Countering Objections
Beneath the question "why work with men and boys?" are concerns and doubts about the likely success or value of this work. Here we look at some of the most common concerns and doubts, along with responses to them.
Men will resist this work because they do not want to lose their power and privilege.
Talking with men about violence prevention involves challenging male power and privilege, and male privilege can make it very difficult for men to see the benefits of working toward gender equality. Fear, too, can get in the way: some men may fear that others will think they not living up to the demands of manhood or that they will be excluded from circles of male friendship. And many men (and women) will resist changing their ideas, behaviors, and beliefs - especially if they think the proposed changes are being imposed from outside their own communities.
Despite all this, there are equally powerful reasons to work on violence prevention that can persuade many men to get involved:
- We will all gain from living in a world with less violence.
- Male gender norms-and the actual or threatened violence often used to enforce them-create fear and anxiety for men and boys, who may wonder: am I man enough? Preventing gender-based violence alleviates these anxieties.
- We often have to give up something to achieve a greater goal.
- If men want to live in a more just and more peaceful world, we have to challenge all forms of violence and oppression, including those based on gender.
There are few opportunities and there is little permission for men to get involved in preventing gender-based violence.
Barriers to men's involvement include lack of experience with discussing gender and violence issues, lack of opportunities for men and boys to engage in open discussion, and concern among men and boys about how they will be perceived by their peers. In many cultures, mainstream notions of what it means to be a man make it hard for men to promote the behaviors, ideas, and beliefs that prevent violence.
It is important that we create opportunities for men and boys to get involved, and give them permission to participate. For example, role models and mentors have a valuable role to play in enabling and encouraging men to prevent gender-based violence.
Men are rewarded for aggressive behavior.
This is often true, and is reinforced by the glorification of violence in movies, sports, and the military, to name a few examples. But many mainstream beliefs also emphasize men's roles in contributing to the community, providing safety, and so on. Many men are already working to create more equal relationships and more peaceful communities-we just don't hear about them. We need to tell their stories and celebrate their successes to encourage other men.
"Boys will be boys": men will not change because they cannot.
We have been socialized to see men only as the problem behind violence, not as part of the solution. The belief that men are born, not made runs deep in our society, and many people's experience-especially women's experience-supports this belief. But does it stand up to examination?
- If we say that men are born, not made, we are saying that men have no choices and no responsibility for what they do. But most of us believe that adults have choices and must be held accountable for them, no matter what the social pressures.
- Just like women, men are socialized into their gender roles and pressured to follow rules about how a man should think, feel, and act. These gender roles and rules are made by society and can be changed by society-just look at how women's roles have changed in the last 20 years.
It is hard to know which men to target.
We can't reliably predict who will become violent, and if we have to work with all men, we will spread ourselves too thin, the argument goes. So we must wait until men are violent, and then intervene.
This view doesn't reflect the knowledge we've developed. There are many reasons men become violent, and there are models for understanding the range of factors involved. The social ecology model is useful for planning violence prevention work because it identifies the factors that make it more likely that individuals, families, communities, and societies will experience gender-based violence.
Moreover, prevention requires targeting men not just as potential (or actual) perpetrators, but also as bystanders who do nothing to stop the violence going on around them. This is a much larger group of men, and working with them is critical. Men can be victims of violence as well, and we can help these men heal so that they, in turn, can help other men avoid acting out their trauma by becoming violent toward others. Men have many roles to play in violence prevention.
Working with men will take scarce resources away from work with women.
This fear is understandable in the current environment of shrinking financial assistance for public programs, but we need to collaborate with others to resist the politics of scarcity.
Work with men can leverage greater funding for antiviolence initiatives as a whole, thereby adding (rather than subtracting) funding for women's services. We can work with women's organizations to ensure that fundraising for violence prevention work with men does not come at the expense of work with women.
There is no evidence that work with men will be effective.
It's true that there is little empirical evidence pointing to the long-term effectiveness of prevention programs, but many programs targeting men and boys are relatively new and their impact has not been fully assessed. This is an argument for rigorous monitoring and evaluation, not for avoiding work with men and boys.
It is very difficult to work with men across lines of racial, sexual, and class difference and inequality.
Historically, the domestic and sexual violence movements have been criticized for neglecting issues and interests of communities of color as well as socially and economically marginalized groups. This has made it more difficult to create alliances among men and women from different social groups.
For that reason, it's important to recognize that in working with men to prevent gender-based violence, we are never work with just "men"-we are working with men of color, working-class men, gay men, and so on. All men have some experience of violence and oppression, but different men have different experiences. When we work with men and boys, we need to help them understand gender-based violence by linking it to their specific experiences. For example, the Men Stopping Violence program in Atlanta works largely with men of color and helps them relate their experiences of racism to women's experiences of sexist violence. We can build a diverse movement of men against violence when we make these connections between different forms of violence and oppression.
For more on this subject, see Cross-Cultural Solidarity.
Reflection questions
Use these questions to help you and your colleagues think about and counter the concerns that people may have about working with men and boys to prevent violence.
- What personal assumptions and attitudes about men do you have that might challenge the work you do with them?
- What challenges to working with men and boys do you think you will face in your own community?
- What might you do to overcome these challenges?
Find out how other men have overcome objections to working on violence prevention.
Go to the Discussion Board to see what people are saying about their concerns and doubts and how they are dealing with them, as well share your own feelings.
