8/16/2007
MANUFACTURING CONSENT:
a.k.a. THE ESSENCE OF DEMOCRACY - MARGINALIZING THE GENERAL PUBLIC & REDUCING THEM TO APATHY TO MAINTAIN ELITIST CONTROL
Manufactured consent is borrowed from a book written by Walter Lipmann in 1921 who described this concept as a revolution in the practice of democracy. What it amounts to is a technique of control. And he said this was useful and necessary and useful because the common interests of all the people elude them and so they (the elitists) have to be the domain of what he called a specialized class – notice that that is the opposite of the standard view of democracy. A version of this is expressed by the highly respected moralist and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in his book called “moral man and immoral society” who incidentally was very influential on contemporary policymakers. He said rationality belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man he follows not reason, but faith and this naïve faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent over simplifications which are provided by the “mythmaker” to keep the “ordinary” person on course. It is not the case as the naïve might think that indoctrination is inconsistent with democracy, rather as this whole line of thinkers observe, it is the essence of democracy.
The point is that in a military state or a feudal state or what we would now call a totalitarian state it doesn’t much matter what people think because you’ve got a bludgeon over their head and so you can control what they do, but when the state loses the bludgeon, when u can’t control people by force, and when the voice of the people can be heard, you have this problem “it might make people so curious and so arrogant that they will never find humility enough to submit to a civil rule” and therefore you have to control what people think and so the standard way to do this, is what in more honest days was called propaganda, manufacture of consent, the creation of necessary illusion – various ways of either marginalizing the general public reducing them to apathy of some fashion.
This view is widely held and deeply rooted in our own civilization….
It goes back to the Origin of modern democracy which goes back to the 17th c. English revolution where there was a struggle b/n parliament representing the gentry and the merchants and the Royalists representing other elite groups and they were fighting it out. At the same time there were many popular movements that were questioning everything; the relation b/n master and servant, the right of authority all together, there was a lot of radical publishing and this disturbed the elites on both sides of the civil war. So as one historian pointed out at the time in 1660 –he criticized the radical democrats, the ones that were calling for what we would call democracy, because “they have made the people so curious and so arrogant that they will never find humility enough to submit to a civil rule.”
Now underlining these doctrines which were very widely held, there is a certain conception of democracy, it is a GAME for elites, and it’s not for the ignorant masses that have to be marginalized, diverted and controlled, of course for their own good. The same principles were upheld in the American colonies, the dictum of the founding fathers of democracy that “the people who ‘owned’ the country ought to govern it” – quoting John Jay.
In modern times, for elites this “contrary view about the intellectual life of the media and so on is in fact now the standard one.
~~~Excerpt transcribed from Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent”
See blogpost below for further information and resources or click here to go directly
"Manufactured Consent" Pt. 2
WHAT IS MANUFACTURED CONSENT?
Presenting an analysis its authors call the "propaganda model", the book argues that since mass media news outlets are now run by large corporations, they are under the same competitive pressures as other corporations. According to the book, the pressure to create a stable, profitable business invariably distorts the kinds of news items reported, as well as the manner and emphasis in which they are reported. This occurs not as a result of conscious design but simply as a consequence of market selection: those businesses who happen to favor profits over news quality survive, while those that present a more accurate picture of the world tend to become marginalized.
The great thing about Noam Chomsky is that he doesn't believe in "Conspiracy Theories" because the truth is right in front of you and as I say..that is harsh enough. He is also a well respected linguist and professor at MIT and has changed the way that we use language.
Learn more about Noam Chomsky here
FOR A BRIEF OVERVIEW of MANUFACTURING CONSENT READ HERE
WATCH THE VIDEO FREE - 3 hrs. long, but well worth it
TO GET THE BOOK go to Amazon.com - Manufacturing Consent
EDUCATE YOURSELF - REMEMBER THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE TO BRING CHANGES - YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE !!! - YOU ARE POWERFUL !!!
8/09/2007
FUNNY IRAQ NEWS...
