Grand
Theft Auto:
Educating Young Men?
by Martin Dufresne
When EWA
asked me to write about programs that
educate young men about violence against
women (VAW), I immediately thought about the
bestselling Grand Theft Auto - San
Andreas, a video game in which preteen
players ‘pick up’ and ‘use’ prostitutes, and
then batter them at will to get their money
back; a subprogram even allows kids to
‘pimp’ these icons in order to make money.
Was there an alternative, I wondered, to the
pervasive kind of VAW education that young
men were getting on every video screen? I
tried to find out if anti-violence programs
for young men existed, whether they worked,
and if their providers and content were
accountable to the women waging this
struggle.
I found that,
although funding exists for such programs,
notably from the Ontario Women’s
Directorate, as well as websites and
print/video resources (see accompanying
resource list), there seem to be extremely
few men in the trenches challenging the kids
who are growing up with a sexist, gangster,
misogynist ethos. Despite ongoing
post-feminist pressure to see men as the
solution instead of the problem, the
difficult, daily work of standing up to the
Grand Theft Auto brand of education
seems to be left to the initiative of
overworked, underpaid, mostly female
teachers.
Could part of
the problem be lack of evidence of
male-centered programs’ efficacy? In a
supportive overview, US scholar Alan
Berkowitz acknowledges that, “Due to
evaluation literature that is limited in
scope, it is difficult to assess the
effectiveness of violence prevention
programs for men.”
Are
providers from Mars?
Is another part of the problem that the male
leaders of these programs dispense with
accountability to feminists? Programs for
men often grow out of their providers’
professional or political agendas,
replicating the men’s movement’s empathy
for men and actively resisting anything that
could be interpreted as ‘shaming’ or
‘instilling fear’ in men. Far from being
pro-feminist, program content is often based
on outdated and unsupported theories
attributing sexist violence to ‘stereotyped
roles,’ ‘female provocation,’ ‘male
distress’ or ‘communication problems,’
instead of acknowledging that abusers choose
to abuse, for obvious benefits. (Messner,
1998)
There is also
the school system’s reluctance to
acknowledge and ‘take on’ sexism and VAW
issues. When school boards invited Metro Men
Against Violence to introduce its
anti-sexist, anti-VAW program into
Toronto-area schools, their intent was for
the program to be transformed into a program
directed at the racialized students that
they had ‘identified’ as the sources of
violence in their schools. The anti-VAW
message was lost.
Another
problem is that educational resources can
and sometimes are used as a way of diverting
abusers out of the justice system. For
example, members of a fraternity gang-rape a
woman during a party. Saying ‘boys will be
boys’ and not wanting to ‘ruin’ the young
men’s lives with criminal charges (and the
university’s good name with a trial),
university authorities call in an educator,
who gives the assaulters an education
session, designed not for criminals but for
a general male audience. Not only does the
woman not see justice, but the men receive
the message that they can beat the
system—and women.
What about Women’s Needs?
Could offering abusers a way to escape
consequences, and providing male
professionals with ‘turf,’ have become more
of a priority than tried-and-true
outreach/education programs centred on the
girls and women most impacted by sexist
violence? As women, feminists have long been
under pressure to serve men, including
sharing with them severely curtailed
public-education budgets. (OAITH, 1998) It
seems bizarre to see male ‘allies’ claiming
their ‘cut,’ at the same time as
anti-feminists are attacking funding for
women’s issues. One men’s education
campaign got its start from hundreds of
thousands of dollars that was allegedly
collected for women’s groups, but was almost
exclusively spent on launching the men’s
campaign. (Spark, 1993) Simple no-nonsense
questions such as “How will this end VAW?”
remain unanswered, and eventually are no
longer even asked, as resources and
attention flow back to men with a sense of
entitlement to have as much as women have,
or more.
Some Good News!
Still, some youths are actually educating
themselves and the community about VAW.
Earlier this spring, Quebec feminists and
pro-feminists directly confronted
antifeminist denial discourse and
woman-bashing with banners and a
counter-conference during a
government-funded Male Lobby international
conference in Montreal. This brought back
memories of similar actions in the same
city, when, in 1993, feminists and
pro-feminists similarly took on the infamous
False Memory Syndrome Foundation at McGill
University, and again in 1995 when they
protested an international conference of the
Human Life International anti-choice lobby.
Yet events
such as these are isolated in time and
geographic space, and hardly integrated into
the education system, whereas Grand Theft
Auto and its sexist values are beamed at
young men everywhere, all the time.
Confronting men about their acceptance of
institutionalized VAW must be done on a more
regular basis, in ways accountable to the
feminist anti-violence community. It is
encouraging that a few men are routinely
doing this kind of work along with women,
such as at Rape Relief in BC. But sadly,
they remain little more than a blip on the
male-supremacist video screen. u
Martin
Dufresne is a Quebec-based freelance
translator, pro-feminist activist, cat
lover, and long-time member of Montreal Men
Against Sexism, with whom he monitors VAW
issues and masculinist strategies on
www.antipatriarcat.org. He is the author of
Limits and Risks of ‘Programs’ for Wife
Batterers (MMAS, 1995).
References
Berkowitz,
Alan (2004) Working with Men to Prevent
Violence Against Women: An Overview,
www.vawnet.org/DomesticViolence/Research/VAWnetDocs/AR_MenPrevent
VAW1.php.
