Strange article, I don’t get the point of it. Like, of course it is about power and control. You don’t need to give me a list of cruel things and abuse.
And it is also utterly strange to read how baffled the author is by their responses. Obviously the abuse by these men is working in this narrow frame of context. There is plenty of information out there on this already, nothing new here.
But apparently the author also completely missed out on what the benefits would be for men to step back from violence and control. Yeah sure, in the context of emotionally limited and estranged men, maybe being control-seeking, manipulative and sadistic is the best possibility to get short-term gratification. But do these people really live a happy life? I would argue that everyone, including these abusive men, would benefit immensely from them learning to get in touch with their own emotions and that of others.
None of that is discussed in this article and I wonder why it was posted to a feminism community in the first place??
It seems to be just one part of the writer describing how he worked in the field of rehabilitation of violent abusers.
By seeing that they did all these things to get and retain power and that there was only the threat of arrest or court mandated time with the writer as a negative, he realized he had to rehabilitate them differently because giving them tools to better communicate was just used as another tool to wield power.
Maybe he has another post where he talks about what tools actually work to rehabilitate abusers.
The site this is from also seems to be a magazine for profeminist men, which if it is truly pro feminist then it could be a good resource for men who need a better understanding of the way the world is for women.
Yes, I understood what the intention of the article was. But I’m really sceptical of pro-feminist groups for men (because they usually don’t challenge men’s patriarchal tendencies) and the article seems to confirm my scepticism. But yeah, I would probably give the author the benefit of the doubt, were it not posted to a feminist community here. I mean, some people seem to take something with them from it. But I’m missing any kind of analysis or further interpretation of the material discussed in the article. Right now, people could even feel validated as abusers because they’ve learned that there are good reasons to abuse others.
There are selfish positives for the abuser that doesn’t mean they are good reasons, though I guess an abuser might see them as good.
Maybe this guy will follow up with more on what he did to help them in a manner that would help equalize the women in their lives rather than raise themselves.
Well, thanks to this comment I went back and had a look at the website the article was published in. The article is already pretty old (from 2015) and the author didn’t publish a lot in the subsequent years. But I found this much more in depth analysis by a sociology professor re-published on this website. Below is a statement by the original author of the article posted here. And yes, this guy seems to have a good grasp on how to deal with the underlying problem of masculinity:
What I have found to be true is that as we access our compassion and put into practice our altruistic caring for women and girls, we collide with our male privilege. If our primary motivation is self-interest, we will not relinquish those privileges and the ongoing benefits we receive due to “toxic” masculinity. We will retreat, internally become silent, talk well, but not change significant behaviors, both personally and institutionally. To me, our willingness to give up our sexist privilege/benefits—including our silence—is the foundation of change, not our immediate self-interest.
If we care about women and children’s lives, we will begin to relinquish those benefits. We will use our remaining male privilege and influence (which we cannot totally discard because of sexist social norms) to undermine patriarchal structures of oppression. We will work to end the violence, harassment, discrimination, income inequality, exploitation, subordination, and danger that women and girls live with every day.
I missed this point in the original article, although yeah, I now better understand why people can still take something from it :)
It doesn’t tell you how to do these behaviors, it’s a list of perceived benefits, and I think the author’s end commentary is making the point that a lot of abuse victims chalk their abusers’ behavior (which they may see in the list) up to personality or upbringing, and this list of all the “benefits” by abusers who are clearly treating this is a very conscious cost/benefit assessment shows that it’s not those, it’s an intentional and willful choice to hurt them.
It was on that day that I realized if I had to choose between providing batterer groups for men who batter or a consistently effective criminal and civil/family court response to domestic violence, I would choose the criminal and civil/family court response every time. There are just too many benefits gained from this behavior.
After that first time asking the men about the benefits of their violence, I began to be much more effective in my work. It was astounding how dramatically the groups changed once I acknowledged and remembered that the violence was functional— and that was why they used it.
I don’t understand what is meant by raw data in the context of this article.
This seems less like a scientific study and more like a black board brainstorming session. The list that was shown seems to read as a disorganized list of thoughts, the type you’d find in a brain storming session.
It seems to me that this court mandated facilitator for men who batter was merely trying to share their experiences and insight for why men abuse women.
Just publishing the brainstorming of perpetrators why violence is helpful without proper comment or even summary and deduplication has damage potential.
I didn’t read in this article any claims that this was a scientific study. Should this person’s experiences be any less valid?
To me it reads as a person attempting to understand why men want to commit violence and abuse against women. It also didn’t read as if it promoted abuse against women but rather promoted publicly addressing and dealing with abuse through public education.
I get that gender related violence is an awkward, uncomfortable topic but this article can be one step of many in understanding and dealing with abuse.
Had this person framed this article as a scientific study, I would definitely doubt it’s message and validity as that would be intentionally deceptive.
Would it help educate the public if someone brainstormed and listed all the reasons Nazis want to kill minorities? No. What good does listing all these abusive points in the article do? None. It does however have the potential to cause harm, as the other commenter already said. The author could also have summarized the points of the brainstorming session. And even then, I would be still cautious with trying to empathize too much with the perspective of abusers. Sure it can be useful, but it also frequently leads to confusing victims and perpetrators.
I don’t see the author empathizing here, I see them attempting to help others come to terms with why abuse happens. It happens because the abuser finds a benefit in it.