...in case you need a good laugh amidst the tragedy. Enjoy!!
Press the Play Button in the middle to start the video
8/08/2007
Sunday Bloody Sunday "by Bush"
Some inventive soul took the time to find times that Dubya used the words to U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday.
Press the Play Button in the Middle to watch the video
Sunday Bloody Sunday by Bush
Uploaded by toonbug
Fascism Is Fun
Press Play Button Symbol to Start Video
8/06/2007
Rape is Normal
I thought this guy made some good points and it was worth sharing with you.
Men's pleasure, women's pain: A dangerous sexual ethic is woven into cultural fabric
Robert JensenSchool of JournalismUniversity of TexasAustin, TX 78712
work: (512) 471-1990fax: (512) 471-7979rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
copyright Robert Jensen 2002
Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, September 1, 2002, pp. D-1, 3
by Robert Jensen
It is not surprising that we want to separate ourselves from those who commit hideous crimes, to believe that the abominable things some people do are the result of something evil inside of them.
But most of us also struggle with a gnawing feeling that however pathological those brutal criminals are, they are of us -- part of our world, shaped by our culture.
Such is the case of Richard Marc Evonitz, a “sexually sadistic psychopath,” in the words of one expert, who abducted, raped and killed girls in Virginia and elsewhere. What are the characteristics of a sexually sadistic psychopath? According to a former FBI profiler who has studied serial killers: “A psychopath has no ability to feel remorse for their crimes. They tend to justify what they do as being OK for them. They have no appreciation for the humanity of their victims. They treat them like objects, not human beings.”
Such a person is, without question, cruel and inhuman. But aspects of that description fit not only sexually sadistic psychopaths; slightly modified, it also describes much “normal” sex in our culture.
Look at mass-marketed pornography, with estimated sales of $10 billion a year in the United States, consumed primarily by men: It routinely depicts women as sexual objects whose sole function is to sexually satisfy men and whose own welfare is irrelevant as long as men are satisfied.
Consider the $52-billion-a-year worldwide prostitution business: Though illegal in the United States (except Nevada), that industry is grounded in the presumed right of men to gain sexual satisfaction with no concern for the physical and emotional costs to women and children.
Or, simply listen to what heterosexual women so often say about their male sexual partners: He only seems interested in his own pleasure; he isn’t emotionally engaged with me as a person; he treats me like an object.
To point all this out is not to argue that all men are brutish animals or sexually sadistic psychopaths. Instead, these observations alert us to how sexual predators are not mere aberrations in an otherwise healthy sexual culture.
In the contemporary United States, men generally are trained in a variety of ways to view sex as the acquisition of pleasure by the taking of women. Sex is a sphere in which men are trained to see themselves as naturally dominant and women as naturally passive. Women are objectified and women’s sexuality is turned into a commodity that can be bought and sold. Sex becomes sexy because men are dominant and women are subordinate.
Again, the argument is not that all men believe this or act this way, but that such ideas are prevalent in the culture, transmitted from adult men to boys through direct instruction and modeling, by peer pressure among boys, and in mass media. They were the lessons I learned growing up in the 1960s and ‘70s, and if anything such messages are more common and intense today.
The predictable result of this state of affairs is a culture in which sexualized violence, sexual violence and violence-by-sex is so common that it should be considered normal. Not normal in the sense of healthy or preferred, but an expression of the sexual norms of the culture, not violations of those norms. Rape is illegal, but the sexual ethic that underlies rape is woven into the fabric of the culture.
None of these observations excuse or justify sexual abuse. Although some have argued that men are naturally sexually aggressive, feminists have long held that such behaviors are learned, which is why we need to focus not only on the individual pathologies of those who cross the legal line and abuse, rape and kill, but on the entire culture.
Those who find this analysis outrageous should consider the results of a study of sexual assault on U.S. college campuses. Researchers found that 47 percent of the men who had raped said they expected to engage in a similar assault in the future, and 88 percent of men who reported an assault that met the legal definition of rape were adamant that they had not raped. That suggests a culture in which many men cannot see forced sex as rape, and many have no moral qualms about engaging in such sexual activity on a regular basis.