Messner,
Michael A (1998) “The limits of ‘the male
sex role’: An analysis of the men’s
liberation and men’s rights movements’
discourse,” in Gender and Society, 12
(3).
OAITH (1998)
Falling Through the Gender Gap: How
Ontario Government Policy Continues to Fail
Abused Women and their Children,
www.oaith.ca/pdf/Gender_Gap.pdf.
Spark, Bobbi
(1993) The White Ribbon Campaign:
Gift-Wrapping the Men’s Movement,
www.members.shaw.ca/sparkspeaks/wribbon.html.
For young men who…
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want to learn from men
about violence against women |
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feel offended by verbal
violence against women in conversation
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are interested in men’s
initiatives to end violence against
women |
Compiled by EWA staff with the help of
Soula Andreopoulos.
The
organizations and websites here provide
information about men who are working,
individually and collectively, to reduce
men’s violence against women. Men commit
most of the violent acts experienced by
women. The following resources try to raise
awareness in men about the problems of men’s
violence, and end their silence about it.
Because most violence against men is also
committed by men, some of the sites below
explore problems with masculinity and how to
find ways of ‘being a man’ without being
violent or homophobic.
White
Ribbon Campaign: Men Working to End Men’s
Violence Against Women.
This is a
great starter page for finding answers to
questions about violence against women. The
Information and Education Kit is
recommended.
www.whiteribbon.ca
Working
with Men and Boys to Prevent Gender-Based
Violence: The Recommended Work
Plan
is comprised
of 10 lessons with readings from the Family
Violence Prevention Fund.
http://toolkit.endabuse.org/Home/RecommendedWork
Men Can
Stop Rape (formerly Men’s Rape Prevention
Project):
This project seeks to redefine masculinity,
raise awareness in male youth about
rape-supportive attitudes, and promote
gender equality by building on men’s
capacity to be strong without violence. The
website covers homophobia, male survivors of
sexual assault, what it is to be a ‘real
man’, and how current forms of masculinity
negatively affect men and women. The website
has printable fact sheets, state-by-state
contact information for men against
violence, and links.
www.mencanstoprape.org/
Profeminist.org:
Provides
information on gender construction,
heterosexism, feminism, capitalism, and
patriarchy. Offers a good collection of
links and a gender news network with updates
on about women’s, gay, and gender-rights
issues.
www.profeminist.org/
National
Organization of Men Against Sexism:
NOMAS
advocates a perspective that is
pro-feminist, gay-affirmative, anti-racist,
and committed to justice on a broad range of
social issues including class, age,
religion, and physical abilities.
www.nomas.org/sys-tmpl/door/
Men For
Change:
This is a
male-positive, pro-feminist,
gay-affirmative, anti-racist group promoting
healthy, nurturing masculinity. Major
sections of the website include personal
growth, political action, women’s stories,
and publications. Also, check out Men’s Net
and Men Against Violence Webring; the latter
includes a list of links about men,
violence, and social change. Men Against
Domestic Violence also has a helpful
collection of links.
www.chebucto.ns.ca/CommunitySupport/Men4Change/
Pip
Cornall.com:
This website
draws attention to the urgent need for
‘sustainable masculinity’: male norms that
are appropriate to the goals of equitable
democracy and humans rights, and therefore
sustainable given the challenges of the
current nuclear/technological age.
www.pipcornall.com/
Men
Against Sexual Assault:
This group
provides educational information to debunk
myths and provide statistics and information
about the after-effects of sexual assault,
and ways to locate local laws. Try taking
their quiz to test your knowledge and find
out more about what men can do.
www.sa.rochester.edu/masa/
xy:
men,
masculinities, and gender politics: This
group starts from the premise that many of
our society’s attitudes about masculinity
are harmful to men and boys in a variety of
ways, as well as being oppressive to women
and children. xy is a forum for men who are
seeking to build life-affirming, joyful, and
non-oppressive ways of being.
www.xyonline.net/index.shtml
Men
Stopping Violence:
This is a
men’s collective focusing on anti-violence
activism and the struggle for gender
justice.
www.xyonline.net/Mensantiviol.shtml
Men
Stopping Violence.org:
Strong points
of this website include information for:
abused women; men who are (or potentially
are) abusers; and legal, criminal-justice,
and mental-health professionals. Some, but
not all, of the information and ways to get
involved are for the Atlanta, Georgia (USA)
community.
www.menstoppingviolence.org/index.php
Gay &
Lesbian Community Center of South Florida:
This organization provides information on
abusive relationships, covering profiles of
batterer and battered, the cycle of
violence, and 10 ‘rules’ for ending
violence. See also Heterosexual Privilege.
www.glccsf.org/library/couples/abuse.htm
Resources for Young Men
Participants in our programs in recent years
have challenged us to make a concerted
effort to better engage young men in
preventing and ending violence against girls
and women without shifting to gender-neutral
language. We invite readers to tell us about
innovative gender-specific programs and
materials aimed at young men that should be
shared. We will compile what we receive for
a special insert in our next newsletter. In
the meantime, see this issue of our
newsletter on our website for a list of
programs that we know about that might be of
interest to young men wishing to end
violence against women. Please contact us by
email: volunteer@womanabuseprevention.com.