The difference between realizing that you’re being abused because someone finds the abuse useful versus thinking it’s something they just kind of stumble into and do accidentally can be the thing that solidifies getting away from it.
Victims of abuse have a mountain of shit to work through, and a lot of it consists of internalized messages that they’re crazy. Any tool that can help with the realization that it isn’t okay and isn’t their fault can be incredibly valuable.
OK, yeah I agree with that. I don’t feel like people could take this with them from the article, but I see your point. It is just so incredibly hard not to frame it all as your own fault and see the abuser for what they really are.
That was a rhetorical question. I have used an over-the-top example here to illustrate how empathizing with abusers without making clear what consequences their actions have will lead to be apologetic with these abusers. Just like people might be apologetic with literal Nazis when you present only their intentions and not how this harms others. I hope you get the analogy…
Well, I disagree with it being rhetorical, and with your answer. 🙂
Some people are apologetic with literal Nazis, and knowing what are their reasons, works as early warning red flags, or to nip an argument in the bud. The same happens with abusers: some people are apologetic of them (even their victims!), and knowing the reasons for the behavior, can help spot them and react before it’s too late.
I have some first hand experience with abusers, victims, acquaintances… and I’ve made the mistake of falling for the excuses made by all of them for the abusers’ behaviors, letting the abuse grow over time. They always grow over time, you could say that they “self-radicalize”, until some breaking point… which sometimes is the death of the victim. It’s much better for everyone to identify the early signs, and cut them hard.
I think there has been some misunderstanding somewhere, maybe it was my phrasing. But I 100% agree with what you just said. I have made similar experiences.
My point was that the article posted here does a bad job at explaining any of this or at offering any meaningful explanation for people suffering under abuse and their allies.
And I would hope that victims of abuse would be persuaded to leave abusive relationships by being confronted with the reasons of their abuse, but they often seem to have very skewed views on their abuser (who they probably won’t even identify as an abuser) and it is hard to get them to confront that. This is to say that just asking abusers to list all of their reasons probably won’t challenge the view of the victims.
I have mixed feelings on this because yes, information can be used to cause harm. That same information has also been crucial to me in understanding how abuse and manipulation have affected me. Without identifying the motive behind certain behaviours or actions, how am I supposed to know which boundaries to put up to protect myself? This is obviously very situational to me because in order for me to act on something, I need to understand the under layers of a topic in order to effectively change my views/habits/behaviour.
This article to me reads as an “Ah-Ha!” moment in understanding how to approach the topic of abuse to abusers. Unfortunately, that part wasn’t expanded on enough and since the article is nearly 10 years old, I don’t think I have the patience enough to see if there is any sort of follow-up regarding how to talk about abuse to abusers.
With the information I’ve learned about abusers and manipulators over the past years, I’ve been not only helping myself place proper boundaries, but encouraging the women in my life to protect their boundaries too by informing them of both actions and intent behind those actions from abusers.
My help is one sided though because there are a few men in my life that are on the border of being decent people, they just need light pushes away from toxic masculine influences. Too much can cause things to crumble. Understanding their intent behind their words has helped in avoiding unnecessary, name-calling backlash. It’s an exhausting balancing act. I more often choose to not engage them because it’s such a long, draining process.
I do wish there were more effective ways of educating the dangers and damage from such forms of masculinity. In my area, medical professionals throw Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Mindfulness at people and call it a day. I feel those methods are like placing a bandage over a problem without looking at the cause. Those methods seem to cause more anger, regret and frustration. It’s such an overburdened mess. It seems the author is attempting to reframe his methods from “treating batterers” to “a consistent coordinated community response.” Or at least advocating for a consistent coordinated community response in general. To approach this sensitive topic from another approach. I can agree this point could have been expanded upon.
Humans are too complex and there’s so no one perfect way to teach other people. What works for one person would completely zone out another person. What can be useful by one person can be harmful by another. There’s really no easy way to talk about uncomfortable topics and it sucks we have to resort to war tactics regarding such information.
You raise interesting points! I guess it is crucial to distinguish with what audience in mind the text was written. As you say, it may help abusive people to be empathized with and to get their intentions mirrored back to them in order for them to understand their own intentions better. Just as the men in the text themselves, who apparently had problems identifying their own intentions in the first place.
But I have a few problems with that. First, I don’t think the text does a particularly good job at actually placing these intentions in any meaningful context. As the other commenter said, it is just raw data. Meaning the author just wrote those quotes down but didn’t expand further on it. Stopping at this stage, other men or abusive people in general might stop thinking about their intentions and feel encouraged. Yeah, I want control! Right, I just keep on doing this, because that’s what’s in my best interest. Second, as I said I would be cautious with trying to empathize with abusive people. Too easily you get could up with feeling sorry for them or giving them the opportunity to feel as victims. Because obviously those men are probably not all fine and have their own struggles that they then externalize and make the problem for other people around them. A lot of men-support groups that start out trying to help men get out of toxic masculinity actually just perpetuate its problems because men then will see themselves as victims and feel legitimized in their actions. Patriarchal violence has the idea at its core that men are the only subjects while all others are mere objects. It is really hard to fundamentally challenge this indoctrinated view in men who instinctively see women as inherently inferior from men. If empathizing is your only strategy, this will fail to challenge this underlying imbalance.
Anyways, the article does a bad job in any of this and that’s why I didn’t get why it was posted here in the first place. I have to go now, may expand on this further later.
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