The language men use to describe sex, especially when they are outside the company of women, is revealing. In locker rooms one rarely hears men asking about the quality of their emotional and intimate experiences. Instead, the questions are: “Did you get any last night?” “Did you score?” “Did you f--- her?” Men’s discussions about sex often use the language of power -- control, domination, the taking of pleasure.
When I was a teenager, I remember boys joking that an effective sexual strategy would be to drive a date to a remote area, turn off the car engine, and say, “OK, f--- or fight.” I would not be surprised to hear that boys are still regaling each other with that “joke.”
So, yes, violent sexual predators are monsters, but not monsters from another planet. What we learn from their cases depends on how willing we are to look not only into the face of men such as Evonitz, but also to look into the mirror, honestly, and examine the ways we are not only different but, to some degree, the same.
Such self-reflection, individually and collectively, does not lead to the conclusion that all men are sexual predators or that nothing can be done about it. Instead, it should lead us to think about how to resist and change the system in which we live. This feminist critique is crucial not only to the liberation of women but for the humanity of men, which is so often deformed by patriarchy.
Solutions lie not in the conservatives’ call for returning to some illusory “golden age” of sexual morality, a system also built on the subordination of women. The task is to incorporate the insights of feminism into a new sexual ethic that does not impose traditional, restrictive sexual norms on people but helps creates a world based on equality not dominance, in which men’s pleasure does not require women’s subordination.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -Robert Jensen, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream and co-author of Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality . He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
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Men Can Stop Rape
from: I'm Not a Feminist, But
A lot has been said about how to prevent rape. Women should learn self-defense. Women should lock themselves in their houses after dark. Women shouldn't have long hair and women shouldn't wear short skirts. Women shouldn't leave drinks unattended. Hell, they shouldn't dare to get drunk at all. Instead of that bullshit, how about:
If a woman is drunk, don't rape her.
If a woman is walking alone at night, don't rape her.
If a woman is drugged and unconscious, don't rape her.
If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don't rape her.
If a woman is jogging in a park at 5 am, don't rape her.
If a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you're still hung up on, don't rape her.
If a woman is asleep in her bed, don't rape her.
If a woman is asleep in your bed, don't rape her.
If a woman is doing her laundry, don't rape her.
If a woman is in a coma, don't rape her.
If a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don't rape her.
If a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don't rape her.
If a woman is but a child, don't rape her.
If your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don't rape her.
If your step-daughter is watching TV, don't rape her.
If you break into a house and find a woman there, don't rape her.
If your friend thinks it's okay to rape someone, tell him it's not, and that he's not your friend.
If your "friend" tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.
If your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there's an unconscious woman upstairs and it's your turn, don't rape her, call the police and tell the guy he's a rapist.
Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it's not okay to rape someone.
Don't tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape.
Don't imply that she could have avoided it if she'd only done/not done x.
Don't imply that it's in any way her fault.
Don't let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he "got some" with the drunk girl.
Don't perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions.
You can, too, help yourself.
If you agree, re-post it. It's that important.
-Author unknown.
2/20/2007
Good Girls, Bad Girls
This is in response to a blog i read entitled "Why Women Hate Whores" found on Myspace.com. It is no longer an active link.
For some men, love and sex don't mix. They save love and marriage for "good" women, and only enjoy sex with "bad" women.
Why should women be ashamed of their sexuality? In some cultures men marry women, but have sex with other women because they don’t want to “defile” the wife. They don’t seem to allow for a woman who is a wife/mother to be also a sexually active woman who has desires. If she is enjoying sex too much with her husband & getting too “kinky” then he calls her a whore…who of course he’d sleep with but not marry….I’m sure that is good for her self-esteem and encourages intimacy between them. Now, why should you have to make a distinction between whore and man whore unless, when speaking of whores we typically mean female? Why are only the females branded this way? Let’s talk about this………
On one hand you have a whore - generally thought of as "bad" and "virgin" or "woman who makes you wait awhile" - generally thought of as "good." But has anyone asked themselves why a whore is considered socially bad? Why are men who ALSO sleep with “these” women on the first date labeling the women as whores but not themselves? Did they not also give it up on the first date? And moreover if men spend so much time degrading “whore-ish” behavior why do they sleep with “whores” and marry their wife, who consequently is not often the same woman?…a shame really….Hmmmmh?? Let’s explore this further…….
