It’s the tweet that’s gone viral over the last week:
Those words – from Jackson Katz, an American educator and filmmaker who has committed his career to preventing violence in sporting institutions and the military – have struck a chord globally.
Because, put simply, they’re true. When we talk about the epidemic that is “violence against women”, it’s an unhealthily unilateral discussion. Women are dying, we cry. Too many women are dying. Women need to speak up more, we need to unite and fight and create hashtags and march down streets and make noise, we decide.
We see the statistics; OurWatch says one woman a week dies from “violence against women”. We know the numbers. Many of us know more than a handful of victims’ faces. But the cause of all this destruction? It might as well be a thick black flog, an invisible and insidious poison, that’s leaving such a long path of dead women in its wake.
Very rarely, if ever, do we discuss the number of men who will inevitably beat their female partners at home tonight. The number of men who will coerce and intimidate those same women into silence. The number of men who will one day murder them.
What change are we really going to make if we only ever discuss the victims, not perpetrators?
Listen: The Mamamia Out Loud team discuss whether the #MeToo campaign was doing just that – highlighting the abused, rather than the abusers. (Post continues after audio…)
According to Professor Alison Young, a expert in Criminology from the School of Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, the language we use to discuss violence is incredibly important.
“I think it matters – if you change the tense, the grammar, you can change the politics,” Professor Young tells Mamamia.
“Language is really important, it shapes the discussion. We’ve seen in the last few days that the #MeToo movement is all about the victims and not the perpetrators, and the push to #IHave instead of #MeToo is all about reframing the language.”
The term ‘violence against women’ is “too general”, too “unspecific”, and fails to explain whose doing it or that it’s so common, Young says, adding: “using the phrase ‘domestic violence’ rather than just ‘violence’ also puts the act in a separate environment… somewhere cosy, somewhere private. People think of it as something behind closed doors that’s a family matter.”
When we discuss violence in all of its forms, our words couldn’t be more important, Young says. The way our language contextualises and illustrates an event seeps into almost every exchange we have about it.
It’s a fine point.
Think of the way Australian attitudes towards violence have shifted since the phrase ‘king hit’ was swapped for ‘coward punch’. The 2014 decision – which was backed by state governments – better reflects the perpetrator and the shame attached to their action, rather than focusing on the impact that action had on their victim.
Think of the reason we rarely hear the term “date rape” anymore – as our education and awareness of sexual violence has increased, so too has the way we discuss it.
“It’s now much more understood that rape often happens to people who know each other, or who are on a date. We know rape is rarely carried out by strangers and our language has changed to reflect that,” Professor Young says.
“Maybe that’s what we need to wait for in terms of ‘domestic violence’ and ‘violence against women’.”
Unfortunately, what makes largely ineffective terms stick is that they are not edgy, or in any way divisive: "They're bland, and the easiest to deal with."
Change often starts with language, and given 2017 is another horror year in Australia - Destroy The Joint reports 39 women have died at the hands of men in their orbit - the need for change couldn't be more urgent.
So, what could the alternative be?
One term Professor Young put forward is "men's violence against women".
Of course, with every phrase coined there will be detractors; those who yell 'not all men!' and highlight the very obvious fact that, yes, indeed, some violence is born from the fists of women.
We're facing a national epidemic here.
So maybe, just maybe, it's time we rethink the way we talk about it.
Top Comments
If you call it 'men's violence against women' you're ignoring women's violence against women, which is proportionally much higher (though in total number much less).
Given that language you are saying to them they aren't worth talking about.
Snorks, your comment is a textbook example of how the message is being received by men. It’s taken as a slur on all men, whereas only a tiny percentage engage in domestic violence and it further offends men by the deliberate discounting of women offenders and male victims, which we all know exist but get attacked for even mentioning.
It may be a very satisfying message to hear for anti men people, but for the target audience it is at best doing no real good and possibly even turning men toward indifference. If anti violence campaigners won’t even acknowledge male victims, why should males sign on to their agenda?
Imagine how much joint suppprt you could build with a campaign that targetted domestic violence against all people? Everyone would support that, but telling men this problem doesn’t effect them runs the risk that men conclude it doesn’t effect them, so why should they care?
Really? My comments saying we should make sure that all women who are abused should be mentioned is a textbook example of how it is taken to be a slur against men?
I didn't say men are abused too or #notallmen.
I agree with you in saying that if you ignore the male victims why should the men support the women.
U spent the entire article talking about how much words and phrasing matters, and then at the end u trivialise the issue some men might take at referring to domestic violence as “men’s violence against women”.
Because it’s a “very obvious fact that, yes, indeed, some violence is born from the fists of women.”
If that fact is “very obvious” (with the implication that it doesn’t need to be specifically addressed) then so is the fact that most of the victims of domestic violence are women, so what’s the point in changing our terminology???
Interesting point. If the target consumer of anti DV campaigns is men, then I think you’d get better results actually analysing what message would best get through to men, rather than declaring all men need to be educated that DV is wrong and becoming almost angry if anyone points out DV perps come in all genders and doubling down on the old, men equals bad - women equals victim narrative.
Open a paper and see an ad that says violence against women is unacceptable. Three scenarios;
1. Duh, tell me something I don’t know. I’ve never hit a woman in my life nor would I.
2. Wow, hold on, I didn’t realise I shouldn’t hit my partner, let me read this again since apparently I should stop.
3. I wonder if they care about a mate of mine who’s crazy gf attacked him with scissors recently?
I think a more effective campaign would be a scenario based one that teaches men about reducing tensions, along with a campaign that teaches women the benefits of doing the same.
Oh come on - men’s violence against women is not equivalent to female on male or female on female. Male perpetrated violence in an intimate relationship context is more violent, more frequent and results in far more injuries, hospitalisations and fatalities, compounded by much higher levels of fear and control. And when a female is identified as a perpetrator it is overwhelmingly in the context of reciprocal violence (I.e. both parties were engaged in violence) or self-defence.
^^Literally the point I am making. You just discounted the suffering of male victims of domestic violence.
That does nothing to encourage men to get behind the campaign, if anything, it just disengages men, the target of the campaign.
From Whitaker et al 2007 they found this:
"Almost 24% of all relationships had some violence, and half (49.7%) of those were reciprocally violent. In nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases."
"Regarding injury, men were more likely to inflict injury than were women, and reciprocal intimate partner violence was associated with greater injury than was nonreciprocal intimate partner violence regardless of the gender of the perpetrator"