites are told that there is no racial equality because whites have oppressed others and discriminated against others in order to enjoy an unearned privilege. Once you accept this as a white person, you lose moral status. If you want to reclaim moral status you have to break ranks and identify against your own race. But this means forfeiting a part of your self-identity and your own larger communal tradition.

So the trap is in accepting the original negative appraisal of whiteness or masculinity or whatever else the left has set itself against.

The aim, then, is to reject the original vilification of men (or whites) as a class of people. But it matters a great deal how you do this.

It's no use trying to plead with liberals that men/whites should be accepted as good by the standards of liberalism. There's little point, for instance, in arguing that whites aren't racist oppressors because they are accepting of diversity, of open borders, of mass immigration and so on. This is asking to be allowed to identify positively with something, by taking away the conditions for its future existence.

So we have to take care, initially, not to be suckered into losing moral status, and, having avoided this, not to plead for the goodness of our tradition on losing terms supplied by liberalism itself.

Boys face compulsory feminism lessons

In my last post I criticised White Ribbon Day, a day when men are supposed to wear white ribbons to show their opposition to domestic violence.

I criticised it on the grounds that it was being used to promote feminist patriarchy theory. Patriarchy theory claims that domestic violence is a result of men as a class using violence against women to secure an unjust power and privilege in society. Therefore, domestic violence is held to be "systemic" - it pervades the whole society as a cultural norm amongst men, but can be abolished for good once men start to "break ranks" with other men and act against their own power and privilege.

One reader wrote in suggesting I had missed the point in what I wrote:

This "article" misses the point on so many levels, it's comical. That's fine. Keep looking for excuses not to do anything about a problem as prevalent and upsetting as domestic violence. Keep looking outside of your comfortable existence. When you realize that we all can participate in making the world better for everyone, perhaps you'll be a happier person.

I understand this response. If you're not aware of the personalities and the politics behind the campaign you might well just take it all at face value as a worthy attempt to counter domestic violence.

But I'll repeat again - the campaign is a very long way from being politically neutral. The day after I posted, the Melbourne Herald Sun published the following news item:

Boys to get gender lesson

Feminism classes aim to curb violence

Boys face compulsory feminism programs in state schools across Victoria in a major push to prevent violence against females.

A VicHealth report for the state Education Department calls for teachers to be trained in gender, violence and sexual health issues ...

The report says programs for all students should start at primary level and be reinforced across all year levels in subjects including drama, English, science and sport ...

It said feminist theories were best at explaining the link between gender power relations and violence against women, and must underpin the programs ...

Report author Dr Michael Flood admitted there was always the risk of a backlash, but said it was crucial that students were taught that sexist attitudes and unequal relationships between the sexes were central to explaining violence ...

"...a feminist conceptual framework is essential ... to anchor the political commitments of the program."

So I was correct in what I wrote. The violence issue is being used for political purposes - in this case to have all state schools students indoctrinated in feminist patriarchy theory across a range of subjects every year from primary school onwards.

And who is this Dr Michael Flood who authored the report? He is a liberal activist who wants to deconstruct both masculinity and heterosexuality. Again, there is an ideology at work here. Liberals think of autonomy as the overriding good in society. We are to self-determine who we are, which means rejecting anything we don't get to choose for ourselves. We don't get to choose our sex - the fact of being a man or a woman - which means that liberals want to make an unchosen ("essential") masculinity or femininity not matter.

That's why Dr Flood doesn't approve of appealing to men's sense of masculine responsibility in domestic violence campaigns. He doesn't like using the slogan "real men don't hit women" because,

We should be wary of approaches which appeal to men's sense of 'real' manhood ... These may intensify men's investment in male identity, and this is part of what keeps patriarchy in place (Stoltenberg, 1990). Such appeals are especially problematic if they suggest that there are particular qualities which are essentially or exclusively male. This simply reinforces notions of biological essentialism ... (Engaging Men, p.3)

Note that he is hostile to "men's investment in male identity". He disapproves of men having a "male identity" because he thinks of it negatively as an oppressive social construct used to prop up male privilege and power. For him, the whole notion of "man" and "woman" is an artificial construct:

Nor should we take as given the categories "men" and "women". The binaries of male and female are socially produced ... (Between Men and Masculinity, p. 210)

Dr Flood also celebrates the "queering" of heterosexual men:

Bent straights: Diversity and flux among heterosexual men
Michael Flood
Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS) La Trobe University

New formations of sexuality are emerging among heterosexual men, informed by constructions of ‘queer’ and ‘metrosexual’ masculinities and other alternatives.

Some straight men express alliance with gay men or question the binary of heterosexual and homosexual, or proclaim themselves to be ‘wusses’ and ‘sissies’, or take up egalitarian or even subordinant roles in their heterosexual sexual relations, or adopt a feminised preoccupation with personal grooming.

Such developments signal a weakening of longstanding constructions of heterosexual masculinity, and there is significant diversity in the contemporary sexual cultures of young heterosexual men. Yet at the same time, many heterosexual men’s social and sexual relations with women are organised both by gendered power relations centred on male privilege and by homophobic and homosocial policing.

It's politically progressive, thinks Dr Flood, for heterosexual men to declare themselves to be "wusses" and "sissies," to accept subordinate roles in sexual relations, and to adopt a feminised lifestyle. Dr Flood welcomes such developments because he supports the deconstruction of heterosexual masculinity, which he believes underpins patriarchy and male privilege.

And yet Dr Flood is the person that VicHealth sought out to design compulsory programmes of indoctrination for Victorian school students.