The biggest problem many men have with this issue is based more around paternity than promiscuity. You see no matter how many men women have sex with, they never have to question the Maternity of their child should they end up pregnant. Men, don't know unless there’s a paternity test and/or a willingness to trust in the woman with whom they've had sexual relations. This lack of paternal knowledge, mixed with a combination of inadequate communication skills, & a decent dose of testosterone which makes them more aggressive and more sexually yearning leads many men down a self-serving pathway. They say to themselves whether consciously or subconsciously through socialization that the best way they can satisfy their sexual appetites without having to make a commitment is to devalue the women who they sleep around with. Then through the use of fear tactics he tries to enforce his wife’s loyalty to him so that he can be sure the children being taken care of are his. Saying things like “men don’t stay with women who are whores” can be motivating to a woman who puts her children above her own needs. As frankly he should, but often does not do. Need an example? Golf – every weekend…to get away from the family he’s spent so little time with all week.
Even now with a condom in place where once none existed, it is an age old socialization that actually relates back to something you said above..."if a women will f**k you on the first date, a woman will f**k anyone on the first date"...what does that really tell us? It REALLY tells us that Men Hate Uncertainty when it comes to the passing of their genes even if they are caught up in a little rubber balloon. They don't want to be committed to putting forth the efforts to support their children if they're not really certain that the child is theirs. The more "easily" a woman allows him to have sex with her, the less likely he feels that if she became pregnant the child would be his to take care of. He then takes advantage privately, degrades her socially, and all in an effort to make a case for why he doesn’t have any responsibility to her as a person. It also tells us that for many men it is easy to think of women as being different from and less valued than men.
So, men are telling women that they want to f**k them, but not make a commitment to them. You feel that whores have their place and you want them to stay in it, but they are less qualified as human beings to be married to you? Since you’re sleeping around with these women then I’d say that makes you less qualified to be with a “good woman” as well if we go by your definition of worthiness. Who are YOU that a woman should feel so honored to “save themselves” FOR you? If a woman’s sexual behavior is the defining factor for determining whether you should make a commitment, then you’ve misunderstood the meaning of commitment. Furthermore, by platonically dating her and sleeping with her best friend you are not describing commitment to the girlfriend. You’re telling the girlfriend that in general you don’t know how to honor the agreement made in the relationship…assuming this agreement is one of monogamy. Also you say that you cannot be relied upon generally as a person and definitely as a life partner because you don’t have the long-term focus to use your resources sensibly and to honor the contract between the two of you. You are more of a threat than a benefit. This is the same if you have a business partnership and one of the partners starts bugging out. It jeopardizes the whole business and leaves you in default of the contract/agreement b/n the two of you….NO DIFFERENT.
But after all the f****ing is over with and he gets what he came for (so to speak), he sets out to devalue her as a person and to convince himself to think of her as less than equal in society. He’ll f**k her, but doesn’t feel he has to respect her. All this because she, like he, has sex on the first date? No all this because he has in his mind millions of years of fear based uncertainty as to the paternity of his children – whether they are conceived or not. Each time he passes his genes, his mind considers one overarching thought – Are they my genes in that child? Then sub-questions follow. For example, what’s the chance they’re mine? Then, depending on his view of how children would affect the resources of his life he’ll either embrace a child, or try to deny it. Need an example of what I’m talking about? Turn on Maury Povich or Jerry Springer…”oh look another paternity test show.” I really haven’t seen enough of that yet!The condom & birth control have done some great things for women, but very little to ease a man’s mind of their biggest fear.However, now with DNA testing we no longer have to rely on "word of mouth" or a person's reputation alone. Ahhhh… the ability to “test for answers” to questions we used to have to rely on our partner for…. It has done so much to stimulate trust and communication skills between couples. Now we'll know right away if he's the father and he needs to step up to the plate. This “test for certainty of paternity” and the obligation that legally follows for men combined with the fact that a woman no longer NEEDS a man to take care of her just because she gets pregnant, changes the dynamics of society. He loses a lot of the leverage he once had. Things like holding financial security over her head don't fly anymore. Don't really need a guy for that anymore and women are saying...i think it would be great if you were a part of this child's life & you would have an important role, but if you aren't willing to be there for the emotional commitment to me and our child, that's too bad, but you're still paying for your responsibility.
