All men are responsible for stopping all forms of male violence against women

All men are responsible for stopping male violence against women
by Utopia Bold
Men may feel unease when male violence against women is addressed including non-violent men. However, all men, both violent and non-violent, must be held responsible for stopping male violence against women.
Violent men must stop assaulting women. Non-violent men must not sit by and allow male violence against women to continue. To do so is to condone it. Their inaction-or indifference-is passive male violence against women by neglect. Silence is complicity.
Breaking the silence by naming an atrocity is the first step in ending it. Male violence against women must be named specifically. To maintain patriarchy, "Women's agony at the hands of men must never be revealed. If women steadfastly and courageously began to tell the truth and would not stop, would not be co-opted, would not become afraid, the truth of our enslavement would be undeniable and the jig would be up" —from "Telling the Truth" by Sonia Johnson.
Women, who outnumber men, are the single largest group of oppressed humans on the planet. Men have oppressed women nonstop for the longest length of time of any oppressed group, more than 5,000 years (The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler). A woman once told me that dealing with male violence "was just part of being a woman!
I don't understand why many people-especially women-resist holding all men responsible for male violence against women. Here are some popular evasions:
1. "Not all men are violent" No one said they were. Since men collectively hold more power than women, non-violent men are also responsible for stopping male violence against women. In the same way, whites, who collectively hold more power than people of color (in the U.S.) are responsible for ending racism, even whites who don’t commit racist acts.
2. "Women are violent too" Two wrongs don't make a right. However, as usual, women are blamed for their own degradation. As Mary Daly wrote in her book Pure Lust, (p.365) " Within the Virulent State of phallocracy, women have been attacked and divided against our Selves. From the earliest times of the patriarchy, countless mothers have been broken and the resulting broken daughters have carried on the chain of fragmentation. . . They have been reduced to responding to the fettered/fathered urge to reproduce their altered–that is, patriarchally identified selves –in an endless circle of Self destruction. Such forcible altered women have appeared to be normal within the man made milieu."
Also, female violence pales in comparison to male violence. Men commit 88 percent of violent crime (US Bureau of Justice statistics). Women don't build rape camps to torture and molest men to death. Women don't control the U.S. government which spends half a trillion dollars a year on mass murder (war). Globally, women can't walk alone without the possibility of men assaulting them. The reverse is not true.
Even though some broken women may collaborate with patriarchal men to gain power (Condi Rice, Margaret Thatcher etc.) it doesn't change the fact that patriarchal men are in charge and allow selected token "henchwomen" into the boys club–if they identify with and behave like patriarchal men.
3. “Violence is a human problem affecting both sexes”
Mary Daly calls this tactic “universalism.” Muddying the waters, it dilutes the specific focus on male violence against women by making it a gender neutral, universal human issue.
4. The absent referent The "absent referent" refers to something without naming it. (See Neither Man Nor Beast by Carol Adams p.16-17). Mary Daly in her book Quintessence wrote, "Naming the agent is required for an adequate analysis of atrocities. Timid terms such as "sexual violence," "domestic violence" "gender-based violence," and "violence" don’t name men as the perpetrators-even when it was obviously men who raped hundreds of thousands of women in Bosnia, Darfur, Rwanda and many other nations.
Even Amnesty International, which calls it "a global scourge," uses the term "violence against women" instead of "male violence against women." (http://web.amnesty.org/actforwomen/index-eng).
5. Men also rape men and boys Rape is a male hate crime against women. However, this use of universalism (see #3) attempts to portray rape as a gender-neutral atrocity. The fact that men also rape men and boys doesn’t change the fact that in every nation on earth, in all levels of society, men commit the overwhelming majority of rapes against women. Men who rape women have contempt for women and want to degrade them. Even when men rape males, contempt for women is the underlying issue. Men rape males to degrade them by treating them like raped women.
6. The duality argument Supposedly, opposing something directly "gives it more power." If racism and sexism were not opposed directly in the U.S., blacks would still be slaves and women would still be men's property, unable to vote, own a business or keep their own wages. If the Nazis were not opposed directly, they would now run the world.
7. Passive grammar Instead of the active voice using the passive voice (women were raped by men) instead of the active voice (men raped the women) shifts the focus from the perpetrators and their actions (men doing the raping) to their victims (the women being raped).
8. "Boys will be boys" Patriarchal cultures promote "nature over nurture" (biological determinism). Supposedly, men are "naturally violent." This legitimizes and perpetuates war and men's abuse of women. Abnormal violent "manhood" is regarded as the norm.
