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Ending Men's Violence

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Ending Men's Violence ENDING MEN’S VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND CHILDREN A U T U M N 2014 THE NO TO VIOLENCE JOURNAL THE NO TO VIOLENCE JOURNAL Contents 1 Introduction 7 A feminist critique of men’s violence against women eforts Tracy Castelino 37 Te Caledonian System: An integrated approach to address men’s domestic violence and improve the lives of women and children Rory Macrae 59 Te ideology of patriarchy behind adolescent girls’ violence Donna Swift 78 Men’s behaviour change programs: Education, therapy, support, accountability, ‘or’ struggle? Rodney Vlais 114 Considerations for partner contact during men’s behaviour change programs: Systemic responses and engagement Catherine Opitz 143 Male leaders: Community organising for gender equality Scott Holmes and Elizabeth Wheeler 159 Addressing intimate partner sexual violence in men’s behaviour change work Gayle Fulford, Joel Davis, Jill Duncan, Susan Bradborn and Elizabeth Wheeler 177 Te men’s domestic violence intervention sector in Queensland: Current issues and future directions Paul Monsour 203 Insights from a leading Baterer Intervention Program in the USA David Garvin and Jeffrie Cape 227 Te use of critical refection processes in group work Carlos Clavijo 245 Contributors A feminist critique of men’s violence against women efforts s Tracy Castelino, ShantiWorks, Victoria Acknowledgement: I greatly appreciate the editorial support and insightful critique provided by Megan Grigg It is critical that all members of the community are engaged if violence against women is to be eliminated. Violence is complex, it is contextual, and it is subjective. It requires a multi-level response, across government and across sectors. I argue that men need to be involved in the process of change. In fact, I contend that men’s eforts are critical to challenge and change the broader community’s atitudes and responses. Tere is much debate about the roles and responsibilities of men: men perpetrating violence, men working to eliminate violence against women and men’s response as part of the wider community. Tis debate interests me because as men enter the terrain of work to eliminate violence against women, women’s roles, voices and experiences change. In this paper I argue that it is important to examine men’s roles in violence prevention work from a gender perspective. I then illustrate such gender analyses using the Violence Prevention Gender Audit Tool (VPGAT) (Castelino, 2011). Te VPGAT provides a way of reviewing and analysing men’s roles in anti-violence work and the impact their involvement has on the experiences of women’s anti-violence workers. Tis process brings to light the ways in which men engage in the prevention of violence against women, how such engagement is named and understood, and what discursive practices are used to formulate the various discourses IntroductIon – the changIng terraIn of antI-vIolence work In my doctoral research I examined the infuence of gender discourses on local government violence prevention eforts (Castelino, 2011)1. One of the key fndings from this research was that there have been signifcant changes Tracy Castelino 7 in men’s roles and responsibilities in family violence prevention eforts2 both locally and globally, and that several issues have arisen with these changes. Firstly, conversations about the topic are no longer only about the women who have been and are being abused, but are also about those who perpetrate the violence and the abuse. Secondly, the issue of family violence is now being discussed by men, who until recently have been reluctant to recognise the underlying violence that exists within masculine cultures. Tirdly, we now focus not just on the individual man but also on particular constructions of masculinity (masculinities) and on male culture that support and perpetuate men’s violence. Tese revisions to men’s roles impact on women, their experiences of anti- violence work and their partnerships with the men’s family violence sector. Tis issue intrigues me. Te Violence Prevention Gender Audit Tool (VPGAT) developed through my doctoral research (Castelino, 2011) enables me to verify the processes by which gender is constructed, named and performed in various violence prevention policies, and provides a thematic framework for collating information and questioning practices around four key components in gender violence prevention work. Tese components are: shared understandings of key concepts, organisational cultures and structures, gender violence prevention policies and processes, and partnership relationships. Te VPGAT outlines the four components with localised enquiry questions and then identifes actions and areas for future work in order to reap the benefts of men’s promising role in gendered violence prevention. the crItIcal role of gender analysIs In all vIolence preventIon work Feminist post-structuralist thought is a critical lens through which to scrutinise the concepts of gender and violence, and to interrogate the discourses of women’s and men’s experiences. Feminist post-structuralism enables the exploration of the state as a site of power and the key actors as fuid, complex, agentic beings (Grosz, 1994; Butler, 1990) who engage in the construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of discourses. Tis framework takes into account the local and diverse nature of gender power, and therefore can examine the discursive practices that occur between community and state, between public and private, between women and men, and between diverse groups of women and diverse groups of men. Tis discourse of gender includes 8 women’s multiple and varied experiences and is located within diverse social, political and ethnic contexts. I use Bacchi’s (1999) infuential work throughout this paper as it assists in beter understanding that gender is fuid and constructed and reconstructed according to many discursive practices. She poses questions around how the problem is constructed and represented in policies and impacts on the paths taken for reforms. How gender is conceptualised and articulated impacts on the development of violence prevention policies and programs. Further, how the masculinity of men who engage and participate in violence prevention is named and performed transforms the actual partnership work. Examining gender power relations in operation within violence prevention work can inform action to address these inequalities that arise from the diferent roles women and men take up, and the consequences of these inequalities on their lives and their work. Some men who have joined the gender debate have provided a lens through which to see how gender shapes masculinity (Connell, 1995; Hearn, 1997; Messerschmidt, 1997). Tere is also a growing body of work on men and masculinities that presents and explores men’s place in anti-violence work (Connell, 1995; Hearn, 1998; Kaufman, 2004; Katz, 2003, 2006; Pease, 2008). Tese pro-feminists cover such issues as: the politics of gender and masculinities; the socialisation process of men and its impact on the individual man, women and the community; and individual and political responses to gender inequality. Tere is a critical space for men to do men’s work. Pro-feminists, through their writings and practices, ofer new gender roles and multiple versions of masculinity. Men are given new options for relating to women as equals and leaders worthy of respect and love. Hearn (2008) and Pease (2008) argue strongly for men taking responsibility for their personal, political and professional power and present what new and transformative gender relations might look like for men in their everyday lives. Hegemonic masculinity is a very useful concept developed by Connell (1995) to name and explore power and political leadership and public and private violence; it contributes to the gender order of society and is embedded in specifc social environments. It represents a way in which men position Tracy Castelino 9 themselves to the detriment of other men and the exclusion of women (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005, p. 830). Hegemonic masculinity defnes agendas for being a man which shape how men and women act, how institutions work, and how culture operates (Connell, 2006). In any given culture and community there may be a diferent hegemonic masculinity, depending on the power structures and what holds dominance. In Western cultures the concept of masculinity is oriented around particular performances, such as sport, competitiveness, heterosexuality, physical prowess, sexism and the subordination of women (Beasley, 2005, 2008; Connell, 2005, 2008). Te concept of hegemonic masculinity can assist our thinking on engaging men in the process of change, so that we can beter understand and manage the masculinities presenting in the anti-violence sector. By focusing on masculinities, the concept of gender becomes visible to and relevant for men. It makes men more conscious of gender as something that afects their own lives as well as those of women, and is another step towards challenging gender inequalities and eliminating violence against women. Tis visibility allows us to examine how men’s gender interests are socially constructed and psychically embedded, and how they might infuence their performances and practices in anti-violence work (Pease, 2002; Flood & Pease 2005; Hearn & Pringle, 2006). In this paper I highlight three dominant presentations of men’s anti-violence work in the sector: • men who focus on changing the behaviour of individual men through workshops, trainings and community-based programs • men who
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