In many ways birth control and civil liberties offer more freedom to women and more control over their bodies, minds, and life paths. In other ways it takes men, who were once just uncertain of paternity, to a new level of fear, where calling a woman a whore no longer will keep her in line. Presently, his words or slights in an effort to control, have little to no effect on how she chooses to live her life & what she can do in life. She can't be held hostage anymore if she chooses not to be.However, though everyone knows about the changes we’ve made in society with equal rights between men and women….it still takes a while for people’s brains to catch up. And we’re not there yet, but we’re getting there and we will get there. Fearing the onset of this new reality, many men only hope that that the word "whore" will continue to incite such fear that it will ensure their self-serving pathway by trying to convince a woman to see herself as less than she really is.
Many women who take men back who have mistreated them need to get their acts together as well and start having some self-respect. You need to know you're better than that. You don't have to continue to honor a contract after he dishonored it. And that's got nothing to do with your sexual activity and everything to do with valuing yourself and not being willing to accept mistreatment.Both men and women have a real learning opportunity right now. Men need to learn to value women and stop creating double standards and using brute force to enforce it.
They need to stop categorizing women in such a way that even the highest category as “wife” is still akin to slavery. And women seriously need to kick each other in the ass and start taking better care of themselves, having more self respect whether they’re sexually active or a virgin, married or single. It doesn’t matter. If the person you’re with defaults on a contract you’ve made between you, have the decency to “spine up” and kick his butt to the curb.
Good men may be hard to find, but maybe that’s because many women endorse their bad behavior too often. Truth is that, if women collectively decided that the ideal "good woman" was not defined solely by one's sex life, then became more confident in one's self as a person & providing a living with or without men around...you guys wouldn't have a leg to stand on. Because afterall...women choose men. Women give men the go ahead or the stay away signal.Women need to raise their expectations of themselves, their partners. Men and women as Parents need to stop raising boys who treat other girls generation after generation just like this and stop raising girls to accept it. And men you need to get more involved in your family life. Become an active member of the family…and no, direct deposit of paycheck is NOT what I mean. I mean be present. Be a father to your children, be a husband to your wife, be a lover to your wife. Show your children what a good man really looks like so little boys will know how to become one and little girls will be able to recognize one. Show your children what a loving relationship filled with passion really looks like. This way they know what to aim for.
There is one more aspect I ask you to consider. That is, how reading/writing a blog like this entitled “Why Women Hate Whores” or being present in a locker room full of men disrespecting women, socializes us to devalue women and at some point for some people violence against women becomes a given. NO ONE in this blog seems to be overly shocked by these words or the way women are being devalued by these sentiments...and I THINK THAT'S A SIGN of how intrinsically woven disrespecting women is into our social fabric. We accept it. We tune it out. In order for violence to occur, several things have to be present and that is how this kind of behavior can lead to violence. Consider this then First, there has to be a lack of identification with the victim. (i.e. both engage in the same behavior, but she’s a whore, he’s not) Second, there has to be a perception of the situation as one that calls for violence. Third, there has to be a decision to act violently, and fourth, there has to be a means of doing harm to the other person. All-male social groups that are disrespectful towards women provide the first part of this formula: a willingness to view women as being different from and less valued than men.
