Men need to step up and help stop domestic violence (Hartford, Connecticut)

YES! Do I hear an amen?!?

http://blogs.courant.com/overcoming_battered_lives/2009/09/men-domestic-violence.html

Men need to step up and help stop domestic violence
By Guest Blogger on September 2, 2009 6:00 AM

David Mandel, MA, LPC, who writes, trains and consults nationally on domestic violence issues, is today's guest blogger. Mandel currently oversees a statewide network of domestic violence consultants for the Connecticut Department of Children and Families.


Violence against women affects men and men need to become involved in stopping it.

Men are the fathers, brothers, sons, uncles, and grandsons of domestic violence survivors. They are impacted when a woman they love, as result of violence against women, experiences anxiety and depression, becomes isolated from family, never reaches her full potential or is murdered.

Men need to become involved in fighting domestic violence because it is men who are committing the most damage through their actions.

While both men and women can perpetrate violence or be controlling in the context of relationships, the data about domestic violence and our understanding about social factors surrounding gender and power clearly underlines a real imbalance that needs to inform dialog, policy and practice.

A survey of 8,000 men and 8,000 women by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2000 found that women are 2 to 3 times more likely to report an intimate partner pushed grabbed or shoved them and 7 to 14 times more likely to report an intimate partner beat them up, choked them, tried to drown them, or threatened them with a gun."

Another study by the National Institute of Justice from 2001-2005 found the average rate of intimate partner violence for women was very similar across most racial and ethnic groups. But within each of those groups we see much higher rates of assaults against women than against men.

African American women were over 3 ½ times more likely to be victims of intimate partner violence than African American males.

White women were 5 times more likely to be victims of intimate partner than white males.
Latina women were more than 7 times more likely to be victims of intimate partner violence than Latino males.

It is important to acknowledge that there are men who have been hit or slapped by a partner and are reluctant to report this to the police. But I do not believe, as some do, that the differences in reported levels of violence by men and women simply reflects men's greater reluctance to report domestic violence due to shame and embarrassment.

A distinction exists between decisions driven by embarrassment and decisions driven by the fear and control that is much more common when men perpetrate violence and abuse against women.

(In communities where there are tensions between the police and the community, men may have another reason for not calling the police -- fear of being targeted because of race, ethnicity or sexual orientation. I still believe we can distinguish between this dynamic and the one of fear and control generated by a partner.)

In my work with child welfare agencies I am regularly presented with the statement: "Both partners in this relationship are batterers because they were both arrested."

But when we assess for patterns of coercive control we usually find that the situation is not equal and one partner is not a batterer.

To make this assessment, we ask questions like:

Who's using physical violence, threats and intimidation to create fear in the other members of the family?

Who's exerting coercive control through finances, manipulation, and sabotage of work or family relationships?

Is one partner more vulnerable to coercive control due to his or her cultural status or institutional disadvantages?

In most of the cases, this objective behavior-focused assessment identifies the male as a perpetrator of the pattern of coercive control with the functioning of his female partner, and often their children, being negatively impacted.

We are sophisticated enough to have a dialog that acknowledges that men are more likely to create physical injury with their violence against their partner, and that most men do not experience a level of fear of violence from their partner that translates to being controlled in their actions.

While recognizing there are some men who have been hit and hurt by their partners, we can still admit men's violence against women occurs in the context of other forms of violence against women like sexual assault and a legacy of centuries of institutionalized male dominance.

It is from this informed dialog we can develop the best strategies for support, education, intervention and change.

-- David Mandel