Men are naturally peaceful. Archaeological evidence shows men enjoyed and maintained 1,500 years of peace in ancient Crete! It's proven today by many non-violent men. It takes traumatic conditioning to make men violent. "Military training camps, police academies and even some self-defense pros are constantly searching for more effective methods of suppressing the human revulsion to taking human life." - The Science of Creating Killers http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/13/INGKFKDJHC1.DTL
9. "Societies were always patriarchal and men have always dominated women"
Marija Gimbutas, the world renowned archaeologist who wrote Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe unearthed relics that prove men didn't always dominate women and that women and men once shared power in peaceful non-patriarchal Goddess worshipping societies. Riane Eisler's book The Chalice and the Blade cites many more instances proving this.
Types of Male Violence against women
Globally. modern patriarchal cultures are maintained by contempt for and abuse of women. Male violence against women in the media, men's requirement for emaciated super models and life threatening cosmetic surgery, mandated pregnancy in most nations, and billions spent on violent degrading pornography confirm this. Feeling contempt for women makes it easier for men to abuse them.
Reproductive male violence against women (Mandated pregnancy)
Male supremacist governments force women to have children they don't want or can't care for by denying women birth control or abortion.
Spiritual male violence against women Male supremacist religions claim men have the right to control women. Men coerce women to have children by telling women birth control or abortion is "sinful" and that "children are sent from god" etc.
Men wrote all the scriptures of all the organized religions, so "god's" agenda is men's agenda. Since the "words of god" are actually the "words of men, men don't "play god" they ARE "god," as illustrated by the following examples of male authored cosmic ca ca:
“Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands, for the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church.”— Ephesians 5:23-24.
“I thank thee O lord, that thou has not created me a heathen, a slave, or a woman.” – Orthodox Jewish prayer.
"God formed her body to belong to a man, to have and to rear children. Let them bear children till they die of it."— Martin Luther.
"In pain shall you bear children, yet your urge will be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."— Genesis 3:16.
"Your women are fields to cultivate, so go to your fields as you will!" –Koran 2:223.
Physical male violence against women-a global scourge
• Male violence against women in the media, emaciated super models, life threatening cosmetic surgery, and the billions spent on violent pornography confirm this.
• Feeling contempt for women makes it easier for violent men to abuse them without guilt.
• Being battered by men is the number one "health" problem of American women. (U.S. surgeon general).
• Men batter twelve percent of pregnant woman, causing seventeen percent of birth defects (March of Dimes).
• Seventy-five percent of women murdered during domestic violence are killed by men after they leave them. (U.S Dept. of Justice-Bureau of Justice Statistics).
• In Pennsylvania, a gunman entered an Amish school and shot 11 girls in the head. Five died, the six others are in critical condition. (Democracy Now)
• ActionAid International held a conference on Violence Against Girls in Schools In Harare, Zimbabwe. (http://www.actionaid.org).
• Since 1993, men raped and murdered more than 320 women in Juárez, Mexico; 450 women are missing. Approximately 100 were sexual-torture killings.
(http://codepink4peace.org/article.php?list=type&type=26).
• In Iraq, a Sunni Arab woman said she was raped by three Shiite policemen.(Iraqi women alleges rape by police" AP 2/20/07) In Iraq, raped women rarely come forward because raped women are often killed by male relatives to "restore the family's honor."
Economic male violence against women
Women in most parts of the world are paid less than men for the same work-if they're paid at all.
Educational male violence against women Men in Afghanistan kill women who teach girls to read (Feminist Majority Foundation http://www.feminist.org). Most of the world's illiterate people are women.
Medical and psychological male violence against women The male dominated medical profession has prescribed shock treatment, psychoactive drugs, lobotomies, life threatening diets, dangerous cosmetic surgery and other “therapies” to tame women and make them acceptable to men. Silence is Complicity
It is the moral responsibility of the group holding the most power to keep its members from harming people in groups holding less power. Just as it's the responsibility of non-racist whites to help people of color end racism in the U.S., it's the global responsibility of all men, including non-violent men- to help women eradicate male violence against women.
There are as many ways to do this. Each man must look into his heart and ask himself what he can do to help end this global scourge. The answers will come.
Mens Resources
http://menagainstsexualviolence.org/ - men against sexual violence.
http://www.borderlands.org.au/masa/ men against sexual assault
http://www.uwlax.edu/MUASA/ - men united against sexual assault
http://www.interactivetheatre.org/mav/ - men against violence webring
Amnesty International
http://web.amnesty.org/actforwomen/scandal-index-eng