Now, maybe you say this is crap, but think about this fear and then think about the violence associated with hookers & pimps ie the core of the definition of sexually promiscuous, right? How do you think it gets from dude in a blog calling women whores and telling cyberspace that men don’t want to marry sexually active women to the violence associated with those who are sexually very active. It is a 4 step program. You’ve completed Step 1 (see above). Maybe it is time to change direction before you go any further so you can be part of a generation who stops this mistreatment instead of continuing it.
11/17/2006
Men’s Violence Against Women
This is a tremendous article which I found at
http://www.apa.org/divisions/div51/div51/01.htm
It is written by a man named Christopher Kilmartin, who is a psychologist specializing in gender-based violence. It puts things together in a way that not only makes sense to the most neanderthalic of minds, but is one of the clearest summaries I've ever read describing the problem and the solution for violence against women.
Here is a link to his bio http://www.umw.edu/mrg/default.php?fid=187
I urge you to read this article and pass it on. Be an advocate for progress and part of the solution!
______________________________________________
Men’s Violence Against Women
Christopher Kilmartin, Bulletin Editor
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and too often we see domestic violence and rape defined as “women’s issues.” Since men do the vast majority of the damage, I think it’s a men’s issue. I’ll begin with a story, not a very happy one, to set the tone.
A little while back, The Washington Post ran a story about a Northern VA country club that held an event called the “Vodka challenge.” It was a men-only event, a standard country club golf tournament. What made it newsworthy was the mode of celebration in the men’s locker room. The day before the tournament, one of the club managers purchased an ice sculpture of a nude woman, sitting down with her legs spread. The vodka was served in the locker room from a fountain stream that came out from between her legs.
When some of the women members found out about this ice sculpture, they were outraged. Most of the men seemed puzzled by this reaction. After all, this was a sculpture, not a real woman, and it was in the men’s locker room, where none of the women would even see it. Quite predictably, there were a lot of statements about angry feminists who have no sense of humor, and the overly rigid atmosphere of political correctness. After all, any one with an open mind would see this as harmless. I think it’s good to have an open mind, but it’s not good to have a mind so open that your brain falls out.
What does this vodka challenge story have to do with violence against women? There was nothing in the story to suggest that any of these men had ever beaten their wives. But, although I’m sure they didn’t realize it, every one of them made it just a little more possible for any one of them to commit an act of violence against a woman.
In order for violence to occur, several things have to be present. First, there has to be a lack of identification with the victim. Second, there has to be a perception of the situation as one that calls for violence. Third, there has to be a decision to act violently, and fourth, there has to be a means of doing harm to the other person.
All-male social groups that are disrespectful towards women provide the first part of this formula: a willingness to view women as being different from and less valued than men. Symbolically, the ice sculpture provided an atmosphere that says women are here for men’s pleasure, and we will bond around our shared masculinity in this place where we don’t have to deal with women as human beings. Seeing them as lower status others allows us to justify mistreating them in many ways, including violence. There is an attitudinal undercurrent of women as enemies, in spite of the fact that most of these men were married to and raising children with the enemy.
Unfortunately, this vodka challenge was most likely not some isolated incident of insensitivity. In fact, country clubs have a history of the exclusion and disrespect of women, from men-only eating areas and tee times to the outright banning of women members. Many clubs also have a history of excluding Jews and people of color. The controversy over the exclusion of women from Augusta National is a case in point – Martha Burk has been called every bad name in the book just because she has pointed out the bigotry of this incredibly wealthy group of men and suggested that we all do something to ensure that they don’t become wealthier from the Master’s tournament.
I am only using country clubs as an example of all-male enclaves that implicitly and subtly condone violence against women. Other institutions, like many fraternities and corporations, also have these histories. And, of course, all-male social groups do not have to be organized and institutional to provide this violence-condoning atmosphere. We can find informal men’s groups in workplaces, college dorms, athletic teams, and corner bars, telling demeaning jokes about women, calling them by animal names or the names of their genitals, and these men rarely confront each other for fear of being attacked or ostracized. There is an unconscious, implicit conspiracy in many men’s groups to keep women in their place. What better way to do it than by causing them to feel perpetually fearful of being physically attacked?.