So, yes, patriarchy theory must be argued against wherever we meet it, including in White Ribbon Day campaigns. It's not something harmless that we can overlook in order to get a buzz in supporting a cause.

We're not in a position to stop the VicHealth bureaucrats from imposing their views on schoolboys, but we can maintain a principled opposition and perhaps even benefit when the backlash that Dr Flood fears does eventually come about.

In the meantime, we should encourage men to be more, not less, masculine. You cannot defend or build a civilisation when men are demoralised, defensive and lacking in moral status in society. We should applaud those men who do step forward and use their masculine strengths to work not only for their families but for their larger tradition.

All men guilty of domestic violence by virtue of being raised men?

We have a White Ribbon Day here in Victoria. Men are supposed to show their support for victims of domestic violence by wearing a white ribbon.

But the campaign is based on feminist political theory - which ends up grossly distorting the issue of domestic violence.

Those running the campaign are supporters of patriarchy theory: of the idea that men have used violence against women to uphold their privileged status in society (i.e. to uphold the patriarchy).

Those who believe in patriarchy theory claim that violence against women is systemic in society - that it's a traditional part of the culture and institutions of society. Therefore, patriarchy theorists will usually:

• exaggerate the extent of domestic violence
• claim that domestic violence is prevalent throughout all parts of society
• claim that male culture has traditionally supported domestic violence
• present men as the perpetrators of domestic violence and women as the victims
• argue that the solution is a political one in which men are to "break ranks" with other men and with their own privileged status

There are some obvious problems with these claims, most notably that:

• male culture has traditionally condemned rather than supported violence against women
• domestic violence is not spread evenly throughout society; it is far more prevalent amongst men who are unemployed, who take drugs and who have mental health issues
• women are sometimes the perpetrators rather than the victims of domestic violence. They not only initiate violence against children and other women, but some studies show they initiate violence against male partners just as frequently as men initiate violence.

Should we be concerned about the distorted approach to domestic violence being taken by the White Ribbon Day organisers? I think so, on the following grounds:

• the campaign unjustly maligns the average man as being responsible for domestic violence
• such campaigns if taken seriously contribute to the poisoning of relations between men and women (what happens to the mind of a woman who believes that the average man hates and disrespects women to the point of violence?)
  
• the campaign requires all men, even those who have never been violent, to adopt a "penitent" attitude, in which they are to accept that they are an unjustly privileged group. If men do adopt this attitude, they lose moral status, not just in terms of the issue of domestic violence, but in society generally. 
• the campaign radically attacks a masculine identity, seeing it as being hostile to, rather than protective of, women. Not surprisingly, the campaign activists have prioritised feminising traditionally masculine environments

I'll finish with a few prize quotes from the mainstream media - which at the moment uncritically accepts the patriarchy theory approach to domestic violence.

The Age had a TV quiz show host, Andrew O'Keefe, address the issue. He followed a familiar path of beginning with a vague but alarming statistic:

At least one in three Australian women at some stage experiences violence at the hands of a man.

Not true, but that's not the point. The idea is to give the impression of domestic violence being systemic. Note too that O'Keefe has already quietly led us into the assumption that domestic violence involves a male perpetrator and a female victim.

By virtue of being raised a man in our society, most men will have contributed to the problem in some way over the years.

Thanks Andy. We men just haven't been maligned enough over the past generation, have we? You've never hit a woman? Doesn't matter to Andy, you're still part of the problem - by virtue of being "raised a man".

Every time I behave that way [laugh at sexist jokes, act insensitively], I am supporting the belief that men have rights and privileges greater than those of women, or that somehow men have a special place in the world that isn't shared by women. It doesn't mean that I beat my wife. But for many men, that belief is the basis of the notion that it's OK to beat your wife ... Because those forms of abuse are all based on the notion of male privilege and power.

At least Andy is upfront with the theory. What he's arguing here is that it's a belief in male power and privilege (patriarchy) which leads men to think it's OK to bash their wives. Therefore, men who believe in male power and privilege are contributing to domestic violence. And, according to Andy, it doesn't take much to be a male "patriarchalist". Even laughing at a sexist joke or being insensitive makes you a supporter of male power against women.

Heaven help any man who took this seriously. You'd end up paralysed from fear of offending women.

As I wrote earlier, Andy's analysis doesn't explain much. It doesn't explain why violence against women was considered so unacceptable in earlier times when men dominated public life more than they do now. It doesn't explain why women commit acts of violence against children, men and other women. It doesn't explain why domestic violence is relatively rare amongst some groups of men, but common amongst men experiencing certain known "stressors", such as alcohol and drug abuse, mental ill-health, homelessness and unemployment.

We need men more than ever to assert their masculinity confidently in society, as a civilisational force. Men won't do this successfully if they are always on the back foot, wondering if they are too powerful or privileged, or if they are oppressing others in virtue of being men.

My local paper, the Diamond Valley Leader (25/11/09), also ran a column on domestic violence. It contained this gem:

Victorian Health Promotion Foundation chief executive Todd Harper said the attitude and behaviour of boys and men in all walks of life needed to urgently change.

"Violence contributes to more death and disability among women aged 15-44 than any other cause," Mr Harper said.

We get it Todd. It's systemic. It's all groups of men. It's a problem of male culture and masculine attitude. It's the biggest threat to women.

Only it's not. Most men already think it's wrong to hit women. They don't need to change their attitude. And it's ludicrous to claim that domestic violence contributes more to death and disability among young women than any other cause. Not only is this untrue, it's obviously untrue. And yet it's peddled in the media because it fits the theory.

And it's the theory that needs to change.