Men’s violence is the single most serious health problem for women in the United States. It causes more harm than accidents, muggings, and cancer combined. For women aged 15-44, an estimated 50% of emergency room visits are the result of violence at the hands of their husbands, boyfriends, ex-husbands, or ex-boyfriends. Every year male partners or ex-partners murder more than 1000 women – that’s about 3 per day. It happens so often that people don’t even pay attention to it. When a stranger murders someone, the story is on the front page of the metro section. If it’s an intimate, it’s at the bottom of page 4. A stranger rape always makes the papers; an acquaintance rape never does unless the rapist is somebody famous. The two most frequent crimes against women are largely invisible to the media. We expect it so much that we don’t even notice it.
I want to point out that I chose my words very carefully there I very intentionally did not say “when a person is murdered by a stranger.” Maybe it’s just because I’m a college professor, but I am an absolute believer in the power of language, and there is some everyday language that smuggles in prejudices against women and contributes to the cultural atmosphere that enables gender-based violence. I have 5 examples.
The first is the one I just pointed out – passive voice – 1000 women are murdered. The victim, not the perpetrator, is the subject of the sentence. When you see this language often enough, the perpetrator becomes a kind of afterthought. Imagine if sportscasters talked like this: “The score was tied when a three-point basket was scored.” “Many dollars were earned.” Wouldn’t everyone ask, “Who did it? Who is responsible?”
Example #2: the use of the term “opposite sex” and the phrase “battle of the sexes”. I challenge you to tell me one way in which the sexes are opposite. Calling men and women opposites is like calling an IBM computer the opposite of an Apple. And “battle of the sexes” implies that men and women are at war. We will never solve this problem until we work together and emphasize our commonalities rather than our differences.
I see research studies reported in the popular press – “a recent study proves what we have suspected all along – that men’s and women’s brains are different.” And what they do is find some infinitesimally small portion of the brain that has some minor difference that accounts for 5% of the variance in a population with wide variability, completely ignoring the fact that men’s and women’s brains both have frontal cortex, amygdalas, thalmuses, hypothalamuses, and on and on. And at the end of the story, the anchorman on the news says, “Well, that explains why I can’t understand my wife at all.” (If you can’t understand your wife, I recommend the much-overlooked method of listening to her).
Example #3, when I tell people I’m a psychologist specializing in gender-based violence, people always ask, when a man is beating his wife, why does she stay with him? That’s question #2; they never ask question #1: Why would a man hit his wife? Men’s violence is considered to be a given, and women’s responses to that violence are seen as choices. This subtly makes women responsible for the violence.
Example #4: self-defense classes for women that are advertised as “rape prevention.” Is it women’s job to prevent rape? Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for women learning self-defense if they want to, but let’s call it what it really is – risk reduction. It is men’s responsibility to prevent rape.
Example #5 comes from the recent scandal over sexual assaults at the Air Force Academy. It turns out that there numerous male cadets who have sexually assaulted female cadets, and the men who run the Academy intimidated survivors into keeping silent about it. The newspaper stories said something like, 54 rapes occurred between male and female cadets. I’m sorry – rapes do not occur between people. Does a bank robbery occur between a robber and a teller? Does vandalism occur between a kid with a can of spray paint and somebody’s property? And here’s another flash of brilliance – in reaction to the scandal, the head of the academy said that the problem was that men and women live in the same residence hall and that men would see women walking down the hall in their bathrobes, and that he was going to now have the men and women living in separate residence halls. So, let’s get this straight: the problem is that men are raping women and so the solution is to get rid of the women?! It’s a new height in victim-blaming. I know I get out of control when I see a woman in a bathrobe. How does that work, physiologically? Prostate exerts pressure on the spinal cord, cutting off oxygen to the brain? And, newspapers reported the Air Force problem as a “sex scandal.” I would submit that the victims were not having sex, and we could also argue that the perpetrators were not either.
When we see gender-based violence, women-hating is just around the corner. Therefore, if we can turn this attitude around, we can go a long way toward solving this problem. And, the people who are in the best position to do so are men -- we have the social status, power, and privilege. We can speak out and affect the attitudes of our fellow men. Just as white people have a special role to play in ending racism, rich people have a special role to play in ending economic inequality, and heterosexuals have a special role to play in ending homophobia, it is vitally important that we, as men of conscience, take seriously our role in ending sexual violence.
In the locker room at the vodka challenge that day, I’m betting that there was at least one man who was uncomfortable with this ice sculpture, just as there is when someone hires a stripper for a bachelor party or makes a woman the butt of a joke. It’s not unlikely that more than one man felt this way. But nobody spoke up because each man feels that he may be the only one, and taking on the collective opinion of the rest of the group can leave him out in the cold. There is tremendous pressure to laugh along with the boys or at least not say anything. It would have taken tremendous courage for a man to stand up and say, even matter-of-factly, “That ice sculpture is really offensive; what could you have been thinking? Why don’t we just get rid of it before we’re all embarassed? We can have just as much fun without it.” And it’s ironic to me that courage is supposed to be a hallmark of masculinity, but there are so many men who find it impossible to display this kind of courage. They would sooner run into a burning building or have a fist fight. Men are also supposed to be independent, but there is tremendous conformity in most all-male peer groups, whether they are adults or younger men.
Social psychologists have known for a long time that one of the biggest barriers to being able to disagree with a group is unanimity. When the group opinion is unanimous and you don’t have an ally, the pressure to conform is tremendous. But if even one person voices a disagreement with the rest of the group, others are much more likely to follow suit. There were probably several uncomfortable men in that locker room that day. If one of them had spoken out, he might have found that there was more support in the room than he had imagined. But somebody has got to go first. Somebody has got to take a risk. Someone has to be the leader. It’s masculine to take a risk, to be a leader; why are so few of us doing it? The research indicates that 75% of college men are uncomfortable when their male peers display these kinds of attitudes. Most men don’t like it; we need to let other men know that we don’t.
Along with changing our attitudes toward women, we’ve also got to change our attitudes toward ourselves. For several years, I have been involved in efforts to fight the alarming prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses. When this problem was first identified in the 1970s, colleges began to provide self-defense training, teach women how to avoid dangerous situations, and provide better lighting and emergency phones across the campus. Obviously, these are very important measures. But, these kinds of strategies constituted the basic extent of campus programming for about twenty years, and all of these measures have one thing in common: they only address potential victims. It is only been the last few years that people have begun to try to do something about the potential perpetrators? Why did it take us so long to come to this obviously important strategy? I think it is the pervasive perception boys will be boys and the only thing we can do is to wait until they commit a crime, and then put them in jail. Some still consider rape an act of male sexuality gone awry, rather than an act of violence. But we know different, just as we know that if a person hits another person over the head with a frying pan, we don’t call that cooking.
If men’s violent behavior is perceived as an unchangeable constant, then violence toward women is a women’s issue, never a men’s issue. “Boys will be boys” not only provides a measure of excuse for violence against women, it is a very disrespectable attitude toward men, as if we are animals, with absolutely no control over ourselves. And again, there’s an irony here. Self-control is another hallmark of traditional masculinity, but aggression and sexuality are considered to be completely out of control -- a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. I want men to have more dignity than that. I saw this book title recently, “All men are jerks until proven otherwise.” It made me sad – and I also realized, how am I ever going to prove what I’m not? Maybe I was a nice guy today, but who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow. It’s a sad state of affairs when so many men have behaved so irresponsibly that the rest of us have to carry the burden of understandable suspicion from women.
So, besides becoming more respectful toward women, we have to regain our self-respect. We are human beings who are capable of caring for others. We are not animals who lash out instinctively, poisoned by testosterone. Violence against women is a men’s issue, and men have to take a leadership role in building a more positive male community. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Thanks to those of you who have been doing this work.
Edited by: Christopher Kilmartin, Ph.D.
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